Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/84

62 women passed incessantly, some lingering, some hurrying. But Sasha did not heed them, nor notice how many came in at the dark and dirty doorway from the street. Only when there got to be a crowd he began to put aside his own repertory of songs, and take up those that were suggested by the customers, that were shouted in his ear—

"Sasha, play Maroosia."

"Sasha, play The Nightingale, play Spring has passed by."

Then, till the small hours of the morning, he would play what people wanted him to—sad songs, gay songs, marches, dances, country measures—dances, dances, dances, every dance in Russia he played, and the tables were crushed back and a space made and the people danced.

Every night, every week, every month Sasha was there, and the crowd and the music and the air thick with makhorka smoke. Not that the nights were always the same. Events in the town, in Russia, had their echoes there. In the time of the South African War Sasha played twenty times a night the March of the Boers. During the festivities of the Franco-Russian Alliance he played the Marseillaise, which was fearfully popular with the dock-labourers. When the Japanese War broke out he played all those sad tunes about far Manchuria and fighting in a strange land.

Alas, the Japanese War made a great change