Reel Life (1914-1915)

Supplement REEL LIFE THE CALL OF THE TRAUMEREI CAST Calvin Demorest, a young artist . Sydney Ayres Rizzio Le Vant, an old music master .... Harry Von Meter Enid Sumner, a country girl . I . Vivian Rich Vera de Lys, a Parisian actress . . Caroline Cooke ALVIN put down his brush upon the easel ledge and looked out over the vale of yel¬ low waving grain. Lazy cotton clouds 'Ll slowly tumbled across the sky. Calvin ^ felt himself falling asleep. He seemed to hear, as he dozed, the quavering strains of a violin. At first he thought the music existed in his imagination. Truth to tell, he was too drowsy to separate h i s waking i m pressions from his day dreams, but when the strains of the instrument slowly grew sweeter and more audible. Calvin raised himself from the meadow grass and looked through the trees. A young woman in a simple blue dress walked slowly toward him, a violin snuggled beneath her cheek and her eyes fixed on the hills across the valley. Calvin listened with rapt attention as she played the simple melodies of a by-gone generation. Finally she broke into a rollicking negro melody of the late ’50s while Calvin sang the refrain: “Oh, a buckwheat cake was in her mouf’ And a tear was in her eye!” Enid turned around with a startled, happy laugh. “So, you know the song, do you?” she inquired, just as if it were an every-day matter to have handsome young artists from the city accompany her in the re¬ frain of her songs. Calvin smilingly bowed acknowledgment of his eru¬ dition in matters musical. “Won’t you play some more for me?” he inquired, while he perched upon a moss-covered boulder at her feet. Enid, with simple, unaffected enthusiasm, plunged into the chorus of “My Grandfather’s Clock.” “My father used to sing that song,” she said. “When I play it, I always think of him. Do you like it?” Vivian Rich and Harry Von Meter in “ The Call of the Traumerei” — American. Calvin assured her that he thought it was the most beautiful song he had ever heard. “I know another old-time melody,” he said. “Perhaps you have heard it. It starts off like this — ” and suit¬ ing the action to the word he whistled the opening bars of Schumann’s “Traumerei.” Enid listened with parted lips as the sweet, affecting strains of the music fell from Calvin’s lips. When he had finished, she was close beside him. As the last bars were borne away by the gentle m i d d a y breeze she turned about and seized her violin. With the perfect mim¬ icry of the natural musi¬ cian she drew her bow firm¬ ly across the strings of her instrument and Calvin was astonished to hear her re¬ peat in accentuated swetness, note for note, the entire selection which he had whistled for her. Thereafter Calvin found it convenient to do his sketch¬ ing at the crest of the little vale where he had first met Enid. And during the long summer weeks that fol¬ lowed, Enid, too, sat at the young artist’s feet and listened to tales of the great city, of the two great opera houses, the oratorios and musicales, the gatherings of the musicians, the concerts and the great symphony orchestras. There came a day, however, when the leaves were golden and the frost lay like a thin veil of cobwebs over the meadow' grass that Calvin came to sketch for the last time. It was late afternoon when he folded up his camp stool and portable easel and took Enid’s hands to say good¬ bye. Her warm palms sent a thrill through him and Enid, too, trembled and looked abashed upon the ground. Insensibly they drew nearer each other until it seemed the most natural thing in the world to Enid to be there with her head snuggled against his breast and to have