Cruel Barbara Allen | Page 5

scorn which patient merit of the unworthy takes, and found his own appreciation of himself of little help to him. His money melted--as money has a knack of melting when one would least wish to see it melt. Oxford Street became to him as stony-hearted a step-mother as it was to De Quincey, and at melancholy last--while his letters to Barbara became shorter and fewer--he found an enforced way to the pawnbroker's, whither went all which his Uncle's capacious maw would receive; all, except the beloved violin which had so often sung to Barbara, so often sounded Love's sweet lullaby in the quiet of his own chamber. That he could not part with, for he was a true enthusiast when all was told. So he went about hungry for a day or two.
I have hurried a little in telling his story in order that I might get the worst over at once.
Two months before he came to this sad pass he was standing one cold night in front of the Euston Road entrance to the great terminal station, when the sound of a violin struck upon his ears, played as surely a violin was never played in the streets before. The performer, whoever he might be, slashed away with a wonderful merry abandonment, playing the jolliest tunes, until he had a great crowd about him, on the outskirts of which girls with their arms embracing each other swung round in time to the measured madness of the music. The close-pent crowd beat time with hand and foot, and sometimes this rude accompaniment almost drowned the music:--
An Orpheus! An Orpheus! He worked on the crowd; He swayed them with melody merry and loud.
The people went half wild over this street Paganini. They laughed with him and danced to his music until their rough acclamation almost made the music dumb. Then suddenly he changed his theme, and the sparkle went out of the air and left it dim and foggy as it was by nature, and by-and-by added a deeper gloom to it. For he played a ghostly and weird and awful theme, which stilled merriment and chilled jollity, and seemed to fill the night with phantoms. It made a very singular impression indeed upon Christopher's! nerves. Christopher was not so well nourished as he might have been, and when a man's economy plays tricks with his stomach, the stomach is likely to pass the trick on with interest. He stood amazed--doubtful of his ears, of the street, of the people, of his own identity. For that weird and awful theme was his own, and, which made the thing more wonderful, he had never even written it down. And here was somebody playing it note for note, a lengthy and intricate composition which set all theory of coincidence utterly aside. Nobody need wonder at Christopher's amazement.
The street fiddler played the theme clean out, and then passed through the crowd in search of coppers. It furnished a lesson worth his learning that, while he abandoned himself to mirth, the coppers had showered into the hat at his feet in tinkling accompaniment to his strains; and that now the weird and mournful theme had sealed generosity's fountain as with sudden frost. The musician came at last, hat in hand, to Christopher. He was a queer figure. His hair was long and matted, his eyes were obscured by a pair of large spectacles of darkened glass, and his coat collar was turned up to the tops of his ears. A neglected-looking beard jutted out from the opening in the collar, and not a feature but the man's nose was visible. The crowd had gone; looking round, one could scarcely have suspected that the crowd had been there at all a minute before.
'That was a curious theme you played last of all,' said Christopher. 'Was it your own?'
'No,' said the musician, chinking together the coppers in his felt hat as a reminder of the more immediate business in hand.
'Whose was it?' asked Christopher, ignoring the hat.
'Don't know, I'm sure,' the musician answered shortly, and turned away.
There was nobody left to appeal to, so, putting his fiddle and bow under his arm, he emptied the coppers into his trousers' pockets, and, putting on his hat, made away in the direction of King's Cross. Christopher followed at a little distance, wonder-stricken still, and half disposed to return to the charge again. The musician, reaching the corner of Gray's Inn Road, turned. This was Christopher's homeward way, and he followed. By-and-by the fiddler made a turn to the right. This was still Christopher's homeward way, and still he followed. By-and-by the man stopped before a door and produced a latch-key. The house before which he stood was that in which Christopher lodged. He laid a hand upon the fiddler's