BROTHER AND SISTER
Before summer had gone, Winnipeg was reminded of the existence of
the foreign colony by the escape from the Provincial Penitentiary
of the Russian prisoner Kalmar. The man who could not be held by
Siberian bars and guards found escape from a Canadian prison easy.
That he had accomplices was evident, but who they were could not be
discovered. Suspicion naturally fell upon Simon Ketzel and Joseph
Pinkas, but after the most searching investigation they were released
and Winnipeg went back to its ways and forgot. The big business men
rebuilding fortunes shattered by the boom, the little business men
laying foundations for fortunes to be, the women within the charmed
circle of Society bound to the whirling wheel of social functions,
other women outside and striving to beg, or buy, or break their way
into the circle, and still other women who cared not a pin's head
whether they were within or without, being sufficient for themselves,
the busy people of the churches with their philanthropies, their
religious activities, striving to gather into their several folds
the waifs and strays that came stumbling into their city from all
lands--all alike, unaware of the growing danger area in their young
city, forgot the foreign colony, its problems and its needs.
Meantime, summer followed winter, and winter summer, the months and
years went on while the foreign colony grew in numbers and more
slowly in wealth. More slowly in wealth, because as an individual
member grew in wealth he departed from the colony and went out to
make an independent home for himself in one of the farming colonies
which the Government was establishing in some of the more barren and
forbidding sections of the country; or it may be, loving the city and
its ways of business, he rapidly sloughed off with his foreign clothes
his foreign speech and manner of life, and his foreign ideals as well,
and became a Canadian citizen, distinguished from his cosmopolitan
fellow citizen only by the slight difficulty he displayed with some
of the consonants of the language.
Such a man was Simon Ketzel. Simon was by trade a carpenter, but he
had received in the old land a good educational foundation; he had,
moreover, a shrewd head for affairs, and so he turned his energies
to business, and with conspicuous success. For in addition to all
his excellent qualities, Simon possessed as the most valuable part
of his equipment a tidy, thrifty wife, who saved what her husband
earned and kept guard over him on feast days, saved and kept guard
so faithfully that before long Simon came to see the wisdom of her
policy and became himself a shrewd and sober and well-doing
Canadian, able to hold his own with the best of them.
His sobriety and steadiness Simon owed mostly to his thrifty wife,
but his rapid transformation into Canadian citizenship he owed
chiefly to his little daughter Margaret. It was Margaret that
taught him his English, as she conned over her lessons with him
in the evenings. It was Margaret who carried home from the little
Methodist mission near by, the illustrated paper and the library
book, and thus set him a-reading. It was Margaret that brought both
Simon and Lena, his wife, to the social gathering of the Sunday
School and of the church. It was thus to little Margaret that the
Ketzels owed their introduction to Canadian life and manners, and to
the finer sides of Canadian religion. And through little Margaret it
was that those greatest of all Canadianising influences, the school
and the mission, made their impact upon the hearts and the home of
the Ketzel family. And as time went on it came to pass that from the
Ketzel home, clean, orderly, and Canadian, there went out into the
foul wastes about, streams of healing and cleansing that did their
beneficent work where they went.
One of these streams reached the home of Paulina, to the great
good of herself and her family. Here, again, it was chiefly little
Margaret who became the channel of the new life, for with Paulina
both Simon and Lena had utterly failed. She was too dull, too
apathetic, too hopeless and too suspicious even of her own kind to
allow the Ketzels an entrance to her heart. But even had she not
been all this, she was too sorely oppressed with the burden of her
daily toil to yield to such influence as they had to offer. For
Rosenblatt was again in charge of her household. In a manner best
known to himself, he had secured the mortgage on her home, and thus
became her landlord, renting her the room in which she and her
family dwelt, and for which they all paid in daily labour, and
dearly enough. Rosenblatt, thus being her master, would not let her
go. She was too valuable for that. Strong, patient, diligent, from
early dawn till late at night she toiled and moiled with her baking
and scrubbing, fighting out that ancient and primitive and endless
fight against dirt and hunger, beaten by the one, but triumphing
over the other. She carried in her heart a dull sense of injustice,
a feeling that somehow wrong was being done her; but when Rosenblatt
flourished before her a formidable legal document, and had the same
interpreted to her by his smart young clerk, Samuel Sprink, she,
with true Slavic and fatalistic passivity, accepted her lot and bent
her strong back to her burden without complaint. What was the use of
complaint? Who in all the city was there to care for a poor, stupid,
Galician woman with none too savoury a reputation? Many and generous
were the philanthropies of Winnipeg, but as yet there was none that
had to do with the dirt, disease and degradation that were too often
found in the environment of the foreign people. There were many
churches in the city rich in good work, with many committees that
met to confer and report, but there was not yet one whose special
duty it was to confer and to report upon the unhappy and struggling
and unsavoury foreigner within their city gate.
Yes, there was one. The little Methodist mission hard by the
foreign colony had such a committee, a remarkable committee in a
way, a committee with no fine-spun theories of wholesale reform,
a committee with no delicate nostril to be buried in a perfumed
handkerchief when pursuing an investigation (as a matter of fact,
that committee had no sense of smell at all), a committee of one,
namely, John James Parsons, the Methodist missionary, and he worked
chiefly with committees of one, of which not the least important
was little Margaret Ketzel.
It was through Margaret Ketzel that Parsons got his first hold of
Paulina, by getting hold of her little girl Irma. For Margaret,
though so much her junior in years and experience, was to Irma a
continual source of wonder and admiration. Her facility with the
English speech, her ability to read books, her fine manners, her
clean and orderly home, her pretty Canadian dress, her beloved
school, her cheery mission, all these were to Irma new, wonderful
and fascinating. Gradually Irma was drawn to that new world of
Margaret's, and away from the old, sordid, disorderly wretchedness
of her own life and home.
After much secret conference with all the Ketzels, and much patient
and skilful labour on the part of the motherly Lena, a great day
at length arrived for Irma. It was the day on which she discarded
the head shawl with the rest of the quaint Galician attire, and
appeared dressed as a Canadian girl, discovering to her delighted
friends and to all who knew her, though not yet to herself, a rare
beauty hitherto unnoticed by any. Indeed, when Mr. Samuel Sprink,
coming in from Rosenblatt's store to spend a few hurried minutes
in gorging himself after his manner at the evening meal, allowed
himself time to turn his eyes from his plate and to let them rest
upon the little maid waiting upon his table, the transformation
from the girl, slatternly, ragged and none too clean, that was wont
to bring him his food, to this new being that flitted about from
place to place, smote him as with a sudden blow. He laid down the
instruments of his gluttony and for a full half minute forgot the
steaming stew before him, whose garlic-laden odours had been
assailing his nostrils some minutes previously with pungent delight.
Others, too, of that hungry gorging company found themselves disturbed
in their ordinary occupation by this vision of sweet and tender beauty
that flitted about them, ministering to their voracity.
To none more than to Rosenblatt himself was the transformation of
Irma a surprise and a mystery. It made him uneasy. He had an
instinctive feeling that this was the beginning of an emancipation
that would leave him one day without his slaves. Paulina, too,
would learn the new ways; then she and the girl, who now spent long
hours of hard labour in his service, would demand money for their
toil. The thought grieved him sore. But there was another thought
that stabbed him with a keener pain. Paulina and her family would
learn that they need no longer fear him, that they could do without
him, and then they would escape from his control. And this
Rosenblatt dreaded above all things else. To lose the power to
keep in degradation the wife and children of the man he hated with
a quenchless hatred would be to lose much of the sweetness of life.
Those few terrible moments when he had lain waiting for the
uplifted knife of his foe to penetrate his shrinking eyeballs had
taken years from him. He had come back to his life older, weaker,
broken in nerve and more than ever consumed with a thirst for
vengeance. Since Kalmar's escape he lived in daily, hourly fear
that his enemy would strike again and this time without missing,
and with feverish anxiety he planned to anticipate that hour with
a vengeance which would rob death of much of its sting.
So far he had succeeded only partially. Paulina and Irma he held in
domestic bondage. From the boy Kalman, too, he exacted day by day the
full tale of his scanty profits made from selling newspapers on the
street. But beyond this he could not go. By no sort of terror could he
induce Paulina to return to the old conditions and rent floor space
in her room to his boarders. At her door she stood on guard, refusing
admittance. Once, indeed, when hard pressed by Rosenblatt demanding
entrance, she had thrown herself before him with a butcher knife in
her hand, and with a look of such transforming fierceness on her face
as drove him from the house in fear of his life. She was no longer his
patient drudge, but a woman defending, not so much her own, as her
husband's honour, a tigress guarding her young.
Never again did Rosenblatt attempt to pass through that door, but
schooled himself to wait a better time and a safer path to compass
his vengeance. But from that moment, where there had been merely
contempt for Paulina and her family, there sprang up bitter hatred.
He hated them all--the woman who was his dupe and his slave, but
who balked him of his revenge; the boy who brought him the cents
for which he froze during the winter evenings at the corner of
Portage and Main, but who with the cents gave him fierce and
fearless looks; and this girl suddenly transformed from a timid,
stupid, ill-dressed Galician child, into a being of grace and
loveliness and conscious power. No wonder that as he followed her
with his eye, noting all this new grace and beauty, he felt uneasy.
Already she seemed to have soared far beyond his sordid world and
far beyond his grasp. Deep in his heart he swore that he would find
means to bring her down to the dirt again. The higher her flight,
the farther her fall and the sweeter would be his revenge.
"What's the matter wit you, boss? Gone back on your grub, eh?"
It was his clerk, Samuel Sprink, whose sharp little eyes had not
failed to note the gloomy glances of his employer.
"Pretty gay girl, our Irma has come to be," continued the cheerful
Samuel, who prided himself on his fine selection of colloquial
English. "She's a beaut now, ain't she? A regular bird!"
Rosenblatt started. At his words, but more at the admiration in
Samuel's eyes, a new idea came to him. He knew his clerk well, knew
his restless ambition, his insatiable greed, his intense selfishness,
his indomitable will. And he had good reason to know. Three times
during the past year his clerk had forced from him an increase of
salary. Indeed, Samuel Sprink, young though he was and unlearned in
the ways of the world, was the only man in the city that Rosenblatt
feared. If by any means Samuel could obtain a hold over this young
lady, he would soon bring her to the dust. Once in Samuel's power,
she would soon sink to the level of the ordinary Galician wife.
True, she was but a girl of fifteen, but in a year or so she would
be ready for the altar in the Galician estimation.
As these thoughts swiftly flashed through his mind, Rosenblatt
turned to Samuel Sprink and said, "Yes, she is a fine girl.
I never noticed before. It is her new dress."
"Not a bit," said Samuel. "The dress helps out, but it is the girl
herself. I have seen it for a long time. Look at her. Isn't she a
bird, a bird of Paradise, eh?"
"She will look well in a cage some day, eh, Samuel?"
"You bet your sweet life!" said Samuel.
"Better get the cage ready then, Samuel," suggested Rosenblatt.
"There are plenty bird fanciers in this town."
The suggestion seemed to anger Samuel, who swore an English oath
and lapsed into silence.
Irma heard, but heeded little. Rosenblatt she feared, Samuel Sprink
she despised. There had been a time when both she and Paulina
regarded him with admiration mingled with awe. Samuel Sprink had
many attractions. He had always plenty of money to jingle, and had
a reputation for growing wealth. He was generous in his gifts to
the little girl--gifts, it must be confessed, that cost him little,
owing to his position as clerk in Rosenblatt's store. Then, too,
he was so clever with his smart English and his Canadian manners,
so magnificent with his curled and oily locks, his resplendent
jewelry, his brilliant neckties. But that was before Irma had been
brought to the little mission, and before she had learned through
Margaret Ketzel and through Margaret's father and mother something
of Canadian life, of Canadian people, of Canadian manners and dress.
As her knowledge in this direction extended, her admiration and
reverence for Samuel Sprink faded.
The day that Irma discarded her Galician garb and blossomed forth
as a Canadian young lady was the day on which she was fully cured
of her admiration for Rosenblatt's clerk. For such subtle influence
does dress exercise over the mind that something of the spirit of
the garb seems to pass into the spirit of the wearer. Self-respect
is often born in the tailor shop or in the costumer's parlour.
Be this as it may, it is certain that Irma's Canadian dress gave
the final blow to her admiration of Samuel Sprink, and child
though she was, she became conscious of a new power over not only
Sprink, but over all the boarders, and instinctively she assumed
a new attitude toward them. The old coarse and familiar horseplay
which she had permitted without thought at their hands, was now
distasteful to her. Indeed, with most of the men it ceased to be
any longer possible. There were a few, however, and Samuel Sprink
among them, who were either too dull-witted to recognise the change
that had come to the young girl, or were unwilling to acknowledge
it. Samuel was unwilling also to surrender his patronising and
protective attitude, and when patronage became impossible and
protection unnecessary, he assumed an air of bravado to cover
the feeling of embarrassment he hated to acknowledge, and tried
to bully the girl into her former submissive admiration.
This completed the revulsion in Irma's mind, and while outwardly
she went about her work in the house with her usual cheerful and
willing industry, she came to regard her admirer and would be patron
with fear, loathing, and contempt. Of this, however, Samuel was
quite unaware. The girl had changed in her manner as in her dress,
but that might be because she was older, she was almost a woman,
after the Galician standard of computation. Whatever the cause,
to Samuel the change only made her more fascinating than ever,
and he set himself seriously to consider whether on the whole,
dowerless though she would be, it would not be wise for him to
devote some of his time and energy to the winning of this
fascinating young lady for himself.
The possibility of failure never entered Samuel's mind. He had an
overpowering sense of his own attractions. The question was simply
should he earnestly set himself to accomplish this end? Without
definitely making up his mind on this point, much less committing
himself to this object, Samuel allowed himself the pleasurable
occupation of trifling with the situation. But alas for Samuel's
peace of mind! and alas for his self-esteem! the daily presence of
this fascinating maiden in her new Canadian dress and with her new
Canadian manners, which appeared to go with the dress, quite swept
him away from his ordinary moorings, and he found himself tossed
upon a tempestuous sea, the helpless sport of gusts of passion that
at once surprised and humiliated him. It was an intolerably painful
experience for the self-centred and self-controlled Samuel; and
after a few months of this acute and humiliating suffering he was
prepared to accept help from almost any course.
At this point Rosenblatt, who had been keeping a watchful eye upon
the course of events, intervened.
"Samuel, my boy," he said one winter night when the store was
closed for the day, "you are acting the fool. You are letting
a little Slovak girl make a game of you."
"I attend to my own business, all the same," growled Samuel.
"You do, Samuel, my boy, you do. But you make me sorry for you,
and ashamed."
Samuel grunted, unwilling to acknowledge even partial defeat to the
man whom he had beaten more than once in his own game.
"You desire to have that little girl, Samuel, and yet you are
afraid of her."
But Samuel only snarled and swore.
"You forget she is a Galician girl."
"She is Russian," interposed Samuel, "and she is of good blood."
"Good blood!" said Rosenblatt, showing his teeth like a snarling
dog, "good blood! The blood of a murdering Nihilist jail bird!"
"She is of good Russian blood," said Samuel with an ugly look in
his face, "and he is a liar who says she is not."
"Well, well," said Rosenblatt, turning from the point, "she is a
Galician in everything else. Her mother is a Galician, a low-bred
Galician, and you treat the girl as if she were a lady. This is
not the Galician manner of wooing. A bolder course is necessary.
You are a young man of good ability, a rising young man. You will
be rich some day. Who is this girl without family, without dower
to make you fear or hesitate? What says the proverb? 'A bone for
my dog, a stick for my wife.'"
"Yes, that is all right," muttered Samuel, "a stick for my wife,
and if she were my wife I would soon bring her to time."
"Ho, ho," said Rosenblatt, "it is all the same, sweetheart and
wife. They are both much the better for a stick now and then.
You are not the kind of man to stand beggar before a portionless
Slovak girl, a young man handsome, clever, well-to-do. You do not
need thus to humble yourself. Go in, my son, with more courage and
with bolder tactics. I will gladly help you."
As a first result of Rosenblatt's encouraging advice, Samuel
recovered much of his self-assurance, which had been rudely
shattered, and therefore much of his good humour. As a further
result, he determined upon a more vigorous policy in his wooing.
He would humble himself no more. He would find means to bring
this girl to her place, namely, at his feet.
The arrival of a Saint's day brought Samuel an opportunity to
inaugurate his new policy. The foreign colony was rigidly devoted
to its religious duties. Nothing could induce a Galician to engage
in his ordinary avocation upon any day set apart as sacred by his
Church. In the morning such of the colony as adhered to the Greek
Church, went _en masse_ to the quaint little church which had come
to be erected and which had been consecrated by a travelling
Archbishop, and there with reverent devotion joined in worship,
using the elaborate service of the Greek rite. The religious duties
over, they proceeded still further to celebrate the day in a
somewhat riotous manner.
With the growth of the colony new houses had been erected which far
outshone Paulina's in magnificence, but Paulina's still continued
to be a social centre chiefly through Rosenblatt's influence. For
no man was more skilled than he in the art of promoting sociability
as an investment. There was still the full complement of boarders
filling the main room and the basement, and these formed a nucleus
around which the social life of a large part of the colony loved
to gather.
It was a cold evening in February. The mercury had run down till it
had almost disappeared in the bulb and Winnipeg was having a taste
of forty below. Through this exhilarating air Kalman was hurrying
home as fast as his sturdy legs could take him. His fingers were
numb handling the coins received from the sale of his papers, but
the boy cared nothing for that. He had had a good afternoon and
evening; for with the Winnipeg men the colder the night the warmer
their hearts, and these fierce February days were harvest days for
the hardy newsboys crying their wares upon the streets. So the
sharp cold only made Kalman run the faster. Above him twinkled the
stars, under his feet sparkled the snow, the keen air filled his
lungs with ozone that sent his blood leaping through his veins.
A new zest was added to his life to-night, for as he ran he
remembered that it was a feast day and that at his home there
would be good eating and dance and song. As he ran he planned
how he would avoid Rosenblatt and get past him into Paulina's room,
where he would be safe, and where, he knew, good things saved from
the feast for him by his sister would be waiting him. To her he
would entrust all his cents above what was due to Rosenblatt,
and with her they would be safe. For by neither threatening nor
wheedling could Rosenblatt extract from her what was entrusted
to her care, as he could from the slow-witted Paulina.
Keenly sensitive to the radiant beauty of the sparkling night,
filled with the pleasurable anticipation of the feast before him,
vibrating in every nerve with the mere joy of living his vigorous
young life, Kalman ran along at full speed, singing now and then in
breathless snatches a wild song of the Hungarian plains. Turning a
sharp corner near his home, he almost overran a little girl.
"Kalman!" she cried with a joyous note in her voice.
"Hello! Elizabeth Ketzel, what do you want?" answered the boy,
pulling up panting.
"Will you be singing to-night?" asked the little girl timidly.
"Sure, I will," replied the lad, who had already mastered in the
school of the streets the intricacies of the Canadian vernacular.
"I wish I could come and listen."
"It is no place for little girls," said Kalman brusquely; then
noting the shadow upon the face of the child, he added, "Perhaps
you can come to the back window and Irma will let you in."
"I'll be sure to come," said Elizabeth to herself, for Kalman was
off again like the wind.
Paulina's house was overflowing with riotous festivity. Avoiding
the front door, Kalman ran to the back of the house, and making
entrance through the window, there waited for his sister. Soon
she came in.
"Oh, Kalman!" she cried, throwing her arms about him and kissing
him, "such a feast as I have saved for you! And you are cold. Your
poor fingers are frozen."
"Not a bit of it, Irma," said the boy--they always spoke
in Russian, these two, ever since the departure of their
father--"but I am hungry, oh! so hungry!"
Already Irma was flying about the room, drawing from holes and
corners the bits she had saved from the feast for her brother.
She spread them on the bed before him.
"But first," she cried, "I shall bring to the window the hot stew.
Paulina," the children always so spoke of her, "has kept it hot for
you," and she darted through the door.
After what seemed to Kalman a very long time indeed, she appeared
at the window with a covered dish of steaming stew.
"What kept you?" said her brother impatiently; "I am starved."
"That nasty, hateful, little Sprink," she said. "Here, help me
through." She looked flushed and angry, her "burnin' brown eyes"
shining like blazing coals.
"What is the matter?" said Kalman, when he had a moment's leisure
to observe her.
"He is very rough and rude," said the girl, "and he is a little pig."
Kalman nodded and waited. He had no time for mere words.
"And he tried to kiss me just now," she continued indignantly.
"Well, that's nothing," said Kalman; "they all want to do that."
"Not for months, Kalman," protested Irma, "and never again, and
especially that little Sprink. Never! Never!"
As Kalman looked at her erect little figure and her flushed face,
it dawned on him that a change had come to his little sister.
He paused in his eating.
"Irma," he said, "what have you done to yourself? Is it your hair
that you have been putting up on your head? No, it is not your
hair. You are not the same. You are--" he paused to consider,
"yes, that's it. You are a lady."
The anger died out of Irma's brown eyes and flushed face. A soft
and tender and mysterious light suffused her countenance.
"No, I am not a lady," she said, "but you remember what father
said. Our mother was a lady, and I am going to be one."
Almost never had the children spoken of their mother. The subject
was at once too sacred and too terrible for common speech. Kalman
laid down his spoon.
"I remember," he said after a few moments' silence. A shadow
lay upon his face. "She was a lady, and she died in the snow."
His voice sank to a whisper. "Wasn't it awful, Irma?"
"Yes, Kalman dear," said his sister, sitting down beside him and
putting her arms about his neck, "but she had no pain, and she was
not afraid."
"No," said the boy with a ring in his voice, "she was not afraid;
nor was father afraid either." He rose from his meal.
"Why, Kalman," exclaimed his sister, "you are not half done your
feast. There are such lots of nice things yet."
"I can't eat, Irma, when I think of that--of that man. I choke
here," pointing to his throat.
"Well, well, we won't think of him to-night. Some day very soon,
we shall be free from him. Sit down and eat."
But the boy remained standing, his face overcast with a fierce frown.
"Some day," he muttered, more to himself than to his sister,
"I shall kill him."
"Not to-day, at any rate, Kalman," said his sister, brightening
up. "Let us forget it to-night. Look at this pie. It is from
Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and this pudding."
The boy allowed his look to linger upon the dainties. He was a
healthy boy and very hungry. As he looked his appetite returned.
He shook himself as if throwing off a burden.
"No, not to-night," he said; "I am not going to stop my feast for him."
"No, indeed," cried Irma. "Come quick and finish your feast.
Oh, what eating we have had, and then what dancing! And they
all want to dance with me," she continued,--"Jacob and Henry and
Nicholas, and they are all nice except that horrid little Sprink."
"Did you not dance with him?"
"Yes," replied his sister, making a little face, "I danced with
him too, but he wants me to dance with no one else, and I don't
like that. He makes me afraid, too, just like Rosenblatt."
"Afraid!" said her brother scornfully.
"No, not afraid," said Irma quickly. "But never mind, here is the
pudding. I am sorry it is cold."
"All right," said the boy, mumbling with a full mouth, "it is fine.
Don't you be afraid of that Sprink; I'll knock his head off if he
harms you."
"Not yet, Kalman," said Irma, smiling at him. "Wait a year or two
before you talk like that."
"A year or two! I shall be a man then."
"Oh, indeed!" mocked his sister, "a man of fifteen years."
"You are only fifteen yourself," said Kalman.
"And a half," she interrupted.
"And look at you with your dress and your hair up on your head,
and--and I am a boy. But I am not afraid of Sprink. Only yesterday I--"
"Oh, I know you were fighting again. You are terrible, Kalman.
I hear all the boys talking about you, and the girls too. Did
you beat him? But of course you did."
"I don't know," said her brother doubtfully, "but I don't think he
will bother me any more."
"Oh, Kalman," said his sister anxiously, "why do you fight so much?"
"They make me fight," said the boy. "They try to drive me off the
corner, and he called me a greasy Dook. But I showed him I am no
Doukhobor. Doukhobors won't fight."
"Tell me," cried his sister, her face aglow--"but no, I don't want
to hear about it. Did you--how did you beat him? But you should not
fight so, Kalman." In spite of herself she could not avoid showing
her interest in the fight and her pride in her fighting brother.
"Why not?" said her brother; "it is right to fight for your rights,
and if they bother me or try to crowd me off, I will fight till I die."
But Irma shook her head at him.
"Well, never mind just now," she cried. "Listen to the noise.
That is Jacob singing; isn't it awful? Are you going in?"
"Yes, I am. Here is my money, Irma, and that is for--that brute.
Give it to Paulina for him. I can hardly keep my knife out of him.
Some day--" The boy closed his lips hard.
"No, no, Kalman," implored his sister, "that must not be,
not now nor ever. This is not Russia, or Hungary, but Canada."
The boy made no reply.
"Hurry and wash yourself and come out. They will want you to sing.
I shall wait for you."
"No, no, go on. I shall come after."
A shout greeted the girl as she entered the crowded room. There was
no one like her in the dances of her people.
"It is my dance," cried one.
"Not so; she is promised to me."
"I tell you this mazurka is mine."
So they crowded about her in eager but good-natured contention.
"I cannot dance with you all," cried the girl, laughing,
"and so I will dance by myself."
At this there was a shout of applause, and in a moment more she
was whirling in the bewildering intricacies of a _pas seul_ followed
in every step by the admiring gaze and the enthusiastic plaudits
of the whole company. As she finished, laughing and breathless,
she caught sight of Kalman, who had just entered.
"There," she exclaimed, "I have lost my breath, and Kalman will
sing now."
Immediately her suggestion was taken up on every hand.
"A song! A song!" they shouted. "Kalman Kalmar will sing! Come,
Kalman, 'The Shepherd's Love.'" "No, 'The Soldier's Bride.'"
"No, no, 'My Sword and my Cup.'"
"First my own cup," cried the boy, pressing toward the beer keg in
the corner and catching up a mug.
"Give him another," shouted a voice.
"No, Kalman," said his sister in a low voice, "no more beer."
But the boy only laughed at her as he filled his mug again.
"I am too full to sing just now," he cried; "let us dance," and,
seizing Irma, he carried her off under the nose of the disappointed
Sprink, joining with the rest in one of the many fascinating dances
of the Hungarian people.
But the song was only postponed. In every social function of the
foreign colony, Kalman's singing was a feature. The boy loved to
sing and was ever ready to respond to any request for a song. So
when the cry for a song rose once more, Kalman was ready and eager.
He sprang upon a beer keg and cried, "What shall it be?"
"My song," said Irma, who stood close to him.
The boy shook his head. "Not yet."
"'The Soldier's Bride,'" cried a voice, and Kalman began to sing.
He had a beautiful face with regular clean-cut features, and the
fair hair and blue grey eyes often seen in South Eastern Russia.
As he sang, his face reflected the passing shades of feeling in
his heart as a windless lake the cloud and sunlight of a summer sky.
The song was a kind of Hungarian "Young Lochinvar." The soldier
lover, young and handsome, is away in the wars; the beautiful
maiden, forced into a hateful union with a wealthy land owner,
old and ugly, stands before the priest at the altar. But hark!
ere the fateful vows are spoken there is a clatter of galloping
hoofs, a manly form rushes in, hurls the groom insensible to the
ground, snatches away the bride and before any can interfere,
is off on a coal-black steed, his bride before him. Let him
follow who dares!
The boy had a voice of remarkable range and clearness, and he
rendered the song with a verve and dramatic force remarkable in one
of his age. The song was received with wild cheers and loud demands
for more. The boy was about to refuse, when through the crowding
faces, all aglow with enthusiastic delight, he saw the scowling
face of Rosenblatt. A fierce rage seized him. He hesitated no longer.
"Yes, another song," he cried, and springing to the side of the
musicians he hummed the air, and then took his place again upon
the beer keg.
Before the musicians had finished the introductory bars, Irma came
to his side and entreated, "Oh, Kalman, not that one! Not that one!"
But it was as though he did not hear her. His face was set and
white, his blue eyes glowed black. He stood with lips parted,
waiting for the cue to begin. His audience, to most of whom the
song was known, caught by a mysterious telepathy the tense emotion
of the boy, and stood silent and eager, all smiles gone from their
faces. The song was in the Ruthenian tongue, but was the heart cry
of a Russian exile, a cry for freedom for his native land, for
death to the tyrant, for vengeance on the traitor. Nowhere in all
the Czar's dominions dared any man sing that song.
As the boy's strong, clear voice rang out in the last cry for
vengeance, there thrilled in his tones an intensity of passion that
gripped hard the hearts of those who had known all their lives long
the bitterness of tyranny unspeakable. In the last word the lad's
voice broke in a sob. Most of that company knew the boy's story,
and knew that he was singing out his heart's deepest passion.
When the song was finished, there was silence for a few brief
moments; then a man, a Russian, caught the boy in his arms, lifted
him on his shoulder and carried him round the room, the rest of the
men madly cheering. All but one. Trembling with inarticulate rage,
Rosenblatt strode to the musicians.
"Listen!" he hissed with an oath. "Do I pay you for this? No more
of this folly! Play up a czardas, and at once!"
The musicians hastened to obey, and before the cheers had died,
the strains of the czardas filled the room. With the quick reaction
from the tragic to the gay, the company swung into this joyous and
exciting dance. Samuel Sprink, seizing Irma, whirled her off into
the crowd struggling and protesting, but all in vain. After the
dance there was a general rush for the beer keg, with much noise
and good-natured horse play. At the other end of the room, however,
there was a fierce struggle going on. Samuel Sprink, excited by the
dance and, it must be confessed, by an unusual devotion to the beer
keg that evening, was still retaining his hold of Irma, and was
making determined efforts to kiss her.
"Let me go!" cried the girl, struggling to free herself. "You must
not touch me! Let me go!"
"Oh, come now, little one," said Samuel pleasantly, "don't be so
mighty stiff about it. One kiss and I let you go."
"That's right, Samuel, my boy," shouted Rosenblatt; "she only wants
coaxing just a little mucher."
Rosenblatt's words were followed by a chorus of encouraging cheers,
for Samuel was not unpopular among the men, and none could see any
good reason why a girl should object to be kissed, especially by
such a man as Samuel, who was already so prosperous and who had
such bright prospects for the future.
But Irma continued to struggle, till Kalman, running to her side,
cried, "Let my sister go!"
"Go away, Kalman. I am not hurting your sister. It's only fun.
Go away," said Sprink.
"She does not think it fun," said the boy quietly. "Let her go."
"Oh, go away, you leetle kid. Go away and sit down. You think
yourself too much."
It was Rosenblatt's harsh voice. As he spoke, he seized the boy
by the collar and with a quick jerk flung him back among the crowd.
It was as if he had fired some secret magazine of passion in the
boy's heart. Uttering the wild cry of a mad thing, Kalman sprang
at him with such lightning swiftness that Rosenblatt was borne back
and would have fallen, but for those behind. Recovering himself,
he dealt the boy a heavy blow in the face that staggered him for
a moment, but only for a moment. It seemed as if the boy had gone
mad. With the same wild cry, and this time with a knife open in
his hand, he sprang at his hated enemy, stabbing quick, fierce
stabs. But this time Rosenblatt was ready. Taking the boy's stabs
on his arm, he struck the boy a terrific blow on the neck. As
Kalman fell, he clutched and hung to his foe, who, seizing him
by the throat, dragged him swiftly toward the door.
"Hold this shut," he said to a friend of his who was following
him close.
After they had passed through, the man shut the door and held it
fast, keeping the crowd from getting out.
"Now," said Rosenblatt, dragging the half-insensible boy around to
the back of the house, "the time is come. The chance is too good.
You try to kill me, but there will be one less Kalmar in the world
to-night. There will be a little pay back of my debt to your cursed
father. Take that--and that." As he spoke the words, he struck the
boy hard upon the head and face, and then flinging him down in the
snow, proceeded deliberately to kick him to death.
But even as he threw the boy down, a shrill screaming pierced
through the quiet of the night, and from the back of the house a
little girl ran shrieking. "He is killing him! He is killing him!"
It was little Elizabeth Ketzel, who had been let in through the
back window to hear Kalman sing, and who, at the first appearance
of trouble, had fled by the way she had entered, meeting Rosenblatt
as he appeared dragging the insensible boy through the snow. Her
shrieks arrested the man in his murderous purpose. He turned and
fled, leaving the boy bleeding and insensible in the snow.
As Rosenblatt disappeared, a cutter drove rapidly up.
"What's the row, kiddie?" said a man, springing out. It was
Dr. Wright, returning from a midnight trip to one of his
patients in the foreign colony. "Who's killing who?"
"It is Kalman!" cried Elizabeth, "and he is dead! Oh, he is dead!"
The doctor knelt beside the boy. "Great Caesar! It surely is my
friend Kalman, and in a bad way. Some more vendetta business,
I have no doubt. Now what in thunder is that, do you suppose?"
From the house came a continuous shrieking. "Some more killing,
I guess. Here, throw this robe about the boy while I see about this."
He ran to the door and kicked it open. It seemed as if the whole
company of twenty or thirty men were every man fighting. As the
doctor paused to get his bearings, he saw across the room in the
farthest corner, Irma screaming as she struggled in the grasp of
Samuel Sprink, and in the midst of the room Paulina fighting like
a demon and uttering strange weird cries. She was trying to force
her way to the door.
As she caught sight of the doctor, she threw out her hands toward
him with a loud cry. "Kalman--killing! Kalman--killing!" was all
she could say.
The doctor thrust himself forward through the struggling men,
crying in a loud voice, "Here, you, let that woman go! And you
there, let that girl alone!"
Most of the men knew him, and at his words they immediately
ceased fighting.
"What the deuce are you at, anyway, you men?" he continued,
as Paulina and the girl sprang past him and out of the door.
"Do you fight with women?"
"No," said one of the men. "Dis man," pointing to Sprink,
"he mak fun wit de girl."
"Mighty poor fun," said the doctor, turning toward Sprink.
"And who has been killing that boy outside?"
"It is that young devil Kalman, who has been trying to kill
Mr. Rosenblatt," replied Sprink.
"Oh, indeed," said the doctor, "and what was the gentle
Mr. Rosenblatt doing meantime?"
"Rosenblatt?" cried Jacob Wassyl, coming forward excitedly.
"He mak for hurt dat boy. Dis man," pointing to Sprink,
"he try for kiss dat girl. Boy he say stop. Rosenblatt he
trow boy back. Boy he fight."
"Look here, Jacob," said Dr. Wright, "you get these men's
names--this man," pointing to Sprink, "and a dozen more--and
we'll make this interesting for Rosenblatt in the police court
to-morrow morning."
Outside the house the doctor found Paulina sitting in the snow
with Kalman's head in her lap, swaying to and fro muttering and
groaning. Beside her stood Irma and Elizabeth Ketzel weeping
wildly. The doctor raised the boy gently.
"Get into the cutter," he said to Paulina. Irma translated.
The woman ran without a word, seated herself in the cutter
and held out her arms for the boy.
"That will do," said the doctor, laying Kalman in her arms.
"Now get some shawls, quilts or something for your mother
and yourself, or you'll freeze to death, and come along."
The girl rushed away and returned in a few moments with a
bundle of shawls.
"Get in," said the doctor, "and be quick."
The men were crowding about.
"Now, Jacob," said the doctor, turning to Wassyl, who stood near,
"you get me those names and we'll get after that man, you bet!
or I'm a Turk. This boy is going to die, sure."
As he spoke, he sprang into his cutter and sent his horse off at a
gallop, for by the boy's breathing he felt that the chances of life
were slipping swiftly away.