"It"s no use," was Schumein"s reply, "music like yours has no market value. We"re not in business for our health; once strike a popular tune and you"ll be famous!"
Von Barwig had never mentioned his Leipsic reputation, and if he had, in all probability, it would have been useless. Seven years is a long time for even a genius to remain in obscurity.
"Bring in a good waltz," said one.
"What we want is a catchy melody; something that everybody whistles,"
said another.
Finally they were too busy to see Von Barwig at all; and after waiting hours and hours in vain efforts to obtain an interview, he would walk home slowly, thinking over the events of the day, or trying to create a tune that might make an appeal to the music-loving, or rather music-buying public.
"Alas!" he would say to himself, after giving up the effort. "I do not understand these people. The American people do not like my work." It did not occur to him that the Americans were not a music-loving nation, at least not at that period. And so Anton Von Barwig gradually came out of the world of dreams into the world of life. He had been reborn, of necessity, for he was nearly down to his last penny. He used to talk over the condition of the music market with Tagliafico, our old friend, Fico, of the hall bedroom on the top floor of Miss Husted"s establishment, and Pinac, Fico"s friend, who occupied the room adjoining. The meeting of these three men, which subsequently resulted in a friendship lasting many years, came about as follows:
While eating dinner at Galazatti"s one night, Von Barwig found himself at the same table as Fico. Fico bowed to him and he graciously acknowledged his salute, not knowing who the man was, but vaguely remembering his features. Fico then introduced Pinac, his fellow-lodger. Fico had recognised Von Barwig as the occupant of the first floor and took this opportunity of making the acquaintance of the musician whose music he had so often heard on the piano--for Von Barwig frequently played his own compositions and the strains were wafted through the open window. Pinac was most enthusiastic, for he knew Von Barwig slightly by reputation. He had been in Dresden and he had heard of Anton Von Barwig, the musical conductor. It seemed scarcely possible that the gentleman before him was that great man.
Von Barwig was silent, smiling a little at Pinac"s enthusiasm, but as he did not deny his ident.i.ty Pinac felt sure that he was right. The three men soon became quite friendly and often met in the little _cafe_ to talk things over. Galazatti"s was frequented chiefly by foreigners and the din of loud voices added to the rattle and clatter of knives and forks made conversation difficult. But its patrons soon became used to this and the _table d"hote_ was cheap and good at the price, twenty-five cents. It was a combination of East Side Tivoli and French Bra.s.serie and Hungarian Goulash Rendezvous--a tiny cosmopolis in itself--and it did a rushing business.
So the months dragged along in unending monotony. Poor Von Barwig tried hard to do work that would please the gentlemen who controlled the music trades, but failed. One day, while looking over his ma.n.u.scripts to discover if possible the cause of his failure, he was struck by the similarity of one of his compositions to another. They all seemed to contain the same melody, in one form or another, and he saw plainly at last that he was subconsciously haunted by the leading motif of the first movement of his last symphony, the symphony that was played on that dreadful night for the first and last time. The inference was plain enough. This melody haunted him, he could not forget it; it showed itself in all his work and he realised that his career as a composer had come to an end.
After that Von Barwig tore up all his compositions and turned his attention to teaching, an occupation he had always hated ever since he had given up the professorship of counterpoint and harmony in the Leipsic Conservatory. Teaching--the very thought had made him shudder.
He looked about him and found that New York was fast moving uptown, and that Houston Street was not a good locality for a musical conservatory.
People who could afford to study music did not live in that neighbourhood; but he could not summon up sufficient energy or courage to leave the place. He had come to like the old house; it had become a home to him now. He liked Miss Husted, too, though she made him the repository for all her troubles, and then there were Fico, and Pinac and Jenny--he really loved Jenny. His little world was all in Houston Street and he made up his mind not to leave it, even if the location made the getting of pupils harder. Besides he felt that he was not a fashionable teacher; he could teach only those who learned music because they loved it and not because they wanted to be accomplished.
Von Barwig did not speak to his friends of all this; his pride would not allow him to discuss his personal affairs with them. Besides neither Pinac nor Fico could throw much light on the pupil question, for though they were musicians, yes, for they played, they did not teach. Pinac did not even know until Von Barwig showed him how to hold his violin properly he used to grab it with his whole hand instead of by his finger and thumb; and as for Fico, he could not read music until Von Barwig taught him, but played the mandolin, guitar and piano by ear. These men were not only grateful to Von Barwig for his kindness, but they loved him, and recognising in him the real artist had unbounded respect for him. As for Von Barwig, he found them simple fellows, sentimental, unpretentious and good-hearted, and he liked them and felt at ease with them because they did not seek to probe into that part of his life which he preferred should remain unknown to them.
They merely accepted him as they found him and for this Von Barwig was grateful. As time went on, Von Barwig found himself badly in need of ready money. One day when Miss Husted came for her rent, he hesitated before he paid her; he had forgotten it was rent day and was unprepared. The poor lady was kindness itself, but her kindness embarra.s.sed Von Barwig extremely, for he had never been in a position in his life where he actually needed cash for his daily wants.
"Leave it a week, a month, a year, my dear professor!" said Miss Husted, and she implored him not to pay her if it afforded him the slightest inconvenience.
"I go to the bank--if you come in an hour I will have it for you," said poor Von Barwig, quite overcome. He did not know what it was to be "behind," and the experience was painful to him.
This was the beginning of the end, and the valuable Amati violin soon went for eight hundred dollars, one-fourth its value, to a scoundrelly violin maker and dealer who told Von Barwig he had tried everywhere but could get no more for it, since there was a doubt as to its genuineness.
Von Barwig took the money, which was further decreased by a twenty per cent. commission. The man told him he was very lucky to get it; and perhaps he was.
This amount tided Von Barwig over for several months, during which time he secured several pupils and seemed for a time to be in a fair way to make a living. Be it understood that he was no longer the Anton Von Barwig who lived in Leipsic ten years before. Gone was the fire of his genius; dead was his ambition. His soul was not in his work--the man was alive, but the artist was dead.
Chapter Eight
And so the years pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d," 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 a.s.sociated 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.