| ARCHIE
ANDERSON was lying on the lounge that was just hidden
from the front room by a bend of the folding doors.
He was utterly tired out, with that unreasonable weariness
that comes from what most of his boy chums called “doing
nothing.” He had been standing still, practising
for two hours steadily, and his throbbing head and weakening
knees finally conquered his energy. He flung himself
down among the pillows, his violin and bow on a nearby
chair. Then a voice jarred on every nerve of his sensitive
body; it was a lady’s voice in the next room,
and she was saying to his mother:
“And how is poor Archie
to-day?”
“Poor Archie!” How
he hated to be called “poor” Archie!
His mother’s voice softened
as she replied: “Oh, he’s pretty
well to-day; his head aches and he seems to be weak,
but he has been practising all the morning.
“He must be a great care
and anxiety to you,” said the caller.
Archie shuddered at the words.
“Only a sweet care,”
said his mother. “I am always hoping he will outgrow
his delicate health.”
Archie groaned. How horribly
like a girl it was to be “delicate.”
“I think,” went
on the caller, raspingly, “that a frail boy is
a care. One depends so on one’s sons to be a strength
to one in old age; to help in their father’s business,
and things like that—unless of course one has
money.” [Page 147]
The harsh voice ceased, and
Archie felt in his soul that the speaker was glancing
meaningly about the bare little parlor of his father’s
house. He could have hugged his mother as he heard her
say: “Oh, well, Trig and Dudley will help their
father; and none of us grudge Archie his inability to
help, or his music lessons either.”
“I should think his violin
and his books and lessons would be a great expense to
you,” proceeded the caller.
“Nothing is an expense
that fills his life and helps him to forget he is shut
away from the other boys and their jolly sports, just
because he is not strong enough to participate in them,”
replied his mother, with a slight chill in her voice
at her visitor’s impertinence.
Presently the caller left, and
Mrs. Anderson, slipping through the folding doors, saw
Archie outstretched on the pillows. She bent over him
with great concern; her eyes read every expression of
his face, every attitude of his languid body.
“Archie, you didn’t
hear?” she asked, pleadingly.
“I’m afraid I did,
motherette,” he said, springing up with unusual
spirit.
He stood before her, a head
taller than herself, his thin form frail as a flower,
his long, slim fingers twitching, his wonderful, wistful
eyes and sensitive mouth revealing all the artist nature
of man of thirty, instead of a boy of fourteen. He was
on the point of flaring out with indignation against
the visitor, but his lack of physical strength seemed
to crowd upon him just at that moment. He sank upon
the lounge again, and with his face against Mrs. Anderson’s
arm, said: “Thank you, motherette, for fighting
for me. Perhaps even with all this miserable ill-health
of mine I can fight for you some day.”
“Of course you will, dear,”
she replied cheerily. “Don’t you mind what
they say; you know ‘Hock’ always stands
by you, and he’s as good as your mother to fight
for you.”
“Dear old ‘Hock!’
Decent old ‘Hock!” he said admiringly. [Page
148] “He’s the best boy in the
world, but he is not you, motherette.”
“There he is now!”
said Mrs. Anderson, as a piercing whistle assailed the
window, followed by a round, red face, a skinning sunburnt
nose, and an assertive voice, saying, “I’ll
just come in this way, Arch.” And a leg was flung
over the window sill. “It’s easier than
goin’ round by the door.”
“Hock” prided himself
on being a “sport,” and he certainly looked
one—thick-knit legs, sturdy ankles, a short, chunky
neck, hands with a grip like a vise, a big, good-natured
dimpling mouth, eyes that were narrow and twinkling,
muscles as hard as nails, and thirteen years old, but
imaging himself eighteen. He had been christened “Albert
Edward,” but fortune smiled upon him, making him
the champion junior hockey player of the county, so
the royal name was discarded with glee, and henceforth
he was known far and wide as “Hock” McHenry.
The friendship between Hock
and Archie was the wonder of the town. Some people said,
“Hock is so coarse and loud and slangy, I don’t
see how Archie Anderson can have anything to do with
him.” Others said: “Archie is so frail and
sensitive, and so wrapped up in his music, how can
Hock find anything in him that is jolly, and boyish,
and congenial?” But Hock’s people and Archie’s
people knew that one supplied what the other lacked.
For so often this conversation between the two boys
would be overheard. Archie’s plaintive voice would
say: “Oh, Hock, it is so good to have you around;
you make me forget that I can’t play hockey and
football with the rest of the kids! You play it for
me as well as for yourself. I’m such a dub; laid
up sick half the time.”
And Hock would frequently be
heard to remark: “Say, Arch, do you know if it
weren’t for you I’d grow into a regular
tough. You kind of keep me straight, and—oh, well,
straight and all that!”
And so the odd friendship went
on, Hock attending [Page 149] his school
daily—the acknowledged leader of all the sports
and mischief that existed; Archie getting to school
about two days out of every five, yet managing through
his hours of illness to mount week by week, month by
month, up, up, up in his music.
“I won’t always
be an expense at home, and have dad keep me as if I
were a girl,” Archie would tell himself on his
good strong days when he felt he had accomplished something
with his violin. “I can feel the music growing
right in my fingers. I feel I’ll play to thousands
yet—thousands of people and thousands of dollars.”
Then perhaps a fit of coughing would come on, and the
boy would grow discouraged again, but only until Hock
appeared on his daily round, and plumping his sturdy
person into a chair would tell all the news, and finish
with, “Say, Arch, fiddle for a fellow, won’t
you?”
And while Archie played, Hock
would sit quietly looking out of the window, vowing
to himself he would give up slang, and go to Sunday-school
regularly, and not shoot craps any more behind the barn
with boys his father had expressed a wish not to have
around the place. In after years Hock knew what made
him have these good impulses while he listened to Archie’s
playing. He knew that a great and beautiful art—the
art of music—was inborn in his chum; that the
wild, melancholy voice of the violin was bringing out
the best in them both.
*
* *
* *
*
It
was summer time. The little Canadian city where they
lived, which stretched its length along the borders
of the great lake, became a very popular resort for
holiday makers, and many Southerners flocked to the
two large hotels, seeking the cooler air of the North.
Ball and tennis matches and regattas made the little
city very gay, and the season was swinging at its height
when one night Hock’s burly voice heralded his
legs through the window of the Anderson parlor. Evidently
he was greatly excited, for he shouted at the top of
his lungs that the east [Page 150]
end factory was on fire, with a dozen operators cut
off from the stairs and elevators, and that his father,
who was foreman, was begging on all sides for volunteers
to rescue the people from the top story. In the twinkling
of an eye Hock was off again with crowds of running
men and boys; the fire engines went clanging past with
the rattle and roar of galloping horses and shouting
men. Never had Archie Anderson felt his frailty as he
felt it at this moment. The very news made him almost
faint, but he started to run with the crowd until his
shortening breath and incessant coughing compelled him
to return home, where he flung himself down on the doorstep,
burying his throbbing forehead in his hands and saying:
“Oh! I’m no good! I can never hope to be
a man! I’m not even a boy! I seem to myself like
a baby!”
Late at night his father and
brothers returned, all begrimed with soot and ashes.
They had worked valiantly with the firemen and rescuers,
saving life after life. But with all their courage and
pluck they could not save big Tom Morris, who perished
in the flames just because he insisted upon others and
weaker ones being saved first.
For days the town was plunged
in gloom. Everyone liked Tom Morris, and everyone’s
heart ached for his little widow and her three small
children, left penniless. Then the only pleasant thing
in connection with the disaster occurred. The kindly
visitors at the summer hotels began getting up a huge
benefit concert, the proceeds of which were to be presented
to Mrs. Tom and her babies. Hock heard of it first—nothing
ever escaped his lynx-like ears. Astride the window-sill
he communicated his gossip to Archie something in this
fashion:
“Say, Arch, they’re
going to have the best performance. Miss Van Alstine
from New York is going to sing, and some long-haired
fellow at one of the hotels is going to play the piano—they
say he’s great; and oh! say, Arch, did you ever
hear of a great fiddler name Ventnor?” [Page
151]
“Only the world-renowned
Ventnor,” said Archie. “Why do you ask,
Hock?”
“Well, he’s the
one! ‘Greatest on earth,’ they say. Gets
thousands of dollars every night he fiddles. He’s
staying at the Lake View Hotel, and—”
“Ventnor here!”
fairly screamed Archie. “The great Ventnor!
Oh, Hock, is he going to play?”
“Yes, he is!” said
Hock, smacking his lips together with glee that something
had at last taken Archie out of himself and made him
forget his frailty, if only for a moment, “Yes,
siree,” continued Hock. “He’s going
to play three times. Heard him say so myself when they
asked him on the beach this morning. He speaks the tanglest-legged
English you ever heard. He said, ‘Me, I holiday;
me, I not blay when I holiday.’ Then a batch of
ladies tried to explain things to him, and when his
Russian-Italian-French brain got around things, he up
with his hands and ran them through his long gray hair
and wagged his head, and said, ‘Me, I understand!
Me, I don’t blay money when I holiday, but me,
I blay for unfortunate beeples. I blay dree times.’
Oh, it was funny, Arch!”
“Funny!” said Archie.
“Funny! Hock, I’ll knock you down if you
call Ventnor ‘funny.’ Why, it’s the
most beautiful thing in the world for him to do. Oh,
Hock! and to think that at last I will hear him!”
“I never heard tell of
him before,” observed Hock, with evident pride
in his ignorance.
“There’s no greater
violinist in the world, Hock,” replied Archie
with enthusiasm. His cheeks were scarlet, his eyes sparkling,
his thin hands trembling with excitement.
“Well, I’m not keen
on hearing anyone fiddle any better than you do,”
Hock answered soberly. “Whenever you fiddle you
just give me the jim-jams, with the creeps going up
and down my back; and what’s worse, I always have
to blow my nose when you get through.” [Page
152]
“What a good chap you
are, Hock! You make me believe in myself. Perhaps I
really will amount to something some day,” replied
Archie, warmly.
“Betcherlife!” said
the sturdy one. “Well, so-long! I’m glad
you’ll hear the big violin player, Arch, if you
really have been wanting to.”
Wanting to! Archie Anderson
had longed to hear Ventnor ever since he first drew
a bow across the strings. He could hardly wait until
the night of the great concert. Owing to the extreme
heat of the summer he had been taking his lessons late
in the evening, but on this eventful night his teacher,
himself anxious to go, told Archie to come at seven
o’clock; he could then give him a full hour, and
the lesson would be over in plenty of time for them
both to attend the concert at half-past eight. The lesson
was trying and the excitement was beginning to tell
on the boy, so, without returning home, he went straight
to the hall, his violin case tucked under his arm. Purposely
he had engaged a seat in the very first row; he wanted
to watch the great master’s marvellous fingers,
as well as drink in the music they made. Even at eight
o’clock the hall was so packed that he could hardly
get through the aisles. The excellence of the programme,
as well as the charitable object, had drawn out the
entire town, and Archie took his seat fearful that the
overpowering summer heat and crowded hall would be his
undoing. He did no even hear the opening piano solo
by the “long-haired fellow,” as Hock had
called him, nor did he rhapsodize over handsome Miss
Van Alstine, whose wonderful gown and thrilling voice
captured the audience. It was only when a slender, dark,
elderly man stepped down to the footlights with a violin
in his long, thin hands that Archie sat bolt upright,
his eyes blazing with excitement, his breath catching
in his throat.
The great man’s face was
fine as an engraving, with a melancholy mouth, and eyes
that burned like black fires. He stood a brief second,
gave his head, crowned with [Page 153]
long, gray hair, a quick, nervous toss, and drew his
bow across the strings softly, sweetly, with a heart-breaking
sound that fell on his listeners like the sob of a thousand
winds. For five minutes he held them spellbound. It
was only when he half smiled and stepped into the stage
wings that they realized that it was over. Then with
one accord the entire audience broke into a storm of
applause—all but Archie, who sat with locked fingers
and tense face; for the life of him he could not move
a single muscle—he was simply paralyzed with pleasure;
at last he had listened to music!
It was nearing the end of the
programme, and Ventnor had stepped forth to play his
last number. It was a wild, eerie Hungarian air, that
wailed and whispered like a lost child, then mounted
up, up, louder, louder, a perfect hurricane of melody,
when—suddenly a sharp crack like a pistol shot
cut the air. The music ceased—one of the violin
strings had snapped. At another time the great man would
have finished the number on the three remaining strings,
but the heat, the lax practice of a holiday season—something,
or perhaps everything combined, for the instant overcame
him. He stood like an awkward child, gazing down at
the trailing, useless string.
Instantly Archie’s sensitive
brain grasped the whole situation. Ventnor’s business
manager was not with him; he had not brought a second
violin. Like a flash Archie whipped his own out of its
case. He had just come from his lesson; it was in perfect
tune. Before the shy, frail boy knew what he was actually
doing he was beside the footlights, handing his own
violin up to the great master, whose wonderful eyes
gazed down into the small, pale face, and whose hand
immediately reached out, grasping the poor, cheap little
fiddle that Archie had learned his scales on. The audience
broke into applause, but with a single glance Ventnor
stilled them, and dashed straight into the melody precisely
where he had left off.
Archie could hardly believe
his ears. Was that his old [Page 154]
thirty-dollar fiddle? That marvellous thing that murmured,
and wept, and laughed under the master hand! Oh! the
voice of it! The voice of it!
They would not let Ventnor go
when he smiled himself off the stage. They called and
shouted, “Encore!” “Encore!”
until he returned to respond—respond, not with
his own priceless instrument, but with Archie’s,
and with a grace and kindliness that only a great man
possesses. He played a good-night lullaby on the boy’s
cheap little violin, and, moreover, played it as he
never had before. Archie remembered afterwards that
he had presence of mind enough to get on his feet when
they all sang “God Save the King,” but it
really seemed a dream that Ventnor was shaking hands
with him and saying, “I t’ank you, me; I
t’ank you. You save me great awkwardness.”
And then, before he knew it, he had promised to go to
the hotel the next day and play for Ventnor.
All the way home he was thinking,
“Fancy it!—I, Archie Anderson, asked to
play before Ventnor!” Then came the fuss and the
delight of the people at home over his good fortune,
but he soon slipped away to bed, exhausted with the
evening’s events. His mother, coming into the
room later to say good-night, saw that close to his
bed, on a table where he could reach out and touch it
during the night, lay his violin.
“Motherette,” he
smiled happily, “I feel that it is consecrated.”
“Keep it so, little lad
of mine. Keep both your music and your violin consecrated.”
*
* *
* *
*
Never
had Archie played so well, for all his shyness and nervousness.
He seemed to gather something of the great man’s
soul as he played before him at the hotel the following
day.
Ventnor
became greatly excited. “Boy, boy!” he cried,
“you have a great music in you! You must have
[Page 155] study and work, like—what
is it you Canadians say?—like Sam Hill!”
“Yes,”
said Archie, quietly; “rainy days and east wind
days, when I coughed and could not go to school, I worked,
and—well, I just worked.”
“Me, I should t’ink
you did! Why, boy, I will make you great. I will teach
you all this summer.”
“I’m
afraid my father can’t afford that,” faltered
Archie.
“Me, I tell you I holiday
now. I take no money in my holiday. I teach you because
I like you, me,” replied the master, irritably.
“But I can never repay
you,” answered Archie.
“Me,
I will give to the world a great musician; it is you!
That’s repay enough for me—the satisfaction
of making one great violinist. That’s repay.”
And
so it all came about. Day after day Ventnor taught,
trained and encouraged Archie Anderson. Day after day
the boy drew greater music from the heart of his fiddle.
He seemed to stride ahead under the power of the master;
and as for Ventnor, he seemed beside himself with joy
at what he called his “find.” They grew
to be friends. Archie confided his great discouragement
of ill-health, his inability to attend school.
“Me,
I fix all that,” answered Ventnor. “Me,
I go see to-night your parents. I talk to them.”
And he did, but his “talk” amazed even the
boy. He wanted Archie to go with him to California,
where his autumn season began. He wanted to adopt him,
to take him away for two years. He gesticulated, and
raised his eyebrows, and talked down every objection
they had.
“I
tell you I want him. I make a virtuoso of him. He is
my boy. I discover him. He’s good boy; he work,
work, work. Never do I see a boy work like dat. He is
in earnest. Dat is de greatest t’ing a boy can
have, to be earnest. It make him a great, good man.
He’s not selfish either. He not t’ink of
himself, only other beeple. I meet with misfortune.
I break my string. [Page 156] He lend
me his violin. Me, I’m selfish. I don’t
lend my violin to not a person. No, not even the King
of England. Den, too, Archie, his throat and lungs,
and his physique, it is not strong, not robust. I take
him hot country, warm California. He get strong.”
This
last argument was too much for Archie’s family.
They yielded, and when Ventnor left for the West the
boy went with him. He never missed a week writing home
or to “Hock,” and at the end of two years
he returned. In his pocket was a signed contract as
“first violin” in the finest orchestra of
a great Southern city. He had left his cough with his
short trousers in California, and had outgrown as much
of his frailness as a boy of his temperament ever can.
The day he left to fill his engagements the lady called
who used to speak of him as “poor Archie, he’s
such an expense to his parents,” and sat talking
to Mrs. Anderson in the little parlor. Trig had just
secured a “situation,” and the caller was
asking about it.
“Yes,”
replied Mrs. Anderson, “Trig has done very well.
He gets six dollars a week now, and Dudley, you know,
gets ten.” Then with pardonable asperity she added:
“Archie
is doing a little better, however; he’s getting
seventy-five dollars a week to start on. He has already
paid his father back every copper ever spent on his
tuition.”
“Archie!
Seventy-five dollars a week! Why, he is hardly
seventeen! How ever did he do it?” exclaimed the
visitor.
“Hock,
dear loyal old Hock, says it’s because Archie
is the very best boy in the world,” replied Mrs.
Anderson, laughingly, “but I say it was the result
of a broken string.” [Page 157]
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