CHAPTER VIII

The superbly dressed visitor, wrapped in silk brocades and woven feathers, seemed strangely out of place there in the doorway of the dingy tenement apartment. That she felt herself so, also, was apparent, for there was, upon her face, a look of high contempt and keen distaste. She swept into the little room with all the majesty of a proud queen, forced, by some untoward circ.u.mstance, to call at the low hovel of a very, very humble, and, probably, unworthy subject.

"Ah, Herr Kreutzer."

The old flute-player, after a scared glance into the hallway, where he had thought he saw the flash of brazen b.u.t.tons, bowed low and handsomely. Among all the millionaire male friends of Mrs. Vanderlyn was not one who was half capable of such a bow, and, in a dim way she appreciated this. She did not for a moment, though, think it marked the aged man before her as a gentleman, and worthy, therefore, of consideration from a lady. She was trying to feel certain, now, that what she had believed an evidence of really high breeding, was, really, mere clever sham. The old musician had lost all the glamor of his mystery for her. Surely, had he really been what she suspected, then his daughter would have been incapable of the offense which she, its victim, had come there to punish. Now the old man's courtly grace upon the ship, by which she had been fooled into believing him a person of real eminence, was openly revealed to her as counterfeit and worthless--he was a swindler, almost, indeed, as viciously dishonest as the thing his daughter had been guilty of. Now his manner merely sent a vague reflection through her brain that upon the ocean's other side their peasants were well trained. Now she was bitterly resentful of the fact that, on the ship, she had been fooled into thinking him a person, possibly, of eminence.

"So," said Kreutzer, offering her, with graceful courtesy which made her falter in her new conviction, and a perfect ease, withal, which much astonished her, the best chair in the room. "And you, Madame, are Mrs. Vanderlyn?"

"Yes," Mrs. Vanderlyn replied. "I'm Mrs. Vanderlyn. Your daughter, till to-day, was--my companion."

"Ah, Madame; I know," said the old man. "You wish to see her? Is that the reason why you honor my so humble home, Madame?"

Mrs. Vanderlyn, who had come to bl.u.s.ter, was a bit nonplussed, even a bit abashed by the superb and easy manner of the man. Never in her life had she been privileged, indeed, to meet with a reception so graceful and so courteous. Could she, after all, be wrong? Here, at last, in an apartment on the top floor of a New York tenement, had she encountered what she had vainly searched for, elsewhere, even on her travels in the European countries. This was the grace and courtesy which she had read about. She really was much impressed, and, in her heart, would have been pleased if she had had an errand there less disagreeable. She wondered why she had not remembered with more accuracy, the superb demeanor of this aged man on shipboard. If she had only realized--she even might have dressed him up, she speculated, and had him at her house for dinner! She could have introduced him to her climbing friends as a musician of great eminence, abroad (she remembered with regret, now, that he really played the flute magnificently--so everyone on shipboard had exclaimed), and made them envious to a degree. But now that she had started on this task, she would not falter. She a.s.sured herself, indeed, that duty as a citizen demanded that she should _not_ falter.

"Yes," she said to him, with real regret, "I certainly must see your daughter; but I am glad first to explain to you--"

"The pleasure," said the courtly flute-player, "is mutual, Madame. May I ask you what you must explain?"

Mrs. Vanderlyn now summoned to her face a look of sympathy, lugubrious and as sincere as she could make it. "It will be a blow, Herr Kreutzer."

The old man was uneasy, but he hid it as best he could, under a most careful, unremitting courtesy. "A blow, Madame?"

She did not speak, at once, but stood there looking at him with wide eyes which she was very careful to make sad. It made him madly nervous.

"Well, I am ready," he protested, after the delay became intolerable.

"I beg of you do not delay."

"First," said Mrs. Vanderlyn, not going to the heart of the unhappy matter, as his whole soul begged of her to do, but paltering with an unnecessary explanation, "you must understand the arrangement of my house. My son's room adjoins my own; then comes the little boudoir I a.s.signed to Anna; then--"

"Yes, Madame," said Kreutzer, unable to endure this any longer, "but what of that? You said--"

"I am positive that this afternoon no one was near those rooms but Anna."

Kreutzer was in agony. "Go on, Madame," he said, imploringly. "Do you not see that this is torture? I cannot bear it longer."

She looked at him again, with that a.s.sumed expression of compa.s.sion, and he could have torn her secret from her with hooked fingers, so exasperated, so intensely agonized was he by her delays. Finally he made a desperate, downward, begging gesture with both hands, and, understanding, she went on:

"This afternoon my son returned from somewhere, and went into his room. He did not come into my room to call me, as he sometimes does.

He was very quiet and it made me curious. I thought perhaps the boy might be there suffering with some headache, or something, which he did not wish to bother me about. A mother's heart, you know--"

"Madame, I pray you, have some consideration for a father's heart, and hasten."

"I went into his room to speak to him and found that he had left it; but on his table was a little jewel-box."

The flute-player drew in his breath with a sharp hiss, so close set were his teeth. Now she was coming to it! Now she was coming to the accusation of his Anna--the accusation which--ah, G.o.d!--had been preceded by the girl's own terrible confession.

"Yes," said he, trying not to let his eyes turn toward the bag, which still lay on the table, "a jewel-box. Well, Madame, what of that?"

"Being a woman," Mrs. Vanderlyn said slowly, "I could not withstand the temptation. I looked in. Within I saw--a magnificent diamond ring."

Still she had not reached the crux of what she had to say. Would the woman never come to the great point--would she never make the charge against his Anna definite and clear? "Well?" he said unhappily, and, as he said the word a resolution found birth in his brain. His little Anna! What if she had been tempted and had yielded? He would not let her suffer for it, as this cold and haughty woman evidently wished to have her suffer! He would ward disgrace from her--at any cost.

Carefully, so that the movement could not rouse suspicion in the mind of his exasperating visitor, he put his hand behind him and let it fall on the bag upon the table. Once on it, his fingers worked with skill and that precision which is natural to fingers trained by practice on a musical instrument until they seem to have a real intelligence, scarcely dependent on the brain.

"I knew for whom the dear boy meant that jewel," Mrs. Vanderlyn went on. "He had bought it as a present for me on my birthday, which occurs tomorrow."

Kreutzer nodded slowly, his fingers working, all the time, in Anna's bag. "Presents are sometimes made on birthdays," he admitted. "Well?"

"Happy in the thought that he had remembered me, I went out for my drive, leaving the box there on his table, just where I had found it.

When I reached the house again I found a note left for me by your daughter, saying that she had decided upon going from my house forever, that someday she hoped I would forgive her--"

"What had she done?" said Kreutzer, in a dry voice, full of misery.

"Ah, that she did not say." Mrs. Vanderlyn paused now, with a fine sense of the dramatic. "But immediately I looked again for that box and ring and they--were gone!"

Kreutzer, pale, his forehead damp from perspiration of pure agony, as truly sweat of pain as any ever beaded on the brow of an excruciated prisoner upon the rack, looked at her with pleading eyes. "Gone!

Madame, you do not think--"

She smiled a bitter little smile. There was, also, just a touch of triumph in it, such as small souls show when they are on the point of proving to another, even though a stranger, that they have been wrong in trusting someone, believing in some thing. "My dear sir," she said slowly, not from unwillingness to speak but to give emphasis, "what else can I think? No one but my son, myself and Anna had been near that room--"

Kreutzer straightened up as one whose shoulders have been stooped for the reception of a mighty load which, finally, has been fixed upon them. "You have told him?"

"Not yet."

"Ah, that is lucky.... I beg your pardon, Madame, you have dropped your handkerchief."

The handkerchief had fallen not less than a minute before, and, instinctively, he had started forward, intending to restore it to her; but by that time the situation had begun to be quite clear to him--ah, deadly clear to him!--and, in a flash the strategy had come to him.

Knowing, then, that that dropped handkerchief would be essential to its execution, he had let it lie.

Mrs. Vanderlyn turned carelessly to raise the handkerchief, and, as she turned, he carried out his plan. Quick as a flash, he slipped the box which held the ring, out of the bag and into his own pocket. When she straightened up again, after having (with a flush, for he had seemed exceedingly polite, before) recovered her own handkerchief, she found him standing as he had stood, only, possibly, a little more erect than he had been, with some addition of calm dignity to his carriage, with a calmer look in his old eyes.

"Why is it lucky that I have not told him?" Mrs. Vanderlyn asked, now.

"Of course he'll have to know. Everyone must know."

It broke his self-control. "That--my little girl is--no, no, no!" he faltered. "Ah, it is not true! She is not guilty!"

She tried to show a sympathetic smile, but in it there was little actual sympathy. "Very natural that you should think so," she admitted. "It came as a great shock--and a surprise--even to me. I had thought she was unusually well-bred, refined." She sighed, as if the world were rather hard on her, to fool her so in one she had believed to be an admirable person. "But let me tell you that she has great admiration for fine jewels. I have noted that, before. And--the temptation was too strong for her. Weak spot, somewhere, in her, don't you see? It was too strong for that weak spot."

"Oh, Madame, I--"

She raised her hand as if to ward away his protests. Clearly she believed that having told him all about it, as gently as she had, she had accomplished her whole Christian duty and was under not the slightest further obligation to be merciful. "I may as well tell you,"

she warned him, "that I brought an officer with me. To save your natural feelings, I requested him to wait downstairs a moment and then to come and wait outside the door--er--um--in case of trouble. Just a little necessary precaution, my dear sir. A woman, coming to a place like this, alone, you see--"