The little chap walked solemnly in, a baton in his hand. "Yeth?" he said.

"_Mein Herr_, my friend and myself desire to join your orchestra."

The youthful conductor considered, ruminatingly. "You blay goot?" he said.

"Wonderfully. I was comb-and-tissue-paper-player in the Cascade Steam Laundry Orchestra, and my friend----"

"He ith goot alzo?"

"Pest, speak for yourself."

I shrugged my shoulders. "Far be it from me to brag," I said, rather lamely, "but I was first violinist to His Majesty the King of Diddle-doodledums."

"Ah, yes," cried Norman; "and you were dismissed because of your unfortunate habit of playing an octave flat." He leaned over and put his lips to Siegfried's ear. "Let him play the drums," he said in a stage whisper.

Amidst roars of delight from the older Klotz, the youngster left the room, and returned in a minute's time, carrying an immense tin dishpan and a broken broom-handle, which musical impedimenta he entrusted to my tender mercies, and then sedately stalked from the scene once more.

With mixed emotions I carried my pan and stick over to the extreme right, and placed a chair beneath the spot where the stage-box would be, calmly surveying the a.s.sumed audience with that look of waggish melancholy one a.s.sociates with gentlemen of the drums. Norman, whom Klotz had armed with the combined ingredients of his instrument, placed a chair halfway between the conductor's stand and myself, and together we joined Herr Klotz in a two-minutes' orgy of discordant preparation.

With a desire to increase the variety of my percussion effects, I conscripted an extra chair into service, placed it back towards me, and prepared to use my cane as an auxiliary drumstick.

By common consent we achieved a moment's unanimity of silence, which was seized by Herr Siegfried as the auspicious moment for his entrance.

Without the least loss of dignity he clambered onto his chair, as we applauded, perfunctorily, by hammering our alleged music-stands with non-existent bows; and, turning to the audience, he bowed with the restraint of genius--a feat of condescension which appeared to delight the throng hugely, for he was constrained to turn about and acknowledge their plaudits a second time before they would allow him to proceed.

As drummer I a.s.sumed an air of morose boredom.

The noise of the audience having subsided, the conductor opened his score and nodded to his _Concertmeister_, Herr Klotz, who carefully found the required place in the orchestration.

"Blay der 'Liebestod' music," said he in his most professional manner to us. We nodded knowingly, and found the required part in the last act of our scores, after turning over a vast number of visionary pages.

"Do we begin at the beginning?" asked Norman.

"Yes," I answered, "and leave off at the end." After which sally I laughed immoderately, and began to understand the instinct which causes a humorist to enjoy his own wit more than any other's.

A rap on the stand brought my mirth to a close. Both arms were extended in the air--a last look at both sides of the orchestra (there must have been a hundred of us)--the left hand slowly poised to indicate "piano"--the right hand gently raised--and then the strings were brought into action. I had intended, as another excellent jest, to give a tremendous crash on the pan at the start, so as to bring down the leader's wrath, but something in the little chap's att.i.tude stopped me.

This was not play to him--it was real; and, to my amazement, it seemed no less vivid to my fellow-burlesquers. Herr Klotz was playing the chromatic development of the opening as if it had been Covent Garden and the real Nikisch conducting. The Blower of Bubbles was giving one more proof of his amazing versatility. In some manner he was imitating a cello, and he _knew_ the music. Where he had learned it one could only conjecture--but when did he learn anything?

Silently I watched the serio-comic development. The boy was conducting remarkably, with unerring artistry, sustaining the exact Wagnerian _tempi_, and, with little exaggeration, indicating the crescendo and diminuendo which colors all the great master's composition. How much of it he knew or whether he was following his father's violin I could not make out, but his earnestness fascinated me; and suddenly his eyes turned towards mine. I gripped the broom-handle--but no, it was merely a warning that my time was imminent. I think my breath came short as I waited. Then his eyes sought mine once more, and inclining towards me, his baton called for the drums. It was _I_ he was conducting, and no one else! And I vibrated the broom-handle against the dish-pan, only to stop instantaneously as his baton moved to subtler instruments. He never failed to warn me with that preliminary glance, and when the magic wand followed I gave him all I had. The little beggar was a hypnotist.

Towards the climax I could have sworn the whole orchestra was there.

Klotz was playing superbly, and Norman was roaming from one instrument to the other with a remarkable combination of accuracy and imitative versatility. As for me, I supplied dynamic effects that would have satisfied even the great Beethoven, who once asked for guns.

Then it was over.

Herr Siegfried bowed twice to the audience, indicated his entire orchestra with an all-embracing wave of the baton, and ended by solemnly shaking hands with his father, who stood up to accept the honor. After that, with a self-conscious wriggle, he became the boy once more, and removed his spell from us. With roars of delight we gathered about him, making a circle by joining hands, and dancing extempore, we sang a chorus consisting of constant repet.i.tions of "Hilee-hilo! Hilee-hilo!" That may not be the correct spelling, but then we were singing, not writing it--which is one advantage music has over literature.

Before we went, Herr Klotz took us into the room where his wife lay ill, and by her eyes--for she was too weak to speak--she thanked us for our part in making the day a festival one for their lonely little household. With an instinctive gentleness that a woman might have shown, Norman spoke of the things she wanted to hear about: how her husband had been missed at the restaurant, of the desire of every one to make a little present to them, of the great future that lay before their son, and of the genius of Herr Klotz that would some day be recognized. With the cheeriest of good-byes, he lightly touched her shoulder with his hand and said he knew she would soon be well again.

He lied. In half of what he said he lied. He was blowing bubbles that the woman stricken with fever might see in them some little compensation for her life of drudgery.

With the guttural good wishes of Herr Klotz still in our ears (we had pledged eternal friendship in three foaming mugs of beer), we sought the street, to find that dusk was settling over the city. For some moments neither spoke, but feeling that perhaps I had descended too abruptly from my pedestal, I cleared my throat and ventured on a remark.

"A decent fellow," I said patronizingly, and felt my dignity rea.s.serting myself; but Norman failed to hear me. He was lost in some memory. Now that I look back, I wonder was it the picture of the sick woman he saw or his vision of the mother with her two sons; or, with his gift of intuition, could he see, less than a year ahead, Klotz, in a German soldier's uniform, marching through Belgium with an army of l.u.s.t and rapine, gorged like gluttonous, venomous beasts?

I wonder.

VIII

It was from an aunt of mine that I first heard of Norman's attachment to Lilias Oxley.

Whenever I received a letter from my relative, I had first to realize that its mission was to educate, not to entertain. She was a woman of strong ideas, and, as my mother died very early in my life, she seldom lost an opportunity of impressing a moral--like the Queen in _Alice in Wonderland_. In her correspondence, and to a large extent in her conversation, my aunt was given to dashes, underlines, and exclamation-marks. It is perhaps unnecessary to state that she was a single woman.

I received the letter two months after Christmas; it was dated from the Beacon at Hindhead.

"MY DEAR NEPHEW,--You will find mentholated crystals--carried in a small bottle--a splendid preventive against the present epidemic of cold in the head! Sniff a little every night before going to bed.

"When are you going to marry? For goodness' sake, marry a _dark_ girl when you do. Our family is growing positively colorless!

"Your friend, Mr. Norman, is visiting the Oxleys down here. It seems young Oxley is trying to write a play with some ideas in it, and Norman thinks he can help him! Who in the world wants to see a play with _their_ ideas! It's a pity you couldn't teach him to do something useful--Norman, I mean.--Young Oxley is going into the Church! Why doesn't he go to Canada! I mean _Norman_.

"Do you remember little Lilias Oxley? She had pneumonia last year, though I _warned_ her mother about flannel soaked in goose-oil and turpentine! She always looked like a hothouse flower, and now she is simply _frail_. Of course, she's pretty and has eyes that always makes fools of the men--not that _that_ signifies! Everybody says she's artistic, but all I ever hear her play is by some newfangled foreigner named Debussy, and it's all discord. She's only nineteen and looks sixteen.

"Of course, young Norman comes along, and instead of picking out some healthy _buxom_ girl, he falls in love with this bit of tinsel china! It's criminal, and should not be _allowed_. What kind of children will they have, if any! He calls her his _Beatrice_--Heaven knows why!

"They are together _constantly_. I would write to the _Times_ about it if I thought that Lord Northfellow would publish it. We should have a Minister of _Eugenics_! Surely Winston Churchill would be better employed at that than trying to build up a huge navy we'll never need! By the way, I see he's taken to writing _novels_ now!

"Do talk to young Norman! Tell him your uncle is doing very well with pigs in Canada; and why not induce your friend to go _there_, and get some _common-sense_, because every Canadian I meet has a head on his shoulders? It must be the climate!

"I am going to stay here for a month, and then visit my cousin in Scotland. She has six children. Whatever induced her to marry a minister? He has no money and no _prospects_--except more children, I suppose!

"Does that Mulvaney woman see that your room is kept aired? When you write you should have the window open and a cap on your head.

"I hope you will never write books! It is quite a _distinction_ nowadays not to.

"Where did you go for Christmas?--Your loving aunt,

"HANNAH.

"Feby. 8/1914."

The only way I can account for my aunt's love of exclamation-marks was her delight at seeing a sentence round to a good finish. I have known authors to be so overcome with the dramatic significance of their work that they put them in as a sort of public recognition thereof.

_En pa.s.sant_.... I wonder why my aunt never wrote a serial story for one of the London dailies.

IX

War.