The Old Flute-Player | Page 4

Kreutzer, doubling his demeanor of astonishment as if in
total ignorance of what she meant. "I run! Why should I run, my Anna?
Why should I run from anybody?"
The daughter looked at him and sighed and then she looked at him and
smiled, and said no more. So many times, in other days, had things like
this occurred; so many times had she been quite unable to get any lucid
exposition from him of the strange occurrences, that, lately, she never
probed him for an explanation. She well knew, in advance, that she
would get none, and was unwilling to compel him into laboring
evasions. But such matters sorely puzzled her.
She did not learn, therefore, that the tall and handsome man who had so
curiously stared at them was the Exalted Personage; she did not learn
why it had been that from him Kreutzer had fled swiftly with her,
obviously worrying intensely lest they might be followed. She did not
know why, later, she was in closer espionage than ever. Two or three
days afterwards, when Kreutzer came in with his pockets full of
steamship time-tables and emigration-agents' folders, she did not dream
that it was that the Most Exalted Personage had cast his eyes upon them,
rather than the fact that wonderful advantages were promised to the
emigrant by all this steamship literature, which had made him make a
wholly unexpected plan to go from London and to cross the mighty sea.
He swore her to close secrecy.

It was with the utmost difficulty that she concealed their destination
from the landlady and from the slavey who assisted her in packing the
small trunks which held their all. She was always glad of anything
which made it absolutely necessary for them to be with her, for her
father, long ago, had told her not to ask them into their small rooms
when their presence there was not imperatively needed. She was and
had been, ever since she could remember clearly, very lonely, full of
longing for companionship--so very full of longing that, had he not
commanded it, she would not have been, as he was, particular about the
social status of the friends she made.
Even poor M'riar's love was very sweet and dear to her, and now, as she
was packing for departure the meagre garments of her wardrobe, her
scanty little fineries, the few small keepsakes she had hoarded of the
pitifully scarce bright days of her life (almost every one of these a gift
from her old father, token of a birth-or feast-day) it was with a sudden
burst of tears, a rushing, overwhelming feeling of anticipatory
loneliness, that she looked at the grimy little child who was assisting
her.
M'riar fell back on her haunches with a gasp. "Garn!" she cried. "Garn,
Miss! Don't yer dare to beller!"
A stranger might have thought she was impertinent, for "garn" on
cockney lips means "go on, now," in the slang of the United States, and
"beller" is not elegant, but Anna knew that she did not intend an
impudence.
"I feel very sad at leaving you, M'ri-arrr." There was pathos, now, in
the way Miss Anna rolled her r's.
"Sad! Huh! Hi thinks Hi'll die of it!" was the reply, accompanied by
more choked sobs and many snuffles. "An' yer won't heven tell me
w'ere yer hoff to!"
"I don't know, exactly, where we're off to M'ri-arrr. Somewhere very
far--oh, very far!"

M'riar, in spite of a firm resolution not to yield to tears, cast herself
upon the floor in anguish, and, as she kicked and howled, grasped one
of Anna's hands and kissed it, mumbling it, as an anguished mother
might a babe's--the hand of an exceedingly loved babe whom she
expected, soon, to lose by having given it to someone in adoption.
At that time M'riar looked upon the separation as inevitable. The wild
scheme which, afterwards, grew in her alert and worried brain, had not
yet had its birth and she could not take the thought of her Miss Anna's
going with composure.
"Hi didn't want ter 'oller," she said, at length, when she had regained
her self-control, "but that there yell hinside o' me was bigger'n Hi 'ad
room fer, Miss."
"It is very sweet of you to weep," said Anna gravely, "although it is not
sweet to hear you weep; but I think it means you love me, M'ri-arrr,
doesn't it?"
"Hi fair wusships yer," said M'riar. "Fair wusships yer."
And there was a strange thing about Miss Anna. It did not in the least
surprise her to be told with an undoubted earnestness, indeed to know,
that she was literally worshiped as a goddess might be. There was
something in her blood which made this seem quite right and proper.
She