Books › Blue Book v25 n01 [1917-05], 1917 › scan 60
Scan 60
Blue Book v25 n01 [1917-05], 1917
50 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1her relatives, at their somber family dinners, often complained bitterly of the fabulous sums of Texler money that he devoted to sending less worthy young aspirants to Europe to study. Uncle Elias clucked in his throat and stopped her.
3"Is that what they say?" he demanded.
5"Yes sir."
7"H'm! I did send one young fellow to Europe."
9She clasped her hands ecstatically.
11"Oh, then you will send Luigi!"
13He smiled grimly.
15"Under the same circumstances, perhaps I would," he said. "My chauffeur ran over this fellow's father, and it was the cheapest way out of the damage-suit he threatened to bring."
17She stared at him, perfectly speechless.
19"Oh!" she gasped in consternation. "Oh! Then it was not because you felt that he was destined to a great career?"
21"Not at all. It was because I knew he was destined to a big verdict if the case came to trial."
23She let her great sorrowful eyes wander from him to the resentful Luigi and then back to him again. Then she shrugged in a perfectly calm and tearless acceptance of her fate. It was a pitiful little shrug. It showed that she was so accustomed to disappointments. It seemed to touch Uncle Elias.
25"Get out your fiddle," he said to Luigi. "I'll hear how you play."
27Alice felt funny little chills run up and down her body when she realized suddenly that the great moment had arrived. Luigi was going to play! And Uncle Elias was going to listen! Was going to listen, and perhaps, after all, send Luigi to Europe to begin his wonderful career!
29Luigi unstrapped his tattered case and unwrapped many folds of a frayed silk scarf, bringing forth at length a pale violin that seemed somehow wizened and anemic even to her inexpert eyes.
31He clicked the strings and tightened and loosened the keys interminably and finally when he seemed satisfied that it was all in tune, he placed it under his chin and drew the bow across it.
33ALICE had never heard the violin well played. She had read many, many times in her books of how violinists had held their hearers spellbound and swayed them to tears with the music of their souls. She tried now to be held spellbound and to be swayed to tears with Luigi's soul, but she found herself cold; and at times she was even conscious of gritting her teeth at some of the sounds that Luigi made.
35At first, she was for putting it down to her own lack of musical education but, when she looked up at Uncle Elias and saw the agonized expression on the old man's face, her heart sank within her, for it told her very plainly and very unmistakably that her rosy dreams were not coming true. Luigi was not the wonderful genius she had thought him.
37With a succession of squeezed squeaks more curdling than the rest, Luigi, oblivious of them, was mounting to his artistic climax. But he did not reach it.
39With a sharply indrawn breath of positive physical pain, Uncle Elias placed the end of a thin forefinger in each ear and cried in agony: "Stop it! In God's name, stop it!"
41Luigi paused in mid-stroke and looked up. What he saw made him flame suddenly scarlet, and his black eyes blazed with fury. He lowered the violin from his chin.
43"My boy! My boy!" Uncle Elias cried. "Stick to your organ-grinding. I don't know how bad you are at organ-grinding, but stick to it. It is better than your fiddling will ever be."
45Luigi bared his white fangs in a snarl. It was a wicked snarl, a snarl that reminded Alice of the treacherous panther she had seen at the Zoo.
47"Ar-r-gh!" Luigi's fury was too carnivorous for articulate speech. The sound that he made told more plainly than words of the lust that suffused him to sink his teeth into the flesh of his tormentor. "Ar-r-gh!"
49He replaced the violin in the tattered case without waiting to wrap it in the frayed, silken scarf. He cinched up the straps and tucked the thing under his arm. Then he picked up his cap and marched to the double doorway, but there he swung about suddenly and
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