The Bent Twig | Page 9

he had learned nowhere but in this
give-and-take. Mrs. Marshall poured the coffee, saw that every one was
served with sandwiches, and occasionally when the talk, running over
every known topic, grew too noisy, or the discussion too hot, cast in
one of the pregnant and occasionally caustic remarks of which she held
the secret. They were never brilliant, Mrs. Marshall's remarks--but they
were apt to have a dry humor, and almost always when she had said her
brief say? there loomed out of the rainbow mist of her husband's
flashing, controversial talk the outlines of the true proportions of the
case.
After the homely feast was eaten, each guest rose and carried his own
cup and saucer and plate into the kitchen in a gay procession, and since
it was well known that, for the most part, the Marshalls "did their own
work," several of the younger ones helped wash the dishes, while the
musicians put away the music-racks and music, and the rest put on their
wraps. Then Professor Marshall stood at the door holding up a lamp
while the company trooped down the long front walk to the gate in the
hedge, and turned along the country road to the cross-roads where the
big Interurban cars whizzed by.
All this happened with that unbroken continuity which was the
characteristic of the Marshall life, most marking them as different from
the other faculty families. Week after week, and month after month,
this program was followed with little variation, except for the music
which was played, and the slight picturesque uncertainty as to whether

old Reinhardt would or would not arrive mildly under the influence of
long Sunday imbibings. Not that this factor interfered at all with the
music. One of Sylvia's most vivid childhood recollections was the
dramatic contrast between old Reinhardt with, and without, his violin.
Partly from age, and partly from a too convivial life, the old, heavily
veined hands trembled so that he could scarcely unbutton his overcoat,
or handle his cup of hot coffee. His head shook too, and his kind,
rheumy eyes, in their endeavor to focus themselves, seemed to flicker
back and forth in their sockets. The child used to watch him, fascinated,
as he fumbled endlessly at the fastenings of his violin-case, and put
back the top with uncertain fingers. She was waiting for the thrilling
moment when he should tuck the instrument away under his pendulous
double chin and draw his bow across the strings in the long sonorous
singing chord, which ran up and down Sylvia's back like forked
lightning.
This was while all the others were tuning and scraping and tugging at
their pegs, a pleasant bustle of discord which became so much a part of
Sylvia's brain that she could never in after years hear the strumming
and sawing of an orchestra preparing to play, without seeing the big
living-room of her father's house, with its low whitewashed ceiling, its
bare, dully shining floor, its walls lined with books, its shabby,
comfortable furniture, the whole quickened by the Promethean glow
from the blaze in the grate and glorified by the chastened passion of the
singing strings.
The two Anglo-Saxon, professors were but able amateurs of their
instruments. Bauermeister, huge, red, and impassive, was by virtue of
his blood, a lifelong training, and a musical ancestry, considerably
more than an amateur; and old Reinhardt was the master of them all.
His was a history which would have been tragic if it had happened to
any but Reinhardt, who cared for nothing but an easy life, beer, and the
divine tones which he alone could draw from his violin. He had offered,
fifty years ago in Vienna, the most brilliant promise of a most brilliant
career, a promise which had come to naught because of his monstrous
lack of ambition, and his endless yielding to circumstance, which had
finally, by a series of inconceivable migrations, landed him in the

German colony of La Chance, impecunious and obscure and invincibly
convinced that he had everything worth having in life. "Of vat use?" he
would say, even now, when asked to play in public--"de moosic ist
all--and dat is eben so goodt here mit friends." Or, "Dere goes a
thousand peoples to a goncert--maybe fife from dat thousand lofes de
moosic--let dose fife gome to me--and I play dem all day for noding!"
or again, more iconoclastically still,--when told of golden harvests to be
reaped, "And for vat den? I can't play on more dan von fioleen at a
time--is it? I got a good one now. And if I drink more beer dan now, I
might make myself seeck!" This with a prodigiously sly wink of one
heavy eyelid.
He gave enough music lessons to pay his small expenses, although after
one