AN UNAMBITIOUS GOLD MINE
Poole, Ernest
AN UNAMBITIOUS GOLD MINE By ERNEST POOLE (Concluded.) SHE came to his shop the next night. And as though he were determined that she should "get over this," his playing at first was rough to a...
...She had known for some days that Ysaye was coming, for of late she had acquired the habit of reading such things in the papers, reading closely, even anxiously...
...Johan was by nature slow of tongue and slow of mind...
...She knows, I tell you, she is sure of it...
...Or at least I was until your scheme began...
...And seizing the situation as a final chance, Fritz went at him one night, went at him hard...
...She will give in...
...AS one by one the evenings passed, and Btill no soft submissive knock was heard on the wooden shutter, by degrees, Johan's stout assurance failed him...
...Cautiously, on his knees, he approached the window, peeped in under the shutter...
...Johan savagely gripped her arm...
...You are sick of me already," she cried...
...she asked...
...Again he looked into the mirror...
...And as though he were determined that she should "get over this," his playing at first was rough to a most surprising degree...
...So they pay," Johan replied...
...Into the woman's face leaped a curious excited look...
...The woman came to the door...
...For the love of a woman...
...And you—you could not do all of that, but you surely could do some of it...
...I could be a greater man than all of you put together...
...I am too old, to begin with, and besides I hate such work...
...and for a long time he sat staring into the curling purplish flames...
...He stopped to collect his lurching thoughts...
...And if you love me, you will do it...
...Slowly from the start, he went over it all...
...Often he would stop and stare at the wall...
...Even while he played tonight I was thinking about it...
...I am thirty-one years old, and I could never learn the tricks...
...If I tried, I would only choke the life out of it all...
...He raised himself with a painful dignity, and walked very soberly down the street...
...When at last the great evening arrived, and they sat listening side by side while Ysaye played, in the intervals between, they said nothing at all...
...And then he began to play...
...And then chancing to glance at her face and catching that same look in her eyes, he stopped abruptly...
...But suddenly old Mike stopped short, he leaned against an iron fence...
...And then for a moment his battered old body fairly vibrated and twisted with glee...
...For in spite of all his soddenness, Old Mike had still the relics of a mind- And just for an instant he had vaguely noted this fact, that human lives can be both inexpressibly radiant with bran new hopes and dreams—and also inexpressibly dark, hopeless, weary and unclean...
...she cried...
...Good night...
...If you feel like doing it, you do it...
...One night Johan told her that Ysaye, the Belgian violinist, was soon to play in New York...
...What else have you to say...
...He angrily denied the statements which she had not made...
...How happy we were tonight...
...How do you...
...She must love me hard, for if she did not she never would have made such plans...
...Leave it alone, I tell you, or soon we will even be sick of each other...
...Nearly an hour passed...
...I am not...
...They were close to a corner, and the arc light from ahead fell full upon their faces...
...he whispered...
...You said to yourself, 'I know this man...
...Yes," she repeated, "I will see...
...If not, you might be amazed to find how hostile to every idea of ambition, thrift and diligence such, a thing can be...
...They were near her tenement now...
...You ought to try to learn to play...
...Well," he said, "this is what comes of being a gold mine...
...When the concert was at an end, the last encore having been played, the last prodigious burst of applause having subsided, Johan gruffly proposed that they walk home to get the air...
...He certainly had...
...He played as he had always played, simply feeling and thinking aloud...
...For a moment Johan could say nothing else, could only glare anxiously into her eyes...
...The way I love you is just this...
...In the most vivid hues he painted the picture in all its dazzling detail...
...This started another long train of thought, of questioning...
...Did I have any schemes to work on you...
...But have you ever been acquainted with a gold mine...
...But in these spells, Johan acted as though she were constantly talking...
...Don't come any further...
...I know he can learn...
...Each one of these points she received with placid interest, although as a matter of fact she herself had read them all...
...He listened to the songs in his soul, and played on, barely knowing that he was playing...
...I mend shoes, I do good work...
...He pulled down the wooden shutter ts far as it would go...
...Johan, faultlessly attired, high up on the stage, violin in hand and shaking his hair, long hair of a genius, vehemently from side to side...
...I don't know," she said slowly...
...He saw the picture of himself toiling for the next ten years from daylight until dark at gymnastics of the fingers, the drudgery he hated, until in the end having failed he would come to detest the very fiddle he played...
...Back in his three-cornered shop, scarcely conscious of what he was doing, he carefully stirred up the embers in the stove and put on fresh coal...
...You cannot down a gold mine when once it is aroused...
...No," he again decided, "there is no doubt about it...
...The more he thought of Fritz's picture of success, the harder did he laugh...
...And as long as you can, you—you have no right to just mend shoes...
...In the next few days, from six o'clock in the morning until late in the night, Johan mended shoes...
...You will see...
...I love you...
...You said, 'I will" make him the greatest violinist under the skies!' Did it make me happy...
...No," he said, with a certain indomitable quiet, "there is no doubt about it at all...
...His face, his eyes, his voice had grown steadily more intense...
...SOME two hours later, old Mike Donovan came staggering solemnly toward the little shop...
...If you did not, you never would have schemed so much...
...Eighteen months had passed since he had begun to know her...
...That is too bad...
...And I tell you I am sick of this...
...When you hear him," he added, "you will see how foolish it would be...
...Continued on page 12...
...Johan laughed...
...Stop," he said...
...he asked...
...You talk like a child...
...He played on and on, till very late that night...
...Again that grim expression...
...I tell you that I know myself, I know how I am when I am playing, I know what I want to do, what I can do, what I need to make me happy...
...You have never stopped trying to make me, for months I have felt it, it spoils all the music I hear...
...I know him, I know exactly how he feels even when he is playing, I know what he can do better than he knows himself...
...That is all...
...Now," he said, "I see how little you know about it...
...But with a desperate effort he gathered the points he had made and felt that they were what he had meant...
...And when he is famous, when he has pitched his old fiddle into the yard and bought a new one for ten thousand dollars, then he will be happy!' "But how do you know it...
...Slowly he took out his fiddle, which he had not played upon for over three weeks...
...THEY spoke little about it in the weeks that intervened...
...He squirmed with anxiety now as he recalled the gleam in her eyes...
...How small you are compared to me...
...I tell you I am not that kind—and that is not the way I love you...
...How happy they must alt be...
...The girl was walking homeward fast, but she could not loosen his grip on her arm...
...This fact, shrewdly noted by Fritz, led to a sly process of questioning, by which Fritz learned at last what a dilemma his brother was facing...
...I don't ask you what you are willing to do for me...
...And now the girl with reddish hair, and again the prodding...
...But she did not come...
...Only from time to time he gave her some new item about the great violinist, items he had gleaned from newspaper accounts, points to show how Ysaye had toiled at dry, monotonous technique since his earliest childhood, and how his life had been one of absolute devotion to the fiddle...
...Do you...
...Now," he said abruptly, at last, "I guess you can feel what I mean...
...Wait...
...His voice shook slightly...
...She made no reply...
...Her face was exceedingly pale...
...The woman started slightly...
...Look up at me," he commanded...
...Can you...
...At sight of him, she sprang back with a slight indistinct cry...
...In a moment she had left him...
...she asked sharply...
...I could never be a real one...
...Strange behavior indeed...
...There would not have been enough to fill so much time, were it not for the fact that he worked slower than he had ever worked before...
...I ask you to marry me —now, this week...
...he asked angrily...
...How lucky Fritz's talk had come just at this crucial time...
...In this manner, for many weeks, the curious struggle went on: the girl quite silent about it, the man vehemently protesting from time to time, just as though she were persistently repeating some reproach, appeal...
...It was late, the narrow street was empty...
...When the "talk was over, Johan came down again into his shop, looking strangely happy and relieved...
...What a chance...
...And I tried to make you happy too...
...I will not," she said...
...Much of it had to be done all over again, for his mind was not on the leather...
...And with this enigmatical remark he dropped the subject...
...But later in the evening in spite of himself, Johan forgot his firm resolution, forgot the girl, himself, even the old brown instrument in his hands...
...If you don't, you don't, and there is no use in trying...
...She was going to use his love as a lever to pry him upward, force him to choose...
...So the gold mine rumbled...
...The girl stopped short...
...Johan scowled...
...i For one thing, he could eat nothing at all...
...Isn't he the one you told me about, the greatest of all living violinists...
...It is wrong," he said, his voice suddenly low as hers...
...he argued, raising all kinds of objections...
...There was a long silence...
...From the bedecked and bejeweled throng, a storm of applause, magnificent bouquets...
...There are no mights in music, none at all...
...Her voice was a trifle unsteady...
...There was something comical in his intensity...
...What could he do...
...But women too are often unaccountable...
...His mind had leaped far back to the time when Fritz had offered to loan him ninety-six dollars that he might go to Munich and become a great violinist...
...Mein Gott...
...I am happy...
...And beaming at |tim from a box, his wife, most gorgeously dressed and Fritz's wife—and Fritz...
...Again she was rapidly walking...
...She does love me...
...On the third evening, he suddenly stopped, put down his violin...
...Her voice was dull, unnatural...
...But Johan had stepped forward, he had her by the arm, and he was looking straight into her eyes...
...It is settled now for good and all...
...She never did...
...What are you willing to do for me...
...AND Johan stood rooted to the spot, like some colossal dog who has just received the order to go home...
...she added...
...But only for a moment...
...It is wrong to be so unhappy...
...This done, he forgot to close the door of the stove...
...But I know...
...And why...
...She appeared to be surprised...
...Gott im Himmel...
...And on the way, under the stars (he had chosen a quiet street)—even still they were silent...
...I loved you, I was happy, I worked hard, and when I wanted to I played my fiddle...
...And I tell you I will never go over this with you again...
...And she will come and tell me so...
...Never had he loved this outrageous girl with reddish hair as he loved her now...
...She promptly obeyed him and looked up...
...and as he listened there, into his wrinkled, sodden face there crept a mcst intense expression...
...From outside you might have heard him softly stir up the coals in the stove...
...And after this, don't come to see me—ever...
...And all at once he began to shake with deep and silent laughter...
...No," he decided at last, "I said the right thing...
...But have you tried...
...She was very angry...
...You were a cashier in a store...
...She looked up into his face...
...She even glared...
...Ten hours a day...
...She controlled it, and continued: "This Ysaye—he must play to thousands every week wherever he goes...
...Finally Johan stopped, with a quivering sigh of satifaction...
...I tell you," he cried, "you have made a mistake...
...How splendid...
...Johan talking fast was like a man who cannot swim floundering in the water: "Listen...
...And that is wrong...
...He gave a savage laugh...
...How can you decide it all in a minute...
...And I did...
...THE END...
...You have known it all along...
...Standing there and frowning down over his fiddle, he seemed like some barbarian giant wrathfully protesting against the civilizing forces that he could feel tightening 'round him...
...he cried...
...I love you...
...He drew an angry breath...
...How do you know you will not...
...In her eyes the stunned expression swiftly cleared...
...He remembered all his brother's efforts since then, appeals to "dig yourself up...
...Sometimes he would notice the portraits of the great musicians, "Hello, fellows," he would mutter...
...But how did I try...
...and when I want to go to a concert, then I go...
...But as he now stood staring down into the girl's flushed face, for once in his life his mental machinery worked like a flash, and he saw the idea that had just popped into her mind...
...He walked to a small cracked mirror that hung beside the door, struck a grandiloquent pose and then bowed low—as to applauding thousands...
...But then you only smiled...
...He tried to play his fiddle, but it had never sounded quite so rough and thin...
...I wanted to make her feel it hard...
...Did I say, 'She is a genius, this woman, I will manage her, I will make her the greatest cashier on the face of the earth?' * * Did I? * * No...
...And your scheme would only throw us both in the dumps...
...She will see that I was right...
...and when I want to play, I play...
...Scores of times, for hours and hours, he went over the whole business, to make sure if he had decided right...
...He seized his hat and started for the place where she lived...
...Even more cautiously he drew back, as though from a fear of leaving some blemish on what he had seen...
...For the next three days, over his shoes and for the next three evenings, over his fiddle, although not completely ccns?:ous of what he was doing—Johan was gathering courage for the thing that he must do...
...You love me...
...All forever up in life...
...in fact she seemed to shrink each time she saw one of those wrathful spells beginning, and she sat quite mute through it, except now and then to remind him that she had said nothing at all...
Vol. 2 • January 1910 • No. 4
