And Gecko, cuddling lovingly his violin and closing his upturned eyes, played that simple melody as it had probably never been played before—such passion, such pathos, such a tone!—and they turned it and twisted it, and went from one key to another, playing into each other’s hands, Svengali taking the lead; and fugued and canoned and counterpointed and battle-doored and shuttlecocked it, high and low, soft and loud, in minor, in pizzicato, and in sordino—adagio, andante, allegretto, scherzo—and exhausted all its possibilities of beauty; till their susceptible audience of three was all but crazed with delight and wonder; and the masterful Ben Bolt, and his over-tender Alice, and his too submissive friend, and his old schoolmaster so kind and so true, and his long-dead schoolmates, and the rustic porch and the mill, and the slab of granite so gray,
“And the dear little nook
By the clear running brook,”
were all magnified into a strange, almost holy poetic dignity and splendor quite undreamed of by whoever wrote the words and music of that unsophisticated little song, which has touched so many simple British hearts that don’t know any better—and among them, once, that of the present scribe—long, long ago!
“Sacrepleu! il choue pien, le Checko, hein?” said Svengali, when they had brought this wonderful double improvisation to a climax and a close. “C’est mon élèfe! che le fais chanter sur son fiolon, c’est comme si c’était moi qui chantais! ach! si ch’afais pour teux sous de voix, che serais le bremier chanteur du monte! I cannot sing!” he continued. (I will translate him into English, without attempting to translate his accent, which is a mere matter of judiciously transposing p’s and b’s, and t’s and d’s, and f’s and v’s, and g’s and k’s, and turning the soft French j into sch, and a pretty language into an ugly one.)
“I cannot sing myself, I cannot play the violin, but I can teach—hein, Gecko? And I have a pupil—hein, Gecko?—la betite Honorine;” and here he leered all round with a leer that was not engaging. “The world shall hear of la betite Honorine some day—hein, Gecko? Listen all—this is how I teach la betite Honorine! Gecko, play me a little accompaniment in pizzicato.”
And he pulled out of his pocket a kind of little flexible flageolet (of his own invention, it seems), which he screwed together and put to his lips, and on this humble instrument he played “Ben Bolt,” while Gecko accompanied him, using his fiddle as a guitar, his adoring eyes fixed in reverence on his master.
And it would be impossible to render in any words the deftness, the distinction, the grace, power, pathos, and passion with which this truly phenomenal artist executed the poor old twopenny tune on his elastic penny whistle—for it was little more—such thrilling, vibrating, piercing tenderness, now loud and full, a shrill scream of anguish, now soft as a whisper, a mere melodic breath, more human almost than the human voice itself, a perfection unattainable even by Gecko, a master, on an instrument which is the acknowledged king of all!
So that the tear which had been so close to the brink of Little Billee’s eye while Gecko was playing now rose and trembled under his eyelid and spilled itself down his nose; and he had to dissemble and surreptitiously mop it up with his little finger as he leaned his chin on his hand, and cough a little husky, unnatural cough—pour se donner une contenance!
He had never heard such music as this, never dreamed such music was possible. He was conscious, while it lasted, that he saw deeper into the beauty, the sadness of things, the very heart of them, and their pathetic evanescence, as with a new, inner eye—even into eternity itself, beyond the veil—a vague cosmic vision that faded when the music was over, but left an unfading reminiscence of its having been, and a passionate desire to express the like some day through the plastic medium of his own beautiful art.
When Svengali ended, he leered again on his dumbstruck audience, and said: “That is how I teach la betite Honorine to sing; that is how I teach Gecko to play; that is how I teach ‘il bel canto’! It was lost, the bel canto—but I found it, in a dream—I, and nobody else—I—Svengali—I—I—I! But that is enough of music; let us play at something else—let us play at this!” he cried, jumping up and seizing a foil and bending it against the wall. … “Come along, Little Pillee, and I will show you something more you don’t know. …”
So Little Billee took off coat and waistcoat, donned mask and glove and fencing-shoes, and they had an “assault of arms,” as it is nobly called in French, and in which poor Little Billee came off very badly. The German Pole fenced wildly, but well.
Then it was the Laird’s turn, and he came off badly too; so then Taffy took up the foil, and redeemed the honor of Great Britain, as became a British hussar and a Man of Blood. For Taffy, by long and assiduous practice in the best school in Paris (and also by virtue of his native aptitudes), was a match for any maître d’armes in the whole French army, and Svengali got “what for.”
And when it was time to give up play and settle down to work, others dropped in—French, English, Swiss, German, American, Greek; curtains were drawn and shutters opened; the studio was flooded with light—and the afternoon was healthily spent in athletic and gymnastic exercises till dinnertime.
But Little Billee, who had had enough of fencing and gymnastics for the day, amused himself by filling up with black and white and red
