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The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson

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'A legacy! so he is gone.' She swayed to me with a wail in her voice, in
a sort of childish abandonment: 'and _you_ tell me! Ah!' she drew back,
chilling suddenly with a touch of visible suspicion. 'You hurt me,
Monsieur! Is it a stroke at random? You spoke of a gift; you say you knew,
esteemed him. You were with him? Perhaps, a message ...?'

'He died alone, Madame! I have no message. If there were none, it might be,
perhaps, that he believed you had not cared for it. If that were wrong, I
could tell you that you were not forgotten. Oh! he loved you! I had his
word for it, and the story. The violin is yours--do not mistake me; it is
not for your sake but his. He died alone; value it, as I should, Madame!'

They were insolent words, perhaps cruel, provoked from me by the mixed
nature of my attraction to her; the need of turning a reasonable and cool
front to that pathetic beauty, that artful music, which whipped jaded
nerves to mutiny. The arrow in them struck so true, that I was shocked at
my work. It transfixed the child in her, latent in most women, which moaned
at my feet; so that for sheer shame as though it were actually a child I
had hurt, I could have fallen and kissed her hands.

'Oh, you judge me hard, you believe the worst of me and why not? I am
against the world! At least he might have taught you to be generous, that
kind old man! Have I forgotten do you think! Am I so happy then? Oh it is a
just question, the world busies itself with me, and you are in the lap of
its tongues. Has it ever accused me of that, of happiness? Cruel, cruel!
I have paid my penalties, and a woman is not free to do as she will, but
would not I have gone to him, for a word, a sign? Yes, for the sake of my
childhood. And to-night when you showed me that,' her white hand swept over
the violin with something of a caress, 'I thought it had come, yes, from
the grave, and you make it more bitter by readings of your own. You strike
me hard.'

I bent forward in real humility, her voice had tears in it, though her
splendid eyes were hard.

'Forgive me, Madame! a vulgar stroke at random. I had no right to make it,
he told me only good of you. Forgive me, and for proof of your pardon--I am
serious now--take his violin.'

Her smile, as she refused me, was full of sad dignity.

'You have made it impossible, Monsieur! It would remind me only now of how
ill you think of me. I beg you to keep it.'

The music had died away suddenly, and its ceasing had been followed by
a loud murmur of applause. The prima-donna rose, and stood for a moment
observing me, irresolutely.

'I leave you and your violin, Monsieur! I have to sing presently, with such
voice as our talk has left me. I bid you both adieu!'

'Ah, Madame!' I deprecated, 'you will think again of this, I will send it
you in the morning. I have no right....'

She shook her head, then with a sudden flash of amusement, or fantasy--'I
agree, Monsieur! on a condition. To prove your penitence, you shall bring
it to me yourself.'

I professed that her favour overpowered me. She named an hour when she
would be at home: an address in the Avenue des Champs Elysées, which I
noted on my tablets.

'Not adieu then, Monsieur! but _au revoir_.'

I bowed perplexedly, holding the curtain aside to let her sweep through;
and once more she turned back, gathering up her voluminous train, to repeat
with a glance and accent, which I found mystifying: 'Remember, Monsieur! It
is only _au revoir_.'

That last glimpse of her, with the strange mockery and an almost elfish
malice in her fine eyes, went home with me later to cause vague disquiet
and fresh suspicion of her truth. The spell of her extraordinary, personal
charm removed, doubt would assert itself. Was she quite sincere? Was
her fascination not a questionable one? Might not that almost childish
outburst of a grief so touching, and at the time convincing, be after all
factitious; the movement of a born actress and enchantress of men, quick
to seize as by a nice professional instinct the opportunity of an effect?
Had her whole attitude been a deliberate pose, a sort of trick? The
sudden changes in her subtile voice, the under current of mockery in an
invitation which seemed inconsequent, put me on my guard, reinforced all
my deep-seated prejudices against the candor of the feminine soul. It left
me with a vision of her, fantastically vivid, raccounting to an intimate
circle, to an accompaniment of some discreet laughter and the popping of
champagne corks, the success of her imposition, the sentimental concessions
which she had extorted from a notorious student of cynical moods.

A dangerous woman! cried Mrs. Destrier with the world, which might
conceivably be right; at least I was fain to add, a woman whose laughter
would be merciless. Certainly, I had no temper for adventures; and a
visit to Madame Romanoff on so sentimental an errand seemed to me, the
more I pondered it, to partake of this quality to be rich in distasteful
possibilities. Must I write myself pusillanimous, if I confess that I never
made it, that I committed my old friend's violin into the hands of the
woman who had been his pupil by the vulgar aid of a _commissionaire_?

Pusillanimous or simply prudent; or perhaps cruelly unjust, to a person who
had paid penalties and greatly needed kindness? It is a point I have never
been able to decide, though I have tried to raise theories on the ground
of her acquiescence. It seemed to me on the cards, that my fiddle bestowed
so cavalierly, should be refused. And yet even the fact of her retaining
it is open to two interpretations, and Cristich testified for her. Maurice
Cristich! Madame Romanoff! the renowned Romanoff, Maurice Cristich! Have I
been pusillanimous, prudent or merely cruel? For the life of me I cannot
say!




SOUVENIRS OF AN EGOIST


Eheu fugaces! How that air carries me back, that air ground away so
unmercifully, _sans_ tune, _sans_ time on a hopelessly discordant
barrel-organ, right underneath my window. It is being bitterly execrated, I
know, by the literary gentleman who lives in chambers above me, and by the
convivial gentleman who has a dinner party underneath. It has certainly
made it impossible for me to continue the passage in my new Fugue in A
minor, which was being transferred so flowingly from my own brain on to the
score when it interrupted me. But for all that, I have a shrewd suspicion
that I shall bear its unmusical torture as long as it lasts, and eventually
send away the frowsy foreigner, who no doubt is playing it, happy with a
fairly large coin.

Yes: for the sake of old times, for the old emotion's sake--for Ninette's
sake, I put up with it, not altogether sorry for the recollections it has
aroused.

How vividly it brings it all back! Though I am a rich man now, and so
comfortably domiciled; though the fashionable world are so eager to lionise
me, and the musical world look upon me almost as a god, and to-morrow
hundreds of people will be turned away, for want of space, from the Hall
where I am to play, just I alone, my last Fantaisie, it was not so very
many years ago that I trudged along, fiddling for half-pence in the
streets. Ninette and I--Ninette with her barrel-organ, and I fiddling. Poor
little Ninette--that air was one of the four her organ played. I wonder
what has become of her? Dead, I should hope, poor child. Now that I am
successful and famous, a Baron of the French Empire, it is not altogether
unpleasant to think of the old, penniless, vagrant days, by a blazing fire
in a thick carpeted room, with the November night shut outside. I am rather
an epicure of my emotions, and my work is none the worse for it.

'Little egoist,' I remember Lady Greville once said of me, 'he has the true
artistic susceptibility. All his sensations are so much grist for his art.'

But it is of Ninette, not Lady Greville, that I think to-night, Ninette's
childish face that the dreary grinding organ brings up before me, not Lady
Greville's aquiline nose and delicate artificial complexion.

Although I am such a great man now, I should find it very awkward to be
obliged to answer questions as to my parentage and infancy.

Even my nationality I could not state precisely, though I know I am as much
Italian as English, perhaps rather more. From Italy I have inherited my
genius and enthusiasm for art, from England I think I must have got my
common-sense, and the capacity of keeping the money which I make; also a
certain natural coldness of disposition, which those who only know me as a
public character do not dream of. All my earliest memories are very vague
and indistinct. I remember tramping over France and Italy with a man and
woman--they were Italian, I believe--who beat me, and a fiddle, which I
loved passionately, and which I cannot remember having ever been without.
They are very shadowy presences now, and the name of the man I have
forgotten. The woman, I think, was called Maddalena. I am ignorant whether
they were related to me in any way: I know that I hated them bitterly, and
eventually, after a worse beating than usual, ran away from them. I never
cared for any one except my fiddle, until I knew Ninette.

I was very hungry and miserable indeed when that rencontre came about. I
wonder sometimes what would have happened if Ninette had not come to the
rescue, just at that particular juncture. Would some other salvation have
appeared, or would--well, well, if one once begins wondering what would
have happened if certain accidents in one's life had not befallen one when
they did, where will one come to a stop? Anyhow, when I had escaped from
my taskmasters, a wretched, puny child of ten, undersized and shivering,
clasping a cheap fiddle in my arms, lost in the huge labyrinth of Paris,
without a _sou_ in my rags to save me from starvation, I _did_ meet
Ninette, and that, after all, is the main point.

It was at the close of my first day of independence, a wretched November
evening, very much like this one. I had wandered about all day, but my
efforts had not been rewarded by a single coin. My fiddle was old and
warped, and injured by the rain; its whining was even more repugnant to my
own sensitive ear, than to that of the casual passer-by. I was in despair.
How I hated all the few well-dressed, well-to-do people who were but on the
Boulevards, on that inclement night. I wandered up and down hoping against
hope, until I was too tired to stand, and then I crawled under the shelter
of a covered passage, and flung myself down on the ground, to die, as I
hoped, crying bitterly.

The alley was dark and narrow, and I did not see at first that it had
another occupant. Presently a hand was put out and touched me on the
shoulder.

I started up in terror, though the touch was soft and need not have alarmed
me. I found it came from a little girl, for she was really about my own
age, though then she seemed to me very big and protecting. But she was tall
and strong for her age, and I, as I have said, was weak and undersized.

'Chut! little boy,' said Ninette; 'what are you crying for?'

And I told her my story, as clearly as I could, through my sobs; and soon a
pair of small arms were thrown round my neck, and a smooth little face laid
against my wet one caressingly. I felt as if half my troubles were over.

'Don't cry, little boy,' said Ninette, grandly; 'I will take care of you.
If you like, you shall live with me. We will make a _ménage_ together. What
is your profession?'

I showed her my fiddle, and the sight of its condition caused fresh tears
to flow.

'Ah!' she said, with a smile of approval, 'a violinist--good! I too am an
artiste. You ask my instrument? There it is!'

And she pointed to an object on the ground beside her, which I had, at
first, taken to be a big box, and dimly hoped might contain eatables. My
respect for my new friend suffered a little diminution. Already I felt
instinctively that to play the fiddle, even though it is an old, a poor
one, is to be something above a mere organ-grinder.

But I did not express this feeling--was not this little girl going to take
me home with her? would not she, doubtless, give me something to eat?

My first impulse was an artistic one; that was of Italy. The concealment of
it was due to the English side of me--the practical side.

I crept close to the little girl; she drew me to her protectingly.

'What is thy name, _p'tit_?' she said.

'Anton,' I answered, for that was what the woman Maddalena had called me.
Her husband, if he was her husband, never gave me any title, except when he
was abusing me, and then my names were many and unmentionable. Nowadays I
am the Baron Antonio Antonelli, of the Legion of Honour, but that is merely
an extension of the old concise Anton, so far as I know, the only name I
ever had.'

'Anton?' repeated the little girl, that is a nice name to say. Mine is
Ninette.'

We sat in silence in our sheltered nook, waiting until the rain should
stop, and very soon I began to whimper again.

'I am so hungry, Ninette,' I said; 'I have eaten nothing to-day.'

In the literal sense this was a lie; I had eaten some stale crusts in the
early morning, before I gave my taskmasters the slip, but the hunger was
true enough.

Ninette began to reproach herself for not thinking of this before. After
much fumbling in her pocket, she produced a bit of _brioche_, an apple, and
some cold chestnuts.

'_V'la_, Anton,' she said, 'pop those in your mouth. When we get home we
will have supper together. I have bread and milk at home. And we will buy
two hot potatoes from the man on the _quai_.'

I ate the unsatisfying morsels ravenously, Ninette watching me with an
approving nod the while. When they were finished, the weather was a little
better, and Ninette said we might move. She slung the organ over her
shoulder--it was a small organ, though heavy for a child; but she was used
to it, and trudged along under its weight like a woman. With her free hand
she caught hold of me and led me along the wet streets, proudly home.
Ninette's home! Poor little Ninette! It was colder and barer than these
rooms of mine now; it had no grand piano, and no thick carpets; and in the
place of pictures and _bibelots_, its walls were only wreathed in cobwebs.
Still it was drier than the streets of Paris, and if it had been a palace
it could not have been more welcome to me than it was that night.

The _ménage_ of Ninette was a strange one! There was a tumbledown deserted
house in the Montparnasse district. It stood apart, in an overgrown weedy
garden, and has long ago been pulled down. It was uninhabited; no one but a
Parisian _gamine_ could have lived in it, and Ninette had long occupied it,
unmolested, save by the rats. Through the broken palings in the garden she
had no difficulty in passing, and as its back door had fallen to pieces,
there was nothing to bar her further entry. In one of the few rooms which
had its window intact, right at the top of the house, a mere attic, Ninette
had installed herself and her scanty goods, and henceforward this became my
home also.

It has struck me since as strange that the child's presence should not have
been resented by the owner. But I fancy the house had some story connected
with it. It was, I believe, the property of an old and infirm miser, who
in his reluctance to part with any of his money in repairs had overreached
himself, and let his property become valueless. He could not let it,
and he would not pull it down. It remained therefore an eyesore to
the neighbourhood, until his death put it in the possession of a less
avaricious successor. The proprietor never came near the place, and
with the neighbours it had a bad repute, and they avoided it as much as
possible. It stood, as I have said, alone, and in its own garden, and
Ninette's occupation of it may have passed unnoticed, while even if any
one of the poor people living around had known of her, it was, after all,
nobody's business to interfere.

When I was last in Paris I went to look for the house, but all traces of it
had vanished, and over the site, so far as I could fix it, a narrow street
of poor houses flourished.

Ninette introduced me to her domain with a proud air of ownership. She had
a little store of charcoal, with which she proceeded to light a fire in
the grate, and by its fitful light prepared our common supper--bread and
radishes, washed down by a pennyworth of milk, of which, I have no doubt, I
received the lion's share. As a dessert we munched, with much relish, the
steaming potatoes that Ninette had bought from a stall in the street, and
had kept warm in the pocket of her apron.

And so, as Ninette said, we made a _ménage_ together. How that old organ
brings it all back. My fiddle was useless after the hard usage it received
that day. Ninette and I went out on our rounds together, but for the
present I was a sleeping partner in the firm, and all I could do was to
grind occasionally when Ninette's arm ached, or pick up the sous that were
thrown us. Ninette was, as a rule, fairly successful. Since her mother had
died, a year before, leaving her the organ as her sole legacy, she had
lived mainly by that instrument; although she often increased her income
in the evenings, when organ-grinding was more than ever at a discount, by
selling bunches of violets and other flowers as button-holes.

With her organ she had a regular beat, and a distinct _clientèle_. Children
playing with their _bonnes_ in the gardens of the Tuileries and the
Luxembourg were her most productive patrons. Of course we had bad days as
well as good, and in winter it was especially bad; but as a rule we managed
fairly to make both ends meet. Sometimes we carried home as much as five
francs as the result of the day's campaign, but this, of course, was
unusual.

Ninette was not precisely a pretty child, but she had a very bright face,
and wonderful gray eyes. When she smiled, which was often, her face was
very attractive, and a good many people were induced to throw a sou for the
smile which they would have assuredly grudged to the music.

Though we were about the same age, the position which it might have been
expected we should occupy was reversed. It was Ninette who petted and
protected me--I who clung to her.

I was very fond of Ninette, certainly. I should have died in those days if
it had not been for her, and sometimes I am surprised at the tenacity of my
tenderness for her. As much as I ever cared for anything except my art,
I cared for Ninette. But still she was never the first with me, as I must
have been with her. I was often fretful and discontented, sometimes, I
fear, ready to reproach her for not taking more pains to alleviate our
misery, but all the time of our partnership Ninette never gave me a cross
word. There was something maternal about her affection, which withstood all
ungratefulness. She was always ready to console me when I was miserable,
and throw her arms round me and kiss me when I was cold; and many a time, I
am sure, when the day's earnings had been scanty, the little girl must have
gone to sleep hungry, that I might not be stinted in my supper.

One of my grievances, and that the sorest of all, was the loss of my
beloved fiddle. This, for all her goodwill, Ninette was powerless to allay.

'Dear Anton,' she said, 'do not mind about it. I earn enough for both with
my organ, and some day we shall save enough to buy thee a new fiddle. When
we are together, and have got food and charcoal, what does it matter about
an old fiddle? Come, eat thy supper, Anton, and I will light the fire.
Never mind, dear Anton.' And she laid her soft little cheek against mine
with a pleading look.

'Don't,' I cried, pushing her away, 'you can't understand, Ninette; you
can only grind an organ--just four tunes, always the same. But I loved my
fiddle, loved it! loved it!' I cried passionately. 'It could talk to me,
Ninette, and tell me beautiful, new things, always beautiful, and always
new. Oh, Ninette, I shall die if I cannot play!'

It was always the same cry, and Ninette, if she could not understand, and
was secretly a little jealous, was as distressed as I was; but what could
she do?

Eventually, I got my violin, and it was Ninette who gave it me. The manner
of its acquirement was in this wise.

Ninette would sometimes invest some of her savings in violets, which she
divided with me, and made into nosegays for us to sell in the streets at
night.

Theatre doors and frequented placed on the Boulevards were our favorite
spots.

One night we had taken up our station outside the Opera, when a gentleman
stopped on his way in, and asked Ninette for a button-hole. He was in
evening dress and in a great hurry.

'How much?' he asked shortly.

'Ten _sous_, M'sieu,' said exorbitant little Ninette, expecting to get two
at the most.

The gentleman drew out some coins hastily and selected a bunch from the
basket.

'Here is a franc,' he said, 'I cannot wait for change,' and putting a coin
into Ninette's hand he turned into the theatre.

Ninette ran towards me with her eyes gleaming; she held up the piece of
money exultantly.

'Tiens, Anton!' she cried, and I saw that it was not a franc, as we had
though at first, but a gold Napoleon.

I believe the good little boy and girl in the story-books would have
immediately sought out the unfortunate gentleman and bid him rectify his
mistake, generally receiving, so the legend runs, a far larger bonus
as a reward of their integrity. I have never been a particularly good
little boy, however, and I don't think it ever struck either Ninette or
myself--perhaps we were not sufficiently speculative--that any other course
was open to us than to profit by the mistake. Ninette began to consider how
we were to spend it.

'Think of it, Anton, a whole gold _louis_. A _louis_,' said Ninette,
counting laboriously, 'is twenty francs, a franc is twenty sous, Anton; how
many sous are there in a louis? More than an hundred?'

But this piece of arithmetic was beyond me; I shook my head dubiously.

'What shall we buy first, Anton?' said Ninette, with sparkling eyes. 'You
shall have new things, Anton, a pair of new shoes and an hat; and I--'

But I had other things than clothes in my mind's eye; I interrupted her.

'Ninette, dear little Ninette,' I said coaxingly, 'remember the fiddle.'

Ninette's face fell, but she was a tender little thing, and she showed no
hesitation.

'Certainly, Anton,' she said, but with less enthusiasm, 'we will get it
to-morrow--one of the fiddles you showed me in M. Boudinot's shop on the
Quai. Do you think the ten-franc one will do, or the light one for fifteen
francs?'

'Oh, the light one, dear Ninette,' I said; 'it is worth more than the extra
money. Besides, we shall soon earn it back now. Why if you could earn
such a lot as you have with your old organ, when you only have to turn
an handle, think what a lot I shall make, fiddling. For you have to be
something to play the fiddle, Ninette.'

'Yes,' said the little girl, wincing; 'you are right, dear Anton. Perhaps
you will get rich and go away and leave me?'

'No, Ninette,' I declared grandly, 'I will always take care of you. I have
no doubt I shall get rich, because I am going to be a great musician, but
I shall not leave you. I will have a big house on the Champs Elysées, and
then you shall come and live with me, and be my housekeeper. And in the
evenings, I will play to you and make you open your eyes, Ninette. You will
like me to play, you know; we are often dull in the evenings.'

'Yes,' said Ninette meekly, 'we will buy your fiddle to-morrow, dear Anton.
Let us go home now.'

Poor vanished Ninette! I must often have made the little heart sore with
some of the careless things I said. Yet looking back at it now, I know that
I never cared for any living person so much as I did for Ninette.

I have very few illusions left now; a childhood, such as mine, does not
tend to preserve them, and time and success have not made me less cynical.
Still I have never let my scepticism touch that childish presence. Lady
Greville once said to me, in the presence of her nephew Felix Leominster,
a musician too, like myself, that we three were curiously suited, for that
we were, without exception, the three most cynical persons in the universe,
Perhaps in a way she was right. Yet for all her cynicism Lady Greville I
know has a bundle of old and faded letters, tied up in black ribbon in some
hidden drawer, that perhaps she never reads now, but that she cannot forget
or destroy. They are in a bold handwriting, that is, not, I think, that of
the miserable, old debauchee, her husband, from whom she has been separated
since the first year of her marriage, and their envelopes bear Indian
postmarks.

And Felix, who told me the history of those letters with a smile of pity
on his thin, ironical lips--Felix, whose principles are adapted to his
conscience and whose conscience is bounded by the law, and in whom I
believe as little as he does in me, I found out by accident not so very
long ago. It was on the day of All Souls, the melancholy festival of
souvenirs, celebrated once a year, under the November fogs, that I strayed
into the Montparnasse Cemetery, to seek inspiration for my art. And though
he did not see me, I saw Felix, the prince of railers, who believes in
nothing and cares for nothing except himself, for music is not with him a
passion but an _agrément_. Felix bareheaded, and without his usual smile,
putting fresh flowers on the grave of a little Parisian grisette, who had
been his mistress and died five years ago. I thought of Balzac's 'Messe de
l'Athée' and ranked Felix's inconsistency with it, feeling at the same time
how natural such a paradox is. And myself, the last of the trio, at the
mercy of a street organ, I cannot forget Ninette.

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