Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey - The Old Flute Player
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Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey >> The Old Flute Player
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9 [Illustration: Anna _Frontispiece_]
The Old Flute-Player
A Romance of To-day
BY
EDWARD MARSHALL
AND
CHARLES T. DAZEY
_Illustrations by_
CLARENCE ROWE
_Frontispiece by_
J. KNOWLES HARE, JR.
G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
_Copyright, 1910, By_
G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
ILLUSTRATIONS
Anna _Frontispiece_
Almost instantly the Italian bully was sprawling in the scuppers and
Vanderlyn had raised the old man to his feet
It was as if the "sweet birds singing in his heart" had risen and were
perched, all twittering and cooing, chirping, carolling upon his lips
"She is not guilty! No; it is I--I--I!"
The Old Flute-Player
CHAPTER I
Herr Kreutzer was a mystery to his companions in the little London
orchestra in which he played, and he kept his daughter, Anna, in such
severe seclusion that they little more than knew that she existed and
was beautiful. Not far from Soho Square, they lived, in that sort of
British lodgings in which room-rental carries with it the privilege of
using one hole in the basement-kitchen range on which to cook food
thrice a day. To the people of the lodging-house the two were nearly
as complete a mystery as to the people of the orchestra.
"Hi sye," the landlady confided to the slavey, M'riar, "that Dutch
toff in the hattic, 'e's somethink in disguise!"
"My hye," exclaimed the slavey, who adored Herr Kreutzer and intensely
worshiped Anna. She jumped back dramatically. "_Not bombs!_"
The neighborhood was used to linking thoughts of bombs with thoughts
of foreigners whose hair hung low upon their shoulders as, beyond a
doubt, Herr Kreutzer's did, so M'riar's guess was not absurd. England
offers refuge to the nightmares of all Europe's political indigestion.
Soho offers most of them their lodgings. For years M'riar had been
vainly waiting, with delicious fear, for that terrific moment when she
should discover a loaded bit of gas-pipe in some bed as she yanked off
the covers. Now real drama seemed, at last, to be coming into her dull
life. Somethink in disguise--Miss Anna's father! She hoped it was
_not_ bombs, for bombs _might_ mean trouble for him. She resolved that
should she see a bobby trying to get up into the attic she would pour
a kettleful of boiling water on him.
The landlady relieved her, somewhat, by her comment of next moment.
"'E's too mild fer bombs by 'arf," she said, with rich disgust.
"Likelier 'e's drove away, than that 'e's one as wishes 'e could
drive. _Hi_ sye, fer guess, that 'e's got titles, an' sech like, but's
bean cashiered." (The landlady had had a son disgraced as officer of
yeomanry and used a military term which, to her mind, meant exiled.)
"'E's got that look abaht 'im of 'avin' bean fired hout."
"No fault o' 'is, then," said the slavey quickly, voicing her earnest
partisanship without a moment's wait. She even looked at her employer
with a belligerent eye.
"'E _doos_ pye reg'lar," the landlady admitted with an air which
showed that she had more than once had tenants who did not.
"Judgin' from 'is manners an' kind 'eart 'e _might_ be _princes_,"
said the slavey, drawing in her breath exactly as she would if
sucking a ripe orange.
"An' 'is darter might be princesses!" exclaimed the landlady with a
sniff. Quite plainly she did not approve of the seclusion in which
Herr Kreutzer kept his daughter. "Five years 'ave them two lived 'ere
in this 'ere 'ouse, an' not five times 'as that there man let that
there 'aughty miss stir hout halone!"
"'Ow 'eavingly!" sighed the maid, who never, in her life, had been
cared for, at all, by anyone.
"'Ow fiddlesticks!" the landlady replied. "You'd think she might be
waxworks, liable to melt if sun-shone-on! Fer _me_, _Hi_ says that
them as is too fine for Soho houghtn't to be _livin'_ 'ere. That's
w'at _Hi_ says--halthough 'e pyes as reg'lar as clockworks."
"Clockworks fawther with a waxworks darter!" cried the slavey, who had
a taste for humor of a kind. "Th' one 'ud stop if t'other melted.
_That's_ sure."
"'E hidolizes 'er that much hit mykes me think o' Roman Catholics an'
such," the landlady replied.
Then, for a time, she paused in thought, while the slavey lost herself
in dreams that, possibly, she had been serving and been worshiping a
real princess. As the height of the ambition of all such as she, in
London, is to be humble before rank, the mere thought filled her with
delight and multiplied into the homage of a subject for an over-lord
the love she felt already for the charming German girl of whom they
spoke.
"She _might_ be," said the landlady, at length.
"W'at? Princesses?" inquired the wistful slavey.
The landlady looked shrewdly at her. It might be that by thus
confiding to the servant her own speculations as to her lodgers'
rank, she had been sowing seed of some extravagance. Hypnotized by the
idea, the slavey might slip to the two mysterious Germans, sometime,
something which would not be charged upon the bill! "Nothink of the
sort!" she cried, therefore, hastily. "An' don't you never tyke no
coals to 'em that you don't tell abaht--you 'ear?"
The slavey promised, but the seed was sown. From that time on full
many a small attention fell to the Herr Kreutzer and his pretty,
gentle-mannered, dark-haired, big-eyed Anna of which the landlady knew
nothing, and many a dream of romance did the smutted slavey's small,
sad eyes see in the kitchen fire on lonely evenings while she was
waiting for the last lodger to come in before she went to bed behind
the kindlings-bin. And the central figures of these dreams were,
always, the beautiful young German girl and her dignified,
independent, shabby, courteous old father.
In the small orchestra where Kreutzer played, he made no friends among
the other musical performers; when the manager of the dingy little
theatre politely tried to pump him as to details of his history he
managed to evade all answers in the least illuminating, although he
never failed to do so with complete politeness.
All that really was known of him was that he had arrived in London,
years ago, with only two possessions which he seemed to value, and,
indeed, but two which were worth valuing. One of these, of course, was
his exquisite young daughter, then a little child; the other was his
wonderful old flute. The daughter he secluded with the jealous care of
a far-eastern parent; the flute he played upon with an artistic skill
unequalled in the history of orchestras in that small theatre.
With it he could easily have found a place in the best orchestra in
London, but, apparently, he did not care to offer such a band his
services. On the one or two occasions when a "cruising listener" for
the big orchestras came to the little theatre, heard the old man's
masterful performance, found himself enthralled by it and made the
marvelous flute-player a rich offer, the old man refused peremptorily
even to talk the matter over with him--to the great delight of the
small manager, who was paying but a pittance for his splendid work.
So anxious did Herr Kreutzer seem to be to keep from winning notice
from the outside world, indeed, that when a stranger who might
possibly be one of those explorers after merit in dim places appeared
there in the little theatre, the other members of the orchestra felt
quite sure of wretched playing from the grey-haired flutist. If it
chanced that they had noticed no such stranger, but yet Herr Kreutzer
struck false notes persistently, they all made sure that they had
missed the entrance of the "cruiser," searched the audience for him
with keen and speculative eyes and played their very best, certain
that the man was there and hopeful of attracting the attention and the
approbation which the old flute-player shunned. More than one had thus
been warned, to their great good.
And Herr Kreutzer, on such evenings, was privileged to strike false
notes with painful iteration, even to the actual distress of auditors,
without a word of criticism from the leader or the manager.
Excruciating discord from the flute, on three or four nights of a
season, was accepted as part payment for such playing, upon every
other night, as seldom had been heard from any flute in any orchestra
in London or elsewhere.
The theatre saw very little of the daughter. Once at the beginning of
the run of every fit new play, the flute-player requested of the
manager a box and always got it. In this box, on such occasions, his
daughter sat in solitary state, enjoying with a childish fervor the
mumming of the actors on the stage, the story of the play, the music
of the orchestra. Such glimpses, only, had the theatre of her. Her
father never introduced her to an attache of the establishment. Once,
after she had grown into magnificent young womanhood, he very angrily
refused an earnest supplication for an introduction from the manager,
himself. On the nights when she came to the theatre he took her to the
box, before the overture began, and she sat there, quite alone, until
he went to her after the audience had been "played out."
His own exclusiveness was very nearly as complete. He formed no
intimacies among the members of the orchestra with whom he played
eight times a week, although his face showed, sometimes, that he
yearned to join their gossip, in the stuffy little room beneath the
stage, which housed them when they were not in their places in the
crowded space "in front" allotted to them.
"_Tiens!_" said the Frenchman who played second-violin. "Ze ol' man
have such fear zat we should wiss to spik us wiz 'is daughtaire, zat
'e trit us lak we 'ave a seeckness catchable!"
It was almost true. He did avoid the chance of making her acquainted
with any of the folk with whom his daily routine threw him into
contact, with a care which might suggest a fear of some sort of
contagion for her. But not all the members of the orchestra resented
it. The drummer (who also played the triangle and tambourine when need
was, imitated railway noises with shrewd implements, pumped an
auto-horn when motor-cars were supposed to be approaching or departing
"off-stage" and made himself, in general, a useful man on all
occasions) was his firm friend and partisan.
"Garn, Frawgs!" he sneered, to the resentful Frenchman. "Yer 'yn't fit
ter sye ther time o' dye ter 'er; yer knows yer 'yn't."
"Wat? To ze daughtaire of a flute!" the Second-Violin replied. "W'y--"
"Garn!" said the drummer. "Sye, yer myke me sick! You, with yer
black-'aired fyce an' paytent boots! Hi bean 'ammerin' 'ide in
horchestras since me tenth birthdye, but Hi knows a hangel w'en Hi
sees one, an' lawst night Hi missed a 'ole bar on the snare fer
lookin' up at 'er just once. Hi never see a brunette look so
habsolutely hinnocent. Th' Ol' Nick's peekin' out o' brunettes' faces,
somew'eres, mostly. Don't know w'at she myde me think of--m'ybe
wreaths o' roses red an' pink, an' m'ybe crowns o' di'mun's--but Hi
missed a 'ole bar on th' snare fer thinking somethink."
"_Tiens!_" the Frenchman began scornfully. "He is too much--"
"Garn!" said the drummer, threateningly, and it may be that the tinkle
of the "ready" bell prevented something more than words between them,
for the drummer, at the time, was holding the bass-drum-stick. He
could have struck a mighty blow with it.
Just when the thought of leaving for America first began to grow in
Kreutzer's mind, it would be hard to say, but it took definite form
immediately subsequent to the London visit of a Most Exalted Personage
from Prussia. On the last day of this Most Exalted Personage's stay
Herr Kreutzer was enjoying, with his Anna, the long Sunday twilight in
Hyde Park. They often strolled there of a Sunday evening. The Most
Exalted Personage, being in a democratic mood and wishful of seeing
London and its people quietly, was also strolling in Hyde Park and met
the father and the daughter, face to face.
There was nothing, so far as Anna saw, about the stranger in plain
_mufti_, to make her father drop his head, pull down his hat and
hurry on, almost as if in sudden panic, dragging her by a slender
wrist clasped in a hand which trembled; but he did do all these
things, while the queer gentleman with the upturned moustaches (Anna
had no notion who he was) stopped stonestill in his stroll and gazed
after them with puzzled eyes in which a semi-recognition and a very
lively curiosity seemed growing.
"Who is he, father?" Anna asked, in English, which the father much
preferred to German from her lips and which she spoke with carefully
exact construction, but with charming rolling of the r's and hissing
of the s's. Her accent was much more pronounced than his, due,
doubtless, to the fact that while he went daily to his little corner
of the English world to earn their living, her seclusion was complete.
She saw few English save M'riar and the landlady--whose accent never
tempted her to imitation. "He seemed to know you," she went on. "He
seemed to wish, almost, to speak with you, but seemed to feel not
positive that you _were_ you."
Kreutzer gave her a quick glance, then seemed to pull himself together
with an effort. He assumed a carefully surprised air. "Who is he? Who
is who, mine liebschen?"
"The gentleman from whom you ran away?"
"I run!" said Kreutzer, doubling his demeanor of astonishment as if in
total ignorance of what she meant. "I run! Why should I run, my Anna?
Why should I run from anybody?"
The daughter looked at him and sighed and then she looked at him and
smiled, and said no more. So many times, in other days, had things
like this occurred; so many times had she been quite unable to get any
lucid exposition from him of the strange occurrences, that, lately,
she never probed him for an explanation. She well knew, in advance,
that she would get none, and was unwilling to compel him into laboring
evasions. But such matters sorely puzzled her.
She did not learn, therefore, that the tall and handsome man who had
so curiously stared at them was the Exalted Personage; she did not
learn why it had been that from him Kreutzer had fled swiftly with
her, obviously worrying intensely lest they might be followed. She did
not know why, later, she was in closer espionage than ever. Two or
three days afterwards, when Kreutzer came in with his pockets full of
steamship time-tables and emigration-agents' folders, she did not
dream that it was that the Most Exalted Personage had cast his eyes
upon them, rather than the fact that wonderful advantages were
promised to the emigrant by all this steamship literature, which had
made him make a wholly unexpected plan to go from London and to cross
the mighty sea. He swore her to close secrecy.
It was with the utmost difficulty that she concealed their destination
from the landlady and from the slavey who assisted her in packing the
small trunks which held their all. She was always glad of anything
which made it absolutely necessary for them to be with her, for her
father, long ago, had told her not to ask them into their small rooms
when their presence there was not imperatively needed. She was and had
been, ever since she could remember clearly, very lonely, full of
longing for companionship--so very full of longing that, had he not
commanded it, she would not have been, as he was, particular about the
social status of the friends she made.
Even poor M'riar's love was very sweet and dear to her, and now, as
she was packing for departure the meagre garments of her wardrobe, her
scanty little fineries, the few small keepsakes she had hoarded of
the pitifully scarce bright days of her life (almost every one of
these a gift from her old father, token of a birth-or feast-day) it
was with a sudden burst of tears, a rushing, overwhelming feeling of
anticipatory loneliness, that she looked at the grimy little child who
was assisting her.
M'riar fell back on her haunches with a gasp. "Garn!" she cried.
"Garn, Miss! Don't yer dare to beller!"
A stranger might have thought she was impertinent, for "garn" on
cockney lips means "go on, now," in the slang of the United States,
and "beller" is not elegant, but Anna knew that she did not intend an
impudence.
"I feel very sad at leaving you, M'ri-arrr." There was pathos, now, in
the way Miss Anna rolled her r's.
"Sad! Huh! Hi thinks Hi'll die of it!" was the reply, accompanied by
more choked sobs and many snuffles. "An' yer won't heven tell me
w'ere yer hoff to!"
"I don't know, exactly, where we're off to M'ri-arrr. Somewhere very
far--oh, very far!"
M'riar, in spite of a firm resolution not to yield to tears, cast
herself upon the floor in anguish, and, as she kicked and howled,
grasped one of Anna's hands and kissed it, mumbling it, as an
anguished mother might a babe's--the hand of an exceedingly loved babe
whom she expected, soon, to lose by having given it to someone in
adoption.
At that time M'riar looked upon the separation as inevitable. The wild
scheme which, afterwards, grew in her alert and worried brain, had not
yet had its birth and she could not take the thought of her Miss
Anna's going with composure.
"Hi didn't want ter 'oller," she said, at length, when she had
regained her self-control, "but that there yell hinside o' me was
bigger'n Hi 'ad room fer, Miss."
"It is very sweet of you to weep," said Anna gravely, "although it is
not sweet to _hear_ you weep; but I think it means you love me,
M'ri-arrr, doesn't it?"
"Hi fair wusships yer," said M'riar. "Fair wusships yer."
And there was a strange thing about Miss Anna. It did not in the least
surprise her to be told with an undoubted earnestness, indeed to know,
that she was literally worshiped as a goddess might be. There was
something in her blood which made this seem quite right and proper.
She looked at the poor slavey with the kind eyes of a princess gazing
at a weeping subject, whose suffering has come through loyalty, and
kindly smiled.
"It is very nice of you, M'riarr. I am fond of you, M'riarr."
"I knows yer is; I knows yer is," said M'riar. "Tyke me with yer,
won't yer, Miss?"
"Oh, I couldn't take you with me," Anna answered, as she laid a kind,
if queenly hand upon the poor thing's cheek. "But you must let me know
just where you are at all times, and, perhaps, some day, I will send
you something to remind you of me."
"Hi won't need nothink ter remind me, Miss," said M'riar. "Hi'll
remember yer, hall right."
The next morning came a four-wheeled cab up to the dingy door, to the
vast amazement of the other lodgers, and, indeed, the entire
neighborhood. Into this Herr Kreutzer handed his delightful daughter
with as much consideration as a minister could show a queen, and then,
with courtly bows, climbed in himself, having, with much ceremony,
bade the landlady adieu. Anna cast a keen glance all about, expecting
a last glimpse of M'riar, but had none and was grieved. So soon do
the affections of the lower classes fade!
After the cab started, the Herr Kreutzer carefully pulled down the
blinds a little way, on both side windows, so that the inside of the
cab was dark enough to make it impossible for wayfarers to note who
was within.
"Father," said Anna, curiously, "why do you pull down the blinds?"
"Er--er--mine eyes. The light is--"
He did not complete the sentence.
"Father," she asked presently, "why did you change the tickets?"
"Change the tickets, Anna? I have not changed the tickets."
"But you told the landlady we were to sail from Southampton. The
tickets, which you showed to me, say Liverpool."
"A little strategy, mine Anna; just a little strategy."
"I do not understand."
"No, liebschen; you do not," he granted gravely.
A moment later and the cab jounced over a loose paving-block, almost
unseating M'riar from her place on the rear springs. The little scream
she gave attracted the attention of the vehicle's two passengers and
they peered from the window at the rear; but it was small and high and
they did not catch sight through it of the strange, ragged little
figure, with the set, determined face, which was clinging to their
chariot with a desperate tenacity.
M'riar's feelings would have been difficult of real analysis and she
did not try to analyze them, any more than a devoted dog who
desperately follows his loved master when that master is not cognizant
of it and does not wish it, tries to analyze the dog-emotions which
compel him to cling to the trail. Such a dog knows quite enough, at
such a time, to keep clear of his master's view, although his
following is an expression of his love and though that love is born,
he knows, of like love in his master's heart for him. M'riar was
yielding to an uncontrolled, an uncontrollable impulse of love, and,
though her brain was active with the cunning of the slums, had not the
least idea of combatting it, or letting anything less strong than
actual death would be in its deterrent force, prevent her from obeying
the swift impulse to the very end. She had not taken any of her
mistress' money, when she fled. Her only sin, she told herself, was
leaving without notice. She had only made a little bundle of her own
worn, scanty, extra clothes, which, now, was tied about her waist and
hung beneath the skirt she wore. There were not many of those clothes,
so the dangling bundle did not discommode her when she dodged behind
the cab, ran beside it (on the far side from the lodging-house) till
it turned a corner, and then sought her perch upon its springs
behind. In her mouth were seven golden sovereigns, the hoard of her
whole lifetime, barring some small silver and an Irish one-pound note
stowed in her left stocking. Her right stocking had been darned till
it was nowise to be trusted with one-eighth of her whole wealth. She
had no dimmest thought of whither she was bound; she only knew that
she would go, if Fate permitted, wherever Anna went, to serve her.
Arrived at the confusion of the railway station known as Waterloo,
Herr Kreutzer helped his Anna from the cab, paid the cabman from his
slender store of silver, hired a porter with another shilling to take
all their luggage to the train and went to get their third-class
railway tickets, keeping, meanwhile, a keen eye for anyone who looked
to be a German of position, and noting with delight that in the crowd
not one pair of moustaches stuck straight up beside its owner's nose.
Slinking after him, at a slight distance, but near enough to hear
quite all he said, came M'riar, and, when he had passed on, bought for
herself a third-class ticket to Southampton. Her keen eyes fixed upon
the backs of the two folk with whom, without their knowledge, she had
cast her fortunes, she then went into the train-shed and found a
place, at length, in the next carriage to the one which they had
entered. Then she trained a wary eye out of the window, to make sure
they did not change their minds and slip out and away without her
knowledge before the train departed.
On the arrival in Southampton she waited in the railway carriage till
she saw them started down the platform; then, again, she trailed them.
Two minutes after the Herr Kreutzer had purchased steerage tickets on
the _Rochester_ for far America, M'riar had bought one for herself.
When the German and his daughter reached the shore-end of the
slightly-angled gang-plank leading to the steamer's steerage-deck
(close it was beside the steeper one which led up to the higher and
more costly portions of the ship) she was not far behind them,
trailing, watchful, terrified by the ship's mighty warning whistle
which reverberated in the dock-shed till her teeth were set a-chatter
in an agony of fear of the mere noise.
At this point she nearly lost her self-control and let her quarries
see her, for Herr Kreutzer, in his hurry and excitement, dropped one
of his small hand-bags. Almost she sprang to pick it up for him,
through mere working of her strong instinct to serve him. Indeed, she
would have done so had it not been for a tall and handsome youth.
This young man's eyes, M'riar had been noting, had been closely fixed
upon the lovely face of Anna, doubly lovely, flushed as it now was by
the excitement of the start of a great journey. He sprang forward,
picked up the handbag and presented it to the old German with a frank
good-fellowship of courtesy which took not the least account of the
mere fact that he, himself, was on the point of stepping to the
gang-plank leading to the first-cabin quarters, while Kreutzer,
obviously, was about to seek the steerage-deck. M'riar, with her
sharp, small eyes, noted that the youth, strong, graceful, tall,
sun-burned and distinctly wholesome of appearance, did not look at
Kreutzer, as he did the little service, but at Anna.
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