CHAPTER XX A MUSICAL TRAMP.

WE wanted Cherry to play, but we did not feel that we ought to ask her to do it; she would be tired, after her journey, and piano playing to her was no novelty.

But when, after dinner, while passing through the sitting room, on our way to the veranda she ran a harmony enticing hand over the keys as she walked by the piano, I could not help saying,

“Don’t you feel like following that up with the other hand?”

She laughed, and sitting down at the piano she said, “Why, certainly. What shall it be?”

“Oh, we leave that to you,” said Ethel. “Play what you like and you’ll play what we like.”

“Is Grieg getting old fashioned?” I asked.

“I never inquired,” said Cherry. “I don’t believe in fashions in arts. I liked Grieg, and Schumann, and Beethoven, and Mendelssohn, and Wagner, and Johann Strauss when I was a child, and so I’ll always like them. And Grieg is always fresh. What shall I play—‘Anitra’s Dance’?”

“Yes, do,” said Ethel. “I never hear that without thinking of Seidl and Brighton Beach and the throngs of doting Brooklyn women who didn’t go to hear the music, but to see Seidl. But it was beautiful music—when the roar of the surf didn’t drown it.”

Cherry found the piano stool at just the right height, and without any airs or graces beyond those which were part of her endowment, she started in to play. The windows were open and the music and the moonlight, and the hum of the insects, and the landscape became indissolubly blended, and I blessed Minerva once more for the truly “Puss-in-boots” service she had rendered to the “Marquis of Carabas.”

The dance ended, Cherry turned around on the piano stool and said,

“Minerva chose a very nice piano.”

There was a sound of steps on the porch and the shadow of a man fell across the square hallway. There was also a subdued rap on the door post.

I stepped to the door and found a tramp standing there. He was the typical tramp of the comic papers; unshaven, dusty, blear-eyed, unkempt, stoop shouldered, ragged, un-prepossessing.

“What do you wish?” said I, irritated at the interruption.

He hesitated a moment.

“I’d like a glass of milk,” said he, huskily.

“Well, go around to the back door and the girl will give you one. Don’t you want some meat?”

“Thanks; I don’t care if I do,” said he, wiping his mouth as if my invitation had been a bibulous one.

He went around, and I returned to the sitting room, where Cherry had started another piece.

“Do you have many tramps?” asked she when she had finished.

“Not many. They are too lazy to climb the hills. I think he is only the third one this summer. He was awful looking. Did you see him?”

“No,” said Ethel and Cherry together.

“What a life! Probably not a wish in the world but for food and drink.”

My moralizing was cut short by the return of the tramp. In his right hand he held a sandwich and with his left he was wiping milk from his moustache.

As he passed the window he beckoned to me, who was sitting by it.

I supposed that he wanted money, and went out.

“Say, boss,” said he, “I’m pretty far gone, but you didn’t set the dog on me, and I want you to ask that young lady in there a favour.”

“What is it?”

“Ask her to play the ‘Dance of the Dwarfs’ in the same suite—‘Peer Gint.’”

“Sit down,” said I, and felt as if I needed a seat myself.

The oafish tramp sat down on the porch seat, and I went in and told Cherry what the tramp would like to hear.

Surprise showed in her face, but quite as a matter of course she went to the piano and began the lumbering, humourous dance.

In the middle of it I could hear the tramp laughing gutturally, and when she had finished it he clapped his hands and said,

“Beg pardon, but I’m much obliged. That’s one of the funniest pieces of music that was ever composed. Say, boss, will you step out a minute.”

I stepped out. He had risen and was evidently going.

“Boss, I used to be one of the second violins in Seidl’s orchestra, but—well,—that’s how. I was go’n’ by here, for I had had som’n’ to eat at the last house, but when I heard ‘Anitra’s Dance,’ gee! it brought back the good old days when I was doing the only thing I ever cared for, fiddling; and I thought I’d ask for some more, and then I didn’t dare until I’d been around to the kitchen and braced up. Thank the young lady for me.”

He shuffled out to the road.

“You wronged him, Philip,” said Ethel when I returned. “Think of his knowing ‘Peer Gint.’”

Cherry wiped her eyes and broke into a chorus from “Iolanthe.”