The Old Flute-Player Part 9

"I wonder," she was thinking, when she should have been absorbed in conjugations, "if there can be the slightest danger in my having this girl here. She's pretty and she has most charming manners. That accent is too fascinating, too. John might--but then, he is a boy of too much sense. If she only had been what I hoped she was, when I saw them on the steamer--but a mere flute-player's daughter! He would never be so silly."

On later days the lessons sometimes went with better speed and more enthusiasm; but almost always Mrs. Vanderlyn was occupied with thinking of the social life she knew and wished to know, so rapid progress was not possible.

John was out of town much of the time and when he came it was impossible for him to see much of the little German maiden, and this made Anna most unhappy. Deep in her heart she knew that what her father had described had come to her--she knew she loved; but it was all a mighty puzzle. Even if he loved her in return, of which she was by no means certain, he was not at all the sort of man, she thought, of whom her father would approve. Her father's notions were the notions of the stiff old world. He had said that she must wait until he was a flute-player no longer and that when that glad time came, he would, himself, pick out for her the handsomest and bravest gentleman whom he could find and bring him to her, ready-made, to love. She knew he felt a great contempt for riches; she knew that his experience of America had far from prepossessed him in favor either of the country or the people in it. She was absolutely certain that the man whom he would choose for her would be a very different sort of person from John Vanderlyn. Handsome he was, for certain, strong he was, for sure; but he was not a German and she knew that when her father spoke of "gentlemen" he had in mind none but a well-bred, well-born German.

It seemed to her, as she reflected on this matter, that she could not possibly endure to wed a German. She was, indeed, a little frightened by what her father had declaimed about her future and the matter of her courts.h.i.+p.

Then things happened, all at once, so suddenly that she could scarcely credit her own knowledge of them. One morning, coming in with Mrs.

Vanderlyn from a long ride, she was informed that Herr Kreutzer had just been there with M'riar, and had left a note for her upon her dressing-table after having waited for a time. The note said that he had an unexpected holiday and begged her to come home, if possible, to spend it with him, and she was just coming out of Mrs. Vanderlyn's boudoir, where she had gone to get permission, when she unexpectedly met John. He had come home without notice and ahead of time from one of his long journeys.

CHAPTER VI

"Has she not come then, yet, my child?" said Kreutzer to the busy M'riar, as he returned. He had thought that Anna might have reached the tenement by that time, for he had gone out a second time and made a number of delightful, although meagre purchases.

"No signs," said M'riar. "Yn't see a sign of 'er. But hit cawn't be long before she'll be 'ere, can it?"

"No, M'riar; not long."

The place was poorly furnished. Marks of poverty, indeed, were everywhere; but upon the little table with its oil-cloth cover, soon began to show, as he brought package after package from his pockets, an array of goodies which amazed M'riar greatly. From the little gas-pipe chandelier which hung above the table (fly-specked and badly rusted before M'riar's busy hands had done their best to polish it, and still uncouth in its plain iron and sharp angles), he hung a little wreath of evergreen. Out of a package, with the utmost care, he produced a frosted cake.

"See, M'riar!" he cried.

"Hi sye!" said M'riar, examining it with distant care as if she feared that it would either break or bite. "Won't she be took haback?"

"And," said Herr Kreutzer, delving busily in a pocket of his long, limp, overcoat, "a bottle of good wine."

"My heye!" said M'riar, awed and gaping admiration. "She _will_ be took haback!"

"And, see again?" said Kreutzer, taking other treasures out of packages and pockets, including a roast fowl, and celery and other fixings. "It is not often, lately, that I have my Anna with me. When she comes, then we must do what we can do to make her welcome." He might have added that it was not often that a little stroke of luck brought him in money for a celebration such as this, but did not.

"_Such_ a feast!" said M'riar.

"Ah, it is something," said the flute-player. "It is little I can do.

I earn so little in this country--less, even, than I earned in London; and here all things cost so much--_more_, even, than they cost in London."

M'riar went to the window, after having seen the good things, while his hands went to his pocket and brought from it the door-key and a pocket-knife. He laughed a little bitterly. "The little feast has cost the last cent in my pocket! When night comes I must walk back to the Garden!... Well what matter? Anna is not suffering, and to-day she will be happy here with me."

"Hi, she's comin'," M'riar screamed and dashed out of the room.

Herr Kreutzer gazed after her with a wide smile of toleration. She had not been a nuisance; she had been very useful. "I worried when we found her on the s.h.i.+p," said he, "and here she is, my housekeeper, while Anna is more happy in the mansion of the Vanderlyns! So things occur as we do not expect."

There came to him the sound of chattering voices on the stair. He hurried to the door.

"Anna, Anna!" he called into the hallway.

An instant later and she sprang up the last flight and ran into his opened arms. "Father!" she cried happily. There was an unwonted flush upon her cheeks, a new, soft glow within her eyes, a certain subtle dignity about her bearing which he failed to note, but which she knew was there and which the keener eyes of M'riar saw and were much puzzled by.

"Father!" she cried again, and held him in so close a clasp that his face reddened quite as much because she choked him as because his heart was beating high with happiness at sight of her.

"Come, come," said he, and led her to a chair by the window which commanded a small vista of back-yards--the only glimpse of out-of-doors the tiny tenement apartment offered. "My liebling! My little Anna! It is good to hold you so, again!" He clasped her in his arms.

"'Yn't it beautiful!" M'riar muttered, gazing at them. "W'ite as snow 'is 'air looks, w'en 'ers that is that dark, is hup hagainst it close, like that!"

"Dear old father!" Anna cried, as she drew back. She took him by the shoulders, now, and, with her beautifully modelled, firm young arms, held him away from her so that she might examine him. With loving scrutiny she studied every line of the old face. Instantly she noted the weary droop of tired eyelids. "Are you sure you are quite well?"

He smiled. "Always I am well, when you are with me. Always well when you are with me, Anna."

"You look tired. Ah, it is not easy for you when you play--"

His heart stood still for half-a-dozen beats. Could it be possible that she had learned how he had lied to her about the place in which he played? Had she learned that it was not a park of elegant importance?

"It is a fine, a splendid park," he interrupted. "Some day I shall take you there, with M'riar, and shall show you. Not at once. At present I must be quite sure to please and so must play without distraction. Your presence might confuse me, so that I could not give satisfaction; but, someday, when things are a little better--then I take you with me."

As he lied away her fears his soul was bitterly inquiring what his daughter who had such respect for him and for his music, would think if she could hear him as he stood upon a rough-board platform, or sat beside a cheap piano, pounded by a colored youth who kept a gla.s.s of beer on one end and a cigarette upon the other as he played. What would Anna think of her old father if she heard him tootle on his flute, with all the breath which he could muster, the strains of "Hot Time," an old favorite, or "Waltz Me Around Again, Willie," not quite so old, but infinitely more offensive than the frank racket of the negro melody to his sensitive ear? How would her artistic soul revolt if she should hear his flute--his precious flute!--inquiring if anybody there had seen an Irishman named Kelly?

"What do they like best, my father?" Anna asked him, still looking searchingly into his face, as if she saw signs there which did not rea.s.sure her. "Mozart, possibly, or Grieg?"

"I think it is 'An Invitation to the Dance,'" said he, and smiled again, more sweetly, more convincingly than ever. "'Around, around, around!'" he muttered, bitterly, sarcastically, as he turned away from her.

"What, father?"

"That melody, so sweet; those words, so full of lovely sentiment--they cling in my old mind, my liebschen," said Herr Kreutzer, to cover up his error. "They what you call it? Keep running in my head--ah, around, around within my head, my liebschen."

"Somehow, I am af-raid that you do not, really, like the place where you are playing."

"It is a fine, a splendid park, my Anna," Kreutzer cried in haste. "I am a grumbler--an old grumbler. My only real cause for complaint is that I must play so very loud for some" (his heart was sore with a humiliation of the night before), "while, for others, it is necessary that I plays so s-o-f-t-l-y--lest my flute disturb their conversation. I am puzzled, Anna, that is all. Quite all. There is no cause for you to worry." He placed his hand upon her shoulder, and, as he sank wearily to the stiff, wooden chair which was as easy as the room could boast, she dropped to her knees beside him.

Her heart was very full. Vividly she longed to tell him that the love, of which he had discoursed to her, had not come in the least as he had said it would--summoned by his counsel after he had searched and found the man whom he decided would be best for her to marry. No; love had not approached her logically, rationally, as result of careful thought by a third party; it had come, instead, as might a burglar, breaking in; an enemy, making an a.s.sault upon an unsuspecting city in the night. She had yielded up the treasures of the casket of her heart without a murmur to the burglar; the city had capitulated without fighting, without even protest. She was sure he would not find it easy to approve of her selection.

So she was not ready, yet, to tell him; she was not ready to destroy the happiness of this, their day together, as she feared that such a revelation must, inevitably.

"Hard times, father!" she said, temporizing. "But perhaps, sometime, they shall be changed. Perhaps _I_ shall be rich, some day."

"Ah, Anna, no; such thoughts are what they call, up at the park, the--the--what is it? Ah, I have it--dream of the pipe. Rich we shall never be, my Anna."

"But it's _so_ hard as it is. Only once-a-while can we be here together."

"Hard?" said he, and smoothed her hair. "You must not say that. It is so sweet when once-a-while it comes! It makes me so happy--"

"Dear!"

Depression seized him, now. Fiercely the thought rose in his mind that while he waited for these meetings with the keenest thoughts of joy, she, on the other hand, must look forward to them with emotions much less purely happy. That she was glad to be with him he did not doubt; he could not doubt; but what a contrast must his poor rooms offer to the luxurious surroundings of her other days! It would be only human if she yielded to an impulse to be critical, only human if, against her will, she felt contempt for his dire poverty. The black thought filled his soul with bitterness.

"Look," he said, and rose with a sudden gesture almost of despair.