Books: Love, The Fiddler
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Lloyd Osbourne >> Love, The Fiddler
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"Wouldn't it be horrible," I said, "if I found out I wasn't a
ffrench at all--but had really sprung from a low-down, capital F
family in the next county or somewhere!"
"Oh, but you are a real ffrench," said Verna.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"I can FEEL it," she said. "I never felt that kind of sensation
before towards anybody except my father!"
I hardly knew whether to be pleased or not. And besides, it didn't
seem to me conclusive.
Then she touched a button (for the castle was thoroughly wired and
there was even a miniature telephone system) and servants brought
us up afternoon tea, and a couple of chairs to sit on, and a
folding table set out with flowers, and the best toast and the
best tea and the best strawberry jam and the best chocolate cake
and the best butter that I had as yet tasted in the whole island.
The view itself was good enough to eat, for we were high above
everything and saw the harbour and the country stretched out on
all sides like a map.
"This is where I come for my day-dreams," said Verna. "I usually
have it all to myself, for people hate the stairs so much and the
ladies twitter about the dust and the cobwebs and the shakiness of
the last ladder, and the silly things get dizzy and have to be
held."
"You don't seem to be afraid," I said.
"This has been my favourite spot all my life," she returned. "I
can remember Papa holding me up when I wasn't five years old and
telling me about the Lady Grizzle that threw herself off the
parapet rather than marry somebody she had to and wouldn't!"
"Tell me about your day-dreams, Verna," I said.
"Just a girl's fancies," she returned, smiling. "I dare say men
have them too. Fairy princes, you know, and what he'd say and what
I'd say, and how much I'd love him, and how much he'd love me!"
"I can understand the last part of it," I observed.
"You are really very nice," she returned, "and when Papa has got
you that place in the City, I am going to allow you to come up
here and dream too. And you'll tell me about the Sleeping Beauty
and I'll unbosom myself about the Beast, and we'll exchange heart-
aches and be, oh, so happy together."
"I am that now," I said.
"You're awfully easily pleased, Fyles," she said. "Most of the men
I know I have to rack my head to entertain; talk exploring, you
know, to explorers, and horses to Derby winners, and what it feels
like to be shot--to soldiers--but you entertain ME, and that is
so much pleasanter."
"I wish I dared ask you some questions," I said.
"Oh, but you mustn't!" she broke out, with a quick intuition of
what I meant.
"Why mustn't?" Tasked.
"Oh, because--because----" she returned. "I wouldn't like to fib
to you, and I wouldn't like to tell you the truth--and it would
make me feel hot and uncomfortable----"
"What would?" I asked.
"You see, if I really cared for him, it would be different," she
said. "But I don't--and that's all."
"Lady Grizzle over again?" I ventured.
"Not altogether," she said, "you see she was perfectly mad about
somebody else--which really was hard lines for her, poor thing--
while I----"
"Oh, please go on!" I said, as she hesitated.
"Fyles," she said, with the ghost of a sigh, "this isn't day-
dreaming at all, and I'm going to give you another cup of tea and
change the subject."
"What would you prefer, then?" I asked. "No! No more chocolate
cake, thank you."
"Let's have a fairy story all of our own," she said.
"Well, you begin," I said.
"Once upon a time," she began, "there was a poor young man in New
York--an American, though of course he couldn't help that--and he
came over to England and discovered the home of his ancestors, and
he liked them, and they liked him--ever so much, you know--and he
found that the old place was destined to pass to strangers, and so
he worked and worked in a dark old office, and stayed up at night
working some more, and never accepted any invitations or took a
holiday except at week-ends to the family castle--until finally he
amassed an immense fortune. Then he got into a fairy chariot,
together with a bag of gold and the family lawyer, and ordered the
coachman to drive him to Lord George Willoughby's in Curzon
Street. Then they sent out in hot haste for Sir George's son, an
awfully fast young man in the Guards, and the family lawyer
haggled and haggled, and Lord George hemmed and hawed, and the
Guardsman's eyes sparkled with greed at the sight of the bag of
gold, and finally for two hundred thousand pounds (Papa says he
often thinks he could pull it off for a hundred and ten thousand)
the entail is broken and everybody signs his name to the papers
and the poor young man buys the succession of Fyles and comes down
here, regardless of expense, in a splendid gilt special train, and
is received with open arms by his kinsmen at the castle."
"The open arms appeal to me," I said.
"He was nearly hugged to death," said Verna, "for they were so
pleased the old name was not to die out and be forgotten. And then
the poor young man married a ravishing beauty and had troops of
sunny-haired children, and the daughter of the castle (who by this
time was an old maid and quite plain, though everybody said she
had a heart like hidden treasure) devoted herself to the little
darlings and taught them music-lessons and manners and how to
spell their names with a little f, and as a great treat would
sometimes bring them up here and tell them how she had first met
the poor young man in the 'diamond mornings of long ago'!"
"That's a good fairy story," I said, "but you are all out about
the end!"
"You said you liked it," she protested.
"Yes, where they hugged the poor young man," I returned, "but
after that, Verna, it went off the track altogether."
"Perhaps you'll put it back again," she said.
"I want to correct all that about the daughter of the castle," I
said. "She never became an old maid at all, for, of course, the
poor young man loved her to distraction and married her right off,
and they lived happily together ever afterwards!"
"I believe that is nicer," she said thoughtfully, as though
considering the matter.
"Truer, too," I said, "because really the poor young man adored
her from the first minute of their meeting!"
"I wonder how long it will take him to make his fortune," she
said, which, under the circumstances, struck me as a cruel thing
to say.
"Possibly he has made it already," I said. "How do you know he
hasn't?"
"By his looks for one thing," she said, regarding the machine oil
on my cuff out of the corner of her eye. "Besides, he hasn't any
of the arrogance of a parvenu, and is much too----"
"Too what?" I asked.
"Well bred," she replied simply.
"No doubt that's the ffrench in him," I said, which I think was
rather a neat return.
She didn't answer, but looked absently across to the harbour
mouth.
"I believe there is a steamer coming in," she said. "Yes, a
steamer."
"A yacht, I think," I said, for, sure enough, it was Babcock true
to the minute, heading the Tallahassee straight in. I could have
given him a hundred dollars on the spot I was so delighted, for he
couldn't have timed it better, nor at a moment when it could have
pleased me more. She ran in under easy steam, making a splendid
appearance with her raking masts and razor bow, under which the
water spurted on either side like dividing silver. Except a
beautiful woman, I don't know that there's a sweeter sight than a
powerful, sea-going steam yacht, with the sun glinting on her
bright brass-work, and a uniformed crew jumping to the sound of
the boatswain's whistle.
"The poor young man's ship's come home," I said.
"It must be Lady Gaunt's Sapphire," said Verna.
"With the American colours astern?" I said.
"Why, how strange," she said, "it really is American. And then I
believe it's larger than the Sapphire!"
"Fifteen hundred and four tons register," I said.
"How do you know that?" she demanded, with a shade of surprise in
her voice.
"Because, my dear, it's mine!" I said.
"Yours!" she cried out in astonishment.
"If you doubt me," I said, "I shall tell you what she is going to
do next. She is about to steam in here and lower a boat to take me
aboard."
"She's heading for Dartmouth," said Verna incredulously, and the
words were hardly out of her pretty mouth when Babcock swung round
and pointed the Tallahassee's nose straight at us.
For a moment Verna was too overcome to speak.
"Fyles," she said at last, "you told me you worked in an office!"
"So I do," I said.
"And own a vessel like that!" she exclaimed. "A yacht the size of
a man-of-war!"
"It was you that said I was a poor young man," I observed. "I was
so pleased at being called young that I let the poor pass."
"Fancy!" she exclaimed, looking at me with eyes like stars. And
then, recovering herself, she added in another tone: "Now don't
you think it was very forward to rendezvous at a private castle?"
"Oh, I thought I could make myself solid before she arrived," I
said.
"Fyles," she said, "I am beginning to have a different opinion of
you. You are not as straightforward as a ffrench ought to be--and,
though I'm ashamed to say it of you--but you are positively
conceited."
"Unsay, take back, those angry words," I said; and even as I did
so the anchor went splash and I could hear the telegraph jingle in
the engine-room.
"And so you're rich," said Verna, "awfully, immensely,
disgustingly rich, and you've been masquerading all this afternoon
as a charming pauper!"
"I don't think I said charming," I remarked.
"But I say it," said Verna, "because, really you know, you're
awfully nice, and I like you, and I'm glad from the bottom of my
heart that you are rich!"
"Thank you," I said, "I'm glad, too."
"Now we must go down and meet your boat," said Verna. "See, there
it is, coming in--though I still think it was cheeky of you to
tell them to land uninvited."
"Oh, let them wait!" I said.
"No, no, we must go and meet them," said Verna, "and I'm going to
ask that glorious old fox with the yellow beard whether it's all
true or not!"
"You can't believe it yet?" I said.
"You've only yourself to thank for it," she said. "I got used to
you as one thing--and here you are, under my eyes, turning out
another."
I could not resist saying "Fancy!" though she did not seem to
perceive any humour in my exclamation of it, and took it as a
matter of course. Besides, she had risen now, and bade me follow
her down the stairs.
It was really fine to see the men salute me as we walked down to
the boat, and the darkies' teeth shining at the sight of me (for
I'm a believer in the coloured sailor) and old Neilsen grinning
respectfully in the stern-sheets.
"Neilsen," I said, "tell this young lady my name!"
"Mr. ffrench, sir," he answered, considerably astonished at the
question.
"Little f or big F, Neilsen?"
"Little f, sir," said Neilsen.
"There, doubter!" I said to Verna.
She had her hand on my arm and was smiling down at the men from
the little stone pier on which we stood.
"Fyles," she said, "you must land and dine with us to-night, not
only because I want you to, but because you ought to meet my
father."
"About when?" I asked.
"Seven-thirty," she answered; and then, in a lower voice, so that
the men below might not hear: "Our fairy tale is coming true,
isn't it, Fyles?"
"Right to the end," I said.
"There were two ends," she said. "Mine and yours."
"Oh, mine," I said; "that is, if you'll live up to your part of
it!"
"What do you want me to do?" she asked.
"Throw over the Beast and be my Princess," I said, trying to talk
lightly, though my voice betrayed me.
"Perhaps I will," she answered.
"Perhaps!" I repeated. "That isn't any answer at all."
"Yes, then!" she said quickly, and, disengaging her hand from my
arm, ran back a few steps.
"I hear Papa's wheels," she cried over her shoulder, "and, don't
forget, Fyles, dinner at seven-thirty!"
THE GOLDEN CASTAWAYS
All I did was to pull him out by the seat of the trousers. The fat
old thing had gone out in the dark to the end of the yacht's boat-
boom, and was trying to worry in the dinghy with his toe, when
plump he dropped into a six-knot ebb tide. Of course, if I hadn't
happened along in a launch, he might have drowned, but, as for
anything heroic on my part--why, the very notion is preposterous.
The whole affair only lasted half a minute, and in five he was
aboard his yacht and drinking hot Scotch in a plush dressing-gown.
It was natural that his wife and daughter should be frightened,
and natural, too, I suppose, that when they had finished crying
over him they should cry over me. He had taken a chance with the
East River, and it had been the turn of a hair whether he floated
down the current a dead grocer full of brine, or stood in that
cabin, a live one full of grog. Oh, no! I am not saying a word
against THEM. But as for Grossensteck himself, he ought really to
have known better, and it makes me flush even now to recall his
monstrous perversion of the truth. He called me a hero to my face.
He invented details to which my dry clothes gave the lie direct.
He threw fits of gratitude. His family were theatrically commanded
to regard me well, so that my countenance might be forever
imprinted on their hearts; and they, poor devils, in a seventh
heaven to have him back safe and sound in their midst, regarded
and regarded, and imprinted and imprinted, till I felt like a
perfect ass masquerading as a Hobson.
It was all I could do to tear myself away. Grossensteck clung to
me. Mrs. Grossensteck clung to me. Teresa--that was the daughter--
Teresa, too, clung to me. I had to give my address. I had to take
theirs. Medals were spoken of; gold watches with inscriptions; a
common purse, on which I was requested to confer the favour of
drawing for the term of my natural life. I departed in a blaze of
glory, and though I could not but see the ridiculous side of the
affair (I mean as far as I was concerned), I was moved by so
affecting a family scene, and glad, indeed, to think that the old
fellow had been spared to his wife and daughter. I had even a pang
of envy, for I could not but contrast myself with Grossensteck,
and wondered if there were two human beings in the world who would
have cared a snap whether I lived or died. Of course, that was
just a passing mood, for, as a matter of fact, I am a man with
many friends, and I knew some would feel rather miserable were I
to make a hole in saltwater. But, you see, I had just had a story
refused by Schoonmaker's Magazine, a good story, too, and that
always gives me a sinking feeling--to think that after all these
years I am still on the borderland of failure, and can never be
sure of acceptance, even by the second-class periodicals for which
I write. However, in a day or two, I managed to unload "The Case
against Phillpots" on somebody else, and off I started for the New
Jersey coast with a hundred and fifty dollars in my pocket, and no
end of plans for a long autumn holiday.
I never gave another thought to Grossensteck until one morning, as
I was sitting on the veranda of my boarding-house, the postman
appeared and requested me to sign for a registered package. I
opened it with some trepidation, for I had caught that fateful
name written crosswise in the corner and began at once to
apprehend the worst. I think I have as much assurance as any man,
but it took all I had and more, too, when I unwrapped a gold medal
the thickness and shape of an enormous checker, and deciphered the
following inscription:
Presented to Hugo Dundonald Esquire for having
With signal heroism, gallantry and presence of mind
rescued On the night of June third, 1900
the life of Hermann Grossensteck from
The dark and treacherous waters of the East River.
The thing was as thick as two silver dollars, laid the one on the
other, and gold--solid, ringing, massy gold--all the way through;
and it was associated with a blue satin ribbon, besides, which was
to serve for sporting it on my manly bosom. I set it on the rail
and laughed--laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks--while
the other boarders crowded about me; handed it from hand to hand;
grew excited to think that they had a hero in their midst; and put
down my explanation to the proverbial modesty of the brave.
Blended with my amusement were some qualms at the intrinsic value
of the medal, for it could scarcely have cost less than three or
four hundred dollars, and it worried me to think that Grossensteck
must have drawn so lavishly on his savings. It had not occurred to
me, either before or then, that he was rich; somehow, in the bare
cabin of the schooner, I had received no such impression of his
means. I had not even realised that the vessel was his own, taking
it for granted that it had been hired, all standing, for a week or
two with the put-by economies of a year. His home address ought to
have set me right, but I had not taken the trouble to read it,
slipping it into my pocket-book more to oblige him than with any
idea of following up the acquaintance. It was one of the boarders
that enlightened me.
"Grossensteck!" he exclaimed; "why, that's the great cheap grocer
of New York, the Park & Tilford of the lower orders! There are
greenbacks in his rotten tea, you know, and places to leave your
baby while you buy his sanded sugar, and if you save eighty tags
of his syrup you get a silver spoon you wouldn't be found dead
with! Oh, everybody knows Grossensteck!"
"Well, I pulled the great cheap grocer out of the East River," I
said. "There was certainly a greenback in that tea," and I took
another look at my medal, and began to laugh all over again.
"There's no reason why you should ever have another grocery bill,"
said the boarder. "That is, if flavour cuts no figure with you,
and you'd rather eat condemned army stores than not!"
I sat down and wrote a letter of thanks. It was rather a nice
letter, for I could not but feel pleased at the old fellow's
gratitude, even if it were a trifle overdone, and, when all's
said, it was undoubtedly a fault on the right side. I disclaimed
the heroism, and bantered him good-naturedly about the medal,
which, of course, I said I would value tremendously and wear on
appropriate occasions. I wondered at the time what occasion could
be appropriate to decorate one's self with a gold saucer covered
with lies--but, naturally, I didn't go into that to HIM. When you
accept a solid chunk of gold you might as well be handsome about
it, and I piled it on about his being long spared to his family
and to a world that wouldn't know how to get along without him.
Yes, it was a stunning letter, and I've often had the pleasure of
reading it since in a splendid frame below my photograph.
I had been a month or more in New York, and December was already
well advanced before I looked up my Grossenstecks, which I did one
late afternoon as I happened to be passing in their direction. It
was a house of forbidding splendour, on the Fifth Avenue side of
Central Park, and, as I trod its marble halls, I could not but
repeat to myself: "Behold, the grocer's dream!" But I could make
no criticism of my reception by Mrs. Grossensteck and Teresa, whom
I found at home and delighted to see me. Mrs. Grossensteck was a
stout, jolly, motherly woman, common, of course,--but, if you can
understand what I mean,--common in a nice way, and honest and
unpretentious and likable. Teresa, whom I had scarcely noticed on
the night of the accident, was a charmingly pretty girl of
eighteen, very chic and gay, with pleasant manners and a
contagious laugh. She had arrived at obviously the turn of the
Grossensteck fortunes, and might, in refinement and everything
else, have belonged to another clay. How often one sees that in
America, the land above others of social contrast, where, in the
same family, there are often three separate degrees of caste.
Well, to get along with my visit. I liked them and they liked me,
and I returned later the same evening to dine and meet papa. I
found him as impassionedly grateful as before, and with a tale
that trespassed even further on the incredible, and after dinner
we all sat around a log fire and talked ourselves into a sort of
intimacy. They were wonderfully good people, and though we hadn't
a word in common, nor an idea, we somehow managed to hit it off,
as one often can with those who are unaffectedly frank and simple.
I had to cry over the death of little Hermann in the steerage
(when they had first come to America twenty years ago), and how
Grossensteck had sneaked gingersnaps from the slop-baskets of the
saloon.
"The little teffil never knew where they come from," said
Grossensteck, "and so what matters it?"
"That's Papa's name in the slums," said Teresa. "Uncle
Gingersnaps, because at all his stores they give away so many for
nothing."
"By Jove!" I said, "there are some nick-names that are patents of
nobility."
What impressed me as much as anything with these people was their
loneliness. Parvenus are not always pushing and self-seeking, nor
do they invariably throw down the ladder by which they have
climbed. The Grossenstecks would have been so well content to keep
their old friends, but poverty hides its head from the glare of
wealth and takes fright at altered conditions.
"They come--yes," said Mrs. Grossensteck, "but they are scared of
the fine house, of the high-toned help, of everything being gold,
you know, and fashionable. And when Papa sends their son to
college, or gives the girl a little stocking against her marriage
day, they slink away ashamed. Oh, Mr. Dundonald, but it's hard to
thank and be thanked, especially when the favours are all of one
side!"
"The rich have efferyting," said Grossensteck, "but friends--
Nein!"
New ones had apparently never come to take the places of the old;
and the old had melted away. Theirs was a life of solitary
grandeur, varied with dinner parties to their managers and
salesmen. Socially speaking, their house was a desert island, and
they themselves three castaways on a golden rock, scanning the
empty seas for a sail. To carry on a metaphor, I might say I was
the sail and welcomed accordingly. I was everything that they were
not; I was poor; I mixed with people whose names filled them with
awe; my own was often given at first nights and things of that
sort. In New York, the least snobbish of great cities, a man need
have but a dress suit and car-fare--if he be the right kind of a
man, of course--to go anywhere and hold up his head with the best.
In a place so universally rich, there is even a certain piquancy
in being a pauper. The Grossenstecks were overcome to think I
shined my own shoes, and had to calculate my shirts, and the fact
that I was no longer young (that's the modern formula for forty),
and next-door to a failure in the art I had followed for so many
years, served to whet their pity and their regard. My little
trashy love-stories seemed to them the fruits of genius, and they
were convinced, the poor simpletons, that the big magazines were
banded in a conspiracy to block my way to fame.
"My dear poy," said Grossensteck, "you know as much of peeziness
as a child unporne, and I tell you it's the same efferywhere--in
groceries, in hardware, in the alkali trade, in effery branch of
industry, the pig operators stand shoulder to shoulder to
spiflicate the little fellers like you. You must combine with the
other producers; you must line up and break through the ring; you
must scare them out of their poots, and, by Gott, I'll help you do
it!"
In their naive interest in my fortunes, the Grossenstecks rejoiced
at an acceptance, and were correspondingly depressed at my
failures. A fifteen-dollar poem would make them happy for a week;
and when some of my editors were slow to pay-on the literary
frontiers there is a great deal of this sort of procrastination--
Uncle Gingersnaps was always hot to put the matter into the hands
of his collectors, and commence legal proceedings in default.
Little by little I drifted into a curious intimacy with the
Grossenstecks. Their house by degrees became my refuge. I was
given my own suite of rooms, my own latch-key; I came and went
unremarked; and what I valued most of all was that my privacy was
respected, and no one thought to intrude upon me when I closed my
door. In time I managed to alter the whole house to my liking, and
spent their money like water in the process. Gorgeousness gave way
to taste; I won't be so fatuous as to say my taste; but mine was
in conjunction with the best decorators in New York. One was no
longer blinded by magnificence, but found rest and peace and
beauty. Teresa and I bought the pictures. She was a wonderfully
clever girl, full of latent appreciation and understanding which
until then had lain dormant in her breast. I quickened those
unsuspected fires, and, though I do not vaunt my own judgment as
anything extraordinary, it represented at least the conventional
standard and was founded on years of observation and training. We
let the old masters go as something too smudgy and recondite for
any but experts, learning our lesson over one Correggio which
nearly carried us into the courts, and bought modern American
instead, amongst them some fine examples of our best men. We had a
glorious time doing it, too, and showered the studios with golden
rain--in some where it was evidently enough needed.
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