Marianina also received warm commendation from this agreeable old soldier, while quite a fashionable crowd was listening; and Veronese arranged for another concert that evening, and placarded the town accordingly.
Barty managed to escape any more meals in the Casa Veronese, but took Marianina for one or two pleasant walks, and told her stories and sang to her in the grenier, while she improvised for him clever little obbligatos on her fiddle.
He found a cheap eating‑house and picked up a companion or two to chat with. He also killed time with his seton-dressing and self dry‑cupping—and hired French novels and read them as much as he dared with his remaining eye, about which he was morbidly nervous; he always fancied it would get its retina congested like the other, in which no improvement manifested itself whatever—and this depressed him very much. He was a most impatient patient.
To return. The second concert was as conspicuous a failure as the first had been a success: the attendance was small and less distinguished, and there was no enthusiasm. The Frau signora slipped a note and lost her temper in the middle of "Roberto," and sang out of tune and with careless, open contempt of her audience, and this the audience seemed to understand and openly resent. Poor Marianina was frightened, and played very wrong notes under the furious gaze of her papa, and finally broke down and cried, and there were some hisses for him, as well as kind and encouraging applause for the child. Then up jumps Barty and gets on the platform and takes the signore's guitar and twangs it, and smiles all round benignly—immense applause!
Then he pats Marianina's thin pale cheek and wipes her eyes and gives her a kiss. Frantic applause! Then "Fleur des Alpes!"
Ovation! encore! bis! ter!
And for a third encore he sings a very pretty little Flemish ballad about the rose without a thorn—"Het Roosje uit de Dorne." It is the only Flemish song he knows, and I hope I have spelt it right! And the audience goes quite crazy with enthusiasm, and everybody goes home happy, even the Veroneses—and Marianina does not get filliped that night.
After this the Veroneses tried humbler spheres for the display of their talents, and in less than a week exhausted every pothouse and beer‑tavern and low drinking‑shop in Blankenberghe! and at last they took to performing for casual coppers in the open street, and went very rapidly down hill. The signore lost his jauntiness and grew sordid and soiled and shabby and humble; the signora looked like a sulky, dirty, draggle‑tailed fury, ready to break out into violence on the slightest provocation; poor Marianina got paler and thinner, and Barty was very unhappy about her. The only things left rosy about her were her bruised nose, and her fingers, that always seemed stiff with cold; indeed, they were blue rather than rosy—and anything but clean.
One evening he bought her a little warm gray cloak that took his fancy; when he went home after dinner to give it her he found the three birds of song had taken flight—sans tambour ni trompette, and leaving no message for him. The baker‑landlord had turned them adrift—sent them about their business, sacrificing some of his rent to get rid of them; not a heavy loss, I fancy.
Barty went after them all over the little town, but did not find them; he heard they were last seen marching off with guitar and fiddle in a southerly direction along the coast, and found that their luggage was to be sent to Ostend.