The Music Master Part 32

"No, no!" replied Mr. Stanton.

Helene went out and closed the door. As she reached the stairway she heard the key turn in the lock. "Why does he lock himself in?" she thought. When Helene returned to the music room she found her music master waiting patiently for her.

"Forgive me for keeping you waiting!" she said.

"There is great pleasure even in waiting for those we love; we love to teach, I should say," he added quickly.

Inwardly Helene found herself contrasting her father with this man.

"If only he had the tenderness, the lovable qualities of this old musician," she thought, "how I could love him!" As he was taking his leave, her eye caught the music on top of the cabinet and in a moment she saw it had been disturbed. She looked quickly at Von Barwig, but he gave no sign that he knew of its existence.

"I hope some day to be able to play those compositions for you," she said, pointing to them.

"Yes," replied Von Barwig with a smile. "I hope so."

"I'll surprise you some day," she added.

"Yes," said Von Barwig simply, and he determined to allow her to surprise him. "Good-bye!" he said, bowing. She held out her hand.

"Good-bye!" she replied almost tenderly.

"To-morrow at the same time?" he asked anxiously.

"Yes, of course."

Von Barwig breathed a sigh of relief. "She is not angry," he thought.

"And it will very soon be to-morrow!"

Chapter Twenty

As Von Barwig walked down Fifth Avenue on his way home to his lodgings in Houston Street he could not help contrasting his present happy existence with the miserably hopeless state in which he had found himself on his first arrival in New York. "And it is to her, Miss Stanton, that I owe all this blessedness. I am a changed man," he said to himself, almost gaily, "I live, I enjoy, for to-morrow I shall see her again. To live that one hour of restful blessedness," he thought, "is well worth the bare existence of the other twenty-three." His friends felt the change, too. They all knew that something had happened, that something had entered the life of the old professor and changed it, but not one of them attempted to pry into his secret.

"_Ma foi_," said Pinac, "he shall tell himself if he wants to. If not, he shall not!"

Fico's reply was characteristic of that Italian's sunny disposition, and it inverted a familiar saying.

"What the h.e.l.l we care, so long as he is happy," he said.

Poons loved Von Barwig as a son, but the best of sons are self-centred when they are in love; and Poons saw nothing.

Jenny was silent, she felt that she had lost her dear professor, but with that spirit of sacrifice of which woman alone is capable, she resigned her place in his heart to another. Be it said to her credit there was not a jealous pang, not a moment of envy, nothing but mournful regret and sweet resignation to the inevitable. As a mother gives her son to another woman in marriage, so did Jenny give up Von Barwig; to whom she knew not, nor did she seek to know.

His secret was sacred to all his friends, all, save one, and this solitary exception led to a slight change in the Houston Street establishment. It came about as follows:

"When a man comes home with orchids pinned to his coat," confided Mrs.

Mangenborn to her friend Miss Husted, "it looks as if it was only a question of time when he would move uptown into more elegant apartments. Orchids in winter only goes with blue diamonds and yellowbacks!"

Miss Husted shook her head. "Move upstairs more likely than uptown,"

replied that lady regretfully. "Why, the poor old gentleman don't even get enough to eat. You mark my word for it, some day he's going to keel over! Only yesterday morning I had to beg him almost on my bended knees to join us at dinner and then he only came in to oblige me. He ate scarcely anything, poor dear!"

"Does he pay regularly?" inquired Mrs. Mangenborn, with a lack of sympathy noted by her friend.

"As regularly as clockwork," snapped Miss Husted. "Half price, but how long will he be able to pay even that? Only three pupils, and only one of them pays him in cash. Oh, how people round here have changed since I first came here; how much they do expect for their money nowadays!"

"He's out every afternoon, regularly. He's out evenings with his fiddle; home at four in the morning, he doesn't do that for nothing. I don't think he tells all he knows," concluded Mrs. Mangenborn with a significant wink of the eye, which brought her fat cheek very close to her eyebrow.

"Well," said Miss Husted with a sigh, "of course it's no business of mine where he goes and what he does, but--whatever it is, it's all right! That you can depend on, it is all right."

This was intended to be a rebuke to Mrs. Mangenborn, but it was entirely lost on that lady, for with the very next breath she said bluntly: "Why don't you ask him?"

Miss Husted set her lips firmly together, and this movement might have warned a less obtuse person.

"Why don't you ask him?" repeated Mrs. Mangenborn.

"Because," replied Miss Husted, with more temper than she had ever exhibited before to her friend, "because, Mrs. Mangenborn, it's none of my business!"

There was a slight pause.

"Not wis.h.i.+ng to give you a short answer, my dear," supplemented Miss Husted, sorry that she had been compelled to take extreme measures to stay her friend's curiosity.

To her utter surprise Mrs. Mangenborn still persisted.

"Well, it is your business, in a sense," went on that lady. "This is your house, and it is your duty to see that it is conducted respectably!"

"Respectably? Am I to understand, Mrs. Mangenborn, that you intend to convey a hint that my house is not conducted respectably?" demanded Miss Husted. Her back at this moment could not have been straighter had she been leaning against the wall.

"Why, no!" a.s.sented Mrs. Mangenborn, who saw that she had gone a little too far. "I merely said that it was your duty, and so it is! People should always do their duty," she added somewhat vaguely.

"I trust I know my duty, Mrs. Mangenborn," said Miss Husted severely, "nor do I require to be put in the path of my duty by anybody, be it he, or be it she, be it transient, or be it permanent."

This was a direct shot and Mrs. Mangenborn gave signs that it had gone home; for she arose. "I am very sorry," she said with heavy-weight dignity, "I am very sorry."

"There is nothing to be sorry for, only this, Mrs. Mangenborn! I'd like it to be thoroughly understood that no person in this living world can besmirch the character of Professor Von Barwig without besmirching me," and Miss Husted folded her arms somewhat defiantly.

"Oh, Miss Husted, Miss Husted, how can you say such a thing! Did I besmirch even a particle of his character? Just prove your words, please; did I, did I?"

Mrs. Mangenborn now came slightly closer to Miss Husted and for a moment it looked as though there would be a personal altercation between the two ladies.

"You said that his hours were not respectable hours, and that he didn't tell all he knew, and--and--oh, I can't remember all you said, Mrs.

Mangenborn, nor does it matter in the least! Pray, why should he tell all he knows? It's no lady's business--what he knows! For that matter, do you tell all you know? No," went on Miss Husted, now thoroughly aroused, "but you tell a great many things that you don't know! Not one of your fortunes has come true, lately, not one!"

The cards had toppled over, there were no more fortunes in them, and Mrs. Mangenborn saw that her reign had come to an end.

"I do not care to discuss the question any further," she said loftily, and giving a wide sweep to her skirts she added somewhat grandiloquently:

"Kindly send my bill to my room, and please consider yourself at perfect liberty to dispose of it to some one else."