Isham Frederic Stewart
The Strollers

CHAPTER VII
A CYNICAL BARD

A dusty window looking out upon a dusty thoroughfare; a dusty room, lighted by the dusty window, and revealing a dusty chair, a dusty carpet and–probably–a dusty bed! Over the foot and the head of the bed the lodger’s wardrobe lay carelessly thrown. He had but to reach up, and lo! his shirt was at hand; to reach down, and there were collar and necktie! Presto, he was dressed, without getting out of bed, running no risk from cold floors for cold feet, lurking tacks or stray needles and pins! On every side appeared evidence of confusion, or a bachelor’s idea of order.

Fastened to the head-board of the bed was a box, wherein were stored various and divers articles and things. With as little inconvenience as might be imagined the lodger could plunge his hand into his cupboard and pull out a pipe, a box of matches, a bottle of ink, a bottle of something else, paper and pins, and, last but not least, his beloved tin whistle of three holes, variously dignified a fretiau, a frestele, or a galoubet, upon which he played ravishing tunes.

Oh, a wonderful box was Straws’ little bedstead cupboard! As Phazma said of it, it contained everything it should not, and nothing it should contain. But that was why it was a poet’s box. If it had held a Harpagon’s Interest Computer, instead of a well-thumbed Virgil, or Oldcodger’s Commercial Statistics for 184–, instead of an antique, leather-covered Montaigne, Straws would have had no use for the cupboard. It was at once his library–a scanty one, for the poet held tenaciously to but a few books–his sideboard, his secrétaire, his music cabinet–giving lodgment in this last capacity to a single work, “The Complete and Classical Preceptor for Galoubet, Containing Tunes, Polkas and Military Pieces.”

Suspended from the ceiling hung a wooden cage, confining a mocking bird that had become acclimated to the death-dealing atmosphere of tobacco smoke, alcoholic fumes and poetry. All these the songster had endured and survived, nay, thriven upon, lifting up its voice in happy cadence and blithely hopping about its prison, the door of which Straws sometimes opened, permitting the feathered captive the dubious freedom of the room. Pasted on the foot-board of the bed was an old engraving of a wandering musician mountebank, playing a galoubet as an accompaniment to a dancing dog and a cock on stilts, a never-wearying picture for Straws, with his migratory, vagabond proclivities.

A bracket on the wall looked as though it might have been intended for a piece of statuary, or a bit of porcelain or china decoration, but had really been set there for his ink-pot, when he was mindful to work in bed, although how the Muse could be induced to set foot in that old nookery of a room could only be explained through the whims and crotchets of that odd young person’s character.

Yet come she would and did, although she got dust on her flowing skirts when she swept across the threshold; dust on her snow-white gown–if the writers are to be believed in regard to its hue!–when she sat down in the only chair, and dust in her eyes when she flirted her fan. Fortunate was it for Straws that the Muse is a wayward, freakish gipsy; a straggler in attics; a vagrant of the streets; fortunately for him she is not at all the fine lady she has been depicted! Doubtless she has her own reasons for her vagaries; perhaps because it is so easy to soar from the hovel to fairy-land, but to soar from a palace–that is obviously impossible; it is a height in itself! So this itinerant maiden ever yawns amid scenes of splendor, and, from time immemorial, has sighed for lofts, garrets, and such humble places as Straws’ earthly abode.

At the present time, however, Straws was alone. This eccentric but lovely young lady had not deigned to visit him that day. Once, indeed, she had just looked in, but whisked back again into the hall, slamming the door after her, and the pen, momentarily grasped, had fallen from Straws’ hand. Instead of reaching for the ink-bottle he reached in the cupboard for the other bottle. Again she came near entering through the window–having many unconventional ways of coming into a room!–but after looking in for a moment, changed her mind after her fashion and floated away into thin space like the giddy, volatile mistress that she was. After that she appeared no more–probably making a friendly call on some one else!–and Straws resigned himself to her heartless perfidy, having become accustomed to her frivolous, fantastic moods.

Indeed, what else could he have done; what can any man do when his lady-love deserts him, save to make the best of it? But he found his consolation in a pipe; not a pipe of tobacco, nor yet a pipe of old madeira, which, figuratively, most disappointed lovers seek; but a pipe of melody, a pipe of flowing tunes and stirring marches; a pipe of three holes, vulgarly termed by those who know not its high classic origin from the Grecian reeds and its relation to the Pandian pipes, a tin whistle! Thus was Straws classic in his taste, affecting the instrument wherein Acis sighed his soul and breath away for fair Galatea!

It had been a lazy, purposeless day. He had awakened at noon; had coffee and rolls in bed; had dressed, got up, looked out, lain down again, read, and vainly essayed original composition. Now, lying on his back, with the Complete and Classic Preceptor before him, he soothed himself with such music “as washes the every-day dust from the soul.” For a pipe of three holes, his instrument had a remarkable compass; melody followed melody–“The Harp that Once through Tara’s Hall,” “She is Far from the Land,” “In Death I shall Calm Recline,” and other popular pieces. When Straws missed a note he went back to find it; when he erred in a phrase, he patiently repeated it. The cadence in the last mournful selection, “Bid her not shed a tear of sorrow,” was, on his first attempt, fraught with exceeding discord, and he was preparing once more to assault the citadel of grief, entrenched with bristling high notes, when an abrupt knocking at the door, followed by the appearance of a face marred by wrath and adorned with an enormous pair of whiskers, interrupted his attack.

“Sair,” said this person, excitedly, with no more than his head in the room, like a Punch and Judy figure peering from behind a curtain, “you are ze one gran’ nuisance! Eet is zat–what you call eet?–whistle! I am crazee–crazee!”

“Yes; you look it!” replied Straws, sympathetically. “Perhaps, if you had a keep–”

“I am not crazee!” vociferated the man.

“No? Perhaps I could tell better, if I could see more of you. Judging from the sample, I confess to curiosity for a full-length view. If you will step in–”

“I will not step in! I will step out! I will leave zis house! I will leave–forever!”

And the head vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, to be followed by hasty footsteps down the stairway.

“Now I can understand why Orpheus was torn to pieces,” ruminated Straws, mournfully surveying the offending pipe. “He played on the lyre! Return to thy cupboard, O reed divine!”–putting the whistle back in the box–“a vile world, as Falstaff says! Heigho!”–yawning–“life is an empty void–which reminds me I have a most poetic appetite. What shall I do”–and Straws sat up relinquishing his lounging attitude–“go out, or have pot-luck in the room? Tortier’s bouillabaisse would about tickle the jaded palate. A most poetic dish, that bouillabaisse! Containing all the fish that swim in the sea and all the herbs that grow on the land! Thus speaks gluttony! Get thee behind me, odoriferous temptation of garlic! succulent combination of broth and stew!”

So saying, Straws sprang from his bed, lighted a charcoal fire in his tiny grate; rummaged a bureau drawer and drew forth an end of bacon, a potato or two, a few apples, an onion and the minor part of a loaf of bread, all of which, except the bread, he sliced and thrust indiscriminately into the frying-pan and placed over the blue flame. Next from behind the mirror he produced a diminutive coffee pot into which he measured, with extreme care, just so much of the ground berry, being rather over-nice about his demitasse. Having progressed thus far in his preparation for pot, or frying-pan luck–and indeed it seemed a matter of luck, or good fortune, how that mixture would turn out–he rapped on the floor with the heel of his boot, like the prince in the fairy tale, summoning his attendant good genii, and in a few moments a light tapping on the door announced the coming of a servitor.

Not a mighty wraith nor spook of Arabian fancy, but a very small girl, or child, with very black hair, very white skin and very dark, beautiful eyes. A daughter of mixed ancestry, yet with her dainty hands and little feet, she seemed descended from sprites or sylphs.

“Monsieur called,” she said in her pretty dialect.

“Yes, my dear. Go to Monsieur Tortier’s, Celestina, and tell him to give you a bottle of the kind Monsieur Straws always takes.”

“At once, Monsieur,” she answered, very gravely, very seriously. And Celestina vanished like a butterfly that flutters quickly away.

“Now this won’t be bad after all,” thought Straws, sniffing at the frying-pan which had begun to sputter bravely over the coals, while the coffee pot gave forth a fragrant steam. “A good bottle of wine will transform a snack into a collation; turn pot-luck into a feast!”

As thus he meditated the first of night’s outriders, its fast-coming shadows, stole through the window; following these swift van-couriers, night’s chariot came galloping across the heavens; in the sky several little clouds melted like Cleopatra’s pearls. Musing before his fire the poet sat, not dreaming thoughts no mortal ever dreamed before, but turning the bacon and apples and stirring in a few herbs, for no other particular reason than that he had them and thought he might as well use them.

“Celestina is taking longer than usual,” he mused. “Perhaps, though, Monsieur Tortier intends to surprise me with an unusually fine bottle. Yes; that is undoubtedly the reason for the delay. He is hunting about in the cellar for something a little out of the ordinary. But here is Celestina now!” as the child reappeared, with footsteps so noiseless the poet saw before he heard her. “Where is the bottle, my little Ariel? It must be an extra fine vintage. Bless old Tortier’s noble heart!”

“There isn’t any bottle,” said the child. “Monsieur said that your account–”

“The miserable old hunks! His heart’s no bigger than a pin-head!”

“Please, I’m so sorry!” spoke up Celestina, a suspicious moisture in her eyes.

“I know it, my dear,” returned Straws. “Your heart is as big as his whole body. One of your tears is more precious than his most priceless nectar.”

“I beg-ged him–that’s why I–I stayed so–long!” half-sobbed Celestina.

“There! there!” said Straws, wiping her eyes. “Of course it’s very tragic, but there’s no use crying over spilled milk. Dear me, dear me; what can we do? It’s terrible, but you know the proverb: ‘Every cloud has a silver lining.’ Perhaps this one has. I wish it had; or a golden one! Think of a cloud of gold, Celestina! Wouldn’t we be rich? What would you do with it?”

“I’d go to–Monsieur Tortier’s and–and get the bottle,” said the child in an agony of distress.

He lifted her on his knee, soothed her and held her in his arms, stroking her dark hair.

“I believe you would,” he said. “And now, as we haven’t got the golden cloud, let us see how we can get on without it. How shall we conquer that ogre, Monsieur Tortier? What would you suggest, Celestina?”

The child looked into the fire, with eyes wide-open.

“Come, be a good fairy now,” urged Straws, “and tell me.”

“Why don’t you write him a poem?” said Celestina, turning her eyes, bright with excitement, upon him.

“A poem! Non–by Jove, you’re right! An inspiration, my dear! People like to be thought what they are not. They want to be praised for virtues foreign to themselves. The ass wants to masquerade as the lion. ’Tis the law of nature. Now Monsieur Tortier is a Jew; a scrimp; a usurer! Very well, we will celebrate the virtues he hath not in verse and publish the stanza in the Straws’ column. After all, we are only following the example of the historians, and they’re an eminently respectable lot of people. Celestina! You watch the coffee pot, and I’ll grind out the panegyric!”

The child knelt before the fire, but her glance strayed from the steaming spout to the poet’s face, as he sat on the edge of his bed and rapidly scribbled. By the time the bacon was fairly done and the other condiments in the frying-pan had turned to a dark hue, the production was finished and triumphantly waved in mid air by the now hopeful Straws.

“I’ll just read you a part of it, my dear!” he said. “It’s not half bad. But perhaps it would–bore you?” With exaggerated modesty.

“Oh, I just love your poetry!” cried the girl, enthusiastically.

“If everybody were only like you now! Isn’t it too bad you’ve got to grow up and grow wiser? But here’s the refrain. There are six stanzas, but I won’t trouble you with all of them, my dear. One mustn’t drive a willing horse, or a willing auditor.”

And in a voice he endeavored to render melodious, with her rapt glance fixed upon him, Straws read:

 
“Sing, my Muse, the lay of the prodigal host!
 
 
 Who enters here leaveth behind not hope.
Course follows course; entrée, relevé, ragoût,
 
 
 Ambrosial sauces, pungent, after luscious soup.
The landlord spurs his guests to fresh attack,
 
 
 With fricassee, réchauffé and omelets;
A toothsome feast that Apicius would fain have served,
 
 
 While wine, divine, new zeal in all begets.
 
 
 Who is this host, my Muse, pray say?
 
 
 Who but that prodigal, Tortier!
 

“There, my dear,” concluded Straws, “those feet are pretty wobbly to walk, but flattery moves on lame legs faster than truth will travel on two good ones. Besides, I haven’t time to polish them properly, or the mess in the frying-pan will spoil. Better spoil the poem than the contents of the flesh pots! Now if–dear me, Celestina, if you haven’t let the coffee pot boil over!”

“Oh, Monsieur,” cried the child, almost weeping again. “I forgot to watch it! I just couldn’t while you were writing poetry.”

“The excuse more than condones the offense,” continued the other. “But as I was about to say, you take this poem to Monsieur Tortier, make your prettiest bow and courtesy–let me see you make a courtesy.”

The girl bowed as dainty as a little duchess.

“That should melt a heart of stone in itself,” commented Straws. “But Tortier’s is flint! After that charming bow, you will give him my compliments; Mr. Straws’ compliments, remember; and, would he be kind enough just to glance over this poem which Mr. Straws, with much mental effort, has prepared, and which, if it be acceptable to Monsieur Tortier, will appear in Mr. Straws’ famous and much-talked-of column in the paper?”

“Oh, Monsieur, I can’t remember all that!” said the girl.

“Do it your own way then. Besides, it will be better than mine.”

With the poem hugged to her breast, the child fairly flew out of the room, leaving Straws a prey to conflicting emotions. He experienced in those moments of suspense all the doubts and fears of the nestling bard or the tadpole litterateur, awaiting the pleasure and sentence of the august editor or the puissant publisher. Tortier had been suddenly exalted to the judge’s lofty pedestal. Would he forthwith be an imperial autocrat; turn tyrant or Thersites; or become critic, one of “those graminivorous animals which gain subsistence by gorging upon buds and leaves of the young shrubs of the forest, robbing them of their verdure and retarding their progress to maturity”?

Straws’ anxiety was trouble’s labor lost. Celestina appeared, the glad messenger of success, and now, as she came dancing into the room, bore in her arms the fruits of victory which she laid before the poet with sparkling eyes and laughing lips.

“So the poem was accepted?” murmured Straws. “Discerning Tortier! Excellent dilettante! Let him henceforth be known as a man of taste!” Here the poet critically examined the bottle. “Nothing vapid, thin or characterless there!” he added, holding it before the blaze in the grate. “Positively I’ll dedicate my forthcoming book to him. ‘To that worshipful master and patron, the tasteful Tortier!’ What did he say, Celestina, when you tendered him the poem?”

“At first he frowned and then he looked thoughtful. And then he gave me some orange syrup. And then–O, I don’t want to say!” A look of unutterable concern displacing the happiness on her features.

“Say on, my dear!” cried Straws.

“He–he said he–he didn’t think much of it as–O, I can’t tell you; I can’t! I can’t!”

“Celestina,” said the poet sternly, “tell me at once. I command you.”

“He said he didn’t think much of it as poetry, but that people would read it and come to his café and–O dear, O dear!”

“Beast! Brute! Parvenu! But there, don’t cry, my dear. We have much to be thankful for–we have the bottle.”

“Oh, yes,” she said with conviction, and brightening a bit. “We have the bottle.” And as she spoke, “pop” it went, and Celestina laughed. “May I set your table?” she asked.

“After your inestimable service to me, my dear, I find it impossible to refuse,” he replied gravely.

“How good you are!” she remarked, placing a rather soiled cloth, which she found somewhere, over a battered trunk.

“I try not to be, but I can’t help it!” answered the poet modestly.

“No; that’s it; you can’t help it!” she returned, moving lightly around the room, emptying the contents of the frying-pan–now an aromatic jumble–on to a cracked blue platter, and setting knife and fork, and a plate, also blue, before him! “And may I wait on you, too?”

“Well, as a special favor–” He paused, appearing to ponder deeply and darkly.

Her eyes were bent upon his face with mute appeal, her suspense so great she stood stock-still in the middle of the floor, frying-pan in hand.

“Yes; you may wait on me,” he said finally, after perplexed and weighty rumination.

At that her little feet fairly twinkled, but her hand was ever so careful as she took the coffee pot from the fire and put it near the blue plate. A glass–how well she knew where everything was!–she found in some mysterious corner and, sitting down on the floor, cross-legged like a little Turk, a mere mite almost lost in the semi-obscurity of the room, she polished it assiduously upon the corner of the table cloth until it shone free from specks of dust; all the time humming very lightly like a bird, or a housewife whose heart is in her work. A strange song, a curious bit of melody that seemed to spring from some dark past and to presage a future, equally sunless.

“Your supper is ready, Monsieur,” she said, rising.

“And I am ready for it. Why, how nicely the table looks! Really, when we both grow up, I think we should take a silver ship and sail to some silver shore and live together there forever and evermore. How would you like it?”

Celestina’s lips were mute, but her eyes were full of rapturous response, and then became suddenly shy, as though afraid of their own happiness.

“May I pour your wine?” she asked, with downcast lashes.

“Can you manage it and not spill a drop? Remember Cratinus wept and died of grief seeing his wine–no doubt, this same vintage–spilt!”

But Straws was not called upon to emulate this classic example. The feat of filling his glass was deftly accomplished, and a moment later the poet raised it with, “‘Drink to me only with thine eyes!’” An appropriate sentiment for Celestina who had nothing else to drink to him with. “Won’t you have some of this–what shall I call it?–hash, stew or ration?”

“Oh, I’ve had my supper,” she answered.

“How fortunate for you, my dear! It isn’t exactly a company bill of fare! But everything is what I call snug and cozy. Here we are high up in the world–right under the roof–all by ourselves, with nobody to disturb us–”

A heavy footfall without; rap, rap, rap, on the door; no timid, faltering knock, but a firm application of somebody’s knuckles!

“It’s that Jack-in-the-box Frenchman,” muttered the writer. “Go to the devil!” he called out.

The door opened.

“You have an original way of receiving visitors!” drawled a languid voice, and the glance of the surprised poet fell upon Edward Mauville. “Really, I don’t know whether to come in or not,” continued the latter at the threshold.

“I beg your pardon,” murmured Straws. “I thought it was a–”

“Creditor?” suggested Mauville, with an amused smile. “I know the class. Don’t apologize! I am intruding. Quite a family party!” he went on, his gaze resting upon Celestina and the interrupted repast.

With his elegant attire, satin waistcoat and fine ruffles, he seemed out of place in the attic nook of the Muse; a lordling who had wandered by mistake into the wrong room. But he bore himself with the easy assurance of a man who could adapt himself to any surroundings; even to Calliope’s shabby boudoir!

“My dear,” remarked the disconcerted bard, “get a chair for Mr. Mauville. Or–I beg your pardon–would you mind sitting on the bed? Won’t you have some wine? Celestina, bring another glass.”

But the girl only stood and stared at the dark, courtly being who thus unexpectedly had burst in upon them.

“There isn’t any more,” she finally managed to say. “You’ve got the only glass there is, please!”

“Dear me; dear me!” exclaimed Straws. “How glasses do get broken! I have so few occasions to use them, too, for I don’t very often have visitors.”

“You are surprised to see me?” continued Mauville, pleasantly, seating himself on the edge of the bed. “Go on with your supper. You don’t mind my smoking while you eat?”

“No; the odor of onions is a little strong, isn’t it?” laughed the other. “Rather strange, by the by, some of nature’s best restoratives should be rank and noisome, while her poisons, like the Upas tree, are often sweet-smelling and agreeable?”

“Yes,” commented the land baron; “we make the worst faces over the medicines that do us the most good.”

“I presume,” said Straws, delighted at the prospect of an argument, and forgetting his curiosity over the other’s visit in this brief interchange of words, “nature but calls our attention to the fact that we may know our truest friends are not those with the sweetest manners.”

“Heaven forbid!” remarked Mauville. “But how are you getting on with your column? A surfeit of news and gossip, I presume? What a busy fellow you are, to be sure! Nothing escapes through your seine. Big fish or little fish, it is all one. You dress them up with alluring sauce.”

The bard shook his head.

“The net has been coming in dry,” he said gloomily. “But that’s the way with the fish. Sometimes you catch a good haul, and then they all disappear. It’s been bad luck lately.”

“Perhaps I can make a cast for you,” cried the patroon eagerly.

“And bring up what?” asked the hack.

“Something everybody will read; that will set the gossips talking.”

“A woman’s reputation?”

“No; a man’s.”

“That is to be regretted,” said Straws. “If, now, it were only a woman’s–.However, it’s the next best thing to start the town a-gossiping. I am much obliged to you for taking the trouble of calling. All those stairs to climb, too!”

“I was sure you would be glad to hear of it,” remarked the patroon, slowly, studying with his bright, insolent glance, the pale, intellectual face of the scribbler.

“Yes; there’s only one thing stands in the way.”

“And that?”

“I never publish anything I don’t believe. Don’t misunderstand me, please.” Pouring out a glass of wine. “Unfortunately I am so incredulous! Isn’t it a pity? I am such a carping cynic; a regular skeptic that follows the old adage, ‘Believe that story false that ought not to be true.’ It’s such a detriment to my work, too! A pretty scandal at the top of my column would make me famous, while a sprinkling of libels and lampoons would enable me to move down a story or two. But, after all, I’d feel lost in the luxury of a first floor front chamber. So, you see, nature adjusts herself to our needs.”

“Makes the shell to fit the snail, as it were,” commented the land baron, patronizingly, gazing around the little cupboard of a room. “At any rate,” he added, in an effort to hide his dissatisfaction, “it’s a pleasure to become better acquainted with such a–what shall I say?–whimsical fellow as yourself?”

“That’s it,” returned the bard. “Whimsical!”

“I dare say you have had many a chance to turn an honest penny or two, if you had not been so skeptical, as you call it?” remarked the patroon, significantly. “People, I presume, have even offered to pay you for publishing the compliments of the season about their neighbors?”

“Well,” answered the scribbler, laughing, “I may have Midas’ longing for gold, but I also have his ears. And the ears predominate. I am such an ass I have even returned a fair petitioner’s perfumed note! Such a dainty little hand! How good the paper smelt! How devilish it read! The world’s idea about the devil always smelling of sulphur and brimstone is a slander on that much abused person. I can positively affirm that he smells of musk, attar, myrrh; as though he had lain somewhere with a lady’s sachet or scent-bag.”

“Really you should revise Milton,” murmured the land baron, carelessly, his interest quite gone. “But I must be moving on.” And he arose. “Good evening.”

“Good night!” said Straws, going to the door after his departing guest. “Can you see your way down? Look out for the turn! And don’t depend too much on the bannisters–they’re rather shaky. Well, he’s gone!” Returning once more to the room. “We’re coming up in the world, my dear, when such fashionable callers visit us! What do you think of him?”

“He is very–handsome!” replied the child.

“Oh, the vanity of the sex! Is he–is he handsomer than I?”

“Are you–handsome?” she asked.

“Eh? Don’t you think so?”

“No-o,” she cried, in a passion of distressed truthfulness.

“Thank you, my dear! What a flattering creature you’ll become, if you keep on as you’ve begun! How you’ll wheedle the men, to be sure!”

“But mustn’t I say what I think?”

“Always! I’m a bad adviser! Think of bringing up a young person, especially a girl, to speak the truth! What a time she’ll have!”

“But I couldn’t do anything else!” she continued, with absorbing and painful anxiety.

“Don’t, then! I’m instructing you to your destruction, but–don’t! I’m a philosopher in the School for Making Simpletons. What will you do when you go out into the broad world with truth for your banner and your heart on your sleeve?”

“How could I have my heart on my sleeve?” asked Celestina.

“Because you couldn’t help it!”

“Really and truly on my sleeve?”

“Really and truly!” he affirmed, gravely.

“How funny!” answered the girl.

“No; tragic! But what shall we do now, Celestina?”

“Wash the dishes,” said the child, practically.

“But, my dear, we won’t need them until to-morrow,” expostulated the poet. “Precipitancy is a bad fault. Now, if you had proposed a little music, or a fairy tale–”

“Oh, I could wash them while you played, or told me a story,” suggested the child, eagerly.

“That isn’t such a bad idea,” commented Straws, reflectively.

“Then you will let me?” she asked.

“Go ahead!” said the bard, and he reached for the whistle.