long. When she returned, she volunteered to show us the house. We
surmised that her desire was to get away from the sound of that
summoning voice, and even as we rose we realized the futility of such
an effort.
The dining-room, into which she led us for cake and tea, was almost
comfortable. Its furniture, dark, serviceable oak, was a gift, Katrina
told us, from her uncle. Twice as she served the tea she responded to a
summons from the professor's study. Once he desired a handkerchief, and
the second time he wished an important letter posted at once. His wife
went out to the rural box which adorned the fence in front of the house
and cast the envelope into its yawning mouth. Returning, she showed us
her kitchen, an immaculate spot, the floor of which was evidently
scrubbed by her own hands, for she mentioned that she employed no
servant.
"Hans thinks we do not need one," she added, simply.
To the right of the dining-room was a fine, bright, cheerful room, full
of shelves on which stood innumerable jars and bottles of evil odor.
"My husband's laboratory," announced Katrina, proudly. "He has to have
light and air."
Up-stairs there was a bedroom containing a huge double bed; a companion
room off this was evidently used by the professor as a dressing-room
and store-room. His clothes and several startling German trunks filled
it. There were other rooms, but not one of them contained a rug or a
piece of furniture. Slowly, convincingly, the knowledge entered our
sentimental little hearts that Katrina's sole refuge for herself and
her friends was the tiny, so-called "sitting-room" down-stairs. She
continued to show us about with housewifely pride. So far as we could
see, her unconsciousness of her wrongs was complete. She was wholly
untouched by self-pity.
"Do you mean to say--" began Jessica, warmly, and then suddenly
realized that she herself could not say it. It was as well, for there
was no opportunity. Even as Katrina was beginning to explain that her
husband did not think it necessary to complete the furnishing of the
house for a year or two, he summoned her to his side by a megaphonic
demand for water to thin his ink. His impatience for this overcame his
obvious aversion to exertion, and he came into the hall to take it from
her hand as we descended the stairs. She introduced him to us, and he
bowed gravely and with considerable dignity. He had a massive head,
with iron-gray, curling hair, and near-sighted eyes, which peered at us
vaguely through large, steel-rimmed spectacles. He surveyed us, not
unpleasantly, but wholly without interest, nodded again, partly to
himself and partly to us, as if our appearance had confirmed some dark
surmise of his own, took the water from Katrina's hand, grunted an
acknowledgment, and retreated to his fastness in the study. He had not
spoken one articulate word. Even Katrina, smiling her untroubled smile,
seemed to feel that something in the situation demanded a word of
comment.
"He is not at ease with girls," she murmured, gently. "He has taught
only boys, and he does not understand women; but he has a kind heart."
Jessica and I ruminated thoughtfully upon this tribute as we went away.
We had learned through the innocent prattle of our hostess's busy
tongue that she desired a garden, but that Hans thought it a waste of
time; that she had suggested open plumbing, and that Hans declined to
go to the expense; that she saw little of her brothers nowadays, as
Hans did not approve of them; that her old friends came to see her
rarely since her marriage, as, for some reason unaccountable to
Katrina, they seemed not to like her husband. We waited until we were
out of sight of the house, and then seated ourselves gloomily on a
wayside rock under a sheltering tree. A robin, perched on a branch
above our heads, burst into mocking song. The sun still shone; I
wondered how it could.
"Well, of all the selfish beasts and unmanageable brutes!" Jessica
began, hotly. Jessica's language was frequently too strong for
elegance, and even at this exciting moment my sense of duty forced me
to call the fact to her attention. I moreover, essayed judicious
weighing of the situation as the most effective means of cooling her
off.
"If the secret of happiness is work, as most authorities agree," I
reminded Jessica, "Professor von Heller's wife ought to be the happiest
bride in this country."
Jessica turned one disgusted glance upon me, rose with dignity, and
moved haughtily down the road to a street-car which was bumping its way
toward us on its somewhat uneven track.
"Oh, well, if you are going to be funny over a tragedy in which one of
your dearest friends is a victim," she observed, icily, "we will not
discuss the matter. But I, for one, have learned a lesson: I know _now_
what matrimony is."
I had a dim sense that even this experience, interesting and educative
though it was, could not be fairly regarded as a post-graduate course
in matrimonial knowledge, and I ventured to say so.
Jessica set her teeth and declined to discuss the matter further,
resolutely turning the conversation to the neutral topic of a cat-bird
which was mewing plaintively in a hedge behind us. Late that night,
however, she awoke me from my innocent slumbers with a request for
knowledge as to the correct spelling of _irrevocable_ and
_disillusionment_. She was at her desk, writing hard, with her brows
knit into an elaborate pattern of cross-stitching. I knew the moment I
looked upon her set young face that the missive was to Arthur Townsend
Jennings, the brother of a classmate, whose letter urging her to "wait
five years" for him Jessica had received only that morning. It was
quite evident, even to the drowsiest observation, that Jessica was not
promising to wait.
Jessica's pessimism on the subject of matrimony dated from that hour,
and grew with each day that followed. Coldly, even as she had turned
from the plea of Arthur Townsend Jennings, did she turn from all other
suitors. She grew steadily in charm and beauty, and her opportunities
to break hearts were, from the susceptible nature of man, of an almost
startling frequency. Jessica grasped each one with what seemed even to
my loyal eyes diabolical glee. She was an avenging Nemesis, hot on the
trail of man. Grave professors, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton Juniors
and Seniors, loyal boy friends of her youth who came in manhood to lay
their hearts at her feet--all of these and more Jessica sent forth from
her presence, a long, stricken procession. "I know _now_ what matrimony
is," was Jessica's battle-cry. If, in a thoughtless partisan spirit, I
sought to say a good word for one of her victims, pointing out his
material advantages or his spiritual graces, or both, Jessica turned
upon me with a stern reminder. "Have you forgotten Katrina?" she would
ask. As I had not forgotten Katrina, the question usually silenced me.
For myself, I must admit, Jessica's Spartan spirit had its effect as an
example. Left alone to work out the problem according to my elemental
processes, I might possibly have arrived at the conclusion that
Katrina's domestic infelicity, assuming that it existed, need not
necessarily spread a sombre pall over the entire institution of
matrimony. But Jessica's was a dominant personality, and I was easily
influenced. In my humble way I followed her example; and though,
lacking her beauty and magnetism, the havoc I wrought was vastly less
than hers, I nevertheless succeeded in temporarily blighting the lives
of two middle-aged professors, one widower in the dry-goods line, and
the editor of a yellow newspaper. This last, I must admit, my heart
yearned over. I earnestly desired to pluck him from the burning, so to
speak, and assist him to find the higher nature of which he had
apparently entirely lost sight. There was something singularly pleasing
to me in the personality of this gentleman, but Jessica would have none
of him. I finally agreed to be a maiden aunt to him, and, this happy
compromise effected, I was privileged to see him frequently. If at any
time I faltered, quoting him too often on the political problems of the
day, or thoughtlessly rereading his letters in Jessica's presence, she
reminded me of Katrina. I sighed, and resumed the mantle, so to speak,
of the maiden aunt. Unlike Katrina, I never had been good at running
errands, and now, in my early thirties, I was taking on stoutness: it
was plain that the risk of matrimony was indeed too great.
For we had been growing older, Jessica and I, and many things more or
less agreeable had happened to us. We had been graduated with high
honors, we had spent four years abroad in supplementary study, and we
had then returned to the congenial task of bringing education up to
date in our native land. We taught, and taught successfully; and our
girls went forth and married, or studied or taught, and came back to
show us their babies or their theses, according to the character of
their productiveness. We fell into the routine of academic life.
Occasionally, at longer intervals as the years passed, an intrepid man,
brushing aside the warnings of his anxious friends, presented himself
for the favor of Jessica, and was sternly sent to join the long line of
his predecessors. Life was full, life in its way was interesting, but
it must be admitted that life was sometimes rather lonely. My editor,
loyal soul that he was, wrote regularly, and came to see me twice a
year. Professor Herbert Adams, a victim long at Jessica's feet, made
sporadic departures from that position, and then humbly returned. These
two alone were left us. Jessica acquired three gray hairs and a
permanent crease in her intellectual brow.
During all these changing scenes we had not seen Katrina. Under no
circumstances, after that first melancholy visit, would we willingly
have seen her again. At long intervals we heard from her. We knew there
were three fat babies, whose infant charms, hitherto unparalleled, were
caricatured in snapshots sent us by their proud mother. Jessica looked
at these, groaned, and dropped them into the dark corners of our study.
Our visits home were rare, and there had been no time in any of them
for a second call at the home of Professor von Heller. Seven years
after our return from Europe, however, Jessica decided that she needed
a rest and a summer in her native air. Moreover, she had just given
Professor Adams his final _conge_, and he had left her in high dudgeon.
I sapiently inferred that Jessica had found the experience something of
a strain. As Jessica acted as expeditiously in other matters as in
blighting lives, I need hardly add that we were transported to our home
town with gratifying despatch. We had stepped from the train at the end
of our journey before a satisfactory excuse for remaining behind had
occurred to me, and it was obviously of little avail to mention it
then. Twenty-four hours after the newspapers had chronicled the
exciting news of our arrival, Katrina called on us.
We gasped as we looked at her. Was this, indeed, Katrina--this rosy,
robust, glowing, radiant German with shining eyes and with vitality
flowing from her like the current of an electric battery? I looked at
Jessica's faded complexion, the tired lines in her face, the white
threads in her dark hair, and my heart contracted suddenly. I knew how
I looked--vastly more tired, more faded than Jessica, for I had started
from a point nearer to these undesirable goals. We three were about the
same age. There were six months at the most between us. Who would
believe it to look at us together?
Katrina seized us in turn, and kissed us on both cheeks. To me there
was something life-giving in the grasp of her strong, firm hands, in
the touch of her cool, soft lips. She insisted that we come to see her
and at once. When would we come? We had no excuse now, she pointed out,
and if we needed a rest, the farm--her home--was the best place in the
world for rest. With a faint access of hope I heard her. The farm? Had
she, then, moved? No, she was still in the same place, Katrina
explained, but the city had lurched off in another direction, leaving
her and Hans and the children undisturbed in their peaceful pastoral
life.
"Ka-tri-na!"
I almost jumped, but it was only a memory, helped on by my vivid fancy.
I had tried to picture the peaceful pastoral life, but all that
responded was the echo of that distant summons. Jessica, however, was
explaining that we would come--soon, very soon--next week--yes,
Tuesday, of course. Jessica subsequently inquired of me, with the
strong resentment of the person who is in the wrong, how I expected her
to get us out of it. It was something that had to be done. Obviously,
she said, it was one of those things to do and have done with.
She discoursed languidly about Katrina in the interval between the
promise and the visit.
"Well! Of course she's well," drawled Jessica. "She's the kind that
wouldn't know it if she wasn't well. For the rest, she's phlegmatic,
has no aspirations, and evidently no sensitiveness. All she asks is to
wait on that man and his children, and from our glimpse of Hans we can
safely surmise that he is still gratifying that simple aspiration.
Heavens! don't let's talk about it! It's too horrible!"
Tuesday came, and we made our second visit to Katrina's--fourteen years
to a month from the time of our first. Again the weather was perfect,
but the years and professional cares had done their fatal work, and our
lagging spirits refused to respond to the jocund call of the day. Again
we approached, with an absurd shrinking, the bleak old house. The bleak
old house was not there; nay, it was there, but transformed. It was
painted red. Blossoming vines clambered over it; French windows
descended to meet its wide verandas; striped awnings sheltered its
rooms from the July sun. The lawns, sloping down to a close-clipped
hedge, were green and velvety. The iron dog was gone. A great hammock
swung in the corner of the veranda, and in it tumbled a fat, pink child
and a kitten. The fat child proved that all was not a dream. It was
Katrina reborn--the Katrina of that first day in school, twenty years
and more ago. Rather unsteadily we walked up the gravel path, rather
uncertainly we rang the bell. A white-capped maid ushered us in. Yes,
Frau von Heller was at home and expecting the ladies. Would the ladies
be gracious enough to enter? The ladies would. The ladies entered.
The partition between two of the rooms had been taken down and the
entire floor made over. There was a wide hall, with a great living-room
at the right. As we approached it we heard the gurgle of a baby's
laugh, Katrina's answering ripple, and the murmur of a bass voice
buzzing like a cheerful bumblebee. Our footsteps were deadened by the
thick carpet, and our entrance did not disturb for a moment the
pleasing family tableau on which we gazed. The professor was standing
with his baby in his arms, his profile toward the door, facing his
wife, who was laughing up at him. The infant had grasped a handful of
his father's wavy gray hair and was making an earnest and gratifyingly
successful effort to drag it out by the roots. Von Heller's face,
certainly ten years younger than when we saw it last, was alight with
pride in this precocious offspring. Seeing us, he tossed the baby on
his shoulder, holding it there with one accustomed arm, and came to
meet us, his wife close by his side. They reached us together, but it
was the professor who gave us our welcome. This time he needed no
introduction.
"My wife's friends, Miss Lawrence and Miss Gifford, is it not?" He
smiled, extending his big hand to each of us in turn, and giving our
hands a grip the cordiality of which made us wince. "It is a pleasure.
But you will excuse this young man, is it not?" He lowered the baby to
his breast as he spoke, while his wife fell upon our necks in
hospitable greeting. "He has no manners, this young man," added the
father, sadly, when Katrina had thus expressed her rapture in our
arrival. "He would yell if I put him down, and he has lungs--ach, but
he has lungs!"
He busied himself drawing forth chairs for us, apparently quite
unhampered by his small burden. We contemplated the baby and said
fitting things. He had cheeks like beefsteaks and eyes that stuck out
of his head with what appeared to be joyful interest in his
surroundings Katrina exclaimed over a sudden discovery:
"But you haven't taken off your hats!" she cried. "Hans, give the baby
to Gretchen and take my friends' wraps and hats up to the guest-room. I
don't want Miss Lawrence to climb stairs."
The professor obediently summoned the nurse, dropped the baby, burdened
himself with our garments, and ambled off with the tread of a peaceful
elephant. When he returned, with the eager look of a retriever waiting
for another stick, his wife promptly met his hopes.
"Arrange the easy-chair for Miss Lawrence, dear," she said,
comfortably, "and put an ottoman under her feet. I want her to rest
while she is here."
The professor did it, while we gazed. He also inquired feelingly as to
the state of Jessica's health, showed a sympathy almost human in her
replies, and placed a pillow behind her back. Subsequently, during that
call, he did these things:
He answered the telephone half a dozen times, faithfully repeating to
his wife the messages of her various friends, and carrying hers back,
as she declined to be torn from us long enough to talk to them herself.
He rounded up the remaining two children and presented them for our
inspection, straightening his son's shoulders with an experienced hand,
and tying with consummate skill the bow on his little girl's hair.
He went to the stable and ordered the family carriage, that we might
drive later in the afternoon.
He searched for and found the morning newspaper, thoughtlessly dropped
in the waste-paper basket by the maid, and he read aloud to us a
paragraph to which Katrina had referred chronicling the achievements of
a classmate of ours. He brought to Katrina, at different times and from
remote parts of the house, one white shawl, six photographs of the
children, an essay written by their son, aged ten, two books, a bib to
meet a sudden need of the baby, and Katrina's address-book. He did
these things, and he did them cheerfully, and with the unmistakable
ease of frequent repetition. I glanced at Jessica. The expressions of
incredulity and amazement to which she had freely yielded during the
first half-hour of our call had given way to a look of deep reflection.
Subsequently Katrina showed us her home. The room that had been the
professor's study was now part of the large general living-room. The
laboratory was now Katrina's personal sitting-room. Through its French
windows we saw Katrina's garden blossoming like the rose. Jessica asked
the present location of the professor's study and laboratory. She
subsequently admitted to me that she should not have done it, but that
to leave the house without the information would have been a physical
and moral impossibility. Katrina looked at her vaguely, as one seeking
to recall a fleeting moment of the long-dead past; but the professor
responded with gratified alacrity.
"But you shall see them!" he cried. "Surely, yes;" and like a jovial
school-boy he led us up to the third floor. There, indeed, was his
study--a hall bedroom, much crowded by his desk and easy-chair; and off
it, in a closet, were his beloved bottles and chemicals. I felt a throb
of sympathy for the professor, but he was evidently blissfully ignorant
of any reason for such a sentiment.
"The _Mutterchen_ and the babies need the rest," he smiled,
complacently. "They must not climb too many stairs--no;" and he led the
way back to comfort with unconsciousness of the painful contrast
between past and present conditions that made Jessica and me carefully
refrain from meeting each other's eyes. The children, when they espied
him upon our return, uttered shrieks of joy. The baby sprang to his
arms, the little boy swarmed up his leg. The picture of Professor von
Heller as a perfectly trained husband and father was complete.
In silence, after our prolonged farewells, Jessica and I left the
house. In silence we entered the trolley-car; in silence we rode home.
At last I voiced a sudden suspicion.
"Do you think," I asked, hopefully, "that it was all a--a--well, that
she persuaded him to do it just this once, for our edification?"
Jessica shook her head.
"I thought so, at first," she conceded, slowly. "That in itself would
have been a miracle--one I'd never believe if I hadn't seen it with
these eyes. But everything disproves the theory. Do you think she could
have trained those children to advance and retreat like a Casino
ballet? On the contrary, it's evident that they literally live on him.
They've worn the creases off his trousers! Didn't you notice where the
creases left off and the sliding-place of the babies began?"
I reluctantly admitted that this detail had escaped my observation.
Jessica sighed.
"Incredible as it is," she summed up, "it's all true. It's the real
thing."
"It opens quite a vista," I observed, thoughtfully. "If you would like
Professor Adams's present address, I can give it to you. He is in the
Adirondacks with his sister Mollie, and I had a letter from her this
morning."
Jessica looked at me and urged me not to be vulgar. Her thoughtful
expression did not lift.
"If Katrina can do _that_ with _that_ man," I murmured, reflectively,
as we entered the house, "I really believe you could work wonders with
Adams. He would probably do the cooking and marketing--"
"If you're so impressed," remarked Jessica, in incisive tones, "I
wonder you don't yield to the prayers and tears of your editor man."
My reply made Jessica sink into a hall chair which was fortunately at
hand.
"I am going to," I said, placidly. And I did.
Jessica's nature being less womanly and yielding than mine, her
surrender was a matter of longer time. In the interval I quite forgot
her unimportant affairs, being wholly absorbed in the really
extraordinary values of my own. Two weeks before the reopening of
college, my reformed yellow journalist, who had come West to spend his
brief vacation with me, was seated by my side one evening studying the
admirable effect of a ring he had just placed on my finger. It is
singular how fraught with human interest such moments can be, and
Edward and I failed to hear Jessica as she opened the door. She looked
over our heads as she spoke to me, Her face was rather red, but her
voice and manner expressed a degree of indifference which I am
convinced no human being has ever really felt on any subject.
"Did you say that you could give me Mollie Adams's address?" asked
Jessica.
XI
BART HARRINGTON, GENIUS
The assistant Sunday editor of the New York "Searchlight" was busy.
This was not an unusual condition, but it frequently included unusually
irritating features. His superior, Wilson, the Sunday editor, was a
gentleman with a high brow and a large salary, who, having won a
reputation as "a Napoleon of Journalism," had successfully cultivated a
distaste for what he called "details." His specialty was the making of
suggestions in editorial council, in cheery expectation that they would
be carried out by his associates--an expectation so rarely realized
that Mr. Wilson's visage had almost a habit of hurt wonder. "Details"
continued to absorb the activity of the Sunday "Searchlight" office,
and Maxwell, the assistant editor, attended to them all, murmuring
bitterly against his chief as he labored.