The Other Fellow Part 10

And between these towns of Dort, Pappendrecht, and the other 'recht moves a constant procession of water craft; a never-ceasing string of low, rakish barges that bear the commerce of Germany out to the sea, each in charge of a powerful tug puffing eagerly in its hurry to reach tide water, besides all the other boats and luggers that sail and steam up and down the forked Maas in front of Boudier's Inn--for Dort is really on an island, the water of the Rhine being divided here. You would never think, were you to watch these ungainly boats, that they could ever arrive anywhere. They look as if they were built to go sideways, endways, or both ways; and yet they mind their helms and dodge in and out and swoop past the long points of land ending in the waving marsh gra.s.s, and all with the ease of a steam yacht.

These and a hundred other things make me love this quaint old town on the Maas. There is everything within its borders for the painter who loves form and color--boats, queer houses, streets, ca.n.a.ls, odd, picturesque interiors, figures, bra.s.s milk cans, white-capped girls, and stretches of marsh. If there were not other places on the earth I love equally as well--Venice, for instance--I would be content never to leave its shower-drenched streets. But I know that my gondola, gay in its new _tenta_ and polished bra.s.ses, is waiting for me in the little ca.n.a.l next the bridge, and I must be off.

Tyne has already packed my trunk, and Johan is ready to take it down the stairs. Tyne sent for him. I did not.

When Johan, like an overloaded burro stumbling down the narrow defile of the staircase, my trunk on his back, disappears through the lower door, Tyne reenters my room, closes the door softly, and tells me that Johan's wages have been raised, and that before I return next summer she and--

But I forgot. This is another strictly confidential communication.

Under no possible circ.u.mstances could a man of honor--certainly not.

Peter, to my surprise, is not in his customary place when I reach the outer street door. Johan, at my inquiring gesture, grins the width of his face, but has no information to impart regarding Peter's unusual absence.

Heer Boudier is more explicit.

"Where's Peter?" I cry with some impatience.

My host shrugs his shoulders with a helpless movement, and opens wide the fingers of both hands.

"Mynheer, the five days are up. Peter has gone to jail."

"What for?" I ask in astonishment.

"To save two gulden."

ONE OF BOB'S TRAMPS

I had pa.s.sed him coming up the dingy corridor that led to Bob's law office, and knew at once that he was one of Bob's tramps.

When he had squeezed himself through the partly open door and had closed it gently,--closed it with a hand held behind his back, like one who had some favor to ask or some confidence game to play,--he proved to be a man about fifty years of age, fat and short, with a round head partly bald, and hair quite gray. His face had not known a razor for days. He was dressed in dark clothes, once good, showing a white s.h.i.+rt, and he wore a collar without a cravat. Down his cheeks were uneven furrows, beginning at his spilling, watery eyes, and losing themselves in the stubble-covered cheeks,--like old rain-courses dried up,--while on his flat nose were perched a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, over which he looked at us in a dazed, half-bewildered, half-frightened way. In one hand he held his shapeless slouch hat; the other grasped an old violin wrapped in a grimy red silk handkerchief.

For an instant he stood before the door, bent low with unspoken apologies; then placing his hat on the floor, he fumbled nervously in the breast pocket of his coat, from which he drew a letter, penned in an unknown hand and signed with an unknown name. Bob read it, and pa.s.sed it to me.

"Please buy this violin," the note ran. "It is a good instrument, and the man needs the money. The price is sixty dollars."

"Who gave you this note?" Bob asked. He never turns a beggar from his door if he can help it. This reputation makes him the target for half the tramps in town.

"Te leader of te orchestra at te theatre. He say he not know you, but dat you loafe good violin. I come von time before, but vas n.o.body here." Then, after a pause, his wavering eye seeking Bob's, "Blease you buy him?"

"Is it yours?" I asked, anxious to get rid of him. The note trick had been played that winter by half the tramps in town.

"Yes. Mine vor veefteen year," he answered slowly, in an unemotional way.

"Why do you want to sell it?" said Bob, his interest increasing, as he caught the pleading look in the man's eyes.

"I don't vant to sell it--I vant to keep it; but I haf notting," his hands opening wide. "Ve vas in Phildelphy, ant ten Scranton, ant ten we get here to Peetsburgh, and all te scenery is by te shereef, and te manager haf notting. Vor vourteen tays I valk te streets, virst it is te ofercoat ant vatch, ant yestertay te ledder case vor veefty cents.

If you ton't buy him I must keep valking till I come by New York."

"I've got a good violin," said Bob, softening.

"Ten you don't buy him?" and a look as of a returning pain crossed his hopeless, impa.s.sive face. "Vell, I go vay, ten," he said, with a sigh that seemed to empty his heart.

We both looked on in silence as he slowly wrapped the silk rag around it, winding the ends automatically about the bridge and strings, as he had no doubt done a dozen times before that day in his hunt for a customer. Suddenly as he reached the neck he stopped, turned the violin in his hand, and unwound the handkerchief again.

"Tid you oxamine te neck? See how it lays in te hand! Tid you ever see neck like dat? No, you don't see it, never," in a positive tone, looking at us again over the silver rims of his spectacles.

Bob took the violin in his hand. It was evidently an old one and of peculiar shape. The swells and curves of the sides and back were delicately rounded and highly finished. The neck, too, to which the man pointed, was smooth and remarkably graceful, like the stem of an old meerschaum pipe, and as richly colored.

Bob handled it critically, scrutinizing every inch of its surface--he adores a Cremona as some souls do a Madonna--then he walked with it to the window.

"Why, this has been mended!" he exclaimed in surprise and with a trace of anger in his voice. "This is a new neck put on!"

I knew by the tone that Bob was beginning now to see through the game.

"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."