METZEROTT, SHOEMAKER.
METZEROTT, SHOEMAKER.
METZEROTT, SHOEMAKER.
METZEROTT, SHOEMAKER.
Karl Metzerott, shoemaker, counted himself reasonably well-to-do in the world. It was a favorite saying of his (though he was not greatly given to sayings at any time, his days being so full of doings), that his Socialist opinions were not based upon his own peculiar needs; and that, when the Commune should supervene, as he fervently believed it must some day, he, Karl Metzerott, would be numbered rather among its givers than its receivers.
In truth, he had some reason for self-gratulation. He was young, strong, and able to earn a fair living at his trade; and his wife,—but stop! We have not come to her quite yet.
The shop where he bent over his lapstone for ten hours a day, excluding meal times, was an odd-looking structure, in a poor quarter of a city which we shall call Micklegard; and which, if any one should strive to locate, we warn him that the effort will bring him only confusion of face and dire bewilderment. For its features may be recognized, now here, now there, like those mocking faces that peered at Ritter Huldbrand through the mists of the Enchanted Forest.
The shoemaker’s dwelling contained but three rooms. The front, a shingled frame building of one story, presentedits pointed gable at the street like a huge caret, denoting that all the sky and stars, perhaps something further, were wanted by those beneath. This was the shop; behind it were the kitchen, looking out upon a small square yard, opening on a not over-clean alley; and a bedroom above, whose front window peered over the gable roof, between the high blank walls of the adjoining houses, while the opposite one kept watch from the rear: and each, in its curtainless bareness, looked equally desolate and unsatisfied.
It was on a cold, dreary November evening that the shoemaker put aside his work somewhat earlier than usual, and, after carefully closing his shutters, stepped through the ever-open door into his little kitchen, which was almost as red-hot as the huge cooking-stove, filled with bituminous coal, that occupied nearly half the tiny apartment. The other half was over-filled by a gigantic four-post bedstead, on which two corpulent feather-beds swelled nearly to the tester, and were overspread by a patchwork quilt, gaudy of hue and startling in design. Fringed dimity curtains hung from the tester, until their snow-white balls caught the reflection from the glowing counterpane, when they were snatched away, as if from the possible soil of contact, and fastened in the middle of each side by an immense yellow rosette. Upon one side of the stove stood an oil-cloth-covered table, which served equally for the preparation and consumption of food; above it, a steep, narrow stair wound upward to the room above; and on the other side of the kitchen, basking in heat which would have consumed a salamander, were a small old-fashioned candle-stand, half hidden by a linen cover, wrought in the old Levitical colors of red and blue, and sustaining a cheap kerosene lamp; a slat rocking-chair, with patchwork cushions, and a tiny old woman bowed over a huge German Bible, bound in parchment,with a tarnished steel clasp and corners, and heavy smooth yellow leaves.
As her son entered, Frau Metzerott lifted her brown, withered face, and fixed her dark eyes and steel-rimmed spectacles upon him.
“You have quitted early this evening,” she said, in thePlatt-Deutschdialect, which, with the High German of the book on her knee, was her only mode of speech, though she had lived in America for nearly forty years.
He nodded briefly, and then, as if by an afterthought, added, “It is the evening of the Kaffee Klatsch at the Hall, and I will go there for my supper. There is a little concert to-night, and dancing.”
“And a few pretty girls, Karlchen?”
He smiled, not ill-pleased, but vouchsafed no further remark as he sprang up the difficult, crooked stairway to his bedroom.
The old woman looked after him with a slow shake of her head. “I wish he would marry one of them,” she thought. “There is room for a wife, up yonder, and it is hard doing the work alone. Besides, one cannot live forever, and, when I am gone, who will make his coffee and his apple cakes as he likes them?”
With a sigh, she fell to reading again.
It is quite possible that, on the sailing-vessel where her husband met and won her, and which, to afford him ample time for the operation, was obligingly blown out of her course so as to lengthen the voyage to America some three months or so, Frau Metzerott had her fair share of youthful attractiveness; but this had been swept from her by the scythe of Father Time, and the storm and stress of life had left her no leisure to cultivate the graces of old age. Of actual years she numbered barely sixty, and the dark hair under her quaint black cap showed scarcely atouch of gray; but the skin was as brown and wrinkled as a frost-nipped russet apple; and rheumatism and the wash-tub together had so bowed her once strong, erect figure, that, like the woman in Scripture, she could in no wise lift up herself. She was dressed in a dark blue calico, marked with small, white, crooked lines, a brown gingham apron, and a small gay-colored plaid shawl over her rheumatic shoulders. Her feet were incased in knitted woollen stockings, and black cloth shoes; and her knotted brown fingers showed beneath black cloth mittens.
She did not trouble herself greatly with the preparations for her lonely supper, when her son, in his Sunday coat, had left her for the Hall; a fresh brew of coffee, a slice or two from the rye loaf, and a few potatoes dressed with oil and vinegar, which had stood in her corner cupboard since noon, supplied all her needs.
The dishes were washed, the kitchen tidied, after this frugal meal, and the mother had settled to her knitting, when there came a knock at the shop door. A pleased smile shone upon the old woman’s face as she recognized the tap, and hastened to admit the person who had formerly embodied her dreams of a daughter-in-law, who should be the instrument of rest and ease to her old age. But the Anna Rolf who now passed through the dark shop into the glowing kitchen, had been for two years a comely young matron; Leppel Rolf, the stalwart young carpenter, having wooed and won her, while Shoemaker Metzerott sat passively under his lapstone. Rumor asserted that the fair Anna had been somewhat piqued by this same passivity; but, however that may be, it was certainly no love-lorn personage who now added the radiance of youth, health, and beauty to the glow of the fire and the yellow light of the kerosene lamp.
Yet Anna was not strictly a beauty, though her vividcoloring, sparkling eyes, and overflowing vitality had gained her that reputation. She was simply a tall, well-made woman, with an abundance of silky black hair, a rich, dark complexion, and features which, like her figure, seemed likely to be sharpened, rather than filled out, by advancing years. She was dressed with a good deal of taste, in a new, black silk, with a bunch of crimson roses in her bosom; and her greeting was interfused by the consciousness of such array.
“So you are not at the Kaffee-Visite, Frau Metzerott?” she asked, laughing a good deal. Laughing was very becoming to Anna; she had such charming dimples, and strong, white, even teeth.
“Kaffee-Visite, indeed!” grumbled the old woman, taking, with her withered hand to her wrinkled brow, a leisurely survey of her radiant visitant. “What should an old woman like me do there? I drink my coffee at home, and am thankful. But,Du lieber Himmel!how fine you are, Anna! A new silk dress?”
“Of course,” said Anna proudly, “and all my own doing, too. Not a penny of Leppel’s money in it, from the neck to the hem. My earning and my making, Frau Metzerott.”
“Ach, Herr Gott!” sighed the old woman, smoothing down the rich folds, half enviously, not for herself, but for her son, whose wife might have worn them; “but what a clever child you are, Aenchen.”
“You see,” said Anna, “it was this way. You remember when I was first married we lived at his home, and when I had swept and dusted a bit, there was no more to be done, for Frau Rolf lets no one help with the cooking. I don’t believe she would trust an angel from heaven to work down a loaf of Pumpernickel for her.” She laughed again, and Frau Metzerott added a shrill cackle as her own contribution.
“So, as twirling my thumbs never agreed with me,” continued Anna, “I just apprenticed myself to a dressmaker; for it is well to have two strings to one’s bow, and Leppel’s life is no surer than any other man’s.”
“But, Anna—?”
“Yes, I know, Mütterchen. It was a special arrangement, of course, not a regular apprenticeship. I was to give so many hours a day to work I already knew how to do, such as running up seams and working buttonholes; and she was to teach me to cut and fit. She knew me, you see, and wasn’t afraid of losing by the bargain.”
“I should think not!” said Frau Metzerott admiringly. She had heard the story at least a dozen times, and never failed to adorn the right point with the proper ejaculation.
“Well, then,” continued Anna, “what should happen but little Fritz came to town, and any one but me would have had enough to do at home; but Inevergive up!”—she drew herself up proudly—“and so, since I finished my course, I have earned enough money to buy this dress.”
“And yet you do so much besides,” said Frau Metzerott.
“Since his father and mother went to live with their son in the West,” said Anna, “I do all my own work, make my own clothes and Fritz’s, and take in sewing besides.”
“What a girl you are!” sighed the old woman. “But why are you home so early from the Hall to-night?”
“Leppel is gone to New York on business. There is some new machine he wants to look at. I wish he would let them all alone, and attend to his day’s work. I did not bargain to marry an inventor,” said Anna discontentedly.
“It is expensive going to New York,” said the old woman, shaking her head.
“It is expensive inventing,” said the young one, her brilliant face darkened by a shadow of real anxiety. “But, however, he must have his own way, and the money is his.So he was off from the Hall, when he had had his supper, and of course,” with a conscious laugh—“he would not leave me there without him.”
“No, no,” said the Frau, her withered lips expanding into a toothless smile, “you are much too pretty for that, Aenchen.”
“The new pastor was there,” said Anna, when she had playfully shaken the old woman by her bowed shoulders, in acknowledgment of this remark, “and, I think, the Frau Pastorin that will be.”
“So?” exclaimed the old woman eagerly; “who is she, Anna?”
“She came over on the same steamer as the Herr Pastor, and her name is Dorothea Weglein. It seems she had a sweetheart here in Micklegard, and came over to be married to him; but when she arrived he had died in the mean time, of something or other, very sudden, I don’t know what.”
“Poor child! And the Herr Pastor is courting her?”
Anna shrugged her shoulders. “It looks like it,” she said. “It seems she got a service place after herSchatzdied. The Herr Pastor could do better than that. But some one else was taken with her baby face and frightened ways, Frau Metzerott. Your son was eating her up with his eyes when I came away.”
“Did herSchatzleave any money behind him?” asked the Frau.
Anna laughed a little shrilly, as she moved towards the door. “You know they weren’t married, Mütterchen; so, if he did, it probably went to his relations. Well, it is two years since it happened; she will be easily consoled. Good-night, Fritz will be wanting me. I only ran over to tell you the news,” and she was gone, leaving the shop and kitchen darker and stiller than ever, by contrast.
Karl Metzerott, meanwhile, had walked briskly enough to meet his fate, but with small thought of new Herr Pastors or possible Frau Pastorins. He was his mother’s own son in appearance, every one had said, when both were younger; at present, the resemblance was less striking. Karl was a man of nearly thirty, who looked older than his years; of average height, strongly and squarely made, the shoulders slightly rounded by his occupation, the head a little large, with a fine, square brow, and a thick covering of coarse black hair. The eyes were keen and clear, the features strong and rugged. The skin was dark, not particularly fine, but clear and healthful; he wore neither beard nor mustache, and his manner showed no slightest consciousness of himself or his Sunday clothes.
But it is best that we should precede him, rapid as are his steps, and gain some knowledge of the scene whither he is bound. The Maennerchor of Micklegard held its collective head rather higher than any similar association in the city. In its own opinion, its members, or the majority of them, were more aristocratic, its club-house better fitted up, its auditorium larger, and its inventive genius greater, than those of any contemporary. Nor shall I attempt to disprove this innocently vain assumption on the part of the Maennerchor, though vanity, whether innocent or the reverse, is said by some to be a part of the German national character. Others doubt whether such a thing exists as a national type of character. My own individual opinion is that, so far as itdoesexist, the Germans are no vainer,au fond, than any other people; but that what vanity they possess is of a surface, childlike type, more quickly recognized, but rather less offensive, than the vanity of, say, an Englishman.
But to return to the Maennerchor.
The managers had, of late, at the instigation of theLadies’ Chorus, issued invitations to a Kaffee-Visite, as it was officially termed; familiarly known as a “Kaffee Klatsch,” or Coffee Scandal. The ladies were to meet at three o’clock, said the program (and we assure our readers that we translate from a veritable document), in the club-house parlor; from three to five was to be theirs alone.
“Needle-work, Gossip, Stocking-knitting,” said the program, with a shriek of triumph. At five was to be served the “Ladies’ Coffee;” from 6.30 to 8.30, “Supper for Gentlemen;” and this exceedingly unsociable arrangement having been carried to its lame and impotent conclusion, the concert, orAbendunterhaltung, would begin at nine, under the auspices of the Ladies’ Chorus.
In its primary aspect, the Kaffee-Visite was emphatically what is jocularly known as a “Dutch treat.” The refreshments were in charge of two or more ladies, in rotation, called theCommittee, who undertook all the expense and took charge of the modest receipts, fifteen cents being the charge for each person’s supper. The receipts and expenses usually balanced with tolerable evenness, the gains of theCommitteenever amounting to a sum which compensated for their trouble, while anxiety of mind lest the incomings should not equal the outlay was written on their foreheads during the early part of the evening.
When Karl Metzerott arrived on the occasion we have selected for description, the “Ladies’ Coffee” was over, and the little parlor was full of uproariousHerren, the ladies having repaired to the Hall upstairs. All parties were full of true German enjoyment, heightened by the independence and freedom from sense of obligation only possible at a real “Dutch treat.” Everybody was host, everybody was guest; theCommitteewaited on the tables, and passed small jokes, with the coffee and cold tongue, and theconvivesroared with laughter as they disposed of the viandswith a business-like rapidity, which, in part, accounted for the smallness of the profits.
Strains of music had already begun to resound from the Hall, as Metzerott finished his repast.
“The girls are enjoying themselves,” he said, smiling, to his neighbor, who happened to be Leppel Rolf; but an obese little man opposite called out,—
“Enjoying? But how can they, with no partners to whirl them around? When I was your age, Karl, would I have been so lazy? No, my arm would have been round the prettiest waist in the lot long ago. Hurry, lazy fellow!”
There was a roar from the tableful at this sally, for the speaker was well known as the shyest of men where “ladies” were in question. It was even asserted that he had never found courage to ask the decisive question of his wife, but that the marriage had been arranged by his mother.
“If there are no partners at all up yonder,” replied Metzerott, “there is no need to hurry. They’ll wait till I come.”
His voice was a deep bass, rich and mellow; his enunciation slow but distinct, his pronunciation and accent those of the public schools, aided by care and thought at home. A shrill falsetto voice followed his reply with:—
“Vanitas vanitatum. If you have so much vanity, Herr Metzerott, I must make you a pastoral visit.”
Karl turned, and leisurely surveyed the speaker. The remark struck him as in a degree personal, from one whom he had met for the first time half an hour before. The Rev. Otto Schaefer, however, as he stood under the full light of the parlor chandelier, seemed rather to court than to avoid scrutiny. He was a man who could be best described by the one word, insignificant. His height wasfive feet one, his proportions thin to meagreness, his hair and beard of scant quantity, and not even so red as they might have been; his voice thin and unmusical. He had been in America only two years, in Micklegard not a fortnight; had recently lost his wife, and was said to be looking out for another, in which search, though the possessor of six small children and a limited income, there was no doubt he would very soon be successful.
“But you know I’m a free-thinker,” said Metzerott.
The Rev. Otto laughed. “I’ll soon cure you of that,” he said. “Ihave studied nothing else but the Bible all my life, andIbelieve in it, so why can’t you?”
“Because Ihavestudied other things,” replied Karl dryly, whereupon he was dragged away by Rolf and the obese little man, both crying, “No theology, no religion to-night; let us dance.”
Their progress towards the Hall being somewhat retarded by Karl’s playful resistance, they found, upon reaching it, that the Herr Pastor had preceded them, and was making a sort of triumphal progress up through its very fair proportions; shaking hands right and left with the lambs of his flock. At the end of the Hall, close by the stage, stood the piano, where the wife of the obese little man was rattling off a waltz with considerable spirit. The floor was full of whirlingTänzerinen, here and there embraced by aTänzer. Metzerott, who was really, like all Germans, fond of dancing, made his way to a group near the piano, among whom Anna Rolf’s tall form was conspicuous.
“Dance!” she cried, in answer to his request, “why, of course I will; I’d dance with the Wild Huntsman if he were here to ask me.”
“I’ve heard of him,” said Karl. “My mother believes in him as she does in”—
He hesitated, and Anna playfully held up her finger. “No wicked speeches,” she said; “your mother is a good woman, much better than you.”
“Oh! she’s good enough,” the man said carelessly. “I don’t see what that has to do with it, though; any one can be good who tries.”
“Then I’m not any one,” said Anna; “for I never was good in my life, and I’m sure I’ve tried.”
“Leppel thinks you are good,—the best of wives,” said Karl, with an indulgent smile.
“Oh! I’m good tohim,” replied Anna, “and so I ought, for he is the best of husbands; then I am clever, industrious, economical, and good-tempered, I know very well; but I’m not religious, though I should like to be.”
“Religion is all nonsense, and the religious man”—and here he was suddenly struck dumb.
“Ah! you dare not speak slanders against religion, so near the Herr Pastor,” said Anna, looking up into his face with amused curiosity, as they whirled away again, Karl waltzing on mechanically, because in his confused state of mind it was easier to do so than to stop. “That girl in gray is the one they say he will marry. Eh? you are dancing horribly, Karl;” as they collided violently with another couple. “Suppose we stop.”
She dropped into the nearest chair, and fanned herself briskly with her handkerchief, while her partner stood aside, and mentally regained his feet, after the shock that had overthrown him. Yet what was it after all? Had he lived to his present age without seriously loving; pleased here or there, it might be, by a voice or a face, which he forgot the next moment, to be thus vanquished in the twinkling of an eye? It was impossible! Why, he could not even recall, now that she was beyond his immediate vision, a single feature; only a cloud of goldencurls on a low, childlike brow, and a soft gray tint surrounding her that might have been an angel’s robe, he thought, if there were angels.
Poor Karl! and above all poor Dora! For the gray frock had been pinched and saved for as a wedding dress, if the young man whom she had crossed the ocean to find had but lived to welcome her. Anna had guessed aright, that his savings had gone to his relations; and Dora, in the midst of her grief and bewilderment, had been forced to look out for some way of supporting herself. For two years she had been nursery governess to two riotous boys, who adored and tyrannized over her; and under whose vigorous kicks and caresses her nature had slowly recovered from the shock it had received. Yet she had with difficulty persuaded herself to accept an invitation to accompany the wife of the obese little man to the Kaffee Klatsch this afternoon; but, that difficulty having been surmounted, wearing her wedding dress followed as a thing of course. It cost her a pang, no doubt, but she had nothing else.
Just how the rest of the evening passed, Karl Metzerott could never after give a coherent account, even to himself. Somehow, somewhere, he was introduced to Dora; he sat near her during the concert, silent, and apparently not looking at her, yet he knew her features well by that time, and could almost have specified the number of her eyelashes.
Then he took her home, actually superseding the Herr Pastor in so doing. They talked but little on the way; when they had nearly reached her home, Karl said,—
“You are not betrothed to the Herr Pastor, Fräulein Dora?”
“No, indeed, he has never asked me,” she replied, laughing and blushing a little, but looking up into his face withchildlike, innocent directness. Perhaps little Dora was scarcely the beauty that Karl fancied her; Anna’s description, “a baby face, and frightened ways,” was much more accurate than any he could have given. But her large, blue eyes, with their long, golden lashes, were really beautiful; and nothing could have so moved the man beside her as the sight of that shy timidity, changed into calm reliance on his strength.
“But you would not marry him,nicht wahr? He is poor, he is a fool, and he has six children.”
“And he is very ugly,” said naughty Dora, deserting, without a pang, her oldest friend in America.
“He is very ugly indeed,” said Karl Metzerott, in a tone of deep conviction; “God be thanked therefor.”
And Dora, though she laughed and blushed still deeper, found it most convenient not to inquire his exact meaning.
CHAPTER II.THE PASTOR’S BLUE APRON.
Pastor Schaefer was in serious trouble. It was the 22d of December, and his Christmas sermon was still unprepared: worse still, it stood every possible chance of remaining so; for how on earth was a man to consider texts, headings, arguments, or perorations, who had a house and six small children to care for, and a housekeeper whose brother had just been inconsiderate enough to die? In truth, however, it was rather the housekeeper who should be blamed for want of consideration, since the brother would very likely have remained alive if he had been consulted about the matter; whereas Mary, the housekeeper, could certainly have restrained her grief sufficiently to take the sausages off the fire!
It was early that same morning that it had all happened, though the brother had been in a dying condition for several weeks, ever since he had fallen from a ladder during the operation of hod-carrying, and fractured his skull. Therefore Mary’s mind had certainly had time to prepare itself for the shock; indeed the pastor’s children had become so accustomed to hearing her shriek wildly every time there came a knock at the door, under the supposition that the knocker brought news of her brother’s death, that, when this event really happened, little Bruno, the third from youngest, said solemnly, “Poor Mary’s brother is dead again;” but nobody supposed it was actually so.
“You had better hold still, and have your hair brushed,”said Christina a little sharply. Poor Tina was only nine years old, yet felt herself, as the eldest, responsible for the family; and the responsibility was apt to re-act on her temper. So they all hurried to finish dressing (for the odors of breakfast were unusually strong), and descended in procession to the kitchen, Tina first, leading Heinz, who was two and a half, and apt, when left to himself, to make only one step, and that head first, from bedroom to kitchen. He had fallen downstairs and landed on his head so often, that Tina said she did not believe he minded it at all. Next to him came Bruno, with Gretchen, who was six, and a person to whom nothing, good or bad, ever happened; then Franz, who was eight, and very useful in splitting wood, clearing away snow, and running errands; and then the father, carrying Lena, the six-months-old baby, at whose birth their mother had died.
“Poor Mary!” said Heinz.
The procession abruptly halted.
The children’s tongues had been running so fast about the nearness of Christmas, and what gifts the Christ-child might be expected to deposit in their shoes, that no one heard a sound from the kitchen until they had almost reached the lowest step.
“Tina, but why do you stop there?” cried the pastor, who at the turn, with the baby in his arms, could see nothing of what was happening below. “Go ahead!” he added in English, being very anxious that his children should acquire the language of their adopted country.
They were good children, and did their best to obey. Heinz made a flying leap down two steps, and, being withheld by Tina’s grasp upon his petticoats from landing on his head, brought some other portion of his anatomy, less toughened by hard knocks, in contact with the steps, whereupon he howled like the last of the Wampanoags.Tina, from the violence of the exertion, fell back upon Bruno and Gretchen, and Franz made two long steps over everybody’s head, and landed first of all in the kitchen.
“Donnerwetter!” said the pastor under his breath, but from the bottom of his heart.
There sat Mary on the floor, her apron over her head, howling like a legion of wolves; Heinz was singing the tenor of the same song, the baby added a soprano, Tina rubbed her back, and Bruno, with doubled fists, attacked Franz, who, he averred, had kicked him on the head in passing. Gretchen alone retained sufficient equanimity to realize the full situation.
“Oh, Tina!” she cried, “the coffee is all boiled over, and the sausages burnt to nothing at all.”
“When your mother died,” said the pastor solemnly, after they had eaten such breakfast as was possible under the circumstances, “when your dear mother died, children,Ihad no time to sit and weep. And I was able to do all that I had to do; but Mary, it seems, was not able even to move back the sausages. Come, let us wash the dishes.”
Matters did not improve as the day went on. There never were better children than Heinz and Bruno; but when one had upset the dishwater, and the other fallen against the stove, in their eagerness to be of use, and they had consequently been turned adrift on the wide world, pray, could they be expected to be as quiet as mice? It was quite natural they should find their way to the pastor’s study, where there was an excellent fire; natural, too, that the thought of tidying the room, as an atonement for their presence there and previous misadventures, should occur to them; and most natural of all that they should upset the lamp over a valuable book, which had been a college prize of their father’s.
Then it was certainly not the baby’s fault if she had atooth nearly through, and was cross about it; nor Tina’s if she was too small to handle the tea-kettle dexterously, and so poured the boiling water over her foot, instead of into the basin; but when the kitchen door was opened by Frau Kellar, the wife of the obese little man, and her niece, this was the situation. Heinz and Bruno were seated in different corners of the room, with orders not to move hand or foot until permitted; Christina, in a third, was contemplating her injured member, bandaged, and supported on a pillow; Gretchen, to whom nothing ever happened, rocked the baby in the middle of the floor; and the pastor, with his coat off, and a blue check apron tied around his waist, was bending over the stove, frying cabbage.
“You poor fellow!” said Frau Kellar, “though begging your pardon for the word, Herr Pastor.Gott!but you must have the patience of Job!”
“Oh, no,” said the pastor. “They are good children, all. It is not their fault if they are young and little; but of course it is hard for a man,” he added wearily.
“I should say so!” cried Frau Kellar; “but now here is my niece Lottie, who will stay to-day, and to-morrow for that matter, and help you.”
“She is very good,” said the pastor, looking up admiringly at Lottie, a tall, florid, good-natured-looking girl, who had already caught up the baby, and hushed its wailing on her substantial shoulder.
“Let Gretchen and the boys go and play with my children,” said Frau Kellar. “Lottie can look after these two, and see to your dinner, and you come into your study with me. There is something I must say to you.”
The pastor meekly obeyed. He was tired out, poor man, mind and body, and disinclined to assert himself; yet he was scarcely prepared for the decided tone of Frau Kellar’s first remark.
“You need a wife, Herr Pastor; you must marry. This state of affairs cannot go on.”
“But I wish to marry,” said the pastor seriously.
Frau Kellar hesitated a moment; there are limits to every woman’s frankness, thank Heaven! especially when she is talking to her pastor. Then she said,—
“Of course you know that Karl Metzerott and Dora Weglein are betrothed?”
The pastor, still in his blue apron, sat somewhat uneasily upon a chair much too high for his short legs. A sufficiently grotesque figure, one would have said, even if his hair had not been so very rumpled, and the hands upon his thin, aproned knees so very grimy; yet, as he straightened his meagre figure and looked Frau Kellar full in the face, there was an unselfish distress upon his ugly little face that dignified his whole personality.
“That man!” he said, “that infidel, that free-thinker!”
“Well, one knew it was sure to happen,” replied Frau Kellar, with a shrug of her ample shoulders; “he has been her shadow ever since the Kaffee-Visite.”
“I tried to hinder it,” said the pastor boldly. “Fräulein Dora is good and pious, and she has no right to marry an atheist. But she only grew angry with me,” he added sadly.
“Of course,” answered Frau Kellar with a laugh, “folks who meddle with mating birds must expect a peck or two. Well, I have no fault to find with Karl, for my part. He is as steady as a rock, and if he chooses to think for himself, it’s no more than every one does nowadays. After all, too little religion is better than too much beer,” she added sagely.
The pastor shook his head. “That may follow,” he said.
“Hardly,” she replied; then, with an access of boldness,“but if she had listened to my advice, Herr Pastor, she would have taken you.”
The pastor did not resent her freedom of speech. “She is very beautiful,” he said sadly, “and who would marry a man with six children, if she could do better?”
Frau Kellar regarded the figure before her with some inward amusement, as she mentally contrasted Dora’s two suitors. “I wonder,” she thought, “if he really considers the six children his only drawback.” Then she said aloud, “If you really wish to know, Herr Pastor, I will tell you. My niece Lottie in there would marry you to-morrow if you asked her.”
“Your niece Lottie?” he said slowly.
“Yes, indeed. And Lottie is a good girl, a very good girl, Herr Pastor; not so young as she has been, perhaps, but you were not born yesterday yourself.”
“No,” he said, “certainly I was not born yesterday.”
“And she would be all the better wife and mother for her thirty years,” continued the match-maker, recklessly subtracting several units from Lottie’s actual attainments. “She is a good worker, too, an excellent cook, and the temper of an angel. And, best of all, Herr Pastor, she has a nice little sum in bank, saved out of her wages. No one knows it, or she’d have offers enough; but Lottie is sharp; she won’t waste her money on any idle good-for-naught. No; but she is tired of living out, and wants a home of her own, and she’d like well enough to be a pastor’s lady. That, you know, gives one a good position.”
“So it does,” said the pastor absently.
“Well, think it over,” said Frau Kellar, rising, “and if it suits you, mention it to Lottie. She’ll stay with you to-day, and you can see what she is for yourself.”
The pastor sat still for a long while after Frau Kellar had left him with his hands upon his knees, gazing intothe fire. Presently a tear trickled down his cheek, then another and another. The pastor was weeping the death of his first and only love: for his first marriage had been as business-like a contract as the present proposed arrangement; and his feeling for Dora had been his one romance. But, after all, one cannot live on romance; especially one plus six children, and minus either a wife or a housekeeper. Romance will not mend the broken head or heal the scalded foot: it will not light the kitchen fire or keep the sausages from burning. The pastor might shed a tear or so over his lost golden-haired darling; but business is business, and when the door at last was gently opened, he knew quite well that the buxom figure and smiling face in the doorway were the face and form of his future wife.
“Dinner is ready, Herr Pastor.”
The pastor rose and untied his blue apron.
“Fräulein Lottie,” he said, “this apron belonged to my former wife. I shall not need it, if you are good enough to stay with me: could you, perhaps, make use of it?”
It was the freedom of the city, the investiture with the best robe, the sending of the pallium, the throwing of the handkerchief; and, as she promptly and proudly tied it on, Lottie took seizin of the pastor, his house and children, and all that he had.
CHAPTER III.A PESSIMIST.
That same afternoon the Reverend Otto paid a pastoral visit to Dorothea Weglein, the lamb who was about to give herself over to the jaws of an infidel and socialistic wolf. His own fate was sealed, as he knew very well; the stalwart Lottie already comported herself with the dignity of a Frau Pastorin; but a certain latent chivalry in the heart of the little man had been developed by his love for Dora, certainly the purest and most unselfish feeling he had ever known; and he would have perilled his dearest possession, his children or his vanity, to avert the fate that was coming upon her.
His way lay from the German quarter of the city, through its business centre, to the region where dwelt the privileged few, where clustered the stately homes of the wealthy manufacturers, for whose sake Micklegard and the world are permitted to exist by an all-wise Providence. Nevertheless, this German quarter deserves more than a passing mention.
It had been originally a distinct settlement, and had only lately been incorporated in the city. There were, as we already know, old people living there who were as ignorant of English as on the day they first trod the shore of America. Indeed they had no especial use for English, since around them were German shopkeepers of all descriptions, as well as German doctors and apothecaries. Over the shop doors stood German signs, German tones resounded on all sides;even the houses, though the ear-marks of America were upon them, had evidently been erected by Germans, and were, for the most part, surrounded by tiny gardens, whose overwhelming luxuriance betokened German thrift upon American soil.
The residence of Mrs. Randolph, Dora’s employer, was at quite the opposite end of the town; the North End, where are the seats of the gods and the horn of plenty. It was a large, square mansion, built of brownstone, and surrounded by a spacious lawn, that sloped down to the river, blackly and barely enough at this Christmas season, but no more uselessly than in summer, when its closely mown turf, too precious to be walked on, might, perhaps, have soothed a tired eye, but otherwise benefited neither man nor beast.
The pastor rang at the side door, and was admitted into a small square hall, luxuriously furnished. A divan ran along two sides, gorgeous tiger-skins lay upon the tiled floor; here and there stood ottomans and lounging-chairs; the walls were decorated with Japanese pottery, pipes of all nations, and swords of not a few; opposite the door a wood fire burned under an elaborately carved mantel-shelf, upon which leaned negligently a tall, finely proportioned man of about thirty, his fair, composed, and slightly sarcastic face distinctly reflected in the mirror above, as he gazed down into the fire.
As he saw the pastor standing, somewhat aimlessly, where he had been left by the servant, this young man took his elbow off the mantel, and advanced a step.
“I have really no right to ask you to sit down in this house,” he said, with a smile that he could not make unkindly, “but if you will do so, I do not suppose any one will object.”
“Perhaps,” said the pastor, slightly bewildered by thismode of address, and not quite sure that he had fully understood his interlocutor. He sank vaguely into the nearest chair, and gazed around him so helplessly that his companion, partly from pity and partly from a certain nervousness which he would by no means have acknowledged, was impelled to continue the conversation.
“You are a German, and a minister,nicht wahr?” he said, in the other’s native language.
“Ja, gewiss!” said the pastor delightedly. “I am the Pastor of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church.”
“So? And you find the sheep of your pasture obey your words? or is the crook sometimes needful to coerce them into the right way?”
“They are as good as other people,” returned the pastor, relapsing into bewilderment. His questioner shrugged slightly his shapely shoulders, as he turned away to his old position. “You are happy if they are no worse,” he said.
At the same moment, he started into sudden vigor and alertness, with a gleam in his eye that told of eagerness for the fray. A heavy silk curtain that hung beside the fireplace was suddenly swept aside, with an angry rattle of rings upon a brass rod, and in the opening appeared a handsome, stately, well-dressed woman, of something more than his own age.
“Dr. Richards, I will speak with you in a moment; I wish I could say that I am glad to see you. Herr Schaefer, you wish to see Fräulein Dora?” Her tone was sharply military rather than rude; but contrasted a little absurdly with the meek obsequiousness of the pastor’s reply.
“If you permit me, gracious lady,” he said, executing his fifth bow.
“I shall be delighted if you can make her see the error of her present course,” said Mrs. Randolph. “You haveheard of her betrothal, I suppose? Betrothal, indeed! Upon my word, I think all the girls have gone crazy together!”
The corners of Dr. Richards’s mouth twitched amusedly.
“So?” he said, under his breath; but perhaps the lady caught the sound, or saw the movement of his lips in the mirror, for she grew suddenly very red as she motioned the pastor towards the doorway.
“You will find a servant just beyond, who will direct you,” she said, “and I hope you will succeed in convincing Fräulein Dora that marriage to one of Karl Metzerott’s opinions can bring her nothing but misery. And now, Dr. Richards”—
“If you will pardon the interruption,” said that young man easily, “I wish to say that, although quite unacquainted with the peculiar tenets of the person referred to, I am entirely at one with you in believing marriage to one ofanyopinions so exceedingly likely to lead to misery that an opposite result can only be considered a happy accident.”
Mrs. Randolph stared into his calm face with angry amazement.
“And you ask my sister to expose herself to such a future?” she said. “I am at a loss to understand you, sir.”
“My dear madam, misery is, unfortunately, peculiar to no state of life. I love your sister, and she is good enough to love me. Such being the case, if she prefer misery with me to misery without me, I can only say that I share her taste, and will do my best to make her as little miserable as fate may permit.”
“If your efforts prove as weak as your arguments, Dr. Richards, that ‘best’ will be a very poor one. ‘Misery without you!’ Why, I will give Alice one year, just one,in America, or six months in Paris, to forget you, and be as happy as a queen.”
“I have always heard,” said Dr. Richards, coolly, “that good Americans go to Paris when they die, so perhaps you may be right.”
“You mean she will never forget you while she lives?” asked the lady scornfully.
“I mean that if youcanmake her forget me, you are quite welcome to try.”
“Ah! this is coming to the point, indeed. I am glad to find you so sensible. So you will not oppose her going abroad with us?”
“I shall not oppose anything that Miss Randolph wishes.”
The lady frowned, knowing well in what direction those wishes tended; but, before she could answer, the silken curtain was gently moved by the hand of a young girl, whose appearance filled Frederick Richards’s blue eyes with the light of anything but misery.
She was about eighteen, of medium height, and slender, with the unconscious grace of a gazelle. Gazelle-like, too, were the large, brown, trustful eyes, her only really beautiful feature, though the brown abundance of her hair, the delicately roseate cheeks and scarlet lips, made her very charming, at least in one pair of eyes. But to us who are present in the spirit, dear reader, at this interview, the most noticeable thing about Alice Randolph is that, despite the shy grace of every movement, and the childlike innocence of the face, we read at once that she will not quail before any pain the future may hold in store for her. Suffer she will; blench or falter, she will not.
She did not speak as she entered the room, but went quietly to Dr. Richards’s side, looked for one instant into his face, and laid her hand in his.
Certainly they seemed well matched, for he also wassilent as he held fast the hand she had given him. Then his firm lips curved into a triumphant smile. “Well, Mrs. Randolph?” he said.
The lady’s face flushed again, rather unbecomingly.
“There is only this to be said,” she cried angrily, “Alice, by her father’s will, cannot marry without my husband’s consent, or she forfeits every penny she has in the world. If you marry a beggar”—
“You forget, my dear madam; at twenty-five she becomes her own mistress.”
“Ah? you have read the will? That accounts for your prophecies of misery.”
“Wrong, Mrs. Randolph. I have not read your father-in-law’s will, though I shall make it a point to do so as soon as possible. I know only what Alice has told me, and hence am well aware that she will lose her fortune in the event of becoming my wife.”
“Yet you urge her to do so!”
“You mistake. I leave her to decide for herself.”
“Harry would not refuse his consent if it were not for you,” interposed Alice. “It is really you who oppose us, Jennie.”
“And have I not good cause?” cried Mrs. Randolph. “Would your father himself have consented to your marriage with an infidel, an atheist?”
Alice Randolph grew pale, then flushed deeply as she hesitated to reply, while her sister looked on, in her turn triumphantly.
A sparkle came into the blue eyes of her lover as they searched hers. “That,” he said, “is a strong argument, Alice. Weigh it well, and dispose of it once for all. If you marry me, I don’t wantthatto contend with. Iaman atheist, for Icannotbelieve in a God who leaves nine-tenths of his creatures to hopeless suffering.”
She gave the other hand to his clasp, and looked up trustfully into his face.
“It is a great mystery,” she said, “but I don’t think my giving you up would help you to solve it.”
“If it can be solved,” he answered.
“I have never tried,” she said; “my life has been so sheltered, I know almost nothing of the pain that is in the world. But you will tell me, and perhaps we may solve the mystery together.”
For all answer he stooped and kissed her.
Mrs. Randolph was furious,—and slightly undignified.
“Very well,” she cried, “go to perdition your own way, Alice Randolph. I have tried to be a mother to you, and this is my reward. You will lose not only your money but your soul, by marrying that man.”
“Be consoled, my dear madam,” returned the young man, sarcastically, “the first will be very useful to you and your children; the second can be of no benefit to any one but the owner. For my part, though I should find it hard to justify myself in holding property under the present régime, I am not exactly a beggar. My practice is a good one, and I can maintain my wife in comfort, if not in luxury.”
“And if your health should fail, or you should die?” sneered Mrs. Randolph.
“And if Mr. Randolph’s calculations should fail, his workmen strike, and his mill burn down?” he answered coolly. “In the present state of things, Mrs. Randolph, a shade more or less of uncertainty as to the future is of very little moment. It is settled, then, Alice?”
“Yes,” she said softly; then her eyes suddenly flashed, her cheeks grew crimson; she turned upon her sister with the air of a lioness defending her young.
“Do you suppose I have not seen,” she cried, “how youwish me to marry him while pretending to oppose it? I am ashamed for you, Jennie, ashamed to put your motive into words, because you are my brother’s wife. But don’t delude yourself with the idea that it is your work; I would have given up the money in any case rather than force him to act against what he believes to be right; and I love him so dearly that I had rather endure misery, cold, and hungerwithhim than to be a queen without him.”
Here, woman-like, her vehemence resolved itself into a burst of tears, and, turning, she threw herself into the arms that were open to receive her.