A small, ruffled, brown-breasted bird, sitting upon a dog-wood sapling, began a soft, throaty, tender little piping in praise of the dew which entices foolish worms from their holes; but suddenly he stopped, and sat with his head turned sidewise, listening.
From the path along the levee there burst forth a jubilant, stirring, buoyant, thrilling whistle, loud and keen and clear as the cleanest notes of the piccolo. The soaring sound rippled and trilled and arpeggioed as the songs of wild birds do not; but it had a wild free grace that, in a way, reminded the small, brown bird of something familiar, but exactly what he could not tell. There was in it the bird call, or reveille, that all birds know; but a great waste of lavish, unmeaning things that art had added and arranged, besides, and that were quite puzzling and strange; and the little brown bird sat with his head on one side until the sound died away in the distance.
The little bird did not know that the part of that strange warbling that he understood was just what kept the warbler without his breakfast; but he knew very well that the part he did not understand did not concern him, so he gave a little flutter of his wings and swooped down like a brown bullet upon a big fat worm that was wriggling along the levee path.
XX
THE HALBERDIER OF THE LITTLE RHEINSCHLOSS
I go sometimes into the _Bierhalle_ and restaurant called Old Munich. Not long ago it was a resort of interesting Bohemians, but now only artists and musicians and literary folk frequent it.
But the Pilsner is yet good, and I take some diversion from the conversation of Waiter No. 18.
For many years the customers of Old Munich have accepted the place as a faithful copy from the ancient German town. The big hall with its smoky rafters, rows of imported steins, portrait of Goethe, and verses painted on the walls--translated into German from the original of the Cincinnati poets--seems atmospherically correct when viewed through the bottom of a gla.s.s.
But not long ago the proprietors added the room above, called it the Little Rheinschloss, and built in a stairway. Up there was an imitation stone parapet, ivy-covered, and the walls were painted to represent depth and distance, with the Rhine winding at the base of the vineyarded slopes, and the castle of Ehrenbreitstein looming directly opposite the entrance. Of course there were tables and chairs; and you could have beer and food brought you, as you naturally would on the top of a castle on the Rhine.
I went into Old Munich one afternoon when there were few customers, and sat at my usual table near the stairway. I was shocked and almost displeased to perceive that the gla.s.s cigar-case by the orchestra stand had been smashed to smithereens. I did not like things to happen in Old Munich. Nothing had ever happened there before.
Waiter No. 18 came and breathed on my neck. I was his by right of discovery. Eighteen"s brain was built like a corral. It was full of ideas which, when he opened the gate, came huddling out like a flock of sheep that might get together afterward or might not. I did not shine as a shepherd. As a type Eighteen fitted nowhere. I did not find out if he had a nationality, family, creed, grievance, hobby, soul, preference, home, or vote. He only came always to my table and, as long as his leisure would permit, let words flutter from him like swallows leaving a barn at daylight.
"How did the cigar-case come to be broken, Eighteen?" I asked, with a certain feeling of personal grievance.
"I can tell you about that, sir," said he, resting his foot on the chair next to mine. "Did you ever have anybody hand you a double handful of good luck while both your hands was full of bad luck, and stop to notice how your fingers behaved?"
"No riddles, Eighteen," said I. "Leave out palmistry and manicuring."
"You remember," said Eighteen, "the guy in the hammered bra.s.s Prince Albert and the oroide gold pants and the amalgamated copper hat, that carried the combination meat-axe, ice-pick, and liberty-pole, and used to stand on the first landing as you go up to the Little Rindslosh."
"Why, yes," said I. "The halberdier. I never noticed him particularly. I remember he thought he was only a suit of armour. He had a perfect poise."
"He had more than that," said Eighteen. "He was me friend. He was an advertis.e.m.e.nt. The boss hired him to stand on the stairs for a kind of scenery to show there was something doing in the has-been line upstairs. What did you call him--a what kind of a beer?"
"A halberdier," said I. "That was an ancient man-at-arms of many hundred years ago."
"Some mistake," said Eighteen. "This one wasn"t that old. He wasn"t over twenty-three or four.
"It was the boss"s idea, rigging a man up in an ante-bellum suit of tinware and standing him on the landing of the slosh. He bought the goods at a Fourth Avenue antique store, and hung a sign-out: "Able-bodied hal--halberdier wanted. Costume furnished."
"The same morning a young man with wrecked good clothes and a hungry look comes in, bringing the sign with him. I was filling the mustard-pots at my station.
""I"m it," says he, "whatever it is. But I never halberdiered in a restaurant. Put me on. Is it a masquerade?"
""I hear talk in the kitchen of a fishball," says I.
""Bully for you, Eighteen," says he. "You and I"ll get on. Show me the boss"s desk."
"Well, the boss tries the Harveyized pajamas on him, and they fitted him like the scales on a baked redsnapper, and he gets the job.
You"ve seen what it is--he stood straight up in the corner of the first landing with his halberd to his shoulder, looking right ahead and guarding the Portugals of the castle. The boss is nutty about having the true Old-World flavour to his joint. "Halberdiers goes with Rindsloshes," says he, "just as rats goes with rathskellers and white cotton stockings with Tyrolean villages." The boss is a kind of a antiologist, and is all posted up on data and such information.
"From 8 P.M. to two in the morning was the halberdier"s hours. He got two meals with us help and a dollar a night. I eat with him at the table. He liked me. He never told his name. He was travelling impromptu, like kings, I guess. The first time at supper I says to him: "Have some more of the spuds, Mr. Frelinghuysen." "Oh, don"t be so formal and offish, Eighteen," says he. "Call me Hal--that"s short for halberdier." "Oh, don"t think I wanted to pry for names," says I. "I know all about the dizzy fall from wealth and greatness. We"ve got a count washing dishes in the kitchen; and the third bartender used to be a Pullman conductor. And they _work_, Sir Percival," says I, sarcastic.
""Eighteen," says he, "as a friendly devil in a cabbage-scented h.e.l.l, would you mind cutting up this piece of steak for me? I don"t say that it"s got more muscle than I have, but--" And then he shows me the insides of his hands. They was blistered and cut and corned and swelled up till they looked like a couple of flank steaks criss-crossed with a knife--the kind the butchers hide and take home, knowing what is the best.
""Shoveling coal," says he, "and piling bricks and loading drays.
But they gave out, and I had to resign. I was born for a halberdier, and I"ve been educated for twenty-four years to fill the position.
Now, quit knocking my profession, and pa.s.s along a lot more of that ham. I"m holding the closing exercises," says he, "of a forty-eight-hour fast."
"The second night he was on the job he walks down from his corner to the cigar-case and calls for cigarettes. The customers at the tables all snicker out loud to show their acquaintance with history. The boss is on.
""An"--let"s see--oh, yes--"An anachronism," says the boss.
"Cigarettes was not made at the time when halberdiers was invented."
""The ones you sell was," says Sir Percival. "Caporal wins from chronology by the length of a cork tip." So he gets "em and lights one, and puts the box in his bra.s.s helmet, and goes back to patrolling the Rindslosh.
"He made a big hit, "specially with the ladies. Some of "em would poke him with their fingers to see if he was real or only a kind of a stuffed figure like they burn in elegy. And when he"d move they"d squeak, and make eyes at him as they went up to the slosh. He looked fine in his halberdashery. He slept at $2 a week in a hall-room on Third Avenue. He invited me up there one night. He had a little book on the washstand that he read instead of shopping in the saloons after hours. "I"m on to that," says I, "from reading about it in novels. All the heroes on the b.u.m carry the little book. It"s either Tantalus or Liver or Horace, and its printed in Latin, and you"re a college man. And I wouldn"t be surprised," says I, "if you wasn"t educated, too." But it was only the batting averages of the League for the last ten years.
"One night, about half past eleven, there comes in a party of these high-rollers that are always hunting up new places to eat in and poke fun at. There was a swell girl in a 40 H.-P. auto tan coat and veil, and a fat old man with white side-whiskers, and a young chap that couldn"t keep his feet off the tail of the girl"s coat, and an oldish lady that looked upon life as immoral and unnecessary. "How perfectly delightful," they says, "to sup in a slosh." Up the stairs they go; and in half a minute back down comes the girl, her skirts swishing like the waves on the beach. She stops on the landing and looks our halberdier in the eye.
""You!" she says, with a smile that reminded me of lemon sherbet. I was waiting up-stairs in the slosh, then, and I was right down here by the door, putting some vinegar and cayenne into an empty bottle of tabasco, and I heard all they said.
""It," says Sir Percival, without moving. "I"m only local colour.
Are my hauberk, helmet, and halberd on straight?"
""Is there an explanation to this?" says she. "Is it a practical joke such as men play in those Griddle-cake and Lamb Clubs? I"m afraid I don"t see the point. I heard, vaguely, that you were away.
For three months I--we have not seen you or heard from you."
""I"m halberdiering for my living," says the stature. "I"m working,"
says he. "I don"t suppose you know what work means."
""Have you--have you lost your money?" she asks.
"Sir Percival studies a minute.
""I am poorer," says he, "than the poorest sandwich man on the streets--if I don"t earn my living."
""You call this work?" says she. "I thought a man worked with his hands or his head instead of becoming a mountebank."
""The calling of a halberdier," says he, "is an ancient and honourable one. Sometimes," says he, "the man-at-arms at the door has saved the castle while the plumed knights were cake-walking in the banquet-halls above."
""I see you"re not ashamed," says she, "of your peculiar tastes. I wonder, though, that the manhood I used to think I saw in you didn"t prompt you to draw water or hew wood instead of publicly flaunting your ignominy in this disgraceful masquerade."
"Sir Percival kind of rattles his armour and says: "Helen, will you suspend sentence in this matter for just a little while? You don"t understand," says he. "I"ve got to hold this job down a little longer."
""You like being a harlequin--or halberdier, as you call it?" says she.