"Freak? Freak? we have no freaks here! Oh," and a faint smile stole over Von Barwig"s features, which he tried hard to repress. "You mean perhaps Miss Husted?"
"Do I?" inquired Costello, "well, p"raps I do! She"s of the vintage of 1776, and looks like a waxwork edition of ----"
"Please, please!" remonstrated Von Barwig. "She is a lady, a most hospitable, kind-hearted lady! You would like her if you knew her, really----"
"Maybe so," said Costello, somewhat dubiously; and then he blurted out: "Well, profess", I"ve come on a professional visit! I want to put you wise before you turn up to play to-night."
Von Barwig looked pained. Costello was bawling at the top of his voice, and he was afraid that the household would hear.
"Hush, please! You speak so loud. As you know, my visits to the Museum are, in a sense, a secret. I keep my private and my professional life apart, as it were. Forgive me, but please, please, don"t speak loudly!
I do not wish it known; for they think that I--they do not know that I--have--" Von Barwig was about to say, "fallen so low," but he did not wish to hurt the amiable Costello"s feelings; so he paused.
"That"s all right, profess"," broke in Costello; "I"m having a little trouble with my main attraction, Bosco, the armless wonder. I wish she was a tongueless wonder! She has no arms, but my G.o.d; how she can talk!
I left her taking it out of the day professor; she was swearing a blue streak. Ain"t it funny how these stars kick?" and Mr. Costello bit the end off a cigar, viciously lit it, and puffed furiously at it till the room was clouded with smoke. Von Barwig was silent. He was waiting for Mr. Costello to tell him the worst, that he could not come again. His heart began to beat; what should he do if he lost his position?
"She says your music is queering her act," said Mr. Costello finally, "she says you don"t give it to her thumpin" enough; she wants ragtime or she can"t work."
"I will do my best," said the old man simply. "I try hard to please her; indeed I do!"
"I know you do, I know you do, profess"! But, say, you can"t do anything with them guys! You know I like you, you"ve got such d.a.m.ned elegant manners--the gentleman all over. Yes, sir, you"re a twenty-two karat gentleman; you"re the first professor the freaks da.r.s.ent josh!"
Von Barwig bowed his head. He was grateful to Costello; the man had made his hideous task almost bearable.
"Now I don"t want to lose her and I don"t want to lose you," Costello went on, "but things have got to go right, see? They"ve got to! You"re one of them kind that can take a tip. Give her what she wants! What"s the difference? You"re a gentleman--she"s a lady! She doesn"t know any better!"
"I am so sorry, so very sorry to trouble--" faltered Von Barwig.
"You"re all right, profess"," broke in Costello, "you earn your money if it is small pay; but the job goes against you, now don"t it?" His voice was almost soft. "You ain"t used to our kind, are you?" The man"s brusque kindness touched Von Barwig, and he choked up a little as he spoke:
"Well--I--I--I have had higher thoughts. Here in Houston Street life is strange, and I must take what I find. Times are a little hard, a little hard, and the parents of my pupils are pushed for money. They don"t pay, otherwise, perhaps I--" and Von Barwig sighed.
"You ain"t suited, that"s what"s the matter!"
"Oh, yes; oh, yes! I--" broke in Von Barwig, afraid that Costello might dispense with his services altogether. "I acknowledge the curios came a little on my nerves at first. It was all so strange: the people staring, the midgets chattering, the stout lady fanning, fanning, always fanning, the lecturing of the lecturer; and you at the door always calling "Insides, insides!""
Costello laughed, "You mean "Insi-i-ide.""
"Yes, insides," went on Von Barwig, unconsciously making the same mistake. Then he added, trying to convince himself, "Better times will come soon and then, perhaps, we shall part, but for the present I remain, eh, yes?"
Costello nodded. "As long as you like, profess"; as long as you like!"
and he held out his hand for Von Barwig to shake. As Von Barwig did so, he said: "I shall always remember it was your money that helped me to bridge over--my--my difficulties----"
"That"s all right, that"s all right!" a.s.serted Costello. "You"re worth the money or you wouldn"t get it. But don"t forget, when the lecturer says, "Bosco, Bosco, the armless wonder!" play up lively, see? and when he says, "Bites their heads off and eats their bodies; eats "em alive, eats "em alive!" give it to her thumpin"!"
Here Von Barwig drew a deep breath. He was tired, tired unto his very soul of the whole business; but he had to go on.
"Yes," he said, with a pathetic smile, "she shall eat "em alive yet livelier!"
This appeared to satisfy Costello, and shaking hands with Von Barwig once more, he went out and left him standing in the middle of the room. Von Barwig"s eye fell on a daguerreotype of Mendelssohn, and it called him back to Leipsic. "Eat "em alive, eat "em alive, eat "em alive!" rang in his ears. "Good G.o.d, to what have I fallen, to what have I fallen?" he cried to himself; then he stopped. "I must have more courage. I am a coward, I am always railing at fate! Who can tell what the future shall have in store for me?" Then he thought of the songs he had found in his old trunk with his symphony. He hastily opened the trunk, took them out and hurried uptown for the purpose of selling them, but the symphony he did not take--he had not the courage to sell that.
It was some years since Von Barwig had tried to dispose of his compositions and he made the rounds of the various music publishers with as little success as usual. "There is no demand for my music," he thought, and he went into a fashionable music emporium, as a last hope.
The clerks at Schumein"s recognised him in a moment; his was a face one could not forget. Mr. Schumein, the head of the firm, could not see him; he was busy.
"I will wait," said Von Barwig, and he sat down.
"I"m afraid he"ll be busy all the afternoon," said the clerk apprehensively.
"I can wait all the afternoon, if necessary," said Von Barwig. He was tired and was glad to sit down.
"Suppose you leave your songs here and I"ll hand them to our reader,"
suggested the clerk, after Von Barwig had been waiting over two hours.
"They won"t see me," thought Von Barwig, "I can no longer obtain an interview. I am not worth seeing," and he smiled to himself as he thought of the days when people used to wait for hours to see him.
"Well," he spoke aloud, "I will leave them; and to-morrow I will call for the answer."
"Better leave it till next week; our reader is very busy," said the clerk, a little impatiently.
"I will call again next week," said Von Barwig patiently.
"What"s your address?" asked the clerk.
Von Barwig told him and he wrote it on the back of the ma.n.u.script. "All right, I"ll attend to it," and the young man threw the songs carelessly into a drawer in his desk. Von Barwig thanked him, bowed politely, and walked slowly out.
"Who is that?" asked a young lady who had just arrived in a fashionable carriage and pair. She had been watching Von Barwig for the past few moments and was struck by the sweet, gentle sadness of his face.
"He"s a sort of a composer, miss; that is, he writes songs and things.
He"s a music master, I fancy, in one of the poorer quarters of the city,"
said the clerk, taking out the ma.n.u.script he had just thrown into a drawer.
"Yes," he added, as she saw the address, "he has a studio at 970 Houston Street. Rather far downtown," he added.
"Nine hundred and seventy Houston Street," repeated the girl; "that must be near our settlement headquarters." She made some purchases, and a few moments later the footman opened the door, and she was whisked rapidly away by a pair of fine blooded horses.
"Who is that?" asked a fellow-clerk.
"Why don"t you know?" asked the other with a slight tinge of superiority.
"It"s Miss Stanton, the heiress."
"Is that so? She"s a beauty!"
"Yes," went on his informant, "her father is only worth about twenty-five millions!"
The other clerk whistled.
During Von Barwig"s absence from his room that morning, young Poons had taken possession of it for the purpose of practising on his "cello, but this was not his only reason. Jenny invariably made it a point to straighten out Von Barwig"s room at just about the time that Poons happened to arrive. There he could look at her and speak to her in little broken bits of the English language, without fear of being interrupted by Miss Husted. Jenny"s knowledge of German was as hopelessly nil as his ideas of English; so they made up their minds to study "each other"s language from each other." To help matters along, they bought two English-German "Conversation Made Easy" books, and in the security of Von Barwig"s studio they exchanged cut and dried sentences by the page, neither understanding what the other said. On this particular morning young Poons, with the a.s.sistance of Fico, had written out an English sentence, which he had recited to himself dozens of times that morning, for he had made up his mind to declare himself.