“Ah, my tear yo’ng friendt! Passil! Marge! Iss it you?” he called out, joyously, the next moment.
“Why, are you sick, Lindau?” March anxiously scanned his face in taking his hand.
Lindau laughed. “No; I’m all righdt. Only a lidtle lazy, and a lidtle eggonomigal. Idt’s jeaper to stay in pedt sometimes as to geep a fire a-goin’ all the time. Don’t wandt to gome too hardt on the brafer Mann, you know:
‘Braver Mann, er schafft mir zu essen.’
You remember? Heine? You readt Heine still? Who is your favorite boet now, Passil? You write some boetry yourself yet? No? Well, I am gladt to zee you. Brush those baperss off of that jair. Well, idt is goodt for zore eyess. How didt you findt where I lif?”
“They told me at Maroni’s,” said March. He tried to keep his eyes on Lindau’s face, and not see the discomfort of the room, but he was aware of the shabby and frowsy bedding, the odor of stale smoke, and the pipes and tobacco shreds mixed with the books and manuscripts strewn over the leaf of the writing-desk. He laid down on the mass the pile of foreign magazines he had brought under his arm. “They gave me another address first.”
“Yes. I have chust gome here,” said Lindau. “Idt is not very coy, heigh?”
“It might be gayer,” March admitted, with a smile. “Still,” he added, soberly, “a good many people seem to live in this part of the town. Apparently they die here, too, Lindau. There is crape on your outside door. I didn’t know but it was for you.”
“Nodt this time,” said Lindau, in the same humor. “Berhaps some other time. We geep the ondertakers bratty puzy down here.”
“Well,” said March, “undertakers must live, even if the rest of us have to die to let them.” Lindau laughed, and March went on: “But I’m glad it isn’t your funeral, Lindau. And you say you’re not sick, and so I don’t see why we shouldn’t come to business.”
“Pusiness?” Lindau lifted his eyebrows. “You gome on pusiness?”
“And pleasure combined,” said March, and he went on to explain the service he desired at Lindau’s hands.
The old man listened with serious attention, and with assenting nods that culminated in a spoken expression of his willingness to undertake the translations. March waited with a sort of mechanical expectation of his gratitude for the work put in his way, but nothing of the kind came from Lindau, and March was left to say, “Well, everything is understood, then; and I don’t know that I need add that if you ever want any little advance on the work—”
“I will ask you,” said Lindau, quietly, “and I thank you for that. But I can wait; I ton’t needt any money just at bresent.” As if he saw some appeal for greater frankness in March’s eye, he went on: “I tidn’t gome here begause I was too boor to lif anywhere else, and I ton’t stay in pedt begause I couldn’t haf a fire to geep warm if I wanted it. I’m nodt zo padt off as Marmontel when he went to Paris. I’m a lidtle loaxurious, that is all. If I stay in pedt it’s zo I can fling money away on somethings else. Heigh?”
“But what are you living here for, Lindau?” March smiled at the irony lurking in Lindau’s words.
“Well, you zee, I foundt I was begoming a lidtle too moch of an aristograt. I hadt a room oap in Creenvidge Willage, among dose pig pugs over on the West Side, and I foundt”—Liudau’s voice lost its jesting quality, and his face darkened—“that I was beginning to forget the boor!”
“I should have thought,” said March, with impartial interest, “that you might have seen poverty enough, now and then, in Greenwich Village to remind you of its existence.”
“Nodt like here,” said Lindau. “Andt you must zee it all the dtime—zee it, hear it, smell it, dtaste it—or you forget it. That is what I gome here for. I was begoming a ploated aristograt. I thought I was nodt like these beople down here, when I gome down once to look aroundt; I thought I must be somethings else, and zo I zaid I better take myself in time, and I gome here among my brothers—the beccars and the thiefs!” A noise made itself heard in the next room, as if the door were furtively opened, and a faint sound of tiptoeing and of hands clawing on a table.
“Thiefs!” Lindau repeated, with a shout. “Lidtle thiefs, that gabture your breakfast. Ah! ha! ha!” A wild scurrying of feet, joyous cries and tittering, and a slamming door followed upon his explosion, and he resumed in the silence: “Idt is the children cot pack from school. They gome and steal what I leaf there on my daple. Idt’s one of our lidtle chokes; we onderstand one another; that’s all righdt. Once the gobbler in the other room there he used to chase ’em; he couldn’t onderstand their lidtle tricks. Now dot goppler’s teadt, and he ton’t chase ’em anymore. He was a Bohemian. Gindt of grazy, I cuess.”
“Well, it’s a sociable existence,” March suggested. “But perhaps if you let them have the things without stealing—”
“Oh no, no! Most nodt mage them too gonceitedt. They mostn’t go and feel themselfs petter than those boor millionairss that hadt to steal their money.”
March smiled indulgently at his old friend’s violence. “Oh, there are fagots and fagots, you know, Lindau; perhaps not all the millionaires are so guilty.”
“Let us speak German!” cried
