Chapter Chapter 1 · 第1章

MUSICAL adventures largely depend on your instrument. Go traveling with

a bassoon or clarionet packed in your trunk, and romance will pass you

by. But far otherwise will events shape themselves if you set forth with

a fiddle.

The moment I turned my back upon the humdrum flute and embraced the

'cello, that instrument of romance, things began happening thick and

fast in a hitherto uneventful life. I found that to sally forth with

your 'cello couchant under your arm, like a lance of the days of

chivalry, was to invite adventure. You tempted Providence to make things

interesting for you, up to the moment when you returned home and stood

your fat, melodious friend in the corner on his one leg--like the stork,

that other purveyor of joyful surprises.

One reason why the 'cellist is particularly liable to meet with musical

adventures is because the nature of his talent is so plainly visible.

The parcel under his arm labels him FIDDLER in larger scare-caps than

Mr. Hearst ever invented for headlines. It is seen of all men. There is

no concealment possible. For it would, indeed, be less practicable to

hide your 'cello under a bushel than to hide a bushel under your 'cello.

The non-reducible obesity of this instrument is apt to bring you

adventures of all sorts: wrathful sometimes, when urchins recognize it

as a heaven-sent target for snowballs; or when adults audibly quote Dean

Swift's asinine remark, 'He was a fiddler and therefore a rogue.'

Absurd, sometimes, as when the ticket-chopper in the subway bars your

path under the misapprehension that you are carrying a double-bass; and

when the small boys at the exit offer you a _Saturday Evening Post_ in

return for 'a tune on that there banjo.' But more often the episodes are

pleasant, as when your bulky trademark enables some kindred spirit to

recognize you as his predestined companion on impromptu adventures in

music.

I was at first almost painfully aware of my 'cello's conspicuousness

because I had abandoned for it an instrument so retiring by nature that

you might carry it till death in your side pocket, yet never have it

contribute an unusual episode to your career. But from the moment when I

discovered the exaggerated old fiddle in the attic, slumbering in its

black coffin, and wondered what it was all about, and brought it

resurrection and life,--events began. I have never known exactly what

was the magic inherent in the dull, guttural, discouraged protests of

the strings which I experimentally plucked that day. But their

songs-without-words-or-music seemed to me pregnant with promises of

beauty and romance far beyond the ken of the forthright flute. So then

and there I decided to embark upon the delicate and dangerous enterprise

of learning another instrument.

It was indeed delicate and dangerous because it had to be prosecuted as

secretly as sketching hostile fortifications. Father must not suspect. I

feared that if he heard the demonic groans of a G string in pain, or the

ghoulish whimperings of a manhandled A, he would mount to the attic,

throw back his head, look down upon me through those lower crescents of

his spectacles which always made him look a trifle unsympathetic, and

pronounce that baleful formula: 'My son, come into my study!' For I knew

he labored under the delusion that I already 'blew in' too much time on

the flute, away from the companionship of All Gaul, _enteuthen

exelaunei_, and Q.E.D. As for any additional instrument, I feared that

he would reduce it to a pulp at sight, and me too.

My first secret step was to secure a long strip of paper to be pasted on

the finger-board under the strings. It was all pockmarked with black

dots and letters, so that if the music told you to play the note G, all

you had to do was to contort your neck properly and remove your left

hand from the path of vision, then gaze cross-eyed and upside down at

the finger-board until you discovered the particular dot labeled G. The

next move was to clap your fingertip upon that dot and straighten out

your neck and eyes and apply the bow. Then out would come a triumphant

G,--that is, provided your fingers had not already rubbed G's

characteristically undershot lip so much as to erase away the letter's

individuality. In that case, to be sure, all your striving for G might

result only in C after all.

It was fascinating work, though. And every afternoon as the hour of

four, and father's 'constitutional,' approached, I would 'get set' like

a sprinter on my mark in the upper hall. The moment the front door

closed definitely behind my parent I would dash for the attic and

commence my cervical and ocular contortions. It was dangerous, too. For

it was so hard to stop betimes that one evening father made my blood run

cold by inquiring, 'What were you moaning about upstairs before dinner?'

I fear that I attributed these sounds to travail in Latin scholarship,

and an alleged sympathy for the struggles of the dying Gaul.

The paper finger-board was so efficacious that in a week I felt ready to

taste the first fruits of toil. So I insinuated a pair of musical

friends into the house one afternoon, to try an easy trio. They were a

brother and sister who played violin and piano. Things went so

brilliantly that we resolved on a public performance within a few days,

at the South High School. Alas, if I had only taken the supposed

rapidity of my progress with a grain of attic salt! But my only

solicitude was over the problem how to smuggle the too conspicuous

instrument to school, on the morning of the concert, without the

knowledge of a vigilant father. We decided at last that any such attempt

would be suicidal rashness. So I borrowed another boy's father's 'cello,

and, in default of the printed strip, I penciled under the strings notes

of the whereabouts of G, C, and so forth, making G shoot out the lip

with extra decision.

Our public performance was a _succès fou_,--that is, it was a _succès_

up to a certain point, and _fou_ beyond it, when one disaster followed

another. My fingers played so hard as to rub out G's lower lip. They

quite obliterated A, turned E into F, and B into a fair imitation of D.

These involuntary revisions led me to introduce the very boldest modern

harmonies into one of the most naïvely traditional strains of Cornelius

Gurlitt. Now, in the practice of the art of music one never with

impunity pours new harmonic wine into old bottles. The thing is simply

not done.

Perhaps, though, we might have muddled through somehow, had not my

violinist friend, during a rest, poked me cruelly in the ribs with his

bow and remarked in a coarse stage whisper, 'Look who's there!'

I looked, and gave a gasp. It might have passed for an excellent

rehearsal of my last gasp. In the very front row sat--father! He

appeared sardonic and businesslike. The fatal formula seemed already to

be trembling upon his lips. The remnants of B, C, D, and so forth

suddenly blurred before my crossed eyes. With the most dismal report our

old bottle of chamber music blew up, and I fled from the scene.

'My son, come into my study.'

In an ague I had waited half the evening for those hated words; and with

laggard step and miserable forebodings I followed across the hall. But

the day was destined to end in still another surprise. When father

finally faced me in that awful sanctum, he was actually smiling in the

jolliest manner, and I divined that the rod was going to be spared.

'What's all this?' he inquired. 'Thought you'd surprise your old dad,

eh? Come, tell me about it.'

So I told him about it; and he was so sympathetic that I found courage

for the great request.

'Pa,' I stammered, 'sometimes I think p'raps I don't hold the bow just

right. It scratches so. Please might I take just four lessons from a

regular teacher so I could learn all about how to play the 'cello?'

Father choked a little. But he looked jollier than ever as he replied,

'Yes, my son, on condition that you promise to lay the flute entirely

aside until you have learned _all_ about how to play the 'cello.'

I promised.

I have faithfully kept that promise.