LEARNING AND TEACHING.
From the swoon into which she had fallen on that New Year’s Night Susan
Price was slow in reviving. But it was nothing, she said, when she had
at last regained consciousness; she was only stupid and tired. So the
ball went on undisturbed, the dancers being only too ready to accept any
theory that would not mar their enjoyment. But Sally went about her work
with dry eyes and set lips. It was all over, she thought, as she rapidly
served the ice-cream; Susan was struck with death, she would never live
through a year that had opened so.
“An’ after all we’ve went through together,” thought Sally, “to die jest
as things is growin’ brighter. Well, the Lord knows best, and she’ll be
took care of up there; but how I am to live without her I s’pose He
knows, but it’s more than I do. You, Polly,” she added aloud, “you ain’t
got no call to slice that cake so thin. Give the folks the worth of
their money, do. And take a sharper knife to it, for a good half goes in
crumbs, and I despise crumbs. They are jest clear sinful waste,
specially cake crumbs, that can’t even be fed to the birds.”
“I’ll eat ‘em,” said Heinz Schaefer, who had, with several other boys of
his age, volunteered as waiters for the new caterer.
“You carry that coffee straight, without spillin’ none of it, and we’ll
talk about cake afterwards,” answered Sally severely. “Polly,” she
continued, “seems to me we’ll come out pretty fair on expenses to-night;
and by the next ball we’ll be makin’ our own ices, and do even better.
Run now for just a minute and see how your Aunt Susan is, that’s a good
girl. Laws! what a thing Providence is, to be sure. To think Dr.
Richards should be so ill just at this minute! But there!” she thought
within herself a moment later, “what call have I got to be talkin’ about
Providence like that? The angel Gabriel himself couldn’t do her no good
ef she’s struck with death.”
A day or two after this, Susan was sitting alone in the bedroom which
was shared by all three. It was scarcely a luxurious apartment; but
there was a rag carpet on the floor and a fire in the little grate,
which was more like luxury than any of Susan’s surroundings for many
years. There were patchwork cushions, too, lining the great wooden
rocker that gave so grateful a support to her tired frame; her calico
dress was clean and whole, and a soft, warm shawl was folded round the
thin shoulders. Yet there was no sign of pleasure in Susan’s face, no
look of basking in creature comforts; she was very white and worn, and
from time to time a large tear escaped from under her closed eyelid, and
wandered down over the withered cheek.
A little hand fumbling at the lock, the sound of small feet upon the
floor, made her brush away these tokens of inward disturbance, and turn
with a smile to greet Louis and his friend and accompanying shadow,
George, the uninteresting.
“Aunt Susan, we’ve come to amuse you a little,” said Louis half timidly;
for there was something beyond his comprehension in the smile on that
white face.
“_I’ve_ come to jest that,” said Susan quietly, without a shadow of
bitterness; “not as I ever was much to brag about, specially compared
with Sally; but now I ain’t even fit to amuse a child, he has to amuse
me.”
Louis seated himself cross-legged on the floor at her feet, George
imitating him to the letter, and looked up gravely into her face. “My
papa says,” he continued, “that he hopes you are better, and if you
could take a little walk it would do you good.”
“Nothin’ won’t ever do me no good no more, Louis, not in this world.”
“And Aunt Sally says,” continued the boy, so anxious for the accurate
transmission of his message as to pass by this remark, “Aunt Sally says,
if you feel strong enough, you could take a walk with me and George, and
if you don’t, we can ’muse you a little bit.”
“Bless your sweet eyes,” said Susan, “I ain’t strong enough hardly to
walk across this room, Louis, let alone goin’ out o’ doors.”
Louis pondered over this for a moment pitifully; it was quite
incomprehensible to his childish vigor. Then, his mind reverting to his
own concerns, he brought out, as most of us do, the subject which lay
uppermost.
“I want to ask you, Aunt Susan, how do boys learn to read?”
Susan laughed. “Same way girls do, I s’pose,” she said. “I learned out
of a spellin’-book. But you must learn your letters first.”
“What’s letters?” asked the child.
Susan lifted the large Bible that lay on the table beside her,—a
treasure inherited from their mother, to which the sisters had clung all
through their days of destitution. It opened of itself at the eleventh
chapter of Isaiah.
“That’s a letter,” said Susan, pointing to the large capital that headed
the chapter; “that’s A, and A stands for Anna.”
“Does it, really?” cried Louis, while George grinned delightedly, and
pressed nearer to see for himself. “There’s another A,” he went on,
glancing down the page, “and another, and—oh, lots of ‘em! What stands
for George?”
It took some little while to find a G, and L, for Louis was even more
difficult; but by dinner-time the child had learned the initials of most
of his acquaintances, and Susan’s eyes were bright with pleasurable
excitement.
“Why do you want to read so bad, all of a sudden, Louis?” she asked,
during the course of the lesson.
“’Cause Freddy’s papa is sick, and his mamma ain’t got time to read
’bout the Christ-child to him,” said Louis. “And if I learned, then _I_
could, you know, Aunt Susan.”
“I guess Freddy’s papa will be either well or dead before you learn to
read,” said Susan thoughtfully; “but you can try, anyway. When was you
there?”
“Yesterday. I’m goin’ again after dinner. Mrs. Richards says I ’muse
Freddy and Miss Pinkie; and I ’muse you, too, don’t I, Aunt Susan?”
“You’re a real little Christ-child yourself,” said Susan fondly.
Louis’ little face beamed with quick pleasure. “I didn’t know I could be
a Christ-child ’cept at Christmas,” he said.
“You can be a Christ-child any time, all the year round,” replied Susan
earnestly; “whenever you make any one good or happy, Louis, that is
being like Him.”
“Did He make everybody happy?” asked the child rather doubtfully,
perhaps remembering the gaunt forms in his Christmas picture, for he
added, “Some of their bones stick out awful.”
“Well, He ain’t never promised to make ‘em _fat_,” returned Susan dryly;
“but as for happy—! Louis, I’ve been through a lot, and I know what I’m
talkin’ about. Them that come to Him, He don’t never cast out, you
remember that. He ain’t never forsook me yet, and He ain’t a-goin’ to.
Ef I begin to doubt Him and fret about not bein’ of no use no more, then
He sends an angel to visit with me; that’s what He does, Louis!”
“Does He really?” said George, who had listened open-mouthed to all this
conversation.
“Well,” said Susan, laughing, though with the tears in her eyes, “p’raps
I’d oughter said _two_ angels; but, to tell you the truth, George, I
forgot you slick and clean.”
Männerchor Hall stood about midway between Metzerott’s shop and the
residence of Dr. Richards, which stood, as Mrs. Randolph had often
regretfully remarked, in an old and unfashionable quarter of the town.
Louis was therefore able to find his way thither alone; for, though he
was but five and a half, children younger than he were left much more to
their own guidance, all around him. In fact, one neighbor of the
shoemaker’s, whose six-year-old daughter was nightly obliged to fetch
him home from the corner saloon, had long ago prophesied that Metzerott
would ruin that boy by over-care, and advised the inculcation of habits
of self-reliance.
But there was no lack of self-reliance about the small figure in the fur
cap and brown overcoat, with mittened hands rammed tightly into the
pockets of the same, that stepped along so carefully over the icy
sidewalks, and watched so keenly at the crowded crossings for a chance
to get over. There was, indeed, even a tinge of self-importance; was he
not the bearer of knowledge? For the idea had come to Louis that he
could “’vide” the letters he had learned with Freddy, and that they
could learn to read “togevver;” which plan was found to result
admirably, assisted by a box of alphabetical blocks.
Learning to read was at least a quiet amusement; and Louis’ visits were
found to conduce so greatly to the tranquillity necessary to Dr.
Richards’s comfort as to be promoted not only by Alice, but even by
Pinkie’s nurse, who had at first been inclined to consider the
shoemaker’s son no fit playmate for her little charge. Yet Louis could
be noisy enough with George; and was wont to storm in and out of his
father’s shop in a way to rejoice his father’s heart, it was only that
with Freddy, who was a cripple, and Pinkie, who was a girl, another side
of his nature came into play. Besides, all of Freddy’s noisy toys had
been put away,—drum, pop-gun, and toy locomotive stood together on a
high shelf, with Pinkie’s beloved wheel (or _feel_, as she called it)
leaning against the closet wall beneath it; its sharply, irritatingly,
jingling little bell silent perforce. But there remained innumerable
books, and the blocks before named, which were probably somewhat amazed
at finding themselves considered from a literary rather than an
architectural standpoint.
Among the books was a picture Bible for children, which was not without
its influence upon the young minds that studied it; for, though the
letter-press had only begun to wear a faint look of familiarity to their
young eyes, the pictures were numerous; and most of the stories had been
told or read to Freddy until he knew them by heart. Pinkie had never in
her life been so good, the nurse said, as when she listened with all her
eager little ears to the story of the Flood, illustrated by the toy
Noah’s Ark; or personated Isaac to Louis’ sacrificial Abraham, while
Freddy, aided by a pair of immense paper horns, represented the ram
caught in the bushes. During Louis’ intervening absences, Pinkie was her
spoilt, mischievous little self; and disputes between her and Freddy,
whose spinal column predisposed him to fretfulness, and who was as
unaccustomed to contradiction as Pinkie herself, were distressingly
frequent; but when one o’clock brought Louis, smiling radiantly, and
full of some new idea that he had picked up, or new word that he had
learned from Susan Price or a street sign, and was eager to teach the
others by means of Freddy’s blocks,—Pinkie’s naughtiness and wilfulness
vanished like a dream, and she became the most docile little maid that
ever invited the judgment of Solomon, or was slain, as Jephthah’s
daughter, among the hills of Palestine.
Their favorite characters, however, were taken from the New Testament;
and though nurse—a devout Romanist—averred that “it gave her a turn, to
see thim childer playin’ at bein’ the blessed Mother and the dear
Saviour,” she was too learned in the ways of children, and of Pinkie in
particular, to risk an interruption, when Dr. Richards lay asleep and
the house was holding its breath for fear of disturbing him. So the
precedent was established, and after that she was powerless to
interfere, except at the expense of a general mutiny.
The _rôle_ of the Christ was always taken by Louis; why, it seemed
difficult to explain, for he was never unwilling to resign to the others
any character to which they specially inclined. Freddy might be Elijah,
fed with cake crumbs by wingless ravens at an imaginary Cherith, or King
Solomon to Pinkie’s Queen of Sheba; or Pinkie herself might choose any
impersonation she liked, regardless of sex and size; from Adam or Noah,
to Goliath of Gath. But, without argument or controversy, the part of
the Christ invariably fell to Louis. Perhaps he cared more for it than
they did; perhaps they felt it was less alien to his nature than to
theirs. For indeed the thought of “being a little Christ-child himself,”
which his father had half carelessly planted, and Susan Price had
watered, had—whether by a Great First Cause or Fors Fortuna—been given
increase.
“Would the Christ-child do that?” he sometimes asked. “How did the
Christ-child do?” he would say. And in his mornings spent with George,
amusing Aunt Susan, or his afternoons passed in keeping Freddy and
Pinkie good and quiet, he was living out that holy Life which he had
been taught to believe only a fairy-tale.
As Dr. Richards slowly grew better, and again became alive to sensations
other than purely and painfully subjective,—he found some amusement in
watching these amateur miracle-plays. One afternoon they were in the
full tide of a new story, which he could hardly at first make out, as he
lay on his couch, observing them through the open door.
Freddy sat alone in the room impersonating ten lepers, so there was
little wonder his father failed to take in the situation. Then the door
opened, and Louis entered, followed by all the disciples in the person
of Pinkie. A blue broché shawl, belonging to nurse, with a bright gold
and red border, was draped about him in a very tolerable imitation of
the pictures; his head was bare, and his childish face upturned with so
sweet and solemn a look that one might almost have fancied him indeed on
his way to Jerusalem and Calvary. Then came the cry from Freddy, “Jesus,
Master, have mercy on us!”
Louis stopped, and turned slowly. His whole countenance changed and
softened into tenderness and pity; he stretched out one hand with a
gesture full of authority.
“Go, show yourselves to the priests,” he said.
“Now dey’s gone,” cried Pinkie, who seemed inclined to add the part of
Greek chorus to her other characters, “now, dey’s all well adain, and
here turns one of ‘em, yunnin, yunnin fasht. Now, Feddy, you tan dowify
Dod.”
But just as Freddy began obediently to clap his hands and shout, “Glory,
glory,” Louis, who had stood all the while motionless, regarding him
fixedly, suddenly laid that small outstretched hand on the arm of his
little friend.
“Stop, Freddy,” he said, still with the same tone of strange authority,
“stop, I’m going to cure _you_.”
Freddy looked up surprised and half frightened. Alice rose from her seat
by the window, and the nurse quietly began to put by her sewing as
though to be ready for any emergency, for there was something in the
child’s manner that showed him to be in awful earnest.
“Freddy, arise and walk!”
The childish tones rang through the room like the notes of a silver
flute; there was a pause; Dr. Richards in the next room raised himself
on his elbow to see the better, Alice made one step forward, and the
nurse stood quietly watching, all unconscious of the tears that followed
each other silently down her cheeks. Even Pinkie was hushed with
expectation, and I think no one would have been at that moment surprised
if the command had been obeyed. But, alas! the two little hands upon the
arms of Freddy’s chair, the helpless feet concealed by the gay,
embroidered skirt, were powerless to raise or to sustain even so slight
a weight as that small figure. There was an effort, a struggle
perceptible but vain; then Freddy’s voice cried out, “O Louis, I can’t,
I can’t! my legs aren’t strong enough,” and broke into bitter, childish
weeping.
The look of authority and confident power on Louis’ face changed to
incredulity, doubt, and blank hopelessness. His hand fell from Freddy’s
shoulder—Freddy, who was already in his mother’s arms—and he began to
unfasten the shawl draped about him.
“It’s no use,” he said quietly, his manner recalling vividly to the
looker-on in the next room Karl Metzerott’s stern, self-contained grief
at the bedside of his dying wife,—“It’s no use; I don’t want to be the
Christ any more!”
“Den I’ll be bad,” cried Pinkie; and, suddenly lapsing into one of her
naughtiest fits, she threw herself on the floor and screamed in a manner
that Louis’ composure was not proof against; the tears rose to his eyes
and his breast heaved.
“I think I’ll go home now,” he said with quivering lip.
“No, no, don’t ye now, alanna,” said nurse hastily, in the intervals of
picking up Pinkie—who made herself very stiff indeed—from the floor, and
assuring her that she should be sent up to the nursery for the rest of
the day, if she cried and made her poor uncle ill again. “Don’t go yet,
Louis astore, Miss Pinkie’ll never be good without ye. Stop yer cryin’,
all of yez, and I’ll tell ye somethin’ now.”
“A story?” asked Pinkie, breaking off a roar in the middle, and speaking
in a composed and cheerful tone.
“Not a story, darlint, but”—as Pinkie picked up her roar at the very
point where she had dropped it, “somethin’ nice, very nice, that’ll make
Louis play with you and Master Freddy again.”
Freddy, at this, raised his head from his mother’s shoulder, Louis dried
his eyes and drew near, and Pinkie condescended to put aside her
intended “badness,” pending further developments.
Alice stood erect, very white and still.
“I will leave them all to you, nurse,” she said, “though it is bitter to
feel that any one but his mother can comfort my boy. But if you can make
them happy again, do so; I cannot; one must say what one really believes
to children, and I do not believe that—any one—could have cured Freddy
any better than Louis did.”
“God help you, ma’am,” said nurse fervently. Then Alice went away into
the next room, sat down beside her husband, and laid her hand in his.
“You may be wrong about one thing, dearest,” he said softly. “Harrison
was talking to me to-day about a new kind of treatment he wants to try
for Freddy. It won’t cure him, that is impossible; but it may help him
very materially. Harrison hopes more from it than I do; but if he is
even able to get about with crutches, that will be something.”
“Will it be painful?” she asked, mother-like.
“A little, perhaps; but you can bear even to see him suffer, can you
not, if it will add to his happiness in the end?”
“_If_, yes; but hush, what is nurse telling them?”
“Sure, ye don’t think the blessed Saviour came on earth just to cure
sick people, do ye?” asked the mellow Irish voice. “He did heal the
lepers, of course, and He raised the dead; but what He come for, you
childer, was to make people good. It was just last Sunday our praste was
tellin’ us that pain is nothing at all at all, and no more is death,
compared with sin. You childer can’t understand that yet; but ye know
the blessed Jesus died, don’t ye? and in such pain—why, look here!” and
she pulled a crucifix out of her bosom, and showed it to the children,
explaining and painting so vividly the pain of such a death that Freddy
was ready to cry again, and Pinkie to do battle with His murderers.
“So ye see,” continued nurse, “that He suffered pain and death too, but
not sin. Nobody ever heard of His doing wrong; and, as Father McClosky
said, that shows which He thought the worst of. So, though you childer
can’t expect to do miracles like He did, you can help each other to be
good, and that’s what He likes much better.”
“If I was dare,” said Pinkie, “I’d made yose bad mens yun avay fasht,
an’ pull yose nails out and say, ‘Tum down, dear Saviour!’”
“Sure, there was onct a little bird thought that same,” said nurse,
availing herself of the opening to change the subject of conversation;
and she proceeded to tell them the legend of the Redbreast, to their
great delight.
“But he didn’t get the nail out,” said Louis rather mournfully, as the
story ended.
“No; but, sure, he got the Saviour’s blood on his breast, and wears it
there to this day, and that was honor enough for him.”
“Want to shee blood on his bweast,” said Pinkie; so nurse put down her
sewing, and looked for a picture of a robin, and, by the time she had
succeeded, the children were eager for play again, and Freddy’s wheeled
chair became the Ark of the Covenant, with Pinkie dancing before it as
King David, while Louis and his mouth-harp represented all the priests
and Levites.
That same night Susan Price quietly and peacefully faded out of life.
She had borne sorrow and pain enough; had she helped any one to be good?
It would have been hard to judge of so blank and colorless a life. She
had never seemed other than a pale reflection of her sister, even her
love and loyalty to whom had been too instinctive and shadow-like to
appear other than a thing of course.
“I’ll try to live without you, Sue,” said Sally, looking down on the
cold, placid face. “I’ll try to live without you, and, since the Lord
has taken you, I s’pose I kin,—_now_! But when we was poor and starvin’,
Sue, I couldn’t of, I know I couldn’t; and it’ll be a long day, sister,
until I see you again.”
And this was Susan Price’s sole funeral oration.
BOOK II.
ALTRUISM.
CHAPTER I.
AFTER TWELVE YEARS.
It was a brilliant day towards the lamb-like end of a March, whose
beginning had been of a particularly leonine character. The leaf-buds
upon the trees showed faint lines of green along their smooth
circumference of delicate brown; the dry, dead grass of winter had been
replaced by young blades of a tender verdure; yet the air was cool and
pleasantly crisp, though the sunshine, as every one said, was warm
enough for June.
At the South Micklegard railroad station, a short, jolly-looking
gentleman seemed to differ from the prevailing opinion as to the heat;
for his hands were in his pockets, and his overcoat buttoned closely
over his stout form up to the smooth-shaven chin.
Up and down the sunniest part of the platform he walked briskly, with at
every turn so impatient a glance along the track that, by and by, a
porter, wheeling up his empty truck to be in readiness for the coming
freight, paused to ask him a question.
“It’s not leaving us you are, Father?”
“No, no, Denny, not so bad as that; only waiting for a friend. She’s
late to-day?” with a motion of his head towards the point whence the
train should have appeared half an hour before. Denny, however, was in
no danger of misunderstanding the figuratively feminine pronoun.
“Av it was the furst toime, she’d’ a ’slipped the track,” he said dryly.
“That ould tin o’clock niver gits in till noon.”
“Then ye should have telephoned me to that intent,” replied the father,
with a twinkle in his eye. “Didn’t I leave me sermon in the midst to
hurry down here? And if I miss me dinner to finish it, ’twill be the
worse for you sinners, I promise ye, Denny.”
Denny grinned, and pulled his forelock; but at this moment a distant
whistle announced the approach of the train, and he wheeled his truck
leisurely away, while Father McClosky restored his handkerchief to his
pocket, and drew his plump figure into a posture of erect expectancy.
The Rev. Bryan McClosky had been for fifteen years in charge of St.
Clement’s Church, a dingy and unbeautiful brick structure on an obscure
street in South Micklegard. His congregation were chiefly poor
working-people; and the few outsiders who recognized the rare qualities
of head and heart which were joined to his unimpressive and somewhat
undignified exterior, were disposed to wonder that the authorities of
his Church, with all their well-known tact and skill at making the most
of their material, should have kept such a man so long in such an
obscure position.
Perhaps, however, the authorities, as usual, knew their own business
best. Bryan McClosky was by birth one of the people among whom he
labored. His father had been an Irish peasant, and Bryan’s first
memories of home were of a cabin wherein pigs and chickens were as much
members of the household as himself. Natural talent and education had
done much to raise him above the level of his former associates, but he
was still one of them at heart. By his present congregation he was
simply idolized; and, though they stood in no manner of awe of him, the
real reverence which they gave and he fully deserved was not at all
impaired by his readiness to laugh and joke on all but _very_ improper
occasions.
Into his religious opinions there would seem to be no need to inquire,
since they were to be found in the doctrinal formulas of a Church which
tolerates no private judgment of such matters. Nevertheless, there had
not been wanting, in high ecclesiastical quarters, rumors as to the
potential heterodoxy of Father McClosky,—a heterodoxy which showed
itself in just a little over-charity towards heretics, and a too great
readiness to unite with them in schemes for the public welfare. He had
even been admonished once or twice—or, if that word be too harsh, gently
interrogated—on these matters, but in every case was able to prove
himself so clearly right, and within the letter of the law, that the
only results were, on the part of the authorities, a conviction that
while it was best to keep him where he would do least harm, it would
also be wisest not to drive him to extremities; and on his side, a habit
of good-humored denunciation of his Protestant friends as heretics, and
destined to a considerable amount of future discomfort, which,
accompanied by a twist of his mouth and a twinkle of his black eyes,
was, as he often remarked, “perfectly orthodox, and hurt nobody.”
The true key to his character was his loyalty to the Church which had
fed, clothed, and educated him. She might not be as infallible as she
thought herself; it might even be that she had, historically and
doctrinally, made mistakes; but if he admitted these to himself, he was
too true a son to allow any one else to guess that he did so. Moreover,
there was no one in the world for whose comfort and well-being he cared
less than for those of the Rev. Bryan McClosky, so he was not likely to
resent the lack of ecclesiastical preferment; and as his gravest doubts
were whether he should himself be more at home in any other church than
that of his birth, or whether he possessed the personal infallibility
necessary to start a church of his own, he asked nothing better than to
devote his life to the people whose coarse, ignorant, sometimes stupid
and brutalized faces were upturned so eagerly Sunday after Sunday to his
pulpit, or bowed beneath his benediction from the altar.
The person for whom he had waited so long at last stepped upon the
platform, and was greeted as a “thief of the world” and a “blazin’
heretic,” to the grinning amusement of Denny and one or two others.
Ernest Clare took the matter very quietly, though there was a gleam in
his blue eyes and a certain compression about his mouth, that seemed to
show that quietude was rather acquired than innate to a man of his
character.
He was considerably above the medium height, and magnificently
proportioned; indeed, his muscular development was usually the first
item of his personal appearance to attract attention. It was only a
second glance, with most people, that noted the calm, pure face, with
its smooth, white brow, clear eyes, and firm, steadfast lips. There was
something rather wonderful about those eyes, under the straight, dark
brows and long, black lashes; they were so soft and utterly still in
their calm, blue depths, while over their surface glanced lights of fun
or anger, or darkened clouds of sorrow. Some one who loved him had once
said that Ernest Clare had two souls,—one which bore the burden and heat
of the day, and one which abode ever upon the spiritual mountain-tops,
rapt in the contemplation of things ineffable,—and that these two souls
were mirrored in his eyes. When she said it, it had been true only at
times; now the two souls were one.
“It’s but a step to ‘Prices,’” said Father McClosky; “will ye walk, or
ride?”
“Of course, after that delicate hint, I will walk,” replied Mr. Clare,
with a smile of amusement.
“Sure, I only meant shank’s mare for ye to ride on, and carry your
valise at that. Oh, ye heretic! if you did but know how glad I am to see
you, and have a chance to convert ye.”
“I believe that, Bryan; part of it, anyway. Could you get a room for me
at this famous co-operative place of yours?”
“Two of them,—bedroom and study.”
“Study? Whew! don’t you know I’m out of a job and poor as a
church-mouse?”
“I gathered as much; but the rooms were vacated the very day I got your
letter, and, as it’s not often two communicating ones can be had at
‘Prices,’ why, I took them. I know ye’ve some scheme afoot, ye spalpeen,
and ye might as well be comfortable while ye carry it out.”
“But”—
“And av ye’ve no money to pay for it, there’s them that has. Things is
dirt-cheap at ‘Prices,’ anyway.”
“Oh, I’ve a hundred or so that will keep me going for a while. Tell me
something about these Prices of yours.”
“Here’s the place, itself, will tell ye more than I can.”
They had halted before a large block of buildings, not of a particularly
fine or imposing architecture. In fact, they had been originally
dwelling-houses, then had been turned into stores, and had been applied
to their present purpose with as little alteration as was practically
possible. The corner house still bore over its entrance the words,
“_Männerchor Gesangverein_;” but above this, in huge golden letters
running along as much of the conglomerate building as possible, shone
this inscription, “THE PRICES.”
“Will ye go to your rooms—I have the key in me pocket—or will ye see the
place first?” asked Father McClosky. “It’s half-past eleven, and dinner
is from twelve till two. I take mine at one usually, the way I won’t be
interferin’ with the factory hands and teachers and the like, that has
only one hour to call their own.”
Ernest Clare smiled. “Factory hands and teachers,—_et id genus omne_!”
he said. “I think I’ll go over the building, Bryan. But do you take all
your meals here? I know you’ve a house of your own.”
“Except when I brew me a cup of coffee on my little gas stove of an
inclement morning,” replied the little priest, with a twinkle of his
black eye. “Sure, it saves me the expense of a housekeeper, and a mighty
lot of trouble. I’ve an old woman now to clean and go away peacefully,
and one of me acolytes looks after the fires; and av he don’t burn the
house down some fine day, he’ll do mighty well.”
“But couldn’t you rent your house, and take a room here? You’d save
still more, then.”
“No doubt; but—well, Ernest, I like me little house. It’s quieter and
more convenient; besides, it joins the church, and I’d not like to rent
it; besides that, I’d get into trouble av I did. But it’s mighty
convenient to eat here; though, to be sure, the half of them is blazing
heretics, like yourself, and the rest howling infidels and bloody-minded
atheists. But heretic food agrees mighty well with a Catholic digestion,
I find. Here, ye can leave your gripsack in the janitor’s office.” He
led the way as he spoke into the main door, within which a glass door at
the side showed a small room, chiefly furnished with shelves, hooks,
etc., for the reception of hats, umbrellas, and the like.
“This is Bruno Schaefer, janitor by the divine right of hereditary
descent,” said Father McClosky, as a pleasant-looking young man sprang
up from his seat beside a table, upon which lay several large books.
“His brother Franz was the first under the present _régime_.”
Bruno smiled broadly at this Irish heredity as he took Mr. Clare’s grip,
umbrella, and hat, in exchange for a celluloid check.
“Franz has been studying music in Germany, and now plays first violin in
some famous orchestra beyant there; and Bruno is to be a heretic
preacher like his father,” continued the priest. “He has a quiet berth
of it here, meanwhile, eh, Bruno? ample facilities for study.”
“With a few interruptions thrown in,” replied the young man in a clear,
pleasant voice.
“Well, this present interruption is the Reverend Ernest Clare, though
why a heretic should be reverend, I can’t say. He has rooms on the
fourth floor of the third house, and ye must learn to know him by sight
as soon as ye hear him comin’.”
“I couldn’t help doing that,” said Bruno, looking with admiration, not
unmixed with confusion, at his visitor’s stalwart physique.
“But I hope Mr. Clare did not understand me to complain”—
“Not at all,” said Ernest Clare, extending his hand and pressing Bruno’s
cordially. “I find it harder myself to rejoice in interruptions than in
any other minor trial of this life; but in your case I should think them
not only an excellent drill in patience, but also a fine opportunity to
study human nature.”
“That’s very true, Mr. Clare, thank you, sir,” said the young man.
“Ye villain! but ye’re a true Irishman!” said Father McClosky, as they
walked on. “There ye’ve preached that lad a sermon, and given him a
staff to help him on, with just a turn of your smooth tongue.”
“A staff? Oh! you mean that suggestion about interruptions. I should
rather call that a fly-fan,” said Ernest Clare with a twinkle in his eye
and a twist of the corner of his firm lips that made his Irish blood
still more evident. He was, indeed, a native-born American; but his
father had left rather a different class in Ireland from that to which
McClosky _père_ belonged, to be equally hardworking and almost equally
poor in America. The sons had spent their early youth together until
Bryan had been taken charge of, at his father’s death, by the Church, to
be educated for a priest. Later in life they had met again; but if there
were any bond between them, formed at that time, and of special strength
and tenderness, it was such as would have estranged ordinary men, and
even between these was only tacitly understood. Neither had ever put it
into words.
“I suppose Herr Bruno is one of your heretics,” continued Mr. Clare; “if
I like your Jews, Turks, and Infidels as well in proportion, Bryan”—
“Ah! he’s a fine lad, Bruno! but is it Turks ye say? Thank the pigs,
we’re not troubled with the likes of them. Nor the Jews don’t take
kindly to us either; but I’ll show you the grandfather of all the
infidels presently, so ye’ve good luck.”
He opened as he spoke a large double swing door, which led into a
dining-hall, well lit and ventilated, where, at various-sized tables,
about two hundred persons could be accommodated. Only about half of
these tables, however, were laid for dinner, for which Father McClosky
proceeded to account.
“Ye see,” he said, “it’s only them that lives in the house, or works
near by, that can spare the time to go and come. Teachers at a distance,
or hands in the mills or the pottery, mostly has their dinner sent. I’ll
show ye the wagon starting, in five minutes from now. Then, the mothers
of families where there’s many little children finds it more convenient
to take their dinners at home, too, though most of them come for supper,
even the babies.”
“It must be a pretty sight,” said Ernest Clare.
Father McClosky shrugged his shoulders. “It’s Bedlam broke loose,” he
said; “but sure they enjoy it, and them that don’t can stay at home.
It’s a free country, and no man has a better right at ‘Prices’ than any
other.”
“And which costs more—for that is the grand criterion nowadays—to eat
here, or have one’s meals sent?”
“Both, and nayther,” replied the priest, “the charge is exactly the
same; but of course there’s more wear and tear of property in sending.
But, as that comes out of the pockets of the stockholders, it is not
supposed that they will incur the loss without necessity.”
“Then all the patrons are stockholders?”
“They must be, to the extent, at least, of one share, which is five
dollars. The directors found it necessary to pass a by-law to that
intent, or else, as they said, just put up with regular boarding-house
grumbles. Now, every one has an interest in saving, and them that can,
help with the work. That saves hired labor, and makes the dividends
larger.”
“Then you do pay dividends to your stockholders? I thought it was only
to the workers, and that stockholders were to receive merely a fair
interest on their investment.”
“We’ve two classes of stockholders,” said Father McClosky. “Those who
are also patrons, and those who are not. The last named get five per
cent on every dollar as promptly as pay-day comes; but the others, since
they have a hand in the work,—or a tooth in it, annyhow,—we consider
entitled to a share in the profits. We find it’s a good working
principle. I’ve a hundred dollars in it meself, that paid me—interest
and dividend—about the likes of seven dollars, last year, and sure it’s
a great joy to me now when a fast day comes round.”
“So you take self-interest as the moving spring of your work?”
“Ye must take men as ye find them, Ernest, me boy. I’m not speakin’ of
meself, that has neither chick nor child, brother nor sister, wife nor
husband belonging to me,” said Father McClosky with intense seriousness
and earnestness; “for sure it’s little matter to me if I’m full or
hungry; but for a man who has little children, to whom a few dollars
makes all the difference between comfort and privation,—why, ye can’t
blame him if he has an eye to the main chance, as folks call it.”
“But has such a man as that always five dollars in hand to pay for his
one necessary share?”
“Sure he don’t need it, av he’s enough to pay for his meals—and, as I
said before, it’s but little he needs for that. He comes here and enters
his name as an applicant for what we call the patron’s share, and makes
arrangements for his meals, as to the number in his family and the cost
per day; then he pays ten cents a week extra on his share until the
whole five dollars is paid, and, the day he hands in his last
instalment, gets his certificate of stock and twenty-five cents
interest; for, ye see, fifty weeks is almost a year, and the directors
do it as an encouragement to him.”
“Suppose he pays his five dollars down.”
“So he ought, if he’s got it, and he gets his quarter back again, but
only on one share. Sure, it’s not a society for the promotion of avarice
that we are.”
“I see. And one share is sufficient to enable a whole family to become
patrons.”
“Yes, that is, all who are under age or not self-supporting. We find the
young folks eager enough to become shareholders when they begin to work
for themselves.”
“I dare say. Ah! there is the wagon you spoke of.”
They had been standing near a window overlooking a large, paved yard,
into which, as he spoke, a wagon rattled at storming pace, and
simultaneously a side door opened and two or three boys appeared, each
bearing a tray full of tin pails. Each pail was marked in large red
letters, legible to Mr. Clare at his window, with the name of the mill,
factory, or schoolhouse to which it was destined, and a small white
ticket just above bore that of the individual to whom it belonged. It
was marvellous to see the swiftness and ease with which the loading was
accomplished and the boys vanished, even though one of them stopped to
“give a back” to the others, who “leap-frogged” over it into the open
door.
“Boys will be boys,” said Father McClosky, “and, sure, exercise promotes
digestion. Now, that wagon,” pointing to where it had just disappeared,
“will be back inside of half an hour, ready to fill any other orders.
There’s mighty good things in some of them buckets, let me tell ye. Miss
Sally never stints on them. She says they use up what would be wasted,
corners of pie and ends of cake and the like, stray apples and oranges,
too, and always a kind thought for any poor girl that’s away from home,
or a bone-tired teacher, with no one belonging to her.”
“Is Miss Sally one of your heretics?”
“She’s an angel, av she _don’t_ look it! Come, I dare say she’ll let us
into the kitchen, although it’s the busy time with them, and ye mustn’t
expect a word with her; but it’s worth seeing.”
It proved to be. A large room, about half the size of the dining-hall,
was lined on two sides with tables, a third row occupying the middle of
the floor, with gangways between every two. Another side of the room
showed a line of ranges in full blast. Between fifteen and twenty young
people of both sexes were working under the direction of Sally Price,
twelve years more gaunt and gray than when we last saw her, but with an
alert, wide-awake quickness in her manner very different from the
listless, quiet despair that long ago had aroused the sympathy of Dora
Metzerott. A cook was in charge of each range, and a sub-cook stood
ready to wait upon each. Along the fourth side of the room ran a double
row of electric bells, each bearing the number of the table with which
it was connected, and at a desk beneath them sat Polly, as pretty, and
apparently as young as ever, though now, in truth, nearly in her
thirtieth year.
“My friend Mr. Clare, Miss Polly,” said the priest. “He wants to see how
you send in a meal at ‘Prices.’ We’ll not disturb annybody.”
Polly smiled, but in a pre-occupied way, and observed, with her eye upon
the clock, which was upon the stroke of twelve, that if they didn’t mind
the bells ringing over their heads, they could get a good view at that
end of the room, and be in nobody’s way.
“The orders are left, and the tables engaged at any time during the
morning,” explained the priest; “so when a bell rings, they know exactly
who it is, and what he wants. The hour also is specified, and av he
comes on time, his dinner is dished and ready.”
“Suppose he comes early, or late?”
“Then he don’t get it until the time, or gets it cold. ‘Prices’ believes
in military punctuality.”
As he spoke, the clock struck twelve, and an electric bell sounded.
“Number 25. One!” cried Polly, clearly and distinctly. A brisk-looking
girl whisked some dishes on a tray, and started for the door, beside
which she paused to receive a celluloid check from a girl who sat at a
high desk, with a big book, a box of checks of varying values, and a
cash-box before her.
“That’s the cashier,” continued the father, who had paused to mutter an
“Ave” while this was occurring. “She looks in her big book for the order
belonging to 25, and gives the girl a check according. It’s a
ready-money business here. The waiters are all numbered as well as the
bells, and take their turn in regular rotation.”
“The discipline is truly military,” observed Mr. Clare.
“Ah! ye’re conversant with Sunday schools, and that’s why ye take notice
of the same,” said Father McClosky.
“And who of these are volunteer workers?” asked Ernest Clare, watching
closely the busy scene before him.
“All of them are _that_,” returned the father; “but Miss Sally, Miss
Polly, the cashier, treasurer, secretary, and six cooks get regular
salaries. The man that drives the wagon is an expressman by trade, and
owns his team; he is hired by the year, and, being a stockholder and
patron, charges very fairly. As for these girls and boys, they enjoy the
work. There are regular relays of them; and these are arranged so as to
intersperse work with books and healthful play, according to the rhyme.
On Saturdays and Sundays, the teachers and some of the factory hands
take their turn at cooking—as sub-cooks, that is—and waiting; and, sure,
it’s a great diversion to them, especially the teachers, after using
their brains all the week.”
“Rest is really only a change of labor, then, to them?”
“It’s purely voluntary, ye know,” said the priest. “None of them need do
a hand’s turn av they don’t like, though I won’t say but what public
opinion would have some weight; but those that are weak or sickly Miss
Sally looks out for, and won’t let them do a stroke more than is good
for them.”
“Miss Sally has it in her power to make or mar everything, it seems to
me.”
“Ay! ye come to that, after all, Ernest. Didn’t ye say a while ago that
the mainspring of this work was self-interest? Well, ye was wrong.
Self-interest is only the balance-wheel; the mainspring is love of our
neighbor. We couldn’t keep things going a day but for that. The root of
the whole business was Christian charity, and the branches partake of
the same life.”
“You have simply helped the growth or lessened the friction by making
one’s neighbor’s interests identical, for the most part, with one’s
own,” said Ernest Clare.
“As they should be. As long as men are individuals they will have
individual interests; but one man’s food and clothing were never meant
to be gained at the expense of his neighbor, as we can see when the
matter is carried to its ultimate conclusion.”
“As how, for instance?”
“Well, in the case of shipwrecked mariners, or them dirty cannibals that
ate one another for pleasure,” said the priest. “Sure, aither of them is
only the main principle of our modern civilization stripped of its
glittering adjuncts.”
Mr. Clare did not answer. There was a glance in his eye and a quiver at
the corner of his mouth, very like amusement; yet he realized in the
depths of his great loving heart the awful truth of the picture which
his friend had drawn in such quaint colors.
“I think,” he said at last, “that I had rather not be a cannibal, that
is—rich.”
The carpenter’s shop, tin-shop, jeweller’s, dry-goods, shoemaker’s, and
other shops, were all on the first floor, facing upon some one of the
four streets that bounded “Prices.” Above these were the dressmaker’s
and milliner’s establishments; but there was little here to notice or
describe, as the one distinctive feature of each separate business was,
that it was owned by the company and managed by salaried workmen. There
was one buying agent for the collective establishment, whose business
was to fill the orders, transmitted, through the executive committee,
from the heads of departments. These, therefore, while they had plenty
of work, had little or no anxiety. Their salaries were secure, and their
only care the business of the day. Literally, they took no thought for
the morrow.
“We find our shops are very popular among the rich folks at the North
End,” said Father McClosky; “they say we give good weight and good
measure, and every article just what it professes to be, no less. A
man—sure, it’s a Christian he calls himself; and he has a fashionable
shoe-store up-town, and was mad at us for under-selling him—and says he
to me, ‘So you have adopted the maxim “Honesty is the best policy.” How
do you find it works?’ says he. ‘Maxim,’ says I; ‘that’s no maxim at
all,’ I says; ‘it’s aither a fact or a lie, and mostly the latter,’ says
I; ‘but it ought to be the universal fact that it is with us,—sure, I
mean universally the fact that we find it,’ says I.”
“And so it will be, some day.”
“It’s always of a hopeful disposition ye were, Ernest. There’s too much
cross-grained selfishness in the world for that day to come soon, I’m
thinkin’.”
“I did not say, soon,” replied Ernest Clare quietly. “I do not know when
it will come, or how; and there are times when one gets discouraged; but
I believe it _will_ come, Bryan. However, I am not ready to talk yet
about my own beliefs, hopes, or plans. Is this my door?” for they had
now reached the lodging department, where rooms were rented singly or in
suites, to individuals or families.
“Sure ye’re pretty high up, but, with an elevator, that’s just as
convenient as the ground floor. And there’s a fire-escape just beyond,
and mighty handy, in case of need; though, for myself, I’d rather burn
up alive like a Christian, than break me neck down one of them things,”
said the priest as he applied his key to the door.
CHAPTER II.
NEO-SOCIALISM.
Much to the surprise of Father McClosky, the key declined to enter the
key-hole, for excellent Communistic reasons: there was a key already
there. Moreover, voices, one very loud, the other very tearful, sounded
on the other side of the door.
The priest drew back, with a sorrowful gesture. “It’s Mrs. Kellar,” he
said. “She is what we call our Matron, for want of a better name; _die
Hausfrau_, the Germans call her. She sees to the rooms, gives out the
bed-linen and so on, and is an invaluable person, so clean and
conscientious. But—well, one must have _les défauts de ses qualités_, as
the French say; and though she is a born ruler and manager, she _has_
got a tongue and a temper. Of course, she has a pass-key to every room,
and I suppose something has gone wrong in here, and she is scolding the
unfortunate perpetrator.”
“Then we had better go in; I dare say it is nothing of any consequence
that has happened,” said Ernest Clare, much amused by his friend’s
correct English, which betrayed an inward perturbation very flattering
to Frau Kellar’s powers of eloquence.
“I suppose we had,” said the little man hesitatingly; but with the touch
of the door-knob his courage seemed to return. “Sure, she’s a
well-meaning woman,” he said with a smile; “and as for temper, it’s not
an Irishman that can cast a stone at her, from Malachi with the Collar
of Gold, to the blessed St. Kevin himself.”
“Here he opened wide the door;” but there was a great deal more than
darkness within. It was a neatly but plainly furnished sitting-room,
with a brown-painted pine table, covered with a red cloth, four
cane-seated chairs, and one large rocking-chair, a few empty pine
bookshelves lining one side, an engraving or so, and a cheerful-looking
carpet, on which—alas!—a hod of coals had been overturned. A small,
pale, nervous-looking girl, with weak blue eyes and reddish hair, was on
her knees beside the coals, picking them up in a weakly ineffective
manner, that seemed to add fuel to the flame of Frau Kellar’s righteous
anger, to the outpouring of which the victim returned no answer save the
tears which dropped fast over the bridge of her nose, and, being brushed
aside by a grimy hand, by no means added to her beauty.
The entrance of the two clergymen seemed to put the last stroke to her
misery, for she immediately fell over on her face upon the coals, and
lay there, making no sound, but shaking from head to foot with
hysterical passion.
“Why, what’s all this?” said the priest good-humoredly. “Is that Lena
Schaefer? You haven’t been making Lena cry, Mrs. Kellar?”
“The lazy good-for-nothing!” cried Mrs. Kellar. “Will tears pick up the
coals, I should like to know?”
“Not so well as a pair of hands,” said Mr. Clare cheerfully. “Come, Miss
Lena, since this is to be my room, I have the best right to work in it,
haven’t I?”
He picked up the thin, light form as if she had been a child, and set
her, literally, to dry off, in the rocking-chair, which she only half
filled, and whence, overcome with amazement, she peeped from under the
shadow of her apron at the handsome gentleman on his knees remedying the
results of her carelessness.
“It’s a poor welcome for you, Mr. Clare,” said Frau Kellar. “I came in
to see if everything was in order, and found the fire nearly gone out;
so I rang for Lena, as these rooms are her business, and the silly
thing, before she could get the coal on the fire, dropped the hod, and
then couldn’t do nothing but cry.”
As she explained, she had made a futile effort to assist in remedying
the evil, which Mr. Clare had silently but decidedly refused.
“Sure, I suppose she came in such haste that her hand shook. Isn’t it
right I am, Lena?”
“The bell rang so loud it frightened me,” said Lena, who had been making
a brave struggle for self-control. “I didn’t forget the fire, Father; it
was only that I didn’t put on quite enough coal.”
“And ain’t the best of us liable to errors of judgment?” said the
priest. “Give the child leave to run away now, Mrs. Kellar, and bathe
her eyes. She’ll feel better when she’s had her dinner.”
“I’d like to sweep up the dust for you, sir,” said the girl, with a look
of appealing confidence, which made her face, despite its homeliness and
grimy tear-stains, not absolutely unattractive.
“To-morrow,” said Ernest Clare, smiling down at her, “to-morrow you
shall do whatever you like, but for to-day Father McClosky’s advice is
the best. A good dinner is the medicine you need.” He bowed her from the
room as if she had been the first lady in the land—poor Lena, who had
never had the door opened for her since she was tall enough to reach the
knob—and said as she passed him, “I am glad you have the care of these
rooms, for I am sure you will take great pains with them; but I will try
to give you as little trouble as possible.”
Lena did not reply; poor girl, her face and eyes were not in condition
even to look an answer; but she went away with a heart overrunning with
gratitude, and a firm determination that, while she had strength to
crawl, Mr. Clare should never have cause to complain of neglect.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Kellar had seized the hearth-broom, and was busily
getting rid of the relics of the catastrophe. No one offered to relieve
her of the duty; the priest had seated himself, and was quietly looking
on, and Ernest Clare passed through the open door into his bedroom, in
order to remove from his hands the traces of his late occupation.
“Sure, it’s a pity,” began the priest, after a moment or two—
“Don’t speak to me, Father McClosky,” said the woman, half petulantly;
“ain’t I calling myself worse names yet than I’ve called Lena already?”
“But calling names is no good, Mrs. Kellar; though I admit there’s a
power of satisfaction in it at times.”
“That’s so, Father. That poor girl! Did not Dr. Richards say that the
best hope for her health is in the regular hours and regular work here?
and didn’t I take her from her father’s house to have her under my eye”—
“Well, well, we are none of us perfect,” said the priest consolingly;
“but I think ye should try to remember one thing, Mrs. Kellar. It’s a
great thing we are doing here for the poor, and there’s a many would
like to see something of the kind prevail all through the land; but that
sort of thing, Mrs. Kellar, ye may call it Communism, or Socialism, or
whatever ye like, but av there isn’t self-control and loving-kindness at
the bottom of it, ’twill be a hell on earth.”
“Indeed, you are right, Father, and I’ve said so already many a time,”
returned Frau Kellar, with her apron to her eyes; “but it don’t tie my
tongue when I once get to scolding.”
“Nothing will do that but the grace of God,” said the priest. “Av ye was
a Catholic, ye’d have the Sacraments to help ye; but, sure, even as a
Protestant, ye have Him who is above all Sacraments. There’s a little
book I lent Miss Sally once about the Blessed Laurence. He was a poor
lay brother in a monastery; but he had an abiding sense of the presence
of God, even amongst his pots and kettles. Sure, he said it made no
difference to him whether he was kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament,
itself, or working in his kitchen—it was the monastery cook he was—for
God was with him just the same. And so, av his pots boiled over, or his
subordinates failed in their duty, or whatever happened, he was always
at peace, and never ruffled or excited about anything.”
“I could never be as good as that,” sighed Frau Kellar.
“Sure, Rome wasn’t built in a day,” returned the priest encouragingly.
“Anyhow, it’s the only cure for speaking first and thinking after, to
have your mind full of Him and your heart of His love. For out of the
abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, and then the afterthought
would find nothing to repent of.”
“You’ll lend me the book, won’t you, Father?” she asked humbly. “Do you
suppose the Blessed Laurence was better than Miss Sally?”
“I’ll lend ye the book with pleasure, but ye’ll find little there beyond
what I’ve told ye. There was but little to say of a poor, ignorant man
that could not even read. And as for Miss Sally, sure, it’s not for me
to measure degrees of goodness; but I’ll tell ye one thing, if Miss
Sally _is_ a saint, she’s not aware of it. Is it going you are? God be
good to you,” and, as he pressed her hand, the good little man added,
“Av ye was a Catholic, ye know, I could be of more use to ye.”
“Sure, I ought to have tried harder to convert her to the true faith,”
he thought, when he was left alone; “but she might have been the death
of poor Lena av I’d distracted her mind with arguments, so I applied the
remedy that was handiest; but it’s the best, after all, for all beliefs,
and maybe He don’t see the difference between Catholic and Protestant
that some of us do here below.”
“Bryan,” said Mr. Clare, re-entering at this moment. He took his stand
on the hearth-rug, and looked down upon his friend with a look that was
half amused and all reverent; then he said, “I don’t wonder now at the
success of ‘Prices.’ I understand it.”
“Do ye, now?” said the priest, returning a glance in which sympathy was
mingled with a comical embarrassment; for Father McClosky was
exceedingly shy, not only of his own good works, but of having his
dealings with one heretic known to another. Also he stood rather in awe
of the keen, clear, logical brain opposite him.
“I believe so,” replied Mr. Clare, laughing outright, “except in one
point, and that a minor one. Is the present stock company nominally the
same—of course I know it is not exactly—that owned the Maennerchor Club
House twelve years ago?”
“That’s aisely answered,” replied the priest, with an air of relief at
which his friend laughed again. “It is, nominally. There was maybe
twenty or a dozen shareholders at that time who wanted the club-house
chiefly for their own recreation; for the most of them was rich men,
and, so it paid expenses, they didn’t look for dividends. When Miss
Sally took the care of it, and they began to see how things was going,
they behaved mighty well; first, they reduced the par value of a share
to five dollars, as we have it now, and gave every shareholder one vote
and no more. And, shure, that’s fair enough,” continued the Father, with
a conscientious desire to be logical whenever he could; “for av a rich
man has twenty votes in a meeting of shareholders, why shouldn’t he vote
twenty times for president?”
“Because human nature is happily illogical, and seldom follows out false
premises to their ultimate conclusions,” said Ernest Clare, with a
gravity which was belied by the twinkle in his eye.
“Oh, get out with your logic and your ultimate conclusions! It’s because
the fellow that tried it on first would be mobbed, that’s why.
Conclusions, indeed!”
“Well, go on,” with a laugh; “what was the effect of manhood suffrage in
this particular instance?”
“The _ultimate_ effect—since ye like the word so well—is that they get
five per cent on their money, and have their recreation just the same.
For the club-house is mostly as it was, and, shareholders not
necessarily belonging to the club, the members have their parlor,
dining-room, and hall to themselves whenever they like. The only
difference is that the hall is never rented to the public now; and on
occasions of balls, concerts, and the like, they ain’t apt to shut out
any regular patrons of ‘Prices’ who want to get in.”
“Are any of the old shareholders now members of the board of managers?”
“Four or five of them, and we’ve the same president and secretary. But
the real business is transacted by the executive committee, three in
number, and two constituting a quorum.”
“It’s a flexible arrangement, at any rate.”
“It’s beautiful,” said the priest with enthusiasm, “and works as easy as
rolling off a log.”
“Ah! that simile reminds me of my own situation. I have emphatically
rolled off _my_ log.”
“Ye wrote me ye had resigned your charge.”
“Resigned! Did you ever hear of the grand bounce?” said Mr. Clare
drolly. “Because that’s what I got for preaching Socialism.”
“Mother of Moses! Tell us about that.”
“Well, you know I always held the opinion that to call nothing one’s
own, to hold all things in common, is the flower and crown of
Christianity. But it was _merely_ an opinion, not a belief; I was what
you might call a _dilettante_ Socialist. My first call was to a
fashionable church as assistant, as you remember; and when this last
charge was offered me, I slipped into it, some way. I suppose I had
become accustomed to a life among people of wealth and cultivation; and,
besides, there was at the time some external pressure, though quite
unconscious on the part of the person who exerted it. I wanted to be in
a position which no one need be ashamed to share with me.”
His voice had grown hoarse and low, and Father McClosky bent his brow on
his hand without attempting a reply. After a moment the speaker
continued,—
“Well, that is all over now; and I can thank Him for her life and—for
her death. But it cut to the roots of my life; it tore the scales from
my eyes, and showed me the true meaning of all that I saw around me. I
could be a _dilettante_ no longer. Yet just because the commonplace
business arrangements of the world had suddenly become so terrible, so
openly subversive of God’s order and out of harmony with His creation, I
did my utmost to avoid giving offence. I could not expect my people to
see at a glance the hollowness and falsity of all they had been trained
to believe right and just, or to spring with one bound to the height
which I had attained through many struggles and much tribulation. But
one cannot be so gentle, so considerate, that a congregation of
millionnaires will not take offence at being told that every dollar they
own, beyond what is needful for themselves and their families, is a
wrong to Christ’s poor; that the Jewish land-laws were of divine
appointment, and a model for our imitation; and that every man, woman,
and child has a moral right, and should have a legal one, to an equal
share of the wealth—not the money—belonging to the nation.”
Father McClosky drew a long breath. “Ye said _that_ to them?” he said.
“You think it required courage; but I assure you the difficulty was to
restrain my words, not to bring them out. I had much ado sometimes to
keep from calling them a generation of vipers, and warning them to flee
from the wrath to come. But the millionnaire of to-day is in much the
same position as the Southern slaveholder of the last generation. The
houses, lands, stocks, bonds, and what not of the one appear to him as
much his rightful possession as the negroes of the other did to him. And
the analogy can be traced still farther; for, convince the millionnaire
that his dollars are not rightfully his, and how is he going to get rid
of them?”
“Ye’re right enough there,” said the priest; “he can’t bury money, drown
it, or give it away without doing infinite harm to other people. It’s
the old story, Clare; the fathers ate the sour grapes, and the childer
has the toothache. But what brought your matters to a crisis at last?”
“A course of lectures on the Sermon on the Mount,” said Mr. Clare,
smiling, “after which they could bear with me no longer. I am bound to
say, however, that they acted in as delicate and gentlemanly a manner as
possible. They did not even call a formal vestry meeting to ask me to
resign; it was merely intimated to me by my senior warden that if I had
any other opening in view, he thought—personally—that it would be better
to consider it, as the doctrine I had lately preached might be _true_,
but it wasn’t exactly practical, and _not_ very acceptable to the
people. He was very kind—good old man!—but it was evident that he looked
upon me as a crank, pure and simple.”
“Sure, I can imagine the whole interview,” said the Father, shaking with
laughter at Mr. Clare’s evident effort not to imitate the senior
warden’s voice and gestures. “But what are ye going to do about it?”
“Well,” he replied, “I have, as I told you, a few hundred dollars in
hand; and I don’t know a parish in the United States where I could stay
for a year, preaching as I must preach. The only thing I see is to fall
back on my trade, working with my hands, like St. Paul, and chargeable
to no man. Then I should be God’s freeman, and able to lift up my voice
against the crying evils of the day, not being in bondage to any man.”
Father McClosky sprang from his seat and paced the room excitedly; but
the very excess of his sympathy made him try to act as brake or
cog-wheel upon his friend’s enthusiasm.
“Ye blatherskite!” he said, “I suppose ye’ll be after starting a new
church, with yourself for pope!”
“On the contrary, I am orthodox of the orthodox,” said Mr. Clare. “I had
a talk with my bishop a day or two ago, and found him very sympathetic,
though with a reserved opinion that I was making too much ado about very
little. No, McClosky, to every age its own conflicts. The sixteenth
century did its work pretty thoroughly; a new Church in our days is an
anachronism. The great battles of the nineteenth century must be fought,
not among the hills of dogma, but in the plain of Conduct, which is
watered by the river of Brotherly Love.”
“And do you expect a Catholic to join ye in underrating dogma?”
“God’s heaven bends alike over hill and plain,” said the other gently.
“Sure it’s a beautiful poet ye are,” said the priest with would-be
sarcasm. He continued his walk for a few more moments, then said slowly,
“But it’s not denyin’ I am that such soldiers as you are wanted on the
right side. It’s mighty little brotherly love for any but themselves
that Socialism has shown so far.”
“I hope to see the day,” said Ernest Clare calmly, “when the Golden Rule
will be the Socialist’s motto, and the Sermon on the Mount his _vade
mecum_. They must be if we are to have law and order, not a reign of
anarchy. And that is why, Bryan, I feel that my course is _not_ much ado
about nothing. One way or the other, Socialism must come; and it will be
all the difference in the world whether Christianity leads or follows
the movement.”
“I make but little doubt that Holy Church will be equal to the
occasion,” said Father McClosky; “sure she has the principle in herself,
in her clergy and her religious orders. What is a monastery or nunnery
but a commune?”
“You are right! And I fancy the Spirit of the Age has something to say
to the revival of the religious orders in my own church, though our new
monks and nuns would be the first to protest against that view of the
matter. No, I don’t doubt the willingness of any _body_ of Christians to
fall into line, once the change is made and established by law; I only
doubt our readiness to lead; yet, unless we do lead, I see small hope of
the new kingdom being established.”
“Without violence,” corrected the priest.
“At all,” said the other. “The kingdom of the Prince of Peace cannot be
established by the sword.”
Father McClosky rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “And what is it ye mean to
do?” he said.
“To maintain myself by my trade; if possible, in connection with
‘Prices;’ after that, to do what I can.”
“Then the first thing ye’d better be at,” said the Father, “is to come
to dinner; for, sure, the clock is on the stroke of one!”
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 saves time 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 of souls—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 an _idée 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, you _are_ a 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 enough for 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 like _that_ comes
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 do a 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 golden _reflets_ to 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 complete _parure_! 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 was _nothing_, 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 for _parures_, 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 what _his_ line is; the line around that box is what I’m
thinking of. Pinks! are you _never_ going 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 transparent flowers 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 you _slippers_?”
“Oh! he’s only a boy, Virgie; he didn’t know any better.”
“Very good taste for a boy, if he _must_ send _slippers_. That box is
too cute for anything. Eh! oh! Pinkie, NO! It _isn’t_ your cousin’s
co-operative friend, the little shoemaker!”
“He’s _not_ little, _any_way,” 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 swaying _portière_, 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 the papa 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 that _her_ house, when she should have one, should have
uncarpeted stairs, and not a _portière_ from 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 was _that_,” 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 are _his_ work, and _his_ gift”—
“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—for _me_ to 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. His practice 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 a position
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 had marked 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 transferred the 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 “complete _parure_;” 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 to him 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,’—hotbed
of 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 it up 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 beg _my_ pardon?” asked the boy, with some
surprise; “but I always think of Him as a carpenter.”
“Him?”
“Jesus Christ,” said the boy, not without reverence.