Cruel Barbara Allen | Page 5

the shell is
uninviting. Christopher found the mollusc very shy, the shell
innutritive.
Publishers did not leap at the organ fugue in C as they ought to have
done. They skipped not in answer to the adagio movement in the
May-day Symphony. The oratorio conjured no money from their
pockets--for the most part, they declined to open the wrapper which
surrounded it, or to see it opened. Poor Christopher, in short,
experienced all the 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