_ And so the years passed away; one, two, three, Von Barwig did not keep count now. One year was just like another, equally profitless, equally monotonous; the struggle for existence just as keen, the interest in this or that pupil just as superficial, the interest in obtaining pupils perhaps the greatest of all. But the drudgery of teaching the young mind to distinguish between crotchet and quaver, and mark time, mark time, wore Von Barwig out.
"Good God," he would think, "will it ever come that time shall cease to be, and I shall cease to mark it?" The old man often smiled as he contrasted the Leipsic days with the present. Then he had but to raise his arm and from a hundred instruments and five hundred voices would vibrate sounds of beauty, of colour, of joy, in harmony and rhythm. Now when he beat time some dirty-fingered little pupil would tinkle out sounds that nearly drove him mad with their monotony. Von Barwig had been compelled to sell his good piano and rent one on the installment plan; a cheap tin-pan affair, with a sounding board that sent forth the most metallic sort of music. This went on until Von Barwig hated the very sound of a musical instrument. He must have suffered terribly, but he made no mention of it. At the close of his day's work he would shut his piano wearily, put away his violin and go to Galazatti's, where he would meet his friends, Fico and Pinac. He did not complain, but they did. Fico was playing the mandolin on a Coney Island boat; Pinac was doing nothing, but sat in Galazatti's all day. When they complained to Von Barwig of their ill luck, their inability to obtain good engagements because they could not get into the Musical Union, Von Barwig did not spare them. He told them plainly that they had talent but that they were lazy; they would neither study nor practise, and yet they expected to enjoy the fruits of labour without its drudgery. Both Fico and Pinac felt that he was right, and from that day forward they did practise and study, with the result that a year or so later they were admitted into the Union; but times were hard and good regular engagements were rare.
One day while Von Barwig was labouring hard to beat time and other musical values into the head of a square-browed, freckle-faced youth of nineteen, whom nature had ordained for the carpenter's bench and not for the piano, a knock came at the door, and on invitation to enter, in came a little fellow not more than nine years of age, black-haired, dark-eyed, of olive complexion, his features plainly bearing the stamp of his Hebraic origin. As he stood at the door trying to speak, Von Barwig could not help commenting on his finely chiselled features and the intelligence and fire in his eyes.
"What can I do for you, little man?" inquired Von Barwig. His soft voice and kindly look of interest gave the boy courage; for he was obviously afraid to speak.
"Come to me," said Von Barwig tenderly, and after he had closed the door, he placed his arm around the boy's neck. The old man's trained eye discerned in a moment the sensitive play of the lad's mouth, the quivering of the nostril that denotes what we call temperament.
"I want to study--I want to learn--and they won't let me," blurted out the boy, bursting into tears.
"Who won't let you?" gently inquired Von Barwig.
"My people," sobbed the child.
"Hully Gee, you're in luck!" interrupted the shock-headed youth. "I wish my people wouldn't let me."
"You go home, Underman! You have no soul; this child has."
"You bet I will!" and with a dart at his hat, the big boy seized it and ran out of the door in a moment.
"So you want to study music and they won't let you?"
"Yes, sir. I--they'll let me play at night, but in the daytime, I--I must work."
In a short half hour Von Barwig made the discovery that the child was a musical genius. He had taken no lessons and yet his manipulation of the keys was marvellous, but all by ear. Chords, arpeggios, diminished sevenths, modulation, expression, all were mixed up in formless melody. The boy knew nothing, but felt everything. In Von Barwig's experience it had generally been the other way.
"Who sent you to me?" asked Von Barwig after he had heard the child play.
"The sign says that you teach music, and I--I--then I saw your name outside." The little fellow seemed to think that he had committed some crime in coming in unasked. Von Barwig put him at his ease, then called in Pinac and Fico, and they listened to the child's playing in open-mouthed astonishment. Bit by bit Von Barwig elicited his history from him. His name, it appeared, was Josef Branski, and he was the oldest of seven children. His father and mother had come from Warsaw, in Poland, and worked in a sweat shop below Grand Street near the river. Josef himself worked there, too, and helped to support his family, who all lived in three small rooms. His parents would miss him and be angry, he said, and this partly accounted for the little fellow's anxiety. Von Barwig shook his head; he already had many pupils who couldn't pay, as well as several who didn't pay, but here was one who had to steal the time in which to learn his beloved art. It would be a crime not to teach the boy, he thought, so he determined to take him as his pupil.
Some six months later an excited Pole bounded into Von Barwig's room and in a mixture of Polish, German and Hebrew threatened Von Barwig with the law if he continued to take his son away from him. He was, as nearly as Von Barwig could make out, little Josef Branski's father. Von Barwig vainly endeavoured to explain to the man that the boy could make his parents rich if they allowed him to study and develop himself as an artist, but they must give him time to practise, instead of compelling him to sew at a machine twelve or fourteen hours a day. The older Branski either could not or would not understand. He declared that he did not want his son to be a worthless musician (for he evidently associated Von Barwig with the gipsy, an inferior type of musician) and could not be made to understand that the boy had talent, even genius. He needed the boy's help and wanted no further interference from Von Barwig. Von Barwig saw that it was useless and gave up trying to dissuade him from his purpose in condemning the boy to the merciless grind of a sweat shop machine. So it was that little Josef came at night only for his lessons. This went on for some time, but Von Barwig shook his head sadly as he saw that the boy was tired out with his day's work and could not take in the instruction. Finally he told Josef that he had better not come again, as the strain of night study following the grind of machine work during the day was plainly telling on his health. But the boy pleaded hard:
"Take away my music and you take away my life," he said. "Some day father and mother will see and then they'll let me study with you."
Von Barwig looked at the boy sadly.
"They love me and they want to see me famous, but they don't understand. They work so hard, they have so little to eat, and there are so many of them. Mother can't work, you know, she has to nurse the baby. I must do all I can; I'm the eldest, it's my duty!"
The boy's eyes filled with tears as he thought of the hardships his parents went through. "Father worked till twelve o'clock last night; he's working now," and the little chap looked at the cuckoo clock, which was just striking ten.
"How long will it be before I can play to the gentlemen you're going to take me to?" he asked wistfully.
"I think you'd better have a little rest before you play to them, Josef. You've been working very hard; up at five, to bed at midnight!" Von Barwig noticed that Josef's face was peaked and white, but his great black eyes looked appealingly at his master.
"But I must play to them; they'll give me money and I can give the money to father. Then he'll believe me, and he'll believe you," said the boy in a tearful voice. His urgent, appealing manner had its effect on Von Barwig.
"I'll take you to-morrow morning," he said. "Will your father let you go?"
"I'll beg him, I'll beg him, oh, so hard, on my bended knees. He won't refuse, he can't refuse! If he does, I--I'll just make an excuse and leave the machine as if I were going for oil, or cotton or something. I'll come! Don't disappoint me, will you?"
And so it was arranged that the boy should call for Von Barwig on the morrow and that they should go to Steinway Hall, where Josef should play before some musical gentlemen that Von Barwig had come to know.
The morning arrived, but little Josef did not appear. After waiting three hours, Von Barwig made up his mind that the father would not let the boy go, so he sadly gave up the idea for that day, and waited till evening for Josef to come as usual for his lesson. When the child did not come, Von Barwig experienced again that sensation of fear, for the first time in several years; and with it came the train of sickening thought, the old dread of impending evil. Von Barwig soon threw this off, and waited for events with as much calmness and patience as he could muster up.
A week passed, and Miss Husted could not understand why Von Barwig spoke in such a low tone when he replied to her cheery good-evening. Mrs. Mangenborn put it down to hard times. Jenny knew something was wrong, for he said very little to her as she swept out his room. She knew something had happened, but experience had taught her that sympathy doesn't ask questions. As for Pinac and Fico, they were too full of their own affairs to notice anything unless it was brought directly to their attention, and as Von Barwig made it a rule never to burden other people with his troubles they were in blissful ignorance of his mental perturbation. So it went on till the tenth day, when Von Barwig made up his mind to go and call on his little pupil and find out what was the matter.
After much hunting and questioning, Von Barwig found the family he was looking for on the fourth floor of a crowded tenement house in Rivington Street. He heard the whirr of sewing machines and as he opened the door he saw the father of his pupil, and several others, all sewing rapidly as if for dear life. The six machines made such a noise he could barely hear the sound of his own voice. As soon as Branski saw Von Barwig, he jumped up from his machine and railed at him in terms of bitter reproach. It was well perhaps that Von Barwig could not understand and that the noise of the machines and the crying of babies prevented his hearing what was said. The father pointed into the next room and motioned him to go in there. Pushing aside a little chintz curtain, for there was no door, Von Barwig saw the object of his search lying on a cot in the corner of a small inner room with no window, only an air shaft for light and air, moaning in the grasp of mortal illness.
The mother sat by the bedside of the sick boy rocking herself slowly, and at the same time holding a babe to her heart. The little one was trying in vain to get sustenance enough to satisfy its pangs of hunger and crying because it couldn't. Another child of two years of age was playing on the floor, banging two pieces of wood together and shouting gleefully when it succeeded in making a noise. The woman looked at her sick son helplessly and then at Von Barwig.
"Doctor?" she asked feebly.
Von Barwig shook his head slowly. He saw that his little pupil was too weak to recognise him and gazed at him too moved to speak. His lips quivered, and kneeling down by the lad's bedside he wept scalding hot tears of agony, for he felt rather than knew that the boy was dying. It appeared from the mother's story that when Josef had reached home that night he had been in too excited a state to sleep. All night he moaned and tossed--the next morning he was delirious. The prospect of deliverance from his life of drudgery had been too much for him and had resulted in brain fever. The doctor said he had a bad cold, then finally announced that tubercular complications had set in, and as nearly as Von Barwig could find out the boy was now rapidly wasting away with the dreaded white disease. Von Barwig looked around him helplessly; the light was bad, the air rank poison and the noise and commotion distracting.
"What hope could there be for his recovery?" thought Von Barwig, and he then and there resolved on a plan of action. Before he left the house he had given the father all the money he had and secured a room with plenty of light and air and a nurse for the boy. His efforts were crowned with success. In a few weeks little Josef was gently nursed back to life, and at the first signs of returning health Von Barwig saw to it that he was sent South. "His only chance," the doctor had said. It was Von Barwig who gave him that chance, but in order to do so he parted with his last remaining bit of valuable jewelry.
* * * * * *
It was some time before Von Barwig recovered from the effects of witnessing the sufferings of his pupil. When Jenny asked him about Josef Branski he smiled sadly and shook his head.
"The doctor says it may be years before he can touch an instrument again. Poor Josef--his little frame completely went to pieces under the burning fire of his genius; if any one was ever born out of harmony with his surroundings, he was. He might have become a great artist," added Von Barwig thoughtfully and then he sighed. It was a great struggle for him to send the money to keep the little chap alive down South, but he made the sacrifice without a murmur. If only the boy recovered, it would be sufficient reward for all his work. But it was not to be, for a few weeks later they brought him the news that his little pupil had died peacefully, without pain. Von Barwig said nothing--his mouth tightened a little and he smiled, a sad, far-away smile. Miss Husted tried to cheer him up. She had learned from Jenny the details of the affair and her heart went out to the old man in womanly sympathy. She had liked the boy, too, and when he came for his lesson had given him many a slice of cake, for she thought he always looked pinched and hungry, underfed, as she called it.
"Do come and have a bit of dinner with us, professor," she said. With her dinner was a universal panacea, but Von Barwig declined with many thanks. He had grown to like Miss Husted and realised that she was far, far above the average woman of her class. Moreover, he felt that she liked him, and sympathy begets sympathy.
"Professor, you are always doing things for folks, but you never allow folks to do anything for you," said Miss Husted, slightly piqued by his refusal of her invitation.
"Ah, then I accept!" said Von Barwig, seeing that she was hurt, "just to show you that you are more powerful than my own resolutions. But I warn you I shall be sad company; I don't feel quite myself tonight. It is better, far better, that little Josef should have--left us, for I do not think he would have ever been strong enough to play again, but--" and Von Barwig sighed, "it is sad enough. A little light prematurely snuffed out is always sad. Ah, well! I won't make you miserable. Life is full of sorrow for us all; don't let me selfishly add to yours."
At dinner he was the life of the party. He pinched Jenny's cheek; he joked with Miss Husted; he smiled at Thurza, and he even ventured a few remarks to Mrs. Mangenborn, whom he cordially disliked. Every one present thought that Von Barwig was as happy as could be.
That night, after he had closed the door of his room he sighed deeply and looked out of his window into the street at the blinking lamplights. Once more that mournful far-away expression came into his face and he asked himself: "Why? Why is it my fate to lose everything I love? Have I not yet drunk the dregs of my cup of sorrow?"
* * * * * *
"Good-night, professor," came Miss Husted's cheery voice from the hallway, interrupting his reverie.
"Good-night, Mr. Von Barwig," said Jenny, as she passed his room on her way to bed. He opened the door and kissed her tenderly.
"Good-night, good-night, my friends," said Von Barwig. The sound of their voices comforted him not a little and then he thought, "I mustn't be ungrateful; there are many, many kind hearts in this world." And he slept peacefully all that night. _