On an afternoon late in April Feuerstein left his boarding-house in
East Sixteenth Street, in the block just beyond the eastern gates of
Stuyvesant Square, and paraded down Second Avenue.
A romantic figure was Feuerstein, of the German Theater stock company.
He was tall and slender, and had large, handsome features. His coat
was cut long over the shoulders and in at the waist to show his lines
of strength and grace. He wore a pearl-gray soft hat with rakish brim,
and it was set with suspicious carelessness upon bright blue, and
seemed to blazon a fiery, sentimental nature. He strode along,
intensely self-conscious, not in the way that causes awkwardness, but
in the way that causes a swagger. One had only to glance at him to
know that he was offensive to many men and fascinating to many women.
Not an article of his visible clothing had been paid for, and the
ten-cent piece in a pocket of his trousers was his total cash balance.
But his heart was as light as the day. Had he not youth? Had he not
health? Had he not looks to bewitch the women, brains to outwit the
men? Feuerstein sniffed the delightful air and gazed round, like a
king in the midst of cringing subjects. "I feel that this is one of my
lucky days," said he to himself. An aristocrat, a patrician, a
Hochwohlgeboren, if ever one was born.
At the Fourteenth-Street crossing he became conscious that a young man
was looking at him with respectful admiration and with the anxiety of
one who fears a distinguished acquaintance has forgotten him.
Feuerstein paused and in his grandest, most gracious manner, said:
"Ah! Mr. Hartmann--a glorious day!"
Young Hartmann flushed with pleasure and stammered, "Yes--a GLORIOUS
day!"
"It is lucky I met you," continued Feuerstein. "I had an appointment
at the Cafe Boulevard at four, and came hurrying away from my lodgings
with empty pockets--I am so absent-minded. Could you convenience me for
a few hours with five dollars? I'll repay you to-night--you will be at
Goerwitz's probably? I usually look in there after the theater."
Hartmann colored with embarrassment.
"I'm sorry," he said humbly, "I've got only a two-dollar bill. If it
would--"
Feuerstein looked annoyed. "Perhaps I can make that do. Thank
you--sorry to trouble you. I MUST be more careful."
The two dollars were transferred, Feuerstein gave Hartmann a
flourishing stage salute and strode grandly on. Before he had gone ten
yards he had forgotten Hartmann and had dismissed all financial
care--had he not enough to carry him through the day, even should he
meet no one who would pay for his dinner and his drinks? "Yes, it is a
day to back myself to win--fearlessly!"
The hedge at the Cafe Boulevard was green and the tables were in the
yard and on the balconies; but Feuerstein entered, seated himself in
one of the smoke-fogged reading-rooms, ordered a glass of beer, and
divided his attention between the Fliegende Blatter and the faces of
incoming men. After half an hour two men in an arriving group of three
nodded coldly to him. He waited until they were seated, then joined
them and proceeded to make himself agreeable to the one who had just
been introduced to him--young Horwitz, an assistant bookkeeper at a
department store in Twenty-third Street. But Horwitz had a "soul," and
the yearning of that secret soul was for the stage. Feuerstein did
Horwitz the honor of dining with him. At a quarter past seven, with
his two dollars intact, with a loan of one dollar added to it, and with
five of his original ten cents, he took himself away to the theater.
Afterward, by appointment, he met his new friend, and did him the honor
of accompanying him to the Young German Shooters' Society ball at
Terrace Garden.
It was one of those simple, entirely and genuinely gay entertainments
that assemble the society of the real New York--the three and a half
millions who work and play hard and live plainly and without pretense,
whose ideals center about the hearth, and whose aspirations are to
retire with a competence early in the afternoon of life, thenceforth
placidly to assist in the prosperity of their children and to have
their youth over again in their grandchildren.
Feuerstein's gaze wandered from face to face among the young women, to
pause at last upon a dark, handsome, strong-looking daughter of the
people. She had coal-black hair that curled about a low forehead. Her
eyes were dreamy and stormy. Her mouth was sweet, if a trifle
petulant. "And who is she?" he asked.
"That's Hilda Brauner," replied Horwitz. "Her father has a
delicatessen in Avenue A. He's very rich--owns three flat-houses.
They must bring him in at least ten thousand net, not to speak of what
he makes in the store. They're fine people, those Brauners; none nicer
anywhere."
"A beautiful creature," said Feuerstein, who was feeling like a prince
who, for reasons of sordid necessity, had condescended to a party in
Fifth Avenue. "I'd like to meet her."
"Certainly," replied Horwitz. "I'll introduce her to you."
She blushed and was painfully ill at ease in presence of his grand and
lofty courtesy--she who had been used to the offhand manners which
prevail wherever there is equality of the sexes and the custom of frank
sociability. And when he asked her to dance she would have refused had
she been able to speak at all. But he bore her off and soon made her
forget herself in the happiness of being drifted in his strong arm upon
the rhythmic billows of the waltz. At the end he led her to a seat and
fell to complimenting her--his eyes eloquent, his voice, it seemed to
her, as entrancing as the waltz music. When he spoke in German it was
without the harsh sputtering and growling, the slovenly slurring and
clipping to which she had been accustomed. She could answer only with
monosyllables or appreciative looks, though usually she was a great
talker and, as she had much common sense and not a little wit, a good
talker. But her awe of him, which increased when she learned that he
was on the stage, did not prevent her from getting the two main
impressions he wished to make upon her--that Mr. Feuerstein was a very
grand person indeed, and that he was condescending to be profoundly
smitten of her charms.
She was the "catch" of Avenue A, taking prospects and looks together,
and the men she knew had let her rule them. In Mr. Feuerstein she had
found what she had been unconsciously seeking with the Idealismus of
genuine youth--a man who compelled her to look far up to him, a man
who seemed to her to embody those vague dreams of a life grand and
beautiful, away off somewhere, which are dreamed by all young people,
and by not a few older ones, who have less excuse for not knowing where
happiness is to be found. He spent the whole evening with her; Mrs.
Liebers and Sophie, with whom she had come, did not dare interrupt her
pleasure, but had to stay, yawning and cross, until the last strain of
Home, Sweet Home.
At parting he pressed her hand. "I have been happy," he murmured in a
tone which said, "Mine is a sorrow-shadowed soul that has rarely tasted
happiness."
She glanced up at him with ingenuous feeling in her eyes and managed to
stammer: "I hope we'll meet again."
"Couldn't I come down to see you Sunday evening?"
"There's a concert in the Square. If you're there I might see you."
"Until Sunday night," he said, and made her feel that the three
intervening days would be for him three eternities.
She thought of him all the way home in the car, and until she fell
asleep. His sonorous name was in her mind when she awoke in the
morning; and, as she stood in the store that day, waiting on the
customers, she looked often at the door, and, with the
childhood-surviving faith of youth in the improbable and impossible,
hoped that he would appear. For the first time she was definitely
discontented with her lot, was definitely fascinated by the idea that
there might be something higher and finer than the simple occupations
and simple enjoyments which had filled her life thus far.
In the evening after supper her father and mother left her and her
brother August in charge, and took their usual stroll for exercise and
for the profound delight of a look at their flat-houses--those
reminders of many years of toil and thrift. They had spent their youth,
she as cook, he as helper, in one of New York's earliest delicatessen
shops. When they had saved three thousand dollars they married and put
into effect the plan which had been their chief subject of conversation
every day and every evening for ten years--they opened the
"delicatessen" in Avenue A, near Second Street. They lived in two back
rooms; they toiled early and late for twenty-three contented, cheerful
years--she in the shop when she was not doing the housework or caring
for the babies, he in the great clean cellar, where the cooking and
cabbage-cutting and pickling and spicing were done. And now, owners of
three houses that brought in eleven thousand a year clear, they were
about to retire. They had fixed on a place in the Bronx, in the East
Side, of course, with a big garden, where every kind of gay flower and
good vegetable could be grown, and an arbor where there could be
pinochle, beer and coffee on Sunday afternoons. In a sentence, they
were honorable and exemplary members of that great mass of humanity
which has the custody of the present and the future of the race--those
who live by the sweat of their own brows or their own brains, and train
their children to do likewise, those who maintain the true ideals of
happiness and progress, those from whom spring all the workers and all
the leaders of thought and action.
They walked slowly up the Avenue, speaking to their neighbors, pausing
now and then for a joke or to pat a baby on the head, until they were
within two blocks of Tompkins Square. They stopped before a five-story
tenement, evidently the dwelling-place of substantial, intelligent,
self-respecting artisans and their families, leading the natural life
of busy usefulness. In its first floor was a delicatessen--the sign
read "Schwartz and Heilig." Paul Brauner pointed with his long-stemmed
pipe at the one show-window.
"Fine, isn't it? Beautiful!" he exclaimed in Low-German--they and
almost all their friends spoke Low-German, and used English only when
they could not avoid it.
The window certainly was well arranged. Only a merchant who knew his
business thoroughly--both his wares and his customers--could have thus
displayed cooked chickens, hams and tongues, the imported sausages and
fish, the jelly-inclosed paste of chicken livers, the bottles and jars
of pickled or spiced meats and vegetables and fruits. The spectacle
was adroitly arranged to move the hungry to yearning, the filled to
regret, and the dyspeptic to rage and remorse. And behind the
show-window lay a shop whose shelves, counters and floor were clean as
toil could make and keep them, and whose air was saturated with the
most delicious odors.
Mrs. Brauner nodded. "Heilig was up at half-past four this morning,"
she said. "He cleans out every morning and he moves everything twice a
week." She had a round, honest face that was an inspiring study in
simplicity, sense and sentiment.
"What a worker!" was her husband's comment. "So unlike most of the
young men nowadays. If August were only like him!"
"You'd think Heilig was a drone if he were your son," replied Mrs.
Brauner. She knew that if any one else had dared thus to attack their
boy, his father would have been growling and snapping like an angry
bear.
"That's right!" he retorted with mock scorn. "Defend your children!
You'll be excusing Hilda for putting off Heilig next."
"She'll marry him--give her time," said Mrs. Brauner. "She's romantic,
but she's sensible, too--why, she was born to make a good wife to a
hard-working man. Where's there another woman that knows the business
as she does? You admit on her birthdays that she's the only real
helper you ever had."
"Except you," said her husband.
"Never mind me." Mrs. Brauner pretended to disdain the compliment.
Brauner understood, however. "We have had the best, you and I," said
he.
"Arbeit und Liebe und Heim. Nicht wahr?" Otto Heilig appeared in his
doorway and greeted them awkwardly. Nor did their cordiality lessen
his embarrassment. His pink and white skin was rosy red and his frank
blue-gray eyes shifted uneasily. But he was smiling with eager
friendliness, showing even, sound, white teeth.
"You are coming to see us to-morrow?" asked Mrs. Brauner--he always
called on Sunday afternoons and stayed until five, when he had to open
shop for the Sunday supper rush.
"Why--that is--not exactly--no," he stammered. Hilda had told him not
to come, but he knew that if he admitted it to her parents they would
be severe with her. He didn't like anybody to be severe with Hilda,
and he felt that their way of helping his courtship was not suited to
the modern ideas. "They make her hate me," he often muttered. But if
he resented it he would offend them and Hilda too; if he acquiesced he
encouraged them and added to Hilda's exasperation.
Mrs. Brauner knew at once that Hilda was in some way the cause of the
break in the custom. "Oh, you must come," she said. "We'd feel
strange all week if we didn't see you on Sunday."
"Yes--I must have my cards," insisted Brauner. He and Otto always
played pinochle; Otto's eyes most of the time and his thoughts all the
time were on Hilda, in the corner, at the zither, playing the maddest,
most romantic music; her father therefore usually won, poor at the game
though he was. It made him cross to lose, and Otto sometimes defeated
his own luck deliberately when love refused to do it for him.
"Very well, then--that is--if I can--I'll try to come."
Several customers pushed past him into his shop and he had to rejoin
his partner, Schwartz, behind the counters. Brauner and his wife
walked slowly home--it was late and there would be more business than
Hilda and August could attend to. As they crossed Third Street
Brauner said: "Hilda must go and tell him to come. This is her doing."
"But she can't do that," objected Mrs. Brauner. "She'd say it was
throwing herself at his head."
"Not if I send her?" Brauner frowned with a seeming of severity. "Not
if I, her father, send her--for two chickens, as we're out?" Then he
laughed. His fierceness was the family joke when Hilda was small she
used to say, "Now, get mad, father, and make little Hilda laugh!"
Hilda was behind the counter, a customer watching with fascinated eyes
the graceful, swift movements of her arms and hands as she tied up a
bundle. Her sleeves were rolled to her dimpled elbows, and her arms
were round and strong and white, and her skin was fine and smooth. Her
shoulders were wide, but not square; her hips were narrow, her wrists,
her hands, her head, small. She looked healthy and vigorous and useful
as well as beautiful.
When the customers had gone Brauner said: "Go up to Schwartz and
Heilig, daughter, and ask them for two two-pound chickens. And tell
Otto Heilig you'll be glad to see him to-morrow."
"But we don't need the chickens, now. We--" Hilda's brow contracted
and her chin came out.
"Do as I tell you," said her father.
"MY children shall not sink to the disrespect of these days."
"But I shan't be here to-morrow! I've made another engagement."
"You SHALL be here to-morrow! If you don't wish young Heilig here for
your own sake, you must show consideration for your parents. Are they
to be deprived of their Sunday afternoon? You have never done this
before, Hilda. You have never forgotten us before."
Hilda hung her head; after a moment she unrolled her sleeves, laid
aside her apron and set out. She was repentant toward her father, but
she felt that Otto was to blame. She determined to make him suffer for
it--how easy it was to make him suffer, and how pleasant to feel that
this big fellow was her slave! She went straight up to him. "So you
complained of me, did you?" she said scornfully, though she knew well
that he had not, that he could not have done anything that even seemed
mean.