Читать книгу Time's Door - Esther Meynell - Страница 20

When her family heard that her husband—whom they had hardly known and almost inevitably regarded unfavourably—was dead, Gerda was besought to return home, to leave that comfortless country Italy, with its decaying marble palaces and absence of proper heating arrangements, and come back to the Germany where she was born. Her father, growing old, longed to behold his grandson and discover the quality of his musicianship—longed, above all, once more to have with him the daughter whose loss had darkened the name of Italy to his mind. Gerda’s own feelings all turned homewards: she had never taken root in Italian soil, as she realised suddenly when the link that held her there was severed. But with Giovanni it was another matter. He was Italian by birth, he knew no other country—for Luigi had always shown a passionate intention that his wife and son should not leave him to visit Germany; he had always declared that someday he would take them there, but that had never been accomplished. So Giovanni had never set foot outside Italy, and it was Italy that held for him the compelling figure of Paganini. Impossible that he should leave Paganini. Gerda bowed to this—her own hopes and desires must once more wait. But she was spared another separation, for Paganini insisted that she should come to Milan and take her son to live with her.

“I have been nursemaid to him long enough,” he said, with a sardonic gleam in his eye, “Besides you want your boy, he is all now left to you,” and the sardonic look melted into something kindlier. Paganini, in spite of his general contempt for women, his remarkable unfitness for any normal domestic life, yet knew the parental passion for the son that Antonia Bianchi the dancer had given him. Also he was at moments curiously touched by Gerda—she made so few claims for herself, and there was something innocent and simple about her which had not been a marked characteristic of the women he had known hitherto, with the exception of his mother.

So to Milan Gerda went and began again her life with Giovanni, who, as she said, was never seen without his violin save when in his bed. His advance in technical skill, in power, in depth of interpretation, was almost startling to his mother. He had grown, in the time of his absence, with great suddenness to a man’s height, and though still far from a man’s years his face had taken on something of the look that was to mark its maturity.

As soon as they were settled down together in their small abode Gerda obeyed her husband’s last wish and gave over to Giovanni’s keeping the Bach Letters with his father’s message.

“They now belong to you, Giovanni,” she said with deep solemnity, “They are in your keeping while you live and then you must hand them on to your son, if you have one. Since they were written they have been the most precious possession of the Cavatini family.”

Giovanni took the little casket from her hands with a feeling almost of awe.

“Always, since I can remember, I have wantedTHE LETTERS to read these Letters,” he said, “And they are now mine? But surely you cannot bear that I should keep them?”

“I have read them so often that I almost know them by heart—they now belong to you.”

Giovanni spent the whole of that night reading them. In spite of the lack of sleep he had a curious radiance of look as he kissed his mother the next morning.

“What a link with him!” he exclaimed, his eyes shining, “One becomes of his household. And if you had not married my father I should never have known!” He took her hand and kissed the wedding-ring. “Thank you!” he said.

After reading—and re-reading—the Letters Giovanni became possessed by the desire some day not too remote to go back to Leipzig.

“Go back?” questioned Gerda smiling, “But you have never been there! You cannot return to a place where you have never been.”

Giovanni looked faintly puzzled. “It is strange that I have not seen Leipzig—I feel as if I belonged there.”

“That is because I have talked to you so much of my home.”

“Yes, that must be the reason, but while the Maestro will teach me we must remain here.”

But the time came, after some period of this life in Milan, that Paganini gave the two of them their release.

He called upon Gerda one day, looking unusually smart in a long overcoat of dark grey that reached to his heels.

After the usual salutations and some unusual commendation of Giovanni’s gifts and hard work, he said “There are only two things that matter in this world.”

“And they are——?” Gerda questioned.

“Music and money!”

Gerda looked startled. She did not know that“THE RICHEST MAN” Paganini had an avaricious love for gold—she had never seen that aspect of his character, for he had entirely refused to take any payment whatever for his teaching of Giovanni. “A really good pupil is payment in himself,” he had said.

Paganini enjoyed her expression.

“With the first I make the second—so much I make that when I die people they will say, not ‘He was the greatest violinist,’ but ‘He was the richest man in Italy!’ And now that so frightfully rich nation the English want that I go and play to them. Their hands are full of their gold guineas which they pour into my pockets if I give them concerts. My pockets can never have enough guineas, so I go. And that will make an end to Giovanni’s lessons.”

“An end?—for always?” asked Gerda, much perturbed.

“Ah, how can I tell? I make no promise. But when I come back from England—if I come back, I may stay there and marry some rich English heiress and grow fat and red of the face like the Englishmen!—I shall not return to Milan, I tire of the life here, indeed I tire of it everywhere. And you too are tired of it,” Paganini patted her shoulder in an awkward manner. “You are much tired of it. Go back to your own country—you will be vastly happier there than in this Italy.”