AN UNAMBITIOUS GOLD MINE
Poole, Ernest
AN UNAMBITIOUS GOLD MINE By ERNEST POOLE (Continued from last week.) LATE one afternoon, sitting at work in his shop, Johan glanced up quickly, with a distinct little shock of surprise. A plain...
...I'll let you hear me...
...I have had this shoe three times already...
...At least he sternly resolved that he would not...
...To be continued...
...These attempts she saw...
...Before this, Johan had not even made the acquaintance of women in books...
...Two days passed, and then she returned to get her shoes...
...She was tweny-four years old...
...For now in a flash he remembered she had come many times in the last five years, come with this same friendly smile...
...But Johan had never in his life had any girl friends...
...Undaunted by this mishap, with a chuckle of sly anticipation he peered up beneath the shutter...
...SHE left a moment later...
...But on one such night, just after a bursting climax in a symphony by one of the Russian composers, Johan turned sharply around, as though he had felt her seize his arm...
...All right," he said...
...Eight—ten—even twelve hours a day...
...Why that little shock of surprise...
...She came in that same evening...
...He ton appeared disappointed, puzzled...
...Her seat was in the corner...
...At least so it seemed to Johan...
...I could never keep at it as some men do...
...He stopped short, and again came that look of surprise...
...Or again she would suddenly laugh in a low rippling fashion, which made her almost beautiful...
...So now he was most anxious to find whether she too knew how to listen, whether at the concerts he could be as happy with her as he had been when alone...
...This went on for over a month...
...He had taken quite a fancy to her...
...But one night every week, they were going together to the top gallery in Carnegie Hall...
...But she had found she could not learn...
...Johan grew over-watchful, over-suspicious...
...He could not have told why, butkej was surprised when she frankly confessed that she did notknown one of these men from the other...
...She was businesslike, polite and brief...
...Her father had been a carpenter and was now a cripple...
...You wait till the bottoms are all holes, and then on rainy nights your feet get soaked and you take cold...
...You must get some new ones...
...A plain faced girl with soft reddish hajr had come in with a shoe, and was beginning to explain how she wanted it mended...
...He too stooped to have a look...
...She turned around and eyed him...
...And so the fact that one of these strange creatures should walk into his shop, not in the abstract but intimately real, should sit down with that friendly smile of hers, and by the things she said, the occasional questions she asked, and the way she listened to his playing, should make him feel that she was getting fast hold of all his most secret memories, thoughts and feelings—this fact was ?o utterly new, that as the weeks went on it began to assume gigantic proportions...
...He smiled good humoredly, reached for the shoe and turned it slowly in his hands...
...he had tacked to the walls...
...Gee...
...And each time that it came, his face darkened, as though he could feel a cloud creeping up...
...He walked slowly back to his shop, and there he played half the rest of the night...
...Johan started slightly, and over his massive face 'there came again that scowl...
...A curious sensation passed down Johan's spine...
...I hate to be all the time alone4 I like to have people come in now and then...
...And it was amazing to him how easy it was to become acquainted with a woman...
...Even when he played himself, he was only listening to the songs deep inside of him, paying little heed to his bow...
...rovino...
...Would you mind...
...If she noticed the change in his attitude toward her, if she in her turn began growing uneasy, she gave no sign...
...As the evening wore on, the thought of it came up again and again in his mind...
...He had never had anyone in...
...Had Johan been forced to choose between these concerts and his fiddle, he would not have hesitated for one moment, he would have given up the fiddle...
...Several times she had told him that she had stopped on her way home at night to listen to his playing...
...Only two or three times did he actually catch that look in her eyes, the rest of the time she was seemingly quite as before, and never by any chance did she speak of the thing which had made him uneasy...
...he asked...
...Johan looked at her grimly...
...But look here," he repeated, "this is the last time I will mend it...
...he whispered...
...She was looking un, her back turned toward him...
...But as a matter of fact, he did tell her, by the clumsy attempts he now made to search into her as she had searched into him...
...She loved him dearly, spent most of her evenings with him playing cards...
...At first he found that he could...
...As he listened, his dark features puckered with suspicion...
...It is only in fits...
...She spoke little of herself, least of all about the feelings she had when listening to his music...
...Johan positively scowled...
...She came to his shop many evenings that summer...
...he cried...
...And the giri'^ guessed this by instinct...
...It is five months since you were here...
...He recovered himself in an instant...
...But Johan now left his fiddle altogether alone...
...Where did you get them...
...She wae certainly grown up, this girl...
...But look here"—he glanced up with a twinkle...
...You are foolish, you young girls, you spend all you can save to buy fine hats and jackets, but shoes you never buy...
...Yes," he said, in German, "I see...
...A year ^.go she had begun to go two nights a week to a music school, to learn to play the piano...
...she asked...
...Autumn cntre...
...Are you never going to let me hear you play again...
...The sooner you get over this the better...
...Because you play a good deal better than you used to...
...she asked, almost surlily...
...In spite of his conviction that he knew her so well, Johan had really learned little more in the way of actual facts...
...Are you sure you wouldn't mind...
...She had only been watching his face...
...You could tell she did by the way she smiled...
...Again, at some things he played, weirdly thrilling Hungarian pieces which he had picked up from wandering minstrels in Bavaria—her eyes, which were of deep brown, would open wide in a solemn stare...
...And as the music rose deep and shaking with all its bran new feelings...
...She sat in her corner seat quite motionless...
...All these were surprises, quite without any reason, for each was a common every-day fact...
...The girl stopped in the doorway...
...As they sat in the dark gallery listening to the music that poured up, it was astounding to him how intimately he could feel her presence, and with her beside him now high and with what glorious ease he soared into the visions...
...Why did you...
...Old Mike Donovan stooped one night, and being in his usual condition he fell over on his knees...
...They had even chatted together...
...Do you know how some violinists work...
...There was nothing at all surprising about her or even about her coming...
...I thought you were," she said, without turning...
...Again he was surprised to find that she was a cashier in a German grocery shop, that she lived two blocks away, that her father was too broken down to work, that her mother was a seamstress, that they had had a tight squeeze but were doing nicely now...
...He played for a time some what stiffly at first, but by degrees becoming natural anil ettsrf He told her what little he knew about the men whose portraits...
...In the weeks that followed, this uneasiness deepened...
...bv tint way, suddenly hearing the voice of the fiddle and remembering Johan, came up close...
...I don't see why you talk like that," she said simply...
...A fine little girl," he had said to himself...
...and in music the part that has to do with the feelings of so many kinds, which can arise between man and woman, had been for him either only beautiful abstractions or else completely unintelligible...
...All this came back to him now in a moment...
...Johan's voice was awkward, its jovial tone decidedly forced...
...I tell you I'm too old...
...But in her eyes he caught a look that made him scowl with annoyance...
...Only now and then, glancing down over his fiddle, he could see the small hands in her lap become tense, move slightly...
...After a moment's pause, during which he stared with a puzzled frown, Johan told her briefly that he was going to concerts...
...To her he said nothing about it...
...In a minute she had paid for the work and was about to go...
...Come any night...
...And when he saw only Johan alone, pl^yinsr with his eyes shut tieht and his shaggy head down over the breast of his fiddle, old Donovan looked back into the gutter wth a puzzled remonstrative expression—as thousrh from the music he had heard, some scene of far deeper interest might hive been expected...
...You can see for yourself how I play...
...For he was by nature a listener...
...When are you coming in...
...No," said Johan very gruffly...
...i This was a lie...
...She had not...
...And—" "Since then," she said sweetly, "you have put these pictures on the wall...
...You could be a great musician," she said gravely...
...Sometimes for weeks I play nothing...
...WHEN one night, after walking with her to the entrance of her tenement, on the way home Johan awoke in one instant to the fact that this was no matter of friendship, his happiness increased ten-fold...
...Jaky shivered in spite of himself, shivered with delight...
...On another night, little "Jake De Twinkler...
...On the wall, framed in strips oi black and brown leather, were some rough newspaper prints oft renowned musicians...
...It could not be seen from the street outside, even had you stooped to look under the shutter...
...For some moments she was silent...
...I only asked you if you were never going to let me hear you play...
...Now she was talking again: - "Yea told me once that I might come in some evening to sit and hear you play...
...He was surprised again win ihe learned that she too had been in that top gallery several \times of late...
...Indeed he was even happier...
...Her visits had become less frequent...
...And when at last she spoke again of his playing, it was in the most careless tone...
...Oh," said the girl...
...Where's de goil...
...Yes," said Johan, "I am...
...And often she grew exceedingly solemn...
Vol. 2 • January 1910 • No. 3
