“His eyes are fat, and he has learned to roll them and close them rapturously, and lift his eyebrows, and now and then he sways his head and seems to be in a dream of beauty. That’s all trick, and very likely he practises it before the glass, for he has no music in his soul really, and he is always scheming. Even while his eyes appear to be closed in ecstasy he is looking under the lids at the women to see which is the best worth cultivating.
“I, too, adore women, although I am afraid of them, and I am so lonely I don’t mind confessing that once I too sat before the looking-glass and tried to make languishing faces like his; but I suddenly realized what I was doing and was ready to disfigure myself for shame. Yet they are so charming, some of the women here, and it would be so delightful to play on their feelings as he can and make them open their lips just a little and look away into nothing; above all to make them want me.
“Why one man playing a piece can do that and another man playing the same piece much better with real feeling cannot is a mystery. And I would be so nice to them. They would be able to trust me. I would give them such good advice and take such care of them.
“Instead, the women who come here, many of them, come only to watch him. They make their men bring them here, and often they forget to eat. Then the men they are with are furious. I have heard them sometimes at the nearest tables to the orchestra. ‘Why can’t you let that damned fiddler alone,’ I have heard them say—every one talks the same in our restaurant—‘and pay a little attention to me?’ And then the women are cross, and the meal is ruined.
“But when he goes off—as he does after every two or three selections—to sit with a friend or receive congratulations from the visitors who call him to their tables, and I have to take his place and lead the orchestra, then the men’s faces clear again, for they know that no woman will ever look at me or forget her food when I am playing a solo, for I am short and fair. It is no use being short and fair. I can play all that he does, and I love it too, which he does not—but it is useless. No one looks at me twice. I am short and fair, and middle-aged too.
“But even when I was younger and better dressed and didn’t care I never could get women to be interested in me. It is some trick, I suppose. He takes them all in; but I could tell them some things about him if I were asked—how mean he is, how vain, how jealous, how fickle.
“He is cruel too. When our poor pianist had pneumonia through playing for him one night in a cold hall he refused to allow him any money till he was well enough to play again. Five weeks. Not a penny. And the second violin, whose place I took, was discharged only because he was applauded too much in the solos. One who really needed the post too. A poor man with a large family.
“But women don’t mind about things like that. They don’t ask a man to be kind and good, especially if he plays well. And I confess that his playing is wonderful—technically. But no heart at all.
“Notes are continually being brought to him by the waiters. Sometimes they merely ask for certain things to be played, always waltzes or love songs, and sometimes they are more personal. And while we are playing a piece which one of the pretty women has asked for he is looking at her and making his faces and closing his eyes until she feels like a queen. Isn’t it strange? They should see him when we rehearse. He doesn’t smile then. He snaps and snarls.
“‘Ah!’ say I to myself as I watch it all through my spectacles, ‘you should see his wife waiting outside the restaurant to waylay him on his way to his cards and get some money. He wanted her once, before she was tired and plain. Now he only wants new faces and new voices and new admiration.’ That’s what I am saying behind my spectacles, but no one knows it. There’s no telepathy, as you call it, in me. I am short and fair. We who are short and fair are without magnetism. All there is for us is to be true; but women don’t mind about that. They want magnetism.