CHAPTER VI.
“AN ENEMY CAME AND SOWED TARES.”
Henry Randolph was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet, when he had once made up his mind to a certain definite course. Most of his successes on Wall Street had been won by prompt and decided action; and within a week from the moment when he had decided that Pinkie’s intimacy with the “little shoemaker” must be broken off, he, she, and Miss Dare were on the high seas.
During the short interval before their departure, Louis never once saw Pinkie alone, by what he considered a series of unfortunate chances; which the young lady more acutely ascribed to the silent watchfulness of uncle, aunt, father, and brother. Freddy would have been heart and soul on the side of the lovers, if they had been sufficiently of one mind to possess anything that, by the utmost stretch of partisan spirit, could be called a side at all. As it was, he was ready at any moment to further any plan or project that Louis might devise; and Louis was too young and too much in love not to long and innocently to scheme for a repetition of that last interview, with its tears and tenderness.
But such schemes as his were by no means difficult to see through and quietly frustrate; nor in truth could any one of the relatives on either side have been justly blamed for wishing that their mutual inclination, innocent and beautiful as it was, should die a natural death.
Perhaps it was a laudable desire to foster his daughter’s good qualities, to enlist her pride on the right side, and appeal silently to her common sense by showing her Louis’ daily life, that brought Mr. Randolph from his hotel quite early one morning, with a proposition to spend the day in a visit to “Prices.”
“Of course we’ve all been there,” he said, “but I, for one, only know one or two shops and departments, here and there. What I wish to do is to understand the working of the whole institution; for I may see others while we are abroad, and, by knowing the peculiarities of this one, might bring home valuable hints.”
“Then you’d better go alone,” said Pinkie, who always smelt a scheme when her papa became explanatory; “you can’t study workings at a picnic.”
“But I particularly wish you to go,” said Mr. Randolph. “Co-operation has come to stay, Pinkie, and, as a woman who will inherit considerable wealth, it is your duty to know all about it. Besides, I have already invited your friend Miss Dare to accompany us. I stopped at her house on my way down, and promised that the carriage should call for her in an hour’s time.”
Miss Dare! Virgie! who was by no means averse to an occasional tête-à-tête with Louis, or in fact anything else masculine that came in her way. Pinkie concluded that she would go, and revenged herself by wearing her very prettiest “spring suit,” of pearl-gray and rose-color, in which she felt quite able to hold her own against any Dare that ever breathed.
“We’ll give the day to it, and dine there,” said Mr. Randolph with benevolent airiness. “Of course it will be rather primitive; but we can stand it well enough for one day. If they stick their knives in the butter, it won’t matter to us, so it isn’t our butter.”
“Oh! do they do such things as that?” said Miss Dare with a shudder.
It was a warm day, a very warm day for the end of March; consequently the furnaces at “Prices” were several degrees hotter than usual. The shoemaker’s work-room, what with this heat, the smell of leather, and the presence of six overheated human beings, was stifling to a degree scarcely bearable to Louis’ youthful vitality. His hand, blackened with work and the soots of Micklegard, had several times brushed away the drops from his forehead, not without leaving traces of the operation; his face was pale, and his fair hair disordered; when suddenly a breath of cooler air made him look up, and there in the doorway, fresh and sweet as her own royal flower, stood Pinkie, as though fallen from heaven.
What happened next, Louis could never afterwards clearly recollect. Did he spring towards her? or was it only that his heart gave one glad, strong leap, to sink again heavy as lead—nay, heavy as sorrow and loneliness and a loveless old age—before the scorn, the horrified disgust upon her fair young face? In truth, Pinkie was to be pitied far more than he. An atmosphere of dainty, fastidious refinement may be best for one’s moral lungs; but it is surely not one of its consequences to prevent us from distinguishing the “Ding-an-sich” from mere phenomena. Such blindness is due to a spiritual indigestion, one would imagine, caused by—ah! who shall say by what admixture of mortal clay with the Bread of Life!
As in a dream, Louis went blindly on with his work, not of cream-hued kid and fairy-like proportions. It was a huge, heavy workman’s shoe into the sole of which he drove peg after peg, with such fierce, unconscious energy. There were words passing, something about permission to inspect the establishment, and a guide; then a whisper from Fritz Rolf, who sat beside him, to which he replied, without understanding it, by a shake of the head. Then he heard Fritz’s gay voice offering himself as a guide, in right, as he averred, of being one of the original founders; and then all were gone, and only the monotonous tap, tap, sounded again around him.
It seemed scarcely five minutes, though in fact nearly three hours had passed, and he had never worked better or faster, when Karl Metzerott rose, and said gruffly that he supposed they were all quite ready to dine with the aristocrats. In a second the men were gone; but Karl lingered to say slowly,—
“As for you, Louis”—
“I shall go to dinner,” said the boy, looking up with wide, bright eyes, dry lips, and burning cheeks. “You are not ashamed of me, father?”
The man gave a short, angry laugh.
“I should be,” he said, “if I saw you running after a girl who turns up her nose at your working clothes, and kisses you in your Sunday coat. She’s not worth a thought, Louis.”
“I have thought of her all my life,” the boy said simply; “but don’t speak of it, please, papa.”
“That way it sinks deeper,” the shoemaker said, as one who knew. They washed their hands, and drew on their coats, in the wash-room, between their rooms and the carpenter shop, and serving the use of both; and so it happened that Louis entered the dining-room with Ernest Clare’s arm over his shoulders.
“There’s that handsome man again,” said Miss Dare, who had not disdained the explanations of such a fine young fellow as Fritz Rolf.
“Didn’t you tell us he was of noble birth?”
“Lineal descendant of Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, surnamed Strongbow,” replied Fritz. “Louis found it in the history-book, and told me. I’m not a scholar myself,” he added agreeably.
“I never could remember history,” replied Miss Dare, “it’s such stupid stuff, but if he was an earl—!”
“He conquered Ireland, and was an awful rebel; ought to have been hanged, only he wasn’t,” observed Pinkie succinctly.
“And now we see why,” said Mr. Randolph; “he was spared to be the ancestor of our friend the carpenter.”
“Do you really believe that, papa?”
Henry Randolph waved the matter aside with a pleasant smile. “Well,” he said, “I never knew an Irishman who wasn’t descended from one king or another, and there were certainly plenty to choose from. Besides, what does it matter? The sooner you girls learn that blood is absolutely valueless in America, the better off you will be.”
As he spoke, they had been slowly approaching their table, which, not without malice prepense on Mr. Randolph’s part, was very near that called after the “Founders,” with which and the “Parsons’ Table” it formed a triangle; and as the speech ended they were sufficiently near for Karl Metzerott to glance around with what I refrain from calling a scowl.
“Nicht wahr, Herr Metzerott?” said the millionnaire blandly.
“Blood?” growled the shoemaker, declining promptly to converse with Henry Randolph in German; English was good enough for him,—“blood? well, I’ve seen the time when I wanted it,—wanted it bad, too; gallons of it; I can’t say that it is absolutely valueless.”
“Sure, I wance knowed a man that had too much of it,” said Father McClosky, his brogue more obtrusive than usual, in honor of the distinguished guests, “and it wint to his head, bad luck to it! and killed him with the appleplexy.”
There was a general laugh, as the groups divided and seated themselves. Mr. Randolph did not exert, during the meal, all those conversational powers for which he was so justly celebrated. Perhaps he was tired, after three hours of statistics; for he had gone very thoroughly, as he had promised, into the “workings” of “Prices;” and his note-book contained neat rows of figures and cabalistic signs furnished him by the heads of departments. “Perhaps I may bring you home some ideas from abroad,” he had said, genuinely surprised to find that the promise was not received with enthusiasm. In fact, Frau Anna Rolf, the head of the clothing department, which included dressmaking, tailors’, and milliners’ shops, had replied somewhat curtly that there were ideas in plenty at “Prices.” What they needed was means to carry them out, and room to grow.
“Why, how much more room do you want?” Pinkie had asked rather pettishly. “I never saw such a big place as this.”
“America is a bigger place,” Frau Anna had answered, with her solemn, gloomy eyes burning upon the girl’s young face; “America is bigger, and so is the world.”
Then Mr. Randolph had pressed her shoulder significantly, and Pinkie had said no more.
From the point of view of a party of pleasure, Pinkie’s day had not been a success. She had been shocked and disgusted, frightened, and, always and above all, thoroughly and intensely bored. The number of barrels of flour consumed a week, the sale for jewelry, above all, the prices of leather and the demand for shoes,—what was all this to Pinkie, aged sixteen, and on the verge of a trip to Paris, but a weariness of the flesh? “Prices” had presented its least attractive face to the little heiress, that morning, not, perhaps, without the knowledge and consent of her wise papa. But at dinner Mr. Randolph indulged himself in a well-earned silence. The humors of the dining-hall could, he felt, be safely left to the conduct of Miss Dare, whose pale, prominent eyes seemed everywhere at once, while the low-toned sarcasms flowed on as unceasingly as Tennyson’s “Brook.”
“Girls, girls! don’t laugh at these good people! They will see you, and feel hurt,” interposed at gentle intervals the Machiavelli of rough-running love-affairs.
Pinkie was not anxious about the feelings of “these good people.” Louis was sitting not a dozen feet from her, beside a sweet, gentle-faced girl, who seemed to absorb more of his attention than his dinner. Moreover, his color was unusually bright, which gave him a very cheerful and animated appearance; and Pinkie felt that if any one at “Prices” had any feelings at all, it would be a satisfaction to wound them as deeply as possible. Meanwhile there were eyes to see and hearts to remember at every table around, and many an ill seed, to bear fruit an hundred-fold thereafter, was sown amid girlish laughter, during that short half-hour.
“Well,” asked Karl Metzerott as he rose from the table, “have you finished your inspection? or do you want that boy of mine again this afternoon?”
“Thanks, I think we have seen everything,” replied the guest in his courteous manner; “I hope the interruption has not been a serious annoyance to you!”
“Well, good workmen don’t grow on trees, and we have plenty of work on hand,” said the shoemaker.
“Ah!” affirmatively, yet somehow conveying to the shoemaker that he had been a bear. “I assure you the morning has been one both of pleasure and profit to me; but I want to ask you just one question. Are you a Socialist?”
“I’m a Socialist bred and a Socialist born, and when I’m dead there’s a Socialist gone,” replied the shoemaker with grim humor.
“And you would like to see the United States of America one great commune?”
“I intend to see it.”
“Then don’t you see that such institutions as ‘Prices,’ by making the workingman more contented, and his life an easier one, are really defeating your own object?”
“He don’t,” said Father McClosky, indicating Mr. Clare, whose blue eyes suddenly flamed up; “but, then, he never argues.”
“It depends upon what Mr. Metzerott’s object is,” said the carpenter parson quietly. “As I understand it, ‘Prices’ took its rise in the endeavor to make life not only easier but possible to those whose name it bears. If the Commune come, or when it comes, ‘Prices’ will be found to have done good work in training citizens for it; meanwhile, life is made easier for hundreds.”
“Didn’t I say so?” cried the priest triumphantly. “He never argues, he only convinces.”
“Yet I am sorry to say that I am still unconvinced,” said the rich man, smiling. “History is against you, Mr. Clare. A people never rebel until their wrongs have become unbearable; take the French Revolution, for example, or even our own, a hundred years ago. I hope you don’t pretend that the American workingman is oppressed as the French peasant was.”
“My friend has told you that I never argue,” replied Ernest Clare, smiling, “certainly not here, with you, and on that subject.”
“I see no objection,” was Mr. Randolph’s reply, “for I consider the American workingman exceptionally well off. And as to wrong”—
“Oh, papa, what does it matter? Rights or wrongs, who cares?” cried Pinkie despairingly; “you have smothered me with bales of cloth, and stifled me with barrels of sugar and bags of coffee, all the morning; but when it comes to the American workingman, I can stand it no longer; my wrongs become unbearable and I rebel.”
“So you take no interest in working-people?” asked Karl Metzerott meaningly.
Rosalie Randolph looked at him with eyes of haughty surprise.
“Not the slightest,” she said distinctly.
“Ah! your interest is reserved for your dolls as yet, my dear,” said her indulgent papa; “public affairs will come later. Good-morning then, Mr. Metzerott; thank you very much for your kindness. Mr. Clare, I am glad you did not convince me, as at present I feel inclined to assist ‘Prices’ to the best of my ability, and yet I object to the Commune. A ‘divide’ is the last thing I should crave.”
“It would be the last thing you’d get, in all probability,” growled Metzerott, “except”—
“‘Les aristocrates à la lanterne, eh?’” said the millionnaire, with his glorious laugh. “Well, the best dog will probably find his way to the top, as usual. Friend Fritz, may I speak to you a moment?”
“You have been very kind and polite,” continued the millionnaire courteously, when he had drawn Fritz aside from the rest, “and I should like to feel that you would not be a loser by it. Is there any favor I can do for you?”
“Well,” said Fritz, after a moment’s thought, “there’s nothing mean about me; so if you should happen to stray into a railroad office, and see a pass to New York lying about handy, why, I don’t know but I might find use for it.”
“You shall have it; that is, if I have the influence I ought to have. For two?”
“Well, yes; in case of a bridal tour, you know,” said the young man, laughing.
Henry Randolph slapped him on the shoulder genially. “It’s that pretty Miss Gretchen, I’ll bet a cookie,” he said. “I saw how it was this morning; if I hadn’t, the young ladies would have opened my eyes. Let me know in time, and I’ll send you a bridal present from Paris.”
“I will, for a fact,” said Fritz Rolf.
Mr. Randolph was sincerely glad to hear that Gretchen had so good a guardian as this wide-awake young Fritz. Frank was to be left in Micklegard as manager of the Randolph nail-mill, a position which he had, in fact, filled to the satisfaction of everybody but the hands, for several years. For he had a good business head, and much of his father’s “luck” at turning an honest penny, though he was by no means so popular as his genial sire.
But did it never occur to this same courteous, genial, warm-hearted gentleman, who wished so exceedingly well to everybody, that an outspoken warning, either to his son, to Gretchen, or to her friends, might possibly have been in place?