The Golden Flame (Timeless Classics Collection)

by Ursula Bloom

  The Maestro said: ‘He will love you when his eyes are opened. It is the boy. He dotes on the boy. It is the business also, he is obsessed with the business, but when those both pass by then he will realize how deeply he cares for you.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

  It was a happy thing to be able to talk about it, not to have to pretend that she did not care, that she was Jan’s cousin, that she was matterless in his life and he in hers. She did love him. She supposed that she had always loved him since that first day when he had come to the restaurant at Amalia, fresh from Villefranche, since that very first time. She would love him till the end.

  ‘But he will never know,’ she told the old man as they pottered round the square.

  ‘You are wrong,’ said he, ‘because he will know.’

  Luis went off contentedly with the old man. It was Jan and Matina who were distressed, and who left Victoria station, with a pricking feeling in their throats, and a strange feeling that the ground had been kicked from under their feet. The house seemed to be empty now. Matina collected the things that Luis had left behind him. She put them away because she could not bear to see them lying about, and was afraid that they would make his father unhappy.

  Now she knew that there was only one thing to do, which was to work hard, and to make a success of the restaurant. To put all that they had got into it, and to make it so profitable that they could afford anything that was required for the boy. This could only be done by going very carefully. And she did not forget that there was always Mr. Campretti to contend with.

  As she put away the little clothes that Luis had left behind him, and the toys, and the stray sheets of music, she felt acutely unhappy. She felt that this was the ending of a chapter. Life would not go on again as it had been before, the three of them here in this little house which was shaped like a lighthouse. There would be much hard work.

  She went downstairs very late at night. Jan was poring over the accounts again; she stood behind him and saw one finger pointing down the column of entries, and the other hand raking through his thick dark hair, again and again. She said gently: ‘It is very late.’

  He could not have heard her standing there, for he turned sharply. Then he said: ‘We have got to work very hard for the bambino.’

  ‘Yes, Jan.’

  ‘He will repay us for all that we give him now, and we must give him everything, everything.’

  She thought how often Jan had mistaken his values. He had believed that Josette could give him happiness, but hers had been the happiness of thistledown which had blown away in the wind. He believed that the bambino could give him joy, but as she had gathered up the little things that he had left behind him she had had the sudden feeling that again happiness would be evasive. It would pass Jan by.

  ‘You should rest now,’ she said.

  He turned and caught both her hands in his own. ‘Matina, you have been so good to me. Without you, where should I have been? What should I have accomplished?’

  ‘It is nothing,’ she replied.

  ‘I know that it was everything, and I am proud of you and grateful. I will show my gratitude with all my life,’ and he raised her hands from his own to his lips.

  For a moment she stood there staring at him dumbly as though she did not understand, then she tore those hands from him, staring at them as though they had been scarred, and turning quickly ran from the room. He did not understand what she meant by it.

  III

  The years passed quickly, because both of them were occupied with the one necessity of living, which was to get money for Luis. Jan saved hard. He became mean with his servants, he was cheese-paring over every penny because he wanted it for the boy. Matina doggedly went her own way. It did not seem to him that she could save as once she had done, because although she never mentioned it to him, she had set aside her own stocking. Systematically she saved against the figment of her fancy, for she was sure that ahead lay the moment when they would want that money; they themselves, not Luis! They would want it badly.

  The Maestro wrote from different places about the boy. Under the great masters, he flourished. He had become quite a different person. His music was something which would one day be heard across the world, and the Maestro was proud of this mission which took him across Europe developing, producing this child who would eventually be so great.

  He was always willing and obedient, wrote the Maestro, he did not object to long hours of practice, he never wanted to go out and play like other boys of his age, his whole life was devoted to music and he gave of it generously.

  ‘I knew he would,’ said Matina, who was still full of that belief that this was a life which had been before, which made Luis so old for his years, and so interested in music to the elimination of all else.

  They worked hard.

  The restaurant kept its following faithfully in spite of the continual attempts of Mr. Campretti to decoy clients from them. As the years passed there were occasional clashes. Once there was trouble one Sunday morning when Mr. Campretti, seeing Jan outside his door, made some audible and insulting remark, and Jan, in a mood which would not stand for such nonsense, retorted savagely, and demanded an apology. He did not get that apology.

  Matina rushed out only just in time to find Jan stooping for a stone to hurl through Mr. Campretti’s window.

  ‘Don’t you see that would put you in the wrong, which is just what he wants?’ she demanded.

  The stone dropped, and Jan went off into the house muttering to himself. He was intensely angry.

  There was another time when Jan made a remark about the shabby suit that Mr. Campretti was wearing, and Mr. Campretti turned, and spoke sharply in return. Jan laughed and went on. That time he knew that he had won!

  There was the third time when there was something nearer to serious trouble, for Matina was standing in the doorway talking to Jan, and Mr. Campretti passing with a friend, said very loudly: ‘They ought to be married; she is just his woman, you know,’ and laughed.

  That was when Jan’s fist shot out into the pulpy face of Mr. Campretti, who doubled up, and rolled over into the gutter as though he had been killed.

  The police came and took notes, and the limp and sagging body of Mr. Campretti was carried into his own house; later in the day a police officer arrived with a summons.

  ‘You should not have done it,’ said Matina.

  ‘I know, but I am glad that I did do it! I had wanted to so much for so long, and it was worth it, every moment of it. I will pay gladly for it.’

  In the dim little police court the proceedings were drab and unreal. Mr. Campretti gave whining evidence, his head bandaged, and he expressed much venom, and much indignation. Jan gave straightforward evidence, and obviously the magistrate liked his manner. All the same, he was in the wrong. He was fined, but came away with a brightly delighted face as though he did not care. The court had shown no sympathy with Mr. Campretti whatsoever, in fact they had told him point blank that he had better leave off making insulting remarks about other people, or he might find himself here again, the next time perhaps he would not get away so easily.

  After that Mr. Campretti would go the whole way round the square rather than come down the street past the Amalia; he had taken a considerable dislike to Jan and Matina and he would not even look at them.

  Time passed on.

  Neither of them realized that the first joy of youth was dead, with its enthusiasms and its happinesses, with its limitless powers and crescendoes. They were more sober now, they were less likely to ride off at a tangent. And every week money went out to pay the great musicians to train the boy for the career, round which the whole of the little restaurant hung.

  ‘Where is the violinist?’ patrons would say, when sometimes Matina played alone to them on the piano that Jan had given her that Christmas.

  ‘You will hear one day,’ said Jan.

  The Maestro wrote that the boy was now in the early teens, and soon would b
e ready for his debut. They had no idea how fine he was. The photographs did not show. Occasionally Luis sent them photographs of an ascetic-looking boy, always with his violin.

  ‘He is too thin,’ Matina would say.

  But Jan would devour the photograph feverishly, for some trace of the mother in him.

  ‘You women only think of creature comfort,’ he would reply, ‘Luis is all right. He studies too hard, that is what makes him thin.’

  He was not very tall, his dark eyes were luminous, his hair brushed back, and worn very long, his clothes showed definite tendency towards untidiness which Matina did not like. Surely, she thought, Luis is not taking on a pose. Surely he still can be himself?

  He wrote seldom because he disliked writing letters which was only natural in a lad of that age.

  He wrote ultimately glowingly to say that his debut was arranged and that it had also been fixed that he would play under another name, for his own was not distinguished enough.

  That hurt Jan!

  Matina knew that it hurt him by the look that came into his eyes, and the way that his hand shook on the letter. She said: ‘Have some more coffee? It will do you good and put heart into you.’ Her voice trembled a little.

  Luis had taken a single name, Nadini, it would look better on bills, he explained and his masters advised him to do this. He felt sure that his father would only approve what the masters advised.

  Although that was a bitter pill for Jan to swallow, he swallowed it, and he wrote back that Luis must do as he was told, and that he wished him well. The debut was to be in Prague, which was sad because it meant that neither he nor Matina would be able to be there. Later, Luis wrote he would be coming to England, and then his father must come to hear him.

  But the whole tone of his letter was dispassionate, and aloof. It seemed that the violin had come between them, instead of cementing their love and thoughtfulness one for the other.

  ‘I feel it,’ said Jan, and touched his heart, ‘I feel it here.’

  Matina patted his shoulders.

  ‘Just for the moment,’ she said, ‘the boy is absorbed with his debut, as is only natural, and you could not expect it to be otherwise. That will pass and he will find his real self again. I don’t see how you could expect anything else.’

  ‘No, perhaps not,’ but the little wrinkle of worry stayed on his forehead, and she knew that he was not satisfied.

  The Maestro wrote of the night itself, and he explained how Luis had been calm and dignified; he had walked on to that stage as though he were walking into a field of buttercups at home. He had superb mastery of himself, and of his instrument. When he played there was a hush over the great house. When he finished, everybody rose, and fluttered programmes, and screamed their applause. They would read about it in the papers that he enclosed. It had been a great success.

  But even more wonderful was the fact that Luis had remained calm. He had come back into the green room and had laid his violin down on the green baize-covered table, with the glass and carafe of water, and the Maestro waiting beside it, with the sweat of anxiety pouring down his brow.

  ‘I knew that I could do it,’ the boy said.

  He had known too. He had carried the whole of his education through to this great moment and had been a great success.

  Together Matina and Jan devoured the papers. Here were photographs of the boy playing, alone on that great platform with the rapt faces of all the others around him staring at him, almost as though he were a god.

  There were photographs of Luis with all the floral tributes around him, and the story of his life which some reporter had taken down. They devoured that too.

  Nadini, they said, was the son of an Hungarian princess who had died at his birth. His father had been a great soldier who had gone away to fight and had never returned. They surmised that he also was dead! The boy’s playing had been heard in the gutters of a European street by the old Maestro, who had adopted him and had brought him to the great masters, and had ultimately produced him so that the world might be better for his music.

  ‘Bah,’ cried Jan, suddenly furiously angry, ‘none of this is true! None of this is right. Who told them this? Not the Maestro, I’ll be sure. Not the Maestro, who loves us too well.’

  ‘No,’ said Matina, ‘it was not the Maestro,’ and she was thinking of the coldly impersonal face of the boy who had dedicated his life to music, and would quite calmly have told any story that might benefit that music.

  Jan wrote an indignant letter which crossed with ones from both Luis and the Maestro. A big tour had been arranged for the boy, and he was to go to all the great cities of Europe, he would be coming to London next spring. It would be wonderful to be there again.

  ‘But that story,’ said Jan, ‘he says nothing about that story of the Hungarian princess and of myself, a great soldier who died fighting. I will write to the Maestro.’

  That letter never reached the Maestro. The old man had given too much of himself to the bringing-up of this boy; he had never spared himself a moment, and now it was taking toll. The first sharpness of winter had come to the country, and pneumonia was about. The old man went into hospital. He lay there in a thin bed, and he dreamt again that he was on the green canals of Venice with the girl that he had loved so dearly. He thought that he had gone back to those nights of the stars and the Serenata. That he was threading daisies in Tuscany once more. He believed all that was real again.

  He drifted out of life, and Luis rushed back from a big concert, only in time to see the old man sleeping that last sleep from which there is no awakening save to a happier morning.

  He sent a notice of the Maestro’s death to his father, but he himself was setting forth on his tour, and he could not afford to sacrifice his whole career to the death of the one old man who had made him. He enclosed no address. At the moment he honestly forgot.

  And with the Maestro, Luis the boy died, the bambino was gone, and in his place a shadowy unknown creature who called himself Nadini was born.

  IV

  When Matina heard that the old Maestro was dead, she could not cry. She went upstairs into the room where the piano stood, and she sat down before it. Her mind went back to the old days at the Golden Galleon, and she thought of the music that the old man had made, and the sympathy and kindness of his eyes, and the understanding that he had given her that last night that he had been in England, when together they had walked round the square lit by the stars, and had talked of Jan, and everything that she felt for him.

  She was glad now that she had saved money.

  She was glad because she knew that Luis was going out of their lives, and that the moment would come when they would reach a crossroads, and the way would be shown to them.

  ‘It was shown that day when we met the Maestro,’ she thought, ‘it will be shown again.’

  She touched the piano gently, and her fingers fell into the chords. She played from La Bohème, the music that the old Maestro had loved so well, and although she did not know it at that time, it was his requiem. It was her farewell to him. When she came downstairs her eyes were red from weeping.

  Jan said nothing.

  They followed Luis’s tour in the papers, for now London knew that this great new violinist was to pay them a visit in the spring, and a publicity agent had got busy and was giving advance publicity. Occasionally there were little items about him. Luis receiving a bunch of lilies from an enthusiastic listener in Austria, Luis doing this, and doing that. He had already made a great name for himself, he had already become famous.

  ‘Supposing,’ said Jan, ‘he does not want us when he comes to England?’

  She said nothing for it had been the one fear that had beset her. Luis wrote less. He had no time for letters these days, an occasional picture postcard of some strange country was all they could hope for, and even that little became infrequent.

  Somehow that Christmas neither of them felt so young or so gay. They could not make the same little crib in the
window; they could not trail tinsel strings across the walls, nor stand the trees about the room with their spangles and their spun glass. They did not feel the same. Yet the patrons came in, in the good old way; there were parties, and much drinking, and much merriment.

  The restaurant made money.

  ‘I will take care of that,’ said Matina, and put it away systematically in her stocking for the rainy day which might come.

  They had a special dinner and show for the new year, and Tessa’s grandchild was carried into the room on a big dish and the people rose, and cheered, and threw streamers. It was very merry. The party went on until three o’clock in the morning, and, when it was over, Jan was too tired to do accounts, too tired to tidy up. He stared at Matina.

  ‘It was good,’ he said.

  ‘Very good, but that is over now! Let us get a breath of air.’

  ‘Yes,’ said he and they went to the door, where the very young new year was shining under a star-spangled sky against which the skeleton trees in the square looked like miracles of black lace.

  ‘Look,’ said Matina suddenly. They turned and looked in the direction of Mr Campretti’s. The door was open. The restaurant was quite deserted and half-way up the stairs a jaundiced light struggled brightly. But on the very floor, sunk across the threshold in a sagging heap was Mr. Campretti himself.

  ‘He is ill,’ cried Matina quickly, and she pushed Jan aside, and ran towards the old man. She stooped over him, and felt for his heart. Suddenly she knew that she felt very sick. Mr Campretti was quite dead.

  Five

  I

  Mr. Campretti had had a heart attack and the witnesses at the inquest were Matina and Jan. His doctor said that he was old, that he had had heart trouble for years, and this end had only been expected.

  Mr. Campretti was buried with a very smart funeral, which all Soho attended, though few mourned him. Then the big TO LET boards were put up outside the restaurant which took on an air of dinginess. The windows became smeared with grime, and the gutters were clogged. There was something derelict about the restaurant in its new deserted guise.