“Not a soul will go near them.”
So the fiddle case was left open and unlocked, and its owner went
away with his companions to regale himself upon cold fowl and tongue
and champagne, or whatever wine he fancied most.
Now, when I say that Mr Cleffton fairly worshipped his own
instrument, I am, I believe, giving only an ordinary case—all
fiddlers, I understand, do that, and the more wretched the instrument
the more devout is their homage. Whether this particular fiddle
merited the slavish devotion I cannot say. It was very ugly, and
rather dirty-looking; but its owner, besides never tiring of admiring
it from every possible point of view, had given £40 for it, and
afterwards spent a good many more, as I shall presently show, in
trying to establish at law that the fiddle he had bought belonged to
him; so I suppose it must have had good qualities of some kind.
When, therefore, the orchestra had finished supper and strolled
back under the guidance of one of the servants to the ball-room, Mr
Cleffton’s first look was towards his fiddle—or rather towards the
case in which he had so tenderly deposited it before leaving the
room. Then he started, and blinked sharply to make sure that the
champagne had not affected his vision. The case was there, as was
also a beautifully quilted bag of wadding and green silk in which he
was wont to tenderly wrap the fiddle when done playing, and before
inserting it in the case; the fiddle bow, too, was there, but the
Cremona was gone.
“Hullo! what’s this!” exclaimed Mr Cleffton, in his quick, sharp way,
and trying to smile in spite of his concern and pitiable pallor.
“Which of you has been meddling with my fiddle.”
Nobody had been touching it, as they all hastened to assure him,
reminding him at the same time how he had been the last to leave the
room; and then, with concerned looks and widely opened eyes, they
looked everywhere about the recess for the missing fiddle, narrowly
inspecting every one of the instruments left; but it was all in
vain—the fiddle had vanished.
“My beautiful _Strad!_ my beautiful _Strad!_ worth £400!” was all Mr
Cleffton could moan out, as, wringing his hands, tearing at the few
hairs left in his head, and almost shedding real tears of grief, he
trotted feverishly and excitedly round the ball-room, peering into
every corner in search of his treasure.
“Perhaps some of the servants may have taken it out to have a scrape
while we were at supper,” suggested another player, keeping his own
instrument tight under his arm so that there might be no danger of a
second tragedy. All the other fiddlers echoed the suggestion, and,
carrying their instruments under their arms, followed the distracted
leader through the lobbies in search of the butler, or any of the
servants likely to throw light on the strange disappearance.
The butler was soon found, and brought out from the supper room
proper to hear the story of the Cremona; and in amazement and
incredulity he followed the players to the ball-room, where, however,
he could only stare and count over the instruments left, with the
invariable result of finding them one short. Then the servants were
questioned closely and searchingly, but not one of them had thought
of looking at the fiddles, far less of taking one out of the room to
try it, and the end of the investigation found them exactly where
they had begun—that is, staring blankly at each other and saying,
“Well, that is strange—how on earth could it have gone?”
By and by odd couples of the guests began to drift into the
ball-room, and at length Lady ——— herself, the amiable hostess,
appeared, and was informed in a whisper by the butler of the
unexpected difficulty.
“One of the violins taken out of the room? oh, impossible,” she
incredulously echoed, with a coolness which must have stabbed Mr
Cleffton like a sword of ice. “You will find it lying about somewhere
when the dancing is over. Could you not play on one of the other
violins, Mr Cleffton, and look for your own afterwards?”
Mr Cleffton looked at the honourable lady in pitying and profound
contempt for her ignorance, and deep reproach for what to him seemed
an indifference absolutely brutal. What! sit down and calmly play on
another instrument while his own—to him the best in the world—might
be speeding in the hands of the exultant robber to the other end of
the world.
This was more than fiddler humanity could endure. High fees and even
the countenance of earls were not to be despised, but they were as
nothing compared with the loss of his darling instrument, and in a
torrent of excited language, such as the lady was seldom favoured
with hearing, the bereaved musician told her so. Not another note
would he play till he got his own fiddle.
A horrible pause followed, but in the end a compromise was effected,
by which all but Mr Cleffton continued to play, while he followed the
butler from the room to prosecute his inquiries in the regions below.
A tardily stammered-out word from one of the servants had given them
a slight clue to the strange disappearance. During the interval
occupied by supper, some of the strange servants being entertained
below—that is, the coachmen and footmen of those who had come a
distance, and merely put up the horses to wait till the party was
over—had proposed that they should take a peep at the glories of the
empty ball-room, and, this being readily agreed to, they slipped
quietly upstairs under the guidance of one of the servants, and
gratified their curiosity.
“But they had been only a moment in the room,” the quaking servant
added, “and hardly inside the door.”