Mr. Feuerstein's evening was even more successful than his afternoon.
Brauner was still grumbling. Mr. Feuerstein could not possibly be
adjusted in his mind to his beloved ideals, his religion of
life--"Arbeit und Liebe und Heim." Still he was yielding and Hilda saw
the signs of it. She knew he was practically won over and was secretly
inclined to be proud that his daughter had made this exalted conquest.
All men regard that which they do not know either with extravagant awe
or with extravagant contempt. While Brauner had the universal human
failing for attaching too much importance to the department of human
knowledge in which he was thoroughly at home, he had the American
admiration for learning, for literature, and instead of spelling them
with a very small "l," as "practical" men sometimes do with age and
increasing vanity, he spelled them with huge capitals, erecting them
into a position out of all proportion to their relative importance in
the life of the human animal.
Mr. Feuerstein had just enough knowledge to enable him to play upon
this weakness, this universal human susceptibility to the poison of
pretense. All doubt of success fled his mind, and he was free to
indulge his vanity and his contempt for these simple, unpretending
people. "So vulgar!" he said to himself, as he left their house that
night--he who knew how to do nothing of use or value. "It is a great
condescension for me. Working people--ugh!"
As he strolled up town he was spending in fancy the income from at
least two, perhaps all three, flat-houses--"The shop's enough for the
old people and that dumb ass of a brother. I'll elevate the family.
Yes, I think I'll run away with Hilda to-morrow--that's the safest
plan."
Otto had guessed close to the truth about Feuerstein's affairs. They
were in a desperate tangle. He had been discharged from the stock
company on Saturday night. He was worthless as an actor, and had the
hostility of the management and of his associates. His landlady had got
the news promptly from a boarder who paid in part by acting as a sort
of mercantile agency for her in watching her very uncertain boarders.
She had given him a week's notice, and had so arranged matters that if
he fled he could not take his meager baggage. He was down to
eighty-five cents of a borrowed dollar. He owed money everywhere in
sums ranging from five dollars to twenty-five cents. The most of
these debts were in the form of half-dollar borrowings. He had begun
his New York career with loans of "five dollars until Thursday--I'm a
little pressed." Soon it became impossible for him to get more than a
dollar at a time even from the women, except an occasional windfall
through a weak or ignorant new acquaintance. He clung tenaciously to
the fifty-cent basis--to go lower would cheapen him. But for the last
two weeks his regular levies had been of twenty-five cents, with not a
few descents to ten and even five cents.
He reached Goerwitz's at ten o'clock and promenaded slowly through both
rooms twice. Just as he was leaving he espied an acquaintance who was
looking fiercely away from him as if saying: "I don't see you, and,
damn you, don't you dare see me!" But Feuerstein advanced boldly.
Twelve years of active membership in that band of "beats" which patrols
every highway and byway and private way of civilization had thickened
and toughened his skin into a hide. "Good evening, Albers," he said
cordially, with a wave of the soft, light hat. "I see you have a
vacant place in your little circle. Thank you!" He assumed that
Albers had invited him, took a chair from another table and seated
himself. Social courage is one of the rarest forms of courage. Albers
grew red but did not dare insult such a fine-looking fellow who seemed
so hearty and friendly. He surlily introduced Feuerstein to his
friends--two women and two men. Feuerstein ordered a round of beer
with the air of a prince and without the slightest intention of paying
for it.
The young woman of the party was seated next to him. Even before he
sat he recognized her as the daughter of Ganser, a rich brewer of the
upper East Side. He had placed himself deliberately beside her, and he
at once began advances. She showed at a glance that she was a silly,
vain girl. Her face was fat and dull; she had thin, stringy hair. She
was flabby and, in the lazy life to which the Gansers' wealth and the
silly customs of prosperous people condemned her, was already beginning
to expand in the places where she could least afford it.
He made amorous eyes at her. He laughed enthusiastically at her
foolish speeches. He addressed his pompous platitudes exclusively to
her. Within an hour he pressed her hand under the table and sighed
dramatically. When she looked at him he started and rolled his great
eyes dreamily away. Never before had she received attentions that were
not of the frankest and crudest practical nature. She was all in a
flutter at having thus unexpectedly come upon appreciation of the
beauties and merits her mirror told her she possessed. When Mrs.
Schoenberg, her aunt, rose to go, she gave Feuerstein a chance to say
in a low aside: "My queen! To-morrow at eleven--at Bloomingdale's."
Her blush and smile told him she would be there.
All left except Feuerstein and a youth he had been watching out of the
corner of his eyes--young Dippel, son of the rich drug-store man.
Feuerstein saw that Dippel was on the verge of collapse from too much
drink. As he still had his eighty-five cents, he pressed Dippel to
drink and, by paying, induced him to add four glasses of beer to his
already top-heavy burden.
"Mus' go home," said Dippel at last, rising abruptly.
Feuerstein walked with him, taking his arm to steady him. "Let's have
one more," he said, drawing him into a saloon, gently pushing him to a
seat at a table and ordering whisky. After the third large drink,
Dippel became helpless and maudlin and began to overflow with generous
sentiments. "I love you, Finkelstern, ol' man," he declared tearfully.
"They say you're a dead beat, but wha' d'I care?"
"Finkelstern," affecting drunkenness, shed tears on Dippel's shoulder,
denied that he was a "beat" and swore that he loved Dippel like a
brother. "You're my frien'," he said. "I know you'd trust me to any
amount."
Dippel took from his trousers pocket a roll of bills several inches
thick. Feuerstein thrilled and his eyes grew eloquent as he noted tens
and twenties and at least one fifty. Slowly, and with exaggerated
care, Dippel drew off a ten. "There y'are, ol' dead beat," he said.
"I'll stake you a ten. Lots more where that came from--soda-fountain
counter's reg'lar gol' mine."
In taking off the ten, he dropped a twenty. It fluttered to the floor
and the soldier of fortune, the scorner of toil and toilers, slid his
foot over it as swiftly and naturally as a true aristocrat always
covers an opportunity to get something somebody else has earned. He
put the ten in his pocket, when Dippel's eyes closed he stooped and
retrieved the twenty with stealth--and skill. When the twenty was
hidden, and the small but typical operation in high finance was
complete, he shook Dippel. "I say, old man," he said, "hadn't you
better let me keep your money for you? I'm afraid you'll lose it."
Dippel slowly unclosed one eye and gave him a look of glassy cunning.
He again drew the roll from his pocket, and, clasping it tightly in his
fist, waved it under Feuerstein's nose. As he did it, he vented a
drunken chuckle. "Soda fountain's gol' mine, Fishenspiel," he said
thickly. "No, you don't! I can watch my own roll." He winked and
chuckled.
"Sorry to disappoint you, Fishy," he went on, with a leer. Then he took
off another ten and handed it to Feuerstein. "Good fel', Fishy," he
mumbled, "'f y' are a dead beat."
Feuerstein added the ten to the thirty and ordered more whisky. Dippel
tried to doze, but he would not permit it. "He mustn't sleep any of it
off," he thought.
When the whisky came Dippel shook himself together and started up.
"G'-night," he said, trying to stand, look and talk straight. "Don't
f'rget, y'owe me ten dollarses--no, two ten dollarses."
"Oh, sit down," coaxed Feuerstein, taking him by the arm. "It's early
yet."
Dippel shook him off with much dignity. "Don' touch me!" he growled.
"I know what I'm 'bout. I'm goin' home." Then to himself, but aloud:
"Dippy, you're too full f'r utterance--you mus' shake this beat."
Again to Feuerstein:
"G'night, Mr. Funkelshine--g'night. Sit there till I'm gone."
Feuerstein rose to follow and Dippel struck at him. The waiter seized
each by the shoulder and flung them through the swinging doors. Dippel
fell in a heap on the sidewalk, but Feuerstein succeeded in keeping to
his feet. He went to the assistance of Dippel.
"Don't touch me," shouted Dippel.
"Police! Police!"
Feuerstein looked fearfully round, gave Dippel a kick and hurried away.
When he glanced back from a safe distance Dippel was waving to and fro
on his wobbling legs, talking to a cabman.
"Close-fisted devil," muttered Feuerstein. "He couldn't forget his
money even when he was drunk. What good is money to a brute like him?"
And he gave a sniff of contempt for the vulgarity and meanness of
Dippel and his kind.
Early the next morning he established a modus vivendi with his landlady
by giving her ten dollars on account. He had an elaborate breakfast at
Terrace Garden and went to Bloomingdale's, arriving at eleven
precisely. Lena Ganser was already there, pretending to shop at a
counter in full view of the appointed place. They went to Terrace
Garden and sat in the Stube. He at once opened up his sudden romantic
passion. "All night I have walked the streets," he said, "dreaming of
you." When he had fully informed her of the state of his love-maddened
mind toward her, he went on to his most congenial topic--himself.
"You have heard of the Freiherr von Feuerstein, the great soldier?" he
asked her.
Lena had never heard of him. But she did not know who was German
Emperor or even who was President of the United States. She,
therefore, had to be extremely cautious. She nodded assent.
"My uncle," said Feuerstein impressively. His eyes became reflective.
"Strange!" he exclaimed in tender accents, soliloquizing--"strange
where romance will lead us. Instead of remaining at home, in ease and
luxury, here am I--an actor--a wanderer--roaming the earth in search of
the heart that Heaven intended should be wedded to mine." He fixed his
gaze upon Lena's fat face with the expression that had made Hilda's
soul fall down and worship. "And--I have found it!" He drew in and
expelled a vast breath. "At last! My soul is at rest."
Lena tried to look serious in imitation of him, but that was not her
way of expressing emotion. She made a brief struggle, then collapsed
into her own mode--a vain, delighted, giggling laugh.
"Why do you smile?" he asked sternly. He revolted from this discord to
his symphony.
She sobered with a frightened, deprecating look. "Don't mind me," she
pleaded. "Pa says I'm a fool. I was laughing because I'm happy.
You're such a sweet, romantic dream of a man."
Feuerstein was not particular either as to the quality or as to the
source of his vanity-food. He accepted Lena's offering with a
condescending nod and smile. They talked, or, rather, he talked and
she listened and giggled until lunch time. As the room began to fill,
they left and he walked home with her.
"You can come in," she said. "Pa won't be home to lunch to-day and ma
lets me do as I please."
The Gansers lived in East Eighty-first Street, in the regulation
twenty-five-foot brownstone house. And within, also, it was of a
familiar New York type. It was the home of the rich, vain ignoramus
who has not taste enough to know that those to whom he has trusted for
taste have shockingly betrayed him. Ganser had begun as a teamster for
a brewery and had grown rapidly rich late in life. He happened to be
elected president of a big Verein and so had got the notion that he was
a person of importance and attainments beyond his fellows. Too coarse
and narrow and ignorant to appreciate the elevated ideals of democracy,
he reverted to the European vulgarities of rank and show. He decided
that he owed it to himself and his family to live in the estate of
"high folks." He bought a house in what was for him an
ultra-fashionable quarter, and called for bids to furnish it in the
latest style. The results were even more regardless of taste than of
expense--carpets that fought with curtains, pictures that quarreled
with their frames and with the walls, upholstery so bellicose that it
seemed perilous to sit upon.
But Feuerstein was as impressed as the Gansers had been the first time
they beheld the gorgeousness of their palace. He looked about with a
proprietary sense--"I'll marry this little idiot," he said to himself.
"Maybe my nest won't be downy, and maybe I won't lie at my ease in it!"
He met Mrs. Ganser and had the opportunity to see just what Lena would
look and be twenty years thence. Mrs. Ganser moved with great
reluctance and difficulty. She did not speak unless forced and then
her voice seemed to have felt its way up feebly through a long and
painfully narrow passage, emerging thin, low and fainting. When she
sat--or, rather, AS she sat, for she was always sitting--her mountain
of soft flesh seemed to be slowly collapsing upon and around the chair
like a lump of dough on a mold. Her only interest in life was
disclosed when she was settled and settling at the luncheon table. She
used her knife more than her fork and her fingers more than either.
Feuerstein left soon after luncheon, lingering only long enough to give
Lena a theatrical embrace. "Well, I'll not spend much time with those
women, once I'm married," he reflected as he went down the steps; and
he thought of Hilda and sighed.
The next day but one he met Lena in the edge of the park and, after
gloomy silence, shot with strange piercing looks that made her feel as
if she were the heroine of a book, he burst forth with a demand for
immediate marriage.
"Forty-eight hours of torment!" he cried. "I shall not leave you again
until you are securely mine."
He proceeded to drop vague, adroit hints of the perils that beset a
fascinating actor's life, of the women that had come and gone in his
life. And Lena, all a-tremble with jealous anxiety, was in the parlor
of a Lutheran parsonage, with the minister reading out of the black
book, before she was quite aware that she and her cyclonic adorer were
not still promenading near the green-house in the park. "Now," said
Feuerstein briskly, as they were once more in the open air, "we'll go
to your father."
"Goodness gracious, no," protested Lena. "You don't know him--he'll be
crazy--just crazy! We must wait till he finds out about you--then
he'll be very proud. He wanted a son-in-law of high social standing--a
gentleman."
"We will go home, I tell you," replied Feuerstein firmly--his tone was
now the tone of the master. All the sentiment was out of it and all
the hardness in it.
Lena felt the change without understanding it. "I bet you, pa'll make
you wish you'd taken my advice," she said sullenly.
But Feuerstein led her home. They went up stairs where Mrs. Ganser was
seated, looking stupidly at a new bonnet as she turned it slowly round
on one of her cushion-like hands. Feuerstein went to her and kissed
her on the hang of her cheek. "Mother!" he said in a deep, moving
voice.
Mrs. Ganser blinked and looked helplessly at Lena.
"I'm married, ma," explained Lena.
"It's Mr. Feuerstein." And she gave her silly laugh.
Mrs. Ganser grew slowly pale. "Your father," she at last succeeded in
articulating. "Ach!" She lifted her arm, thick as a piano leg, and
resumed the study of her new bonnet.
"Won't you welcome me, mother?" asked Feuerstein, his tone and attitude
dignified appeal.
Mrs. Ganser shook her huge head vaguely. "See Peter," was all she said.
They went down stairs and waited, Lena silent, Feuerstein pacing the
room and rehearsing, now aloud, now to himself, the scene he would
enact with his father-in-law. Peter was in a frightful humor that
evening. His only boy, who spent his mornings in sleep, his afternoons
in speeding horses and his evenings in carousal, had come down upon him
for ten thousand dollars to settle a gambling debt. Peter was willing
that his son should be a gentleman and should conduct himself like one.
But he had worked too hard for his money not to wince as a plain man at
what he endured and even courted as a seeker after position for the
house of Ganser. He had hoped to be free to vent his ill-humor at
home. He was therefore irritated by the discovery that an outsider was
there to check him. As he came in he gave Feuerstein a look which said
plainly:
"And who are you, and how long are you going to intrude yourself?"
But Feuerstein, absorbed in the role he had so carefully thought out,
did not note his unconscious father-in-law's face. He extended both
his hands and advanced grandly upon fat, round Peter. "My father!" he
exclaimed in his classic German. "Forgive my unseemly haste in plucking
without your permission the beautiful flower I found within reach."
Peter stepped back and gave a hoarse grunt of astonishment. His red
face became redder as he glared, first at Feuerstein, then at Lena.
"What lunatic is this you've got here, daughter?" he demanded.
"My father!" repeated Feuerstein, drawing Lena to him.
Ganser's mouth opened and shut slowly several times and his whiskers
bristled. "Is this fellow telling the truth?" he asked Lena in a tone
that made her shiver and shrink away from her husband.