The Old Flute-Player Part 7

"M'riarrr," said Anna slowly, rising, "you are crrazy."

"Not so cryzy as a 'ackman 'ammerin' 'is 'ead hagainst a 'ouse." said M'riar. "There's cryzier. Love mykes 'em that w'y."

"Quite crrazy," Anna answered; but she was blus.h.i.+ng furiously.

"Blus.h.i.+n' red as beefstykes," M'riar commented as she took the brush and started to do Anna's painfully accomplished task all over, from the big crack by the door where she had started. "'Ow's 'e hever goin'

to know w'ere we 'ave moved to?" she asked her mistress, now.

"Father left a word."

"Ho, did 'e?" M'riar asked.

"Yes; certainly."

"Ho, _did_ 'e!" M'riar exclaimed again. "Wot mykes yer think 'e did?"

"He told me so."

M'riar sat back, astounded. She knew he had not done so, for she, herself, had asked the landlord there and been a.s.sured that no hint had been given. She did not know just what to do, but soon reached a decision.

"Hi'll tell yer, frow-line. I reckon 'e forgot or else th' toff there, 'e don't ricollick. Hi knows as 'e don't know w'ere 'tis we've come to. 'E tol' me hit 'ad slipped 'is mind."

"Oh," said Anna, in distress.

"'Ow's Mr. Vanderlyn to find, then?"

"Oh, I do not know," said Anna in dismay.

"Hi do," said M'riar, scrubbing furiously toward Anna till that dainty maiden fled before her and took refuge in the doorway. "Hi'm goin'

back there to leave word fer 'im."

"Father might not wish--" Anna began doubtfully.

"Mr. Vanderlyn--_'e_ would," said M'riar.

"Perhaps--he might," said Anna.

When Herr Kreutzer reached the tenement again he was both humbled and elated. To have discovered any kind of work was fortunate, to have found the only place available a cheap beer-garden was disheartening.

But work he had and they could live, which surely was a great deal to be thankful for.

"Ach, liebschen," he exclaimed on entering, anxious to apprise her of his luck, loath to tell her all its details. "I have work. I play first flute, from this time onwards, in a--pleasure park." He did not tell her that there was no second flute or any other instrument save a terrible piano, played by a black "professor"; he did not tell her that "the park" was a beer-garden.

She rushed to him and threw her arms about his neck.

"We celebrate a little," he said grandly, and began to draw out of his great-coat pockets the materials for a bona-fide dinner, for, knowing that he could redeem it the next Sat.u.r.day, he had put his watch in p.a.w.n. They had not had real dinners lately. "M'riar, she will cook it."

"My heye!" said M'riar, taking the first package, and, when he followed it with others: "Ho, Hi sye!"

She had just come in from her uncannily quick dash across town--M'riar had learned the simple key to New York's streets and rushed about them without fear--to leave their new address for Mr. Vanderlyn. She felt, therefore, that she had accomplished a good deed that day and was in the very highest spirits. She went to work upon the supper with a will and singing, which greatly distressed Kreutzer, although he would not have expressed his pain for worlds.

"I work from six to eleven," he told his daughter, in explaining the arrangement he had made. The manager had said that at eleven all sober folks had gone and that those who still remained were all too drunk to know if there was music or was not; but the old man did not tell his daughter this. He hoped that she would never know how humble and unpleasant the work which he had found must be.

The very next day Vanderlyn appeared, to M'riar's satisfaction and Anna's fluttering joy. He was most respectful, plainly very anxious to be of further service to her and her father. She felt a little guilty because she had sent M'riar with the address--if her father had not left it he certainly had failed to for no other purpose than preventing Vanderlyn from getting it--but surely it was right for her to be good friends with one who wished to be so kind to him and her!

An hour pa.s.sed most delightfully in that earnest conversation about little which engages young folk of their age and suffering from the complaint which ailed them both.

"But I really had a solemn, sober errand to attend to when I came," he said, at length. "My mother fell in love with you." (He wished he might have told her that her son had, also.) "She is anxious to see more of you." (He did not tell her that the reason was his mother's firm conviction that her father certainly was a distinguished person in hard luck, incog.) "This summer, while she was in Europe, she found that she was sadly handicapped by knowing almost nothing of the German language. She wants to know if you won't come to her and teach her.

You could also be her friend, you know; a sort of young companion to a lonely woman." He was making it sound as attractive as he could. He had devised the scheme with earnest care, had brought his mother round to eagerness for it with cautious difficulty, and now presented it with diffidence and fear to the delightful girl he loved.

"I teach?" said Anna, delighted by the thought of being able, thus, to help her father, and, at the same time, not utterly averse to anything which would make frequent glimpses of her knight-errant an easy certainty. "I don't know if I _could_ teach."

"Why, it's a cinch," said the enthusiastic lover. "I don't think she will be slow to learn. She'll work hard, mother will; she didn't like this summer's trip too well. The crowned-heads didn't tip their crowns and bow as she went by."

"You are mistake," said Anna gravely. "Kings do not wear their crowns upon the streets."

He laughed. "You see how much we've got to learn?" he asked. "May I tell my mother that you'll come?"

"I shall ask my father," Anna answered.

Reluctantly, after a week, Herr Kreutzer gave consent. He was afraid he might not hold the place in the beer-garden. He hated the cheap rag-time music which the man insisted on and had held his temper with much difficulty, when he had been reproved for playing "hymns" because he had, for solos, interspersed a worthy number now and then. With his tenure of that place uncertain, not sure that he could find another, he felt that he would have no right to interpose too serious objections to the highly flattering arrangement Mrs. Vanderlyn proposed. His worry about Vanderlyn subsided, somewhat, when he found the young man was away from town much of the time.

The little tenement-house apartment was a lonely place, when he was there, after Anna took up her new work and could come to it but once a week and M'riar was a comfort to him. An astonis.h.i.+ng companions.h.i.+p grew up between the strangely differing pair. To save his ears he taught her something about singing; to save her pride from gibings from the other children in the block (who were irreverent and sometimes made a little fun of Kreutzer) she saw to it that he was always brushed when he went out. Indeed she made him very comfortable.

Monday afternoons were what made life worth living, though, to him. On Monday afternoons there was no music at the beer-garden and Mrs.

Vanderlyn gave Anna, also, that time to herself so they had these hours together, reunited.

Anna's absence from him among strangers was a constant worry and humiliation to him. He reproached himself continually because his poverty had made it necessary. She was at that age, he knew, when maidens learn to love, and she must never learn to love until--until he could go back, with her to his dear Germany, where were such men as he would choose for her. And when would that be safe? Oh, when would that be safe!

He wondered if it was not yet time to trust her with the secret which he had concealed from her her whole life long. The temptation was tremendous. Some day she would know why he had lived, must live a fugitive. Must he wait on, for other weary years? He sat immersed in thought of these things, while M'riar worked at making everything as near to neat perfection as her training in the London lodging-house made possible.

The old man's thoughts dwelt much upon young Vanderlyn. His Anna would see much of him, ere long, when the young man's western trips were ended. But she must not fall in love with him! It would not do for Anna Kreutzer, daughter of the beer-garden flute-player, to marry an American. But how, without revealing to her what he hid, could he be certain that she understood this? He wondered if it had not been a great mistake to let her go to Mrs. Vanderlyn, and then laughed bitterly because he had not "let" her go; a grim necessity had forced it--it, or something else which might have been much less desirable.

It was almost dinner-time when Anna came--radiantly beautiful, with her crisp color heightened by the rapid run from her employer's in the Vanderlyn's great touring-car. She had not wished to ride in it, but had been told to, so that she might have the time to do some errands and still get to her home on time.

"It is fine for you, up there, at the great house of Mrs. Vanderlyn, eh, Anna?" said the old man after they had greeted one another lovingly.

"But yes," said Anna, "it is pleasant. She is kind--oh, ve-ry kind; but, father, I miss you! I miss you every day and every hour. Of mornings, when I rise, I wonder what it is that you are having, down here in the little home, for breakfast. I wonder if M'riarrr still is thoughtful and remembers all that she has learned about the sweeping and the scrrrubbing. I wonder how things went with you the night before, in that grreat orchestra at that amus.e.m.e.nt park. Do they still think the first-flute a gr-r-reat musician, father?"

He smiled. "At the garden none has, so far, made complaint about my playing," he said slowly, "except that I am not quite willing, sometimes, to play the music they seem best to like." He would not have told her all the details of his battles against rag-time, for the world. "It is music of the negroes, Anna. Er--er--syncopation. Ach!

_What_ syncopation! All right in its place, my dear, but a whole evening of it! Ach, drives me--it grows tiresome, Anna."

"Some day, father, you will not play there," she said with emphasis.

"Some day will come fortune to us--some day."

"Yes; perhaps; some day. But there is something finer than a fortune, Anna. I have been thinking, thinking, thinking, lately, of your mother, Anna. How delighted she would be to see you, now, with your dark hair! Why, Anna, it is almost black! So delighted she would be!

It was blonde when you were born--blonde, fair like mine, before mine turned to white; but hers was dark, as yours is now, and I think that when she saw that yours was light she was a little disappointed till her old nurse told her that in early years her own hair had been as yours was. You were one year old, my Anna, before your hair began to show the brown."

"Do you like it, father?"

"Like it? Ah, I love it! But--I am worried."