“Oh, that I were a musician, to bring that beautiful look into his face! Lucy’s fingers have stolen half his heart, her voice the rest.” Thus sighed Mary in the depths of her troubled spirit.
The Don rose softly from his seat. “Excuse me,” said he; and moving silently and on tiptoe across the room, took up his violin, placed it under his chin, and poising the bow over the strings, stood there waiting for a pause in Lucy’s song. By Lucy alone, of all the company, had these movements of the Don been unobserved; and when there leaped forth, just behind her and close to her ear, the vibrating tones of the Guarnerius, echoing her own, she gave a quick start and a pretty little “oh!” but turning and seeing the Don behind her, she beamed upon him with a radiant smile.
“Aha, an obligato! so!” cried the Herr. “Very goot, very goot.” And he bent him over the piano with renewed zeal.
If I knew what an “obligato” was, I would tell you most cheerfully; but even Charley could never get it into my head. It was not an accompaniment, that I know; for the Herr was playing the accompaniment himself.
“I tell you venn to come in,” said the Herr to Lucy, who was naturally a little confused at first. “Now—ah—so, very goot.”
This time the Don broke in here and there upon Lucy’s song in a fragmentary kind of way, as it seemed to me, and just as fancy dictated, producing a very weird and startling effect; and when the pause came in her score, he continued the strain in an improvisation full of power and wild passion. “Wunderschön! Ben trovato!” cried the Herr, lapsing into and out of his mother-tongue in his enthusiasm.
I gave the reader to understand, when I brought him acquainted with Waldteufel, that he was a musician of far greater ability than one would have expected to find teaching in a country neighborhood; regretfully giving the reason for this anomaly. Aroused now by the Don, he showed the stuff that was in him; dashing off an improvisation full of feeling on the theme of the “Serenade.” “Now,” said he, striking the last notes, “coom again, coom. Vot you got to say now?” he added, in challenge.
The Don gave a slight bow to Lucy.
“Ah, das is so,—I forgot.”
Lucy began anew, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling with excitement, nodding approval, first to one, then to the other of the rival artists, as each in turn gave proof of his virtuosity. Schubert’s “Serenade” is of a divine beauty, and improving upon it is like adding polish to Gray’s “Elegy.” But such considerations did not disturb our little audience. Our local pride was up. The stranger had been carrying everything before him, and when our honest Herr came back at him with a Roland for his Oliver, as described above, there had been a lively clapping of hands. And now, first one or two, then the entire company had risen in a body and clustered around the performers, applauding and cheering each in turn, but the Herr, as I remember, most warmly; for few of us had ever heard him improvise before, and, besides, he seemed to deserve special encouragement for his pluck in contending with this Orpheus, newly dropped among us from the skies, as it were.