CHAPTER III

The Story of a Violin

Mildred Lancaster, with whose history this book is largely concerned, was an orphan, and had been brought up from her babyhood by an uncle and aunt who had no children of their own. Her uncle, Dr. Graham, was a busy man with a large practice, who managed nevertheless to spare a little leisure to keep up the scientific side of his profession. He was a prominent member of Health Congresses, Sanitary Commissions, and Medical Societies, and was full of schemes for the better housing of the labouring classes, the opening of gardens and pleasure-grounds in crowded slum districts, the care of cripples and pauper children, or any question which affected the well-being of the poor people among whom his work chiefly lay. In all these things Mrs. Graham was his most earnest right hand.

She had a very strong sense of her responsibility towards those who were less-well equipped for the world's battles than herself, and she tried to take some of the light and beauty and culture of her own well-ordered life into those sad, sordid homes, where no dawn of higher things had ever shone. It was quiet, unostentatious work, that sometimes seemed to show small reward for the trouble spent over it, but she went on patiently all the same, knowing that the result might often be there, even if she were not able to see it herself.

To both Dr. and Mrs. Graham, Mildred stood in the place of a daughter. She could remember no other home, and knew no other friends, for her mother's relations had hitherto ignored the very fact of her existence. It was a happy little household, with a great deal of love in it, but the life was plain and simple, with few luxuries or extra indulgences. The Grahams were not rich people, and everything that they did not need for absolute necessities was devoted to helping forward the many causes they had at heart. On Mildred's education, however, they spared no expense. They sent her to St. Cyprian's College because it was the only school where she could spend an adequate time on the music which they hoped might some day prove to be her career, and they were prepared later on to give her the best possible advantages.

On the very afternoon when Ella Martin and Kitty Fletcher were talking about her, Mildred, quite unconscious of their concern on her behalf, was at home, trying to make up some arrears on her practising sheet. The cosy upstairs sitting-room of the corner house in Meredith Terrace was a cheerful place, though the carpet was worn and the curtains were faded. The long rows of shelves on either side of the fire-place were overflowing with books; on the walls hung prints, etchings, and water-colour sketches, most of them unframed, and pinned here and there, without any definite order as to arrangement, so as to secure the best light available. An unfinished red-chalk drawing stood on an easel by the open piano, a pot full of tulips made a rich spot of colour against the old green table-cloth, and a large grey Persian cat slept peacefully and luxuriously in the arm-chair.

It was a congenial atmosphere for study, and Mildred, who stood with her violin in the bow-window, had the dreamy, far-away expression in her eyes which, to those who knew her, meant that her artistic side was uppermost. Her long, thin, supple fingers were bringing real music from her instrument. Though her gaze might be fixed upon the piece placed upon the stand before her, she was paying no heed to it, for the snatches of melody, now bright and joyful, now soft and sad, which floated through the room were of her own improvising, a kind of reflection of the spring sunshine and the twittering of the birds outside that found its expression in the notes which flowed so richly and easily that it almost seemed as if her violin were speaking with a human voice. One cannot live long, however, in a world composed only of sweet sounds, and Mildred found her day-dream quickly and suddenly dispelled by the opening of the door and the brisk entrance of her aunt.

"Mildred, dear! Do you call this practising? I thought you had promised me to keep strictly to your concerto. When I last heard it there were still a great many mistakes, and I'm afraid Herr Hoffmann will be anything but satisfied when you go for your next lesson."

Thus brought back to the practical side of life, Mildred put down her violin with a sigh.

"Such a lovely idea came into my head, Tantie! I just had to try it over at once, for fear it should go out again. I thought I might enjoy myself for ten minutes!"

Mrs. Graham did not look approving.

"How many scales and arpeggios have you played?" she enquired gravely.

"Well, not any yet. I can do them after tea."

"And your exercise?"

"Oh! there'll be plenty of time to learn that before next Wednesday. It's quite an easy one."

"It may be easy, but it will need practice all the same. Have you tried your new piece?"

"The 'Fruehlingslied'? It's much too difficult. I shall take it back and tell Herr Hoffmann I can't possibly manage it. It's one of those terrible things that go with an orchestra. I simply hate them. The Professor plays to represent the other instruments, and he's always more than usually fussy and particular. He scolds most abominably if I play a false note, or happen to come in at the wrong place."

"I'm very glad to hear it. I think you need more scolding than you get at home."

Mildred screwed up her mouth with a rather humorous expression, then flung her arms round her aunt's neck and gave her an impulsive hug.

"Sweetest darling little Tantie, you can't scold! So please don't begin to try. I know I'm horribly bad. I ought to have been grinding away at that wretched concerto all the time, but it isn't very pretty, and it has such nasty catchy bits in it. I like making up pieces for myself so much better than proper practising. The tunes just come into my head, and then I feel as if I must play them over before I forget them. If I wait, they're gone, and I never can catch them again."

"I don't blame you, dear child, for liking to compose. What I find fault with is that you always want to shirk the hard part of the work. Scales and exercises are not pleasant, I own, but they train your fingers in a way which nothing else can do. How often has the Professor told you that, I wonder?"

"About fifteen dozen times, I dare say!" laughed Mildred, cajoling her aunt into one of the cosy basket-chairs which stood near the hearth, and installing herself in the other, with Godiva, the Persian cat, on her knee. "That doesn't make the scales and exercises any more interesting, though. It's no use, Tantie! I love music, but I detest the drudgery of it. Why need I spend so much time over the part I don't like? Why can't I just play my own tunes, and be happy?"

"Because we all hope you are worthy of better things. Simply to amuse yourself is not the highest ideal, either in music or life. Your violin was the only possession which your father could leave to you, and you must think of it as an inheritance, not as a toy."

"I know so little about my father," said Mildred, leaving her seat, and throwing herself down on the hearth-rug, with her head against her aunt's knee. "You scarcely ever talk about him."

"Because it's a sad remembrance, dear," said Mrs. Graham, stroking the golden hair with a gentle hand. "I've shrunk from speaking of it before, and yet I have often felt lately that you ought to know the story. I would rather you heard it from me than learnt it from anyone who might tell it to you with less sympathy than I should."

She paused, with a far-away look in her eyes, as if memories of the past were living before her. For a moment or two there was silence in the room, only broken by Godiva's purrs and the twittering of the birds outside.

"Please go on!" said Mildred impatiently.

"Your violin has a history," began Mrs. Graham. "You know already that it is a very old and valuable one, made by Stradivarius himself, whose skill was so marvellous that nobody since has ever been able to equal the instruments which he turned out from his workshop at Cremona. I can't tell you who was the earliest owner, or how many hands, long since dead, have brought sweet music out of it; but when I first made its acquaintance it was the most cherished possession of a strange old gentleman who lived in the cathedral city where I was born. No one knew anything about Monsieur Strelezki, for though he had been an inhabitant of Dilchester for several years, he remained to the last as great a mystery as on the day he arrived. His housekeeper, an elderly Frenchwoman, always alluded to him as 'Monsieur le Comte', and he was generally believed to be a Polish nobleman, who for some political reason had been exiled from his native land. He spoke excellent English, and was apparently well off and accustomed to good society; yet he lived the life of an absolute recluse, refusing to exchange visits with any of his neighbours, who, after their first curiosity had worn off, shunned him with an almost superstitious horror, whispering many tales about him under their breath.

"My brother and I would look with a kind of fascination at the gloomy old dwelling just outside the precincts which the Comte had bought, and at once surrounded with such a very high wall that it went in future by the name of 'The Hidden House'. We used to pass it every day on our way to school, and I remember how, by a mutual understanding, we always crossed the road exactly at the corner near the lamp-post, so as to avoid walking too close to what, in our childish imagination, might be the abode of an anarchist or worse. Your father was my only brother, five years younger than myself, my greatest companion, and my special charge after our mother's death. He had the most charming, lovable, careless, happy-go-lucky, and irresponsible disposition that I have ever known. I fear both my father and I spoilt him, for he was very winning, and when he would ask in his coaxing way it was difficult to refuse him anything. From a little child he had shown the most wonderful love for music. He seemed to learn the piano almost by instinct, and his greatest amusement was to play by ear all the chants and anthems which were sung by the cathedral choir. An air once heard never escaped his memory, and he would put such beautiful harmonies to it, and make such elaborate variations upon it, that I have often listened to him with amazement. Our father was proud of his boy's talent, and, wishing him to play the organ, made arrangements that he should take lessons from the cathedral organist.

"At first Bertram was pleased to have the great instrument respond to his little fingers, but he found the stops and pedals were troublesome and confusing to manage, and he did not make the progress we had hoped for. His one longing was to learn the violin. He used to implore our dancing-master to allow him to try the small instrument by which we were taught to regulate the steps of our quadrilles and polkas, and he would even bribe the blind old street musician who played before our house on Saturday mornings to lend him his fiddle and bow. There was no one in the town, however, whom my father considered worthy to teach him, so he was obliged to content himself with trying to pick out tunes on a guitar which had belonged to my mother, and which he had found stowed away in the lumber-room. One day my brother and I were walking down the narrow paved street on our way home from the cathedral, when, passing by the mysterious 'Hidden House', we heard the wailing strains of a violin. Bertram at once stopped to listen, and seeing that the door in the high wall, which was generally fast locked, to-day stood open, he crept inside the garden, so that he might hear the better. I followed, to try and persuade him to return, but I, too, was so attracted by the enchanting music which flowed through the open window that together we stood concealed behind a syringa bush, almost holding our breath for pleasure.

"I know now that it was a composition of Rubenstein's that Monsieur le Comte was playing, but we had never heard it before. It was a style of foreign music quite new to us, and the wild romance, the weird beauty and pathos, the bewitching, haunting ring of the melody, rendered by a master hand, together with the strangeness of the unusual rhythm, roused my brother to a degree of excitement I had never seen him show before. As the last soft notes sank quivering away, he rushed from his hiding-place, and running up the steps to the French window, dashed impulsively into the room where Monsieur Strelezki stood with his violin.

"'Oh, thank you! Thank you!' he cried. 'I've never heard anything so wonderful in all my life. Will you please tell me what it's called? And oh! if you would play it over again!'

"To say that the Comte was astonished will very poorly describe the scene that followed, but finding that the boy was in earnest, he bade us be seated, and gave us such a bewildering and utterly charming selection of quaint Polish and Hungarian airs that Bertram was wild with delight. He sealed a friendship then and there with Monsieur Strelezki, and whenever he had a half-hour to spare he would hurry away to the 'Hidden House' to listen to more of the fascinating music.

"It was perhaps only natural that the Comte, seeing my brother's enthusiasm, should offer to teach him the violin; and though my father was somewhat doubtful about allowing him to accept so great a favour from our eccentric neighbour, he could not, in the end, resist Bertram's pleadings, so the lessons began. I think teacher and pupil enjoyed them equally, and the boy's progress was simply marvellous. He not only learned with a rapidity which astonished even his master, but about this time he began to compose pieces himself, and could hardly contain his joy in this newly-discovered talent. I would often beg him to write them down, as he was apt to forget them; but he did not like the trouble of transcribing music, and would declare with a laugh that it did not matter, as he always had a new one in his head. His school work suffered very much. He would spend over his violin hours which ought to have been given to preparing Greek and Latin, and my father was often angry over his bad reports. It seemed little use, however, to scold him; he was full of promises of amendment, but he never kept any of them.

"This had gone on for perhaps three years, when one day my brother went round early to the 'Hidden House'. He found everything in a state of confusion and upset. Monsieur Strelezki had died suddenly of heart failure during the night. The old housekeeper had discovered him, when she entered the dining-room in the morning, sitting, as she supposed, writing, with his violin on the table by his side; but the eyes bent over the paper were sightless, and the fingers that still held the pen were stiff and cold. On a half-sheet of note-paper he had written in a shaky hand:

"'TO BERTRAM LANCASTER.

"'Farewell, dear pupil and friend! The King of the Musicians has called me. We shall meet no more in this world. I bequeath you my Stradivarius. May it prove for you the key to fame. Remember always that there is only one secret of true success, and that is....'

"But here the messenger had come for Monsieur le Comte, and he had obeyed the summons, leaving the secret he had tried to tell for ever untold.

"As my brother grew older his passion for music seemed only to increase. My father wished him to study law, so that he might in time give him a partnership in the steadygoing old-fashioned solicitor's practice which had been in our family for several generations, but Bertram utterly refused. He had set his heart on a musical career, and after a bitter quarrel with his father, he left home altogether, taking with him the small fortune he had inherited from our mother, and went away with the avowed intention of devoting himself to his violin.

"'I feel I have a future before me, Alice,' he said, as he bade me good-bye. 'I shall solve the Comte's secret yet. If it was talent he referred to' (and he flushed a little) 'I think I've my fair share of that, so perhaps the Stradivarius may really prove the key to fame, in spite of everything!'

"It is a very sad part of the story that comes now, but I must tell it to you all the same. Bertram left us in high hopes, and for a time, while his enthusiasm was fresh, and the change still new, I believe he studied hard at his music. But he had a curious lack of any real effort or steady concentrated purpose. He was always going to do great things, which somehow were never accomplished. I cannot tell you how many operas and oratorios he began to compose, which were to take the public by storm; but none of them was ever finished, though the fragments which I heard were of so rare a quality that they were fit to rank among the works of men of genius. Sometimes he would be at the very height of exaltation, and sometimes in the lowest depths of despair; there were periods of wild ambition, when he was determined to have the world at his feet, but they never lasted long enough to carry him through the whole of an opera.

"A few of his shorter compositions were published, and were very highly thought of by musicians, and he had splendid opportunities of playing at concerts and recitals. His appearances in public were always successful; yet he so often refused to fulfil his engagements, for no apparent reason except the whim of the moment, that the managers grew tired of him. He fell under the influence of bad companions, who led him to neglect his work, and to think of nothing but pleasure, and he had not the moral courage to say 'No' to them. His little fortune was soon spent, and as my father refused to help him, he was obliged at last to earn his bread as a teacher of music. It was in this capacity that he made the acquaintance of your mother, whose father, Sir John Lorraine, could not forgive her runaway match with one whom he considered utterly unworthy of her, and forbade her name to be mentioned again in his presence. You cannot remember her, Mildred, for she only lived long enough to put her little golden-haired baby into my arms, and beg me to be a friend to it--a trust that I have never forgotten, both for your sake and hers.

"After this matters went from bad to worse. Your father, in his grief, took no trouble over his teaching, pupils slipped away, and he also lost the post in an orchestra which for some time had been his chief resource. I helped him to my uttermost, but it was little enough, after all, that I could do for him. His health, never robust, seemed suddenly to fail, and before the year was out he had died, broken-hearted, in the prime of his youth, the success he had dreamt of still unwon. I was with him at the last, and as he put his poor worn hand in mine, he said:

"'Alice, I discovered the Comte's secret too late! Give the Stradivarius to my child. It's the only inheritance I have to leave her. Perhaps my wasted life may teach her to use hers to better advantage, and some day she may meet with the fame and success that I always hoped for but never gained.'"

Mildred sat very silent for a moment or two when Mrs. Graham had finished her story.

"What was the Comte's secret?" she asked at length, with a break in her voice.

"Perseverance and hard work. Talent is of very little use without these. Nothing can be gained in this world without taking pains, and any success worth having must be at the cost of the best effort that's in us. Do you see why I've told you this to-day?"

"Yes," replied Mildred thoughtfully. "I didn't know my violin had such a history. I loved it before, but I shall love it ten thousand times better now. Tantie, I think I'll tussle with the 'Fruehlingslied' after all. I believe if I really slave at it I can manage it. It'll be hateful, but I declare I'll try, if I break every string, and wear my bow out in the attempt."

"That's my brave girl! Shall we have a resolutions, not only for the 'Fruehlingslied', but for all-round work at school? Miss Cartwright says you can do so well when you choose. Won't you promise?"

"Honour bright, Tantie! I'll do my best!"