The father saw the lamentable condition of his child, but being a philosopher and caring only for abstract meditations and his ease, he preferred that she should be kept out of his sight as much as possible, than that he should be asked to mend matters. What can a man be expected to do with a motherless baby girl? Not teach it the alphabet, surely? Nor walk it about the barren slopes of Lycabettus of a Sunday, nor initiate it into the mysteries of the Catechism? Clearly there was nothing else for a hard-working and good-tempered German to do but let nature work her will on such unpromising and unmanageable material, and continued to smoke his pipe and drink his mastic at his favourite coffee-house fronting Lycabettus. If nature failed, it was far from likely that he should succeed, and it was too much to expect him to devote his rare leisure hours to his unruly child. The neighbours did not, however, regard it in this light; but then neighbours never are disposed to regard the concerns of others from a reasonable point of view. So many improvements they could bring into the management of your family matters which they fail to bring into their own. No, no; leave a philosopher to find the easiest road of life and to discover a way out of all domestic responsibilities. Socrates was an admirable example in this high path, and if he could discourse in public on the immortality of the soul and other subjects, while his much calumniated wife and child wanted bread at home, a more modest individual like Jacob Natzelhuber might certainly sip his mastic in the Greek sunshine, and cherish a poor opinion of the policy of Metternich, while his little daughter was running about the narrow Athenian streets.
But there was one saving and remarkable grace about Photini. Not only did she display a nascent passion for music, but even as an infant she had shown an amazing taste for thrumming imaginary tunes on every object with which her fingers came in contact. When not fighting with a dozen amiable little beggars, or rolling delightedly in mud and dust, she was always to be seen playing this imaginary music of hers, and on the few occasions when her father took her to hear the German band on the Patissia Road, the sight of the King and Queen on horseback was nothing to her in comparison with the joy of sound.
This growing passion was becoming too prominent and imperious to be long overlooked; besides, Jacob had a German’s reverence for true musical proclivities, so he purchased the cheapest piano to be had, engaged the services of a Bavarian music master who had come to Athens in the hope of making his fortune under his compatriot king, and for so many hours in the day, at least, Photini was guaranteed from mischief. Her progress was something more than astonishing, and caused the Bavarian to give his spectacles an extra polish before announcing gravely to Jacob that Liszt himself could not ask for a more promising pupil. This naturally made Jacob very thoughtful, and sent his aimless meditations into quite a new channel. It is a negative condition of mind to feel that one has a poor opinion of Metternich, but to learn that one has a genius in one’s daughter leads to disagreeably positive reflections.
Now Jacob was a quiet man, we know, and the idea of an exceptional child frightened him. It was not an enviable responsibility in his estimation. Far from it, a distinctly painful one. An ordinary girl who would have grown just a little better-looking than her mother, learned to sew and housekeep in the usual way, and terminated an uneventful girlhood by marriage into something better than mechanics, thanks to his industry and economy—this was his ideal of a daughter’s career. Evidently here Nature thought differently.
As soon, however, as he had given a conscientious attention to Photini’s talent, greatly injured by the modest instrument on which she played, he came to the conclusion that this was not a case in which man can interfere, and that he was before a vocation claiming its legitimate right of sovereignty and refusing to be shifted off into the shallow byways of existence.
“I am of your opinion,” he said to the Bavarian master. “It is no common talent, that of my girl, but for my part I would far rather she did not know a major from a minor scale. It is not a woman’s business. However, I can do nothing now. I leave the matter in your hands. I am a poor man, but whatever you propose, as far as it is honourably necessary, I will make an effort to meet your proposal,” he added, with a slow, grave look.
“There is nothing for it but Germany, Natzelhuber,” said the Bavarian, promptly. “I should fancy we might manage, with the help of your father-in-law, a little influence I possess, and the girl’s own genius, to get her three or four years’ study in Leipzig. Once that much assured, she need only keep her head above water, and the waves will surely carry her——”
The Bavarian flung out his hands in an attitude suggestive of infinity.
“Well, well, so long as they do not carry her into evil,” said Jacob, shaking his head mournfully. “I am mistrustful of a public career for a woman.”
“You cannot deny that it is better than marriage with a man of your own class.”