“It is an insult to a man of your talent to offer such a miserable pittance. But my hands are tied, and tied very strictly, I can tell you. Turn up at the Parthenon on Friday night; you will soon get something better. You can read music quickly?”
Nello assured him on that point. He could read music as easily as his newspaper. The terms which Mr. Gay offered him were riches compared to the few coppers he had earned in the streets.
That same afternoon he and the joyful Anita presented themselves in Dean Street, with their few belongings. Papa Péron furnished a royal supper and broached another bottle of the very excellent Chambertin.
There was, however, still the question of clothes. Nello had nothing but what he stood up in, and the Parthenon was a very swagger theatre. Péron was equal to the emergency. He took the young man round to a neighbouring costumier’s, and secured a dress-suit on the hire-purchase system, at a very small outlay of ready money which he advanced. For, although the good Papa was not rich, he was very thrifty, and usually had a shot in the locker.
It was a very happy ménage; the old Frenchman was kindness and geniality itself. He seemed to grow younger in the society of his youthful friends.
And in time the mystery that had seemed to surround him vanished, his means of livelihood became revealed. He was on the staff of a couple of big music publishers. He corrected their proof sheets, he occasionally advised on compositions of budding composers; but needless to say, at this hack work his remuneration was very modest.
But he always appeared cheerful and resigned. He would drop fragmentary hints of a brilliant past, when money flowed like water, when he had mixed with illustrious personages. But he could never be induced to dwell very long on this period, would enter into no convincing details.
“It is gone, it is a feverish dream,” he would say with a somewhat theatrical wave of the hand. It was evidently a weakness of his to enshroud himself in an air of romance and mystery. “What does it matter who and what I was? To-day I am Papa Péron, music publisher’s hack, earning a few shillings a week at a most uncongenial occupation. But, at my age, I want little.”
Nello and his sister were happy too. The salary at the Parthenon was not magnificent, but it was a certainty, and they were frugal young people. No more playing in the sleet-driven streets, no more terrible uncertainty as to the night’s lodging and the next day’s meal.
For a month they pursued this humble, but not uncomfortable life. And Nello, who had no opportunity of displaying his talent in this big orchestra, where he was one of many, played two or three hours a day to the brilliant accompaniment of the old Frenchman.