Part 5

As the winter leaped into spring, and days came which were the duplicates of those I had spent with her, of course my pain grew more acute. The murmur of out-door life and the warmth and perfume of the spring air, penetrated to the very quick of memory and made it quiver. But at about this time I began to taste an unexpected pleasure. It was an odd one. Of old, during our betrothal, I had been tormented almost nightly by bad dreams. As surely as I laid my head upon its pillow, so surely would I be wafted off into an ugly nightmare—she and I were separated—we had quarreled—she had ceased to love me. But now that my worst dream had been excelled by the reality, I began to have dreams of quite another sort. As soon as sleep closed upon me, the truth was annihilated, Veronika came back. All night long we were supremely happy; we played and sang and talked together, just as we had been used to do. These dreams were astonishingly life-like. Indeed, in the morning after one, I would wonder which was the very fact, the dream or the waking. My nightly dream got to be a goal to look forward to during the day. But as the summer deepened, I dreamed less and less frequently, and at length ceased altogether.

Autumn returned, and winter; and my life did not vary. Time was slow about healing my wounds, if time meant to heal them at all. But time did not mean to heal them at all, as ere long became apparent.

One afternoon in November, a month or so before the two years would have terminated, a young man entered the shop and ensconced himself at a table in the corner. Having delivered his order and lighted a cigarette, he pulled out a yellow covered French book from the pocket of his coat, and speedily became immersed in its perusal. I don’t know what it was in the appearance of this young man that attracted my attention. Almost from the moment of his advent my eyes kept going back to him. His own eyes being fastened upon his book, I could stare at him without giving offense. And stare at him I did to my heart’s content.

He was a tall young fellow and wore his hair a trifle longer than the fashion is. He was dressed rather carelessly; he knocked his cigarette ashes about so that they soiled his clothes. He had a dark skin, and, in singular contrast to it, a pair of large blue eyes. His forehead, nose, and chin were strongly modeled and expressed force of character without pretending to conventional beauty. He was not a handsome, but a distinguished looking man. The absence of beard and mustache lent him somewhat of the aspect of a Catholic priest. His big blue eyes were full of good-nature and intelligence. He had a quick, energetic way of moving which announced plenty of dash within. He had entered the shop like a gust of wind, had shot across the floor and taken his seat at the table as if impelled by the force of gunpowder, and now he turned the pages of his book with the air of a man whose life depended upon what he was doing. No sooner had he consumed one of his cigarettes than he applied a match to its successor.

I stared at him mercilessly and wondered what manner of individual he was.

“He is not a business-man,” I said, “nor a lawyer nor a doctor: that is evident from his whole bearing; and besides, what would he be doing in a wine-shop at this hour of the afternoon? I don’t think he is a musician, either—he hasn’t the musician’s eyes or mouth. Possibly he is a school-teacher, or it may be—yes, I should say most certainly, he is an artist of some sort, a painter or sculptor, or perhaps a writer.”

My speculations had proceeded thus far when in the quick, energetic way above alluded to the young man looked at his watch, slammed to his book, shoved back his chair, and commenced hammering upon the table with the bottom of his empty beer-mug.

“Yes, sir,” I said, responding to his summons.

“Check,” he demanded laconically.

I handed him his check. He thrust his fingers into his waistcoat-pocket for the money. They roamed about, apparently unrewarded.

A puzzled expression came upon his face. The fingers paused in their occupation; presently emerged and dived into another pocket and then into another. The puzzled expression deepened: at last changed its character, became an expression of intense annoyance. He knitted his brows and bit his lip. Glancing up, he said, “This is really very awkward. I—I find I haven’t a sou about me. It’s—bother it all, I suppose you’ll take me for a beat. But—here, I can leave my watch.”

“Oh, that’s entirely unnecessary,” I hastened to put in. “Don’t let it distress you. Tomorrow, or any other day you happen to be passing, will do as well.”

He looked at the same time surprised and relieved. “That’s not a conservative way of doing business,” he said. “How do you know I may not take advantage of you?”

“Oh, I’m quite at rest about that. You need not be disturbed.”

“Well, such faith in human nature is stimulating,” he answered. “I should hate to imperil it. So you may be sure I’ll turn up to-morrow. Meanwhile I’m awfully obliged.”

Thereat he went away.

I paid his reckoning from my own purse, and immediately fell again to wondering about him.

By and by it occurred to me, “Why, that is the first human being who has taken you out of yourself for the last two years!” And thereupon I transferred my wonder to the interest he had managed to arouse in my own preoccupied mind. Then gradually my thoughts flowed back into their customary channels.

But early the next day I caught myself asking, “Will he return?” and devoutly hoping that he would. Not on account of the money; I had no anxiety about the money. But somehow, self-centered as I was, I had felt drawn toward this blue-eyed young man, and anticipated seeing him again with an approach to genuine pleasure.

Surely enough, in the course of the afternoon the door opened and he entered.

“Ah,” he said, “you see, I am faithful to my trust. Here is the lucre: count it and be satisfied that the sum is just. Really,” he added, dropping the mock theatrical manner he had assumed, “really, it was frightfully embarrassing yesterday. But I’m a victim of absentmindedness, and in changing my clothes I had omitted to transfer my pocket-book from the one suit to the other. I can’t tell you how much indebted I am for your considerateness. I suppose you are overrun with dead-beats who play that dodge regularly—eh?”

I gave him the answer his question called for, served him with the drinkables he ordered, and stationed, myself at a respectful distance.

He lighted his inevitable cigarette and produced his book. He read and smoked for a few moments in silence. Suddenly he flung the book angrily upon the table, pushed back his glass, and uttered an audible “Confound it!”

I hastened forward to learn the subject of his discomposure and to supply what remedy I might.

“I beg your pardon,” I ventured, “is there any thing wrong with the wine?”

“Eh—what?” he queried. “With the wine? Any thing wrong? Oh—I perceive. Oh, no—the wine s all right. It’s this beastly pedantic author. He is describing the Jewish ritual, and now just observe his idiocy. He goes on at a great rate about the beauty of a certain prayer—gets the reader’s curiosity all screwed up—and then—fancy his airs!—and then quotes the stuff in the original Hebrew! It’s ridiculous. He doesn’t even condescend to affix a translation in a foot-note. Look.”

He opened the book and pointed, with a finger dyed brown by tobacco-smoke, to the troublesome passage.

Now I, having been brought up as an orthodox Jew, had a smattering of Hebrew, and at a glance I saw that I could easily translate the few sentences in question. So, impulsively and without stopping to reflect that my conduct might seem officious, I said, “If you would like, I think perhaps I may be able to aid you.”

“What!” he exclaimed, fixing a pair of wide open eyes upon my face.

“Yes, I think I can translate it.”

“The deuce!” he cried. “I didn’t suspect you were a scholar. How in the name of goodness did you learn Hebrew?”

“A scholar I am not, surely enough: but I am a Jew, and like the rest of my faith I studied Hebrew as a boy.”

“Ah, I understand. Well, fire away.”

I took the book and read the Hebrew aloud. It was a prayer, which, when a child, I had known by heart. Afterward I explained its sense while my friend jotted it down with a pencil upon the margin.

“Thanks,” he was good enough to say. “I don’t know what I should have done without your help.—And so you are a Jew? You don’t look it. You look like a full-blown Teuton. But I congratulate you all the same.”

“Congratulate me for looking like a Teuton?” The shop being empty, there was no harm in my joining in conversation with a client. Besides, I did not stop to think whether there was harm in it or not. I yielded to the attraction which this young man exerted over me.

“No—for belonging to the ancient and honorable race of Jews,” he answered. “Your ancestors were civilized and dwelt in cities and wrote poems, thousands of years ago: whereas mine at that epoch inhabited caves and dressed in bearskins and occasionally dined on a roasted neighbor. I should be proud of my lineage, were I a Jew.”

“But it is the fashion for the Gentiles to despise us.”

“Oh, bosh! It is the fashion for a certain ignorant, stupid set of Philistines to do so—but those who pretend to the least enlightenment, on the contrary, regard the Jews as a most enviable people. They envy your history, they envy the success that waits upon your enterprises. For my part, I believe the whole future of America depends upon the Jews.”

“Indeed, how is that?”

“Why, look here. What is the American people to-day? There is no American people—or rather there are twenty American peoples—the Irish, the German, the Jewish, the English, and the Negro elements—all existing independently at the same time, and each as truly American as any of the others. Good! But in the future, after emigration has ceased, these elements will begin to amalgamate. A single people of homogeneous blood will be the consequence. Do you follow?”

“I think I follow. But the Jews?”

“But the Jews—precisely, the Jews. It is the Jewish element that is to leaven the whole lump—color the whole mixture. The English element alone is, so to speak, one portion of pure water; the German element, one portion of eau sucrée; now add the Jewish—it is a dose of rich strong wine. It will give fire and flavor to the decoction. The future Americans, thanks to the Jew in them, will have passions, enthusiasms. They will paint great pictures, compose great music, write great poems, be capable of great heroism. Have I said enough?”

The result was that we chatted together for half an hour with the freedom of old acquaintances. He quite made me forget that I was his servant for the time, and led me to speak out my mind with the unreserve of equal to equal. I enjoyed a peculiar sense of exhilaration that lasted even after he had gone away. In spite of myself I could not help relishing this contact with a superior man. Again I fell to wondering about his occupation. I was more and more persuaded that he must be an artist of some sort, or a writer.

The next day he came again, and the next, and the next, and regularly every day at about the same hour for a fortnight. As surely as he seated himself at the corner table, so surely would he beckon to me and begin to talk. In these dialogues he afforded me no end of entertainment, touching in a racy way upon a score of topics. He had resided abroad for some years—seemed equally at home in Paris, Rome, and Munich—and his anecdotes of foreign life were like glimpses into dream-land for me. He had the faculty of making me forget myself, and for that reason, if for no other, I should have valued his friendliness. Our interviews occurred as bright spots in the sad gray monotone of my daily life.

VIII.

BUT one day, the fortnight having passed, he failed to put in an appearance. I was heartily disappointed. I spent the rest of the afternoon fathoms down in the blues—like an opium eater deprived of his daily portion. It was Saturday, and as usual at nightfall the shop filled up and the staff of waiters was kept busy. Toward ten o’clock, long before which hour I had ceased altogether to expect him, the door opened and my friend came in. He squeezed up between a couple of Germans at one of the tables, and sat there smoking and reading an evening paper. I had no opportunity to do more than acknowledge the smile of greeting with which he favored me; and it chanced that the table at which he was established fell under the jurisdiction of another waiter. He consumed cigarette after cigarette and read his paper through to the very advertisements on the last page; and still, while the other guests came and went, he staid on. At the hour for shutting up he had not yet shown any disposition to depart. His attendant carried off his empty glass and hovered uneasily around his chair; but he failed to take the hint. At length the proprietor began to turn out the lights. At this he got up, buttoned his overcoat, waved a farewell at me, and passed beyond the door.

I followed soon after. Turning up Second avenue, I felt a hand laid gently upon my shoulder. “I have been waiting for you,” said my friend. “Which way do you walk?” Without pausing for a reply, “You won’t mind my walking with you?” and he linked his arm in mine.

“I was afraid I had seen the last of you for the day,” I answered. “This is a pleasant surprise, I assure you.”

After a few yards in silence he resumed, “I say—oh, by the way, you have never told me your name?”

“My name is Lexow.”

“What? Lexow?—Well, I say, Lexow, without being indiscreet, I should like to ask how under the sun you ever came to be employed as you are around in Herr Schwartz’s saloon.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Oh come now; yes, you do understand, too,” he rejoined. “Don’t take offense and be dignified—We’re both young men, and there’s no use in trying to mystify each other. You needn’t tell me that you have always been a waiter. You’re too intelligent, too much of a gentleman in every way. I’m not blind; and it doesn’t require especially long spectacles to perceive that you are something different from what you would havens believe. I’ve seen a good deal of the world and I’m not prone to romancing. So I don’t fancy that you’re a king in exile or a Russian nobleman or any thing of that sort. But at the same time I’m sure you’re capable of better things than waiting, and I want to know what the trouble is, so that I can help to set you back on the right track.”

“One confidence deserves another. I have told you my name, tell me yours.”

“My name is Merivale, Daniel.—But don’t change the subject.”

“Well, Mr. Merivale, I will say then, that if any other man had spoken to me as you have just done, I should certainly have been offended. I say this not to reproach you, but to show by the fact that I’m not offended how much I think of you. So you mustn’t take offense either when I add that I should prefer to speak of other things.”

“After that I suppose I ought to consider myself snubbed. But, I sha’n’., notwithstanding. I shall simply take the whole confession for granted. Now, Mr. Mysterious, I will venture to make three allegations of fact about you. Promise to set me right if I am wrong. I assure you I am actuated by disinterested motives. All you will have to do will be to say yes or no. Promise.”

“I can’t pledge myself blindfold. But if the ‘allegations of fact’ are within certain limits, I will satisfy you—although I repeat I would prefer a different subject.”

“Capital! Well, then, for a beginner: You are or were or have at some time hoped to be, an artist of some sort—eh?”

“How did you find that out?”—The query escaped involuntarily. For a moment a dread lest he might have discovered my true identity, darkened my mind: but it was transitory.

“You indorse allegation number one! No matter how I found it out. I don’t really know myself—unless it was by that instinct which kindred spirits have for recognizing one another. But now for allegation number two. Its form shall be negative. You are not a painter, a sculptor, an actor, or a poet.”

“No, neither of them.”

“Brava! I could have sworn to it. Therefore you are a musician. And I will have the hardihood to guess that your instrument is the violin.”

“I confess, Mr. Merivale, that you surprise me. You have divined the truth, but for the life of me, I don’t see how.”

“Why, by the simplest of possible means. If one is only observing and has a knack of putting two and two together, most riddles can easily be undone. After our first interview I said, That fellow is above his station; after our second, That fellow is an artist; after our third, I’ll bet my head he is a musician. I have told you it was partly instinct, that made me set you down for an artist. It was partly the tone of your conversation—your tendency to warm up over matters pertaining to the arts, and to cool down when our talk verged the other way. Then a—a certain ignorance that you betrayed about pictures and books and statuary helped on the process of elimination. I concluded that you were a musician—which conclusion was strengthened by the fact of your being a Jew. Music is the art in which the Jews excel. And one day a chance attitude that you assumed, a twist of the neck, a hitch of the shoulder, cried out Violin! as clearly as if by word of mouth—though no doubt the wish fostered the thought, for I have always had a predilection for violinists. Now I will go further and declare that a chagrin of one kind or another is accountable for your present mode of life. A few years ago I should have said: A woman in the case—disappointment in love—and so forth. Now, having become more worldly, I say: Fear of failure, lack of self-confidence. Answer.”

“Since you are such an adept at clairvoyance, I need not answer. But don’t let this thing become one-sided. You too are an artist, as you have hinted and as I had fancied. And your art is?”

“Guess. I’ll wager you’ll never guess.”

“No; I confess I am at a loss. You seem equally familiar with all the arts. One moment I think you are a painter; the next, a sculptor. I’m sure you’re not a musician. And on the whole it seems most probable that you are in some way connected with literature. I don’t know why.”

“Good! You have hit the nail on the head! In spite of my slangy speech and my worldly wisdom, learn that I aspire to become a poet! the poet of the practical, of the every day, of the passions of modern life. As yet, however, I am, as the French put it, inédit. The magazines repudiate me. I am too downright, too careless of euphemism, to suit their dainty pages. But this is aside from the point. The point is that I want to hear you play.”

“Impossible. For me music is a thing of the past. I haven’t touched a violin these two years. I shall never touch one again.

“Bah, bah! Excuse my frankness, but don’t be a child. If you haven’t touched your violin for two years, you have allowed two precious years to leak away. All the more reason for stopping the leak at once. Come in.”

“We had arrived in front of an English-basement house in Seventeenth street.

“Come in,” he repeated. “This is where I live.”

“It is too late,” I said.

“Nonsense,” he retorted. “It is never too late. Advance!”

I followed him into the house.

The room to which he conducted me was precisely the sort of room one would have expected. It was chock-full of odds and ends, piled about in hopeless confusion. The walls were hung with a reddish paper, and freckled with framed and unframed pictures—etchings, engravings, water-colors, charcoals, some suspended correctly by wires from the cornice, others pinned up loosely by their corners. The ceiling was tinted to harmonize with the walls. The floor was carpetless, of hard wood, waxed to a high degree of slipperiness, and relieved by a sporadic rug or two. Bits of porcelain and metal ware, specimens of old Italian carving, Chinese sculptures in ivory, rich tapestries, bronze and plaster reproductions of antique statuary, and books of all sizes and descriptions and in all stages of decay, were scattered hither and thither without a pretense to order. On the whole the effect of the room was pleasant, though it resembled somewhat closely that of a curiosity-shop gone mad. My host informed me that it was Liberty Hall and bade me make myself at home. Producing a flagon of Benedictine, he said laconically, “Drink.”

We drank together in silence. Turning his emptied glass upside down, “Now,” he cried, “now for the music. Now you are going to play.”

“Oh, I thought you had forgotten about that,” I answered.

“‘Tis not among my talents to forget,” he declaimed, theatrically. “You must prepare to limber up your fingers.”

“Really, Mr. Merivale,” I insisted, “you don’t know what you are asking. I should no more think of touching a violin to-night than, than—no need of a comparison. The long and short of the matter is that I have the best of reasons for not wanting to play, and that the most you can urge to the contrary won’t alter my resolution. I hate to seem boorish or disobliging, but really I can’t help it. Besides, my instrument is a mile away and unstrung, and it is so late that the other occupants of this house would be annoyed. And as the subject is extremely painful to me, I wish you would let it drop.”

“Oh, if you are going to treat the matter au grand sérieux,” said Merivale, “I suppose I must give in. But you have no idea of how disappointed I shall be. As for an instrument, I’ve a fiddle of my own in the next room—one that I scrape on now and then myself. As for the other occupants of this house, I pay double rent on the condition that my quarters are to be my castle, and that I can create as much rumpus in them, day and night, as I desire. If I were disposed to do so, I could make this a broad proposition of ethics, and maintain that as an artist you have no right to decline to exercise your skill. Your talent is given you in trust—a trust which you violate when you bury the talent in the ground. But I won’t go so far as that. I’ll simply ask you as a favor to play for me, and, if after that you are still obstinate, I’ll hold my peace.”

“Well, I am forced to be obstinate. Now let’s change the subject.”

“I bow my head. Only, perhaps you will make a single concession. As I have said, I am the possessor of a fiddle. It is one I picked up in Rome. I bought it of a seedy Italian nobleman; and he claimed it for a rare one—a Stradivari, in fact. I’m no judge of such things, and most likely was taken in. Will you look at it and give me your opinion?”

“Oh, yes, I have no objection to doing that,”

I said, glad to prove myself not altogether churlish.

“Here it is,” he continued, putting the violin into my hands.

It was a beautiful instrument from an optical standpoint. What remained of the varnish was ruddy and crystalline, and as smooth as amber.

The curves were exquisite. It was also either genuinely old or a marvelous imitation. Its interior was dark and dirty—an excellent condition. I could descry no label there—another favorable sign. Was it indeed a Stradivari? Formerly it had been an ambition of mine to play upon a Stradivari; an ambition which I had never had a chance to gratify, because among the dozen so-called Stradivaris that I had come upon here and there, I had found not one but betrayed its fraudulent origin from the instant the bow was drawn across the strings. Something of the old feeling revived in me as I held this instrument in my hands, and before I had thought, my finger mechanically picked the A string. The clear, bell-like tone that responded, caused me to start. I had never heard such a tone as this produced before by the mere picking of a string.