CHAPTER III.PRINCE LOUIS.
“The one o’clock dinner,” said Father McClosky, “is when ye’ll see the ‘home folks,’ as we call ‘em, that is, the employés of ‘Prices,’—excepting the cooks and waiters,—and some of them that lives in the house. The Prices themselves—that is, Miss Sally and Miss Polly—takes their dinner then, the rush bein’ over, and the ‘home folks’ not in such a hurry.”
As he spoke they came upon two girls who were talking eagerly in the lower corridor, one of whom proved to be Lena, the unfortunate, and the other her sister Gretchen, a tall, placid personage with a look of great determination, and what New-Englanders call “faculty.”
Upon the appearance of the two gentlemen, Lena blushed and tittered nervously; but Gretchen faced them with perfect composure, and gave Mr. Clare an opportunity of recognizing her as the person he had observed at the treasurer’s desk.
Father McClosky only favored them with a nod, as he hurried his friend along, observing that the dinner would be cold, and that they were to have the table next to the Founders.
“And who are the Founders?”
“The Prices, Metzerotts, and Rolfs. Sure ye’ve heard the story of how they began ‘Prices’ amongst ‘em? And for old sake’s sake, I suppose, and partly because it savestime and labor, they always dine together, and some way it got the name of the Founders’ table.”
“Ah! there he is now,” continued the Father in a different tone, as at that moment they encountered two others,—an elderly man and a youth,—on their way to the same quarter of the room as themselves. “There’s the Emperor. Emperor, let me introduce my friend, Mr. Clare.”
“I think I have heard of you before, Mr. Emperor,” said Ernest Clare, cordially shaking the blackened palm held out to him, “under the name of Metzerott.”
“That’s my name, Mr. Clare, and I’m not ashamed of it,” replied Karl Metzerott. He had changed but little, though his hair had become “a sable silvered,” and his countenance bore marks of his full fifty years; but the clear glance, the firm mouth and appearance of perfect health and full vigor would have made the promise of another fifty appear in his case not unlikely of fulfilment.
The three founders! what a study their faces were, thought Ernest Clare, watching them from the next table. Sally Price’s, which, now that the resting time had come, had lost its keen intentness, and gained a sweet, reposeful look that resembled the old weary, listless passiveness as a dim church window before the dawn is like the same window flashed through by the rays of the rising sun. Then Karl Metzerott, with his strong, sturdy, sensible face,—strong enough to keep in order the fierce passions that lay beneath it, but not too sensible to be fully conscious of his own share in all that he saw around him, and of the significance of his nickname the Emperor. Last of all, Frau Anna, with her thin cheeks, upon which the color seemed burnt in, her dark, eager, restless eyes, and unsatisfied mouth. Her voice, too, had a querulous sound; and perhaps it was the instinct of the physician—the healer ofsouls—that caused the quiet blue eyes to rest so long upon her before exploring the other faces around the table. There was nothing especially remarkable about the brisk, good-looking young man who sat next her, except his inability to keep those sparkling dark eyes of his away from the next table, where Gretchen Schaefer was, apparently placidly unconscious of him and his glances. Frau Anna, however, noted every one, and as she followed them with amused rather than resentful eyes, it may be inferred that Gretchen’s unconsciousness was not so real as it looked; for Anna Rolf adored her eldest son, though it may be that the place nearest her heart was filled by the boy whose birth had been so closely followed by her husband’s death. Fritz knew this, amusedly; had he been the favorite, it is possible that George’s peculiar disposition would have rendered necessary a different adverb. He was a loosely built, awkward-looking youth, with an overhanging brow, sullen, blue-gray eyes, and heavy jaw; much given to thinking, and a good deal to brooding, when he had nothing of importance to think about; very like his father, in short, and equally capable of becoming enslaved by anidée fixe,—a youth who should have studied the Elements of Euclid along with his catechism, and for whom the differential Calculus was a part of the scheme of salvation.
It was a very different face opposite him. “Little Annie,” as she used to be called, was now a tall girl of nineteen, not pretty, perhaps, but fair and restful to tired eyes; like George, but with a serious thoughtfulness about the eyes and mouth instead of his brooding sullenness. She and Louis always sat beside each other, perhaps rather too pointedly for the success of any parental scheme; and, indeed, though they were evidently on the best of terms, there was nothing like love-making in the quiet looks which they exchanged from time to time.The two tables were quite near enough for conversation, and Karl Metzerott was not slow to begin one.
“I wish you’d explain to me, Father McClosky,” he said, as that person crossed himself and murmured a Latin grace, “what good you get from that sort of thing. Does your dinner agree with you better after it?”
“I said I’d show ye the grandfather of all the infidels,” said the priest, turning to Mr. Clare, “and there he sits. But I’ve done arguin’ with ye, Emperor. It’s my friend here is in that line of business, and I’ll leave ye to him. Sure, he’s just argued himself out of his own pulpit and five thousand a year on account of his rabid Socialism.”
There was a perceptible emotion at the Founders’ table; then Sally Price said dryly, “Well, I must say he don’t look the character.”
“And I hope I don’t act it,” said the rabid Socialist, smiling. “But I should explain to you, Mr. Metzerott, that I never argue.”
“And ye’ll say next that ye never did.”
“I wish I could,” said Ernest Clare, laughing, yet with a half-sigh. “But, unfortunately, I began the world with my lance in rest, ready to argue with all and sundry. Only experience has taught me how worse than useless it is. No one was ever converted by argument; thousands have been hardened in error by it.”
“And who is it at ‘Prices’ you want to convert?” asked Karl Metzerott.
“I have come to ‘Prices’ to find work if I can,” replied Ernest Clare. “I was a poor boy, Mr. Metzerott, and learned the trade of a carpenter, not from choice but necessity, and supported myself by it until I went to the Theological Seminary.”
“Where ye was educated free like myself, though not in the true faith,” said Father McClosky. “Ye see, Emperor,there’s more charity among Christians than ye give ‘em credit for.”
“They’ll educate priests to keep up their own system of lies. Of course they will,” replied Metzerott; “and much good it does, when one of ‘em can’t live by the trade they taught him. Though I beg your pardon, sir, if I am rude,” he added apologetically.
“Only mistaken,” said Ernest Clare, smiling. “Don’t you remember how St. Paul worked with his hands at his trade of tent-making rather than be chargeable to any man?”
“It’s the best thing I ever heard of him,” replied the other. “He was too much of a man, I suppose, to live on charity.”
Ernest Clare laughed softly. “You call yourself a Socialist, Mr. Metzerott?”
“I do, indeed; an out-and-out one.”
“Then, are you not rather false to your own principles? The clergy are a standing witness of the right of every man who will work to a support at the hands of the nation.”
Metzerott was too confused by this new way of putting the case to be able at first to reply, and Mr. Clare went on. “Unfortunately, my individual support came only from a very small part of the nation, who had become possessed of a larger proportion of the nation’s wealth than I was quite able to approve of; so, pending the arrival of the Commune, I am compelled—mind you,compelled, Mr. Metzerott—either to hold my tongue upon what I believe to be vital truth, or to work at my trade like a man.”
“By thunder, youarea man!” cried Karl Metzerott. “And your trade is carpentering, you say? I suppose you know that our head carpenter died a week ago?”
“My friend here wrote me as much.”
“So I thought. Well, we’ve been puzzled who to put in his place; for he had only boys under him, not old enoughfor the head of a department, and the applications we’ve had—but, however, it’s a matter for the board of managers, not the dinner-table. I’m a member of the board, though; and if you send in your application, I’ll see that it’s looked into.”
“I am very much obliged to you,” said Ernest Clare quietly. Then, with a smile, and a glance of Irish mischief, he added, “And you won’t expect me to hold my tongue about what you may consider a system of lies, while to me they are vital truths?”
“Hold your tongue? By gracious, Mr. Clare, it’s a free country! No man need hold his tongue in America, as long as it’s a decent one.”
Mr. Clare smiled again, but made no reply, and in a few moments more Louis pushed back his chair and rose to go.
“Why, you have eaten nothing, Louis,” cried his father, with some vexation. “I do not see that if a pink and white chit likethatcomes to be sixteen, it should spoil your appetite.”
“Pink and brown, if you mean Miss Rose Randolph,” said Fritz. “She’s pretty, though. Why not let the child enjoy himself, Emperor? it won’t last long.”
“And, of course, he has his Sunday coat on,” said Frau Anna with a frown.
During these rather personal remarks Louis had waited with his hand on the back of his chair, and a look of amusement not unmixed with vexation, while the color rose high in his young cheek; but at this point he replied.
“I am only going to give Mr. Fred a ride in his wheeled chair,” he said, “and I won’t hurt my coat, Frau Anna, though I am better able to buy a new one than he is.”
“The boy has a right to his holiday if he pays his fine,” struck in Metzerott roughly; “and I’m glad he should doa kindness if he can. What vexes me—well, he knows what it is, but no one else has any concern with it.”
“I’ll never vex you if I can help it, father,” said Louis gently; “and all I can do is small return for the kindness I have received.”
“So!” said his father.
Louis stood for a moment longer, looking down upon him with a puzzled brow. He was slightly above the medium height, with a figure rather firmer and better filled out than is often seen at his age, and a manner of that perfect unconsciousness of himself which is the essence of good-breeding, so that, in his gray “Sunday suit,” he looked, as one of Pinkie’s school friends had once been heard to say, “quite like a gentleman.” The face was a young face, with a complexion of girlish fairness, and eyes of that pure, transparent blue seldom seen beyond childhood. Across the white brow waved hair of gold just darkened into brown, and the brows and lashes, too, gave goldenrefletsto the sunshine; there was scarcely a trace of masculine down on the short, curved upper lip or the smooth cheek, yet, despite all this, the face of Louis Metzerott at eighteen was neither boyish nor effeminate. The low squarely cut brow, the short, straight nose, the full but firm lips, the square chin, were thoroughly masculine in form; and the wistful gravity of the clear eyes was that of one who had looked upon the sin and sorrow of life without quite seeing how these were to be set right.
As he turned to leave the room, his eyes, with that look in them, met those of Ernest Clare, full of that still peace that seemed to hold the solution of all life’s mysteries. Then both smiled, and Louis held out his hand, a firm and shapely one, though with some traces of his daily work at his father’s trade.
“I am very glad you have come to Micklegard, Mr.Clare,” he said, “and I hope you will get—whatever you want.”
“And I am glad to make your acquaintance, Prince Louis,” said Ernest Clare, cordially pressing the young hand; “and much obliged for your good wishes. I hope we shall be good friends.”
Louis smiled with a relieved look, and, before leaving the room, bent to whisper in Annie’s ear. The girl smiled gently, but made no other reply; and Mr. Clare noticed that her eyes had a tired look as she raised them to his face.
“I think you struck it that time, sir,” observed Polly to Mr. Clare. “A prince is just what our Louis looks like, and ought to be.”
“He’d better be an honest man; princes are very poor property,” growled the Emperor, with would-be severity.
“He’s more like an angel,” said Miss Sally.
But Louis was no angel, he was only a man; for this was what he had whispered to Annie Rolf.
“I will tell her who painted the beautiful roses,liebes Aenchen.”
CHAPTER IV.CINDERELLA’S SLIPPERS.
The dinner-wagon which we saw depart from “Prices” had, on its second trip, deposited a tray and a small brown paper parcel at Dr. Richards’s. The tray bore several viands destined to furnish forth a portion of Pinkie’s birthday feast; for Alice often found it convenient to order dishes whose preparation required much time or pains, though not marching with the times to the extent of a whole dinner. The parcel was addressed in Louis’ best hand—which was a very good hand indeed—to “Miss Rosalie Randolph.”
It was a very small parcel indeed, so small that Miss Virginia Dare, Pinkie’s “best friend” and desk-mate, who had come to dine with her, clasped her hands with an instant and disinterested exultation.
“Jewelry, Pinkie!” she exclaimed; “maybe a completeparure! from your father!”
Pinkie shook her head with its soft short curls of dark brown. She was exceedingly pretty, as brown as a gypsy, as graceful as a fairy, and as full of mischief as—but here I pause. No hackneyed kitten could supply a simile for Pinkie’s mischief. There wasnothing, as her long-suffering teachers, pastors, and masters were accustomed to say with emphasis,—nothing, in the way of mischief, that that girl was not up to. But, as they were accustomed to add, “her heart was in the right place, after all, and there was no great harm in her. With good training she would make a fine woman yet.”
“It’s not the governor’s fist,” said Pinkie, with a shake of her dark head, while the color deepened in her bright cheeks and crept upward to her pretty blue-veined temples. “And as forparures, Virgie, you don’t know the old man. He won’t let me wear even a finger-ring, when he knows it. Jeffersonian simplicity is his line.”
“Oh! never mind whathisline is; the line around that box is what I’m thinking of. Pinks! are younevergoing to open it?”
“How do you know it’s a box?” asked Pinkie leisurely.
“How do I know that my nose is a Roman and yours a snub? by the shape, of course. Rosalie, Rosalia! I die, I perish, I positively gasp with curiosity. Will you slay me here in cold blood, before your very eyes?”
“I wouldn’t mind a bit, if—if I wasn’t so very curious myself,” said Pinkie, laughing. “But mind, now, Virgie, whatever it is, mum’s the word. There’s a small suspicion rising on my mind”—
“The size of a man’s hand?”
“No, boy’s hand. And if you breathe a whisper of it, you know”—
“Tortures—not to mention wild horses—shall never drag the secret from my lips,” said Virgie briefly, whereupon Pinkie whipped off the wrapper, and discovered the daintiest little box that can be imagined. It was made of fragrant cedar—Louis had chosen the wood himself—and lined with satin; there were silver hinges and a silver padlock, and within there lay upon the crimson lining the smallest pair of creamy kid slippers that any mortal maiden, save Cinderella herself, ever wore.
“They are pretty enough to eat,” said Miss Dare,—“and oh! Rosie, your own flowers on the toe, hand-painted, as I’m a living sinner.”
Sure enough they were; the palest, most transparentflowers that ever bloomed, but still pink roses with their setting of green leaves, upon each tiny toe. It was as if the maker had dreamed of a rose as he worked, and the treacherous little slippers had betrayed him.
“They’re just lovely, and it’s a perfectly new style. I wonder where he got them,” continued Miss Dare. “Who is he, Pinks? and how came he to send youslippers?”
“Oh! he’s only a boy, Virgie; he didn’t know any better.”
“Very good taste for a boy, if hemustsendslippers. That box is too cute for anything. Eh! oh! Pinkie, NO! Itisn’tyour cousin’s co-operative friend, the little shoemaker!”
“He’snotlittle,anyway,” murmured Pinkie guiltily, but stanchly.
Miss Dare stared blankly at her bosom friend for a moment; then a singular spasm passed over her high-bred, aquiline countenance. She covered her face with her hands, and shook with visible emotion; then, suddenly slipping to the floor, laid her head upon an ottoman and howled with mirth.
“Oh! Pinks!” she gasped, “I’m certainly going to die! Slippers!—Great Cæsar!—Were he a dairyman, he’d woo thee with pats of butter!”
“What’s that?” said a voice from the door; whereat it would be hard to say which girlish heart gave the quickest throb of terror.
For there, beyond the swayingportière, stood, not merely Mr. Randolph, which would have been bad enough in all conscience, but also Frank, Pinkie’s only remaining brother, since Harry had died at college—some said from overwork, others from over-pleasure.
“That’s a very graceful attitude, Miss Virgie,” said thepapa genially, as Miss Dare sprang to her feet; “why change it? How are you? well, if your cheeks speak truly. And you, my little girl, many happy returns of the day. May you never be less happy and light-hearted than you are now. It did my heart good to hear your hearty laugh as I came up the stairs.”
“It was Virgie laughing, not I,” said Pinkie, resolving savagely in her young mind thatherhouse, when she should have one, should have uncarpeted stairs, and not aportièrefrom cellar to garret. “And what she was laughing at, I’m sure I can’t tell. You must ask her.”
“Prices’ wagon left a package for you,” observed Frank grimly; “I suppose it wasthat,” pointing disdainfully to the box in Pinkie’s hand.
“This?” Henry Randolph, still with his genial smile, suddenly became aware of the dainty object, took and opened it. “Very pretty indeed,” he said cheerfully; “but they’ll break all to pieces if they indulge in shoe-boxes in this style; and you will be short of pocket-money for a month or more, you extravagant child.”
“I fear you don’t exactly grasp the situation, sir,” said Frank with fine scorn; “she won’t waste any pocket-money on those things. It’s a birthday present.”
“A present, eh? well, they won’t lose by it. Present and advertisement mean much the same to tradespeople.”
“Not when they’re as cheeky”—
“There, there, Frank, don’t tease your sister! There’s no cheek in the case, though, of course, a birthday is rather more personal than Christmas; but one can’t expect nice discriminations from people of that class. It was meant as a delicate attention, and I wish Pinkie to accept it as such.”
Upon which, Dr. Richards and Alice entered the room, to the great relief of Pinkie, who was able to sweep her“present” up in both hands, and carry it off to her own room.
Pinkie had remained in her aunt’s care ever since her mother’s death; an arrangement which at once set her father free to look after his business, and enabled him to add considerably to his sister’s income under color of paying board for his daughter and her nurse. But for the fact that Alice’s religious views continued very unsettled, Henry Randolph’s mind would have been tolerably easy about his family; for Dr. Richards’s influence upon his wife’s faith had fully justified her brother’s opposition to the marriage, and the fortune left in his hands had been multiplied twenty-fold by “judicious management.” But that Pinkie should be tainted with materialism, rationalism, or socialism, would indeed have been a misfortune; and it had been with true paternal delight that her father observed her pretty little head to be too full of herself and her own affairs to leave room for any kind of “ism” whatsoever. Harry’s sudden death, from causes which his father had never so much as suspected, had, however, rather shaken that gentleman’s faith in his own clear-sightedness, and he had come to Micklegard for his semi-annual visit to his daughter, prepared to observe closely, and act promptly, if necessary.
Before dinner was announced, Frank found an opportunity of interviewing his father, in the bay window.
“About those slippers, sir,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s a serious business. The doctor and my aunt here have cockered up that little Metzerott till he thinks himself the equal of the Tsar of Russia. Those slippers arehiswork, andhisgift”—
“My boy,” said Henry Randolph kindly, “do you suppose I have been on Wall Street for twenty years without ability enough to manage one sixteen-year-old girl?”
“By George, sir, a sixteen-year-old girl”—
“As I understand it, Frank, the fellow’s name is Louis, not George. Did you see this?” He held up a card, on which was daintily inscribed, “Many Birthday Wishes from Louis.”
“Truly touching! the young upstart!” growled Frank.
“Just so; and you will now, perhaps, give me credit for a little discrimination. Rose has not seen this, or it would not have been left where it was—in the toe of a slipper—formeto find; therefore the thing is an advertisement, pure and simple; do you understand?”
“I see!” said Frank, with a smile of profound admiration.
“The boy is coming, after dinner, to give poor Fred an outing,” continued this wise father; “and I particularly desire that there shall be no rudeness on your part for Pinkie to complain of, and especially no hint of any possible romance in the situation. You know your sister”—
“Yes, as obstinate as the devil when she likes, and she generally does like.”
“Don’t swear, Frank; it is ungentlemanly, and irreligious too. Pinkie is only a child, after all—and so is the boy, for that matter. There’s no harm done yet; but, of course, I shall get her away from this as soon as possible; only, in the mean time, mind what you’re about.”
“No fear of me, sir, now that I know you have your eyes open.”
“I usually have, my fine fellow,” thought Mr. Randolph as his son left him, “and especially when I find my jeweller putting up a locket containing your picture, and marked ‘Gretchen.’ Humph! How came you to know what Prices’ wagon left? Your old father isn’t quite in his dotage, my boy.”
Twelve years of ill-health had not passed over Dr. Richards without leaving some token behind them. Hispractice among the wealthy had fallen off almost to nothing; though a few old patients still liked him to come, when he was able, and send Dr. Harrison when he was not; but among the poor, who were only too glad to see him on any terms, he did far more than was prudent or perhaps right; though I, for one, must hesitate before casting a shadow of blame on one who spends himself for others.
“I believe that there are others for whom I ought to live,” he had said long ago.
Those others! When living for one’s self is almost beyond one’s strength, and the weight of a grasshopper a perceptible burden involving a loss of nerve-force and vitality, living for others is a phrase that acquires new meanings every day. And visits among the very poor are of all things exhausting and disheartening to a man whose own purse is empty. Tonics, change of air, change of scene, above all—rest—rest of mind and body, would have saved many a life during those twelve years, while the thousands of Alice Randolph’s fortune were multiplying themselves by ten and twenty. And Henry Randolph was, in his own opinion, not only a just man, but kind and generous; Frederick Richards had but to lift a finger, and his hands would have been filled with twice the amount of the original bequest.
The finger was not raised. As sternly as Elijah of old surveyed the rainless heavens, while the deeps afforded no water and the rivers were exhausted; while the suckling’s tongue clave for thirst to his mouth, and the infant children cried for bread which none brake to feed them;—so sternly stood Frederick Richards beside the dying lives for which he would have given his own; but to save which he would not touch with so much as a finger the polluted millions of Henry Randolph.
Alice could not quite understand it, and, indeed, it was aposition which, for one reason or another, most people will fail to appreciate. The “price of blood” even Judas was unable to spend with a light heart; and the actual spoils of a pickpocket or burglar, most of us would gladly restore to their lawful owner; but if Henry Randolph handed his sister a hundred-dollar bill, to whom, if not to him, did it rightfully belong? And since to Alice’s eyes it represented, not money in the abstract, still less unlawful gains, but food, clothing, strengthening cordials, and innocent pleasures for husband and son,—and when he who offered these was her own brother,—why should she not accept them? To her it was a distinction without a difference that her husband was willing—or rather permitted her—to receive a fair amount as board for Pinkie and Nurse Annie.
“He has a right to provide for his own child,” said Dr. Richards.
Alice was glad that he looked at it in that light; but she could not understand it. Hewing down the priests of Baal in the name of the Lord would have been comprehensible enough; but when Jehovah and Baal were alike empty names, one sacrifice deserved fire from heaven as well as another, it seemed to Alice.
The subject had never been a bone of contention between them; they had, it is true, once discussed it thoroughly, but dispassionately; then Alice had said, “I cannot quite understand your way of looking at it, Fred; but, of course, I shall not do anything that you disapprove of.”
“That is all I ask of you, Alice,” he had answered gravely.
It was indeed a virtue which most men would have felt with intense appreciation, that Alice was capable of stating her own views upon a question once for all, and, having realized those of her husband, choosing her course, and keeping silence forever thereafter. But the course he hadmarked out for himself was not so easy to Dr. Richards that he could dispense with the glad and hearty co-operation his wife had always been able to give him, and accept, as a full equivalent therefor, her mere passive acquiescence. It fretted him, like friction upon a raw spot, that from the numerous petty annoyances and privations that had come into her daily life, Alice knew that he could have saved her, and would not. She did not blame him; she recognized it as a question of conscience, and left it there; but the consciousness of it was ever alive and present to his thoughts.
It was little wonder that the once fair, calm face was marked by many a line and furrow, and the quiet, cheerful manner often marred by gloomy impatience.
Matters might indeed have been far worse had not Freddy’s presence been about the house like an angel redeeming from all evil. He was seventeen now, and the treatment inaugurated by Dr. Harrison years ago had been so far successful that he was able to take a few steps about his room by the aid of a pair of crutches. He had long arms, and large, but well-shaped hands, white and blue-veined; and his young face, that should have been brown and rosy, was so pathetically bright, sweet, and merry, that the shrunken limbs and distorted spine appeared by contrast comparatively insignificant.
For Freddy had a wonderfully happy disposition. His soul was like a plant, turning ever from the shadow and reaching out towards every ray of light and happiness. He was very clever, too, with his pencil, and might have been a great artist, Dr. Richards thought, if his spine had been like other people’s; but that view of the case had never occurred to Freddy. So, instead of repining because he was unable to cover a twenty-foot canvas with impossible scenes from historic or poetic fiction, Freddy transferredthe turbid waves of his own rushing river, or the changeful clouds that swept across the sky, to graceful, smooth-lined shell or slender water-jar; while his cherub heads were sweet as those immortal angel faces of Fra Angelico.
He was waiting at the dinner-table in his old “Ark of the Covenant,” which, alas! he had never outgrown; and watched with brown eyes, full of mischief, Pinkie’s inspection of the parcels that lay heaped about her plate; for all the gifts had been reserved for dinner-time, since Mr. Randolph was unable to come earlier.
And, after all, the father’s present was of jeweller’s work, though not a “completeparure;” it was a dainty little watch incrusted with diamonds, and a chain of such fairy workmanship that it was hard to believe it could have been wrought by mortal fingers.
“And nothing from Freddy! You ‘vage deceiver!’ Then, what did you mean by ordering me out of the room, whenever you got out your paint-box and palette?”
“I wanted to surprise you, and lo! you are surprised,” said Freddy, laughing. “But I’ve a kiss here for you, if you choose to come and get it.”
“Cool you are! I’ll take it by and by as a corrective to these sugar-plums.”
“Bitters are best before meals,” said the boy, holding out his hand so invitingly that Pinkie pushed back her chair and came around the table to his side. As his lips touched her young, fresh cheek, he murmured, “You shall have it after dinner, Rosebud; I didn’t want it swamped in all that, and criticised by the whole tableful.”
Pinkie replied by a patronizing pat on the brown head, and returned to her seat quite content; for it would have cut her to the heart to be slighted by the cousin who, into the brotherly habitual affection and pity that belonged tohim in right of their life together and his affliction, had contrived to infuse a piquant charm of his own.
Dessert was on the table when a slender gray figure knocked at the glass door opening into the garden. It was Louis’ usual entrance; for, as Freddy now occupied the doctor’s offices on the ground floor, it was more convenient to both. The back office had been turned into a bedroom, when it became difficult to manage the conveyance of the Ark up and down the stairway; the front room Freddy sat and painted in, except during office-hours, when he retired before the doctor’s patients; but these, though numerous, brought so little increase to the treasury that, to any others but Frederick Richards and his son, their number would have been positively disheartening.
Henry Randolph raised his eyebrows the barest line—just a shadow of a line—as the young shoemaker entered, and, though evidently just a little disconcerted at finding the family still at table, made his apology to Alice, and accepted a chair at Freddy’s side, and a portion of birthday ice-cream, as simply and easily as if his grandfather had “come over with King Charles,” like the “Spanyels.”
“I thought you would have finished,” said Louis, “but, of course, birthday wishes take some time,” and he bowed across the table to Pinkie, with a frank boyish smile. “If you are not tired of them, Miss Rose, I hope you will accept mine,” continued the boy with very pretty, old-fashioned courtesy. Frank scowled, and muttered something under his breath; but Mr. Randolph, whose own manners were justly celebrated, felt his heart warm towards the young man.
“It’s merely imitative, of course,” he said to himself. “He has had the same training as Fred, and does the trainers credit, I must say. If he were anything but a shoemaker,—and then that confounded ‘Prices,’—hotbedof Socialism that it is!—Good wishes, Mr. Metzerott, are among those good things one can’t have too much of,” said Mr. Randolph, aloud and benignly.
“Thank you,” said Pinkie distinctly at the same moment. She raised her eyes and gave him a long, full glance, with, perhaps, a certain consciousness in it, which had been entirely absent from his look at her; for the next moment both young faces glowed with a sudden and violent blush.
Mr. Randolph finished his ice-cream, and calmly took up his conversation with the master of the house at the very point where Louis’ entrance had interrupted it.
“American art,” he said, “has a great future before it; just now, of course, we are imitative—imitative! and yet we do show some symptoms of striking out a line of our own. There’s Quartley, now—he’s very American; and Rinehart, poor fellow!”
“I’m not a connoisseur,” said Dr. Richards, “but I never saw anything sweeter than Rinehart’s bust of his mother.”
“Is that your favorite? Well, it’s a good specimen of his best manner; individual, you know, and American. Now, there’s his Clytie; she’s no more Greek than I am; as why should she be? Who his model was, I’m sure I don’t know; but Clytie herself is simply a beautiful American girl.”
“You remember Pinkie’s exclamation when she first saw his Endymion,” said the doctor, smiling; “‘Oh! how I should like to kiss him!’”
“Ah! exactly! ‘like Dian’s kiss!’ There’s a softness, a tenderness about his manner that’s very attractive, and intensely American.”
“Do you consider tenderness a prominent feature of the American character?”
“Why, we don’t get the credit of it, because we cover itup with flippancy; but yes, we are tender-hearted to a fault.”
“Father,” said Freddy, “oh! I beg your pardon for interrupting you, Uncle Henry, but Louis has been telling me something so very interesting. Only imagine! a clergyman giving up his pulpit, and a salary of five thousand a year, because he preached Socialism. And so he has come to Prices, and means to turn carpenter there.”
“He must be a fool,” said Mr. Randolph.
“Appearances are against him; he is a clergyman,” observed Dr. Richards.
“Nonsense, Uncle Fred; that’s your agnosticism,” put in Pinkie decidedly. “Who is he, Louis? and isn’t he rather old to learn carpentering?”
“He is a carpenter,” said Louis. “You always see the practical side of a subject, Miss Rose; he worked at his trade, he says, while he was studying.”
“Oh! if he’s that sort of a person it’s not to be wondered at,” observed Miss Dare, interrupting a very animated conversation with Frank, and bringing her aquiline features to bear upon the matter in hand. “It’s a mere case of wallowing in the mire after being washed, don’t you know.”
“Do you call carpentry a wallowing in the mire?” asked Louis with sudden gravity.
Miss Dare grew scarlet. “I beg your pardon, I’m sure,” she said; “I really had forgotten”—
“Had you? and why do you begmypardon?” asked the boy, with some surprise; “but I always think of Him as a carpenter.”
“Him?”
“Jesus Christ,” said the boy, not without reverence.
There was a decided sensation around the table; for that sacred name is considered altogethermalàpropos, andin wretched taste in good society. Then Alice said, “I don’t think Miss Dare intended any reflection upon the trade of a carpenter, Louis; that was only her witty manner of speaking. What she meant was that if he were brought up a carpenter there was less wonder in his taking to the trade now.”
“But it does give one a kind of shock,” quoth Pinkie with candor, “to hear our Lord spoken of as a carpenter. I wonder why?”
“So do I,” said her uncle. “It is very un-American.”
“He was a very good carpenter, I’m sure of that,” said Louis, the wistfulness growing deeper in his blue eyes.
“Do you think we had better discuss the subject?” asked Mr. Randolph with grave disapprobation; “besides,—Miss Dare, I have been wishing to ask you—how soon does your father intend returning to America?”
“Gracious knows,” answered Miss Dare, with a shrug of her thin shoulders, “I don’t. But, Mr. Randolph, if you hear of any one going over—any friend of yours, I mean, would you mind letting me know? Papa wants me to join him if I can hear of a good escort.”
“PerhapsImay have the pleasure; I may take a fortnight abroad this spring.”
“Papa!” cried Pinkie, “you will take me this time! You promised!”
“Well, I suppose I might as well be bothered with two girls as one,” said Mr. Randolph amiably. “Your father was speaking of giving you a year or so at a French convent when I last saw him, Miss Virgie. Is that the idea at present?”
“Yes, sir; and oh! if you’d only leave Pinkie there too! I shouldn’t mind it if she were along. Oh, Pinks! wot larks!”
“Ah! I fear the Sisters would take them for condors,”observed the papa, with his celebrated genial laugh. “Well, I’ll think it over; but don’t set your hearts on it, you two.”
Wherewith they rose from the table.
“Nothing could be better,” mused the tender-hearted American, noting the sudden blankness of Louis’ face at the proposed journey. “Her own proposal, no interference or parental tyranny on my part. And then—Dare! ‘The old blood holds its own,’ on Wall Street, in his case, and I’m positive he has some little game in hand there in Paris. It will do no harm to look after him. His daughter would make an excellent wife for Frank one of these days; and if the boy is up to any rascality with his lockets and things, it is just as well she should be abroad, out of the way of hearing of it. As for this other affair, there is no harm done at present,—two such children!—but it is just as well to get Pinkie out of this house with its atmosphere of free thought and Socialism. Yes, nothing could be better!”
Rendered even more genial than his wont by these reflections, the rich man paused, ere leaving the dining-room, to say to Louis,—
“My little girl has not thanked you yet for the slippers, Mr. Metzerott. I suppose they came from you, as that is your department at ‘Prices.’”
“Yes,” said Louis quietly, “it is my department.”
“And they do you credit. Pinkie will find nothing prettier in Paris, if I decide to take her. Why, they would be just the thing, little girl, for gala days at the convent, with a white dress and veil.”
“Do they wear veils? I should like to see you in one, Miss Rose,” said Louis, still with that blank quietness which had so suddenly descended upon him.
“Papa,” said Pinkie suddenly, “Freddy has something toshow me, some of his own work. And we don’t want you, papa, or Virgie; you are too learned in technique and chiar-oscuro and that, and Virgie is too satirical. Go upstairs, you two; I’ll see you later.”
“Don’t wait for me, Mr. Randolph; I have something to say to Mr. Metzerott,” said Virginia boldly. Louis was only a boy, she said to herself; besides, one need hardly stand on ceremony with that sort of people.
Thus cast off by his women-kind, Mr. Randolph had no alternative but to obey, since interference was not his cue. “Tell Pinkie not to be long, she is keeping her cousin from his ride,” said the great Wall Street operator, as he left her; but Virgie was not thinking of Pinkie at all.
“I want to say, Mr. Metzerott,” she said, “that I am so much obliged to you for speaking as you did, about—carpenters, you know.”
“Why, I did not say anything, did I?” replied Louis, rather absently, following Pinkie with his eyes as she walked away by the side of Freddy’s chair, which his father wheeled into the office.
“Oh! I know you’d rather go with them,” said Virgie with the candid directness which was a part of her character; “but I’ve got something to say, and I mean to say it. Mr. Metzerott—or, I say, do you mind if I call you Louis?”
“No, why should I? everybody does except Mr. Randolph; and he—oh! I don’t suppose he meant to make fun of me.”
“Humph!” said the astute Virginia. “But never mind what he meant,Iknow his tricks and his manners. Louis, what you said was this, that you always thought of our Lord as a carpenter. Now, does that mean that you think of Him often? a bright, handsome boy like you! becauseIdon’t, not more than once a week, on Sundays, you know; and yet girls,—one would think a girl had more time!”
“It’s while we’re at work,” answered the boy; “oh! I have plenty of time, Miss Dare. My father is a very silent man. When he does talk, what he says is well worth hearing; but he don’t talk much when we’re at work; and so I think of things then.”
“Things! do you mean our Lord?”
“Him, yes; and of Washington and Bonaparte; and our own Hermann, who fought the Romans; and Fra Angelico and Titian, and—oh! I couldn’t tell you half,” said Louis, smiling. “I’m here about every day, you know; and Fred and I talk about things and people; heroes and great artists, and all sorts of things. Fred believes that Jesus Christ was really God, you know, and so is alive still.”
“And don’t you?”
“No: I wish I did, but I can’t. I love Him, you know; I’d rather be like Him than any of those men I told you of; but I can’tfeelHim, like Fred.”
“FeelHim; what do you mean?”
“Why, Fred says that sometimes, when he is suffering, he knows Jesus Christ is in the room, close by him; closer than any of us.”
“And that makes him always so bright and happy,” said Virgie under her breath.
“I suppose so; it would, you know. I’d change with Fred, spine and all, to feel so,—I know that. Well, I’d change with him anyway, if I could, and he’d like it; but you can’t make yourself feel, can you?”
“Wouldn’t you just as soon leave the feeling to other people, sometimes?” asked Miss Dare, relapsing into frivolity without the slightest warning. “Never mind, Louis, if he does take her abroad to get her out of your way; fathers are not always as clever as they think themselves, and I won’t let her forget you.”
“I think she hardly could,” returned the boy, with a troubled smile; “we have known each other all our lives.”
“Well, here she comes, and I’ll do as I would be done by, and make myself scarce. That’s a Christian maxim, anyway.”
Louis turned quickly to meet his friend, with an eager face. “I could not come,” he said, “I was kept—but you have it? he gave it to you?”
Pinkie glanced down at a tile she carried in her hand. “Yes, he gave it to me,” she said.
“But I want to ask you, Pinkie—oh! I ought to say Miss Rose, but I’ve called you Pinkie all my life;—she says, Miss Dare says, that your father will take you to Paris to get you away fromme. Pinkie, do you want to go?”
“That’s all Virgie’s nonsense,” said Pinkie decidedly; “he’d better not play stern parent, and he knows it. Yes, Louis, I do want to go; to see the ocean, and Paris, and all. Of course I want to go.”
“If you would enjoy it,” said Louis reluctantly, “we would try to bear it, Freddy and I. But we should miss you, Pinkie,liebes Herz,” he added tenderly.
“Well, you know I’d be back in two years,” said Pinkie, blushing slightly, though really it was hardly worth while to blush for Louis; a mere child, and a shoemaker at that.
“If your father wants to get you away from me,” said Louis, “it may be two years or ten. Will he like you to have my picture, Pinkie?”
“Heoughtto,” said that young lady, a mischievous dimple showing itself at the corner of her rosy mouth. “It’s in Freddy’s best manner, tender, individual, and American,veryAmerican.”
Louis smiled, though he would rather have seen Pinkie more respectful to her genial papa; but he had not beenacquainted with that young lady for twelve long years without having learned the futility of remonstrance. His arm was around her by this time, and he was stroking back the rough, brown curls from her brow. It was much such a caress as Freddy might have bestowed; for, as Henry Randolph had said, they were both mere children.
“And did the slippers fit?” he said. “Annie Rolf painted them; but not half well enough for you,mein Röslein roth.”
Pinkie drew away from him rather abruptly. “Were he a dairyman, he’d woo thee with pats of butter,” said Virginia’s voice in her ear. Pinkie hated herself for the thought; and she loved Louis as well as at that stage of her development she was capable of loving; but she drew away from him notwithstanding.
“They are pretty enough for a queen,” she said; “and your father always fits me; or did you make them all yourself? But you know, Louis, I told you, we are not children now, and”—
“It is your birthday,” said Louis, “and you will be far away on mine, perhaps. You might kiss me for my birthday, Pinkie, and another for our good-by. I do love you so very dearly.”
Pinkie looked doubtful for a moment; but her heart was soft and young, and Louis was very handsome. Besides, it suddenly occurred to her that her father would strenuously object to any such proceeding; whereupon the dairyman and his pats of butter vanished from her mind.
“Just one, then,” she said with a demure, naughty little smile.
Louis was quite equal to the occasion.
“One on your lips,” he said, suiting the action to the word in obedience to Shakespeare, “and one on each cheek, my pink rose. And then, your brown eyes are so pretty,you would not have them slighted, I know; and this white forehead was just made to be kissed. But I like the rosy lips best, after all,allerliebste,” concluded Louis, with great simplicity.
Whereupon Pinkie amazed him by clinging to his neck, which was almost out of her reach, she was such a tiny little thing; and bursting into sudden tears. She was much less simple and innocent than he,—perhaps, under our present system of education, it is impossible for a girl to be thoroughly innocent and perfectly simple,—and, though the word marriage had not been openly named between them, Pinkie knew that Louis looked upon her as his; his so entirely that there was scarcely need to speak of it. Besides, they were too young, every one would laugh at them; but when he should be twenty-one, thought poor Louis—
Pinkie loved no one so well, not her father, nor Freddy. She had, in her naughty childhood, always been good with Louis; and his power over her now was almost unlimited when they were together; but yet—
She drew away from him again, and dried her eyes. “There’s nothing the matter,” she said in answer to his alarmed inquiries, “only that I am foolish, and that papa will ask why I have been crying. Let me go; I must bathe my eyes before he sees them.”
She ran lightly up the stairs, then by a sudden impulse turned, ran down again, and threw her arms about his neck. “I do love you, Louis,” she said; “and I don’t care what they do to me, if they keep me in a cellar on bread and water, withrats—yes, Louis,rats—running over my feet, I’ll never forget you, never,never.”
“You couldn’t, Pinkie,mein Röslein, nor I you, you couldnotforget me,” he said as he had answered Virginia, when suddenly Pinkie tore herself away, and vanished likesummer lightning. Louis turned to meet the eyes of Dr. Richards.
“You are both such children,” said that gentleman, “that it is no use to scold, far less to warn you. But, Louis, did you never hear the story of Cinderella?”
“Many a time, sir.”
“There is a new version of the story, my boy. The modern Cinderella is a princess, the daughter of a money-king, and her lover a poor shoemaker. The slippers were his workmanship, and had a fairy power to test her truth, and—Louis—when she wore them, and thought of him as he was—no, not that, but as he appeared; for he was a prince at heart, but a shoemaker by trade,—then, Louis, her fine raiment and her glittering equipage vanished, and she appeared to those who understood her only a poor cinder girl, sitting among the ashes that had ruined a thousand lives to enrich one.”
“And therefore she left the ashes, and came to her lover in her rags,” said Louis, smiling proudly.
“Do you think so?” said the doctor. “Well, well, after all you are only children, and have kissed each other many a time. She will go to Paris”—
“—And come home again,” said Louis.
While Pinkie, as she packed away the pretty china tile with the fair young face upon it, murmured to herself, “There’s no good in showing it to Virgie, she would laugh; and as for papa, it is none of his business. But oh! Louis, if only you were anything but a shoemaker!”