One afternoon late in the summer, Mr. Clare and Dr. Richards, accompanied by a large party of boys and young men, including Freddy and the Ark of the Covenant, had climbed a rather steep road which led to one of their favorite resorts, a quaint and beautiful cemetery on a hill overlooking the river. The names, the German inscriptions, the artificial flowers, the child’s toys upon the smaller graves, the beautiful river flowing beneath—“It is all a mistake,” said Dr. Richards, smiling; “this is not practical, humdrum America; we are in Germany, the home of myth and song, and yonder flows the mysterious and beautiful Rhine. I am positive there is a ruined castle just at the turn of the hill yonder; and, if you listen, you will hear the song of the Lorelei.”
“I hope not,” replied Mr. Clare, so seriously that the others looked at him in surprise, perceiving which he went on more lightly, “There’s a song of the kind to be heard even in humdrum America, boys; and I confess to a terrible fear lest some of us should some day listen to it. A song that promises wealth and happiness to everybody at the cost of only a little bloodshed and violence. ‘All these things will I give thee,’ says Satan to us, as once to our Master, ‘if thou wilt fall down and worship me.’ And don’t you suppose it was a real temptation? to blot out the ‘two thousand years of wrong’ through which the world has waited, and to establish then and there the kingdom for which we still look?”
“That’s a new explanation of that temptation,” observed Dr. Richards, who never let fall a syllable that could lessen or hinder Mr. Clare’s influence over his “boys.”
“No, it’s in all the Commentaries,” said the clergyman, smiling; “except that we are now hoping that this kingdom may manifest itself to the world after a certain new yet old fashion. And that hope is the more sure,” he added, “because the temptation has grown so loud and insistent. ‘Fall down and worship me; manufacture a little dynamite; plot and conspire a little; murder a few tyrants; it’s all for the good of the race, the salvation of the oppressed, and the rescue of the poor and suffering!’ Do I blink the strength of the temptation, or blame unduly those who fall before it? The blessed Lord Himself can feel for them, and has given them the only effective weapon against it: ‘Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.’”
“It’s pretty hard, sometimes, not to hate a rich man,” said Fritz Rolf gloomily. He laid down beside him on the grass an opera-glass which he had borrowed from Herr Martin, the jeweller, in order to examine some distant object in the landscape; but it had evidently been directed, as he held it to his eyes, towards the town they had left, where, perhaps, the color of a dress had caught his eye. It was on a secluded by-street, shut in by the high side walls of factories, empty and deserted on this summer Sunday evening, that the wearer of the dress stood, with her fair head drooping against the breast of a black coat, the sleeve of which gloomed about the blue waist.
Fritz was very pale, but he said nothing; as he himself would have expressed it, he “wouldn’t give it away to those fellows;” so he kept the glass strictly in his own possession, in spite of the objurgations levelled against him. He had borrowed it, he said, he was responsible for it, and he did not mean to have it broken. Only Mr. Clare, whose eyesight was as keen as the rest of his faculties, had caught a gleam of blue down the same treacherous vista of tall chimneys and low fences; and, though it was too far away for recognition of the wearer, fancied that he traced in the young man’s unusual sulky selfishness the features of chivalrous knighthood; upon which hint he spake.
“It must have been especially hard,” he said, “for those old fellows who used ‘to ride abroad redressing human wrong,’ putting down violence with the strong hand.”
“Like King Arthur’s Round Table,” said Freddy eagerly.
“Just so; next time, boys, we’ll bring Tennyson along, and Freddy shall read to us, if he will, about the knights. He reads wonderfully well; as well as he paints. But now I’ll tell you some of the story of it.”
Fritz scarcely listened to the story, he was so busy considering what was best to be done. Long before he could reach the street where he had seen them, the blue dress and the black coat would have vanished; besides, he had no legal or moral right to interfere, or even to suppose that what he had seen was anything more than honest “keeping company.” Indeed, from any contrary supposition Fritz’s honest soul revolted with all the strength of its own integrity; yet the secrecy observed,—for no one at “Prices” suspected that even an acquaintance existed between the two he had seen,—and the man’s reputation, which was none of the best, left no reason to suppose that he, at least, intended honorable marriage. “And it is so easy to deceive a girl,” thought Fritz, grinding his teeth with secret rage. Just at this moment, something Mr. Clare was saying caught his attention.
“No enemy, boys, is bad enough to justify us in hating him. It may be perfectly right to knock him down or give him a good thrashing, but only in case it is the best course for him, as well as for those we want to help. For there is many a brute who is not amenable to any milder argument than a horsewhip; and it is, of course, better for him to try conclusions with that than to be allowed to commit a crime and injure the innocent. Your muscles were given you to protect not only your mothers, sisters, and sweethearts, but also every weak one unable to protect himself; but I should be chary of handing over the oppressor to the secular arm, until all other methods had failed; nor even then to gratify any personal feeling. If you are ready to bind his head up afterwards, you may trust yourself to knock it against a stone wall,” he ended, smiling, “but not unless.”
“I’d like to see the color of his brains first,” said Fritz savagely; “and decide upon mending him afterwards.”
“Then you’re not a good soldier, my boy,” said Mr. Clare. “While you profess to beat the enemy off the open battle-field, you will in reality give him shelter in the fortress intrusted to your special care, your own heart.”
“The enemy! you mean sin?” said Fritz, who was well accustomed to Mr. Clare’s modes of speech.
“The only enemy worth speaking of.”
“But suppose a man is trying to lead some one into sin—a girl, say; and you could prevent it by breaking his head?”
“Would that root out the sin from her heart, Fritz? A girl who will listen to one man might listen to another, and you could not keep on breaking heads forever.”
“She might be deceived once; she could not be the second time.”
“In that case, there need be no question of breaking heads; you need simply open her eyes.”
“And if she refused to believe me?”
“Those who are true know the truth when it comes to them. If a woman deliberately shuts her eyes to a danger of that sort, it argues some untrueness in herself, which he who would save her can only conquer by the completeness of his own truth and purity. He may die for her; he must die to self; but he must not dare to sin for her, lest he lose both her and himself.”
Fritz had been lying upon the grass with his handsome head very close to Mr. Clare’s knee, as the latter sat on a circular bench around the stem of a tall chestnut tree; and this conversation had therefore been inaudible to all but themselves. At this point, the young man turned slightly, so as to look the clergyman full in the face. His own, usually so bright and carelessly gay, was pale and drawn with care and anxiety, and his dark eyes asked so plainly, “How much do you know?” that the clergyman answered the question.
“My dear boy,” he said kindly, “I don’t know at all what is troubling you, only that you are troubled. If I can help you, I will, without asking any questions. Mind that, my boy; but the dear Lord, Fritz, does know, and can help you better than I can.”
“If a fellow could only believe that,” said Fritz slowly. “I think I’d like to go an errand for you, Mr. Clare. Isn’t there something you’d like at ‘Prices’? I want to get away from the boys”—
“No explanations,” said Mr. Clare, smiling. “I’ll trust you and abet you without. Here is the key of my rooms; you might see if the soot has fallen down the chimney, or the sun faded the carpet.”
“All right,” said Fritz, slowly raising himself to an erect position. He put the key in his pocket, and strolled off, leaving Mr. Clare to satisfy the uproarious curiosity of his companions.
Soot and carpet were in their proper relative positions as he opened the door of the clergyman’s sitting-room, and the sun could not possibly have forced an entrance through the heavy green shutters that guarded the window. The room felt close and warm after the cool evening air on the hill, and Fritz threw the shutters wide, and, leaning his arms on the window-sill, looked down into the street.
“If a fellow could only believe in Jesus Christ!” he murmured. “He’s about the only one I know who could help me; for the pastor never could manage Gretchen; besides, he’d be so wild at the bare idea that he’d be ready to tear me in pieces. Then, any interference from anybody would put her on her ear directly; yet, as the parson says, breaking that rascal’s head wouldn’t do anybody good—but me! Now, Jesus Christ—if there is such a person—could help, if He’d a mind to; and if help of any kind does come, it’ll be from Him, that’s a dead certainty. I suppose the parson would ask Him; but, no, hang it all! if He is the sort of person they say He is, and knows all about it, He won’t wait to be asked; Mr. Clare didn’t. Well, there’s just this about it. If Gretchen comes safe out of this, even if she marries some other fellow, so he’s an honest man and not a cursed rascal like Frank Randolph, then I will believe in Him, and fight His battles, too, for all I’m worth.”
It was an odd self-dedication, and one could almost fancy a smile of amused tenderness on the Face that was all the while so very, very close to him. The next moment Gretchen herself came hurriedly around the corner. She was flushed and heated as if from rapid walking; her bonnet was slightly askew, and her “bangs” were wild: the whole appearance of things was as if something had happened, or was about to happen, to her, at last.
“Aha! my lady,” said Fritz to himself, “my eye is upon you, and I propose to keep it there. It’s come to stay. Hello!” he called aloud. “Hello, Gretchen!”
She glanced up and around with an air of frightened guilt until she caught his eye.
“What are you doing there?” she called.
“Waiting for the parson. Where have you been, to get so warm?”
“None of your business,” she cried, as she disappeared around the corner.
Fritz drew in his head with a smile.
“I don’t mind trifles like that,” he said grimly. “Guess she’ll sing another tune by and by; and meanwhile I’ll go get some supper.” He paused before a copy of Gabriel Max’s head of Christ, and looked at it steadfastly, just checking himself in saying, “I am much obliged to you.”
“Stuff and nonsense! He ain’t a picture, anyway,” said Fritz, as he banged the door with unnecessary emphasis.
In spite of his eye being upon her, Gretchen managed to elude him, and go home by herself when her duties were over; and when he followed her to the parsonage, he was told that she had gone to bed with a bad headache. There was a light in her window, however, and a shadow upon the blind as of some one moving about the room. Fritz felt half inclined to keep watch all night; but, though in one sense a full-blooded German, three generations of his kith and kin had breathed American air; so he only said, “Humbug!” and went to bed in a re-actionary frame of mind.
And all the while that Face was so very, very close to him!
He could not sleep; the room was small and close on that warm night; his pillow was first too high, then too low; and all sorts of horrors haunted his restless brain. George, on the pillow beside him, snored loud and heavily, only rousing occasionally to protest against his brother’s restlessness, and bid him—with a mild but terribly sounding German oath—to lie still and go to sleep. But it was not until near morning that Fritz, having by sheer force of will remained motionless unusually long, had a strange dream. He thought the Christ Himself stood beside him, like as Gabriel Max has drawn Him, only without that look of solemn agony. Gently as a father, tenderly as a mother, He laid His hand on the young man’s burning brow, saying, “Sleep, Fritz, I am watching over her.” What he dreamed next, Fritz could not remember; but suddenly it was broad daylight in the room, and he was sitting up in bed, inspired—not oppressed—by the sense that something was to be done immediately.
He dressed himself quickly without waking George, and only discovered, when he was outside in the silent street, that he had mechanically put on his Sunday clothes.
“But it’s all right,” said Fritz, “if He’s got anything really for me to do, I’m ready; and if not, I’ll get home in time to change ‘em. Well! I’m hanged if I even know where I’m going, for all I walk so thundering fast. Eh? oh! good-morning to you, Denny,” as the railway porter we once saw conversing with Father McClosky, crossed over the street to meet him.
“What’s up at ‘Prices,’ Fritz,” demanded the porter, “that they do be sendin’ Miss Gretchen to New York be the foive-o’clock train?”
Fritz’s heart stood still for a minute, then he said coolly, “That’s more than I can tell you, Denny. Did you see her off?”
“Sure, I did, an’ mighty glad to oblige her. She axed me to buy her ticket, but that blazin’ young spalpeen that’s managin’ Randolph’s Mill come along, and took it out of my hands intirely, bad luck to him!”
“Oh! Frank Randolph has gone too, has he? Then she won’t travel alone, at any rate.”
“Indade, and she won’t that, for they got into the same car, and it’s mighty attintive he was, wrappin’ her up, and carryin’ her carpet-bag,” said Denny, looking curiously at the young man.
If Fritz had been a genuine American, he would have laughed, even under the given circumstances, at the idea of the elegant Frank Randolph saddled with the pastor’s antiquated carpet-bag, with its faded, once gaudy colors, and oilcloth-covered handles; but, as it was, he only said, still coolly,—
“Well, don’t give it away, Denny; it’s private business she’s gone on. I did not know young Randolph was going on this train, though. I say, if I take the six-o’clock, I won’t be much behind her, will I?”
“Gets in three hours later,” said Denny, “connects with the western express at the junction; but I guess it’s the best ye’ll do now. Phy didn’t ye make the five-o’clock?”
“Overslept myself,” said Fritz. “I say, will you take a note from me to ‘Prices’?”
To which Denis consenting, he wrote on a blank leaf of the huge pocketbook in which he always carried the “pass” Mr. Randolph had procured for him,—
“DEAR MR. CLARE,—I’m off for New York. Gretchen has gone on the 5 A.M. You promised to help me, so make it all right with the Emperor and Miss Sally, and don’t let the pastor make a row. I’ll bring her back all right in a day or two. Blame it all on me.
“Truly yrs,
“FRITZ R.”
“P. S. I don’t want her talked about: my wife, you know.”