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.”