March pushed the door open into a room like that on the left, but with a
writing-desk instead of a cobbler's bench, and a bed, where Lindau sat
propped up; with a coat over his shoulders and a skull-cap on his head,
reading a book, from which he lifted his eyes to stare blankly over his
spectacles at March. His hairy old breast showed through the night-shirt,
which gaped apart; the stump of his left arm lay upon the book to keep it
open.
"Ah, my tear yo'ng friendt! Passil! Marge! Iss it you?" he called out,
joyously, the next moment.
"Why, are you sick, Lindau?" March anxiously scanned his face in taking
his hand.
Lindau laughed. "No; I'm all righdt. Only a lidtle lazy, and a lidtle
eggonomigal. Idt's jeaper to stay in pedt sometimes as to geep a fire
a-goin' all the time. Don't wandt to gome too hardt on the 'brafer Mann',
you know:
"Braver Mann, er schafft mir zu essen."
You remember? Heine? You readt Heine still? Who is your favorite boet
now, Passil? You write some boetry yourself yet? No? Well, I am gladt to
zee you. Brush those baperss off of that jair. Well, idt is goodt for
zore eyess. How didt you findt where I lif?
"They told me at Maroni's," said March. He tried to keep his eyes on
Lindau's face, and not see the discomfort of the room, but he was aware
of the shabby and frowsy bedding, the odor of stale smoke, and the pipes
and tobacco shreds mixed with the books and manuscripts strewn over the
leaf of the writing-desk. He laid down on the mass the pile of foreign
magazines he had brought under his arm. "They gave me another address
first."
"Yes. I have chust gome here," said Lindau. "Idt is not very coy, Neigh?"
"It might be gayer," March admitted, with a smile. "Still," he added,
soberly, "a good many people seem to live in this part of the town.
Apparently they die here, too, Lindau. There is crape on your outside
door. I didn't know but it was for you."
"Nodt this time," said Lindau, in the same humor. "Berhaps some other
time. We geep the ondertakers bratty puzy down here."
"Well," said March, "undertakers must live, even if the rest of us have
to die to let them." Lindau laughed, and March went on: "But I'm glad it
isn't your funeral, Lindau. And you say you're not sick, and so I don't
see why we shouldn't come to business."
"Pusiness?" Lindau lifted his eyebrows. "You gome on pusiness?"
"And pleasure combined," said March, and he went on to explain the
service he desired at Lindau's hands.
The old man listened with serious attention, and with assenting nods that
culminated in a spoken expression of his willingness to undertake the
translations. March waited with a sort of mechanical expectation of his
gratitude for the work put in his way, but nothing of the kind came from
Lindau, and March was left to say, "Well, everything is understood, then;
and I don't know that I need add that if you ever want any little advance
on the work--"
"I will ask you," said Lindau, quietly, "and I thank you for that. But I
can wait; I ton't needt any money just at bresent." As if he saw some
appeal for greater frankness in March's eye, he went on: "I tidn't gome
here begause I was too boor to lif anywhere else, and I ton't stay in
pedt begause I couldn't haf a fire to geep warm if I wanted it. I'm nodt
zo padt off as Marmontel when he went to Paris. I'm a lidtle loaxurious,
that is all. If I stay in pedt it's zo I can fling money away on
somethings else. Heigh?"
"But what are you living here for, Lindau?" March smiled at the irony
lurking in Lindau's words.
"Well, you zee, I foundt I was begoming a lidtle too moch of an
aristograt. I hadt a room oap in Creenvidge Willage, among dose pig pugs
over on the West Side, and I foundt"--Liudau's voice lost its jesting
quality, and his face darkened--"that I was beginning to forget the
boor!"
"I should have thought," said March, with impartial interest, "that you
might have seen poverty enough, now and then, in Greenwich Village to
remind you of its existence."
"Nodt like here," said Lindau. "Andt you must zee it all the dtime--zee
it, hear it, smell it, dtaste it--or you forget it. That is what I gome
here for. I was begoming a ploated aristograt. I thought I was nodt like
these beople down here, when I gome down once to look aroundt; I thought
I must be somethings else, and zo I zaid I better take myself in time,
and I gome here among my brothers--the becears and the thiefs!" A noise
made itself heard in the next room, as if the door were furtively opened,
and a faint sound of tiptoeing and of hands clawing on a table.
"Thiefs!" Lindau repeated, with a shout. "Lidtle thiefs, that gabture
your breakfast. Ah! ha! ha!" A wild scurrying of feet, joyous cries and
tittering, and a slamming door followed upon his explosion, and he
resumed in the silence: "Idt is the children cot pack from school. They
gome and steal what I leaf there on my daple. Idt's one of our lidtle
chokes; we onderstand one another; that's all righdt. Once the gobbler in
the other room there he used to chase 'em; he couldn't onderstand their
lidtle tricks. Now dot goppler's teadt, and he ton't chase 'em any more.
He was a Bohemian. Gindt of grazy, I cuess."
"Well, it's a sociable existence," March suggested. "But perhaps if you
let them have the things without stealing--"
"Oh no, no! Most nodt mage them too gonceitedt. They mostn't go and feel
themselfs petter than those boor millionairss that hadt to steal their
money."
March smiled indulgently at his old friend's violence. "Oh, there are
fagots and fagots, you know, Lindau; perhaps not all the millionaires are
so guilty."
"Let us speak German!" cried Lindau, in his own tongue, pushing his book
aside, and thrusting his skullcap back from his forehead. "How much money
can a man honestly earn without wronging or oppressing some other man?"
"Well, if you'll let me answer in English," said March, "I should say
about five thousand dollars a year. I name that figure because it's my
experience that I never could earn more; but the experience of other men
may be different, and if they tell me they can earn ten, or twenty, or
fifty thousand a year, I'm not prepared to say they can't do it."
Lindau hardly waited for his answer. "Not the most gifted man that ever
lived, in the practice of any art or science, and paid at the highest
rate that exceptional genius could justly demand from those who have
worked for their money, could ever earn a million dollars. It is the
landlords and the merchant princes, the railroad kings and the coal
barons (the oppressors to whom you instinctively give the titles of
tyrants)--it is these that make the millions, but no man earns them. What
artist, what physician, what scientist, what poet was ever a
millionaire?"
"I can only think of the poet Rogers," said March, amused by Lindau's
tirade. "But he was as exceptional as the other Rogers, the martyr, who
died with warm feet." Lindau had apparently not understood his joke, and
he went on, with the American ease of mind about everything: "But you
must allow, Lindau, that some of those fellows don't do so badly with
their guilty gains. Some of them give work to armies of poor people--"
Lindau furiously interrupted: "Yes, when they have gathered their
millions together from the hunger and cold and nakedness and ruin and
despair of hundreds of thousands of other men, they 'give work' to the
poor! They give work! They allow their helpless brothers to earn enough
to keep life in them! They give work! Who is it gives toil, and where
will your rich men be when once the poor shall refuse to give toil? Why,
you have come to give me work!"
March laughed outright. "Well, I'm not a millionaire, anyway, Lindau, and
I hope you won't make an example of me by refusing to give toil. I dare
say the millionaires deserve it, but I'd rather they wouldn't suffer in
my person."
"No," returned the old man, mildly relaxing the fierce glare he had bent
upon March. "No man deserves to suffer at the hands of another. I lose
myself when I think of the injustice in the world. But I must not forget
that I am like the worst of them."
"You might go up Fifth Avenue and live among the rich awhile, when you're
in danger of that," suggested March. "At any rate," he added, by an
impulse which he knew he could not justify to his wife, "I wish you'd
come some day and lunch with their emissary. I've been telling Mrs. March
about you, and I want her and the children to see you. Come over with
these things and report." He put his hand on the magazines as he rose.
"I will come," said Lindau, gently.
"Shall I give you your book?" asked March.
"No; I gidt oap bretty soon."
"And--and--can you dress yourself?"
"I vhistle, and one of those lidtle fellowss comess. We haf to dake gare
of one another in a blace like this. Idt iss nodt like the worldt," said
Lindau, gloomily.
March thought he ought to cheer him up. "Oh, it isn't such a bad world,
Lindau! After all, the average of millionaires is small in it." He added,
"And I don't believe there's an American living that could look at that
arm of yours and not wish to lend you a hand for the one you gave us
all." March felt this to be a fine turn, and his voice trembled slightly
in saying it.
Lindau smiled grimly. "You think zo? I wouldn't moch like to drost 'em.
I've driedt idt too often." He began to speak German again fiercely:
"Besides, they owe me nothing. Do you think I knowingly gave my hand to
save this oligarchy of traders and tricksters, this aristocracy of
railroad wreckers and stock gamblers and mine-slave drivers and mill-serf
owners? No; I gave it to the slave; the slave--ha! ha! ha!--whom I helped
to unshackle to the common liberty of hunger and cold. And you think I
would be the beneficiary of such a state of things?"
"I'm sorry to hear you talk so, Lindau," said March; "very sorry." He
stopped with a look of pain, and rose to go. Lindau suddenly broke into a
laugh and into English.
"Oh, well, it is only dalk, Passil, and it toes me goodt. My parg is
worse than my pidte, I cuess. I pring these things roundt bretty soon.
Good-bye, Passil, my tear poy. Auf wiedersehen!"