Partly from age, and partly from a too convivial life, the
old, heavily veined hands trembled so that he could scarcely unbutton
his overcoat, or handle his cup of hot coffee. His head shook too, and
his kind, rheumy eyes, in their endeavor to focus themselves, seemed
to flicker back and forth in their sockets. The child used to watch
him, fascinated, as he fumbled endlessly at the fastenings of his
violin-case, and put back the top with uncertain fingers. She was
waiting for the thrilling moment when he should tuck the instrument
away under his pendulous double chin and draw his bow across the
strings in the long sonorous singing chord, which ran up and down
Sylvia's back like forked lightning.
This was while all the others were tuning and scraping and tugging at
their pegs, a pleasant bustle of discord which became so much a
part of Sylvia's brain that she could never in after years hear the
strumming and sawing of an orchestra preparing to play, without seeing
the big living-room of her father's house, with its low whitewashed
ceiling, its bare, dully shining floor, its walls lined with books,
its shabby, comfortable furniture, the whole quickened by the
Promethean glow from the blaze in the grate and glorified by the
chastened passion of the singing strings.
The two Anglo-Saxon, professors were but able amateurs of their
instruments. Bauermeister, huge, red, and impassive, was by virtue of
his blood, a lifelong training, and a musical ancestry, considerably
more than an amateur; and old Reinhardt was the master of them all.
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