"Sh-h! It is Heinrich! Listen to him--to Heinrich!" There were nods and
smiles and soft thudding of mugs, and turning of broad faces toward the
other end of the enclosure, as a small figure mounted the platform.
He was a tiny man, unlike the others; but he carried himself with a
gentle pomposity, and he faced the gathering with a proud gesture,
holding up his hand to enjoin silence. After a few muttering rumbles
they subsided.
Sebastian, sitting between his father and a fat Bach, gulped with joy.
It was the great Heinrich--who composed chorals and fugues and gavottes
and--hush! Could it be that he was rebuking the Bachs--the great
Bachs!... Sebastian's ears cracked with the strain. He looked
helplessly at his father, who sat smiling into his empty beer-mug, and
at the fat Bach on the other side, who was gaping with open mouth at the
great Heinrich.
Sebastian looked back to the platform.
Heinrich's finger was uplifted at them sternly.... "It was Reinken who
said it. He of the Katherinenkirche has said it, in open festival, that
there is not a Bach in Germany that can play as he can play. Do you hear
that!" The little man stamped impatiently with his foot on the platform.
"He has called us flutists and lutists and 'cellists--" He stopped and
held up a small instrument that he carried in his hand--"Do you know
what this is?"
A response of grunts and cheers came from the crowd.
Sebastian stretched his neck to see. It was a kind of viol, small and
battered and torn. Worn ribbons fluttered from the handle.
The small man on the platform lifted it reverently to his chin. He ran
his fingers lightly along the broken strings. "You know the man who
played it," he said significantly, "old Veit Bach--" Cheers broke from
the crowd. He stopped them sternly. "Do you think if he were alive--if
Veit Bach were alive, would Reinken, of Hamburg, dare challenge him in
open festival?"
Cries of "Nein, nein!" and "Ja, ja!" came back from the benches.
"Ja, ja! Nein, nein!" snarled back the little man. "You know that he
would not. He had only this--" He held up the lute again. "Only this and
his mill. But he made the greatest music of his time. While you--thirty
of you this day at the best organs in Germany.... And Reinken defies
you.... Reinken!" His lighted eye ran along the crowd. "Before the next
festival, shall there be one who will meet him?" There was no response.
The Bachs looked into their beer-mugs. The great Heinrich swept them
with his eagle glance. "Is there not one," he went on slowly, "who dares
promise, in the presence of the Bachs that before Reinken dies he will
meet him and outplay him?"
The Bachs were silent. They knew Reinken.
Sebastian, wedged between his father and the fat Bach, gulped mightily.
He struggled to get to his feet. But a hand at his coat-tails held him
fast. He looked up imploringly into his father's face--but the hand at
his coat-tails restrained him. "I will promise," he whispered, "I want
to promise."
"Ja, ja, little son," whispered the father; and he and the fat Bach
exchanged smiles across the round head.
Heinrich's glance swept the crowd once more.... "You will not promise?
Then let me tell you--" He raised his small hand impressively.
"There shall come of the Bachs one so great that all others shall fade.
He only shall be known as Bach--he and his sons; and before him the name
of Reinken shall be as dust!" With a hiss upon the last word, he threw
open his arms. "Come!" he said, "take your instrument and play."
Then fell upon the assembly a series of squeaks and gruntings and
tunings and twinges and groans and wails such as was never heard outside
a Bach festival. And little Sebastian, tugging at his violin, tuned and
squeaked and grunted with the rest, oblivious to the taps that fell on
his small head from surrounding bows. And when at last the tuning was
done and there burst forth the wonderful new melody of the choral,
Sebastian's heart went dizzy with the joy of it. And Uncle Heinrich on
the platform, strutting proudly back and forth, conducting the
choral--his own choral--forgot his anger and forgot Reinken, and forgot
everything except the Bachs playing there before him--playing as only
the Bachs, the united Bachs, could play--in all Germany or in all the
world.