Anna Rolf arose from her bed with her beauty wasted, her youth gone. Instead of the brilliant, joyous girl, there remained the sharp-featured, sharp-tongued woman, whose sound health, clear head, and practical abilities were now, instead of a source of self-satisfaction, viewed by herself merely as a stock in trade, her only capital for the business of taking care of her children. For Leppel’s life insurance had been forfeited by the doubt cast upon the manner of his death, and their tiny home was mortgaged to its full value. Even the money designed to purchase his patent had to be returned to those from whom it had been borrowed, some of whom, bad as were the times, declined to receive it, and others would receive only a part; so that fifty dollars in all were left to help the fatherless and widow begin the world for themselves. It was a very good thing, as every one agreed, that Leppel had left his wallet in the pocket of his overcoat, which he had not remembered to put on before he wandered out to his death through that January fog.
The house was sold to satisfy the mortgage, and Anna rented two rooms on the third floor of the tall building that overshadowed the shoemaker’s dwelling to the left. Here she established herself as a dressmaker, but for a while found little custom. Karl and Dora had been her true friends throughout, with that sort of friendship which resides not only in the heart but the pocket. Indeed, but for them it is doubtful whether she could have weathered the first six months of her widowhood; for Leppel’s relations, who were all in the Far West, had, it is true, helped with his funeral expenses, but declined to be troubled further. He had always been a sort of ugly duckling among those shrewd, close-fisted people—that quiet, silent, unpractical dreamer; but they were very sorry, notwithstanding, that, in spite of his excellent wife, he had come to such a bad end.
“Under the Commune,” said Karl Metzerott, with an added bitterness derived from his own personal aggrievement, “Leppel would be alive and an honored citizen.”
“I don’t know,” said Dora doubtfully. “That man in Washington, you know, says that the machine would not pay. Would the Commune adopt a machine that would not pay?”
“It would pay, under the Commune,” replied Karl; but as this point belonged to the domain of the unprovable, Dora did not argue upon it.
“Well,” she said, “at least the Commune would not have been kinder to him than his own wife and his own relations.”
“Any woman might be unkind who saw her children threatened with starvation,” he answered gloomily.
“Yes,” she answered hesitatingly, loath to condemn Anna, yet feeling in her own soul, that she, Dora, would have acted very differently. Then, with a sudden brightness, “Anyway, Karl, the Commune wouldn’t make much difference to us. We shouldn’t be much better off, and we should not act any differently.”
“We’re pretty good Communists, you and I,” he said with a grim smile, “but what have we got by it? I tell you, Dora, we’ve got to live very close for the next year or so, if we mean to catch up.”
“I know it,” she answered, smiling; “and, Karl, I’ve thought of a way to save quite a lot of money. If Anna and her three children can live in two rooms, why can’t we? Then we could rent our bedroom, and, when winter comes, that would save coal. For you know we should be obliged to have a fire there on account of Louis,” she added apologetically.
“If you don’t mind, I don’t,” he said carelessly. “It won’t rent for much, though; but it will give you less to do,” with a rather anxious glance at the form and face of his wife. Indeed, Dora was not looking well; she had grown very thin, and her eyes looked pathetically large and blue in her white face. But she laughed off all anxiety; she might be a little pulled down by the warm weather, she said, but that was all.
The next day, a placard appeared in the shop window bearing, in the large, beautiful Italian hand Dora had learned in her German school, the words, “Room for Rent.” But a day or two passed before it attracted any attention. On Sunday afternoon Dora and Louis were sitting in the shop door, enjoying the cool evening air after a heavy thunder storm, when two passers-by stopped to consider the announcement, with an air that evidently meant business.
For a moment Dora’s heart failed her, then it swelled with sympathy, while baby Louis opened his blue eyes and stared with all his might. Anything quite so tall, and painfully, terribly thin as the elder of these two women, he had never seen in all his little life. When she turned to address Dora, a moment later, she showed a face with large, strongly marked features, whereupon an expression of hopeless patience sat but ill. Her companion was shorter, and of a thinness less painfully apparent; with a face from which all expression, even that of patience, seemed to have been crushed out. It was dull, blank, and hopeless; that was all. They were dressed in thin, shabby calico, bonnets, of which shabby would be too flattering a description, and faded plaid shawls, which they kept so closely drawn over their wasted bosoms that, considering the warmth of the evening, they must have served to cover further defects in their costume. Their voices, when they spoke, were low and weak, not so much from physical weakness—for there was no sign of any actual disease upon either—as with a weary consciousness that speaking louder would not better their condition.
“What rent do you ask for this room, ma’am?”
“We did wish to get one dollar a month,” replied Dora, in her pretty German-English.
The woman shook her head.
“I guess it’s worth it too,” she said; “but we ain’t got it to pay. Come, Susan.”
“Stop one minute,” cried Dora as they were about to move on; “how much do you wish to pay?”
“‘Taint wishin’, ma’am; it’s what we can do. We’ve been paying seventy-five cents a month, ever sence we come to town, Susan and me; but times is hard, and yesterday our landlady raised the rent on us, so we’ve got to quit.”
“I might let you have it for seventy-five,” said the young mother softly. Louis seemed to agree with her, for he had already struggled down from her lap, and was clinging triumphantly to Susan’s thin hand, which she had involuntarily put out to help him. Louis was not fond of sitting in laps, much preferring his own two sturdy legs as a means of support.
“He’s a pretty child,” said the elder woman with a dull glance at him. “I used to be fond of children, but, law! it’s no use trying to be fond of nothin’ in this world. There ain’t time.”
“Won’t you sit down?” said Dora. “I will bring chairs, and you can tell me about yourselves. Or will you come and see the room?”
“’Most any room will suit us if the rent does,” replied the woman. “We ain’t particular, and looking at rooms takes time.”
Dora, with Louis clinging to her skirts, brought seats, and the elder woman continued speaking just where she had left off. Indeed, it seemed as though she had at one time been a voluble talker; but that also had been crushed out of her.
“But, of course, you want to know about us, ma’am. Our name is Price,—Susan and Sally Price, and we’ve kep’ respectable, ma’am, though it’s been hard work. We are sewing women; work for Grind and Crushem,—that large shirt factory at the end of Blank Street.”
“It must be hard work,” said Dora pitifully.
“Well, it ain’t easy,” said Sally Price; “not even as easy as it might be. Some of the factories are running machines by steam, and having all the work done on the premises; but our bosses are too stingy for that. I should think it would pay ‘em, though, in the end.”
“I will let you have the room,” said Dora. “When do you want to come?”
Decidedly, Dora was a very bad business woman; a short-sighted, easily gulled, and far from sharp business woman.
“We’d like to come to-night, so’s to be ready to go to work early to-morrow morning,” answered Miss Price with some show of animation. “But won’t your husband swear at you, for lettin’ it go so cheap?”
“He never swears at me,” said Dora, smiling, blushing, and shaking her head at the same time, until she looked so pretty that even the blank face of Susan Price gained a little life and almost smiled. She held out her hand to Louis, who was again struggling towards her, and volunteered her first contribution to the conversation.
“Your only one?” she asked.
“Yes, my only one, and so good. He is no trouble at all,” answered Dora proudly.
“Some folks are happy in this world and some ain’t,” said Susan Price. “I s’pose it’s all right, or it wouldn’t be so.”
“You’d better have some tea with me,” returned pitiful Dora, moved almost to tears by the sad patience of this speech. “Then I can show you the room. I’d like you to see it. It has been our own bedroom, but we have spent so much money lately that we must try to save a little. Is there anything to be brought from your other room?”
“Our machine and some clo’es; not many. Susan and me can bring ‘em. It’s just around the corner. You see, we generally sew Sundays as well as other days. You won’t mind if you hear the machine on Sunday, ma’am?”
“If you must, you must,” said Dora. “I knit on Sunday, often; I am German. But it is pity; you should rest.”
“Oh! we never rest,” said Sally quietly. “But maybe it’s Sabbath-breakin’ that brings us such bad luck. I don’t know; but I don’t see how to help it.”
Metzerott, coming home to his tea, just at this moment, and learning the state of affairs, pooh-poohed the idea of any one but himself fetching the machine and “clo’es” of his new lodgers. Perhaps he wanted an opportunity to make those inquiries, for which Dora’s inexperience had not seen the necessity. Their former landlady, however, gave the Prices a high character for quietness, respectability, and prompt pay, “reg’lar as Sat’day evenin’ come.” They were poor and half starved, she said, but the Lord knew that wasn’t their fault; they had lodged with her ever since they came from the country, two years ago, and she thought they would have done better to go out to service; but, at first, they were too proud, she supposed, and now they looked so sick and down-trodden, no respectable person would hire either one of them. Well, Lord knew what this world was coming to, anyway. She would not have raised the rent if she could have helped it; but her husband—and here came an apprehensive glance over her shoulder, which fully accounted for Miss Price’s ideas as to swearing.
So the Prices came to be an institution in the Metzerott household; but it was very doubtful whether Dora’s savings were greatly increased thereby, even in the matter of steps. For she was always running up those steep, narrow stairs, with Baby Louis on one arm and a plate of raisin bread in the other hand, or perhaps the coffee-pot, if she had “made more than Karl and she could drink, and it never is good warmed over.”
Karl had drank warmed-over coffee many a time, and said so smilingly. His wife’s efforts at economy were a constant amusement to him; but he never interfered but once. That was on a day in the late fall, when a sudden cold snap seemed doubly disagreeable, because nobody’s system had had time to adjust itself to winter requirements. The Prices were not supposed to need adjustment, or, perhaps, by any but Dora, to possess systems; their room was heated by whatever superfluity of hot air might escape from the kitchen. On cold days, this was too little; in moderate weather, too much; only on one or two halcyon days of all the three hundred and sixty-five was that small, poor chamber of a comfortable temperature; but the Prices were used to discomfort, and, especially now that they could warm their fingers at Dora’s fire, when they grew numb and useless from cold, would have scorned to complain. So, on this particular cold morning, Karl heard a sudden crash in the kitchen, and, hurrying to the spot, leathern apron and all, found Dora, very white and trembling, looking into his face with eyes like those of a frightened deer.
She had only been going to make a little fire for the Prices, she said; poor souls, she felt so sorry for them; and the hod had slipped from her hand, some way or other.
Poor little frail hand, and fluttering, feeble pulse! such deeds of charity as this are beyond your power henceforth. Karl took in the situation in all its bearings: the thinness of the once rounded form, the panting breath, the varying cheek, the hand unconsciously pressed to the side, the dark, pathetic hollowing of the beautiful eyes. Then he said something beginning with “tausend,” which would have been totally inadequate had it begun with a million, picked up from the floor the scattered lumps of coal, carried up the hod, and made the fire himself, all in stern, dead silence. But the Prices might make the most of that cheerful blaze; it was the last that glowed upon their hearth for many a long, long day.
Karl had not been blind to the change that had come over Dora, and he would have joyfully given his life—this mortal life, which he held to be all—if he could have lightened the slow, feeble step that smote so heavily upon his heart, or planted anew the delicate roses in her cheek. But what could he do?
His work, which now was chiefly mending, paid poorly, and took up all his time; yet what should they do without it, if he gave his days to helping and nursing Dora? He would willingly have hired some one to do the work for her; but where was the money to come from? Besides, except carrying coal, which he could do at odd times, there was nothing, Dora said, in the work itself to tire any one, if she had not been just a little run down and under the weather to begin with. Karl must not worry, she would soon pick up when the spring came again.
Especially, it was not the care of little Louis that tired her; never was there a child that gave so little trouble. He seemed to know by instinct that she was not well, she said, and was as good and quiet as possible, playing as contentedly with a few scraps of leather from his father’s bench, and a string of spools given him by Frau Anna, as if they had been toys of ivory and gold. So far from being a trouble, he was even a help, and certainly a comfort to her. It was only to Louis that Dora confided how her head ached and throbbed, and the incessant cough racked her feeble body; and Louis listened with serious blue eyes and rapt attention. It was a very interesting story indeed, he thought; almost equal to that of the dead canary they found one December morning on the window-sill; as to which he never tired of hearing how it had strayed from its home, and perished in the bitter night. And, though of either tale he could have understood but little, his sympathy was always ready, and he stroked the bird’s cold feathers and his mother’s aching forehead with soft baby fingers, saying pityingly, “Oh! my, my, my.” These were the only words at his command, but they satisfied Dora.
Dr. Richards, for whose skill she had a respect amounting to veneration, had prescribed for the cough, and for a while it had seemed better; but it grew worse after one bitter morning when she had run over to the butcher’s with a shawl pinned over her head, and blown back from her chest by the icy wind.
And then came a time when help came in unhired and unsought, when Dora lay powerless upon the grandmother’s testered bed, with Baby Louis beside her, happy in her society and his string of spools. It was a great treat to have his mamma so close beside him all day long; and he was by no means pleased when their tête-à-tête was broken by a visit from Dr. Richards, though the latter did his best to look cheerful. Metzerott stood also by the bed, but would by no means smile or play “Peep-bo” with Louis, so absorbed was he in listening to the doctor. But “acute pleuro-pneumonia” had no meaning whatever to a baby mind; so the child shook his plump little hand, and said “Bye-bye” very politely to the doctor, as a signal that the visit might as well be brought to a close. Dr. Richards, however, whose heart was very tender towards children, and who had a little maiden babe about Louis’ age, remembered to bring him a little harmless candy the next day, and they became quite good friends during the few days of Dora’s illness.
For there came a day when he was carried up to Frau Anna’s narrow quarters, and played all day very happily with Fritz, Annie, and little George. This was nice indeed, if his mamma had but been there to share his pleasure. Very often he paused in his fun to call her, “Mamma! Mamma!” in his sweet bird-like voice. Frau Anna cried when he did so, and called him “poor motherless lamb,” which he considered a new kind of game, and laughed at delightedly.
The next day was Christmas itself; but if Louis had had a longer experience in Christmases, he would surely have considered that he celebrated that blessed feast in a most singular manner. For he was taken to his own home, where, in the shop, several neighbors were assembled, all with solemn faces, and some shedding tears. Louis sat on his father’s knee, and surveyed them all, until his attention was caught by a long black box in the middle of the room, near which stood Pastor Schaefer. The box had shining handles, which took his baby fancy immensely; so he slid suddenly from his father’s hold, and, before any one could stop him, rushed across the room, and seized the bright handle with a joyous shout.
The women present broke into loud sobs, but no one interfered with him; and he played with his new toy all through the pastor’s prayer and exhortation. Then some one lifted him up, and there in the box lay his mamma, white and still, with closed eyes. But this also was part of the game, thought Louis; and his baby laugh rang out strangely in the silent room. Then, as she took no notice, he pulled at her dress, saying impatiently, “Up! Up!” and when, for the first time in all his little life, she was deaf to his voice, his rosy lip quivered, and he burst into tears of helpless, hopeless, baby grief.
There followed a long drive in a close carriage,—quite a new experience, which he would have better enjoyed had the curtains been up, and his companions not quite so silent. He sat very still on his father’s knee, one dimpled hand clasped in that of Frau Anna, who sat beside him. The Price sisters were opposite, grieving sincerely for poor Dora, it is true; but they had been surprised that morning by a box from their old country home, containing such a store of eatables as would last them a long while, and grief and surprise together had so lightened the usual blank monotony of their faces that they looked almost happy.
This air of relief Karl Metzerott saw and resented, as he resented the garlanded shop windows, the bright faces of the passers-by, even the crisp air and sparkling sunshine. What right had the world to rejoice and be glad, when his young wife lay dead in her coffin, murdered by those very rich men whose gay carriages rattled past the hearse that bore her to her grave, in whose coffers lay buried the wealth that would have saved her?
From this day the shoemaker grew more silent and gloomy, less fond of the society of his fellows, more given to sullen brooding over the wrongs of the poor and the cruelty, oppression, and self-indulgence of the rich. It was well that to this temper Baby Louis served as a safety valve; for Karl kept stern silence when social questions were debated at Männerchor Hall or other places of friendly meeting. What did they know about it, he said scornfully, not one of whom had ever lost a Dora? Besides, until the time for action came, why waste one’s strength in words?
But he grew eloquent when Louis sat upon his knee in the late twilight, while he smoked his pipe; and the child, with grave blue eyes upraised to his father’s face, listened to tales of wrong and oppression as other children hearken to the woes of Cinderella or the terrible fate of Rothkäppchen.
They were always together. Metzerott rose very early, dressed Louis, prepared breakfast, and tidied the kitchen, all much more handily than could have been expected. Then father and son departed hand in hand to the shop, where all day long the child played happily with his few poor toys, or sat by his father’s side, watching, entranced, the movements of his skilful hands.
Metzerott asserted that the boy brought him good luck, and certainly his trade had greatly improved; but prosperity had rather a hardening than a softening effect, since it had come too late to save his wife.
And still he poured out all his anger, grief, and hardness of heart to little Louis, and felt, perhaps, gentler and more forgiving for the telling, like King David when he had cried to God in the Psalms for vengeance on his enemies.