"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 ingrat.i.tude 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 p.a.w.n-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 sc.r.a.per 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 G.o.d, 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.
ACCORDING TO THE LAW
I
The luncheon was at one o"clock. Not one of your club luncheons, served in a silent, sedate mausoleum on the princ.i.p.al street, where your host in the hall below enters your name in a ledger, and a bra.s.s-be-b.u.t.toned Yellowplush precedes you upstairs into a desolate room furnished with chairs and a round table decorated with pink _boutonnieres_ set for six, and where you are plied with Manhattans until the other guests arrive.
Nor yet was it one of your smart petticoat luncheons in a Fifth Avenue mansion, where a Delmonico veteran pressed into service for the occasion waves you upstairs to another recruit, who deposits your coat and hat on a bed, and who later on ushers you into a room ablaze with gaslights--midday, remember--where you and the other unfortunates are served with English pheasants cooked in their own feathers, or Kennebec salmon embroidered with beets and appliqued with green mayonnaise. Not that kind of a mid-day meal at all.
On the contrary, it was served,--no, it was eaten,--reveled in, made merry over, in an ancient house fronting on a sleepy old park filled with live oaks and magnolias, their trunks streaked with green moss and their branches draped with gray c.r.a.pe: an ancient house with a big white door that stood wide open to welcome you,--it was December, too,--and two verandas on either side, stretched out like welcoming arms, their railings half hidden in clinging roses, the blossoms in your face.
There was an old grandmother, too,--quaint as a miniature,--with fluffy white cap and a white worsted shawl and tea-rose cheeks, and a smile like an opening window, so sunny did it make her face. And how delightfully she welcomed us.
I can hear even now the very tones of her voice, and feel the soft, cool, restful touch of her hand.
And there was an old darky, black as a gum shoe, with tufts of grizzled gray wool glued to his temples--one of those loyal old house servants of the South who belong to a regime that is past. I watched him from the parlor scuffling with his feet as he limped along the wide hall to announce each new arrival (his master"s old Madeira had foundered him, they said, years before), and always reaching the drawing-room door long after the newcomer had been welcomed by shouts of laughter and the open arms of every one in the room: the newcomer another girl, of course.
And this drawing-room, now I think of it, was not like any other drawing-room that I knew. Very few things in it matched. The carpet was a faded red, and of different shades of repair. The hangings were of yellow silk. There were haircloth sofas, and a big fireplace, and plenty of rocking chairs, and lounges covered with chintz of every pattern, and softened with cushions of every hue.
At one end hung a large mirror made of squares of gla.s.s laid like tiles in a dull gilt frame that had held it together for nearly a century, and on the same wall, too, and all so splotched and mouldy with age that the girls had to stoop down to pick out a pane clear enough to straighten their bonnets by.
And on the side wall there were family portraits, and over the mantel queer Chinese porcelains and a dingy coat-of-arms in a dingier frame, and on every table, in all kinds of dishes, flat and square and round, there were heaps and heaps of roses--De Vonienses, Hermosas, and Agripinas--whose distinguished ancestors, hardy sons of the soil, came direct from the Mayflower (This shall not happen again), and who consequently never knew the enervating influences of a hothouse. And there were marble busts on pedestals, and a wonderful clock on high legs, and medallions with weeping willows of somebody"s hair, besides a miscellaneous collection of large and small bric-a-brac, the heirlooms of five generations.
And yet, with all this mismatching of color, form, and style,--this chronological array of fittings and furnishings, beginning with the mouldy mirror and ending with the modern straw chair,--there was a harmony that satisfied one"s every sense.
And so restful, and helpful, and comforting, and companionable was it all, and so accustomed was everything to be walked over, and sat on, and kicked about; so glad to be punched out of shape if it were a cushion which you needed for some special curve in your back or twist of your head; so delighted to be scratched, or slopped over, or scarred full of holes if it were a table that could hold your books or paste-pot or lighted pipe; so hilariously joyful to be stretched out of shape or sagged into irredeemable bulges if it were a straw chair that could sooth your aching bones or rest a tired muscle!
When all the girls and young fellows had arrived,--such pretty girls, with such soft, liquid voices and captivating dialects, the one their black mammies had taught them,--and such unconventional, happy young fellows in all sorts of costumes from blue flannel to broadcloth,--one in a Prince Albert coat and a straw hat in his hand, and it near Christmas,--the old darky grew more and more restless, limping in and out of the open door, dodging anxiously into the drawing-room and out again, his head up like a terrapin"s.
Finally he veered across to a seat by the window, and, shielding his mouth with his wrinkled, leathery paw, bent over the old grandmother and poured into her ear a communication of such vital import that the dear old lady arose at once and, taking my hand, said in her low, sweet voice that we would wait no longer for the Judge, who was detained in court.
After this the aged Terrapin scuffled out again, reappearing almost immediately before the door in white gloves inches too long at the fingers. Then bowing himself backwards he preceded us into the dining-room.
And the table was so inviting when we took our seats around it, I sitting on the right of the grandmother--being the only stranger--and the prettiest of all the girls next to me. And the merriment was so contagious, and the sallies of wit so sparkling, and the table itself!
Solid mahogany, this old heirloom! rich and dark as a meerschaum, the kind of mahogany that looked as if all the fine old Madeira and choice port that had been drunk above it had soaked into its pores. And every fibre of it in evidence, too, except where the silver coasters, and the huge silver centrepiece filled with roses, and the plates and the necessary appointments hid its shining countenance.
And the aged Terrapin evidently appreciated in full the sanct.i.ty of this family altar, and duly realized the importance of his position as its High Priest. Indeed, there was a gravity, a dignity, and repose about him as he limped through his ministrations which I had noticed in him before. If he showed any nervousness at all it was as he glanced now and then toward the drawing-room door through which the Judge must enter.
And yet he appeared outwardly calm, even under this strain. For had he not provided for every emergency? Were not His Honor"s viands already at that moment on the kitchen hearth, with special plates over them to keep them hot against his arrival?
And what a luncheon it was! The relays of fried chicken, baked sweet potatoes, corn-bread, and mango pickles--a most extraordinary production, I maintain, is a mango pickle!--and things baked on top and brown, and other things baked on the bottom and creamy white.