BENNIE AND THE CHARMING OLD MAID
There followed a blessed week of work—a “human warious” week, with
something piquant lurking at every turn. A week so busy, so
kaleidoscopic in its quick succession of events that my own troubles
and grievances were pushed into a neglected corner of my mind and made
to languish there, unfed by tears or sighs.
News comes in cycles. There are weeks when a city editor tears his hair
in vain as he bellows for a first-page story. There follow days so
bristling with real, live copy that perfectly good stuff which, in the
ordinary course of events might be used to grace the front sheet, is
sandwiched away between the marine intelligence and the Elgin butter
reports.
Such a week was this. I interviewed everything from a red-handed
murderer to an incubator baby. The town seemed to be running over with
celebrities. Norberg, the city editor, adores celebrities. He never
allows one to escape uninterviewed. On Friday there fell to my lot a
world-famous prima donna, an infamous prize-fighter, and a charming old
maid. Norberg cared not whether the celebrity in question was noted for
a magnificent high C, or a left half-scissors hook, so long as the
interview was dished up hot and juicy, with plenty of quotation marks,
a liberal sprinkling of adjectives and adverbs, and a cut of the victim
gracing the top of the column.
It was long past the lunch hour when the prima donna and the
prize-fighter, properly embellished, were snapped on the copy hook. The
prima donna had chattered in French; the prize-fighter had jabbered in
slang; but the charming old maid, who spoke Milwaukee English, was to
make better copy than a whole chorus of prima donnas, or a ring full of
fighters. Copy! It was such wonderful stuff that I couldn’t use it.
It was with the charming old maid in mind that Norberg summoned me.
“Another special story for you,” he cheerfully announced.
No answering cheer appeared upon my lunchless features. “A
prize-fighter at ten-thirty, and a prima donna at twelve. What’s the
next choice morsel? An aeronaut with another successful airship? or a
cash girl who has inherited a million?”
Norberg’s plump cheeks dimpled. “Neither. This time it is a nice German
old maid.”
“Eloped with the coachman, no doubt?”
“I said a nice old maid. And she hasn’t done anything yet. You are to
find out how she’ll feel when she does it.”
“Charmingly lucid,” commented I, made savage by the pangs of hunger.
Norberg proceeded to outline the story with characteristic vigor, a
cigarette waggling from the corner of his mouth.
“Name and address on this slip. Take a Greenfield car. Nice old maid
has lived in nice old cottage all her life. Grandfather built it
himself about a hundred years ago. Whole family was born in it, and
married in it, and died in it, see? It’s crammed full of
spinning-wheels and mahogany and stuff that’ll make your eyes stick
out. See? Well, there’s no one left now but the nice old maid, all
alone. She had a sister who ran away with a scamp some years ago. Nice
old maid has never heard of her since, but she leaves the gate ajar or
the latch-string open, or a lamp in the window, or something, so that
if ever she wanders back to the old home she’ll know she’s welcome,
see?”
“Sounds like a moving picture play,” I remarked.
“Wait a minute. Here’s the point. The city wants to build a branch
library or something on her property, and the nice old party is so
pinched for money that she’ll have to take their offer. So the time has
come when she’ll have to leave that old cottage, with its romance, and
its memories, and its lamp in the window, and go to live in a cheap
little flat, see? Where the old four-poster will choke up the bedroom—”
“And the parlor will be done in red and green,” I put in, eagerly, “and
where there will be an ingrowing sideboard in the dining-room that
won’t fit in with the quaint old dinner-set at all, and a kitchenette
just off that, in which the great iron pots and kettles that used to
hold the family dinners will be monstrously out of place—”
“You’re on,” said Norberg.
Half an hour later I stood before the cottage, set primly in the center
of a great lot that extended for half a square on all sides. A
winter-sodden, bare enough sight it was in the gray of that March day.
But it was not long before Alma Pflugel, standing in the midst of it,
the March winds flapping her neat skirts about her ankles, filled it
with a blaze of color. As she talked, a row of stately hollyhocks,
pink, and scarlet, and saffron, reared their heads against the cottage
sides. The chill March air became sweet with the scent of heliotrope,
and Sweet William, and pansies, and bridal wreath. The naked twigs of
the rose bushes flowered into wondrous bloom so that they bent to the
ground with their weight of crimson and yellow glory. The bare brick
paths were overrun with the green of growing things. Gray mounds of
dirt grew vivid with the fire of poppies. Even the rain-soaked wood of
the pea-frames miraculously was hidden in a hedge of green, over which
ran riot the butterfly beauty of the lavender, and pink, and cerise
blossoms. Oh, she did marvelous things that dull March day, did plain
German Alma Pflugel! And still more marvelous were the things that were
to come.
But of these things we knew nothing as the door was opened and Alma
Pflugel and I gazed curiously at one another. Surprise was writ large
on her honest face as I disclosed my errand. It was plain that the ways
of newspaper reporters were foreign to the life of this plain German
woman, but she bade me enter with a sweet graciousness of manner.
Wondering, but silent, she led the way down the dim narrow hallway to
the sitting-room beyond. And there I saw that Norberg had known whereof
he spoke.
A stout, red-faced stove glowed cheerfully in one corner of the room.
Back of the stove a sleepy cat opened one indolent eye, yawned
shamelessly, and rose to investigate, as is the way of cats. The
windows were aglow with the sturdy potted plants that flower-loving
German women coax into bloom. The low-ceilinged room twinkled and shone
as the polished surfaces of tables and chairs reflected the rosy glow
from the plethoric stove. I sank into the depths of a huge rocker that
must have been built for Grosspapa Pflugel’s generous curves. Alma
Pflugel, in a chair opposite, politely waited for this new process of
interviewing to begin, but relaxed in the embrace of that great
armchair I suddenly realized that I was very tired and hungry, and
talk-weary, and that here; was a great peace. The prima donna, with her
French, and her paint, and her pearls, and the prizefighter with his
slang, and his cauliflower ear, and his diamonds, seemed creatures of
another planet. My eyes closed. A delicious sensation of warmth and
drowsy contentment stole over me.
“Do listen to the purring of that cat!” I murmured. “Oh, newspapers
have no place in this. This is peace and rest.”
Alma Pflugel leaned forward in her chair. “You—you like it?”
“Like it! This is home. I feel as though my mother were here in this
room, seated in one of those deep chairs, with a bit of sewing in her
hand; so near that I could touch her cheek with my fingers.”
Alma Pflugel rose from her chair and came over to me. She timidly
placed her hand on my arm. “Ah, I am so glad you are like that. You do
not laugh at the low ceilings, and the sunken floors, and the
old-fashioned rooms. You do not raise your eyes in horror and say: ‘No
conveniences! And why don’t you try striped wall paper? It would make
those dreadful ceilings seem higher.’ How nice you are to understand
like that!”
My hand crept over to cover her own that lay on my arm. “Indeed, indeed
I do understand,” I whispered. Which, as the veriest cub reporter can
testify, is no way to begin an interview.
A hundred happy memories filled the little low room as Alma Pflugel
showed me her treasures. The cat purred in great content, and the stove
cast a rosy glow over the scene as the simple woman told the story of
each precious relic, from the battered candle-dipper on the shelf, to
the great mahogany folding table, and sewing stand, and carved bed.
Then there was the old horn lantern that Jacob Pflugel had used a
century before, and in one corner of the sitting-room stood Grossmutter
Pflugel’s spinning-wheel. Behind cupboard doors were ranged the
carefully preserved blue-and-white china dishes, and on the shelf below
stood the clumsy earthen set that Grosspapa Pflugel himself had modeled
for his young bride in those days of long ago. In the linen chest there
still lay, in neat, fragrant folds, piles of the linen that had been
spun on that time-yellowed spinning-wheel. And because of the tragedy
in the honest face bent over these dear treasures, and because she
tried so bravely to hide her tears, I knew in my heart that this could
never be a newspaper story.
“So,” said Alma Pflugel at last, and rose and walked slowly to the
window and stood looking out at the wind-swept garden. That window,
with its many tiny panes, once had looked out across a wilderness, with
an Indian camp not far away. Grossmutter Pflugel had sat at that window
many a bitter winter night, with her baby in her arms, watching and
waiting for the young husband who was urging his ox-team across the ice
of Lake Michigan in the teeth of a raging blizzard.
The little, low-ceilinged room was very still. I looked at Alma Pflugel
standing there at the window in her neat blue gown, and something about
the face and figure—or was it the pose of the sorrowful head?—seemed
strangely familiar. Somewhere in my mind the resemblance haunted me.
Resemblance to—what? Whom?
“Would you like to see my garden?” asked Alma Pflugel, turning from the
window. For a moment I stared in wonderment. But the honest, kindly
face was unsmiling. “These things that I have shown you, I can take
with me when I—go. But there,” and she pointed out over the bare,
wind-swept lot, “there is something that I cannot take. My flowers! You
see that mound over there, covered so snug and warm with burlap and
sacking? There my tulips and hyacinths sleep. In a few weeks, when the
covering is whisked off—ah, you shall see! Then one can be quite sure
that the spring is here. Who can look at a great bed of red and pink
and lavender and yellow tulips and hyacinths, and doubt it? Come.”
With a quick gesture she threw a shawl over her head, and beckoned me.
Together we stepped out into the chill of the raw March afternoon. She
stood a moment, silent, gazing over the sodden earth. Then she flitted
swiftly down the narrow path, and halted before a queer little
structure of brick, covered with the skeleton of a creeping vine.
Stooping, Alma Pflugel pulled open the rusty iron door and smiled up at
me.
“This was my grandmother’s oven. All her bread she baked in this little
brick stove. Black bread it was, with a great thick crust, and a bitter
taste. But it was sweet, too. I have never tasted any so good. I like
to think of Grossmutter, when she was a bride, baking her first batch
of bread in this oven that Grossvater built for her. And because the
old oven was so very difficult to manage, and because she was such a
young thing—only sixteen!—I like to think that her first loaves were
perhaps not so successful, and that Grosspapa joked about them, and
that the little bride wept, so that the young husband had to kiss away
the tears.”
She shut the rusty, sagging door very slowly and gently. “No doubt the
workmen who will come to prepare the ground for the new library will
laugh and joke among themselves when they see the oven, and they will
kick it with their heels, and wonder what the old brick mound could
have been.”
There was a little twisted smile on her face as she rose—a smile that
brought a hot mist of tears to my eyes. There was tragedy itself in
that spare, homely figure standing there in the garden, the wind
twining her skirts about her.
“You should but see the children peering over the fence to see my
flowers in the summer,” she said. The blue eyes wore a wistful,
far-away look. “All the children know my garden. It blooms from April
to October. There I have my sweet peas; and here my roses—thousands of
them! Some are as red as a drop of blood, and some as white as a bridal
wreath. When they are blossoming it makes the heart ache, it is so
beautiful.”
She had quite forgotten me now. For her the garden was all abloom once
more. It was as though the Spirit of the Flowers had touched the naked
twigs with fairy fingers, waking them into glowing life for her who
never again was to shower her love and care upon them.
“These are my poppies. Did you ever come out in the morning to find a
hundred poppy faces smiling at you, and swaying and glistening and
rippling in the breeze? There they are, scarlet and pink, side by side
as only God can place them. And near the poppies I planted my pansies,
because each is a lesson to the other. I call my pansies little
children with happy faces. See how this great purple one winks his
yellow eye, and laughs!”
Her gray shawl had slipped back from her face and lay about her
shoulders, and the wind had tossed her hair into a soft fluff about her
head.
“We used to come out here in the early morning, my little Schwester and
I, to see which rose had unfolded its petals overnight, or whether this
great peony that had held its white head so high only yesterday, was
humbled to the ground in a heap of ragged leaves. Oh, in the morning
she loved it best. And so every summer I have made the garden bloom
again, so that when she comes back she will see flowers greet her.
“All the way up the path to the door she will walk in an aisle of
fragrance, and when she turns the handle of the old door she will find
it unlocked, summer and winter, day and night, so that she has only to
turn the knob and enter.”
She stopped, abruptly. The light died out of her face. She glanced at
me, half defiantly, half timidly, as one who is not quite sure of what
she has said. At that I went over to her, and took her work-worn hands
in mine, and smiled down into the faded blue eyes grown dim with tears
and watching.
“Perhaps—who knows?—the little sister may come yet. I feel it. She will
walk up the little path, and try the handle of the door, and it will
turn beneath her fingers, and she will enter.”
With my arm about her we walked down the path toward the old-fashioned
arbor, bare now except for the tendrils that twined about the lattice.
The arbor was fitted with a wooden floor, and there were rustic chairs,
and a table. I could picture the sisters sitting there with their
sewing during the long, peaceful summer afternoons. Alma Pflugel would
be wearing one of her neat gingham gowns, very starched and stiff, with
perhaps a snowy apron edged with a border of heavy crochet done by the
wrinkled fingers of Grossmutter Pflugel. On the rustic table there
would be a bowl of flowers, and a pot of delicious Kaffee, and a plate
of German Kaffeekuchen, and through the leafy doorway the scent of the
wonderful garden would come stealing.
I thought of the cheap little flat, with the ugly sideboard, and the
bit of weedy yard in the rear, and the alley beyond that, and the red
and green wall paper in the parlor. The next moment, to my horror, Alma
Pflugel had dropped to her knees before the table in the damp little
arbor, her face in her hands, her spare shoulders shaking.
“Ich kann’s nicht thun!” she moaned. “Ich kann nicht! Ach, kleine
Schwester, wo bist du denn! Nachts und Morgens bete ich, aber doch
kommst du nicht.”
A great dry sob shook her. Her hand went to her breast, to her throat,
to her lips, with an odd, stifled gesture.
“Do that again!” I cried, and shook Alma Pflugel sharply by the
shoulder. “Do that again!”
Her startled blue eyes looked into mine. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“That—that gesture. I’ve seen it—somewhere—that trick of pressing the
hand to the breast, to the throat, to the lips—Oh!”
Suddenly I knew. I lifted the drooping head and rumpled its neat
braids, and laughed down into the startled face.
“She’s here!” I shouted, and started a dance of triumph on the shaky
floor of the old arbor. “I know her. From the moment I saw you the
resemblance haunted me.” And then as Alma Pflugel continued to stare,
while the stunned bewilderment grew in her eyes, “Why, I have
one-fourth interest in your own nephew this very minute. And his name
is Bennie!”
Whereupon Alma Pflugel fainted quietly away in the chilly little grape
arbor, with her head on my shoulder.
I called myself savage names as I chafed her hands and did all the
foolish, futile things that distracted humans think of at such times,
wondering, meanwhile, if I had been quite mad to discern a resemblance
between this simple, clear-eyed gentle German woman, and the battered,
ragged, swaying figure that had stood at the judge’s bench.
Suddenly Alma Pflugel opened her eyes. Recognition dawned in them
slowly. Then, with a jerk, she sat upright, her trembling hands
clinging to me.
“Where is she? Take me to her. Ach, you are sure—sure?”
“Lordy, I hope so! Come, you must let me help you into the house. And
where is the nearest telephone? Never mind; I’ll find one.”
When I had succeeded in finding the nearest drug store I spent a wild
ten minutes telephoning the surprised little probation officer, then
Frau Nirlanger, and finally Blackie, for no particular reason. I
shrieked my story over the wire in disconnected, incoherent sentences.
Then I rushed back to the little cottage where Alma Pflugel and I
waited with what patience we could summon.
Blackie was the first to arrive. He required few explanations. That is
one of the nicest things about Blackie. He understands by leaps and
bounds, while others crawl to comprehension. But when Frau Nirlanger
came, with Bennie in tow, there were tears, and exclamations, followed
by a little stricken silence on the part of Frau Nirlanger when she saw
Bennie snatched to the breast of this weeping woman. So it was that in
the midst of the confusion we did not hear the approach of the
probation officer and her charge. They came up the path to the door,
and there the little sister turned the knob, and it yielded under her
fingers, and the old door swung open; and so she entered the house
quite as Alma Pflugel had planned she should, except that the roses
were not blooming along the edge of the sunken brick walk.
She entered the room in silence, and no one could have recognized in
this pretty, fragile creature the pitiful wreck of the juvenile court.
And when Alma Pflugel saw the face of the little sister—the poor,
marred, stricken face—her own face became terrible in its agony. She
put Bennie down very gently, rose, and took the shaking little figure
in her strong arms, and held it as though never to let it go again.
There were little broken words of love and pity. She called her
“Lammchen” and “little one,” and so Frau Nirlanger and Blackie and I
stole away, after a whispered consultation with the little probation
officer.
Blackie had come in his red runabout, and now he tucked us into it,
feigning a deep disgust.
“I’d like to know where I enter into this little drayma,” he growled.
“Ain’t I got nothin’ t’ do but run around town unitin’ long lost
sisters an’ orphans!”
“Now, Blackie, you know you would never have forgiven me if I had left
you out of this. Besides, you must hustle around and see that they need
not move out of that dear little cottage. Now don’t say a word! You’ll
never have a greater chance to act the fairy godmother.”
Frau Nirlanger’s hand sought mine and I squeezed it in silent sympathy.
Poor little Frau Nirlanger, the happiness of another had brought her
only sorrow. And she had kissed Bennie good-by with the knowledge that
the little blue-painted bed, with its faded red roses, would again
stand empty in the gloom of the Knapf attic.
Norberg glanced up quickly as I entered the city room. “Get something
good on that south side story?” he asked.
“Why, no,” I answered. “You were mistaken about that. The—the nice old
maid is not going to move, after all.”