THE BOOK.
In the morning the master of the house rapped on Leonhard's door and
said: "When you come down I have something to show you." The voice
of Mr. Loretz had almost its accustomed cheerfulness of tone, and he
ended his remark with a brief "Ha! ha!" peculiar to him, which not
only expressed his own good-humor, but also invited good-humored
response.
Leonhard answered cheerily, and in a few moments he had descended the
steep uncovered stair to the music-room.
"Now for the book," Loretz called out as Leonhard entered.
How handsome our young friend looked as he stood there shaking hands
with the elderly man, whose broad, florid face now actually shone with
hospitable feeling!
"Is father going to claim you as one of us, Mr. Marten?" asked the
wife of Loretz, who answered her husband's call by coming into the
room and bringing with her a large volume wrapped in chamois skin.
"What shall I be, then?" asked Leonhard. "A wiser and a better man, I
do not doubt."
"What! you do not know?" the good woman stayed to say. "Has nobody
told you where you are, my young friend?"
"I never before found myself in a place I should like to stay in
always; so what does the rest signify?" answered Leonhard. "What's in
a name?"
"Not much perhaps, yet something," said Loretz. "We are all Moravians
here. I was going to look in this book here for the names of your
ancestors. I thought perhaps you knew about Spenersberg."
"I am as new to it all as Christopher Columbus was to the West India
islands. If you find the names of my kinsmen down in your book, sir,
it--it will be a marvelous, happy sight for me," said Leonhard.
"I'll try my hand at it," said Loretz. "Ha! ha!" and he opened the
volume, which was bound in black leather, the leaves yellowed with
years. "This book," he continued, "is one hundred and fifty years
old. You will find recorded in it the names of all my grandfather's
friends, and all my father's. See, it is our way. There are all the
dates. Where they lived, see, and where they died. It is all down.
A man cannot feel himself cut off from his kind as long as he has a
volume like that in his library. I have added a few names of my own
friends, and their birthdays. Here, you see, is Sister Benigna's,
written with her own hand. A most remarkable woman, sir. True as
steel--always the same. But"--he paused a moment and looked at
Leonhard with his head inclined to one side, and an expression of
perplexity upon his face--"there's something out of the way here in
this country. I have not more than one name down to a dozen in my
father's record, and twenty in my grandfather's. We do not make
friends, and we do not keep them, as they did in old time. We don't
trust each other as men ought to. Half the time we find ourselves
wondering whether the folks we're dealing with are _honest_. Now think
of that!"
"Are men any worse than they were in the old time?" asked Leonhard,
evidently not entering into the conversation with the keenest
enjoyment.
"I do not know how it is," said Loretz with a sigh, continuing to turn
the leaves of the book as he spoke.
"Perhaps we have less imagination, and don't look at every new-comer
as a friend until we have tried him," suggested Leonhard. "We decide
that everybody shall be tested before we accept him. And isn't it the
best way? Better than to be disappointed, when we have set our heart
on a man--or a woman."
"I do not know--I cannot account for it," said Mr. Loretz. Then with a
sudden start he laid his right hand on the page before him, and with a
great pleased smile in his deep-set, small blue eyes he said: "Here is
your name. I felt sure I should find it: I felt certain it was down.
See here, on my grandfather's page--_Leonhard Marten, Herrnhut_, 1770.
How do you like that?"
"I like it well," said Leonhard, bending over the book and examining
the close-fisted autograph set down strongly in unfading ink. Had he
found an ancestor at last? What could have amazed him as much?
"What have you found?" asked Mrs. Loretz, who had heard these remarks
in the next room, where she was actively making preparations for the
breakfast, which already sent forth its odorous invitations.
"We have found the name," answered her husband. "Come and see. I have
read it, I dare say, a hundred times: that was what made me feel that
an old friend had come."
"That means," said the good woman, hastening in at her husband's call,
and reading the name with a pleased smile--"that means that you belong
to us. I thought you did. I am glad."
Were these folk so intent on securing a convert that in these various
ways they made the young stranger feel that he was not among strangers
in this unknown Spenersberg? Nothing was farther from their thought:
they only gave to their kindly feeling hearty utterance, and perhaps
spoke with a little extra emphasis because the constraint they
secretly felt in consequence of their household trouble made them
unanimous in the effort to put it out of sight--not out of this
stranger's sight, but out of their own.
"Perhaps you will stop with us a while, and maybe write your name on
my page before you go," said Loretz, afraid that his wife had gone a
little too far.
"Without a single test?" Leonhard answered. "Haven't we just agreed
that we wise men don't take each other on trust, as they did in our
grandfathers' day?"
"A man living in Herrnhut in 1770 would not have for a descendant a--a
man I could not trust," said Loretz, closing the book and placing it
in its chamois covering again. "Breakfast, mother, did you say?"
"Have you wanted ink?" asked Sister Benigna, entering at that instant.
"Are we writing in the sacred birthday book?"
"Not yet," said Leonhard hastily, the color rising to his face in a
way to suggest forked lightning somewhere beyond sight.
"You have wanted ink, and are too kind to let me know," she said. "I
emptied the bottle copying music for the children yesterday."
"The ink was put to a better use then than I could have found for it
this morning," said Leonhard.
And Mrs. Loretz, who looked into the room just then, said to herself,
as her eyes fell on him, "Poor soul! he is in trouble."
In fact, this thought was in Leonhard's mind as he went into breakfast
with the family: "A deuced good friend I have proved--to Wilberforce!
Isn't there anybody here clear-eyed enough to see that it would be
like forgery to write my name down in a book of friendship?"
The morning meal was enlivened by much more than the usual amount of
talk. Leonhard was curious to know about Herrnhut, that old home
of Moravianism, and the interest which he manifested in the history
Loretz was so eager to communicate made him in turn an object of
almost affectionate attention. That he had no facts of private
biography to communicate in turn did net attract notice, because,
however many such facts he might have ready to produce, by the time
Loretz had done talking it was necessary that the day's work should
begin.