JUST IN TIME
At the close of the day on which Dennis received his promotion, and
his horizon was widened so unexpectedly, Mr. Ludolph, in passing out,
noticed him engaged as usual on one of Pat Murphy's old tasks. He
stopped and spoke kindly, "Well, Fleet, where am I going to find a man
to fill your place made vacant to-day?"
"Would you be willing to listen to a suggestion from me?"
"Certainly."
"If a young boy was employed to black boots, run errands, and attend
to minor matters, I think that by industry I might for a while fill
both positions. In a short time the furnace will require no further
attention. I am a very early riser, and think that by a little good
management I can keep the store in order and still be on hand to attend
to my counter when customers are about."
Mr. Ludolph was much pleased with the proposition, and said, promptly,
"You may try it, Fleet, and I will pay you accordingly. Do you know
of a boy who will answer?"
"I think I do, sir. There is a German lad in my mission class who has
interested me very much. His father is really a superior artist, but
is throwing himself away with drink, and his mother is engaged in an
almost hopeless effort to support the family. They have seen much
better days, and their life seems very hard in contrast with the past."
"Can we trust such a boy? Their very necessities may lead to theft."
"They are not of the thieving sort, sir. I am satisfied that they would
all starve rather than touch a penny that did not belong to them."
"Very well, then, let him come and see me; but I will hold you
responsible for him."
Mr. Ludolph, being in a good humor, was disposed to banter Dennis, so
he added: "Do you find time to be a missionary, also? Are you not in
danger of becoming a 'Jack at all trades'?"
"I am not entitled to the first character, and hope to shun the latter.
I merely teach a dozen boys in a mission school on Sundays."
"When you ought to be taking a good long nap, or a row on the lake for
fresh air and recreation."
"I should be dishonest if I spent my Sabbaths in that way."
"How so?"
"I should give the lie to my profession and belief. I must drop the
name of Christian when I live for myself."
"And if you should drop it, do you think you would be much the loser?"
"Yes, sir," said Dennis, with quiet emphasis.
"You are expecting great reward, in some sort of Paradise, for your
mission work, etc.?"
"Nothing done for God is forgotten or unrewarded."
"Believing that, it seems to me that you are looking after self-interest
as much as the rest of us," said his employer, with a shrewd smile.
Looking straight into Mr. Ludolph's eyes, Dennis said, earnestly:
"Without boasting, I think that I can say that I try to serve you
faithfully. If you could see my heart, I am sure you would find that
gratitude for your kindness is a part of my motive, as well as my
wages. In the same manner, while I do not lose sight of the rich rewards
God promises and daily gives for the little I can do for Him, I am
certain that I can do much out of simple gratitude and love, and ask
no reward."
"Ignorance is certainly bliss in your case, young man. Stick to your
harmless superstition as long as you can."
And he walked away, muttering: "Delusion, delusion! I have not said
a word or done a thing for him in which I had not in view my interests
only, and yet the poor young fool sees in the main disinterested
kindness. Little trouble have the wily priests in imposing on such
victims, and so they get their hard-earned wages and set them
propagating the delusion in mission schools, when mind and body need
change and rest. Suppose there is a Supreme Being in the universe,
what a monstrous absurdity to imagine that He would trouble Himself
to reward this Yankee youth for teaching a dozen ragamuffins in a
tenement-house mission school!"
Thus Mr. Ludolph's soliloquy proved that his own pride and selfishness
had destroyed the faculty by which he could see God. The blind are not
more oblivious to color than he was to those divine qualities which
are designed to win and enchain the heart. A man may sadly mutilate
his own soul.
At a dainty dinner-table Mr. Ludolph and his daughter discussed the
events of the day.
"I am glad," said the latter, "that he is willing to fill Pat's place,
for he keeps everything so clean. A dusty, slovenly store is my
abomination. Then it shows that he has no silly, uppish notions so
common to these Americans." (Though born here, Miss Ludolph never
thought herself other than a German lady of rank.) "But I do not wish
to see him blacking boots again. Yet he is an odd genius. How comical
he looked bowing to me with one of Mr. Schwartz's big boots describing
a graceful curve on a level with his head. Let old Schwartz black his
own boots. He ought to as a punishment for carrying around so much
leather. This Fleet must have seen better days. He is like all Yankees,
however, sharp after the dollar, though he seems more willing to work
for it than most of them."
"I'll wager you a pair of gloves," said her father, "that they get a
good percentage of it down at the mission school. He is just the subject
for a cunning priest, because he sincerely believes in their foolery.
He belongs to a tribe now nearly extinct, I imagine--the martyrs, who
in old-fashioned times died for all sorts of delusions."
"How time mellows and changes everything! There is something heroic
and worthy of art in the ancient martyrdoms, while nothing is more
repulsive than modern fanaticism. It is a shame, though, that this
young man, with mother and sisters to support, should be robbed of his
hard earnings as was Pat Murphy by his priest, and I will try to open
his eyes some day."
"I predict for you no success."
"Why so?--he seems intelligent."
"I have not studied character all my life in vain. He would regard
you, my fair daughter, as the devil in the form of an angel of light
tempting him."
"He had better not be so plain-spoken as yourself."
"Oh, no need of Fleet's speaking; his face is like the page of an open
book."
"Indeed! a face like a sign-board is a most unfortunate one, I should
think."
"Most fortunate for us. I wish I could read every one as I can Fleet."
"You trust no one, I believe, father."
"I believe what I see and know."
"I wish I had your power of seeing and knowing. But how did he get his
artistic knowledge and taste?"
"That I have not inquired into fully, as yet. I think he has an unusual
native aptness for these things, and gains hints and instruction where
others would see nothing. And, as you say, in the better days past he
may have had some advantages."
"Well," said she, caressing the greyhound beside her, "if Wolf here
should go to the piano and execute an opera, I should not be more
astonished than I was this morning."
And then their conversation glided off on other topics.
After dessert, Mr. Ludolph lighted a cigar and sat down to the evening
paper, while his daughter evoked from the piano true after-dinner
music--light, brilliant, mirth-inspiring. Then both adjourned to their
private billiard-room.
The scene of our story now changes from Mr. Ludolph's luxurious
apartments in one of the most fashionable hotels in the city to a
forlorn attic in De Koven Street. It is the scene of a struggle as
desperate, as heroic, against as tremendous odds, as was ever carried
on in the days of the Crusades. But as the foremost figure in this
long, weary conflict was not an armed and panoplied knight, but merely
a poor German woman, only God and the angels took much interest in it.
Still upon this evening she was almost vanquished. She seemed to have
but one vantage-point left on earth. For a wonder, her husband was
comparatively sober, and sat brooding with his head in his hands over
the stove where a fire was slowly dying out. The last coal they had
was fast turning to ashes. From a cradle came a low, wailing cry. It
was that of hunger. On an old chest in a dusky corner sat a boy about
thirteen. Though all else was in shadow, his large eyes shone with
unnatural brightness, and followed his mother's feeble efforts at the
washtub with that expression of premature sadness so pathetic in
childhood. Under a rickety deal table three other and smaller children
were devouring some crusts of bread in a ravenous way, like
half-famished young animals. In a few moments they came out and clamored
for more, addressing--not their father; no intuitive turning to him
for support--but the poor, over-tasked mother. The boy came out of his
corner and tried to draw them off and interest them in something else,
but they were like a pack of hungry little wolves. The boy's face was
almost as sharp and famine-pinched as his mother's, but he seemed to
have lost all thought of himself in his sorrowful regard for her. As
the younger children clamored and dragged upon her, the point of
endurance was passed, and the poor woman gave way. With a despairing
cry she sank upon a chair and covered her face with her apron.
"Oh, mine Gott, Oh, mine Gott," she cried, "I can do not von more
stroke if ve all die."
In a moment her son had his arms around her neck, and said: "Oh, moder,
don't cry, don't cry. Mr. Fleet said God would surely help us in time
of trouble if we would only ask Him."
"I've ask Him, and ask Him, but der help don't come. I can do no more;"
and a tempest of despairing sobs shook her gaunt frame.
The boy seemed to have got past tears, and just fixed his large eyes,
full of reproach and sorrow, on his father.
The man rose and turned his bloodshot eyes slowly around the room. The
whole scene, with its meaning, seemed to dawn upon him. His mind was
not so clouded by the fumes of liquor but that he could comprehend the
supreme misery of the situation. He heard his children crying--fairly
howling for bread. He saw the wife he had sworn to love and honor,
where she had fallen in her unequal conflict, brave, but overpowered.
He remembered the wealthy burgher's blooming, courted daughter, whom
he had lured away to marry him, a poor artist. He remembered how, in
spite of her father's commands and her mother's tears, she had left
home and luxury to follow him throughout the world because of her faith
in him and love for him--how under her inspiration he had risen to
great promise as an artist, till fame and fortune became almost
a certainty, and then, under the debasing influence of his terrible
appetite, he had dragged her down and down, till now he saw
her--prematurely old, broken in health, broken in heart--fall helplessly
before the hard drudgery that she no longer had strength to perform.
With a sickening horror he remembered that he had taken even the
pittance she had wrung from that washtub, to feed, not his children,
but his accursed appetite for drink. Even his purple, bloated face
grew livid as all the past rushed upon him, and despair laid an icy
hand upon his heart.
A desperate purpose formed itself within his mind.
Turning to the wall where hung a noble picture, a lovely landscape,
whose rich coloring, warm sunlight, and rural peace formed a sharp,
strange contrast with the meagre, famine-stricken apartment, he was
about to take it down from its fastening when his hand was arrested
by a word--"Father!"
He turned, and saw his son looking at him with his great eyes full of
horror and alarm, as if he were committing a murder.
"I tell you I must, and I vill," said he, savagely.
His wife looked up, sprang to his side, and with her hands upon his
arm, said, "No, Berthold, you must not, you shall not sell dot picture."
He silently pointed to his children crying for bread.
"Take der dress off my back to sell, but not dot picture. Ve may as
vell die before him goes, for we certainly vill after. Dot is de only
ding left of der happy past. Dot, in Gott's hands, is my only hope for
der future. Dot picture dells you vat you vas, vat you might be still
if you vould only let drink alone. Many's der veary day, many's der
long night, I've prayed dot dot picture vould vin you back to your
former self, ven tears and sufferings vere in vain. Leave him, and
some day he vill tell you so plain vat you are, and vot you can be,
dot you break der horrid spell dot chains you, and your artist-soul
come again. Leave him, our only hope, and sole bar against despair and
death. I vill go and beg a dousand times before dot picture's sold;
for if he goes, your artist-soul no more come back, and you're lost,
and ve all are lost."
The man hesitated. His good angel was pleading with him, but in vain.
Stamping his foot with rage and despair, he shouted, hoarsely, "It is
too late I am lost now."
And he tore the picture from its fastening. His wife sank back against
the wall with a groan as if her very soul were departing.
But before his rash steps could leave the desolation he had made, he
was confronted by the tall form of Dennis Fleet.
The man stared at him for a moment as if he had been an apparition,
and then said, in a hard tone, "Let me pass!"
Dennis had knocked for some time, but such was the excitement within
no one had regarded the sound. He had, therefore, heard the wife's
appeal and its answer, and from what he knew of the family from his
mission scholar, the boy Ernst, comprehended the situation in the main.
When, therefore, matters reached the crisis, he opened the door and
met the infatuated man as he was about to throw away the last relic
of his former self and happier life. With great tact he appeared as
if he knew nothing, and quietly taking a chair he sat down with his
back against the door, thus barring egress. In a pleasant, affable
tone, he said: "Mr. Bruder, I came to see you on a little business
to-night. As I was in something of a hurry, and no one appeared to
hear my knock, I took the liberty of coming in."
The hungry little ones looked at him with their round eyes of childish
curiosity, and for a time ceased their clamors. The wife sank into a
chair and bowed her head in her hands with the indifference of despair.
Hope had gone. A gleam of joy lighted up Ernst's pale face at the sight
of his beloved teacher, and he stepped over to his mother and commenced
whispering in her ear, but she heeded him not. The man's face wore a
sullen, dangerous, yet irresolute expression. It was evident that he
half believed that Dennis was knowingly trying to thwart him, and such
was his mad frenzy that he was ready for any desperate deed.