The Old Flute-Player Part 13

He smiled. "Quite natural," he answered. "Why, I might have eaten you!" But in the absorption of his talk with her he had forgotten that, as he went to the door, he had seen a blue coat and bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, had recognized the face of his old enemy, Moresco. Now the realization that, armed and uniformed, a minion of the forces of the city's law and order, that cheap foe was actually waiting for his little Anna--for his gentle, big-eyed, soft-voiced Anna!--came to him with a new and dreadful shock. His frame stiffened and his poor old, soft hands clenched into pathetic fists. "He shall not--" he began with a brave bl.u.s.ter, but then stopped, realizing his own helplessness.

"What can you do?" asked Mrs. Vanderlyn, and smiled again that twisted little smile which was her counterfeit of the sweet look of sympathy.

"I am only doing what is right and what is necessary. I am, naturally, most indignant at this betrayal of my confidence. I will not interfere to save the girl from justice!"

From behind the kitchen door, at this, Herr Kreutzer thought he heard a sound as of swift breath indrawn through tight-set, angry teeth, but was not sure. It might have been his own. He was so terribly excited that he did not know. Certainly, from now, his angry breathing was quite audible. His little Anna taken to a prison! No! "She shall not be punished!" he exclaimed in wrath.

Mrs. Vanderlyn looked at him, for a second, as might one look at an unpleasant child who is a disappointment. Then she for the first time showed a little wrath towards him. Up to that moment her calm, maddening att.i.tude of skin-deep sympathy had been unbroken. She spoke sharply, now, however, as she countered: "That will not depend on you."

"It _shall_ depend on me!" said Kreutzer, hotly.

"There is but one thing which will lighten the severity of the bad girl's punishment," said Mrs. Vanderlyn, didactically.

"And that, Madame?"

"The immediate rest.i.tution of the ring. She is here, now, is she not?"

"Yes, she is here, but--"

The poor old man looked helplessly around him. The whole thing seemed too terrible to be believed. He wondered if some dreadful nightmare did not hold him prisoner and half expected, as he let his agonized old eyes roam round the room, to wake up, presently, and find the episode was but a dreadful dream.

"Call her; ask her to give it up--"

"No," said the old man softly, careful that his voice should not rise so that it could easily be audible in the adjoining room, "I will not ask her to give up the ring, for the ring is not in her possession.

She would not know of what I spoke. She would look at me, my Anna would, with soft reproach in her sad eyes and wonder if her poor old father had gone mad to bring an accusation such as that against her soul--so pure--so innocent--so--"

"Certainly she has the ring." The woman, now, was definitely sneering at his protestations of his daughter's worthiness.

"No; she has not got the ring. I--have it--"

From his pocket he drew forth his hand and in it lay the little box.

Out of the box, with trembling fingers, he removed the ring, and held it up, smiling at her, as he did so, with a wondrous look of triumph--not the look of one who has just placed his feet, quite consciously, upon the road that leads to prison, but that of one who has won victory against great odds. She could not understand that look.

And that was not so strange, for on the face of the old flute-player the expression was like few this selfish old world ever sees--the expression of complete self-abnegation, of absolute self-sacrifice for pure and holy love.

"The ring, Herr Kreutzer!" Mrs. Vanderlyn exclaimed, in relief, sure, now, for the first time, of the recovery of the precious trinket. "The ring! She's given it to you!"

Herr Kreutzer laid the box upon the table and drew back with studied calm to gaze at her reflectively, as is necessary to a man who, as he stands and talks, must fas.h.i.+on from his fancy a cute fiction logical enough and clear enough to save from overwhelming sorrow one whom he loves better than he loves himself. "I tell you the whole truth," he said, "on one condition. One condition, mind you, Madame--and that condition must be kept. It is that she--my Anna--shall never be disturbed, annoyed--"

The woman shook her head with emphasis. Self-righteous and indignant, feeling that her confidence had been betrayed as well as her ring stolen, she was determined not to let the guilty girl escape. "I cannot promise that," she said with emphasis, "for she is guilty."

The German raised himself to his full height and stood there towering over her, the very effigy of sublime fatherhood. "She is _not_ guilty!" he exclaimed. "No; it is I--I--I!"

"You!" Mrs. Vanderlyn fell back a step or two, staring at him in amazement. Could the man be crazy? This unexpected turn of the affair brought a gasp of sheer astonishment from her.

From behind the door Herr Kreutzer thought he heard, again, a sound as of swift breath drawn through tight shut teeth, but again he was not sure--nor did it matter. When, an instant later, the door softly opened, then as softly closed and left M'riar there in the room with them, standing, for a second, with her back against the portal which she had just come through, neither of them glanced at her. The situation which involved them was too tense, too fiercely was their full attention focussed upon one another. They scarcely noted that she pa.s.sed as she went through the room and out the other door.

"Yes," said Herr Kreutzer, "it is I who took the ring."

CHAPTER IX

[Ill.u.s.tration: "She is not guilty! No; it is I--I--I!"]

"_You_ who took the ring!" said the astonished woman. "How utterly absurd! You have not been in my house." She was so amazed by his confession, which, she knew, could not have the least foundation, that, for the moment, she forgot to pose, either as an injured benefactress or as an avenging nemesis.

Now Herr Kreutzer smiled. Having determined on the sacrifice, he was delighted by this first error in her argument. "Yes, Madame," he said, quite truthfully, "I _have_ been at your house. I called while you were driving. M'riar will tell you. She went with me. I called there to tell Anna that I should expect her here, this afternoon. A servant showed me to her room--showed M'riar and me both to her room. I can prove all of this by M'riar--by your own servants, Madame. I waited for her, for a time, there in her room, and, as I walked to and fro, I saw, through an open door, upon a table--that jewel-box."

Mrs. Vanderlyn was looking at him in complete astonishment. Even in her artificial soul there rose some admiration for the man who would confess to felony, rather than submit his child to suffering.

"And you--," she cried.

He bowed before her, almost as he had, in bygone days, bowed low before an appreciative audience. Was not this, as much as ever any solo on the flute had been, a triumph of high art? And more! Was it not the triumph of his love for Anna over, first, this hard-souled, little-minded Mrs. Vanderlyn, and, second, the last selfish impulse lingering within his own unselfish soul?

"I am very, very poor, Madame," he said. "I am only a poor flute-player. Things have not gone well with me since I have been in your so great, so glorious country. No; they have gone very far from well with me. If they had not gone most ill do you imagine that I ever would have let my Anna go to you as your companion? Do you not imagine that it cut my soul to have her separate from me, that it cut my pride to have to tacitly admit that I was quite unable to provide for her?

Yes, Madame; it cut both soul and pride. But I am very poor. What could I do? I am so poor that always I have little to wear--see, Madame, this old suit is all that I possess! It prevents me, possibly, from getting better wages than I might get if I were not so shabby.

Often, also, I do not have enough to eat. That, Madame, is true, although my Anna does not know it. Well, glittering in that little box upon the dresser, when I was there at your house, I saw so much comfort, so much happiness."

The old man's art had won, indeed. He had quite convinced the woman that it had been he and not his daughter who had stolen the diamond.

She was not exactly disappointed, although it robbed the crime of one of its most dramatic elements--ingrat.i.tude. She was being quite as well diverted by the old man's dignity and calm as she would have been by his poor Anna's wild, hysterical grief. She was, perhaps, she thought, a very lucky woman. She had not only had a valuable diamond stolen, which, of itself, was entertaining, in a way, but she had recovered it through such a strange experience as would furnish food for tales to be told in boudoirs and over tea-cups for three months.

"So it really was you!"

"Yes, yes; have I not told you?"

There was an inconsistency in this affair, however, and Mrs. Vanderlyn thought herself a veritable Sherlock Holmes as she pounced on it.

"But that note from Anna?" she protested.

Kreutzer had been thinking of that note from Anna, and, for a time, had found the obstacle a hard one to surmount. At length, and in good time to meet the question, he had, however, arranged an explanation, which, if not too carefully looked into, would seem reasonable.

"Oh, of course," said he. "You mean the note about her going away?

Why, that is easily to be understood. When she came I told her that I have had luck. I told her that we have much money and we go to Germany, at once. I was afraid that if she went back to your house there would arise suspicions, so I said she must not go, but must be content with just the note, alone, for her goodbyes. She did not wish to do this, but consented, at the last, because I ordered her to do it."

Mrs. Vanderlyn was now entirely convinced. He had made the case against himself so black she could not doubt it; but she determined that if he thought he would gain clemency in payment for the frankness of his full confession he would find himself to be mistaken. It was her duty as a member of society, she told herself, to see to it that the guilty poor who prey upon the helpless rich should not pa.s.s on unpunished.

"I understand," she said, "you are the guilty one. Your daughter is quite innocent of this. It may be chance, alone, that keeps her so.

With such a father--but I will be merciful and will not show you what a vile inheritance of wickedness you have prepared for the poor child.

Your conscience will do that, if you have any conscience. While you are in prison you will have that to reflect upon."

He was dismayed. The ring had been returned. Would she still--"I--I must go to prison?"

"Why, certainly. Don't you see how necessary that is? What would happen to society if thieves were left unpunished?"

"Thief!" The word fell on his ears with tragic force. A thief in prison! Was this to be the end of all his striving? Were the high hopes and ambitions of his splendid youth to end, at length, behind the bars of a thief's cell? Ah, those happy, bygone days, when with unbounded hope and confidence he had promised all things to the lovely creature he had wooed and won and wed in that toy village far away in the Black Forest! What was their fruition! Unhappiness, disgrace and exile for her loveliness, and finally a child for whom she paid the supreme price of death. His promises, breathed at her bedside of unwavering care, unfaltering devotion, unfailing happiness for the wee baby in the years to come--how had he kept them? Poverty, distress, privation. With such commodities had he redeemed those promises, and, finally, had driven the girl, naturally as sweet-souled as an angel, as pure as the new-fallen snow, to vulgar crime to satisfy, no doubt, those girlish and quite natural desires which it should have been his duty and his pleasure to provide for. Oh, he had done well with life!

The soul within him writhed in agony as he reflected on the use which he had made of it. His heart went sick from shame. And--what would Anna do without him?