Christopher wrote the incidental music for the new comedy and composed
an overture and entr’actes for it--work for which he was paid pretty
liberally. He wrote to Barbara of his better fortunes, and promised to
run down and see her so soon as the business strain was over. But the
business strain was over and he did not go. He finished his music,
rehearsed it once with the orchestra of the Garrick Theatre, and then
fell ill of a low fever through which Rubach most kindly nursed him. The
Bohemian himself was busy, rehearsing half the day and playing at the
theatre at night, but he gave all his spare time to his friend. I had
forgotten to tell you that, for convenience’ sake, they had quitted
their old lodgings, and had taken chambers off the Strand, within three
minutes’ easy walk of the house. It was here that Christopher fell ill.
When he grew a little better, the Bohemian rather began to aggravate
him. Rubach talked of the new piece and its heroine, and of nothing but
the new piece and its heroine. He was enraptured with her. He confessed
himself overhead in love. So charming, so dainty, so sweet, so piquante,
so lovable was Mademoiselle Hélène. Rubach, half in earnest, half in
jest, confessed himself hopeless. Mademoiselle was engaged to Mr. Holt
the dramatist.
‘And even if she were not,’ he said, ‘is it likely she would look at a
poor wretch of a fiddler? She is going to make her fortune. She is going
to be the rage. She has never played before, but she sings like a lark,
like a linnet, like a nightingale; and she walks the boards as naturally
as if she had been born upon them. She is English too, in spite of her
foreign name. Why on earth do professional English people take foreign
names?’
‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said Christopher wearily. ‘I should like to go
to sleep.’
While the sick man slept or made believe to sleep, Rubach was quiet as a
mouse; but when he awoke the ecstatic praises began again, until, before
the public knew more of the new actress than her name, our poor invalid
was sick of her and of her praises to the very soul.
He tried, however, to take some interest in the piece, and as he became
stronger he began to grow a little anxious about his own share in its
success. When the eventful night came he was able to sit up for an hour
before the piece began, and Rubach had to leave him. It was midnight
before the faithful chum returned, and after looking in on the invalid,
who seemed to slumber calmly, sat down for a final pipe by his own
bedside. But Christopher was only ‘playing ‘possum,’ as our playful
American cousins put it, and, his anxiety over-riding his desire for
quiet, he called out,
‘Is that you, Carl?’
‘Yes,’ said the other, hastening into his room on tiptoe. ‘I thought you
were asleep.’
‘How did the music go?’
‘Capitally. Both the songs repeated. The overture and the second
entr’acte would have been redemanded at a concert, but of course the
play was the thing. Such a success, Stretton! Such a furore! She is a
little goddess, a queen. You should see her and hear her! Ah me!’--with
a comic ruefulness--‘Holt should be a happy man.’
Christopher, warned by his outbreak, which he knew by old experience to
be the merest exordium, ‘played ‘possum’ again, with such success that
Rubach left him and he went to sleep in earnest.
Holt came to see him next day, and brought the morning papers with
him. The musician and he began to talk about writing an English opera
together, and Christopher brightened at the scheme, which opened up the
road to all his old ambitions.
‘You are getting stronger now,’ said Holt. ‘We shall have you in to see
the piece by-and-by.’
‘I shall come in a day or two,’ said Christopher; and when his visitor
had gone, sat down to read over and over again the reviews of his own
work. How they would gladden Barbara, he thought. How proud she would be
of his success! how eager to hear the music! He laid-a romantic little
plot for her pleasure. He would run down when he got stronger, and
compel Barbara and her uncle on a visit to town. He would convey them to
the theatre and when Barbara was quite in love with the music he would
tell her that he himself had written it. How well the songs would
suit her voice, and how charmingly she would sing them to him! Pleasant
fancies, such as lovers have, floated through his mind. He took up his
violin for the first time for a month, and played through the old tune,
‘Cruel Barbara Allen.’ Rubach came in and found him thus employed.
‘You are getting on, my boy,’ said the good Bohemian. ‘Can you come and
see the piece to-night? Are you strong enough?’
‘Not to-night,’ Christopher returned. ‘In a day or two.’ And he went oh
playing ‘Cruel ‘Barbara Allen’ dreamily.
‘What is that?’ said Rubach with a wry grin. ‘Is not twice or thrice of
it enough?’
Christopher laid down the instrument with a smile. When Carl had left
him he took it up again and played over to himself the songs Barbara
used to sing. He was weak and could not play for any great length of
time together, but he played every now and then a melody, and in a while
he got back again to ‘Cruel Barbara Allen.’ Back came Carl as he played
it.
‘That tune again? what is it?’
‘An old ballad,’ answered Christopher. “Cruel Barbara Allen.”’
He found a pleasure in speaking her name aloud in this veiled way.
‘Let the girl alone,’ said Carl. ‘I am tired of her.’
‘I am not,’ said Christopher with a weak little chuckle, ‘and I have
known her since she was a child.’
He began to play the air again, and Carl took away the violin with
simulated theatric anger. But Carl’s treatment of the name of the ballad
as though it were the name of a girl still extant gave Christopher
a temptation, and he played the air once or twice again in Carl’s
presence.
‘You are passionately attached to Miss Allen,’ said Carl.
‘She is the only sweetheart I ever had, responded simple Christopher
with shy merriment.
Rubach sat down at the piano and sang this song:--
Through all the green glad summer-time
Love told his tale in dainty rhyme,
And sighed his loves out one by one,
There lives no echo of his laugh,
I but record his epitaph,
And sigh for love worn out and gone.
For love endures for little time,
But dies with every change of rhyme,
And lives again with every one.
And every new-born love doth laugh
Above his brother’s epitaph,
The last light love worn out and gone.
‘That is not your doctrine, mon ami,’ he said as he turned round on the
music-stool. ‘You are faithful to Miss Allen?’
‘I am faithful to Miss Allen, certainly,’ said Christopher, reaching out
his hand for the violin, and again chuckling weakly.
‘No,’ said Carl, rising and confiscating the fiddle. ‘You shall sing her
virtues to that tune no more. Write a new tune for her.’
Anybody who has been in love, and I do not care for any other sort
of reader, may fancy for himself the peculiar enjoyment which shy
Christopher extracted from this homely badinage.
Two or three days later he was almost reestablished, and had indeed
begun to write a little. He would not yet go to the theatre, however,
having some fear of the excitement. He sat alone in the sitting-room
which he and his chum occupied in common, dreaming of Barbara over a
book, and building cloud palaces. It was ten o’clock in the evening,
and Carl would not be home till midnight. Then ‘who was this dashing
tumultuously up the stone steps after Carl’s accustomed fashion? Carl
himself, it seemed, but unlike himself, pale and breathless, and with
an ugly scratch across his forehead which looked at first sight like a
severe wound.
‘What’s the matter?’ cried Christopher, rising hastily.
‘I have had a fall,’ said Carl. ‘There is nothing to be alarmed at,
but,’ holding out his left hand, ‘I have sprained my wrist and I cannot
play.’
‘How did it happen?’ asked Christopher, following him into the bedroom,
where Carl had already begun to twine a wet handkerchief round the
injured wrist.
‘I was crossing the stage between the acts,’ said Carl; ‘a plank had
been moved, and I set my foot in the hole and fell--voilà tout I want
to ask you to play for me. There is not a man in the band who can do
justice to “When Love has flown.” It will be no trouble to you. You will
simply have to stand in the flies and play the air whilst a man on the
stage appears to play it, sawing away with a soaped bow. Will you come?’
Christopher stood irresolute. ‘They can do without me in the orchestra,’
said Carl, ‘but I have been playing your song as it deserves to be
played. Mademoiselle Hélène looks forward to its being played so. It
gives her aid, I know. The people look to hear it well played, and if
you do not go it will be given to Jones--to Jones, Gott in Himmel! who
plays as a mason cuts stone. Do come. It will cost you no trouble.’
Christopher took up his violin-case, long since extracted from My
Uncle’s maw, and followed Carl from the chambers into the street.
‘You play only the first movement, very low and soft,’ said Carl as they
went along. ‘I will stand by you and tell you when to begin.’
They entered the theatre--a terra incognita to Christopher--and found
their way through a chaos of disused dusty scenery. A great burst of
applause sounded through the unseen house.
‘That is for Mademoiselle,’ said Carl, ‘We are just in time to get breath
comfortably. Stay here. I will be with you directly.’
He left Christopher standing in the flies, looking on the stage. There
were two or three people on the boards, but Christopher had not the key
to their talk, and had little interest in them. By-and-by all but
one left the stage. The light dwindled and faded. The sun-sets on the
English stage are as rapid as in any tropic region. The player played
his part. He was in love, and true as true could be, but the empress of
his soul had her doubts about him. How could she doubt him? That was
the burden of his speech as he sat at the table, and murmured the loved
one’s cruelty with a broken voice and his whole function suiting with
forms to his conceit. It was almost dark when the first rays of the
silver moon fell athwart the chamber. Christopher felt that the dead
silence of the house betokened the coming of the crisis in the play,
and he was strung to the expectation of something out of the common.
Watching from his own dark standing-place, he could see the actor draw
towards him a violin case, and he silently drew forth his own instrument
to be in readiness. Whilst he waited and watched, Carl’s stealthy
footstep sounded behind him.
‘You will see her in a minute or two,’ whispered Carl. ‘I will touch you
once, when you shall make ready, and once when you shall begin.’
For half a minute or nearly, everything was still on the stage and in
the house. Then the player’s voice, passionate and low, broke again upon
the silence, and in a second or two Carl touched Christopher upon
the shoulder. There was a curiously _crisp_ feeling in the-composer’s
nerves, and he was a little excited. He tucked his violin under his
chin, and stood prepared. Into the definite band of moonlight which
crossed the stage glided suddenly a white figure.
‘Now,’ whispered Carl, and touched the musician on the shoulder, and
straight from the violin soared a voice, not soft and low, but clear and
loud, and the air was ‘Cruel Barbara Allen.’ Carl fell back a step or
two in his amazement. The white figure on the stage turned round, and
for a moment peered into the darkness of the flies--then glided on
again. The air once played, the composer cast his violin upon the stage
beneath his feet and trampled it, hurled the bow from him, and with one
cry, eloquent of agony and rage, turned and dashed past his companion,
and, tumbling through the dark and unaccustomed ways, reached the
street. Carl followed him and caught him up.
‘What is it, Stretton? What is the matter?’ he cried, and seized his
friend by the arm. Christopher answered nothing, but hurried on like one
distracted. ‘He’s mad,’ said Carl within himself--‘quite mad.’
They came together to their chambers, and Christopher sank into
an arm-chair and moaned, unconscious of Carl’s presence, ‘Barbara!
Barbara!’
‘It is madness,’ said Carl, tossing his hands tempestuously towards
the ceiling, ‘mere midsummer madness. Poor fellow! Stretton! Stretton!
Listen to me! What is it? Don’t you know me?’
For Christopher glared at him like one who had no knowledge of him, and
then again hid his face within his hands.
‘What on earth made you play that tune?’ cried Carl.
‘She was there, man! She was there!’ groaned Christopher, rising and
pacing the room with unequal steps.
‘Who was there?’ said Carl, almost as wildly.
‘Barbara,’ groaned Christopher again, ‘Mademoiselle Hélène is Barbara
Allen.’
‘“Angels and ministers of grace defend us!”’ murmured the theatrical
Carl. ‘I must humour him. Never mind, old man. Suppose she is! what does
it matter?’
‘Oh, Carl! Carl!’ cried the other, turning upon him and gripping him by
both shoulders. ‘I never loved another woman, and I never can. I would
have built my hopes of Heaven upon her truth.’
Carl began to think there was something in it.
‘You mean that Mademoiselle Hélène is Miss Allen?’
‘Yes, I said so.’
‘And that you knew her?’
‘We were sweethearts when we were children. We were engaged to be
married two years ago. Would you believe it, Carl? would you believe it?
I had a letter from her only this morning dated from the old place in
the country. Think of the cunning perfidy of it!’
‘How long can she have known Holt?’ asked Carl, rather to himself than
Christopher.
‘Why, how can I tell?’ said the musician, groaning. ‘She has deceived me
all along.’
There was no present consolation possible, and Carl had the sense to
see it. He lit a pipe and watched his unhappy friend sympathetically.
Christopher went up and down the room exclaiming here and there against
the perfidy of woman. There came an imperious summons at the door.
‘Don’t let him in, whoever it is,’ said Christopher.
Somebody kicked the door and roared ‘Rubach!’
‘It’s Milford,’ said Carl; ‘the manager. There’s going to be a row. A
bit of a row will do you good, my poor fellow. I shall let him in.’
So said, so done. Enter Milford the lordly, in a towering rage, followed
by Holt, evidently disposed to appease his manager’s wrath.
‘I have called,’ said the manager, blowing hard and fixing a savage eye
on Carl, ‘to know what the devil you mean, sir, by turning the theatre
into a bear-garden?’
‘My good sir----’ said Carl with Continental affability.
‘Don’t “good sir” me, sir,’ cried the manager. ‘What the devil do you
mean, sir?’
‘This is a matter for commiseration, sir, not for anger,’ Carl began.
Then the great man began to swear, and did it well and fluently, with
gusto. When he had done, he collected himself and shook his fist at Carl
with a final admonition.
‘Don’t you come near my theatre again, you--you foreign rascal.’
‘It is I who am to blame,’ said Christopher, ‘and not he. It was I who
played for him, and who--in short, I am to blame.’
The manager glared speechlessly for a moment, and then gasped,
‘Explain, sir.’
‘Mr. Rubach,’ said Christopher, ‘had sprained his wrist by a fall this
evening. He came to me and requested me to play for him behind the
scenes in the last act. You know what happened. _That_ I cannot
explain.’
The situation was awkward for everybody. If Barbara’s perfidy had
sullied his own life and left him desolate, Christopher could still
speak no evil of her in the presence of the man for whom she had jilted
him. Carl’s tongue was tied by his regard for Holt’s feelings. The
manager naturally wanted to get at the bottom of the situation, and the
dramatist felt that a friend whom he was learning to value had somehow
imperilled his play. All four stood silent, and footsteps came leisurely
up the stone stairs, and were heard very distinctly in the stillness.
The door had been left open, but one of the new-comers stopped to tap at
it.
‘Come in,’ cried Carl, ready to welcome any diversion.
A red face and a grey head came round the door.
‘Does Mr. Stretton------? Oh! Chris, my boy, how are you?’
No other a person than Barbara’s uncle.
‘I’ve brought Barbara to see you. Come in, Barbara. Why, what’s the
matter?’
Christopher turned away from Barbara, as she approached him, veiled,
and walked to the window, through which he looked on the night, seeing
nothing.
‘Chris!’ said Barbara, in a pathetic, wounded voice. ‘Chris!’
Mechanically she raised her veil and looked round upon her uncle with a
pale scared face.
‘Stretton!’ roared Carl, leaping at him and laying forcible hands upon
him, forgetful of his own sprained wrist. ‘Is this Miss Allen?’
‘Yes,’ said Christopher, with a sob which would have way in spite of
him.
‘Then it isn’t Mademoiselle Hélène,’ said Carl.
Christopher turned with bewildered looks.
‘Tell me,’ he said to Barbara wildly, ‘are you playing at the Garrick
Theatre?’
‘You’ve been a-drinking, Christopher,’ said Barbara’s uncle plaintively.
‘No,’ said Barbara, frightened as she well might be at the presence of
strangers at this curious scene, and at the scene itself. ‘Uncle had
business in London, and he brought me with him this afternoon. We heard
that you had written the music to a play, and we went to hear it. We--we
thought you would be conducting, and that I should see you there.’
Little Barbara put up her hands and began to cry.
‘Sir,’ said Carl to the manager, ‘I ask you, as the first step towards
the understanding of this business, to admit that the likeness between
this young lady and Mademoiselle Hélène is very remarkable and close.’
‘Very remarkable!’ said the manager.
‘Wonderful!’ said Mr. Holt.
‘Me and my niece have been a-laughing at it and a-noticing of it all the
evening,’ said Barbara’s uncle.
Carl told the story.
‘I’ll have it in the papers,’ said Milford the manager. ‘Stunning good
advertisement; Eh? No names, of course. Oh dear, no; no names!’
Then the manager and the dramatist suddenly felt themselves de trop, and
Carl, catching the infection, went with them.
‘Can you forgive me for doubting you?’ said Christopher. ‘It was I who
suffered by it.’
‘Poor Chris!’ said Barbara, and quite regardless of her uncle she put
her arms round her lover’s neck and kissed him like the tenderhearted,
unsophisticated child she was. ‘Am I cruel Barbara now?’ she asked,
nestling to him, and looking up with a smile half audacious, half
appealing.
‘No,’ said Christopher a little sheepishly. But as she slipped away
from him he recovered himself and took her in his arms and kissed her
tenderly.
And so, shortly thereafter--to finish in the style of the best of all
story-tellers who entertained us in our childhood--they married, and
lived happily.
End of Project Gutenberg’s Cruel Barbara Allen, by David Christie Murray