go? He did not.
“But we will _not_ sell your house. We will go back, even if it must be
in the steerage, and work _together_, live _together_, happily ever
after!”
“Dominus vobiscum!” cried Ravant’s happy wife, leaping into his arms.
And all this, save the steerage, they did. And at this very moment they
are living as happily as they planned.
[Illustration: “_She was on the floor there before him, her face
upraised to his_”]
LIEBEREICH[4]
I THE HOUSE THAT HE AND EMMY BUILT
“He’d be better off,” said Mrs. Schwalm, referring to the possible death
of old Liebereich.
“You don’t mean you’d be?” grinned Hermann Schlimm.
He had drifted into Mrs. Krantz’s kitchen, among the women, after the
funeral. No one gave him any attention.
Old Liebereich’s wife had just been buried, and they were met to pay
Mrs. Krantz their respects. She had been the “next-door neighbor”
through Mrs. Liebereich’s illness.
There was some strawberry preserve presently, and some “field tea.”
Then Mrs. Krantz said to Mrs. Schwalm:
“You had better go now.”
Mrs. Schwalm was “next door” on the other side. She would now housekeep
for old Liebereich for a week. Then Mrs. Engwein, who lived next to Mrs.
Krantz, would take her turn, and so on while old Liebereich lived—which
it was thought would not be long. For no one ever went to “the
poor-house” or “the home” from this German vicinage.
These things were so well understood that they were not even discussed
at this gathering. But there was a well-defined understanding that the
brief management of old Liebereich would be difficult. Mrs. Schwalm rose
to go.
“He won’t fold his britches unless you make him,” warned Mrs. Krantz.
“And I’ve heared,” said another, “that he never hangs ’em on the back of
a cheer if he kin put ’em on the floor.”
Old Liebereich had an odious reputation for this sort of thing.
“You know Emmy she spoiled him.”
“If _he_ didn’t do things, _she_ done ’em.”
“That’s a good way to spoil ’em!”
Mrs. Krantz warned again:
“You got to keep the clock on him all the time, or it’s no use. At six
he’s got to eat his supper. You’ll have to push him right in his cheer,
and see that he gits things in his mouth. If you don’t, you’ll have to
clean ’em off the floor. Seven, to bed with him. Yisterday he says to
me, says he: ‘I ain’t no dog-gone baby! Lemme alone! I kin git to bed
myself.’ But I had him asleep by that time.”
Mrs. Schwalm sighed. It was plain that she was going to a house of
trouble. But it was her duty, and she would do it, as they all would.
I do not know at what point, precisely, along the pike, east and west
from old Liebereich, the “next-door neighbor” obligation ceased. It was
very far. Nevertheless, before the year which succeeded the death of his
wife had passed, its courtesies had been exhausted. Each neighbor had
served two turns, and each had murmured dismally at the prospect of a
third. Finally, they all joined in discussing out-and-out rebellion
against custom and Liebereich.
Indeed, one morning the doctor, whose business it was to keep the people
up to their duties, found an interregnum. He brought Mrs. Krantz from
her house to old Liebereich’s as one does a detected criminal.
“I’ve had three turns a’ready,” she defended.
“The man has had no breakfast,” said the doctor. “He must eat while he
lives!”
“Well, he’d be better off, and so would we, if he was—”
The doctor stopped her with a solemn up-lifted finger:
“‘Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the
least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’”
She thought it made no difference that she gave grudgingly. But old
Liebereich felt the touch of impatience. And he saw that she swept the
dirt into a corner, stood the broom where it did not belong, and left
the stale water in his pitcher.
“You git out!” he quavered senilely. “I kin housekeep for myself!”
“Git your other leg in your britches, or I’ll—”
He did it so suddenly, in his fright, that Mrs. Krantz’s humor returned,
and she laughed. She was dressing him. He broke out afresh at this
evidence of safety:
“I built this here house before I was twenty-one or you was born—I did.
My mother she says, says she: ‘Bill, soon it will be a man in the house.
Don’t you think you’d better git the house? You and Emmy’s mighty
thick.’ I took the hint. And, on the morning I got twenty-one, here I
was! And, begosh, there”—he pointed to the other side of the
fireplace—“was Emmy! She and me done it all—together. She drawed the
plan. You see them bricks that ain’t the right color? Emmy laid ’em!
Yessir! With her little hands—and a trowel—and mortar! They are all
right except the color. I says, says I, ‘Take ’em right out!’ But she
threw the mortar on me, and it went in my hair and eyes, and she had to
wash it out—that’s why they was never changed. And I’m glad they wasn’t.
Whenever I look at ’em—one of ’em’s a little loose—I kin see my Emmy
laying ’em! Well, you never see nothing as nice, I’ll bet you, as Emmy
laying bricks! Old Gaertner made the bricks—out there where the boys
swim now. That was all clay once. None of the ground clods like you git
in bricks nowadays! It’s too long for you to remember, I expect. You not
more’n sixty-five or so.” Then his mind flew back to the cause of his
rebellion, and he was all the more angry that he had forgotten it in
thinking of Emmy. “And now you want to boss me! I won’t stand it. Git
out! You’re just a spring chicken.”
“You shut up!” cried Mrs. Krantz.
At this anathema he gasped in fresh fear.
“Betsy,” he said humbly when he could speak, “you’re too young to talk
to me like that!”
“I’m going on seventy!” snapped Mrs. Krantz; which boast was untrue.
“So?”
Old Liebereich caught the insincerity and turned to inspect her.
“’Tain’t so!” he said, with old-fashioned passion against a lie. “You
think you kin shut me up that-a-way and I’ll go to bed easy! You git
right out!”
“If you don’t take keer I will!” cried the exasperated housekeeper.
“Let’s see what the Lord says!”
She closed her eyes and put a finger on a text of the Bible which lay
open there, meaning, if it were favorable, to take him at his word and
leave the consequences to heaven.
But what she read was:
“Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the
least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
II
EMMY AND HE WERE NEVER APART
When seven o’clock came, old Liebereich, unrebuked, still reviled her
and her housekeeping. For the Scriptures had spoken and the woman knew
her duty. She did it. And not a word delayed or hastened by an instant
old Liebereich’s relentless progress to bed.
Even when he was there he said:
“You can’t keep no house! My Emmy kin beat you all! Look at that!”
It was an andiron which had become dull.
“When my Emmy gits back you kin go to grass!”
But the last word was mumbled in the delicious sleep Mrs. Krantz had
brought him.
Then Mrs. Krantz humbly polished the dulled andiron, cleaned the dirt
out of the corners, restored the broom to its rightful corner, folded
old Liebereich’s trousers and hung them over the back of a chair,
lighted the lamp, shaded it, looked again at that scriptural text, as if
to ask whether every cross had been borne, then went out, to return at
five in the morning. For old Liebereich was permitted to sleep late. He
was no trouble when he slept.
Now, while old Liebereich sleeps, I shall tell you some things you ought
to know. In the idiom of the vicinage he was considered “funny,” which
means only queer. Happiness had made him so, they said. His most
constant and odious boast was that he had loved his wife for eighty
years. It began, he said, when he was four and she was born.
And old Liebereich did not know that she was dead. Something had dulled
his faculties when they told him she would die, and now he believed (as
they told him, so that he would not “bother” them) that she was at her
sister’s in Maryland to get well, and would be home soon. So the curious
jerk of his head toward the door by the fireplace meant only that he was
vigilant for his wife’s return. The neighbors thought it part of his
aberration.
But even the little intelligence he retained made out this return to
have been logically too long delayed. It was no longer “very soon,” as
they had at first told him; it was scarcely “soon,” as they had at last
told him.
And Christmas was coming!
“Do you think she will be here for Christmas?” he asked each one of
them.
They assured him of this.
“Then I’ll hang up the old stockings and su’prise her!”
Here, again, I must explain that they had always cherished the element
of surprise in their Christmas giving.
You will have seen that old Liebereich was living too long for his
neighbors. I must be careful how I put their sentiments into words, so
that no injustice be done them. I think I had better say that it began
to seem to them like effrontery for him to live on. They said oftener
now and with greater unction that he would be better off. And they
answered Hermann Schlimm’s query (in the second paragraph of this
story), when he repeated it, with accumulating anger now.
But you are not to suppose that old Liebereich was made unhappy by the
least knowledge of this. On the contrary, nothing of it reached him. He
found another reason for their brusqueness. They were simply _women_—and
unlike Emmy.
One day, Mrs. Schwalm, wearily responding to his questions about his
wife, asked him why he did not write to her. This at least, she thought
cunningly, would consume time, keep him quiet, and give death added
opportunity.
Now, in all his thoughts there had never been that one.
“Why, you see,” he said, “Emmy and me was never apart for a day. It was
no need to write. And,” he went on, “I ain’t no scholar. But—say—you got
any ink?”
The letter was a secret office which he attended to himself. It took
many days. But he was very happy afterward, and delivered it to Mrs.
Schwalm and Mrs. Krantz, who were to get a stamp and mail it.
“What we going to do with it?” whispered Mrs. Schwalm. “Burn it?”
“No. Open it.”
However, Mrs. Schwalm, who was known to be sentimental, opposed this.
“But it’s got to be answered.”
This was so. Mrs. Krantz cumulated her arguments.
“He’ll ask for the answer a dozen times a day till you’re crazy!”
“Well, anyhow, let’s wait a little. He may die any day,” was the way
Mrs. Schwalm temporized.
“You’re interfering with the Lord’s business!” chided the curious Mrs.
Krantz, finally.
III
“VERGISSNICHTMEIN”
So, while they went away with this letter which was never to be mailed,
old Liebereich sat by the fire in the fireplace which he had built, and
rocked gently, and sang old German songs, and would not go to bed, but
fell asleep there. And even in his sleep he was found singing:
“Blau ist ein Blümlein
Das heiszt Vergissnichtmein—”
None of us will ever agree with those old German wives, I think. How
could old Liebereich ever be better off—how could any one—than singing
old German songs by the fire and waiting for the coming of his wife—and
Christmas?
And he got an answer to his letter. It told him very briefly not to
worry, that she would be home at Christmas. It was signed “Emmy.”
For the wives had said among themselves that God would understand. Just
as if they understood God! If He should take him, all would be well. If
not, He would find a way.
It was because they thought God would understand that they had opened
that pitiful letter of old Liebereich’s. He spoke of his loneliness; how
he had waited for her without complaint; how, now, he could wait no
longer. At the end he told her, with the imperiousness of a husband,
that she _must_ come home. They read this; they saw the childish blots;
they knew where his half-palsied hands had missed the line, then
recovered it; finally they read the boyish signature—with dry eyes.
Then they wrote that reply.
I hope that neither you nor I could have done this—with dry eyes.
But the night before Christmas arrived, and old Liebereich’s wife had
not come. Nevertheless, he had no doubt. No one had ever lied to him
except Mrs. Krantz. And he had never lied. And here was her letter.
There was her name.
They came in and found him reading the letter.
“My Emmy never fooled me yit,” he told them exultingly. “She’ll come.
Only she’s late a little.”
He put the letter in their eyes.
“Don’t it say she’ll be home _at_ Christmas?”
And I hope that neither you nor I have ever had that happen to us—such a
letter thrust into our eyes!
When they whispered among themselves he grew cunning, and pretended to
sing, while he listened. What he heard made him think that she was
already come, but was in hiding to surprise him. Something was to happen
the moment he went to sleep. And he fancied that they meant to bring her
in at that moment. Well, he liked that. No surprise he had ever planned
himself was quite so fine. _Emmy_ was to be his Christmas gift!
But what they had spoken about was the paleness of his old face, and how
he had recently “failed.” For he could not sleep now, or eat, for
watching and waiting.
And old Liebereich carried his cunning on to a desperate end. He
pretended to be prodigiously sleepy. Yet, when they would have hustled
him off to bed, he suddenly and savagely rebelled, stamped his feet, and
put them out of the house, in a specious fury they could not withstand.
“I kin put myself to bed,” he cried happily after them. “I ain’t no
dog-gone baby. I won’t be bossed in my own house!”
But the moment he had closed the door upon them he laughed.
And when he pulled down the blinds he did not know that he shut out
their peeping eyes.
It all had made him tired.
IV
THE NIGHT-SHIRT WITH THE FEATHER-STITCHING OF BLUE
He unlocked the door by the fireplace, presently, and lighted two new
candles. Then he got from the bottom drawer the night-shirt with the
blue feather-stitching about the collar, and put it on. His trousers lay
on the floor.
“Now,” he laughed defiantly, “what will Mrs. Schwalm say? Let her say
it!”
For you must know that such things as this adorned night-shirt had been
banished to the bottom drawer, since his commandeering, as far too
frivolous for his years. You will also observe that old Liebereich
expected Mrs. Schwalm to see him in this garment and to rebuke him. But
it was about this that he was so very reckless. For at the moment of its
discovery his wife would have arrived, and then, in his own words, they
might all go to grass!
But this obliges me to speak of old Liebereich’s cunning plan, or, which
perhaps is better, to let him tell it for you as he now told it to
himself in the kitchen of the house he and Emmy had built.
“They’ll bring her in that door by the fireplace, all dressed for
Christmas. And they’ll all be crowding in behind her to see what I’ll
do. Well, they’ll see! Oh, they’ll see! I wish it would be early morning
and the sun come through the door. I expect I kin wait that much longer.
And mebby the bells’ll ring. They’ll sneak her right up to my bed, and
then they’ll holler, ‘Merry Christmas, Liebereich! Wake up!’
“But I’ll fool ’em. I’ll hug Emmy right afore ’em all, and let ’em know
that I’ve fooled ’em! And I’ll laugh at Mrs. Schwalm. So will Emmy. And
after that—” Now what _could_ there be after that? “After that we’ll
just be happy. That’s all.”
Meanwhile he tidied the room as it had never been tidied before, and
then fixed his thick white hair about his face in the fashion which Emmy
liked.
At last he held up both candles and looked at himself in the mirror, and
there were pink spots on his cheek-bones, and the bit of blue about his
neck went very well with his faded eyes. Old Liebereich wagged his head
with the satisfaction of a dandy at what he saw.
Suddenly he started away from the mirror, then back to it. Then he
laughed.
“I thought it was you, Emmy. And you looked like that first day when you
saw your face in it. Sixteen. I wouldn’t like you to come back looking
sixteen, and me eighty-four. No, I ain’t quite ready for you yit, Emmy;
I must get clean sheets. But we ain’t far apart now no more!”
He went close to the mirror to whisper this. He still was not sure that
he did not see her there.
And I hope that you and I have “seen things” in the mirror, though
perhaps we are not eighty-four and have no Emmy.
Then he went on getting ready for her till he was very tired—more tired,
he thought, than he had ever been.
Outside Mrs. Schwalm was whispering to Mrs. Krantz:
“No, they ain’t far apart! He’s mighty funny to-night. He is seeing
things.”
At last he was ready to hang up their stockings on the brass nails which
had been put into the mantel for this purpose when the house was built.
And, for something to surprise her, he took from behind that loose brick
a gold coin. It had the date of 1825 on it. There was a hole in it, and
through the hole a narrow blue ribbon.
But now he stopped and his heart heaved.
“It was to cut the baby’s teeth on.”
After a while:
“We was going to call him Billy if he was a boy—Emmy if she was a girl.”
Again:
“But there never was no baby.”
And then, at last:
“But there never was no baby.”
He put the coin in the toe of Emmy’s stocking and went to bed and closed
his eyes—to watch. And his last words were:
“Tired—tired—tired—Emmy!”
He dozed and made himself wake so often, and nothing had happened, that
he grew afraid and much more tired. And the red went out of his cheeks,
and he could feel his face becoming very cold.
He dozed a long time, at last without waking.
Then they outside, seeing this, came in—all those neighbors—stealthily,
whispering and going toward his bed. Some one brought a candle and held
it so close to his eyes that it scorched and tortured him. He woke; he
was tremendously terrified by their stealth, but he did not understand
at all—he who had never had such thoughts as theirs.
They did not know that he was awake.
“He is better off,” said one of them.
“He died easy,” said another.
Then, suddenly, old Liebereich understood. He did not quiver. But his
heart was bursting.
“I don’t know about that,” said a wary one.
Some one took Liebereich’s hand from under the covers.
“’Sh! He’s only asleep,” the voice whispered.
Another sighed a disappointment.
“Touch his feet,” said one.
This was done, and the same verdict reached. He was not yet dead.
“He still thinks she’ll come!”
There was a laugh somewhere.
“Look at the night-shirt!”
“How long is she dead now?”
They left him then, and he could breathe a moment. They put into his
stocking some things they had brought—simple things—at the last a spiral
of pink-and-white candy.
But there was no laughter—only silence. Once more they were doing their
duty. And once more—for only the second sad time in his long life—old
Liebereich understood.
“It ain’t much,” said a pitying one.
“It’s enough,” said another, crossly.
The last one said—to comfort both:
“He’ll never know no better.”
Then they came and looked at him again.
“Yes—only asleep.”
Another voice said:
“In the morning, I expect. Often they sleep away.”
A doubting young woman said:
“Mebby it just happened now and he ain’t cold yet.”
But her elders, who had seen death often, only frowned.
Then they went out.
Old Liebereich lay very still. He was icy cold. The feet and hands they
had touched would not get warm. He felt yet their cold touch. Two tears
stole down his cheeks. His heart was still filled to bursting. Yet he
lay quite still. Presently something like content came and stayed, and
smoothed the sorrow from his face, and made it beautiful.
V
THE SECOND OPENING OF THE DOOR
Then, without the least warning, the door opened again, directly in his
eyes, and everything was quite as he had fancied it. Like a picture in
its frame, there stood his wife dressed for Christmas. And she was well
and happy—by the smiles on her face. And the morning had come, as he had
wished; for, as the door opened, the sun behind her smote away the
darkness, and it seemed as if she had come down to him on those sheaves
of glittering javelins. And yes, closely crowding behind her, came the
very people he knew would come, filling all the door and making a
background for his picture. Such a background! He forgave them all at
once. For he must have dreamed those other, sadder things. And,
more,—and better still,—the bells of the little town were jangling out
their Christmas madrigal. (You know how dear the bells are to Germans!)
[Illustration: “_Like a picture in its frame, there stood his wife_”]
And old Liebereich, too, did everything just as he had planned it. He
lay quietly in his bed until they shouted, “Merry Christmas, Liebereich!
Wake up!” Then he rose and took his wife in his arms and laughed at
them,—in the very faces of them all!—and told them how cunningly he had
fooled them. Precisely as he had planned.
And he had two recollections of the moment. One was that Mrs. Schwalm
_smiled_ when she saw the blue feather-stitched night-shirt; the other
was that his wife was the prettiest of them all. After that came the
vast happiness—all as he had planned.
For all of this, from the second opening of that door, old Liebereich
had only dreamed. But, quite as they had said, he would never know
better, for he never woke.
And when the neighbors indeed came through that door again in the
morning, with guilt upon them, with stealth, wondering whether he were
now dead, while it was yet dark, holding candles once more to his eyes,
old Liebereich met them with such a beautiful, smiling, heaven-touched
face that, one and all, they dropped to their knees. And their eyes were
not dry.
And I am no longer sure of that philosophy, a few pages past, where we
agreed that nothing could be better than to wait for old Liebereich’s
wife—and Christmas.
Or maybe the German wives are right, and he is better off?
For perhaps he hears sweeter music than the Christmas bells; perhaps
there is a more glorious light than the morning sun in that doorway;
perhaps the background of his picture is crowded with fairer faces than
those of his former neighbors. God knows! Perhaps immortal youth has, in
truth, come. Perhaps he does, indeed, embrace his wife. Else what is the
use of heaven? God knows!
“IUPITER TONANS”[5]
I THE SERIOUS INSOMNIA OF HIER RUHET
The Spring of The Thousand Years on the Island of Floresnik, in the
South Pacific, has now a pink marble panel, with an ornamental border,
put up by the Society for the Prevention of Disappointment, warning the
traveller, in Gothic letters and seven languages, that he who drinks of
it will sleep unchanged a thousand years.
But no such warning was there on the morning of the 15th of December,
1504, when the Iupiter Tonans, seventy-two guns, Admiral Hier Ruhet,
from Amsterdam eighty-eight days, bore down upon the little island. The
great new battleship had been separated from her consorts by the thick
weather following the storm on the 12th of January of that year, and had
now been out of her reckoning and without fresh water for twenty-three
days.
There was little attempt at discipline as the great ship came to anchor.
Indeed, none was needed. From Ruhet down to the ship’s boots, Jawrge,
but one desire prevailed,—water.
Nor was there any waiting for boats. The crew waded or swam ashore and
drank till they could drink no more. Nicht Wahr, the haughty first
officer, dropped to the earth by the side of the third cook and put his
face into the enchanting pool with him—jowl by jowl.
So that around the great spring, like the fringe on the admiral’s
cap—which he had taken off to drink—was the crew of the Tonans. And when
all were satisfied, the pool had nearly vanished.
“Ah, Nicht Wahr,” said the admiral, to his next in command, “now I am
again filled up, thank God!” with which he rolled over on his back and
disposed himself to sleep.
But he remembered then how the pool had lowered as they drank and cried
out humorously to his men: “On your life, don’t no one but me go to
sleep till the ship has had her drink. Fill everything!”
Again he turned upon his back, whispering to Nicht Wahr: “You know that
my black beast is insomnia, and it has never been worse than recently.
Therefore I must snatch my sleep when I can. I never felt so much like
it in my life. Keep awake until the ship is filled—excuse me—don’t speak
to me!—and don’t let me sleep after six o’clock.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” answered Nicht Wahr, though his own eyelids were heavy.
“But there will be no need of that, sir. You always wake first. Your
sleeplessness is a great misfortune to us all.”
Ruhet was already asleep.