Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1881 — HIS NEXT ENGAGEMENT. [ARTICLE]

HIS NEXT ENGAGEMENT.

The glories of the entertainment have faded, down goes gas, out scramble audience. It is the last night of the season, and the band, sorrowfully, gloomily every one, from the big drum down to the piccolo, are playing the national anthem over said season’s grave to give it decent burial. Even the first fiddle feels out of sorts. The bassoon has a teardrop trembling on his left eyelash, and lets it hang there, unconscious of the fact that all the while it glistens visibly in a tiny ray from the footligbt. As for the violoncello next him, that cliffbvowed, set-faced, hoary-headed old veteran of a score or two of pantomimes, surely this particular pantomime’s death grieves him but little. Why should it —while he can twine his bony left arm around that old violoncello’s neck as if it lived and loved him; when he can bend his gray head to its strings and hear the sweet pathos of their tones; when he cun pass h s long, skinny musician’s fingers fondly over them to draw forth rich, soothing, swelling, fal ing, beautiful melody? Why should there be a quavering lip and a trembling eyelash when the last chord comes? The chord is struck and over. Out of the orchestra, and already on his way home, is the first violin; the cornet has brought up the rear with a cadenza moraudo; the big drum has closed his last roll; the second violin has packed up his fiddle-case; bassoon and violoncello remain alone with the dying lights in the hall. “ Dick !” said the bassoon, quietly. Poor old white-faced violoncello never heeded. The left arm in its rusty sleeve still clasped the instrument’s neck in that loving way ; the old gray head bent down over the strings, wi’h the eyes closed. “ Poor old chap !” observed the bassoon, pittyingly, as he turned up his coat-collar and tucked his installmentcase under his arm. “ Slowed if he ain’t a playin’ now !” “ Dick—Dick I” he repeated, tapping the old violoncello good-naturedly on the shoulder. This old man opened his eyes and awoke to the silence. “Hallo, Tom Hornby! What—all gone ? Ithought”—he looked around him in disappointed inquiry, and spoke in a tone of sadness—“l thought he repeated that second strain. Well well ! How deaf I’m getting, to be sure !” The rusty black coat heaved with a sigh as its wearer rose and shut his music. . ‘ ‘ All. gone but y ou, Tom ?” he said, sorrowfully. “Well, I won’t deny I thought .they might ha’ wished me ‘ good-night,’ or ‘ good-by,’ or something of the sort, for the last night ; but I won't grumble. An old fellow who’s as deaf as a post and has nol>odv to mind him ain’t no place in an orchestra. He’d i get out of the road as quick as he 1 make no fuss about it. Friends X v. -seme. Dick. old man, - ’ exycsnu'Litee lA.e Isksscou, “ don't go for -. hie that. Y-:u knows there’s ■ ■■_ - .1.1:5. m-is :-or tck>—lash mv ie iir'V Yes, savs L Dick; : >IXS cos m whenever you _ks. t 1 '-.•*! f'.-z you, and the fii.ms iu-s I „s.s myself, whenever y.n -is cLes. : and, if we can’t ±~..i 7 . m• sit ’ s-omewheres : .--sx!-. 5 Blow me, it’s a

'lr.s. Hoflyou’re a good-hearted f-' . zir. retimed the violoncello, gratefihy, as his stolid face relaxed a little before thbassoon's penial smile. “ A nsesess, old, worn-out blessing like mine ain’t much to give any body.” he continued, “but such as it is, Tom, take it for your kindness; and may you never have such a black world before you as I’ve got now. ” They shook hands; the bassoon stepped through the little narrow door beneath the 1 stage, and his companion, hearing his unwieldy violoncello, extinguished the last gas-jet as he followed him. “Good-night, Dick; and don’t be down-hearted, old man. Your next engagement ’ll make amends.” “ Good-night, . Tom Hornby ; God bless you.” Again they shook hands; then bassoon whistled off into the hurrying crowd at the stage-door, and violoncello turned to face the wind the other way. Out into the bleak street, where tiny yellow rushlights of lamps cast a melancholy glimmer or two upon crowds of hurrying faces, some fat and round, some red and well-favored, some blue and ill-favored, all hurrying along through the little snow-dots which the wind blew about.

Old violoncello buttoned his rusty coat close, and turned up the collar as if the wind might find that an obstacle in its attacks upon his scraggy old throat, while he hugged that dingy big fiddle of his tight against his body, and, settling his eyes straight before him, dragged his trembling knees in the direction they pointed. Up one street and down another; along a wide, white road, lined with tall white mansions; down a narrow, wriggling, dark alley, lined with rickety lodging houses. On he trudged through the gray, pulpy mud of trampled snow. On and on to that dreary blank of fu ture which lay before him, the old lackluster eyes fixed in that straightforward look of despair, the cold loneliness steadily settling down upon his aged heart to brood there. For the season was over, and old violoncello had struck his last chord at the hall. “You see, Dobbs,” the leader of the orchestra had said, “now that the full season’s over, it’s unreasonable to expect the management to keep up such a band, so, much as it goes against me to say it, we must part. ” “Quite right,” had chimed in the manager with a ferocious mustache. “Establishment expenses must be cut down, my man; everybody can’t stop on; so there you are ! Might as well ask me to keep extra bandsmen out of my own salary 1” So the old violoncello struck his last chord, and went with a leaden heart. Good-hearted Tom Hornby comforted him with hopes of that next engagement. But who would have him—poor, old, worn-out, deaf as he was ? Nobody, he said. And his heart sank like a lump of cold lead as he thought of that answer. The pulpy slush changed to white, untrodden snow upon the path; the streets.were quieter and darker. Old violoncello reached his humble lodging, admitted himse f by his latch-key, climbed the three flights of rickety stairs. In the tiny garret at the top of them was a fireless grate, a square white jjed. a table, a chair and a window—one

broken pane of which was stopped with brown paper. As he lighted his two inches of lean candle and showed these, the old man sat down upon the °bair and bent his gray head upon the table. No tear was in his eyes when he lifted them. He drew his violoncello closer to him ; he hugged it as he might a favorite child; then he bent his head once more upon the little table, and his bow slipped to the floor from the numbed fingers which clasped it. Lower and lower burned the candle, while outside, upon the bars of the window-panes, white snow gathered higher and higher as the flakes kept falling. When the blanched face was again upturned the eyes were moistened. “So we’ve coma-to it at last, have we, old fiddle!” the old man moaned in apostrophe of his beloved violoncello, as he stooped to pick up the bow. “We’re old now, both of us; we’re no use now. You’re patched and cracked and yotu master’s deaf; they don’t want a pan like us nowadays. We’re ready almost for our last engagement. Yes, old fiddle ; you’ve been a good servant to your old master, and you could do something, too, in your day; but not much longer—not very much longer. We’re old now ; they can do without us.” A tear dropped upon the finger-board, and the old man wiped it carefully off with his coat-sleeve.

“ Yes, old friend,” he continued, gazing affectionately on his battered companion of wood and strings, “we’ve been friends for long, but we’re coming to our last engagement.” While the snow-flakes fell thicker and thicker against the window, softly and noiselessly, the old man drew his bow across the strings of the violoncello in a half-unconscious way, bending down lus head to the instrument just as he always did. Though his ears were deaf to aught else, they never failed to drink in the tones which sprung from those vibrating cords. Slowly, weirdly, pathetically the music rose aud fell in gentle ripples around the room, so hushed and low that it awakened no echoes in the silent house. Only in that poor chamber would it wander ; only around that poor old couple, instrument and player, would its sweet melody float. As he played, the old man’s eyes gently closed, and from his face the lines of settled despair gradually cleared away, till only a happy smile was left beaming around wrinkles. The player's thoughts were faraway; to him‘the cold room and snowy window were become as naught. Back’ in the little garden of fifty years ago, in the arbor scented by the pinks and roses, with the dark velvet pansies clustering the little plot at his feet, he was listening again to that same old tune as he heard it first, when the wife, long dead, sang the words, and he played the air upon that well-remem-bered violin. He could hear her voice ; he could smell the roses’ perfume. Surely it was that same violin he was playing now ! From his closed eyes, down the white cheeks, tears dropped warm and fast upon the strings of the violoncello. He heeded them not; his thoughts were far away. So the tune rose and fell, and the snow gathered thicker and thicker on the window panes, till the caudle on the little table flickered out. Yet the arm in the rusty sleeve did not weary in its slow, regular motion; the cold fingers still pressed the strings; the player did not awake to the darkness of the room.

“We’re old now,” he murmured; “they don’t want us any longer.” His eyes were still shut, but the tune waxed slower and slower and slower, till it died altogether. The bow slipped from the old man’s fingers; the. gray head sank upon the table; the violoncello rested soundless against the breast of the rusty black coat. * * * When the morning rame and bright sun rays struggled through the snowblocked window panes, they shone upon a tiny table, a square white bed, a tireless grate, a patched and dingy old violoncello. But the bow had fallen upon the floor, and the player’s nerveless fingers hung white and stiffened upon the strings. Old Violoncello had gone to his last engagement.