[Frontispiece: "YOU!" SHE BREATHED. _Page 300_]
MOTHERS OF MEN
By
WILLIAM HENRY WARNER
AND
DE WITTE KAPLAN
_With Frontispiece by E. L. Blumenschein_
NEW YORK
TEMPLE SCOTT
101 PARK AVENUE
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
TEMPLE SCOTT
MOTHERS OF MEN
CHAPTER I
Marie sat staring at the thin, hard-featured man opposite her. His
eyes, through the great bone spectacles, were magnified till they
looked like some gigantic insect's, and his nervous hands shuffled
among the papers on the table before him.
"I'm sorry, Miss Helmar," he said, "very sorry, but that is all there
is. Your father was a man who indulged his hobbies, and you must
admit that a hobby which carries one into every country on the globe
is rather expensive."
Across the girl's mind came the image of her father, whom she had
followed weeping to the cemetery only yesterday. His tall, thin
figure, with its haggard, pain-racked face, was clearly before her
mental vision.
When her mother, who was now only a shadowy remembrance, had faded
out of her life, Marie had been taken to the convent and left with
the nuns. Her childhood had been passed in even, colorless days, in
which the monotony had only been broken when she had been called into
the library once a week to hear the letter from her father, who was
wandering in far countries, which, for her, meant only the colored
maps in her geography books.
It seemed little longer than yesterday, when the Mother Superior had
sent for her that last time. She could almost hear the gentle voice
now.
"Your father is coming home to Vienna, Marie. He writes he has had
his solicitor take a house for him on the _Blumen Strasse_. You are
to leave us, dear child, and make a home for him."
This wonderful father of whom she had been dreaming, was going to
take her with him to a home of their own! She had wanted so to
belong to some one. The holiday time had always meant heartaches for
her. She could remember how wistfully she had stood with her small
face pressed against the convent windows, watching her schoolmates as
they left to spend those days at home. She remembered how bare and
empty the convent had looked after they were gone, and she had been
left to wander about alone, till the school days should begin again.
The small, hard pillow on her narrow bed, would be soaked with tears
as she read and re-read the small packet of letters from her father,
that told her so little. These quiet years, while they had succeeded
in suppressing her natural affection, had only stored it away as it
were, and the girl was pathetically eager to pour it out to the
father whom she scarcely knew.
The wonder and interest of those first few months, woke in her mind
ideals and dreams she had never had in the seclusion of the convent,
where her day had been bounded by prayers in the morning and the
vesper bell at night.
Professor Helmar's life had been wrapped up in his pretty wife. She
had been much younger than the reticent, rather shy man, whose
interests were all centered in the dry dust of forgotten ages, until
the living sunshine of her own hair had flashed across his gray
vista. There had been six joyous, wonderful years, and then suddenly
she had gone, leaving the place she had filled, empty indeed. Her
short illness and death had been a blow so severe to him, that he
hesitated only long enough to put their little daughter, whose golden
hair reminded him too forcibly of his loss, in the care of the nuns,
then threw himself once more into his researches among the ruins of
antiquity.
That was twelve years ago, and weary at last, longing for the
companionship of the daughter who was the symbol of the love that had
meant so much to him, he had come back. And in this short year,
Marie, wide-eyed and passionately eager to be all that this wonderful
father wanted her to be, had blossomed from the shy convent child
into the promise of charming young womanhood.
The little house in the _Blumen Strasse_ was filled with his books,
and the pictures her mother had loved. The girl, inspired by her
father, came to know and understand art, for Professor Helmar's quest
after the evolution of beauty, had carried him through the ages, from
its shadowy beginning among the great temples of Egypt, to its
culmination in the Greece of Pericles. Then, like a bolt out of the
blue, had come his last illness and death, and now she was alone.
Something of all this flashed across her mind in the few seconds the
solicitor waited for his answer, much as a man's life passes before
him when he is drowning. She looked about her helplessly.
"But," she scarcely recognized her own voice, "what am I to do?"
"That, my dear young lady," this time the solicitor looked over the
great spectacles, "is something you will have to decide for yourself.
Your father gave you a very good education, I believe."
"I was at the Sacred Heart Convent from the time I was six until just
about a year ago. They taught me French and music, and a little
drawing. I never thought I should have to use them." Indeed, the
idea that the necessities of life were not one's by right, had never
entered her mind.
The solicitor was beginning to gather up the papers.
"We never know, my dear young lady, when we will be overtaken by
adversity. It is always well to have something to fall back upon.
Couldn't you teach--er--say French? Music?"
Marie's tear-filled eyes wandered about the tasteful room. With what
happiness she had come here, and after so brief a space of time, this
overwhelmingly crushing blow. All her brief life, sheltered as it
had been in the convent, her mind had never dwelt upon the nature of
material things. There had always been new, clean frocks for her.
There had always been sufficient food to eat without the thought of
how it had been provided, always the haven of her scrupulously clean,
little white room. These things all were, there was no thought in
her mind of how they came to be, nor the possibility that they would
ever cease to exist.
But now, the meaning of the shriveled old solicitor's words were
making themselves plain to her. The means of a livelihood had been
taken away. She must, in order to live, provide for herself, either
through some physical exertion, or some mental effort. What was she
to do?
She had never learned to walk alone. The quiet cloisters, the
sweet-faced nuns, had been a prop on which she had leaned. When her
father had returned from those journeys into foreign lands, where his
discoveries and scientific studies had furnished dreams for her
lonely childhood, she had leaned as heavily on him, and now that this
support had been taken away, she stood like one swaying dizzily on
the edge of a precipice.
It was so short a time ago, only a year, that he had returned, but
how different from the strong, stalwart, handsome man she had been
expecting.
Again his face seemed to float before her, pale, thin, drawn with
suffering, with its sad eyes always seeming to ask for something.
Her poor father! The love and companionship she had dreamed of had
been too long deferred, and he had gone away on that last great
journey, only to leave her worse than alone in the end.
"I suppose you will not want to keep up this place," the solicitor's
voice broke in on her thoughts, "it will be quite beyond your
affording."
She looked about her at the things she had learned to love. After
the bare convent walls, the simple beauty of this little home, had
seemed luxury itself. The really fine etchings which had been her
mother's, the delicate little Tanagra figurines her father had
brought her, the bits of Pompeiian glass flashing back the prismatic
colors of the tears that must once have filled them, the little
bronze Narcissus, which she had loved above everything, must she give
them all up?
Through the long windows she caught a glimpse of the tiny garden
where her father and she had always had their coffee. The old locust
tree was even now dropping its fragrant white petals on the flagging.
He had loved the scent of these white blossoms! How could she leave
it all?
"Where shall I go? Where can I go?" She was frightened; the world
seemed such a vast, unexplored place to her who had known only the
convent and these sheltered walls.
The papers were all gathered together now, and the hands of the
solicitor were busy putting them carefully into his black leather
portfolio.
"You have about two thousand crowns, Miss Helmar," he told her, "to
be exact, I should say, that after all expenses are paid, there will
be about one hundred crowns a month for you, for a year. That is not
a munificent sum, but it will maintain you until you begin to earn
your living."
Marie looked helplessly about her. Her knowledge of money was not
very extensive, but she knew that one hundred crowns a month would
not even begin to pay the rent of this little nest her father had
brought her to. And there was the housekeeper to be paid, food to be
bought, clothes. She sighed.
"Where shall I go to live?" she faltered.
"You will find many places, many places," reassured the solicitor, "I
dare say I may be able to find you--er--one or two pupils--er--if you
are not exorbitant in your prices."
"Oh, no, I'll not be," she answered him eagerly. "I'll ask the least
possible, Herr Gutman. I--I suppose I had better seek a room for
myself this--this afternoon?"
"The sooner, the better," the tone was unsympathetic, there were too
many cases such as this, stored away among his files. "The less time
you stay here, the more _kronen_ you will have for the year." He
picked up his shining black hat, "I must bid you good morning, Miss
Helmar. If there is anything I can do, let me know. Of course, I
shall want to know your new address," and with a slight bow he left
her.
Unpleasant as his crabbed features were, they were better than no
one, and after the door had closed on his thin figure, she felt
terrifyingly alone.
All her life she had been led to believe that Hunger and Want, those
two cruel sisters, would never knock at her door, but here they were,
actually grinning at her elbow. When this small sum that stood
between her and starvation was gone, what was she to do? Suppose she
couldn't get any pupils? Suppose she could find no way of earning
her living. The thought sent her blond head down on her arms, and
shook her slender, black-clad figure with sobs.
"Ach, Fräulein!" it was old Minna, the housekeeper, who found her,
and whose broad hand tried to pat some comfort into the shaking
shoulders. "Ach, Fräulein, you must not cry so, it is much better
for the good Herr to be at rest. He was in pain so long, it is much
better so."
"I am alone, Minna, I am alone," sobbed the girl, "nobody wants me,
nobody needs me, I'm alone."
Minna dabbed her eye with the corner of her stiff white apron.
"You must not cry, Fräulein," she begged, "you must not cry! Come,
lie down awhile, and when you are rested, you will feel better!"
"I must leave here, Minna," sobbed the girl, "I have no money
now--I'm--I'm poor--I must go away--to-day. I don't know where! I
don't know where!"
Minna's broad bosom heaved sympathetically.
"Why not go back to the good sisters at the Sacred Heart?" she
suggested.
"That was my thought," replied Marie between her sobs, and indeed,
all that first bitter night after her father's death, she had longed
for the comforting arms of the Mother Superior, and the little French
sister who had been her dearest friend.
"Why not go there, then?" The problem seemed so simple to the good
German woman.
"I promised father," explained Marie, "that I wouldn't. You see, he
was always afraid I would become a nun. He said I was never meant to
be shut away from the world; but, oh, Minna, I'm so afraid."
"Tut-tut, Fräulein, what need you fear?" For Minna there was no
danger that she could not meet with the aid of her ready tongue and
able arms. "Can't you keep this pretty house?"
"I am poor now, Minna," Marie told her sadly. "I must find a place
not so expensive, I must find pupils," and at the thought the golden
head went down again on her folded arms.
The old woman stared at her.
"What about me?" she asked.
Marie lifted her head, startled.
"I don't know," she said, "I hadn't thought!"
Minna pursed her lips, her brow wrinkling into a heavy frown for a
moment, then suddenly, her face cleared.
"Don't mind about me, Fräulein," she said. "I have been wanting a
rest. I shall take it for a week. After that there are plenty of
places for good housekeepers."
"But where can I go?" The blue eyes were very wistful, the world
seemed so terrifyingly large and strange.
Minna thought a moment.
"If the Fräulein would not find it too plain," she ventured, "I can
take her to a nice place."
"Nothing is too plain, Minna; don't you understand that I am poor?
Will you take me there, now?"
"Of course, I will." Minna was all eagerness. "It is quite on the
other side of the city, Fräulein, but it is clean, and I think we can
get it cheap. My friend is a musician," this with some pride, "he
and his wife live there. I'll get my bonnet. We'll go right away!"
and she bustled out to prepare for the journey.
Marie sat a moment looking about her. The things she loved and which
her father had taught her to understand, everything that had grown
dear to her, she must leave them all, for the grim-faced Herr Gutman
had made it very plain to her that it was only by selling all these
that she was to have the means to live at all.
Slowly, she rose to her feet, and went into her little room with its
pretty pink and white hangings, its dainty bed. For a long time she
stood and stared at herself in the mirror. The sad face stared back
at her, made whiter by the black of her mourning frock. There were
deep shadows under her blue eyes, one or two strands of fair hair had
escaped from their fastenings. Wearily she brushed them back and
dried her tears. She pulled a small black leather trunk out of the
cupboard and began packing it. The tears started afresh as she laid
her belongings neatly in the trays and put in the dainty piles of
lingerie. Marie loved beautiful things; she loved to feel the touch
of fine linen next to her white skin. She loved the dainty ribbons,
tied across her young breast. But ribbons, bows and silk stockings
would be impossible in the future.
The last frock packed, the last pair of shoes put in, she closed and
locked the little trunk, then, with trembling lips, she pinned on her
black hat and slipped into her coat.
"I'm ready, Minna," she called, as she came back into the
living-room, "we must waste no time."
The good woman bustled in, resplendent in her Sunday bonnet.
"I'm ready too, Fräulein," she said as she buttoned across her ample
bosom the jacket that had evidently been made for her in less buxom
days. "I'm ready too, shall we start?"
With a last look back, Marie went down the stairs and out into that
world of which she knew so little.