"Don't soar into metaphor again, Mr. Thacker, please. It delays your point most confoundedly."
"That Streightley is ruined--partly by her act--is nuts to her, but nothing like such nuts as that his wife has left him. She and that old cat Lady What-do-you-call her--Marsh something--have talked that poor girl over ever since,--regular old Tabby that Lady Thingammy,--and so I changed my mind, and thought to myself, 'No; nothing would make Mrs. Frere so wild as to see Mrs. Streightley restored to, and happy with, her husband;' and I determined I'd do my best to carry that idea into effect."
"My good fellow, you only determined what all of us have determined and tried, but without the smallest possible result."
Mr. Thacker settled his elbows comfortably on the table, and replied in a tone of easy confidence:
"Ye-es; that's exactly the difference between me and 'all of us.' But listen to me, and I will show you I have come here on no fool's errand. You know that, pending the great gathering together of all of us at Jerusalem, our people are spread over the whole face of the earth. Thus those among us who are well known, or who take a leading part, have ramifications and correspondents in every large city in the world. I myself am in this position; and it was my intention to have set the whole of the machinery in motion, with the view of discovering where Mrs. Streightley lay hidden, when, by a most fortunate accident, I believe I have been spared the trouble, and have at once accomplished my end."
"God grant it!" said Yeldham earnestly. "But how? how?"
"You must let me tell my story in my own way, and this part of it involves rather a lengthened explanation. When I was a lad, my bosom-friend was a boy of my own age named Hartmann. He was of German origin; but his family had been for a long time settled in this country, and he and I were sworn chums. I do not know why; I never could make out why, except perhaps"--and here Mr. Thacker set his teeth, while the colour mounted into his cheeks--"except perhaps that we were both Jews; and the other boys stood aloof from us, and used to chaff and call us names. D--n 'em! I've made some of 'em pay for that fun since. There was nothing else in common between young Hartmann and me. I was always pushing and energetic, looking to the main chance, and doing all I could to make something out of every body; while he was a dreamy, quiet kind of fellow, with no interest for any thing in the world but music. He was a wonderful musician. By George! sometimes even now, when I'm in a quiet mood, and get thinking of him, I fancy I hear the sounds that he used to draw out of his violin. There he would sit, scraping away hour after hour in play-time; so that when we left school, which we did about the same time, he'd had great practice for such a young chap, and was quite a proficient. His friends talked about getting him into a house of business; but I knew how much that would do. When you've got what your friends call artistic, and your enemies Bohemian tendencies, you had better give way to 'em at once, for they'll prevent your settling down to any thing else, and they're sure to claim you in the end. Poor Nat Hartmann prayed so hard to be allowed to follow his bent, that his friends never attempted to struggle with him; and he went off, very soon after leaving school, to some connections of his family at Vienna, where he was to finish his musical education. He was not long absent before we had news of him. He was in the highest spirits, making excellent progress. Then he wrote that he had been noticed by the Emperor, and taken into the Imperial private band, of which, in about three years, he became leader. His name began to be known in musical circles, and his arrival in England was announced for the approaching season. Then suddenly there came a rumour that he was under a cloud--how or why we could never ascertain. I wrote to him twice or thrice; but my letters were unanswered, and I gave it up in despair.
"It must have been ten years after this, that, one night as I was coming out of the Opera, I felt a gentle pull at my coat, and, turning round, I saw Nat Hartmann. I knew him in an instant, though he was utterly changed from my friend of years before. All his colour was gone; his face was thin and pinched and haggard; his eyes sunk deep in his head; his lips, which had been so full and ruddy, were now thin and pallid. I stepped aside to satisfy myself that it was he; then I made him get into my brougham, and drove him to my rooms. To my dying day I shall never forget that man's appearance as he stood in his thin, wretched clothes, under the lamplight; I shall never forget the manner in which he rushed to the fireplace, knelt down on the rug, and spread out his transparent hands to the blaze; I shall never forget the manner in which he gulped down the wine which I handed to him, or the ravenous way in which he tore at the food. When he had eaten and drank, had warmed himself, and nature seemed revived within him, I talked to him, and bit by bit managed to drag from him his story. He was a long time telling it, and it was disconnected and jerky to a degree, interspersed with loud railing at fortune, with sighs and tears, and dolorous ejaculations, and I had a hard task to follow him; but I gleaned from him this: His first downward step had been caused by his having married a Christian girl, a singer at the Grand Opera in Vienna, with whom he fell desperately in love. This had so exasperated his relatives, that after trying, by every means in their power, to prevent the marriage, when they found it had actually taken place, they repudiated him, and did every thing possible to ruin him and his wife. One of the principal Jewish bankers, who had originally introduced Hartmann to the Imperial notice, now became his bitterest enemy, used the influence which had formerly been exerted in the young man's favour to debase him, and finally, under some pretext, got him removed from his position as leader of the Emperor's private band. From that time onward misfortune seemed to have seized him; his wife, after a long illness, died in childbirth, leaving him with one little girl. In his misery he took to drinking, and sunk from bad to worse. One night, while drunk, he struck an officer who had mocked his playing, and, to save his life, fled with his little child to England. He had been in London a week, and had haunted the streets in the hope of meeting me; and the meeting was only just in time, by George! for he and his little child were nearly starved.
"This is a long story, but it's pretty nearly over now. Of course I did what was possible to be done for this poor fellow; I gave him money and clothes, and sent him to the doctor, and all that; but he was very proud in all his misery, and would not accept what he called 'charity,' but insisted upon working for his living. Poor Nat, poor fellow! the drink had ruined him, mind and body--all his crisp touch, all his wonderful execution, gone, sir, gone never to return; but he could still play the fiddle very decently, better than most, at any rate; so I spoke to Wuff and some operatic people I knew, and got him playing at concerts and theatres, and that sort of thing. But it didn't last long; the drink had done its work, and he could not get on without stimulants; when he got ill again, and broke up suddenly, sending for me when he was on his death-bed, and imploring me to take care of his little girl--his little Louise. I promised readily enough, for she was a sweet little child, and I had always been fond of her; and as soon as we had buried the poor fellow, I sent the girl over to a school in Paris, intending to have her brought up as a governess; but with a splendid violinist for her father, and a first-rate opera-singer for her mother, it wasn't to be expected that she'd go in for steady respectability, though she's as good a girl as ever breathed; moreover she inherits her mother's voice, and I believe--from what I hear from friends of mine over there, who know all about this kind of thing--that she'll some day be a splendid singer, and astonish the world. So, when all these representations were made to me, I could not hold out any longer; and when Louise left school, eighteen months ago, I got her admitted as a pupil at the Conservatoire; and there she is working away, and I'm told is getting on gloriously. Was getting on gloriously, I should say, up to within the last month; but she has been very ill, poor child, and that has pulled her down, and put her back; and--that's exactly what I'm coming to. I daresay you've been horribly bored up to this point, Mr. Yeldham; but I think when I've finished, you'll say it was worth your listening to."
"Only you carry out the hopes you've raised, Mr. Thacker, and you may depend upon it I won't complain," said Yeldham.