LITTLE HUNGARY
"Not hungry, Red? After all that cold drive to-day? Would you like to
have Cynthia make you something special, dear?"
R.P. Burns, M.D., shook his head. "No, thanks." He straightened in his
chair, where he sat at the dinner table opposite his wife. He took up
his knife and fork again and ate valiantly a mouthful or two of the
tempting food upon his plate, then he laid the implements down
decisively. He put his elbow on the table and leaned his head upon his
hand. "I'm just too blamed tired to eat, that's all," he said.
"Then don't try. I'm quite through, too. Come in the living room and lie
down a little. It's such a stormy night there may be nobody in."
Ellen slipped her hand through his arm and led the way to the big blue
couch facing the fireplace. He dropped upon it with a sigh of fatigue.
His wife sat down beside him and began to pass her fingers lightly
through his heavy hair, with the touch which usually soothed him into
slumber if no interruptions came to summon him. But to-night her
ministrations seemed to have little effect, for he lay staring at a
certain picture on the wall with eyes which evidently saw beyond it into
some trying memory.
"Is the whole world lying heavy on your shoulders to-night, Red?" Ellen
asked presently, knowing that sometimes speech proved a relief from
thought.
He nodded. "The whole world--millions of tons of it. It's just because
I'm tired. There's no real reason why I should take this day's work
harder than usual--except that I lost the Anderson case this morning.
Poor start for the day, eh?"
"But you knew you must lose it. Nobody could have saved that poor
creature."
"I suppose not. But I wanted to save him just the same. You see, he
particularly wanted to live, and he had pinned his whole faith to me. He
wouldn't give it up that I could do the miracle. It hurts to disappoint
a faith like that."
"Of course it does," she said gently. "But you must try to forget now,
Red, because of to-morrow. There will be people to-morrow who need you
as much as he did."
"That's just what I'd like to forget," he murmured. "Everything's gone
wrong to-day--it'll go worse to-morrow."
She knew it was small use to try to combat this mood, so unlike his
usual optimism, but frequent enough of occurrence to make her understand
that there is no depression like that of the habitually buoyant, once it
takes firm hold. She left him presently and went to sit by the reading
lamp, looking through current magazines in hope of finding some article
sufficiently attractive to capture his interest, and divert his heavy
thoughts. His eyes rested absently on her as she sat there, a charming,
comradely figure in her simple home dinner attire, with the light on her
dark hair and the exquisite curve of her cheek.
It was a fireside scene of alluring comfort, the two central figures of
such opposite characteristics, yet so congenial. The night outside was
very cold, the wind blowing stormily in great gusts which now and then
howled down the chimney, making the warmth and cheer within all the more
appealing.
Suddenly Ellen, hunting vainly for the page she sought, lifted her head,
to see her husband lift his at the same instant.
"Music?" she questioned. "Where can it come from? Not outside on such a
night as this?"
"Did you hear it, too? I've been thinking it my imagination."
"It must be the wind, but--no, it _is_ music!"
She rose and went to the window, pushing aside draperies and setting her
face to the frosty pane. The next instant she called in a startled way:
"Oh, Red--come here!"
He came slowly, but the moment he caught sight of the figure in the
storm outside his langour vanished.
"Good heavens! The poor beggar! We must have him in."
He ran to the hall and the outer door, and Ellen heard his shout above
the howling of the wind.
"Come in--come in!"
She reached the door into the hall as the slender young figure stumbled
up the steps, a violin clutched tight in fingers purple with cold. She
saw the stiff lips break into a frozen smile as her husband laid his
hand upon the thinly clad shoulder and drew the youth where he could
close the door.
"Why didn't you come to the door and ring, instead of fiddling out there
in the cold!" demanded Burns. "Do you think we're heathen, to shut
anybody out on a night like this?"
The boy shook his head. He was a boy in size, though the maturity of his
thin face suggested that he was at least nineteen or twenty years old.
His dark eyes gleamed out of hollow sockets, and his black hair,
curling thickly, was rough with neglect. But he had snatched off his
ragged soft hat even before he was inside the door, and for all the
stiffness of his chilled limbs his attitude, as he stood before his
hosts, had the unconscious grace of the foreigner.
"Where do you come from?" Burns asked.
Again the stranger shook his head.
"He can't speak English," said Ellen.
"Probably not--though he may be bluffing. We must warm and feed him,
anyhow. Will you have him in here, or shall I take him in the office?"
Ellen glanced again at the shivering youth, noted that the purple hands
were clean, even to the nails, and led the way unhesitatingly into the
living room with all its beckoning warmth and beauty.
"Good little sport--I knew you would," murmured Burns, as he beckoned
the boy after him.
Ellen left the two alone together by the fire, while she went to prepare
a tray with Cynthia in the kitchen, filling it with the hearty food
Burns himself had left untouched. Big slices of juicy roast beef, two
hurriedly warmed sweet potatoes which had been browned in syrup in the
Southern style, crisp buttered rolls, and a pot of steaming coffee were
on the large tray which Cynthia insisted on carrying to the living-room
door for her mistress. Burns, jumping up at sight of her, took the tray,
while Ellen cleared a small table, drew up a chair, and summoned the
young stranger.
The low bow he made her before he took the chair proclaimed his
breeding, as well as the smile of joy which showed the flash of his even
white teeth in the firelight. He made a little gesture of gratitude
toward both Burns and Ellen, pressing his hands over his heart and then
extending them, the expression on his face touching in its starved
restraint. Then he fell upon the food, and even though he was plainly
ravenous he ate as manneredly as any gentleman. Only by the way he
finished each tiniest crumb could they know his extremity.
"By Jove, that beats eating it myself, if I were hungry as a faster on
the third day!" Burns exclaimed, as he sat turned away from the
beneficiary, his eyes apparently upon the fire. Ellen, from behind the
boy, smiled at her husband, noting how completely his air of fatigue had
fallen from him. Often before she had observed how any call upon R.P.
Burns's sympathies rode down his own need of commiseration.
"Hungarian, I think, don't you?" Burns remarked, as the meal was
finished, and the youth rose to bow his thanks once more. This time
there was a response. He nodded violently, smiling and throwing out his
hands.
"_Ungahree_!" he said, and smiled and nodded again, and said again,
"_Ungahree_!"
"He knows that word all right," said Burns, smiling back. "It's a land
of musicians. The fiddle's a good one, I'll wager."
He glanced at it as he spoke, and the boy leaped for it, pressing it to
his breast. He began to tune it.
"He thinks we want to be paid for his supper," Ellen exclaimed. "Can't
you make him understand we should like him to rest first?"
"I'd only convey to him the idea that we didn't want to hear him play,
which would be a pity, for we do. If he's the musician he looks, by
those eyes and that mouth, we'll be more than paid. Go ahead,
Hungary--it'll make you happier than anything we could do for you."
Clearly it would. Burns carried out the tray, and when he returned his
guest was standing upon the hearth rug facing Ellen, his bow uplifted.
He waited till Burns had thrown himself down on the couch again in a
sitting posture, both arms stretched along the back. Then he made his
graceful obeisance again, and drew the bow very slowly and softly over
the first string. And, at the very first note, the two who were watching
him knew what was to come. It was in every line of him, that promise.
It might have been his gratitude that he was voicing, so touching were
the strains that followed that first note. The air was unfamiliar, but
it sounded like a folk song of his own country, and he put into it all
the poignant, peculiar melody of such a song. His tones were exquisite,
with the sure touch of the trained violinist inspired and supported by
the emotional understanding of the genuine musician.
When he had finished he stood looking downward for a moment, then as
Burns said "Bravo!" he smiled as if he understood the word, and lifted
his instrument again to his shoulder. This time his bow descended upon
the strings with a full note of triumph, and he burst into the brilliant
performance of a great masterpiece, playing with a spirit and dash which
seemed to transform him. Often his lips parted to show his white teeth,
often he swung his whole body into the rhythm of his music, until he
seemed a very part of the splendid harmonies he made. His thin cheeks
flushed, his hollow eyes grew bright, he smiled, he frowned, he shook
his slender shoulders, he even took a stride to right or left as he
played on, as if the passion of his performance would not let him rest.
His listeners watched him with sympathetic and comprehending interest.
Warmed and fed, his Latin nature leaping up from its deep depression to
the exaltation of the hour, the appeal he made to them was intensely
pathetic. Burns, even more ardently than his wife, responded to the
appeal. He no longer lounged among the pillows of the broad couch; he
sat erect, his eyes intent, his lips relaxed, his cares forgot. He was a
lover of music, as are many men of his profession, and he was more than
ordinarily susceptible to its influences. He drank in the tones of the
master, voiced by this devoted interpreter, like wine, and like wine
they brought the colour to his face also, and the light to his eyes.
"Jove!" he murmured, as the last note died away, "he's a wonder. He must
be older than he looks. How he loves it! He's forgotten that he doesn't
know where he's to sleep to-night--but, by all that's fair, _we_ know,
eh?"
Ellen smiled, with a look of assent. Her own heart was warmly touched.
There was a small bedroom upstairs, plainly but comfortably furnished,
which was often used for impecunious patients who needed to remain under
observation for a day or two. It was at the service of any chance guest,
and the chance guest was surely with them to-night. There was no place
in the village to which such a vagrant as this might be sent, except
the jail, and the jail, for a musician of such quality, was unthinkable.
And in the night and storm one would not turn a dog outdoors to hunt for
shelter--at least not Red Pepper Burns nor Ellen Burns, his wife.
As if he could not stop, now that he had found ears to listen, the young
Hungarian played on. More and more profoundly did his music move him,
until it seemed as if he had become the very spirit of the instrument
which sung and vibrated under his thin fingers.
"My word, Len, this is too good to keep all to ourselves. Let's have the
Macauleys and Chesters over. Then we'll have an excuse for paying the
chap a good sum for his work--and somehow I feel that we need an excuse
for such a gentleman as he is."
"That's just the thing. I'll ask them."
She was on her way to the telephone when her husband suddenly called
after her, "Wait a minute, Len." She turned back, to see the musician,
his bow faltering, suddenly lower his violin and lean against his
patron, who had leaped to his support. A minute later Burns had him
stretched upon the blue couch, and had laid his fingers on the bony
wrist.
"Hang me for a simpleton, to feed him like that he's probably not tasted
solid food for days. The reaction is too much, of course. He's been
playing on his nerve for the last ten minutes, and I, like an idiot,
thought it was his emotional temperament."
He ran out of the room and returned with a wine glass filled with
liquid, which he administered, his arm under the ragged shoulders. Then
he patted the wasted cheek, gone suddenly white except where the excited
colour still showed in faint patches.
"You'll be all right, son," he said, smiling down into the frightened
eyes, and his tone if not his words seemed to carry reassurance, for the
eyes closed with a weary flutter and the gripping fingers relaxed.
"He's completely done," Burns said pityingly. He took one hand in his
own and held it in his warm grasp, at which the white lids unclosed
again, and the sensitive lips tried to smile.
"I'd no business to let him play so long--I might have known. Poor boy,
he's starved for other things than food. Do you suppose anybody's held
his hand like this since he left the old country? He thought he'd find
wealth and fame in the new one--and this is what he found!"
Ellen stood looking at the pair--her brawny husband, himself "completely
done" an hour before, now sitting on the edge of the couch with his new
patient's hand in his, his face wearing an expression of keen interest,
not a sign of fatigue in his manner; the exhausted young foreigner in
his ragged clothing lying on the luxurious couch, his pale face standing
out like a fine cameo against the blue velvet of the pillow under his
dark head. If a thought of possible contamination for her home's
belongings entered her mind it found no lodgment there, so pitiful was
her heart.
"Is the room ready upstairs?" Burns asked presently, when he had again
noted the feeble action of the pulse under his fingers. "What he needs
is rest and sleep, and plenty of both. Like the most of us he's kept up
while he had to, and now he's gone to pieces absolutely. To-morrow we
can send him to the hospital, perhaps, but for to-night--"
"The room is ready. I sent Cynthia up at once."
"Bless you, you never fail me, do you? Well--we may as well be on our
way. He's nearly asleep now."
Burns stood up, throwing off his coat. But Ellen remonstrated.
"Dear, you are so tired to-night. Let me call Jim over to help you carry
him up."
A derisive laugh answered her. "Great Cæsar, Len! The chap's a mere bag
of bones--and if he were twice as heavy he'd be no weight for me. Jim
Macauley would howl at the idea, and no wonder. Go ahead and open the
doors, please, and I'll have him up in a jiffy."
He stooped over the couch, swung the slender figure up into his powerful
arms, speaking reassuringly to the eyes which slowly opened in
half-stupefied alarm. "It's all right, little Hungary. We're going to
put you to bed, like the small lost boy you are. Bring his fiddle,
Len--he won't want that out of his sight."
He strode away with his burden, and marched up the stairs as if he were
carrying his own two-year-old son. Arrived in the small, comfortable
little room at the back of the house he laid his charge on the bed, and
stood looking down at him.
"Len, I'll have to go the whole figure," he said--and said it not as if
the task he was about to impose upon himself were one that irked him.
"Get me hot water and soap and towels, will you? And an old pair of
pajamas. I can't put him to bed in his rags."
"Shall I send for Amy?" questioned his wife, quite as if she understood
the uselessness of remonstrance.
"Not much. Amy's making out bills for me to-night, we'll not interrupt
the good work. Put some bath-ammonia in the water, please--and have it
hot."
Half an hour later he called her in to see the work of his hands. She
had brought him one of his surgical aprons with the bath equipment. With
his sleeves rolled up, his apron well splashed, his coppery hair more or
less in disarray from the occasional thrustings of a soapy hand, and his
face flushed and eager like a healthy boy's, Red Pepper Burns stood
grinning down at his patient. Little Hungary lay in the clean white bed,
his pale face shining with soap and happiness, his arms upon the
coverlet encased in the blue and white sleeves of Burns's pajamas, the
sleeves neatly turned back to accommodate the shortness of his arms. The
workman turned to Ellen as she came in.
"Comfy, eh?" he observed briefly.
"Absolutely, I should say, poor dear."
"Ah, you wouldn't have called him that before the bath. But he is rather
a dear now, isn't he? And I think he's younger than I did downstairs.
Not over eighteen, at the most, but fully forty in the experiences and
hardships that have brought him here. Well, we'll go away and let him
rest. Wish I knew the Hungarian for 'good-night,' don't you? Anyway, if
he knows any prayers he'll say 'em, I'll venture."
The dark eyes were watching him intently as he spoke, as if their owner
longed to know what this kind angel in the form of a big American
stranger was saying to him. And when, in leaving him, Burns once more
laid an exploring touch upon his wrist, the two thin hands suddenly
clutched the strong one and bore it weakly to lips which kissed it
fervently.
"Well, that's rather an eloquent thank-you, eh?" murmured Burns, as he
patted the hands in reply. "No doubt but he's grateful. Put the fiddle
where he can see it in the morning, will you, honey? Open the window
pretty well: I've covered him thoroughly, and he has a touch of fever to
keep him warm. Good-night, little Hungary. Luck's with you to-night, to
get into this lady's house."
Downstairs by the fireside once more, the signs of his late occupation
removed, Burns stretched out an arm for his wife.
"Come sit beside me in the Retreat," he invited, using the name he had
long ago given to the luxurious blue couch where he was accustomed,
since his marriage, to rest and often to catch a needed nap. He drew the
winsome figure close within his arm, resting his red head against the
dark one below it. "I don't seem to feel particularly tired, now," he
observed. "Curious, isn't it? Fatigue, as I've often noticed, is more
mental than physical--with most of us. Your ditch-digger is tired in his
back and arms, but the ordinary person is merely tired because his mind
tells him he is."
"You are never too tired to rouse yourself for one patient more," was
Ellen's answer to this. "The last one seems to cure you of the one
before."
Burns's hearty laugh shook them both. "You can't make me out such an
enthusiast in my profession as that. I turned away two country calls
to-night--too lazy to make 'em."
"But you would have gone if they couldn't have found anybody else."
"That goes without saying--no merit in that. The ethics of the
profession have to be lived up to, curse 'em as we may, at times. Len,
how are we to get to know something about little Hungary upstairs? Those
eyes of his are going to follow me into my dreams to-night."
"I suppose there are Hungarians in town?"
"Not a one that I ever heard of. Plenty in the city, though. The waiter
at the Arcadia, where I get lunch when I'm at the hospital, is a Magyar.
By Jove, there's an idea! I'll bring Louis out, if Hungary can't get
into the hospital to-morrow--and I warn you he probably can't. I
shouldn't want him to take a twelve-mile ambulance ride in this weather.
That touch of fever may mean simple exhaustion, and it may mean look out
for pneumonia, after all the exposure he's had. I'd give something to
know how it came into his crazy head to stand and fiddle outside a
private house in a January storm. Why didn't he try a cigar shop or some
other warm spot where he could pass the hat? That's what Louis must find
out for me, eh? Len, that was great music of his, wasn't it? The fellow
ought to have a job in a hotel orchestra. Louis and I between us might
get him one."
Burns went to bed still working on this problem, and Ellen rejoiced that
it had superseded the anxieties of the past day. Next morning he was
early at the little foreigner's bedside, to find him resting quietly,
the fever gone, and only the intense fatigue remaining, the cure for
which was simply rest and food.
"Shall we let him stay till he's fit?" Burns asked his wife.
"Of course. Both Cynthia and Amy are much interested, and between them
he will have all he needs."
"And I'll bring Louis out, if I have to pay for a waiter to take his
place," promised Burns.
He was as good as his word. When he returned that afternoon from the
daily visit to the city hospital, where he had always many patients, he
brought with him in the powerful roadster which he drove himself a
dark-faced, pointed moustached countryman of little Hungary, who spoke
tolerable English, and was much pleased and flattered to be of service
to the big doctor whom he was accustomed to serve in his best manner.
Taken to the bedside, Louis gazed down at its occupant with
condescending but comprehending eyes, and spoke a few words which caused
the thin face on the pillow to break into smiles of delight, as the
eager lips answered in the same tongue. Question and answer followed in
quick succession and Louis was soon able to put Burns in possession of a
few significant facts.
"He say he come to dis countree October. Try find work New York--no
good. He start to valk to countree, find vork farm. Bad time. Seeck,
cold, hungree. Fear he spoil hands for veolinn--dat's vhy he not take
vork on road, vat he could get. He museecian--good one."
"Does he say that?" Burns asked, amused.
Louis nodded. "Many museecians in Hungary. Franz come from Budapest. No
poor museecians dere. Budapest great ceety--better Vienna, Berlin,
Leipsic--oh, yes! See, I ask heem."
He spoke to the boy again, evidently putting a meaning question, for
again the other responded with ardour, using his hands to emphasize his
assertion--for assertion it plainly was.
Louis laughed. "He say ze countree of Franz Liszt know no poor museeck.
He named for Franz Liszt. He play beeg museeck for you and ze ladee
last night. So?"
"He did--and took us off our feet. Tell him, will you?"
"He no un'erstand," laughed Louis, "eef I tell him 'off de feet.'"
"That's so--no American idioms yet for him, eh? Well, say he made us
very happy with his wonderful music. I'll wager that will get over to
him."
Plainly it did, to judge by the eloquence of Franz's eyes and his joyous
smile. With quick speech he responded.
"He say," reported Louis, "he vant to vork for you. No wagees till he
plees you. He do anyting. You van' heem?"
"Well, I'll have to think about that," Burns temporized. "But tell him
not to worry. We'll find a job before we let him go. He ought to play in
a restaurant or theatre, oughtn't he, Louis?"
Louis shook his head. "More men nor places," he said. "But ve see--ve
see."
"All right. Now ask him how he came to stand in front of my house in the
storm and fiddle."
To this Louis obtained a long reply, at which he first shook his head,
then nodded and laughed, with a rejoinder which brought a sudden rush of
tears to the black eyes below. Louis turned to Burns.
"He say man lead heem here, make heem stand by window, make sign to
heem to play. I tell heem man knew soft heart eenside."
To the edge of his coppery hair the blood rushed into the face of Red
Pepper Burns. Whether he would be angry or amused was for the moment an
even chance, as Ellen, watching him, understood. Then he shook his fist
with a laugh.
"Just wait till I catch that fellow!" he threatened. "A nice way out of
his own obligations to a starving fellow man."
He sent Louis back to town on the electric car line, with a round fee in
his pocket, and the instruction to leave no stone unturned to find Franz
work for his violin, himself promising to aid him in any plan he might
formulate.
In three days the young Hungarian was so far himself that Burns had him
downstairs to sit by the office fire, and a day more put him quite on
his feet. Careful search had discovered a temporary place for him in a
small hotel orchestra, whose second violin was ill, and Burns agreed to
take him into the city. The evening before he was to go, Ellen invited a
number of her friends and neighbours in to hear Franz play.
Dressed in a well-fitting suit of blue serge Franz looked a new being.
The suit had been contributed by Arthur Chester, Burns's neighbour and
good friend next door upon the right, and various other accessories had
been supplied by James Macauley, also Burns's neighbour and good friend
next door upon the left and the husband of Martha Macauley, Ellen's
sister. Even so soon the rest and good food had filled out the deepest
hollows in the emaciated cheeks, and happiness had lighted the sombre
eyes. Those eyes followed Burns about with the adoring gaze of a
faithful dog.
"It's evident you've attached one more devoted follower to your train,
Red," whispered Winifred Chester, in an interval of the violin playing.
"Well, he's a devotee worth having," answered Burns, watching his
protégé as Franz looked over a pile of music with Ellen, signifying his
pleasure every time they came upon familiar sheets. The two had found
common ground in their love of the most emotional of all the arts, and
Ellen had discovered rare delight in accompanying that ardent violin in
some of the scores both knew and loved.
"He's as handsome as a picture to-night, isn't he?" Winifred pursued.
"How Arthur's old blue suit transforms him. And wasn't it clever of
Ellen to have him wear that soft white shirt with the rolling collar and
flowing black tie? It gives him the real musician's look."
"Trust you women to work for dramatic effects," murmured Burns. "Here we
go--and I'll wager it'll be something particularly telling, judging by
the way they both look keyed up to it. Ellen plays like a virtuoso
herself to-night, doesn't she?"
"It's enough to inspire any one to have that fiddle at her shoulder,"
remarked James Macauley, who, hanging over the couch, had been listening
to this bit of talk.
The performance which followed captured them all, even practical and
energetic Martha Macauley, who had often avowed that she considered the
study of music a waste of time in a busy world.
"Though I think, after all," she observed to Arthur Chester, who lounged
by her side, revelling in the entertainment with the zest of the man who
would give his whole time to affairs like these if it were not necessary
for him to make a living at the practice of some more prosaic
profession, "it's quite as much the interest of having such a stagey
character performing for us as it is his music. Did you ever see any
human being throw his whole soul into anything like that? One couldn't
help but watch him if he weren't making a sound."
"It's certainly refreshing, in a world where we all try to cover up our
real feelings, to see anybody give himself away so naïvely as that,"
Chester replied. "But there's no doubt about the quality of his music.
He was born, not made. And, by George, Len certainly plays up to him. I
didn't know she had it in her, for all I've been admiring her
accomplishments for four years."
"Ellen's all temperament, anyway," said Ellen's sister.
Chester looked at her curiously. Martha was a fine-looking young woman,
in a very wholesome and clean-cut fashion. There was no feminine
artfulness in the way she bound her hair smoothly upon her head, none in
the plain cut of her simple evening attire, absolutely none in her
manner. Glancing from Martha to her sister, as he had often done before
in wonderment at the contrast between them, he noted as usual how
exquisitely Ellen was dressed, though quite as simply, in a way, as her
practical sister. But in every line of her smoke-blue silken frock was
the most subtle art, as Chester, who had a keen eye for such matters and
a fastidious taste, could readily recognize. From the crown of her dark
head to the toe of the blue slipper with which she pressed the pedal of
the great piano which she had brought from her old home in the South,
she was a picture to feast one's eyes upon.
"Give me temperament, then--and let some other fellow take the common
sense," mused Arthur Chester to himself. "Ellen has both, and Red's in
luck. It was a great day for him when the lovely young widow came his
way--and he knows it. What a home she makes him--what a home!"
His eyes roved about the beautiful living room, as they had often done
before. His own home, next door, was comfortable and more than
ordinarily attractive, but he knew of no spot in the town which
possessed the subtle charm of this in which he sat. His wife, Winifred,
was always trying to reproduce within their walls the indefinable
quality which belonged to everything Ellen touched, and always saying in
despair, "It's no use--Ellen is Ellen, and other people can't be like
her."
"Better let it go at that," her husband sometimes responded. "You're
good enough for me." Which was quite true, for Winifred Chester was a
peculiarly lovable young woman. He noted afresh to-night that beside
Martha Macauley's somewhat heavy good looks Winifred seemed a creature
of infinite and delightful variety.
Perhaps the music had made them all more or less analytic, for in an
interval James Macauley, comfortably ensconced in a great winged chair
for which he was accustomed to steer upon entering this room, where he
was nearly as much at home as within his own walls, remarked, "What is
there about music like that that sets you to thinking everybody in sight
is about the best ever?"
"Does it have that effect on you?" queried Burns, lazily, from the blue
couch. "That's a good thing for a fellow of a naturally critical
disposition."
"Critical, am I? Why, within a week I paid you the greatest compliment
in my power."
"Really!"
"If it hadn't been for me this company would never have been gathered,
to listen to these wondrous strains."
"How's that?" Burns turned on him a suddenly interested eye.
"Oh, I'm not telling. It's enough that the thing came about." Macauley
looked around for general approbation.
Red Pepper sat up. "It was you stood the poor beggar up under my window,
on that howling night, was it, Jim? I've been looking for the man that
did it."
"Why," said Macauley comfortably, "the chap asked me to point him to a
doctor's office--said he had a bit of a cold. I said you were the one
and only great and original M.D. upon earth, and as luck would have it
he was almost at your door. I said that if he didn't find you in he
should come over to my house and we would fix him up with cough drops.
He thanked me and passed on. As luck would have it you were in."
Red Pepper glared at him. A chuckle from Arthur Chester caused him to
turn his eyes that way. He scrutinized his guests in turn, and detected
signs of mirth. Winifred Chester's pretty shoulders were shaking. Martha
Macauley's lips were pressed close together. The others were all
smiling.
Burns turned upon Winifred, who sat nearest. "Tell me the truth about
this thing," he commanded.
She shook her head, but she got no peace until at length she gave him
the tale.
"Arthur and I were over at Jim's. He came in and said a wager was up
among some men outside as to whether if that poor boy came and fiddled
under your window you'd take him in and keep him over night. Somebody'd
been saying things against you, down street somewhere--" she hesitated,
glancing at her husband, who nodded, and said, "Go on--he'll have it out
of us now, anyhow."
"They said," she continued, "that you were the most brutal surgeon in
the State, and that you hadn't any heart. Some of them made this wager,
and they all sneaked up here behind the one that steered Franz to your
window."
Burns's quick colour had leaped to his face at this recital, as they
were all accustomed to see it, but for an instant he made no reply.
Winifred looked at him steadily, as one who was not afraid.
"We were all in a dark window watching. If you hadn't taken him in we
would. But--O Red! We knew--we knew that heart of yours."
"And who started that wager business?" Burns inquired, in a muffled
voice.
"Why, Jim, of course. Who else would take such a chance?"
"Was it a serious wager?"
"Of course it was."
"Even odds?"
"No, it was Jim against the crowd. And for a ridiculously high stake."
Red Pepper glared at James Macauley once more. "You old pirate!" he
growled. "How dared you take such a chance on me? And when you know I'm
death on that gambling propensity of yours?"
"I know you are," replied Macauley, with a satisfied grin. "And you know
perfectly well I haven't staked a red copper for a year. But that sort
of talk I overheard was too much for me. Besides, I ran no possible risk
for my money. I was betting on a sure thing."
Burns got up, amidst the affectionate laughter which followed this
explanation, and walked over to where Franz stood, his eager eyes fixed
upon his new and adored friend, who, he somehow divined, was the target
for some sort of badinage.
"Little Hungary," he said, smiling into the uplifted, boyish face, with
his hand on the slender shoulder, "it came out all right that time, but
don't you ever play under my window again in a January blizzard. If you
do, I'll kick you out into the storm!"