Down in the new tenement Anna and her little slave, M'riar, worked
hard, that day, at cleaning.
"W'ere Hi wuz born," M'riar gravely commented, "we wuz brought up on
dirt an' liked hit, but we never wusn't greedy for hit, like th' way
these folks, 'ere, 'as been."
Anna, in the next room, was for the first time in her life working
with a scrubbing-brush, and, presently, M'riar heard its swish.
"Hi s'y!" she cried, and dashed into the gloomy cubby-hole. "Wot's
this? You scrubbin'? Drop it, now, you 'ear? Hit 'yn't fer me to show
no disrespeck, Frow_line_, but--drop it. Hi 'yn't a-goin' to have them
pretty 'ands hall spoilt."
"But, M'riarrr, I just _love_ to scrub."
"Don't love hanythink so vulgar," M'riar replied without a moment's
hesitation. "Don't _you_ bother lovin' hanythink but just the guvnor,
and--and--Mr. Vanderlyn." She looked down at blushing Anna who, upon
her knees, was astonished almost into full paralysis. And then she
shrilly laughed.
"_Hi_ knows!" said she. "_Hi_ knows."
"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 blushing furiously.
"Blushin' 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 assured 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 Saturday, he had put his watch in
pawn. 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 passed 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 astonishing companionship
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 amusement 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."
"Worried?"
"Yes. Always in the past have I been with you. Now you are alone and
beautiful. And of life you know so little, while of love--you
know--ah, nothing!"
Anna was not sure of this. She had been wondering, indeed, if she did
not know much of it. It startled her to have her father speak of it.
There had been tremors in her heart, hot flushes in her cheeks, dim
mists before her eyes when she had thought about young Vanderlyn, of
which she was suspicious--very. No; she was by no means sure that she
knew nothing about love--but she did not say this to her father.
Instead she pressed her dark head closer to his thick white mane.
"Love!" said she. "It is such a pretty word. Tell me something of it,
father."
He smiled down at her. "Ah, you have some interest! Well, I tell you."
Into his old eyes there came the deep and happy glow of reminiscence
of bright days. She knew the look--always was it in them when he was
thinking of her mother and never was it in them at any other time.
"Love," said he, "it is life's spring-time. Ah, your mother, Anna!
Your dear mother! It is the splendor and the glory of the dawn." The
old man's head was back, his eyes were closed and on his face there
was a singularly sweet and simple smile, more like that of a youth
than that of one whose years stretch far behind him. "It is the light
that falls from heaven and turns this grim old world into a paradise.
It is the hand of fate that grips the heart till we must
follow--follow. We cannot hold back, my Anna; I could not hold back,
your lovely mother, she could not hold back. Ah, one must follow when
Love's hand is clasped about one's heart and leads! Some day you will
understand and many things will then be clear to you. It is the glow
of ardor in the eyes, reflected from the flame which burns deep in the
heart--the flame which melts, which welds a link, a mystic bond, to
bind for all eternity." He opened his eyes, now, and smiled at her.
"That, liebschen--that is love--ah, that is love. Your mother taught
me all about it. Be careful--careful, Anna--about love!"
"It sounds so splendid as you speak of it! How shall I know when it
has come to me?"
The old man's caution was all gone; his fears now all forgotten. He
was thinking of past days, dear days, young days.
"How shall you know?" he asked, and smiled again, this time in soft,
affectionate derision. "You will not mistake. Mistake? It is
impossible. When your heart leaps at the sound of his dear footsteps;
when the world is empty till he comes and then is, ah, so full that
you are crowded out of it into the valleys of a paradise; when little
chills run over you one moment and the next the hot blood makes your
cheeks into twin roses! How shall you know? Ah, there are many signs!"
"And do you think that such a love will ever come to me?"
"To you? Of course." The old man caught himself up short, just there,
and lost his rapt expression. There were still hopes in his heart of
realization for his daughter of all the brilliant dreams of his own
youth--those dreams which had so sadly gone quite wrong. She must do
nothing which would shut her from it if ever it should become
possible. "Yes; it will come to you, of course; but not for a long
time, and you must be very careful," he added in a greatly altered,
less magnetic voice. "You must love no one until I tell you."
"Can one make love wait?"
"Ah--well--yes--one _must_!"
"But father--"
"Wait! You must not question me, mine liebschen; but, someday it may
be that I shall no longer flute-play in a garden. Someday, maybe,
things are better with us. You must wait a while, to see if that comes
true. Then--then, when it _is_ true, I pick out for you, ach! the
handsomest, the bravest gentleman that I can find. I bring him to you,
and I say: 'Anna, you love him!' That is all."
She was dismayed. This was not to her taste at all! "But father--"
The old German in his worry lest the life that she must lead as the
companion to the rich New Yorker might induce her to let down the
barriers of the exclusiveness which that which he could not, at
present name, implanted in his very soul, looked sternly at her. He
wished, now, to end the talk of it. "That, Anna," he said gravely,
"that is all."
"But you tell me you will pick him out and bring him to me! Must he
not love me?"
This again made him forget a little. It brought back other vivid
memories of those bygone days when, young and ardent, he had gone to
this girl's mother with his heart aflame.
"Love you? Yah; of course he loves you. You think love is a game of
solitaire? But--he _will_ love you, liebschen. To fall very much in
love with you he has only once to see you. But, Anna, it is not with
women as it is with men. _You_ must _conceal_ your love, until he
speaks."
She smiled. "And, father, what shall I do then?"
"Do when he speaks? When comes the right man and tells you that he
loves you, asking you to be his wife, mine Anna, you must answer: 'For
this so great honor, sir, I thank you, and I give you in return my
heart and hand.'"
Ah, the visions in his mind as he said this, of the far-off German
village, of the dainty maiden standing there before a gallant youthful
gentleman, trying to be as formal, when she placed her hand in his, as
lifelong training in the stiff formalities of life had made him, in
his embarrassment, while he told his great devotion to her! Thinking
back along the path of years that led to that bright garden, how Herr
Kreutzer smiled!
"How beautiful that sounds!" said Anna, softly. "'For this so great
honor, I thank you, and I give you in return my heart and hand.'"
It brought the old flute-player back from the far garden.
"Do not practice on it yet," he said, without unkindness, but with a
firm tone which gave his words almost the stern significance of a real
order. "There is no hurry, liebschen, but, when the time is ripe for
it, ah, it will come. Yah; it will come."
Her thoughts were full of all this talk of love and marriage as she
went to Mrs. Vanderlyn's next morning, to take up again her routine of
companion and instructor to the lady in the German language. She was
not so very fond of Mrs. Vanderlyn. That lady was too much absorbed in
her ambition to gain real importance in the social world to leave much
time for being lovable to anybody but her son. That she was fond of
him no one could doubt, but he was winning his own way, and did not
need her mother care. It left her free for other things; it made the
other things essential to her happiness. How empty is a mother's life
when from it, out into the world, her only son goes venturing, none
but a mother knows. Mrs. Vanderlyn had striven to fill hers with
social episodes and had not done so to her satisfaction. There were
things, she had discovered, which money, by itself, cannot accomplish
and the learning had astonished her. She had thought a golden key
would certainly unlock all gates. It had come to her as inspiration
that the easy way for an American to gain social favor in New York,
where, hitherto, gates have been closed to her, might be to purchase
social favor, first, in England or in Germany and then come back with
the distinction of it clinging like a perfume to her garments. But the
purchase had not been an easy matter. Abroad, to her amazement, money
had its mighty value, but only as a superstructure. There must be
firmer stuff for the foundation--family. Her family was traced too
easily--for the tracing was too brief. It ended with abruptness which
was startling, two generations back, in a far western mining camp.
Beyond that all the cutest experts in false genealogies had failed to
carry it convincingly.
"Anna," she said to the attentive girl, "tell me about your family in
Germany."
"My family?" said Anna. "There is no family of mine, now, left in
Germany. My father--he is here with me, my mother died when I was very
young. I can remember her a little, but _so_ little that it makes my
heart ache, for it is so ver-ry little."
"I mean about your grandfather and grandmother. Who were they and what
were they? You are certainly well educated."
"My father and an old woman whom he hired, in London, have taught me
what they could. I studied hard because I had so little else to do.
It helped me in my loneliness. Ah, I was ver-ry lonely, ach! in
London!"
"Had you no friends?"
"I had my father and my M'riarrr."
"Did no one ever visit you from Germany?"
"No one ever visited from anywhere."
"What did your father do, there?"
"He played first-flute in an orchestra--a theatre."
"Did he never go back to his home--his native land--to Germany, you
know, to see his relatives?"
"I think he has no relatives alive."
"Did you never ask him about that?"
"If he had wish to tell me--if there had been some for to tell
about--he would have told me without asking. I never thought of asking
questions about such a thing."
"It's very funny!" Mrs. Vanderlyn said somewhat pettishly. "I could
have sworn, from the first time I saw your father on the steamer,
that he was a man of family."
"Of family? No; Mrs. Vanderlyn, I think not so."
"And he has never told you anything?"
"He has told me, sometimes, that by and by, when something happens
which he never will explain, we would go back to Germany."
The daily lesson in court German then went on. Mrs. Vanderlyn was
plainly disappointed at the meagreness of Anna's family history, and
did badly with her lesson; but she could not possibly complain. Anna
had made no claims. She had accepted her purely of her own--she did
not realize how much it, really, had been her son's--volition. Anna
had not asked for the position.
"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 courtship.
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.