"Ah, you vind day oud, do you? Tat _is_ a new neck, sure, ant a goot
von, put on py Simon Corunden--not Auguste!--Simon! It is better as
efer."
I looked for the guileless, innocent expression with the regulation
smile that distinguishes most vagabonds on an errand like this, but
his lifeless face was unlit by any visible emotion.
Drawing the old red handkerchief from his pocket in a tired, hopeless
way, he began twisting it about the violin again.
"Play something on it," said Bob. He evidently believed every word of
the impromptu explanation, and was weakening again. Harrowing
sighs--chronic for years--or trickling tears shed at the right moment
by some grief-stricken woman never failed to deceive him.
"No, I don't blay. I got no heart inside of me to blay," with a weary
movement of his hand. He was now tucking the frayed ends of the
handkerchief under the strings.
"_Can_ you play?" asked Bob, grown suddenly suspicious, now that the
man dare not prove his story.
"Can I _blay_?" he answered, with a quick lifting of his eyes, and the
semblance of a smile lighting up his furrowed face. "I blay mit
Strakosch te Mendelssohn Concerto in te olt Academy in Vourteenth
Street; ant ven Alboni sing, no von in te virst violins haf te solo
but me, ant dere is not a pin drop in te house, ant Madame Alboni send
me all te flowers tey gif her. Can I BLAY!"
The tone of voice was masterly. He was a new experience to me,
evidently an expert in this sort of thing. Bob looked down into his
stagnant, inert face, noting the slightly scornful, hurt expression
that lingered about the mouth. Then his tender heart got the better of
him.
"I cannot afford to pay sixty dollars for another violin," he said,
his voice expressing the sincerity of his regret.
"I cannot sell him vor less," replied the man, in a quick, decided
way. It would have been an unfledged amateur impostor who could not
have gained courage at this last change in Bob's tone. "Ven I get to
New York," he continued, with almost a sob, "I must haf some money
more as my railroad ticket to get anudder sheap violin. Te peoples
will say it is Grossman come home vidout hees violin--he is broke. No,
I no can sell him vor less. Tis cost one hundret ant sefenty-vive
dollar ven I buy him."
I was about to offer him five dollars, buy the patched swindle, and
end the affair--I had pressing business with Bob that morning--when he
stopped me.
"Would you take thirty dollars and my old violin?"
The man looked at him eagerly.
"Vere is your violin?"
"At my house."
"Is it a goot von? Stop a minute"---- For the third time he removed
the old red silk handkerchief. "Draw te bow across vonce. I know aboud
your violin ven I hears you blay."
Bob tucked the instrument under his chin and drew a full, clear,
resonant tone.
The watery eyes glistened.
"Yes, I take your violin ant te money," in a decided tone. "You know
'em, ant I tink you loafe 'em too."
The subtle flattery of this last touch was exquisitely done. The man
was an artist.
Bob reached for a pad, and, with the remark that he was wanted in
court or he would go to his house with him, wrote an order, sealed it,
and laid three ten-dollar bills on the table.
I felt that nothing now could check Bob. Whatever I might say or do
would fail to convince him. "I know how hard a road can be and how
sore one's feet can get," he would perhaps say to me, as he had often
done before when we blamed him for his generosities.
The man balanced the letter on his hand, reading the inscription in a
listless sort of way, picked up the instrument, looked it all over
carefully, flecked off some specks of dust from the finger-board, laid
the violin on the office table, thrust the soiled rag into his pocket,
caught up the money, and without a word of thanks closed the door
behind him.
"Bob," I said, the man's absolute ingratitude and my friend's colossal
simplicity irritating me beyond control, "why in the name of common
sense did you throw your money away on a sharp like that? Didn't you
see through the whole game? That note was written by himself. Corunden
never saw that fiddle in his life. You can buy a dozen of them for
five dollars apiece in any pawn-shop in town."
Bob looked at me with that peculiar softening of the eyelids which we
know so well. Then he said thoughtfully: "Do you know what it is to be
stranded in a strange city with not a cent in your pocket, afraid to
look a policeman in the face lest he run you in? hungry, unwashed, not
a clean shirt for weeks? I don't care if he is a fraud. He sha'n't go
hungry if I can help it."
There are some episodes in Bob's life to which he seldom refers.
"Then why didn't he play for you?" I asked, still indignant, yet
somewhat touched by an intense earnestness unusual in Bob.
"Yes, I wondered at that," he replied in a musing tone, but without a
shadow of suspicion in his voice.
"You don't think," I continued, "he's such a fool as to go to your
house for your violin? I'll bet you he's made a bee line for a rum
mill; then he'll doctor up another old scraper and try the same game
somewhere else. Let me go after him and bring him back."
Bob did not answer. He was tying up a bundle of papers. The violin lay
on the green-baize table where the man had put it, the law books
pushed aside to give it room. Then he put on his coat and went over to
court.
In an hour he was back again--he and I, sitting in the small inner
office overlooking the dingy courtyard.
We had talked but a few moments when a familiar shuffling step was
heard in the corridor. I looked through the crack in the door, touched
Bob's arm, and put my finger to my lips. Bob leaned forward and
watched with me through the crack.
The outer office door was being slowly opened in the same noiseless
way, and the same man was creeping in. He gave an anxious glance about
the room. He had Bob's own violin in his hand; I knew it by the case.
"Tey all oud," he muttered in an undertone.
For an instant he wavered, looked hungrily towards his old violin,
laid Bob's on a chair near the door, stepped on tiptoe to the
green-baize table, picked up the Cremona, looked it all over,
smoothing the back with his hands, then, nestling it under his chin,
drew the bow gently across the strings, shut his eyes, and began the
Concerto,--the one he had played with Alboni,--not with its full
volume of sound or emphasis, but with echoes, pulsations, tremulous
murmurings, faint breathings of its marvelous beauty. The instrument
seemed part of himself, the neck welded to his fingers, the bow but a
piece of his arm, with a heart-throb down its whole length.
When it was ended he rubbed his cheek softly against his old comrade,
smoothed it once or twice with his hand, laid it tenderly back in its
place on the table among the books, picked up Bob's violin from the
chair, and gently closed the door behind him.
I looked at Bob. He was leaning against his desk, his eyes on the
floor, his whole soul filled with the pathos of the melody. Suddenly
he roused himself, sprang past me into the other room, and, calling to
the man, ran out into the corridor.
"I couldn't catch him," he said in a dejected tone, coming back all
out of breath, and dropping into a chair.
"What did you want to catch him for?" I asked; "he never robbed you?"
"Robbed me!" cried Bob, the tears starting to his eyes. "Robbed _me_!
Good God, man! Couldn't you hear? I robbed _him_!"
We searched for him all that day--Bob with the violin under his arm, I
with an apology.
But he was gone.