CHAPTER XXXVII.
A VERY PATHETIC MUTE.
In spite of the fact that the Warburton servants were a thoroughly disciplined corps, and that domestic affairs, above stairs and below, usually moved with mechanical regularity, it was nearly two o’clock before Millie, armed with dusters and brushes, entered Alan’s study to do battle with a small quantity of slowly-accumulated dust.
“Ah!” she exclaimed as she flung open the windows, “how gloomy the house is! I s’pose Mr. Alan will set himself up as master now, and then, Millie, you’ll get your walking papers. Well, who cares; I don’t like him, anyhow.” And she made a vigorous dash at the fireless grate.
Millie Davis was the joint protege of Leslie and Winnie, a rustic with a pretty face, and scant knowledge of the world and its ways.
Up and down the study flitted Millie, dusting, arranging, and pausing very often to admire some costly fabric, or bit of vivid color.
Almost the last article to come under her brush was Alan’s cabinet-arsenal, and her feminine curiosity prompted her to peep in at the door, which Alan had left ajar; and then Millie gasped and stood aghast.
“Guns and pistols, and all manner of cuttin’ and shootin’ things,” she soliloquized, as she drew back and prepared to close the door of the cabinet. “Well, it takes a good while to find some folks out!” And then, as a tuneful sound smote her ears, she turned swiftly from the open cabinet to the window.
A hand organ grinding out the “Sweet By-and-by”, is a thing most of us fail to appreciate. But Millie both appreciated and understood. It was music, familiar music, and sweet; at least so thought Millie, and she hurried to the window nearest the cabinet, and looked out.
“My,” she said, half aloud, “but that sounds cheerful!”
She leaned over the window-ledge and looked up and down the quiet side street. Ah, there he was; quite near the window, resting his organ against the iron railings, and playing, with his eyes turned toward her. Such beseeching eyes; such a good-looking, picturesque, sad-faced organ-grinder!
Catching sight of Millie, he lifted his organ quickly, and without a break in the “Sweet By-and-by”, came directly under the window, gazing up at her with a look that was a wondrous mixture of admiration and pathos. Poor fellow; how sorrowful, how distressed, and how respectful, was his look and attitude!
“What a mournful-looking chap it is!” murmured Millie, drawing back a little when the tune came to an end.
As the organ struck up a more cheerful strain, a new thought seized her, and she leaned out again over the sill.
“Look here, my man,” she began, in a tone of gentle remonstrance, “you shouldn’t play, come to think of it, quite so near the house. It won’t do; stop, stop.” And, as the man stared, hesitated, and then ground away more vigorously than before, she indulged in a series of frantic gestures, seeing which the organ-grinder paused and stared wonderingly. Then, with a sudden gleam of comprehension, he smiled up at her, touched a stop in his organ, and complacently began a different tune.
“No! no! no!” cried Millie; “not that; stop!” And she shook her head so violently that the little blue bow atop of her brown locks, flew off and fell at the feet of the minstrel, who, in obedience to the movement of her head and hand, stopped his instrument once more, stooped down, and picking up the blue bow, began to clamber up the iron railings, with his organ still strapped to his side, evidently intent upon restoring the bow in the most gallant manner.
“My! you shouldn’t climb onto the railings like that,” remonstrated Millie, as she put out her hand to receive the bit of ribbon.
But the minstrel, bracing one knee against the brick and mortar, thus steadying himself and giving his hands full play, began a series of pantomines so strange that Millie involuntarily exclaimed:
“Why, what in the world ails the man!” And then, struck once more by the pitiful appeal in his eyes, she cried: “Look here, are you sick?”
Only renewed pantomines from the minstrel.
“Are you hungry?” Then, in a tone of discouragement: “What is he at, anyhow?”
But as the man’s hand went from his lips to his ear, even Millie’s dull comprehension was awakened.
“Gracious goodness!” she exclaimed, “he’s deaf and dumb.”
Faster still flew the fingers of the minstrel, sadder and more pitiful grew his face, and Millie watched his movements with renewed interest.
“He’s talking with his fingers,” muttered Millie. “I wonder—”
She stopped suddenly; he was doing something new in the way of pantomine, and Millie guessed its meaning.
“A baby!” she gasped; “it’s something about a baby. One, two, three, ah! five fingers; five babies, five years—oh, say, say, man; say man!”—and Millie’s face was white with agitation, and she barely saved herself from tumbling out of the window, in the intensity and eagerness of her excitement—“you don’t mean—you don’t know anything about our Daisy—you don’t—”
But Millie’s breath failed her, for even as she spoke, the sad-eyed organ-grinder took from his pocket a dirty bit of paper, unfolded it, and displayed to the eager girl a tiny tress of yellow hair—just such a tress as might have grown on little Daisy’s head.
“Oh,” she cried, “I’ll bet that’s it! I’ll bet, oh,—” And with this last interjection, any such small stock of prudence as Millie may naturally have possessed, was scattered to the four winds.
“Wait here,” she cried, utterly disregarding the fact that she was addressing a deaf man, but by a natural instinct suiting her gestures to her word. “Just you wait a minute. I know who can talk finger talk.”
In another moment she had rushed from the room, shutting the door behind her with a sudden emphasis that must have been a surprise to those stately panels, and the noiseless, slow-moving hinges on which they swung.
Scarcely has Millie turned away from the window when the man outside, with two quick turns of the neck, has assured himself that for a moment at least, the window is not under the scrutiny of any passer-by. No sooner has the study door closed, than the mute, without one shade of pathos in look or action, grasps the window-sill, swings himself up, and drops into the room, organ and all.
“So far, good,” mutters this pathetic mute, under his breath. “This is Alan Warburton’s study; not a doubt of that. Now, if I can continue to stay in it until he comes—”
He broke off abruptly, with his eyes fixed upon the half-open cabinet; moved briskly toward it, peeped in, and then, with a satisfied chuckle, stepped inside, and depositing his organ upon the floor of his hiding-place, drew the door shut, softly and slowly.
In another moment the study door opened quickly, and there was a rustle, and the patter of light feet, as Winnie French crossed the room rapidly, and leaned out of the window.
“Why, Millie,” she said, looking back over her shoulder, “there’s no one here.”
“Perhaps—” began Millie; then, catching her breath sharply, she too leaned over the sill.
“Where is your pathetic mute, Millie?”
“Well, I never!” declared the girl, still gazing incredulously up and down the street. “He was here.”
Winnie smiled as she turned from the window.
“Some one has imposed upon you, Millie,” she said; “and you did a very careless thing when you left such a stranger at an open window.”
And a certain listener near by added to this exordium a mental amen.
“He might have entered—” continued Winnie.
“Oh, my!”
“And robbed the house.”
“Bless me; I never thought of that!”
“Try and be more thoughtful in future, Millie. Close the window and let us go; ah!”
This last exclamation, uttered in a tone of unmistakable annoyance, caused Millie to turn swiftly.
Alan Warburton, having entered noiselessly at the door left ajar by Millie’s reckless hand, was standing in the centre of the room, his well-bred face expressive of nothing in particular, his eyes slightly smiling.
At sight of him, Millie shrank back, but Winnie came forward haughtily.
“You are doubtless surprised at seeing me here, sir,” she said, with freezing politeness, bent only upon screening Millie and beating an orderly retreat. “I came—in search of Millie; and, being here, had a desire to take a view of Elm street. You will pardon the intrusion, I trust.” And she moved toward the door.
“Winnie,” said Alan gently, “you entered to please yourself, and you are very welcome here. Will you remain just five minutes, to please me?”
Winnie frowned visibly, but after a moment’s hesitation, said:
“I think I may spare you five minutes. You may go, Millie.”
And Millie, only too thankful to escape thus, went with absurd alacrity.
When the door had closed behind her,—for, retreating under Alan’s eye, the fluttered damsel had remembered to close the door properly—Winnie stood very erect and silent before her host, and waited.
“Winnie,” began Alan, consulting his watch as he spoke, “it is now almost three o’clock, and I expect a visitor soon; that is why I asked for only a few moments.”
“I am not anxious to remain,” observed Winnie, glancing carelessly from the timepiece in Alan’s hand to a placque on the wall above his head.
“But I am most anxious that you should.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Warburton, but you have such a peculiar way of making yourself agreeable.”
“Winnie!”
“Your interviews with ladies are liable to such dramatic endings: I seriously object to fainting, and I remained here, as you must know, not because I cared to listen to you, but because of Millie’s presence. I think it took you half an hour to talk Leslie into a dead faint yesterday, and as nearly as I can guess at time, one of your minutes must be gone. You have just four minutes in which to reduce me to silence.”
“You are very bitter, Winnie,” he said sadly. “I am bowed down with grief—that you know. I am also burdened with such a weight of trouble as I pray Heaven you may never suffer. Will you let me tell you all the truth; will you listen and judge between Leslie Warburton and me?”
She drew herself very erect, and turned to face him fully, thus shutting from her view the door behind Alan.
“No,” she answered, “I will listen to nothing from you concerning Leslie. Without knowing the cause, I know you are her enemy. If I ever learn why you hate her so, I will hear it from her, not from you. Leslie is not a child; and you must have said bitterly cruel words before you left her in a dead faint on that library floor last night—”
A very distinct cough interrupted her speech, and they both turned, to meet the respectful gaze of a jaunty-looking stranger, who said, as he advanced into the room:
“Pardon me; the servant showed me in somewhat unceremoniously, supposing the room unoccupied. I was instructed to wait here for Mr. Warburton.”
Winnie was first to recover herself. Turning to Alan, she murmured politely:
“I think my time has expired; good evening, Mr. Warburton.”
As she swept from the room, the stranger approached Alan, saying:
“This, then, is Mr. Warburton. My name is Grip, sir; Augustus Grip.”