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. He was coming to make his fortune.
That went without saying. He was brim-full of belief in himself,
to begin with. ‘The world’s mine oyster,’ he thought, as the cheap
parliamentary train crawled from station to station. The world is _my_
oyster, for that matter, but the edible mollusc is hidden, and the
shell is uninviting. Christopher found the mollusc very shy, the shell
innutritive.
Publishers did not leap at the organ fugue in C as they ought to have
done. They skipped not in answer to the adagio movement in the May-day
Symphony. The oratorio conjured no money from their pockets--for the
most part, they declined to open the wrapper which surrounded it, or
to see it opened. Poor Christopher, in short, experienced all the
scorn which patient merit of the unworthy takes, and found his own
appreciation of himself of little help to him. His money melted--as
money has a knack of melting when one would least wish to see it melt.
Oxford Street became to him as stony-hearted a step-mother as it was to
De Quincey, and at melancholy last--while his letters to Barbara became
shorter and fewer--he found an enforced way to the pawnbroker’s, whither
went all which his Uncle’s capacious maw would receive; all, except
the beloved violin which had so often sung to Barbara, so often sounded
Love’s sweet lullaby in the quiet of his own chamber. _That_ he could
not part with, for he was a true enthusiast when all was told. So he
went about hungry for a day or two.
I have hurried a little in telling his story in order that I might get
the worst over at once.
Two months before he came to this sad pass he was standing one cold
night in front of the Euston Road entrance to the great terminal
station, when the sound of a violin struck upon his ears, played as
surely a violin was never played in the streets before. The performer,
whoever he might be, slashed away with a wonderful merry abandonment,
playing the jolliest tunes, until he had a great crowd about him, on
the outskirts of which girls with their arms embracing each other swung
round in time to the measured madness of the music. The close-pent crowd
beat time with hand and foot, and sometimes this rude accompaniment
almost drowned the music:--
An Orpheus! An Orpheus! He worked on the crowd; He swayed them with
melody merry and loud.
The people went half wild over this street Paganini. They laughed with
him and danced to his music until their rough acclamation almost made
the music dumb. Then suddenly he changed his theme, and the sparkle
went out of the air and left it dim and foggy as it was by nature, and
by-and-by added a deeper gloom to it. For he played a ghostly and weird
and awful theme, which stilled merriment and chilled jollity, and seemed
to fill the night with phantoms. It made a very singular impression
indeed upon Christopher’s! nerves. Christopher was not so well nourished
as he might have been, and when a man’s economy plays tricks with his
stomach, the stomach is likely to pass the trick on with interest. He
stood amazed--doubtful of his ears, of the street, of the people, of
his own identity. For that weird and awful theme was his own, and, which
made the thing more wonderful, he had never even written it down. And
here was somebody playing it note for note, a lengthy and intricate
composition which set all theory of coincidence utterly aside. 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. His hair was long and matted, his
eyes were obscured by a pair of large spectacles of darkened glass,
and his coat collar was turned up to the tops of his ears. A
neglected-looking beard jutted out from the opening in the collar,
and not a feature but the man’s nose was visible. The crowd had gone;
looking round, one could scarcely have suspected that the crowd had been
there at all a minute before.
‘That was a curious theme you played last of all,’ said Christopher.
‘Was it your own?’
‘No,’ said the musician, chinking together the coppers in his felt hat
as a reminder of the more immediate business in hand.
‘Whose was it?’ asked Christopher, ignoring the hat.
‘Don’t know, I’m sure,’ the musician answered shortly, and turned away.
There was nobody left to appeal to, so, putting his fiddle and bow under
his arm, he emptied the coppers into his trousers’ pockets, and, putting
on his hat, made away in the direction of King’s Cross. Christopher
followed at a little distance, wonder-stricken still, and half disposed
to return to the charge again. The musician, reaching the corner of
Gray’s Inn Road, turned. This was Christopher’s homeward way, and he
followed. By-and-by the fiddler made a turn to the right. This was still
Christopher’s homeward way, and still he followed. By-and-by the man
stopped before a door and produced a latch-key. The house before which
he stood was that in which Christopher lodged. He laid a hand upon the
fiddler’s shoulder.
‘Do you live here?’ he said.
‘What has that to do with you?’ retorted the fiddler.
‘That was my theme you played,’ said Christopher; ‘and if you live here,
I know how you got hold of it. You have heard me play it.’
‘You live on the third floor?’ said the other in a changed tone.
‘Yes,’ said Christopher.
‘I’m in the attics, worse luck to me,’ said the street player. ‘Come
into my room, if you don’t mind.’
He opened the door and went upstairs in the darkness, with the assured
step of custom. Christopher, less used to the house, blundered slowly
upwards after him.
‘Wait a minute,’ said the occupant of the attic, ‘and I’ll get a light.’
There was a little pause, and then came the splutter of a match. The
pale glow of a single candle lit the room dimly. Christopher jumped
at the sight of a third man in the room. No! There were but two people
there. But where, then, was the man who had led him hither? Here before
him was a merry-looking youngster of perhaps two-and-twenty, with a
light brown moustache and eyes grey or blue, and close-cropped fair
hair. The hirsute and uncombed genius of the street had vanished.
‘Don’t stare like that, sir,’ said the transformed comically. ‘Here are
the props.’ He held up a ragged wig and beard.
‘The what?’ asked Christopher. ‘The props,’ returned the other. ‘Props
are properties. Properties are theatrical belongings. There’s nothing
diabolical or supernatural about it. Wait a minute, and I’ll light the
lamp and set the fire going.’
Christopher stood in silence whilst his new acquaintance bustled
about the room. The lamp cast a full and mellow light over the whole
apartment, and the fire began to crackle and leap merrily.
‘Sit down,’ said the host, and Christopher obeyed. ‘I always like to
take the bull by the horns,’ the host continued with a little blush. ‘I
didn’t want to be found out at this game, but you have found me out, and
so I make the best of it, and throw myself upon your confidence.’
He took up the wig and beard lightly between his finger and thumb and
dropped them again, laughing and blushing.
‘You may rely upon me,’ said Christopher in his own dogged and sulky
tones. ‘If I wanted to tell of it, I know nobody in London.’
‘That was your theme, was it?’ said the host, throwing one leg over the
other and nursing it with both hands.
‘Yes,’ said Christopher; ‘you played it very accurately, you must have
a very fine memory.’
‘I suppose I have,’ said the other, with a little laugh. ‘But it’s a
wonderful thing.’
‘Do you think so?’ asked Christopher, blushing with pleasure.
‘I do indeed,’ his new acquaintance answered. ‘Play something else of
yours.’
There was a bed in one corner of the room, and on this he had laid the
instrument and the bow when he came in. He arose now and proffered them
to Christopher. Christopher took them from his outstretched hand and
played. The other listened, nursing his leg again, and nodding at the
fire, in time to the music.
‘You write better than you play,’ he said at length, with more candour
than was altogether agreeable. ‘Not that your playing isn’t good, but
it misses--just misses--the real grip--the real royal thing. Only one
player in a million has it.’
‘Do you think you have it?’ asked Christopher, not sneeringly, though
the words might imply a sneer, but speaking because he was shy and felt
bound to say something.
‘I?’ said the other, with a merry laugh.
‘O Lord no! 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. If I could have written that gavotte you played a minute ago,
I could knock sparks out of people with it. Here! lend me the fiddle.’
He played it through with the grave-faced merriment proper to it, and
here and there with such a frolicking forth of sudden laughter and
innocent fun as gave gravity the lie and made the pretence of it dearly
droll.
‘That’s it,’ he said, looking up with naïve triumph when he had
finished.
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. ‘I beg your pardon,’
he said a second later; ‘that is no business of mine, of course.’
‘About seven or eight shillings,’ said the other, disregarding the
withdrawal of the question. ‘And I won’t ask you,’ he went on, ‘what
brings a man who writes like you living near the clouds in a street like
this?’
‘Are you an Englishman?’ asked Christopher.
‘No,’ said the other. ‘No fiddler ever was. I beg your pardon. I
oughtn’t to have said that, even though I think it. No. I am a Bohemian,
blood and bones, but I came to England when I was eight years old, and I
have lived in London ever since.’
They went on talking together, and laid the foundations of a friendship
which afterwards built itself up steadily. 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.
‘Allow me to introduce to you Mr. John Holt,’ said the Bohemian. ‘This,
Mr. Holt, is Mr. Christopher Stretton, a musician of great genius.
This--Stretton--is Mr. John Holt, a dramatist of great power. Gentlemen,
know each other. Mr. Holt writes charming songs. Mr. Stretton writes
beautiful music.’
He flourished with mock gravity as he said these things, turning
first to one and then to the other. Mr. John Holt’s eyes were keen and
observant; and one swift glance took in the knowledge of the composer’s
hungry pallor, his threadbare dress, the bare and poverty-stricken
aspect of the room.
‘I have two songs for a new play of mine,’ he said; ‘I want them set to
music.’
Christopher’s hand, thinner and more transparent than a healthy man’s
hand should be, reached out for the offered manuscript.
‘When do you think you can let me have the music?’ asked the dramatist.
Christopher read the songs through, and looked up.
‘To-morrow?’ he said.
‘So soon!’ said the other. ‘At what time to-morrow?’
‘Will midday suit you?’
‘Can you bring them to that address?’ ‘I will be there,’ responded
Christopher.
His visitors left him and he sat down to think. He was weak, and the
pains of hunger gnawed him, but as he sat over one of the songs the
words built themselves into a tune almost without his knowledge or
effort. Then he turned to write, and found that he had no music-paper.
He laughed bitterly at this discovery, and looking round the bare
apartment sighted his violin-case, and rising, took the violin and bow
out of it, put on his hat, and, with the case under his arm, made for
the pawnbroker’s. There he realised half-a-crown, one halfpenny of which
was confiscated in payment for the pawn-ticket. He bought paper and pen
and ink, and having taken them home, went out again and ate cold sausage
at the bar of a public-house, and came back with a few pence still in
his pockets. There was a nausea upon him, and he could not recall the
air he wished to write. He had eaten nothing for three days and he felt
at once sick and drowsy.
He was fain to lie down, and he fell asleep, to awake in two hours’ time
a little strengthened and refreshed. The tune came back again, and he
set it down, and then attacked the second one with like success.
Morning came, and after a meagre breakfast which finished his resources,
he went weakly to the address the dramatist had given him. Mr. Holt had
left behind him apologies for unavoidable absence. Would Mr. Stretton
call again at three? He wandered desolately home, and; waited, and when
the time drew near set out again. This time the dramatist was ready to:
receive him.
‘The lady who will sing the songs is here,’ he said, ‘and with your
permission I will ask her to try them over now. Will you come with me?’
‘I would rather await you here,’ said Christopher. The tunes he had
written were running riot in his head, and he thought them puerile,
vulgar, shameful. He would have torn the papers on which they were
written if he had not already surrendered them. He had liked them an
hour ago, and now he thought them detestable.
‘As you please,’ said the dramatist, and added ‘poor beggar!’ inwardly
as he went upstairs.
The composer sat in a sick half-dream and faintly heard a piano sounding
in a distant room. It played the prelude of one of his songs. Now
and then the sound of a female voice just touched his ears. He was
so fatigued and weak that, in spite of his anxiety, he glided into a
troubled doze in which he dreamed of Barbara. The dramatist returned,
and Christopher came back to the daylight at the sound of the opening
door.
‘Mademoiselle Hélène and myself,’ said Mr. Holt, ‘are alike delighted
with your setting of the songs. I shall ask you, Mr. Stretton, to read
my comedy and to write the whole of the incidental music, if you will
accept the commission. We can talk over terms afterwards. In the mean
time, shall I offer you a cheque for ten guineas?’
‘Thank you,’ said Christopher. He took the cheque and walked to the
bank, which was near at hand in Pall Mall, received his money, and
plunged into an eating-house, whence he emerged intoxicated by the
absorption of a cup of coffee and a steak. If you doubt the physical
accuracy of that statement, pray reduce yourself to Christopher’s
condition and try the experiment. You are respectfully assured that you
will doubt no longer.