Cruel Barbara Allen | Page 9

thought you
were asleep.'
'How did the music go?'
'Capitally. Both the songs repeated. The overture and the second
entr'acte would have been redemanded at a concert, but of course the
play was the thing. Such a success, Stretton! Such a furore! She is a
little goddess, a queen. You should see her and hear her! Ah me!'--with
a comic ruefulness--'Holt should be a happy man.'
Christopher, warned by his outbreak, which he knew by old experience
to be the merest exordium, 'played 'possum' again, with such success
that Rubach left him and he went to sleep in earnest.
Holt came to see him next day, and brought the morning papers with
him. The musician and he began to talk about writing an English opera
together, and Christopher brightened at the scheme, which opened up
the road to all his old ambitions.
'You are getting stronger now,' said Holt. 'We shall have you in to see
the piece by-and-by.'
'I shall come in a day or two,' said Christopher; and when his visitor
had gone, sat down to read over and over again the reviews of his own
work. How they would gladden Barbara, he thought. How proud she
would be of his success! how eager to hear the music! He laid-a
romantic little plot for her pleasure. He would run down when he got
stronger, and compel Barbara and her uncle on a visit to town. He
would convey them to the theatre and when Barbara was quite in love
with the music he would tell her that he himself had written it. How
well the songs would suit her voice, and how charmingly she would
sing them to him! Pleasant fancies, such as lovers have, floated through
his mind. He took up his violin for the first time for a month, and
played through the old tune, 'Cruel Barbara Allen.' Rubach came in and
found him thus employed.

'You are getting on, my boy,' said the good Bohemian. 'Can you come
and see the piece to-night? Are you strong enough?'
'Not to-night,' Christopher returned. 'In a day or two.' And he went oh
playing 'Cruel 'Barbara Allen' dreamily.
'What is that?' said Rubach with a wry grin. 'Is not twice or thrice of it
enough?'
Christopher laid down the instrument with a smile. When Carl had left
him he took it up again and played over to himself the songs Barbara
used to sing. He was weak and could not play for any great length of
time together, but he played every now and then a melody, and in a
while he got back again to 'Cruel Barbara Allen.' Back came Carl as he
played it.
'That tune again? what is it?'
'An old ballad,' answered Christopher. "Cruel Barbara Allen."'
He found a pleasure in speaking her name aloud in this veiled way.
'Let the girl alone,' said Carl. 'I am tired of her.'
'I am not,' said Christopher with a weak little chuckle, 'and I have
known her since she was a child.'
He began to play the air again, and Carl took away the violin with
simulated theatric anger. But Carl's treatment of the name of the ballad
as though it were the name of a girl still extant gave Christopher a
temptation, and he played the air once or twice again in Carl's presence.
'You are passionately attached to Miss Allen,' said Carl.
'She is the only sweetheart I ever had, responded simple Christopher
with shy merriment.
Rubach sat down at the piano and sang this song:--

Through all the green glad summer-time Love told his tale in dainty
rhyme, And sighed his loves out one by one, There lives no echo of his
laugh, I but record his epitaph, And sigh for love worn out and gone.
For love endures for little time, But dies with every change of rhyme,
And lives again with every one. And every new-born love doth laugh
Above his brother's epitaph, The last light love worn out and gone.
'That is not your doctrine, mon ami,' he said as he turned round on the
music-stool. 'You are faithful to Miss Allen?'
'I am faithful to Miss Allen, certainly,' said Christopher, reaching out
his hand for the violin, and again chuckling weakly.
'No,' said Carl, rising and confiscating the fiddle. 'You shall sing her
virtues to that tune no more. Write a new tune for her.'
Anybody who has been in love, and I do not care for any other sort of
reader, may fancy for himself the peculiar enjoyment which shy
Christopher extracted from this homely badinage.
Two or three days later he was almost reestablished, and had indeed
begun to write a little. He would not yet go to the theatre, however,
having some fear of the excitement. He sat