"Yes. I don't know why he keeps him on. He says the fellow has a couple of blind children, and if he were dismissed under a cloud he would have trouble in securing employment. But that's not business. The fellow's an a.s.s, isn't he?"

Whereupon his face beamed with delight, and his gray eyes twinkled like diamonds. My comment on the matter was stifled by the arrival of _hors-d'oeuvre_. I had no idea that one tray could hold such a variety of unpalatable things. At the table next to us a woman laughed boisterously, her shoulders, which were fat and formless, vibrating like blanc-mange.

"Ah!" said Basil Norman; "Klotz has arrived."

He indicated a low platform, where a dingy pianist, pimply of countenance and long of hair, was strumming the barbaric discords that always accompany the tuning of stringed instruments. A violinist, with his back towards us, was strangling his instrument into submission; while a cellist, possessed of enormous eyebrows and a superb immobility of pasty-facial expressionlessness, sat by his cello as though he had been lured there under false pretenses, and had no intention of taking any part in the proceedings--unless forced to do so by a writ of habeas-corpus. A fourth musician, who seemed all shirt and collar, blew fitfully into a flute, as if he realized it was an irrelevant thing, and was trying to rouse it to a sense of responsibility.

"Which," I asked, "is Klotz?"

As I spoke the violinist turned about and caught my host's eye. They both bowed--Norman cordially; the musician, I thought, with restraint.

The fellow stood out as a man apart from his accomplices; his high forehead and dreamy eyes were those of an artist, though a receding chin robbed his face of strength. He was the type one sees so often--able to touch, but never grasp, the cup of success.

"Klotz," said Norman, "is superb. He has the touch of the artist about him. His tone is not always good, and sometimes he scratches; but when he is at his best he does big things. So many people can perform at music--just as so many write at words--but Klotz plays with color. His art has all the charm of a day in April. He will caress a phrase according to his mood, like a mother crooning to her child. To know how to hesitate before a note in a melody, as a worshiper hesitates at the entrance to a shrine, is Art, and an Art that cannot be taught.

"It is so with painters, writers, musicians--they must have that sense of color, that instinct that brings each subtle nuance of expression into being."

I began to feel bored.

Suddenly the orchestra became animated and burst into a waltz, one of those ageless, rhythmic compositions that might have been the very first or the very last waltz ever written. Supported by wailing strings and the irrelevant flute, the enjoyment of the diners took on fresh impetus. The lady with the shoulders became a vibrating obbligato. The pumpkin-faced man beamed fatuous delight, an electric light behind him giving the odd effect that he was illuminated inside like a Hallow-e'en figure. A girl, who might have been pretty if she hadn't rouged, took a puff from her toilet-case and powdered her nose. She felt that the evening was commencing. Over the whole scene my melancholy brooded as a ghostly presence. To me it seemed like the dominant seventh in a chord of surfeiting commonplaceness; once it was heard, the whole pitch of the evening would alter to another key.

Fortunately the dominant seventh remained unheard.

The waltz stopped, and we turned our undivided attention to dinner.

"Klotz," said my host, pouring me a gla.s.s of wine, "should have made a mark, but----"

"d.a.m.n Klotz!"

"That has been done, Pest. The Bricklayers' Union, or something equally esthetic, took exception to him for one reason or another, and prevailed upon its sister-cabal to debar him from the big orchestras.

To offend your Union, dear boy, is to accomplish the total eclipse of your future. Even genius to-day is subject to regulations. Klotz is in a worse position than a clerk with a Board School education trying to secure employment in a London bank."

"Confound it!" I said, "there must be some spheres reserved for gentlemen."

His twinkling eyes steadied, and a dreamy look crept into them. "Pest,"

he murmured, "some day England is going to thank G.o.d for the gentlemen--who were educated at Board Schools. Listen!--the cellist is playing Saint-Saens."

Dinner--or the mess of foodstuffs dignified by the name--was almost finished when Klotz, the violinist, started one of the rare melodies which Wagner permitted himself--the Song to the Evening Star.

It was being beautifully played--even I would have admitted that--but I could not account for the troubled look that crept into my companion's face, driving the gayety and the whimsicality from it as a cloud obscures the sunlight.

"Klotz," he said anxiously, "is in great sorrow."

"How the deuce," I muttered, with a feeling of creepiness stealing over me, "can you tell that? Do you read it in his face?"

He shook his head. "Listen!" he said; "can't you hear it? Can't you feel the tears in it?"

And in spite of myself I remained silent, held irresistibly by the double fascination of the German's artistry and the sense of mystery engendered by Norman. The last sob of the G string quivered to its finish. The crowd applauded perfunctorily, then applied themselves to the more essential things of life--food, wine and noise.

Rousing myself from the reverie into which I had fallen, I turned to Norman, and found his chair vacated. I started. He had reached the platform, and was talking earnestly to the violinist. Half-contemptuous and half-interested, I watched the pantomime as they talked. Norman's hands were emphasizing some point, and every gesture was a pleasure to the eye; the musician was protesting, but with steadily abating determination. Then the scene came to a climax, and the German disappeared.

Holding the violin in his arms, Basil Norman mounted the platform, the fingers of his left hand picking quiet, pizzicato notes from the strings.

"My friends----" His voice traveled like sound on the ocean at twilight; the room subsided into silence, and diners craned their necks to see him. The woman with the shoulders brought them to a standstill, like an electric fan that had lost its current.

"My friends"--what a charming voice the fellow had!--"I do not want to bring a note of sorrow into your happiness. You are here, like my companion and myself, for enjoyment; but Herr Klotz ... his wife is very ill; she is perhaps dying; and, my friends, it is very hard that he should play while his wife is dying ... on Christmas Eve ... in a strange country. You are English, and I know you are kind. I have sent him home, and I promised that I would take his place, as well as I can take the place of such an artist. For you who work so hard, it is not fair to spoil your happiness on this of all nights--but you will forgive me? Good!"

And his face had a whimsical, tender look.

A murmur of sympathy rose from the crowd, but died away as he raised the violin in his hands and brought from it a tone that breathed over them like a benediction. It was Gounod's "_Ave Maria_," and the pianist's fingers were mothering the keys as they had not done since his ambition evaporated like a cloud on a summer day.

It was exquisite--haunting. It was a prayer to Mary, but a prayer sung in a field of daisies and violets. There was sorrow in it, but it was the grief of a girl over a shattered dream. It was mature artistry, yet was born of sunshine and throbbed with the primrose sweetness of youth.

It touched one like the face of a beautiful child.

Still caressing the violin, he repeated the "_Ave Maria_," whistling a unison. With almost any one else it would have been commonplace; with him it was a sound more pleasing than any flute, and only accentuated his sense of emanc.i.p.ation from the thrall of years. He played "_Still wie die Nacht_," "_Old King Wenceslaus_," "_Meditation_" from Thas, "_Intermezzo_" of Mascagni; and whatever he did, or however hackneyed the piece, he surrounded it with a joyousness that trembled on the brink of tears.

I looked at my watch; it was nearly midnight, and the evening so dreaded was almost at a close. He had put down his violin with a gesture of finality, when the prolonged outburst of applause changed his decision, and, with another of those rare smiles, he took the instrument once more.

Maxwellton's braes are bonnie Where early fa's the dew, And it's there that Annie Laurie Gi'ed me her promise true....

The violin seemed to speak the words; and I'll swear there wasn't a woman in the place who wasn't recalling the sweet innocence of her first love. He had hardly finished, when the man with the face like a pumpkin jumped to his feet, and I rubbed my eyes.

The fellow had changed. His face had expression. Confound it! there was something rather splendid about his features--a kindliness--a----

"Young feller, m'lad," he was saying, "I knows I speaks for hevery one when I says we ain't 'eard music like that there since we was knee-'igh to a gra.s.s'opper, and I knows you won't take it hamiss if we was to pa.s.s the 'at and----"

I held my breath. What would the Blower of Bubbles say?

"You're a brick, sir!" His voice was a mellow contrast to the other's.

"My friends, this gentleman has suggested that we pa.s.s the hat for our poor friend Klotz."

"I didn't neither," protested the benefactor. "Leastways----"

But the woman of the shoulders cut him short by placing two shillings beside him. It was tactful of her, a kindly thing to do, and again I was amazed. There was a womanly, motherly look about her as she turned away, and her eyes were radiant like stars in a mist.

I think I gave ten bob--it must have been a considerable amount, for the girl who would have been pretty if she hadn't rouged looked straight into my eyes and said something that sounded like a blessing.

I hope it was; she made me think of a little sister I once had.

And then we were walking together again in the street, and the crowds were thinner than before. I cannot remember what we talked of, but I know I said to him, "Where did you learn to play like that?"

And he answered, "My dear old boy, music must be loved, not learned."

Then we were in Sloane Square, at my flat, and I was thanking him, or he was thanking me--I forget which; and he promised to call at noon next day to take me to Klotz's home.... And the lamps in Sloane Square seemed duller than before.

Selfishness does not die in an hour, but the bachelor who looked from his window that night was a different man from the one who had spoken to Mrs. Mulvaney. He was thinking ... and much is accomplished in itself when a man is made to think.

A distant clock struck one.