THE SQUIRE AND DAVID TAKE A JOURNEY BY DAY
DAVID and the squire had not gone far in their search for Alvin before
David's mind changed. He did not care to seek him at the house of the
little Improved New Mennonite or to ask the squire to take the long walk
to Alvin's house on the mountainside. It would be better to follow the
squire's suggestion and wait until morning.
"Then we will drive out to the poorhouse and see Koehler himself. He is
the one to see. You'd better stay here to-night with me."
David shook his head. He wished to be alone; he had set a task for
himself. Perhaps some letter or document had escaped him among those in
his father's safe, some letter or document which could throw light on
the strange past.
But David found nothing. He entered again into his great house, locked
its doors, and opened the iron safe. There he read through ledgers and
day books and mortgages and deeds in vain. He found nothing but the
orderly papers of a careful business man. He looked again at the letter
upon which the secret had been written, he held it up between him and
the lamp, but the original writing was gone forever. It had been a
letter,--of that there was no doubt,--his father's writing followed the
spaces of a margin, but the text of the letter was gone.
In the morning the two men drove out the country road to the almshouse.
The fields were green, wild roses and elder were in bloom, the air was
sweet. A man could ask nothing better of fate than to be given a home
and work in such a spot.
"They say Koehler has grown quieter," said the squire. "He doesn't rave
and pray this long time."
David did not answer. If another had visited such shame upon him, it
would have been a long time before he would have grown quiet. David was
now pale, now scarlet; he moistened his lips as though he were feverish.
Reparation must be made, but what adequate reparation could be offered?
Of money there was plenty, and Alvin, alas! could be satisfied with
money; Alvin would probably never understand the awful hurt which had
been done him. But his father--how could reason be returned to him?
In his corner in the almshouse garden they found William. The almshouse
was a pleasant place with shady lawns and comfortable porches upon which
old men could smoke their pipes and old women could sit knitting or
shelling peas, or helping in other ways with the work for the large
family. William Koehler never sat with the rest. He worked all day and
then went back to his room like any self-respecting laborer. He was
disinclined to speak; he was happiest on long, sunny days when he could
be in the garden from dawn till twilight.
Now he was on his knees, weeding his cabbage plants. Another man would
have done the work quickly with a hoe, but not so William. The
delightful labor lasted longer if he pulled each weed by hand.
Frequently he paused, to press down the soil a little more solidly about
the roots of a plant or to say what sounded like an encouraging word.
Thus had he been accustomed to talk to his chickens and his bees.
When the squire and David approached, he looked up from his work with a
frown. At David he merely glanced; at the squire he stared. When he
recognized him, he smiled faintly and rose from his knees.
"Well, William," said the squire, cheerfully. "Do you know me?"
"To be sure I know you."
"Come over here and sit down, William."
"I am very busy this morning," objected William, uneasily.
He answered the squire in Pennsylvania German. The years which had
almost anglicized Millerstown had had no educating effect upon the
residents of the county home.
"But I want to talk to you a little."
The squire took him in a friendly way by the arm, at which an expression
of terror came into William's eyes, and he jerked away from the squire's
grasp.
"I will come," he promised. "But I will come myself."
The squire led the way across the lawn to the shade of a great tree
where two benches were placed at right angles. Upon one the squire and
David sat down, upon the other William. The line between William's eyes
deepened, his lips trembled, he pressed his hands, palm to palm, between
his knees. The squire and David looked at each other. The squire, too,
had grown pale; he shook his head involuntarily over the task which they
were beginning. He, too, had had a share in William's condemnation, as
had all Millerstown. The squire felt helpless. He remembered the mocking
boys, the scornful, incredulous people; he recalled the gradual taking
away of William's business by the new mason whom Millerstown imported
and encouraged. The squire thought as David had of the years that could
never be returned, of the reason which could never be restored. He took
a long time to begin what he had to say. When William half rose as
though to escape back to his garden, the squire came to himself and his
duty with a start.
"William, do you remember anything about the window that you plastered
shut in the church and about the communion set?"
William lifted his hands, then joined them on his breast. He shook now
as with palsy. David, watching him, looked away to hide his tears. David
was young, the wreck of William Koehler seemed a unique, horrible case.
Presently William answered in a low voice.
"God told me to be quiet. I prayed and prayed and God told me to be
quiet. I am quiet now."
"But, William, you must tell us what you can remember. It will be for
your good."
William opened his arms in a wild gesture, then clasped his hands again.
"A voice told me to forget it. I prayed till I heard a voice telling me
to be quiet. You are tempting me! You are tempting me to disobey God.
God said to be quiet about it!" He covered his face with his hands and
began to weep aloud in a terrible way.
David crossed the little space between them and sat down beside him.
"You didn't take the communion set," he said. "We know you didn't take
it."
William Koehler drew his hands away from his eyes and looked round at
the young face beside him. Some tone of the voice startled him.
"Who are you?" he asked in astonishment. As he put the question he moved
slowly and cautiously away, as though he planned to flee. "What do you
mean to do with me?"
Together David and the squire rose. It was clear that William had heard
as much as he could endure. His hands twitched, his eyes were as wild as
any lunatic's.
"It doesn't make any difference who I am," said David, steadily. "You
are to remember that all the people know you did not take the communion
set. You are to think of that all the time."
Again William began to weep, but in a different way.
"I cannot think of it," he sobbed. "God told me not to think of it. God
told me to forgive him. I have forgiven him."
As the squire and David drove through the gate, William was kneeling
once more among his cabbages. Sometimes he stopped and rubbed his head
in a puzzled way, then his hands returned to caress the young plants.
Almost silently the two men drove back to Millerstown and up to the
little white house on the mountain road. Standing before the door, David
saw once more its littleness, its meanness. It seemed as though it could
never have been altogether proof against the storms of winter. Looking
back at his own great mansion among the trees he shivered. Imagination
woke within him; he comprehended something of the lonely misery of poor
William. It was a salutary though dreadful experience for David.
Alvin answered their knock at once. In a half-hearted, inefficient way
he was trying to put the house into habitable condition. For the first
time in his life he thought with respect of his father and of his
father's work. His father could have applied the needed plaster and
boards skillfully and quickly.
When Alvin saw who stood without he looked at them blankly. The
difference between his worn clothes and David's fine apparel hurt him.
He was always afraid of the squire. Together the three sat down on the
porch. Here David was the spokesman. To him the squire listened with
admiration and respect.
"Alvin, the communion service has been found."
Alvin looked at them more blankly than ever. The affair of the communion
service belonged to the dim past; since he had thought of the communion
service he had been away to school, and had been educated and jilted,
and cruelly maltreated by Bevy Schnepp, and had become engaged once
more. It was a long time before Alvin could remember the very close
relation he bore to the communion service. When he remembered, his heart
sank. He recalled clearly his father's trying, desperate appeal on
Christmas Day so long ago. Had they come to make him pay for his
father's theft?
"Your father insisted that my father had been in the church and had
taken it," explained David.
"I never believed it," cried Alvin at once. He was now terrified. Were
they going to make him suffer for his father's madness. "I never
believed it! Pop could never get me to believe it," he assured them
earnestly.
"But it is true, Alvin," insisted David. "Your father had nothing to do
with it. He spoke the truth when he said that he knew nothing about it.
A great wrong was done your father. I want to try to make part of it
right with you and him."
Alvin gaped at them. It was difficult to comprehend this amazing offer.
"I have been to see your father, Alvin," David went on. "I hope you will
forgive my father and me."
David spoke steadily. The request was easy to make now; even greater
humbling of himself would have been easy.
Alvin responded in his own way. He remembered his long poverty, his lack
of the things he wanted, the cruel price he had had to pay for his first
beautiful red necktie.
"My father spent a great deal of money for detectives," he said,
ruefully.
"That will be restored to him," said David. "Everything that I can do, I
will do, Alvin."
When their errand was made perfectly clear to Alvin, he was terrified
again, now by his good fortune. He was to have money, money to do what
he liked with, more money than he actually needed! The mortgage was to
be destroyed--the mention of that instrument had alarmed him for the
moment. Was he only to be relieved of a burden of whose existence he had
been to this time unaware? But there was more to come! The sum his
father had spent was to be guessed at liberally and was to be put on
interest for his father's support, and Alvin himself was to have
recompense.
"Do you like teaching?" asked David. "Is there anything you would rather
do?"
Alvin clasped his hands as though to assure himself by physical
sensation that he was awake and that the words he heard were real. He
cherished no malice, hoarded no hatred--that much could be said for
Alvin who failed in many other ways.
"Oh, how I would like to have a store!" he cried. "If I could borrow the
money from you to have a store, a store to sell clothes and shoes and
such things! I do not like teaching. I am not a teacher. The children
are naughty all the time for me. I--" Suddenly Alvin halted. No more in
this world could he go his own sweet way; liberty now offered was
already curtailed. A fixed star controlled now the steady orbit of his
life. His bright color faded. "We would better talk to her about it,"
said he.
David Hartman forgot for an instant the Pennsylvania German idiom. It is
an evidence of the monogamous nature of the true Pennsylvania German
that the personal pronoun of the third person, used alone, applies but
to one human being.
"To her?" repeated David, puzzled.
"Yes, to Essie Hill. I am going to be married to Essie Hill." Alvin
rose. "Perhaps we could go down there," he proposed hesitatingly.
Together the trio went down the mountain road. The squire drove the
buggy, Alvin and David walked. The squire kept ahead, so that the
curtains on the back of the buggy sheltered him from the view of his
companions. Thus hidden, he laughed until the buggy shook. To the squire
Alvin could never be a tragic figure; he belonged on the stage of comedy
or broad farce.
When the squire reached the house of the preacher of the Improved New
Mennonites, he dismounted, tied his horse, and awaited the arrival of
the young men. Then the three went in on the board walk to the kitchen,
where Essie was singing, "They ask us why we're happy." Again the
squire's face quivered.
Essie received her three guests in her calm, composed way. She put the
interesting scallops on the edge of her cherry pie with a turn of her
thumb, and invited the three gentlemen to have seats. Essie was neither
an imaginative nor an inquisitive person. Her life was ordered, her
thoughts did not circle far beyond herself. The tragedy suggested by the
juxtaposition of these three persons did not occur to her. She sat
primly with her hands folded and heard her visitors for their cause. Her
eyes narrowed as she listened to David's statement of Alvin's desire for
a store. It was true that Alvin did not like teaching, was not a success
as a teacher. Essie had intended to think out some other way for him to
earn the family living. Selling fine clothes would not be a sin like
wearing them; indeed, one could preach a sermon by refraining from what
was so near at hand and so tempting. That such a policy might be
damaging to the family pocketbook, Essie did not realize for the moment.
Essie was always most anxious that the sermon should be preached.
Millerstown, however, fortunately for Alvin's success as a haberdasher,
was set in its iniquity as far as the wearing of good clothes was
concerned.
"I think it would be a very good thing for Alvin to have a store," said
she.
"I want to do everything I can to make up for the past," explained
David. "I can't make it right entirely. I wish I could."
To Essie the balancing of accounts always appealed.
"That is right," said she.
"But there is Alvin's father," David went on. "We cannot leave him where
he is if he can be persuaded to come away. He doesn't understand yet
that we have discovered that he was not guilty, but we hope he may."
Essie answered without pause. Essie had as clear an idea of her own duty
as she had of other people's--a rather uncommon quality.
"We will take him home to us," said she.
When the interview was over, David went with the squire to partake of
Bevy's dinner. The squire and his two companions had not been unobserved
in their progress through Millerstown. Sarah Ann Mohr, on her way to
David's house with a loaf of fresh bread and a Schwenkfelder cake and
two pies and a mess of fresh peas from her garden and with great
curiosity in her kindly heart about David's future movements, saw the
three, and stood still in her tracks and cried out, "Bei meiner Sex!"
which meaningless exclamation well expressed the confusion of her mind.
When they vanished into Essie's kitchen, she cried out, "What in the
world!"--and, basket in hand, plates rattling, instant destruction
threatening her pies, she flew back to the house of Susannah Kuhns.
Susannah hurried to the house of Sarah Knerr, and together all sought
Bevy, as the only woman connected with any of the three men. Other
Millerstonians saw them assembled and the conference grew in numbers.
"The squire and David and Alvin Koehler together at the Mennonite's!"
cried Susannah.
"Perhaps he is to marry her and Alvin," suggested a voice at the edge of
the crowd.
"David used to sit with her, too, sometimes," Sarah Knerr reminded the
others. "Perhaps there is trouble and it will give a court hearing."
"Humbug!" cried Bevy. "You don't know anything about it!"
Bevy, of course, knew nothing about it either.
Almost bursting with curiosity, Bevy made her noodle soup. It was only
because she was not a literary person that the delicious portions of
dough which gave the soup its name were not cut into exclamation points
and question marks. Bevy was suffering; when the squire brought David
home with him, her uneasiness became distressing to see. Presently she
was thrown into a state bordering on insanity.
David laid down his fork and looked across the table at her restless
figure.
"Bevy," said he in an ordinary tone, "the communion set has been found."
"What!" screamed Bevy.
All her speculations had arrived at no such wonderful conclusion as
this. The squire looked startled; he had wondered how the report would
first reach Millerstown.
"Did Koehler tell?" demanded Bevy. "Did he tell where he put it? Is it
any good yet? Will they use it? Did you come to it by accident? Did--"
Bevy's breath failed.
"Koehler had nothing to do with it," said David. "My father put it into
the hole made by plastering up the window in the church. There it lay
all these years."
"He never meant to take it!" screamed Bevy.
"No," agreed David; "I do not believe he meant to take it."
"What _did_ he mean?"
"I do not know."
"Doesn't anybody know?"
"Nobody knows," interposed the squire. "Now, Bevy, get the pie."
Immediately Bevy started for her kitchen. When after a few minutes she
had not reappeared, the squire followed her. The kitchen was empty, no
Bevy was to be seen; but from across the yard a loud chattering issued
from Edwin's Sally's kitchen.
In the evening the squire and the preacher came and sat with David on
his porch. The communion set had been taken from its hiding-place and
the preacher's wife had polished it until it was once more bright and
beautiful. Millerstown dropped in by twos and threes to behold it, each
with his own eyes. The squire and the preacher and David talked about
many things of interest to Millerstown and to the world at large. When
the two men went away together, they said that David had astonished
them.
Later in the evening another man entered the gate and came up to the
porch. Oliver Kuhns, the elder, sat down in the chair which the squire
had left.
"I heard a strange thing to-day," said he, brokenly. "I cannot
understand it. When I was in great trouble, your father helped me. If
you want I shall tell Millerstown, I will. I took my money when my
father died and went to New York and bad people got me, and when I came
home to my wife and little children, I had nothing. Your father lent it
to me so she should not find it out, and he would never take it again."
"He would not want you to tell Millerstown," said David.
As Oliver Kuhns, the elder, went out the gate, Jacob Fackenthal came in.
He would not sit down.
"Your pop saved me from jail, David," said he. "Anything I can do for
you, I will. Nobody in Millerstown believes that he meant to take the
communion set. If you will stay in Millerstown, Millerstown will show
you what it thinks."
After a long time David went into the great house, through the front
door, up the broad stairway to the handsome room which he had selected
for his own. He could not understand his mother and father; still, in a
measure, they put him away from them. Dimly he comprehended their
tragedy, error on one side, refusal to forgive on the other, and
heartbreak for both. He thought long of his father and mother. But when
he went to sleep, he was thinking of William Koehler and his son Alvin
and planning the fitting-out of a little store and the planting of a
garden and the purchasing of a flock of chickens and several hives of
bees. Old ghosts were laid, old unhappinesses forgotten; from David's
consciousness there had vanished even Katy Gaumer, who in a strange way
had brought him a blessing.