Vignettes of Manhattan; Outlines in Local Color Part 28

"If you love him better than you love your work with us, go to him, in G.o.d's name," she said. "We seek no unwilling workers here. If you cannot give yourself to the service joyfully, putting all else behind you, go in peace--and may the blessing of G.o.d be with you!"

She bent forward and kissed the younger woman and left her, as Dexter Standish came and stood before her.

"Margaret," he said, firmly, "I have come for you."

Without a word she stepped down from the platform and went with him.

When they came to the door a hansom happened to pa.s.s and he called it.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked, glad to be under the shelter of his devotion and ready to relinquish all right to decide upon her future for herself.

"To my mother," he answered, as he lifted her into the vehicle. "She's at a hotel here. She'll be glad to see you."

"Will she?" the girl asked, doubtfully.

"Yes," was the authoritative answer, "she knows that I have always loved you."

(1897.)

THE SOLO ORCHESTRA

The air was thick and heavy, as it sometimes is in the great city towards nightfall after a hot spell has lasted for ten days. There were sponges tied to the foreheads of the horses that wearily tugged at the overladen cross-town cars. The shop-girls going home fanned themselves limply. The men released from work walked languidly, often with their coats over their arms. The setting sun burned fiery red as it sank behind the hills on the other side of the Hudson. But the night seemed likely to be as hot as the day had been, for the leaves on the trees were motionless now, as they had been all the afternoon.

We had been kept in town all through July by the slow convalescence of our invalid, and with even the coming of August we could not hope to get away for another ten days yet. The excessive heat had r.e.t.a.r.ded the recovery of our patient by making it almost impossible for her to sleep.

That evening, as it happened, she had dropped off into an uneasy slumber a little after six o'clock, and we had left her room gently in the doubtful hope that her rest might be prolonged for at least an hour.

I had slipped down-stairs and was standing on the stoop, with the door open behind me, when I heard the shrill notes of the Pan-pipes, accompanied by the jingling of a set of bells and the dull thumping of a drum. I understood at once that some sort of wandering musician was about to perform, and I knew that with the first few bars the needful slumber of our invalid would be interrupted violently.

I closed the door behind me softly and sprang down the steps, and sped swiftly to the corner around which the sounds seemed to proceed. If the fellow is a foreigner, I thought, I must give him a quarter and so bribe him to go away, and then he will return every evening to be bought off again, and I shall become a subscriber by the week to the concerts I do not wish to hear. But if the itinerant musician is an American, of course I can appeal to him, as one gentleman to another, and we shall not be troubled with him again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE AIR WAS THICK AND HEAVY"]

When I turned the corner I saw a strange figure only a few yards distant--a strange figure most strangely accoutred--a tall, thin, loose-jointed man, who had made himself appear taller still by wearing a high-peaked hat, the pinnacle of which was surmounted by a wire framework, in which half a dozen bells were suspended, ringing with every motion of the head. He had on a long linen duster, which flapped about his gaunt shanks encased in tight, black trousers. Between his legs he had a pair of cymbals, fastened one to each knee. Upon his back was strapped a small ba.s.s-drum, on which there was painted the announcement that the performer was "Prof. Theophilus Briggs, the Solo Orchestra." A drumstick was attached to each side of the drum and connected with a cord that ran down his legs to his feet, so that by beating time with his toes he could make the drum take part in his concert. The Pan-pipes that I had heard were fastened to his breast just at the height of his chin, so that he could easily blow into them by the slightest inclination of his head. In his left hand he held a fiddle, and in his right hand he had a fiddle-bow. Just as I came in sight, he tapped the fiddle with the bow, as though to call the attention of the orchestra. Then he raised the fiddle; not to his chin, for the Pan-pipes made this impossible, but to the other position, not infrequent among street musicians, just below the shoulder. Evidently I had just arrived in time.

He was not a foreigner, obviously enough. It needed only one glance at the elongated visage, with its good-natured eyes and its gentle mouth, to show that here was a native American whose parents and grandparents also had been born on this side of the Atlantic.

"I beg your pardon for interrupting you before you begin," I said, hastily, "but I shall be very much obliged indeed if you would kindly consent to give your performance a little farther down this street--a little farther away from this corner."

I saw at once that I had not chosen my words adroitly, for the kindly smile faded from his lips, and there was more than a hint of stiffness in his manner as he responded, slowly:

"I don't know as I quite catch your meaning," he began. "I ain't--"

"I'm sorry to have to ask you to go away," I interrupted, wis.h.i.+ng to explain; "I'd like to hear your concert myself; but the fact is, there's a member of my family slowly recovering from a long sickness, and she's only just fallen asleep now for the first time since midnight."

"Why didn't you say so at first?" was Professor Briggs's immediate response, and the genial smile returned to his thin face. "Of course, I don't want to worry no one with my music. And I'd just as lief as not go over the other side of the city if it will be any more agreeable to a sick person. I know myself what it is to have sickness in the house; there ain't no one knows what that is better than I do--no one don't."

"It is very kind of you, I'm sure," I said, as he walked back with me to the corner.

"Oh, that's all right," he returned. "It don't make any differ to me.

Now you just show me which house it is, so I can keep away from it."

I pointed out the door to him.

"The third one from the corner, is it?" he repeated. "Well, that's all right. And I am much obliged to you for telling me about it, for I should have hated to wake up a sick person; and these pipes and this drum ain't exactly soothing to the sick, are they?"

Then the smile ripened to a laugh, and after I had thanked him once more and shaken hands, he turned back and walked away, accompanied by the bevy of children who had encircled us expectantly ever since I had first spoken to him.

Before daybreak the next morning a storm broke over the city, and the heavy rain kept up all day, cooling the streets at last and was.h.i.+ng the atmosphere. With the pa.s.sing of the hot wave sleep became easier for us all. Men walked to their offices in the morning with a brisker step, and the shop-girls were no longer listless as they went to their work. Our invalid improved rapidly, and we could count the days before we should be able to take her out of the city.

The rain-storm had brought this relief on a Thursday, and the skies did not clear till Friday evening. The air kept its freshness over Sat.u.r.day and Sunday.

On the latter day, towards nightfall, I had taken my seat on the stoop, as is the custom of New-Yorkers kept in town during the summer months. I had brought out a cus.h.i.+on or two, and I was smoking my second after-supper cigar. I felt at peace with the world, and for the moment I had even dispensed with the necessity of thinking. It satisfied me to watch the rings of tobacco-smoke as they curled softly above my head.

Although I was thus detached from earth, I became at last vaguely conscious that a man had pa.s.sed before the house for two or three times, and that as he pa.s.sed he had stared at me as though he expected recognition. With his next return my attention was aroused. I saw that he was a tall, thin man, of perhaps fifty years of age, with a lean face clean-shaven, plainly dressed in black, and in what was obviously a Sunday suit, so revealing itself by its odd wrinkles and creases. As he came abreast of me, he slackened his gait and looked up. When he caught my eye he smiled. And then I recognized him at once. It was Professor Theophilus Briggs, the Solo Orchestra.

When he discovered that I knew him again he stood still. I rose to my feet and greeted him.

"I thought this was the house," he began, "but I wa'n't sure for certain. You see, my memory ain't any longer than a toad's tail. Still, I allowed I hadn't ought to disremember anything as big as a house--now had I?" and he laughed pleasantly. "And I thought that was you, too, setting up there on the porch," he went on, cheerfully. "And I'm glad it is, because I wanted to see you again to ask after the lady's health.

Did she have her sleep out that evening? And how is she getting on now?"

I thanked him again for his considerate action the first time we had met, as well as for his kindly inquiries now, and I was glad to give him good news of our patient. Then I recognized the duties of hospitality, and I asked my visitor if he would not "take something."

"No, thank you," he returned--"that is, if there ain't no offence. Fact is, I've quit. I don't look on the wine when it is red now, for it biteth like an adder and it stingeth like a serpent, and I don't want any more snakes in mine. I've had enough of them, I have. Croton extra dry is good enough for me now, I guess; and I ain't no use now for a happy family of blue mice and green rats and yellow monkeys. I've had whole menageries of them, too, in my time--regular Greatest Show on Earth, you know, and me with a season ticket. But it's like all these continuous performances, you get tired of it pretty soon--leastways, I did, and so I quit, and I don't touch a drop now."

"Sworn off?" I suggested, as I made room for him on the cus.h.i.+on by my side.

"Oh no," he said, simply, as he sat down; "I hadn't no need to swear off. I just quit; that's all there was to it."

"Some men do not find it so very easy to give up drinking," I remarked.

"That's so, too," he answered, "and I didn't either, for a fact. But I just had to do it, that's all. You see, I'd given drinking a fair show, and I'd found it didn't pay. Well, I don't like no trade where you're bound to lose in the long-run--seems a pretty poor way to do business, don't it? So I quit."

This seemed to call for a commonplace from me, and I was equal to the occasion. "It's easier to get into the way of taking a drop now and then than it is to get out of it."

"I got into it easy enough, I know that," he returned, smiling genially.

"It was when I was in the army. After a man has been laying out in the swamp for a week or so, a little rum ain't such a bad thing to have in the house."

Then it was that for the first time I noticed the bronze b.u.t.ton in his coat.

"So you were in the army?" I said, with the ever-rising envy felt by so many of my generation who lived through the long years of the Civil War mere boys, too young to take part in the struggle.

"I was a drummer-boy at Gettysburg," he answered; "and it warn't mighty easy for me, either."