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Updated: June 9, 2025
Over the wide entrance door was the musicians' gallery, where the regimental band, and Neroda, their leader, a handsome Italian, with their gleaming instruments, made a great splash of vivid color against the sombre wall. Opposite the entrance was the Commanding Officer's box, beautifully draped with flags and wreaths of holly. In the box sat the Colonel and Mrs.
When they reached the Commandant's house and Colonel Fortescue swung Anita from her saddle she walked into the house slowly, her eyes fixed on the ground. At the door the After-Clap met her with a shout, but instead of a romp with his grown-up playmate, he received only an absent-minded kiss. Almost at the same moment Neroda walked into the hall.
Anita, testing the strings, her bow wandered into the soft heart-moving music of Mascagni's Intermezzo. Neroda said nothing, but watched his favorite pupil. Usually she took up her violin with a calm confidence, like a young Amazon taking up her well-strung bow for battle, because the violin must be subdued; it must be made to obey; it must feel the master hand before it will speak.
Anita stopped and laid down her bow, and once more holding the violin to her ear, began tuning it. That time the tuning was so bad that she handed the violin to Neroda. "You must tune it for me, Maestro," she said, with a wan smile. "The spirit of music seems far away to-night." Neroda, in a minute, handed her back the instrument in perfect tune.
Before every ball, Colonel Fortescue's aide, Conway, a serious young lieutenant, delivered the Colonel's orders that there was to be no tangoing or turkey-trotting or chicken-reeling or "Here Comes My Daddy" business in that ball-room. Moreover, Neroda, the bandmaster, had orders if any of these dances, abhorred of the Colonel's heart, were started the music was to stop immediately.
Broussard, inwardly cursing himself, made up his mind to have it out with the Colonel the next day about the Lawrence affair. When dinner was over and the men had come in from the smoking-room, Mrs. Fortescue asked Broussard if he would sing; Neroda was already there to play his accompaniments and Anita, would play the violin obligato.
He loved the imaginative nature of the girl, who treated her violin as if it were a living thing, and whispered her secrets into the ear of her riding horse, and told love stories to her birds. "In Italy," said Neroda, "a fiddler, if he really knows how to play dance music, can dance as well as play.
Anita, dropping the violin, found a book of songs, some of which she had heard Broussard sing. "Come," she cried eagerly, "I must play these obligatos over. You will sing the songs." Neroda sat down once more to the piano and played and sang in a queer, cracked voice, the songs, while Anita, her soul in her eyes and all her heart and strength in her bow arm, played the violin part.
"Here I am, Signorina," he said, "ready for the practice. Mr. Broussard sings too well for you to do less than play divinely." Anita, taking off her gloves and veil, went, unsmilingly, into the drawing-room, Neroda following her, and putting up the top of the grand piano. It was Neroda's rule that Anita should tune her own violin.
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