CHAPTER IV.DREAMS AND DREAMERS.
Dora Weglein belonged to that large class of women in whom the heart is far stronger than the head. Such women feel strongly, but reason weakly; if the feeling be pure and right, their actions are the same; but if selfishness clog the action of the heart, there is no head to appeal to. These are the women who never theorize, or else theorize wide of the mark, and whose husbands often are the happiest, whose children are the best-behaved in the world.
Alice Randolph, on the contrary, was a woman of theory. It was to her impossible to act without a clear knowledge of all the laws that ought to govern such action; hence, as time and tide wait for no man, the opportunity for action often passed while she was weighing pros and cons; and hence, also, she frequently came to doubt the correctness of her own conclusions, when their resulting action had lapsed into the past.
That two women so different, when placed in circumstances almost exactly similar, should choose the same course, is at least noteworthy; indeed Alice found it rather too much noted. She was not aware of any sort of reprehensible pride. It certainly would have mattered little to her if Frederick Richards had been the son of a hangman, to put it as strongly as possible, and she had proved herself not purse-proud; but it was—yes, itwas—very galling to be always likened and compared to Dorothea Weglein, her sister’s German nursery governess. But in truth a womanof theory and one of feeling (or shall I say instinct? It is a good old word, and, while perhaps not strictly scientific, expresses my meaning fairly well)—women of theory and women of instinct, then, are only too apt mutually to look down upon and scorn one another. Dora, however, loved and admired Miss Alice, and was strengthened in allegiance to her lover by the knowledge of her young lady’s course.
“It is beautiful that she gives up all her money,” she said to Karl, as they walked towards his home on the Sunday afternoon when, as his betrothed, she was in all solemnity to take tea with his mother.
“She may be glad of it some day,” he answered grimly. “When the people get their rights, they will have a heavy score to settle with Henry Randolph. He has a heart as hard as his own nails.”
“Ach, how terrible!” sighed little Dora. “But the money is good all the same, Karl.”
“It is stained with blood,” he said. “I am glad you are to touch little more of it.”
Whereupon Dora began to cry, as she told him of the check Mr. Randolph had slipped into her hand that morning, and which would be so convenient in buying her wedding outfit.
“And he called me a good girl, Karl, and said you should be a happy man. I think his heart cannot be so very hard. Rich people are sometimes so kind, they cannot be all bad. Must I give him back the money?”
“Keep it, keep it,” said Karl gloomily. “You have a right to more than that, you who have slaved for him so long. And, for Heaven’s sake, don’t cry and spoil your pretty eyes,” he added tenderly.
Dora and Alice were married on the same day, though not by design, or even with the knowledge of the latter, who had, to the grief and dismay of the little governess,lately turned a deaf ear to all confidences, and even frowned coldly upon proffered sympathy. Unamiable, very; but Alice had never been particularly amiable. It was a necessity that both, if they married at all, should do so before the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Randolph for New York, whence they were to sail for Europe; and so, one morning, Alice Randolph, quite alone, stepped into the carriage her lover had brought, entered St. Mark’s Church a rich woman, and left it without a penny in the world, except what she had in her purse.
“And you are sure you will never repent, Alice, my darling?” asked her husband, when they stood together in the little parlor of the home he had prepared for her. “It was hard for you, dear, with not a sister or a friend to look on at your marriage. Are you quitesureyou do not regret?”
“What, already?” she answered, laughing. “You might at least give me time. No, sir, I’m not sorry yet, and never expect to be, in spite of your pessimism.”
“I hope your optimism may be right, my darling.”
“I willmakeit right,” she cried defiantly, not of him but fate; “and as for friends, whom do I want but you? Don’t you suppose I could have had scores of bridemaids?—girls who would have called you ‘too sweet for anything,’ and considered it ‘so romantic’ to have one’s only brother”—her eyes filled, but she shook off the tears and went on merrily. “No, sir, I don’t repent as yet, and don’t mean to; but, if ever Ishould, I am very much afraid that you will becertain to find it out.”
Dora’s wedding took place that same afternoon, but with scarcely more pomp or circumstance. She had been staying for some days with Frau Kellar, and in the immediate neighborhood of the Herr Pastor, to whom, long ere this,the buxom Lottie had gained a legal title. The pastor’s experience in haling into the narrow path this wandering lamb had not been such as to encourage any further effort on her behalf; in fact, the lamb had shown, if not the teeth of a wolf, at least the claws of a cat, and had given her spiritual guide to understand that she was perfectly competent to direct her own goings in the way.
“We love each other, Herr Pastor,” she had said, “and the good God would not have put that into our hearts if He had wished us not to marry.”
“But the man is an infidel, Fräulein Dora; he does not believe in God.”
“That is nothing,” answered Dora, smiling. If she had been able to put into words what she meant, it would have been something like this, perhaps,—
“Love is of God, and God is love: Karl loves, therefore he partakes of the being of God; and whether he professes to believe in Him or not is of very little consequence.”
But carefully remember, dear reader, I am not justifying little Dora in this conclusion, only stating the argument as she would have done, had her mental powers been cultivated up to syllogisms.
The pastor, however, understood her to mean that belief or unbelief were equallyNichts, and went away sorrowful. But Karl Metzerott, when he heard of the conversation, was exceeding wroth, and expressed himself with great force, in a string of German nouns and adjectives, some of which began with “ver,” while others referred to well-known atmospheric phenomena. No such person, he said, should marry a dog or cat that belonged to him, Karl Metzerott; if Dora objected to a justice of the peace, there was the Calvinist minister, and plenty of Americans in the same business, more was the pity. All ministers werethieves and rogues, anyhow, said Karl Metzerott, living on the charity of their parishioners under pretence of saving their souls. Souls, indeed!
It was not often that Karl found words for his thoughts to such an extent as this; but gentle little Dora was unmoved by the torrent of eloquence. She would not be married by any one but a minister of God, she said; but that minister need be by no means the Rev. Otto Schaefer. “Though, for her part, and though she had been angry at the time, Dora would always believe that the Herr Pastor was a good little man, and meant well.”
“He meant to marry you himself, if you call that meaning well,” growled Karl.
And so they were married by the Episcopal clergyman, who in the morning of the same day had united Frederick and Alice; selected by Dora, indeed, for that very reason; a clergyman of the old, indolent sort, now happily almost unknown, who married all that were set before him, pocketed his fee, and asked no questions for conscience sake. He shall not trouble the reader again, and is of importance here only because, having been Alice’s pastor all her life, she was not likely to have been aroused by his walk or conversation to any consciousness of the deep things of the spiritual life.
After the ceremony, the happy pair and their friends, who had witnessed the marriage, partook of a social tea, for which Frau Kellar provided house-room, and the bridegroom paid; then, husband and wife went home to their little three-roomed dwelling, and the new life began.
And then—for a while—how Karl would have laughed at any pessimistic theories. As for Dora, she would not have known a theory of any description, if she had stumbled across one. But she was very, very happy, our little Dora! Life had not been easy to her,—an orphan, maintainedand educated by grudging fraternal care, and with her early hope nipped, in its first flower, by the frost of death. Now, surrounded by love, her nature blossomed into a wonderful luxuriance; the wistful blue eyes grew full of laughter, the sad lips smiled, and the cheeks grew rosy. She was as merrily busy all day long as a child at play; and Frau Metzerott the elder found her a daughter beyond her dreams.
Shoemaker Karl said little; but no king upon his throne ever more intensely believed his wife a queen among women. All day he could hear her blithe, sweet voice, singing over her work, or chatting and laughing with his mother, who had suddenly failed, now that she had some one to rest her cares upon. It mattered little, she said; Dora was eyes, hands, and feet to her; she had worked hard enough in her time, now she could rest. And so she lay and rested under her gay, patchwork quilt, upon her testered bed, while Dora bustled cheerfully about the tiny kitchen. In the evening, when work was over, she would often draw the old candle-stand to the bedside, and, with the yellow lamplight shining on her golden hair, read aloud from the heavy yellowed pages of the old German Bible, while Karl sat near with his pipe. Not that he listened, except to the soft murmur of his wife’s sweet voice; yet the unheeded words returned to him in after years, stirring always a new throb of misery.
But at the time the Bible-reading served as a not unpleasant accompaniment to his pipe, which he would not for worlds have disturbed or interfered with. “Religion was an excellent thing for women,” said Karl Metzerott.
During the following summer occurred the great Sängerfest, the first held by the Sängerbund to which belonged the Micklegard Männerchor. Karl had been married nearly six months at the time, and when we say that in all probabilityhe would not have gone if he could not have taken Dora, we have sufficiently indicated that he was still very much in love with his wife. Fortunately, Laketon, where the Fest was held, is only a short journey by rail from Micklegard, so that travelling expenses were light; and he had cousins in Laketon with whom they could board very reasonably; nevertheless, the sum expended made a hole in Karl’s savings-bank account, at which he would have shaken his head dismally a year before.
With the Sängerfest itself we have nothing to do. Of course there were processions, concerts, balls, and all the rest of the routine with which Americans have since become so familiar; but the only noticeable incident for us is that when, as their contribution to the prize singing, the Micklegard Männerchor gave that sweetest of German Volkslieder, “Bei’m Liebchen zu Haus,” the audience arose as one man and applauded to the very echo. The prize was theirs; a result to which, in Dora’s opinion, Karl’s rich bass had not a little contributed.
She was thinking blissfully of this and other matters, in the train that bore her homewards, when her attention was attracted to a conversation going on between two young men who occupied the seat before her. They were students of the Laketon University, though this Dora could not be expected to know; and as one was Irish and the other a German, even more prone than is the case with students in general to discuss all things in heaven above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth. They spoke in English or German as suited their subject-matter or the impulse of the moment, and the first words that caught Dora’s attention were these:—
“Have I ever objected to Socialism in itself?”
“What do you call its Self? You seem to object to its most necessary elements.”
“By no means. I only say that you Socialists are short-sighted, and seem to adopt the very measures best calculated to defeat your own ends.”
“Specify, specify!” growled the German.
“With pleasure. The end at which you profess to aim is a universal brotherhood among men, a sort of lion and lamb lying down together all over the world; yet you go to work, with your secret plots and your assassinations, as if you were preparing for another Reign of Terror.”
“The Reign of Terror may be necessarybeforehand.”
“Very long beforehand, then. You know the story of the tiger who has once tasted blood. Teaching men to murder makes them murderers; no less. You can’t build your social republic out of unsocial Republicans, dear boy.”
“Oh! get along with your Irish sophistry! A social republic, as you call it, seems to be, in your eyes, another Donnybrook Fair!”
“Take your time,” said the Irishman. “When a fellow falls back on old Donnybrook, I know he’s hard pressed for an argument.”
“I could prove to you in five minutes that tyrannicide is not murder, any more than tiger-hunting; and”—warned by a twinkle in the blue Irish eye,—“far more righteous than ordinary capital punishment. But, passing that over for the time, I should like to know what meansyouwould employ to build a social republic, supposing you wanted one?”
“Do you suppose I should not hail the advent oftrueSocialism as the dawn of new light and life for the world?”
“Eh? a new convert! But stop! there was a qualifying word.TrueSocialism; that is, with all its distinctive features omitted.”
“Not at all. Socialism with all its vital organs strengthened and purified; in short—Christianity.”
“I thought so! Christianity! Why, Christianity has had her fling for eighteen centuries, and what has she done?”
“The first thing she did was to establish a commune,” replied the Irishman. “You can read a full account of it in the Book of Acts, including the history of some weak disciples, who, having perhaps been trained in tiger-hunting, were not fully equal to the occasion during a reign of peace. As the first recorded experiment in Socialism, it ought to interest you.”
“But the experiment failed.”
“Failed? In the reign of Tiberius, with Nero and Caligula and all those fellows to come after? Well, rather! The world wasn’t quite ready for it, not by some eighteen centuries, so Christianity fell back on her intrenchments, as you might say, and, while she reserved the spirit of Socialism, let go the letter.”
“She did, did she? why, Christians.”
“I’m not talking about Christians. We’re a bad lot, most of us, but it’s because we don’t live up to our principles. You read over your Gospels, old boy, and tell me whether, if they really and vitally influenced the lives of the majority of Americans, Socialism in its essence—that is, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity—would not follow as a matter of course.”
“Oh! perhaps, yes. I don’t quarrel with your religion as a system of morality, Clare. It is”—
“I know; miracles. But how a fellow who, not content with making bricks without straw, tries to build a house by tearing up the foundations, can quarrel with miracles, passes my comprehension. Look here. Do you not know that it is a waste of time to reform society from the outside,and especially by main force? The worm at the root of the social tree, my dear fellow, is sin. How do you propose to get rid of it?”
“Ah, there indeed,” sighed the German, his metaphysical soul rising to the bait, “you start the great religious problem, my friend, with which Zoroaster, Buddha, and other religious teachers have grappled.”
“And which only Christ has solved,” said Ernest Clare.
Whereupon they rushed into a discussion which, taking by and by another turn, led them into transcendental mathematics, and the possible existence of worlds or universes where a fourth dimension forms part of the usual order of things; with many wild fancies as to the type of inhabitants such universes may possess. When Karl hurried back from the other end of the car to fetch his wife and change cars for Micklegard, they were still hard at it.
That night Dora had a singular dream. She stood in a world which formed part of one of those universes of which Clare and his companion had spoken; a universe which admits a fourth, even perhaps a fifth, dimension, and which must therefore differ so widely from our earth even in the primary elements that compose what here we call land and water, that any attempt to describe it were but as the meaningless babble of an infant.
In the world whereon she stood or floated—for our commonplace to them would be miraculous, while what we call miracle is there a daily happening—there was a stir and moving to and fro, as of leaves swayed by a sudden breeze. One of their number had willed to leave them, and seeking our earth—known to him as the theatre of the wondrous drama of redemption—to don our uniform of flesh and strike one good blow against sin. And this, by a law of his world, was possible to him.
He stood, a tall, radiant figure, before One appointed to hear such requests and decide upon them.
“Have you thought well upon the matter?” it was asked him. “It is nothing that, though you may choose to go or stay, you may by no means choose your post in the battle. No good soldier would grumble at that; nor, to say truth, is the difference between what there they call riches and poverty, high and low, happiness and misery, at all worth considering. But have you thought upon the horribleness, the awful, slimy infectiousness, of the foe you must close with in a death grapple? Have you considered the sinfulness of sin?”
“I have looked upward to the midnight sky,” he made answer, “and have beheld the universe that contains earth floating there, a pale, translucent disk. And when the thought of sin had stained its purity with the hue of blood, I have been as one who, bound and helpless, beholds a fiery serpent approaching, to devour before his eyes a sleeping, innocent babe.”
“But what,” it was urged, “if you should be overcome in the struggle? For the serpent is very strong, and his poison is death.”
“The Life of our King,” he replied, “is stronger than the death of the serpent.”
“But the choice is forever,” he was told. “Victor or vanquished, hither you can never return, save as others have done, in passing from world to world. Man you will be, and man you must remain forever. Also, you will forget your world, your friends; and, though broken visions may float about your infancy, like rainbow hues above the dewdrops of morning, they will vanish all too soon before the coming of that sun of earth.”
“Morning and evening are alike His handiwork,” he replied. “Everywhere and always I shall have Him.”
Then He who had questioned him arose solemnly. “Thou bearest with thee the sign of victory,” He said. “Go in peace.”
And it seemed to Dora as if the tall, radiant form turned upon her, her alone in all that illimitable throng, a face of wondrous and eternal beauty. Close it came, and closer still; now they two were alone in all that measureless universe, and his lips smiled, and the eyes were the eyes of a little child.
“Mother!” he said, and kissed her on the lips; wherewith a strange shuddering thrill of utter bliss shot through every member. She woke to find the daylight streaming in at the curtainless window. Her heart was throbbing heavily, her limbs trembled, and her eyes were full of tears.
CHAPTER V.“WHEN SORROWS COME.”
Do you know, dear reader, how slowly and heavily fall the first drops of a thunder shower? After a little, when the storm is fully upon us, when the wind crashes in the branches of the trees, and sheets of rain beat against the windows, there is but small account made of a single drop; but at first, after a day of sunshine, ah! how large and ominous they seem; and even so is the first coming of trouble.
It was but a few weeks after the end of the Sängerfest that a change in Leppel Rolf which had long been silently operative, began to manifest itself in his outward man. He grew morose in speech and manner, shabby in his clothing, negligent of his daily task, more and more absorbed in his invention, which now neared completion, and as he fondly hoped, success. Meanwhile, the hope brought something far from happiness, whatever might be the case with realization. Anna’s color grew hard, her features sharp, her eyes anxious, under the pressure of dread for the future, and the knowledge that Leppel’s savings and her own had been exhausted to the last penny, and that all which now stood between them and dire want were her husband’s daily wages. And Leppel had been of late more than once sharply reproved by the foreman of the great building firm for which he worked.
Indeed, Anna could not justly blame the foreman. She would have scolded, too, if an employé of hers had beenfound dreaming over his work, and drawing plans on the smooth pine boards, instead of making them into doors.
“If he had looked at the plans, he would have admired, instead of cursing,” growled Leppel.
“Not if they delayed work he had contracted to finish by a certain time,” returned Anna shrewdly. “Everything in its own time and place, Leppel; should I get through the work I do, if I did not remember that?”
Anna’s practical, clear-seeing spirit did not know the power of an idea stronger than itself; it was no wonder she lacked patience. Meanwhile troubles dropped faster and faster both upon herself and her neighbors.
The old Frau did not wait to receive the little grandson who came when the June roses bloomed over the land, as beautiful and sweet as they. Life and death lay together under the shoemaker’s roof; the old life passively drifting out of the world, as the young life struggled into being. It was terrible for Dora, said all the gossips; but, fortunately, Dora was one of those happy persons who take everything quietly, so it seemed to do her no harm. Anna Rolf was at the house day and night, and managed everything, in spite of the fact that her own domestic anxieties were daily on the increase. It was owing to her, she always said afterwards, that little Louis had such splendid health. She “started him right,” and the start is just everything to a baby!
There never was such a baby! Of course not. Others might be as pretty, perhaps as bright and knowing, but what baby ever was so good and loving since the world began, or cooed in such varied tones, as sweet as the notes of an angel’s harp? There was no doubt about it, he was certainly a remarkable child; and as the young mother lay upon her bed in the hot, close room, or by and by went about her work again in the kitchen beneath, many an oldtale returned to her mind that she had heard in her German home, of beings from the upper air, higher intelligences who had come down to teach and bless our sinful earth. Her wonderful dream also returned to her many times, and, bending over the little form, she strove to trace in the unconscious baby features some resemblance to that strange and beautiful face that had looked so lovingly into hers. And at times she quite believed she could; when little Louis’ eyes were suddenly opened, and he looked into her face with that strange, grave look, the resemblance was wonderful, thought Dora.
These thoughts she kept to herself; they were sweet and beautiful, but Karl would only have laughed at her for them, willing as he was to agree that such a baby as their boy had seldom, if ever, been seen before.
The grandmother’s testered bed was very convenient for Louis to lie upon while Dora was busy. They remembered the old Frau tenderly. “She was a good woman and a hard worker,” Karl had said gravely. But she was now reaping the reward of her goodness. Was it possible to wish her back into such a world as this, especially as her funeral expenses and Dora’s illness had brought their savings very low indeed?
And trade began to fall off.
Karl Metzerott had a certain reputation in his own quarter of Micklegard for the excellence of his work. His shoes were not fancy shoes, he was wont to say, but he used only the best leather, and they were every stitch hand-made. One pair of them would outlast two pairs of machine-made shoes, he said, and then be half-soled to look as good as new. But there was no denying that the machine-made shoes were cheaper to begin with, whatever they might be in the end; and when business is bad all over the country, money as tight as wax, and the air filledwith rumors of a general financial crisis, and complaints of over-production,—whatever that may be,—why, people will wear the cheapest things they can find. Perhaps they reason that the sooner the things wear out the sooner will the demand catch up with the supply, and the evil of over-production be remedied; or perhaps it is simply that if a man have five dollars to buy shoes for his entire family, he must make it go as far as it will, rather than spend it all on one member (or pair of members), letting the rest go barefoot. As to what he shall do when the cheap shoes are gone, why, he must just resort to the expedient of which the rest of us avail ourselves when everything else has proved unsuccessful,—he must trust in Providence.
Whatever the cause, Metzerott saw his best customers pass his door in machine-made shoes; but he did derive a sort of cynical pleasure from noticing how soon the shoes were brought to him to be mended and patched.
“I must work over hours, and lower my prices,” he said to Dora; and, though the latter could not quite understand why he must overwork, when rows of unsold shoes stood upon his shelves, she made no objection, as the idea seemed to comfort him.
Lowering the prices, however, had an excellent effect; and though the shoes were sold at little more than cost, it was certainly less depressing than to see them hanging there so helplessly, or staring from the shelves with their toes turned out in the first position, in such an exasperating manner.
Anna Rolf also felt the hard times, even more than the Metzerotts, since “every woman her own dressmaker” is an easier problem to solve than how to make one’s own shoes. Leppel had been discharged at last,—got the sack, as he expressed it; not before he had richly earned, as one might candidly admit, all that the sack might contain.But oh! for the innocent who suffer with the guilty, in this world of ours! There is never a jewelled cup of gold in the mouth of any sack for them.
Leppel’s family bade fair to have very little in their own mouths for a while, with the father out of work, and Anna expecting to be again laid aside from hers for a season. “But you have no rent to pay, that is one thing,” said Dora comfortingly, “and we will take care of the children, Karl and Louis and I. Do you suppose I can forget how good you were to me?”
Leppel himself could have lived on air, in his present tension of mind and body. His model was at last completed; more, it actually worked. It was indeed a beauteous little machine, and the admiration of the whole quarter; so that, in spite of the hard times, he had been able to borrow five dollars here and ten there, until he had raised enough to pay the necessary fees at the patent-office.
“But if you take my advice,” said one of the lenders (the loans were all to be secured by shares in the patent), “you’ll get a man I know in Washington to look into it for you. I believe he has that patent-office at his finger-ends, and it’s a regular picnic to hear him tell why this model was a failure, and that, not half so good, perhaps, took like hot cakes. Just send your machine to him. It looks tomelike a pretty good thing, but”—
“I’lltakeit to him,” answered Leppel sharply.
He did take it to him.
The man of knowledge inspected it closely, and carefully studied every motion. Then he thoughtfully stroked his beard, which was long and luxuriant (perhaps from excess of knowledge) to the point of aggressiveness.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, yes. Seems pretty clever: ingenious, too; works all right; labor-saving, no doubt ofthat. Might be a very good thing; but I’m afraid, Mr. Rolf, I’mafraidthere’s no money in it. In fact,” for you see the man of knowledge had had other interviews with inventors, and he knew that things must be broken to them gently, “in fact, there’s a what-you-call-‘em already in the office, enough like yours to be its own brother.”
“Impossible! I never heard of it!” stammered the inventor.
“Oh! I don’t suppose you did; case of great minds thinking alike, you know. Bless your soul, it happens every day! Not the samemachine, you know,” with an emphasis as if it might possibly have been the same something else; “but like it; just enough like it for yours to be an infringement on the patent, if the patent was worth anything, which it ain’t.”
“Then my invention is surely not the same,” said poor Leppel, in his labored English; for, though he had twice helped to elect a President, he had lived in America only ten years. “Have you not already said it was good and labor-saving?”
“Oh, it’s all that,” said the man of knowledge easily; “but the fact is, it didn’t pay. It was tried, you know. The man who owned it,—not the inventor, who sold it for a song and was happy ever after, as the story-books say,—but the man who bought it—well, he was pretty warm about the pockets, so he did some extensive advertising, and started up his works in fine style; but the machines cost like fun to make, especially at first; if they hadtaken, you know, he could have run things on a bigger scale, and so made ‘em cheaper; but they didn’ttake. They save muscle, of course; but you see most of us have muscle, and very few of us money. That’s about the English of it, I guess. If they’d savedtime, now, or money, ’twould have been different.”
“What became of him?” asked Leppel gloomily.
“The inventor? don’t know; clever fellow, though, ought to succeed at something; maybe not the first thing he tried, but something. Oh! you mean the holder of the patent? Failed, and blew his brains out afterwards; can’t say but it served him right, either.”
“It served himquiteright,” cried the inventor fiercely; “he took advantage of the other man’s necessities”—
“But we all do that, you know, Mr. Rolf,” said the man of knowledge. “I never came across a patent yet that was run on Gospel principles. What I blame this fellow for is for letting himself go before he examined into things. Pen and ink are cheap, and arithmetic taught for nothing; and he ought to have known human nature well enough to see that he hadn’t struck a paying job. Well, don’t be discouraged; go home and invent something that is cheap to make, and knocks Father Time into the middle of next week—some improvement in the telegraph, for instance, so a man can hear yesterday how stocks stood day after to-morrow—and you’ll make a fortune yet. Good-night. Oh, don’t mention it! I’ve really enjoyed our little talk; took me back twenty years.”
Twenty years! So his fixed idea, his Moloch, to whom he had sacrificed work, wife, and children, his machine that was to have enabled them to live like princes, had been tried and failed, while he was still a happy schoolboy in Germany! He took the night train for home, and sat gazing into the blank darkness outside the window, his beloved model still carefully cherished upon his knees,—why, he scarcely knew. The conductor shook him twice before he heard the demand for his ticket, and then he only turned his head and stared stupidly, so that the other took the bit of pasteboard himself from the hat-band, where Leppel had mechanically placed it.
“He ain’t drunk,” the conductor said to the brakeman, afterwards, as they stood together on the front platform; “so he must be either crazy or a blank fool.”
The brakeman inspected Leppel through the glass of the door, and concerted measures with the conductor, to be taken if the supposed maniac should become violent. But there was no danger of violence from poor Leppel. He had not yet begun to realize what had happened to him; only he felt queer, and very numb and stupid.
The numbness and stupidity had not worn off when he stepped upon the platform, at Micklegard, of the station nearest his home. The model was heavy, and he was just alive enough to resolve to leave it at the ticket-office. The clerk was known to him, and recognized immediately the package of which he was asked to take charge.
“What?” he said with cheerful consternation, “fetched it back, after all? No go, eh?”
“No,” said Leppel, slowly and stupidly, “it was no go.” He walked away bent and draggingly. The clerk looked after him, then stowed the model carefully away on a high shelf. “Well, I’m blest!” he said. “I certainly am!”
It was barely daylight of a January morning, and in the upper windows of his home, when he reached it, shone a faint light. A feeble baby wail came down the staircase as he opened the door. Leppel was not too stupid to understandthat. Another mouth to be fed; that was what the cry meant to the house-father who had thrown away his children’s daily bread in pursuit of a shadow. He climbed the steep stairs that led up directly from the little parlor to his bedroom door, where Dora met him, smiling kindly.
“She is doing well,” she said, “and it is another fine boy. But, oh!” as she noticed the look upon his face, “don’t tell her any bad news if you can help it.”
“If I can help it,” he said assentingly. His brain seemed only equal to repeating what was said to him. He went into the room, and sat upon a chair by Anna’s bedside. They had been bad friends for some time, but he was scarcely awake enough to dread her tongue now.
“Well,” she said angrily, “have you nothing to say? You might tell me you are glad I am safe through with it.”
“I am glad,” he said obediently, “that you are safe through with it.”
“And you had better be,” she cried. “I don’t know what your children would have done without me,—such a father as they have! Here! don’t you care to see your baby?”
She pulled the cover from its face, and he inspected it with the same dull obedience, but beginning now to be unpleasantly conscious of Anna’s angry eyes. Yet all the while the old love was tugging at her heartstrings, as she read in his face and bearing the story of his failure. But she would not spare him; Anna had not learned to spare either herself or others.
“And your invention? Of course that was a failure, as I always told you!”
“Yes,” he said in English, recalling the words of the ticket-clerk, “yes, it was no go.”
“And the money all wasted, and your place thrown away, and my children starving!” she cried, her voice growing louder and shriller with each particular; “and now the great stupid fool tells me it was no go.No go!” She broke into wild, hysterical laughter, and beat upon her head with her work-worn hands.
They must have turned him out of the room, Leppel supposed, for he found himself in the open air without very well knowing how he came there. There was a heavy fog; and, well though he knew the streets, he was again surprisedto find himself suddenly standing upon the bridge across the Mickle River, which at this season of the year, especially after such mild weather as had lately prevailed, was apt to be very high, and, with the melting of the snow in the mountains, to overflow its banks, and work mischief to all in its way.
Leppel stood for some moments stupidly and fixedly regarding the swift, turbid current. Did he lose his balance? Was he seized with sudden giddiness? Or was it a deliberate plunge? No one ever knew.
The policeman who saw him fall had help upon the spot as quickly as it was possible to do so; but it was only the earthly frame of Leopold Rolf that was rescued from the angry waters. The soul of the man whose invention would not pay had gone to carry its cause before the Great Inventor, the Maker of heaven and earth.
CHAPTER VI.IN BATTALIONS.
Anna Rolf arose from her bed with her beauty wasted, her youth gone. Instead of the brilliant, joyous girl, there remained the sharp-featured, sharp-tongued woman, whose sound health, clear head, and practical abilities were now, instead of a source of self-satisfaction, viewed by herself merely as a stock in trade, her only capital for the business of taking care of her children. For Leppel’s life insurance had been forfeited by the doubt cast upon the manner of his death, and their tiny home was mortgaged to its full value. Even the money designed to purchase his patent had to be returned to those from whom it had been borrowed, some of whom, bad as were the times, declined to receive it, and others would receive only a part; so that fifty dollars in all were left to help the fatherless and widow begin the world for themselves. It was a very good thing, as every one agreed, that Leppel had left his wallet in the pocket of his overcoat, which he had not remembered to put on before he wandered out to his death through that January fog.
The house was sold to satisfy the mortgage, and Anna rented two rooms on the third floor of the tall building that overshadowed the shoemaker’s dwelling to the left. Here she established herself as a dressmaker, but for a while found little custom. Karl and Dora had been her true friends throughout, with that sort of friendship which resides not only in the heart but the pocket. Indeed, but forthem it is doubtful whether she could have weathered the first six months of her widowhood; for Leppel’s relations, who were all in the Far West, had, it is true, helped with his funeral expenses, but declined to be troubled further. He had always been a sort of ugly duckling among those shrewd, close-fisted people—that quiet, silent, unpractical dreamer; but they were very sorry, notwithstanding, that, in spite of his excellent wife, he had come to such a bad end.
“Under the Commune,” said Karl Metzerott, with an added bitterness derived from his own personal aggrievement, “Leppel would be alive and an honored citizen.”
“I don’t know,” said Dora doubtfully. “That man in Washington, you know, says that the machine would not pay. Would the Commune adopt a machine that would not pay?”
“Itwouldpay, under the Commune,” replied Karl; but as this point belonged to the domain of the unprovable, Dora did not argue upon it.
“Well,” she said, “at least the Commune would not have been kinder to him than his own wife and his own relations.”
“Any woman might be unkind who saw her children threatened with starvation,” he answered gloomily.
“Yes,” she answered hesitatingly, loath to condemn Anna, yet feeling in her own soul, that she, Dora, would have acted very differently. Then, with a sudden brightness, “Anyway, Karl, the Commune wouldn’t make much difference tous. We shouldn’t be much better off, and we should not act any differently.”
“We’re pretty good Communists, you and I,” he said with a grim smile, “but what have we got by it? I tell you, Dora, we’ve got to live very close for the next year or so, if we mean to catch up.”
“I know it,” she answered, smiling; “and, Karl, I’vethought of a way to save quite a lot of money. If Anna and her three children can live in two rooms, why can’t we? Then we could rent our bedroom, and, when winter comes, that would save coal. For you know we should be obliged to have a fire there on account of Louis,” she added apologetically.
“If you don’t mind, I don’t,” he said carelessly. “It won’t rent for much, though; but it will give you less to do,” with a rather anxious glance at the form and face of his wife. Indeed, Dora was not looking well; she had grown very thin, and her eyes looked pathetically large and blue in her white face. But she laughed off all anxiety; she might be a little pulled down by the warm weather, she said, but that was all.
The next day, a placard appeared in the shop window bearing, in the large, beautiful Italian hand Dora had learned in her German school, the words, “Room for Rent.” But a day or two passed before it attracted any attention. On Sunday afternoon Dora and Louis were sitting in the shop door, enjoying the cool evening air after a heavy thunder storm, when two passers-by stopped to consider the announcement, with an air that evidently meant business.
For a moment Dora’s heart failed her, then it swelled with sympathy, while baby Louis opened his blue eyes and stared with all his might. Anything quite so tall, and painfully, terribly thin as the elder of these two women, he had never seen in all his little life. When she turned to address Dora, a moment later, she showed a face with large, strongly marked features, whereupon an expression of hopeless patience sat but ill. Her companion was shorter, and of a thinness less painfully apparent; with a face from which all expression, even that of patience, seemed to have been crushed out. It was dull, blank, and hopeless; that was all. They were dressed in thin, shabbycalico, bonnets, of which shabby would be too flattering a description, and faded plaid shawls, which they kept so closely drawn over their wasted bosoms that, considering the warmth of the evening, they must have served to cover further defects in their costume. Their voices, when they spoke, were low and weak, not so much from physical weakness—for there was no sign of any actual disease upon either—as with a weary consciousness that speaking louder would not better their condition.
“What rent do you ask for this room, ma’am?”
“We did wish to get one dollar a month,” replied Dora, in her pretty German-English.
The woman shook her head.
“I guess it’s worth it too,” she said; “but we ain’t got it to pay. Come, Susan.”
“Stop one minute,” cried Dora as they were about to move on; “how much do you wish to pay?”
“‘Taint wishin’, ma’am; it’s what wecando. We’ve been paying seventy-five cents a month, ever sence we come to town, Susan and me; but times is hard, and yesterday our landlady raised the rent on us, so we’ve got to quit.”
“I might let you have it for seventy-five,” said the young mother softly. Louis seemed to agree with her, for he had already struggled down from her lap, and was clinging triumphantly to Susan’s thin hand, which she had involuntarily put out to help him. Louis was not fond of sitting in laps, much preferring his own two sturdy legs as a means of support.
“He’s a pretty child,” said the elder woman with a dull glance at him. “I used to be fond of children, but, law! it’s no use trying to be fond of nothin’ inthisworld. There ain’t time.”
“Won’t you sit down?” said Dora. “I will bring chairs,and you can tell me about yourselves. Or will you come and see the room?”
“’Most any room will suit us if the rent does,” replied the woman. “We ain’t particular, and looking at rooms takes time.”
Dora, with Louis clinging to her skirts, brought seats, and the elder woman continued speaking just where she had left off. Indeed, it seemed as though she had at one time been a voluble talker; but that also had been crushed out of her.
“But, of course, you want to know about us, ma’am. Our name is Price,—Susan and Sally Price, and we’ve kep’ respectable, ma’am, though it’s been hard work. We are sewing women; work for Grind and Crushem,—that large shirt factory at the end of Blank Street.”
“It must be hard work,” said Dora pitifully.
“Well, it ain’t easy,” said Sally Price; “not even as easy as it might be. Some of the factories are running machines by steam, and having all the work done on the premises; but our bosses are too stingy for that. I should think it would pay ‘em, though, in the end.”
“I will let you have the room,” said Dora. “When do you want to come?”
Decidedly, Dora was a very bad business woman; a short-sighted, easily gulled, and far from sharp business woman.
“We’d like to come to-night, so’s to be ready to go to work early to-morrow morning,” answered Miss Price with some show of animation. “But won’t your husband swear at you, for lettin’ it go so cheap?”
“He never swears at me,” said Dora, smiling, blushing, and shaking her head at the same time, until she looked so pretty that even the blank face of Susan Price gained a little life and almost smiled. She held out her hand toLouis, who was again struggling towards her, and volunteered her first contribution to the conversation.
“Your only one?” she asked.
“Yes, my only one, andsogood. He is no trouble at all,” answered Dora proudly.
“Some folks are happy in this world and some ain’t,” said Susan Price. “I s’pose it’s all right, or it wouldn’tbeso.”
“You’d better have some tea with me,” returned pitiful Dora, moved almost to tears by the sad patience of this speech. “Then I can show you the room. I’d like you to see it. It has been our own bedroom, but we have spent so much money lately that we must try to save a little. Is there anything to be brought from your other room?”
“Our machine and some clo’es; not many. Susan and me can bring ‘em. It’s just around the corner. You see, we generally sew Sundays as well as other days. You won’t mind if you hear the machine on Sunday, ma’am?”
“If you must, you must,” said Dora. “I knit on Sunday, often; I am German. But it is pity; you should rest.”
“Oh! we never rest,” said Sally quietly. “But maybe it’s Sabbath-breakin’ that brings us such bad luck. I don’t know; but I don’t see how to help it.”
Metzerott, coming home to his tea, just at this moment, and learning the state of affairs, pooh-poohed the idea of any one but himself fetching the machine and “clo’es” of his new lodgers. Perhaps he wanted an opportunity to make those inquiries, for which Dora’s inexperience had not seen the necessity. Their former landlady, however, gave the Prices a high character for quietness, respectability, and prompt pay, “reg’lar as Sat’day evenin’ come.” They were poor and half starved, she said, but the Lord knew that wasn’t their fault; they had lodged with her ever since they came from the country, two years ago, and she thought theywould have done better to go out to service; but, at first, they were too proud, she supposed, and now they looked so sick and down-trodden, no respectable person would hire either one of them. Well, Lord knew what this world was coming to, anyway. She would not have raised the rent if she could have helped it; but her husband—and here came an apprehensive glance over her shoulder, which fully accounted for Miss Price’s ideas as to swearing.
So the Prices came to be an institution in the Metzerott household; but it was very doubtful whether Dora’s savings were greatly increased thereby, even in the matter of steps. For she was always running up those steep, narrow stairs, with Baby Louis on one arm and a plate of raisin bread in the other hand, or perhaps the coffee-pot, if she had “made more than Karl and she could drink, and it never is good warmed over.”
Karl had drank warmed-over coffee many a time, and said so smilingly. His wife’s efforts at economy were a constant amusement to him; but he never interfered but once. That was on a day in the late fall, when a sudden cold snap seemed doubly disagreeable, because nobody’s system had had time to adjust itself to winter requirements. The Prices were not supposed to need adjustment, or, perhaps, by any but Dora, to possess systems; their room was heated by whatever superfluity of hot air might escape from the kitchen. On cold days, this was too little; in moderate weather, too much; only on one or two halcyon days of all the three hundred and sixty-five was that small, poor chamber of a comfortable temperature; but the Prices were used to discomfort, and, especially now that they could warm their fingers at Dora’s fire, when they grew numb and useless from cold, would have scorned to complain. So, on this particular cold morning, Karl heard a sudden crash in the kitchen, and, hurrying to the spot,leathern apron and all, found Dora, very white and trembling, looking into his face with eyes like those of a frightened deer.
She had only been going to make a little fire for the Prices, she said; poor souls, she felt so sorry for them; and the hod had slipped from her hand, some way or other.
Poor little frail hand, and fluttering, feeble pulse! such deeds of charity as this are beyond your power henceforth. Karl took in the situation in all its bearings: the thinness of the once rounded form, the panting breath, the varying cheek, the hand unconsciously pressed to the side, the dark, pathetic hollowing of the beautiful eyes. Then he said something beginning with “tausend,” which would have been totally inadequate had it begun with a million, picked up from the floor the scattered lumps of coal, carried up the hod, and made the fire himself, all in stern, dead silence. But the Prices might make the most of that cheerful blaze; it was the last that glowed upon their hearth for many a long, long day.
Karl had not been blind to the change that had come over Dora, and he would have joyfully given his life—this mortal life, which he held to be all—if he could have lightened the slow, feeble step that smote so heavily upon his heart, or planted anew the delicate roses in her cheek. But what could he do?
His work, which now was chiefly mending, paid poorly, and took up all his time; yet what should they do without it, if he gave his days to helping and nursing Dora? He would willingly have hired some one to do the work for her; but where was the money to come from? Besides, except carrying coal, which hecoulddo at odd times, there was nothing, Dora said, in the work itself to tire any one, if she had not been just a little run down and under theweather to begin with. Karl must not worry, she would soon pick up when the spring came again.
Especially, it was not the care of little Louis that tired her; never was there a child that gave so little trouble. He seemed to know by instinct that she was not well, she said, and was as good and quiet as possible, playing as contentedly with a few scraps of leather from his father’s bench, and a string of spools given him by Frau Anna, as if they had been toys of ivory and gold. So far from being a trouble, he was even a help, and certainly a comfort to her. It was only to Louis that Dora confided how her head ached and throbbed, and the incessant cough racked her feeble body; and Louis listened with serious blue eyes and rapt attention. It was a very interesting story indeed, he thought; almost equal to that of the dead canary they found one December morning on the window-sill; as to which he never tired of hearing how it had strayed from its home, and perished in the bitter night. And, though of either tale he could have understood but little, his sympathy was always ready, and he stroked the bird’s cold feathers and his mother’s aching forehead with soft baby fingers, saying pityingly, “Oh! my, my, my.” These were the only words at his command, but they satisfied Dora.
Dr. Richards, for whose skill she had a respect amounting to veneration, had prescribed for the cough, and for a while it had seemed better; but it grew worse after one bitter morning when she had run over to the butcher’s with a shawl pinned over her head, and blown back from her chest by the icy wind.
And then came a time when help came in unhired and unsought, when Dora lay powerless upon the grandmother’s testered bed, with Baby Louis beside her, happy in her society and his string of spools. It was a great treat to have his mamma so close beside him all day long; and hewas by no means pleased when theirtête-à-têtewas broken by a visit from Dr. Richards, though the latter did his best to look cheerful. Metzerott stood also by the bed, but would by no means smile or play “Peep-bo” with Louis, so absorbed was he in listening to the doctor. But “acute pleuro-pneumonia” had no meaning whatever to a baby mind; so the child shook his plump little hand, and said “Bye-bye” very politely to the doctor, as a signal that the visit might as well be brought to a close. Dr. Richards, however, whose heart was very tender towards children, and who had a little maiden babe about Louis’ age, remembered to bring him a little harmless candy the next day, and they became quite good friends during the few days of Dora’s illness.
For there came a day when he was carried up to Frau Anna’s narrow quarters, and played all day very happily with Fritz, Annie, and little George. This was nice indeed, if his mamma had but been there to share his pleasure. Very often he paused in his fun to call her, “Mamma! Mamma!” in his sweet bird-like voice. Frau Anna cried when he did so, and called him “poor motherless lamb,” which he considered a new kind of game, and laughed at delightedly.
The next day was Christmas itself; but if Louis had had a longer experience in Christmases, he would surely have considered that he celebrated that blessed feast in a most singular manner. For he was taken to his own home, where, in the shop, several neighbors were assembled, all with solemn faces, and some shedding tears. Louis sat on his father’s knee, and surveyed them all, until his attention was caught by a long black box in the middle of the room, near which stood Pastor Schaefer. The box had shining handles, which took his baby fancy immensely; so he slid suddenly from his father’s hold, and, before any onecould stop him, rushed across the room, and seized the bright handle with a joyous shout.
The women present broke into loud sobs, but no one interfered with him; and he played with his new toy all through the pastor’s prayer and exhortation. Then some one lifted him up, and there in the box lay his mamma, white and still, with closed eyes. But this also was part of the game, thought Louis; and his baby laugh rang out strangely in the silent room. Then, as she took no notice, he pulled at her dress, saying impatiently, “Up! Up!” and when, for the first time in all his little life, she was deaf to his voice, his rosy lip quivered, and he burst into tears of helpless, hopeless, baby grief.
There followed a long drive in a close carriage,—quite a new experience, which he would have better enjoyed had the curtains been up, and his companions not quite so silent. He sat very still on his father’s knee, one dimpled hand clasped in that of Frau Anna, who sat beside him. The Price sisters were opposite, grieving sincerely for poor Dora, it is true; but they had been surprised that morning by a box from their old country home, containing such a store of eatables as would last them a long while, and grief and surprise together had so lightened the usual blank monotony of their faces that they looked almost happy.
This air of relief Karl Metzerott saw and resented, as he resented the garlanded shop windows, the bright faces of the passers-by, even the crisp air and sparkling sunshine. What right had the world to rejoice and be glad, when his young wife lay dead in her coffin, murdered by those very rich men whose gay carriages rattled past the hearse that bore her to her grave, in whose coffers lay buried the wealth that would have saved her?
From this day the shoemaker grew more silent andgloomy, less fond of the society of his fellows, more given to sullen brooding over the wrongs of the poor and the cruelty, oppression, and self-indulgence of the rich. It was well that to this temper Baby Louis served as a safety valve; for Karl kept stern silence when social questions were debated at Männerchor Hall or other places of friendly meeting. What did they know about it, he said scornfully, not one of whom had ever lost a Dora? Besides, until the time for action came, why waste one’s strength in words?
But he grew eloquent when Louis sat upon his knee in the late twilight, while he smoked his pipe; and the child, with grave blue eyes upraised to his father’s face, listened to tales of wrong and oppression as other children hearken to the woes of Cinderella or the terrible fate of Rothkäppchen.
They were always together. Metzerott rose very early, dressed Louis, prepared breakfast, and tidied the kitchen, all much more handily than could have been expected. Then father and son departed hand in hand to the shop, where all day long the child played happily with his few poor toys, or sat by his father’s side, watching, entranced, the movements of his skilful hands.
Metzerott asserted that the boy brought him good luck, and certainly his trade had greatly improved; but prosperity had rather a hardening than a softening effect, since it had come too late to save his wife.
And still he poured out all his anger, grief, and hardness of heart to little Louis, and felt, perhaps, gentler and more forgiving for the telling, like King David when he had cried to God in the Psalms for vengeance on his enemies.