“Papa!” said Louis, one autumn evening. The child, just five years old, was perched, as usual, upon his father’s knee, his golden head nestled against his father’s breast. They were an oddly contrasted pair; Metzerott, with his powerful, yet apparently clumsy frame, brown, rugged face, and hair just beginning—though he was not yet forty years old—to be touched with gray, while Louis had his mother’s face, refined and spiritualized into absolute loveliness. His grave blue eyes could be merry enough at times; but as he lifted them now to his father’s face, there was a solemn purity in their gaze, at sight of which Metzerott drew the boy closer to his breast, in a sudden, irrational terror of losing him.
“Well,” he said.
“Papa, why did my mamma die?” He spoke a baby patois, half English, half German, which we should vainly attempt to reproduce.
“Because we are poor, my son, and were even poorer then. If your mother could have been nursed and done for, like a rich lady with plenty of money and crowds of servants, she would have been alive now. Money, my boy, was the medicine she needed.”
“If I were President,” said Louis after a thoughtful pause, “I would make more money, so that every one might have enough.”
Metzerott smiled, even while he shook his head. “There’s money enough, or so people say, and making more would only lower the value of what there is. That was tried during the war, Louis. The trouble is that all the money is in too few hands. Some have more than enough, and others have nothing. As if I should eat all the dinner, you know, and leave none for you.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” said Louis confidently.
“Nor the millionnaires sha’n’t much longer,” said Metzerott. “When we get the Commune, Louis, every man who has more than he needs—yes, and we’ll cut his ‘needs’ down pretty close, too—will have to divide with his poor neighbors.”
“What is ‘’vide’?” asked Louis, who had often heard of the Commune.
Metzerott showed him practically, by means of a box of lead soldiers that had been given to the child that day, and which was cherished fondly in one chubby arm.
“Now,” said the shoemaker, arranging these in two files upon his mother’s old candle-stand, which stood at his elbow, “now, if you were to give half of these to George Rolf, and keep this row for yourself, that would be dividing with him.”
“I fink,” said Louis, “I don’t like ’viding.”
“No more will the millionnaires,” said Metzerott, laughing; “but if you were George, my boy, with no lead soldiers at all to play with, maybe you’d like it better. Why, Louis, there is money enough in the country to buy every poor man in it all that he needs; and there is food enough grown every year to fill every hungry mouth from Maine to Florida; yet people die by hundreds, like your poor mother, of want and toil, just because those who have won’t divide with those who have not.”
“I will,” said Louis, “I’ll ’vide my soldiers with George, right away.”
“George is abed long ago,” said Metzerott, surprised, amused, and a little touched, at this unexpected result of his lecture; “and high time you were there, too. Put off your ’viding until to-morrow.”
He was still more astonished, and almost remorseful, next morning, to see the child march off, with a very sober face, and his box of soldiers under his arm. Frau Anna’s rooms were still in the topmost story of the house next door; and Louis climbed the stairs patiently, and arrived panting, but resolute, at the familiar door.
“George,” he said, “I’ve come to ’vide my soldiers with you.”
“Du Engelchen!” cried Frau Anna, dropping her sewing to clasp her hands. “Who put that into your head, my lamb?”
“Papa,” said Louis. “It’s so every one will have enough to eat and to wear,” he added explanatorily.
“Du lieber Himmel!” said Frau Anna, “much good your ’viding will do, you poor baby. Folks as poor as us must keep all we get for ourselves.”
Louis was happily far too busy to hear this speech, with which, as we know, Frau Anna’s practice did not exactly correspond. The question of dividing offered sufficient practical difficulty to absorb his whole attention; but by following his father’s example and marshalling his army into two columns, he at last succeeded, to the mutual satisfaction of himself and his playmate.
Time passed very happily until noon, when Louis trotted home, to announce to his father that it was “nice to ’vide. When we bofe play togevver, it’s as good as if they was all mine,” he said.
For all reply, Metzerott produced a brown paper package of a charmingly mysterious shape, and watched with a lurking smile the eager little fingers struggle with the string.
“Oh! what is it?” cried little Louis.
It was of tin, painted in gay colors, and it spun upon the floor, upon being wound, with a loud humming noise.
“Now,” said Metzerott, when the first edge of delight had worn off, “how about George? you can’t divide a top with him.”
“No,” returned Louis with a mournful shake of his head, “you can’t ’vide one top.”
He leaned his chin upon his two plump hands, as he sat tailor fashion on the floor, and delivered himself up to contemplation of the top, which lay just where it had toppled over from its last spin, as if there were inspiration in its gaudy hues. Presently he looked up brightly.
“I know,” he said, “we can spin it togevver, and it can be bofe of ours. That’s the only way to ’vide a top!”
“You’re your mother’s own son,” said Metzerott. “Come, dinner is ready, let’s see how you ’vide that. There’s a splendid pot of soup, enough for a dozen; so never say your father can’t cook.”
But scarcely had they seated themselves at the table when a heavy fall in the room above was followed by two shrill, feeble, feminine shrieks. Metzerott ran hastily up the stairs, which he had not ascended since the death of his wife, followed more slowly by Louis, to whom they were more familiar, though the silent pre-occupation of the sisters had not tended to encourage his visits.
The Prices had recently taken a young niece to share their room, and earn her own bread if she could; and she it was who now lay upon the floor with her head upon Sally’s thin bosom, while Susan chafed the unconscious hand, and wept. She was evidently quite young, and the battle with want and toil, while it had wasted her form and paled her cheek, had not lasted long enough to destroy her youth and beauty.
“She ain’t used to it yet, Mr. Metzerott,” said Sally Price half apologetically. “I’m sorry to disturb you at your dinner, sir, specially if it’s as good as it smells. Them that has ought to enjoy,” she added without a trace of bitterness.
“I’m not caring for my dinner,” answered Metzerott roughly. “I’ll get her some whiskey; that’s what she wants.”
There was silence in the room until he returned, except that, when Louis, not seeing any other way of being useful, wiped the eyes of the weeping Susan with his blue-checked gingham apron, she asked Sally if it wasn’t beautiful to see how that child favored his mother, to which Sally replied that the Lord knew it was indeed.
The whiskey, which Metzerott procured at the nearest saloon, was vile stuff perhaps, but it brought back the color to Polly’s white lips.
“She’ll do now, Mr. Metzerott, and thank you kindly,” said Miss Price. “We’ve got a little bread here we can give her; and this is Saturday, bless the Lord, so we’ll be able to buy more.”
“More bread?” asked Metzerott, who, man-like, had never attained to a realizing sense of his lodgers’ domestic affairs, “is that all you’ve got to give her?”
“It’s all we ever have,” replied Sally calmly. “Bless you, sir, what can you expect, with shirts five cents a dozen? But Polly, she was raised in the country, till her father and mother both died in one week with the typhoid, and her brother got married; and she come to the city to better herself, the Lord help her! So, what with not being used to sewing so constant, and nothing to eat, so to speak, and the smell of your dinner, Mr. Metzerott,—though I’m the last to begrutch it to you, sir, as works as hard as any, and has had your own troubles,—why, her head turned giddy, and she fainted clean away. That’s all, sir.”
“And quite enough, too,” said Metzerott, watching how, as she spoke, Sally fed her niece with fragments of bread, dipped in the whiskey and water,—not a very palatable refreshment, one would suppose, yet Polly swallowed it eagerly.
“Now, that’s enough liquor for the present, Polly Price,” said her aunt; “you can eat the rest of your bread dry, and be thankful you’ve got it. She’s a good girl, Mr. Metzerott, and a pretty girl, though I say so; and there’s them that has eyes to see it, and would keep her like a queen if she would listen to their wicked words.”
Polly groaned, and hid her face upon her aunt’s thin shoulder.
“It’s young Crushem, the contractor’s son,” continued Sally. “And when he spoke to her as I tell you, sir, Polly she comes home, and she says, says she, ‘It’s hard to put the bread from your mouth when you’re starving,’ she says. And then Susan there, she says, ‘It’s only putting off the starving a bit, Polly,’ says she. ‘Money made that way don’t never last long, and you’ll come to the garret and the crust at last,’ says she. ‘But he’s promised to settle money on me, so as I could take care of you both,’ says Polly. ‘Bless you, Polly Price,’ says I, ‘we’re used to it,’ says I; ‘we can stand it if you can,’ says I. And Polly, she says, kinder cryin’, ‘I thought I couldn’t, Aunt Sally,’ she says. ‘I told him I’d think over it, and I’d about made up my mind to say yes; but when that child downstairs looked at me with his solemn blue eyes, I knew I’d better starve than be a wicked girl,’ says Polly.”
Metzerott had listened to this long story with a frown of sympathy contracting his rugged features. But at this point a hand pulled at his short working-jacket, and a sweet voice said, “Papa, don’t you think we’d better ’vide our dinner? There’s soup enough for a dozen, and don’t ever say my father can’t cook!”
Metzerott caught the boy in his arms. “Do you hear the emperor?” he cried. “Louis Napoleon must be obeyed. Come down to dinner, all of you!”
It was good to see the starving women eat, and Louis’ face bright with the joy of ’viding. Metzerott, as he watched them, knew not whether to be glad or sorrowful. That there should be no more starving under his roof he was quite determined, yet how to take upon himself the support of three full-grown women? At last a happy thought came to him.
“I have been thinking,” he said, when the meal was over, and his guests were regretfully wiping their mouths, “I have been thinking, Miss Sally, what a convenience it would be to me if one of you ladies would do my cooking, and housekeep for me regular. You might take it in turn, if you liked; a little exercise don’t hurt nobody, and I shouldn’t care. Then we could all eat together sociable, and you could do your sewing just the same, unless you could find other work.”
He said nothing of the rent, which indeed had not been demanded or paid since Dora’s death.
The sisters looked at each other in silence for a moment, while Polly burst at once into tears; then Susan’s head went down on the table, and Sally, with clasped hands and eyes uplifted, cried fervently, “Bless the Lord!”
“Don’t cry,” said Metzerott hastily; “it’ll be cheaper to me in the end, now that trade’s so brisk, than knocking off to go to market and cook every five minutes or so. I’ve been knowing for quite a while that I should have to hire somebody; but I didn’t want no strange women around, and I’m ashamed to say I never thought of you.”
“And you know,” said Louis, who had scrambled down from the table, and was hugging Polly Price, “you know we’ve got to ’vide some day, and I’m glad of it because it’s so awful jolly.”
“The boy is a good Communist,” said Metzerott, laughing; “and now, if you ladies feel able to wash the dishes, I’ll go back to my work.”
“There’s pretty near enough soup for to-morrow,” said Sally Price, peeping into the big iron pot. “My laws! wasteful ain’t the name for a man!”