CHAPTER VII.
“THESE, THROUGH THEIR FAITH, RECEIVED NOT THE PROMISE.”
More than a week had passed, and it was early October. The bare hill-tops stood mournfully against the golden sunset; but in the valleys the woods were bright with maple, oak, and chestnut, and the fields gorgeous with sumach and goldenrod, while the oldest, most crumbling fence boasted such garlands of blackberry and elder as a queen might have envied. Apples in myriads hung from the trees, or were stored away in barrels that could only be numbered by thousands; barn and storehouse over all the land were bursting with the plenteous yield of the generous harvest; and Christina Kellar walked home from her work heartsick and weary.
Weary!
Dear reader, have you ever known real weariness? Not the fatigue after a pleasure party or ball, to recover from which you lie abed or lounge on a sofa, and are coddled by tender hands; but weariness which, as it promises to have no end, seems also to have had no beginning; weariness which lies down with you at night and drags you backward as you rise in the morning; the faint, deadly, terrible weariness of one whose needs and whose work go on, on, on, in a treadmill round, while her strength, day by day, is failing, failing, failing!
God help all those who are weary with such weariness as this.
Christina Kellar was scarcely conscious of the pavement on which she trod. Her head was dizzy, her whole frame a dull steady ache, and the solid ground was like air beneath her feet, while the long, long street, where lamp after lamp twinkled redly to meet her, stretched out to interminable distances, which she did not dare to calculate. Only she permitted herself a faint throb of something like pleasure whenever a street corner was passed; otherwise it took all her strength to make one step after another. Her husband had now been away nearly six months, and what had Tina accomplished beyond the bare keeping together of body and soul! The rent which Karl Metzerott had refused to take had all gone to pay for medicine for little Paul, who had been sickly from his birth; as for outfit or travelling expenses, she had saved nothing towards them; and now she had only the money actually in her pocket to depend on; for Miss Randolph had no more work for her, nor did she know of another job she was at all likely to get.
Dully feeling—scarcely thinking these things and others; and mercifully unable quite to realize that winter drew near, with a plentiful lack of fuel and warm clothing—she reached her own door, behind which there seemed, even to her tired brain, some unusual stir and bustle; while the one poor window was brilliant with firelight to a ruinous extent, that made her heart throb achingly. She must indeed scold Dora for such wastefulness! The evening was barely cool enough for fire to be a luxury; and even when it should become a necessity, their prospect of having it was scanty enough.
At this moment the door was thrown open, and Dora herself appeared on the doorstep. Dora, in her best Sunday frock, which was shabby enough, to be sure; her hair freshly plaited, and her small round face shining with soap and water.
“Here she is!” cried Dora, dancing frantically up and down on the low doorstep, “hier kommt das Mütterchen!”
And then came a sudden rush of great legs and small legs; legs in petticoats, kilts, and cut-over trousers; little Paul scrambling after, last of all, while the baby, left alone upon the front-room floor, contributed a wail instead of her personal presence, but all the legs distanced by one pair in gray pantaloons rudely patched upon the knees, the arms belonging whereunto straightway lifted poor weary Tina off her feet, while bearded lips covered her face with kisses.
“My Tina!” cried Paul Kellar wildly; “I have come home for thee and the little ones, with money, too, plenty of it, to carry you all away into the golden West, where there is work for all and money for all, Tina.”
It was like a dream to the poor tired soul, the bright smiles and festive appearance of the children, whom Dora had washed and combed into agonized tidiness; the warmth of the cheerful fire, and the plentiful meal which handy little Otto had ordered with such pride from “Prices.” She sat as one half asleep, in a great cushioned chair, and heard how her Paul, while his partner kept possession of their “claim,” had been herder for a neighboring ranchman, and so had earned money enough to bring his family out. It was strange to feel that all responsibility had been lifted from her shoulders; that she need not struggle so sorely against this deadly weariness, but could safely afford herself a day or two of utter rest. And even the labor of packing and sending off her household goods, and the long journey that must follow seemed bagatelles to Tina. Had not Paul come home? Paul, with his strong arms and loving heart! Paul, who might be passionate now and then,—he took that after his mother,—but who had never let her tire herself with work that he was able to do.
But she could not swallow a morsel of the nice supper they had ready; she was too tired to eat; only she drank a cup of tea, and then leaned back in her great chair, with the baby at her breast, watching them in weary happiness.
“But you can never nurse that great girl, unless you eat,” said Paul, in distressed perplexity; “you should feed her, Christina.”
“Dora feeds her when I am away,” she said, smiling happily, “but I like to give her her supper when I come home. The touch of her soft lips seems to rest me, Paul.”
“Only in reality it does nothing of the kind,” said Paul, with severe common sense; “it is but another drain upon your strength. She thrives, however; a fine baby, to be sure!”
“And she crawls,” said the proud mother; “she crawls already, about the floor; in another month or so she will walk. We have good children, Paul.”
“Because they crawl at eight months,” laughed the man. “You do not know what you are saying, my Tina, you are so tired. Let us go to bed, and to-morrow”—
“Oh, to-morrow!” said little Dora importantly, “mother must lie abed and rest. I can take care of the children.”
Her mother kissed her, but made no reply, and the little house was soon wrapped in silence and darkness.
Paul Kellar, healthy, strong, and just pleasantly tired, lost very little time in falling asleep; but, his training upon the western plains having taught him to sleep lightly, he was awakened towards morning by a little sharp, impatient baby cry. He raised himself on his elbow and looked around. A pale gray light stole in through the one window; his wife lay with her face turned from him, the baby upon her arm, nestling close to her breast. How long a time had passed since she lifted the child from the empty cradle beside them, he could not know; but there was a strange stillness about the pale figure with the long brown hair that struck to his heart with a terror for which he could not account. He leaned over and looked closer at the sunken eyelids, the half-open mouth. He touched her hand; it was very cold.
At the same moment, little Louise, withdrawing her lips from the cold bosom, looked into his face with frightened eyes and a piteous wail of baby hunger.
With a loud cry, Paul Kellar sprang to his feet.
“Christina!” he cried. “Ach! mein Gott! Christina, awake, awake!”
But Christina could not answer.
What happened afterwards he could never clearly recollect. That the children came huddling and sobbing down the steep, narrow staircase; that some one fetched Edgar Harrison, and another the Herr Pastor; that kind hands were about that silent form, and tears dropped on the cold, white features, he scarcely noted. Back and forth, back and forth, treading hard and recklessly through the small house, calling to her to awake and speak to him, trying now one remedy, then calling restlessly, impatiently, for another.
“It is of no use,” said Edgar Harrison gently; “she has been dead some hours.”
“But it is impossible,” cried the half-mad husband; “she was well last night, only a little tired.”
The young physician shook his head. He was new to such scenes, and there were tears in his eyes. “It is that,” he said. “Fatigue kills as many as cholera, I think; overfatigue and, perhaps, insufficient nourishment.”
At this moment there was a cry from those who stood nearer the bed; a sobbing of women, and the pitiful cry of a child. In the haste and confusion, and efforts at recovery, the little Louise had been laid at the foot of the bed on which her mother lay dead; and now, in the pause, she had crawled, unobserved, once more to that mother’s side, and, laying her lips to that cold bosom—ah! well may you weep, baby Louise! the mother-heart is still, the mother’s breast is cold and empty, the mother love has gone away from you to heaven.
“Is there a God?” cried the pastor, wildly tossing his thin arms upward, “that he lets the sun rise upon such scenes as this!”
“There is a God,” said Ernest Clare, “who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up to death, that we might live forevermore. Courage, friend, the day of freedom is at hand; you would not grudge your daughter the glory of helping Him to redeem the world; of filling up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ?”
“It is for Henry Randolph’s daughter that mine has died,” said the pastor, but with less violence; “upon the floors and walls of that palace, to which he has no right, which he has robbed from others, she spent her precious life.”
“Henry Randolph!” it was like the cry of a wild beast, as Paul Kellar sprang to his feet with clinched hands and red and glaring eyes.
“Henry Randolph! the bloated millionnaire who cuts down his workmen’s wages! the gambler with the daily bread of thousands, starving them by hundreds that he may add another cipher to his bank-account! Is he the murderer of my wife?”
“Not wittingly, oh, not wittingly!” Ernest Clare knew better than to urge any plea of “employment” and “wages” at such a moment as this. “Not wittingly, Paul, does he injure any man. Therefore, Father,” he added, looking upward, “forgive both him and those like unto him. Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do!”
But Paul Kellar had rushed away into the early and peaceful morning; while the pastor, falling upon his knees beside his dead child, cried out,—
“She was my first-born! I called her Christina that she might be like unto Christ; and behold, like Him, she has died,—died for the sins of the world.”
Tina Kellar’s piteous death was, to the labor-world of Micklegard, the breath which, fanning the clouds of their discontent a hair’s-breadth nearer, completed the power of the gathering storm. A martyr! That was their name for her; but a martyr whose death they were bound to avenge? that, to students of Scripture, seemed less fit and natural.
Karl Metzerott was foremost in proclaiming the duty of revenge. In his youth a silent man, and given to much thinking, the years had brought with them a power of rude but vivid eloquence, beneath which his hearers were swayed as the tree-branches bend before the wind.
It was a glorious victory for Karl Metzerott, this triumph of the doctrine of violence; for, though a few faithful ones still clung to Ernest Clare, with the majority his influence was a thing of the past; and Karl rejoiced over his enemy with a mighty joy, careless or unknowing that what these men followed was not “the Emperor,” as they had called him, but the anger and lust for blood and vengeance of their own hearts.
Such an assemblage of lowering brows and sullen, brooding eyes as followed Tina Kellar to the grave had never been seen in Micklegard; the men had nothing to do and nowhere to go; they might as well go to the funeral, they said; and two by two, on foot and silently, they walked after the coffin, through the streets where once Frank Randolph had lured away the dead woman’s sister (though only two of them thought of that), and up the hill to the quiet cemetery where Ernest Clare had taught Ritter Fritz the duties of true knighthood.
There was silence still, while the body was committed to the ground; silence through the dull falling of the first clods and the steady filling-up of the grave; then Paul Kellar cried with a strained, loud, hoarse voice,—
“Men! brothers! I call upon you for vengeance on the murderers of my wife!”
A hoarse murmur of assent, more terrible than words, swept over that sombre crowd; but once again the arms of the pastor were thrown upward, blackly outlined against the brilliant, clear October sky.
“Not for my daughter!” he cried, “no vengeance for her who bears the name of Christ! ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord!’”
The crowd dispersed, silently and sullenly; they were not quite ready yet. There was to be a meeting that night, not, however, at Männerchor Hall; that was a victory which even the Emperor had not been able to achieve. This, and the knowledge that Louis, his only son, Louis, to whom he had been both father and mother, that Louis clung to his rival and condemned his father’s course, filled Karl Metzerott’s tongue with fire. His rugged features glowed, his strong frame trembled, as he pictured the rich man’s home, where the cost of one single picture would have been wealth—nay, length of days, to the bowed figure, old beyond her years, whose life slowly ebbed from her, as she toiled through the gorgeous rooms and up and down the wide, richly carpeted stairs.
“We will have revenge, my brothers,” he said; “not now, the time is not yet. We must be stronger first, then we will call Henry Randolph to account, then”—
“Then?” cried a wild, shrill voice, as Paul Kellar leaped upon the platform; “then? I say now! What are they doing now in that gorgeous palace? Repenting of the murder they have done? I tell you they are feasting! Feasting while my wife lies yonder on the hillside, while my children are motherless and my home a desert. The son of the murderer is to marry the daughter of another, of Dare, the great grain-operator, who managed that clever corner in wheat which starved thousands! And they are feasting and making merry!”—His words were lost in a hoarse and terrible roar.
“Burn down the mill! Let us teach him what poverty means!”
Then Karl Metzerott, carried away from all power of reason or self-control by the spirit to which he had so long yielded, sprang upon his feet for the last time.
“The mill!” he cried with angry scorn. “Do you think his millions are there? Were you to burn ten mills he would scarcely feel the loss. The house, the house, I say! Burn down his house, with him in it, and teach him what hell means.”
In silence more deadly than the wildest outcry, the crowd swept down the steps and out into the night, a fit night for such plans as theirs; for the rain fell, not heavily, but in a soft, cold, treacherous drizzle. The sky had hidden her face from them, and there was not a star to be seen. And as they passed along their power grew: homeless waifs crept from the door-ways and market-stalls where they had sheltered, and joined them at the hint of fire; thieves and coiners left their secret labors; burglars stepped into rank, tools in hand; all the scum and slime of the great city left the holes and corners where it had festered, to aid in the work of flame and blood.
The meeting had been held with closed and guarded doors; but, as it ended, one man, light and active as a monkey, slipped through a window, lit upon the wide, projecting cornice of the one below, thence sprang swiftly and caught a rainpipe, by the aid of which he slid to the ground and ran rapidly up an alley into the principal street of Micklegard. Here he paused a moment, as if in doubt, then sprang upon a figure approaching him from the direction of up-town.
“Louis! was ever such luck as meeting you!”
“What is it, Fritz? not”—
Fritz nodded. “That’s what’s the matter,” he said. “Going to burn Randolph and his house together, and teach him what—well!” said Fritz considerately, “never mind that. Now, you see, there are two streets they can take to get there, and a fellow can’t tell which they’ll choose. I’ve got the pull on ‘em so far, though; and if you’ll take the road of the pins, I’ll take that of the needles, as the wolf said to Rothkäppchen; and then one or the other will do the business. See?”
Louis nodded, and sped away; but Fritz was surprised to see him turn off at right angles to his proper course. He did not stop to reason about it, however. “Louis is all right; there’s nothing mean about him,” said Fritz, “and I guess he knows what he means by it, if I don’t.”
The truth was that Louis had seen Edgar Harrison’s buggy standing before a door in this side street, and was quite prepared to run away with it if necessary; but the doctor was just stepping in as he reached it.
“Mr. Randolph’s, doctor,” said Louis, stepping after him; “and as fast as you can. I’ll explain as we go.”
Edgar Harrison lost no time in obeying.
Meanwhile, all had not been peace and serenity in the magnificent mansion whither they were bound. The dinner, which to Karl Metzerott and his kind appeared like riotous feasting, was, in the opinion of those immediately concerned, a very quiet affair indeed; for anything like gayety so soon after the death of so near a relative as Freddy Richards would have been dreadfully shocking to the feelings, and obviously improper. But a mere family dinner, in honor of the betrothal of Frank Randolph and the fair Virginia, was quite another thing; and though, of course, all black was too sombre for one so bright and young as Pinkie, nothing could be deeper mourning than her dress of white crape, caught here and there with bunches of lilies of the valley.
Certainly nothing could have been prettier or more “wildly becoming.” The pretty, plump throat shone whitely between the folds of lace at the V-shaped neck of the corsage; the round arms were hidden below the elbow only by a fall of the same priceless lace, faint and misty as frost-work on the window-pane. The eyes were bright, the red lips curved into frequent smiles; but Pinkie’s lilies were the work of art, not nature. She would not wear natural flowers now; she hated them, she said; and of all flowers she hated most deeply the pale and fragrant tea-rosebuds.
She presided, for the first time, on an occasion of any moment, with a very pretty, childlike dignity, to the intense admiration of Virginia’s rich bachelor uncle, who was, as Pinkie knew very well, the matrimonial fish specially designed by kind friends for her daintily barbed hook; but whom she had not the remotest intention of doing more than tease and play with. In all, including a cousin or two on her mother’s side, and various representatives of the house of Dare, the party numbered not more than a dozen; so it was, however costly and brilliant the surroundings, decidedly a very quiet affair.
Coffee was on the table, and Henry Randolph held up one of the tiny cups in which it was served, to show the daintiness of the figures inlaid upon it in mother-of-pearl and gold, and studded here and there with infinitesimal jewels.
“Genuine Japanese,” he said, “and belonging to a period of art, past at least two hundred years. I bought them from a seafaring friend, and he picked them up—I fancy, they were given to him—somewhere on the islands.”
“Perhaps he stole them,” observed Pinkie.
“Ah, well! we won’t be uncharitable,” said her father indulgently; “at all events, I paid for them, and roundly too; the fellow knew my fancy for this sort of thing, and took advantage of it.”
“Very immoral of him to take advantage of a man’s necessities,” said the elder Dare quietly.
“Well, you know, sailors are a rough lot; one can’t expect very fine feelings from them. At all events, there isn’t such a set of cups in the world. They have never been used before, and I don’t know when I shall care to use them again.”
“Except on a similar auspicious occasion,” whispered the bachelor uncle in Pinkie’s pretty ear.
She made some audaciously saucy reply without half hearing him; for her eyes were riveted upon her father, who was at the moment reading a telegram which had just been handed him by a servant.
Pinkie saw that he grew white to the lips; then, recovering himself with an effort, “It’s all right,” he said; “no answer,” and tossed off his cup of coffee.
“This tiresome business!” sighed Mrs. Dare; “it never lets one alone, day or night, Mr. Randolph. I’m sure I expect it will kill Mr. Dare some day; I often tell him he’ll have nervous prostration if he don’t take care.”
“You need not fear, my dear madam,” returned her host grimly; “Mr. Dare has no nerves to be prostrated. He is entirely safe!”
“Though it might be better for some of us,” he added some moments later, “if Dare had been smothered in his cradle.”
This remark was made in the library, whither Mr. Randolph had retired for a few moments, and whither he had found means to summon his son Frank.
“That’s pretty rough on my prospective father-in-law, governor,” said the young man gayly; “where would the fair Virginia have been in that case, eh?”
“You’ve got to look sharp if you want to marry Virginia Dare,” said his father. “I did think a marriage between you two would—but I suppose he thinks it hasn’t come to that yet. Read this telegram from Fletcher, will you? There’s a couple of millions gone out of my pocket and yours.”
“And you think Mr. Dare”—
“I don’t think, I know he’s at the bottom of it. He’s got nerves of iron and a forehead of brass, that fellow! And that’s not the worst of it, Frank. This thing giving way lets me in for a number of others; it means simple ruin if it isn’t put a stop to.”
Frank whistled thoughtfully.
“What are you going to do about it?” he asked.
“If these—people weren’t in the house, I’d be off on the next train; but it would never do to show my hand like that. There’s the midnight express, though; I shall make that, I think; and, in the mean time, I want you to wire Fletcher for me. Take it yourself to the office; and listen that it is sent correctly; for it must be in cipher, and the mistake of a letter would be fatal. I’ll make excuses for you in the parlor; what shall I say?”
Frank thought for a moment. “Rumors of a riot downtown,” he said then, “and I’ve gone to look into it. He may swallow that.”
“It may be,” replied his father, “that he and all of us will be obliged to swallow it. But there is no time to be lost.”
Frank only stopped to change his evening coat for less conspicuous raiment, then hurried through the garden to a side gate that opened on what was called River Street, on which a telegraph office was situated at no great distance. Hurrying along this at the top of his speed, he suddenly ran full into the arms of a man who was running rapidly in the other direction.
“Oh! it’s you, is it?” said Fritz Rolf, who, as the stronger and less taken by surprise, was the first to recover himself; “and just what I might have expected! Running away like a coward, and leaving your father and sister in danger. A pretty fellow you are!”
“I don’t know what you mean by danger,” replied Frank impatiently; “but I’ve no time to quarrel just now.”
“Some folks have time to quarrel with you, though,” said Fritz, restraining him by a grasp of the arm as he would have sped onwards. “Do you know that the mob are out to-night, and mean mischief to you and your family? I am on my way to warn the house now.”
Frank hesitated. “I must go on,” he said, “it is a matter almost of life and death to send this telegram. Keep on like a good fellow, and give them warning to clear out by the back way, and I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
“It’s almost too late now,” said Fritz, as the tramp of many feet was heard approaching; “by George, I believe they’ve divided, so as to take the house in front and rear. And they won’t have much mercy on you, if they know who you are,” he added, glancing at the figure before him.
Frank Randolph was physically brave; but a tremor shook him for just a moment, as he glanced right and left for some way of escape. To retreat was, of course, still possible, but Frank had no idea of running away. The task he had undertaken should be performed, and the way to its performance lay before him. The street on which he stood sloped down to the river; there were no cross-streets or blind alleys through which he could make his way.
“‘Twice thirty thousand foes before,
No telegraph office behind,’”
he said coolly. “The only thing I see is to swim for it.”
Fritz grinned in unwilling admiration. “It’s your only chance if the current don’t get away with you,” he said. “But, I say, you know who I am, and that any other man but me would hold your head under water, till the devil was washed out of you?”
“Any other man, and you included, might have some trouble about that,” replied Frank, as he took off his coat, kicked off his shoes, and fastened the precious telegram inside his hat. “However, you ought not to bear malice for an affair in which I had decidedly the worst of it,” he added. “Come, you’re a fine fellow, and I am heartily sorry I ever interfered with you. Will you shake hands on it?”
It must be confessed that Fritz hesitated before he could clasp the hand held out to him.
“It wasn’t me that you tried to ruin,” he said sullenly. “After all, it would be a good deed to drown you.”
“It’s a better deed to make me ashamed of myself,” said Frank, shaking heartily the reluctant hand, “and perhaps I may drown myself and no thanks to you. Good-by.”
“You ain’t a coward, at all events,” said Fritz, as the white shoulders disappeared beneath the dark stream, “but you’ve got to be a regular old swimmer from Swimtown to get through to-night.”
The tramp of feet was very close at hand now; even through the darkness he could discern an advancing line, which absorbed and deepened the blackness of the starless night, and this line swayed hither, thither, as if in wild mirth, while overhead scattered torches flamed redly in the misty air, and wreaths of black and suffocating smoke eddied here and there before settling in foul and noxious rain upon faces which needed little to add to their hideous, repulsive horror. Then a woman’s voice began some wild and obscene melody, which was caught up, with curses and laughter, by hundreds; and Fritz turned and fled through the quiet night before him towards the doomed household.
Meanwhile, Henry Randolph had returned to his guests, just as Louis Metzerott entered the room from the hall. Mr. Randolph was a brave man; courage had come to him, with his sturdy muscles and handsome face, from a long succession of ancestors.
“A riot, is it?” he said; “poor devils, don’t they know who will be the real sufferers?” and then he told his lie as neatly as if the hour which might be his last were not even then ringing out from every clock in the city.
“I heard a rumor of this before we left the table,” he said, “and have sent Frank to inquire into the truth of it. I hope he won’t get into trouble.”
The fair Virginia gave a little scream.
“Hadn’t we better have the carriage brought round, mamma?” she cried. “You don’t think they will attack our house, do you, Mr. Metzerott? Oh! dear me, why should they? I’m sure we never did anything to them!”
“I think the police will be here before they could have time,” said Louis. “We telephoned the news of the riot as we came along. Indeed, for all of you to make your way to Mr. Dare’s will be much the best plan. I will stay here to meet them; perhaps, when they find no one whom they are angry with, they will not do any harm; or even if a few pictures and things were injured”—
“I shall stay to defend my property,” said Henry Randolph, for it would never do, he thought, to miss that midnight train, and Dare’s house was three miles out of the city, “but if you will take my daughter with you, Mrs. Dare”—
“I shall stay with my father,” said Pinkie.
“You will not talk nonsense, but do as you are told,” said Mr. Randolph sharply. Pinkie’s red lips closed firmly, but she made no reply.
The carriages—there were three of them—rattled around to the door in a shorter time than they had ever been got ready since they left the builders’ hands; the last to start, Mr. Dare’s, was to have taken Pinkie, but that young lady was nowhere to be found, nor did she reply to any calling of her name.
“Oh! she must be in one of the other carriages,” cried Mrs. Dare, sobbing with terror; “Virgie, my dear, did you not see her drive off with your uncle in the phaeton?”
“I dare say she did; some one was with him; but don’t ask me, mamma, for I’m too frightened to see anything.”
There was no time to be lost, for the red glow of torches, the noise of singing, and the sound of that terrible tramp, were coming nearer with every second. The coachman slammed the door, and the carriage dashed away too swiftly to fear pursuit by men on foot.
Doors and windows had already been securely fastened, and now, that by which his guests had departed having been secured also, Mr. Randolph turned to re-enter the parlor.
“Now, all we have to do,” he said cheerfully to Louis and Edgar Harrison, who had stayed, hoping by his personal influence to do some good, “all we have to do is to—Pinkie!”
For down the great staircase, her eyes and cheeks bright with excitement, came Pinkie. She shivered with cold, and had wrapped a great scarlet opera cloak over the whiteness of her crape. One hand held the ermine collar closely around her throat, the other clung for support to the brazen balustrade; but her smile was as saucy as ever as she said,—
“It’s just like a man to want to keep all the fun for himself. I’m not to be fooled that way, daddy, I assure you.”
“You are a recklessly disobedient child, Rosalie, and I am severely displeased with you,” said her father sternly; “but,” as a roar as of wild beasts showed that the house was surrounded, “we must make the best of it now. It is too late.”
There was utter silence among the little group, for a moment; then a repetition of that savage roar, another, and another, shook the night air.
“I should like to know what they are doing?” said Henry Randolph restlessly. Pinkie, with her face on his shoulder, trembled in every limb. “I hope you are enjoying the fun, my dear,” he added, looking down at her.
The roar changed to his own name.
“Randolph! Randolph! come out, come out!”
“You’ll never think of such a thing, Mr. Randolph,” cried Edgar Harrison. “Let me go instead. I may be able to influence them!”
“Influence a mob?” said Henry Randolph, smiling as he placed his daughter in a chair and hastily kissed her brow. “The only hope is to keep them amused until the police can come up. If they only have the sense at headquarters to mount them, it won’t be very long.”
“Long enough to tear you in pieces, as they are more than ready to do,” said Louis.
“Maybe so; but—well, my young friend, I don’t pretend to be a saint, or an idealist, either,—I believe that’s the new term,—but I never yet have sent any one into danger when I could go myself. Take care of my little girl, both of you. Now, John,” to the servant, “be ready to fasten that door behind me. Look sharp now.”
“Hold on, John,” said Louis quietly. “I shall go with Mr. Randolph. They won’t hurt me, and I may be able to help him.”
Henry Randolph regarded him sharply. “I fancy you are safe enough,” he said; “both of us know very well who is the ring-leader in this thing. No, I sha’n’t mention his name, now or afterwards, for your sake.”
The young man bent his head silently, he could not answer; then he turned for one last, wistful look at his darling, his pink Rose, as he had loved to call her.
For the first time since their parting in the warm September dusk, their eyes met.
“Louis!” her white arms went out to him with the cry, and with one step he was upon his knees beside her, and they were holding each other so closely, it seemed that death itself would have been powerless to part them.
Another roar, another cry of “Randolph! Randolph!” and Louis rose to his feet.
“I must go, darling,” he said; then, with his wistful eyes upon her father, “You will forgive me, sir. I could not help it; I have loved her all my life.”
Still holding her lover’s hand, Pinkie stood up. “Papa,” she said, “I’m going to marry Louis. I don’t care if he is a shoemaker! I’d marry him if he was a rag-picker.”
“Your own education having especially fitted you for the pursuit of rags,” said Mr. Randolph. “But I’ve no time to discuss such folly now. Louis Metzerott, are you coming?”
“I am coming,” said Louis. “Don’t be frightened, darling; there is no danger for me, and I will take care of your father.”
“It is very bright here,” he said to Mr. Randolph, as they passed into the hall. “I think I would not let them see more of the house than could be helped. Some of them scarcely know what it is to have a roof over their heads; others are starving”—
“Ah! I see,” said Henry Randolph; “turn down the gas, John.”
In the new darkness, the lovers kissed each other again, then Louis placed the girl’s hand in Edgar Harrison’s.
“Take care of her, doctor,” he said.
Then the bolts rattled; the key turned; the heavy door swung back on its hinges just far enough to permit them to pass through; then, with a bang and jar, it closed behind them.
Outside, in the red glare and dense smoke of the torches, the mob stood waiting. Most of them knew Henry Randolph by sight, yet such was the darkness that only the sound of his voice made them certain of their prey. As for the slighter, more youthful figure that stood beside him, whose fair hair had shone for an instant in the dim gaslight from the hall, not a man there doubted that Frank Randolph had chosen to share his father’s danger; and one man felt that his hour of revenge had come. No one could ever guess, on such a night, and from such a throng, the source of a stray bullet; and he was certain of his aim. He had prepared himself for this moment; the weapon in his bosom was as familiar to his hand as the tools of his lawful trade. Fritz would be avenged, and Gretchen’s fair fame be all untouched.
“Well, men,” said Henry Randolph, “I think I heard my name called; may I ask what I can do for you?”
“Blank your impudence!” returned a rough voice; “you’ll soon find out what we want.”
“Where’s my wife?” cried a thin, shrill voice, “where is Tina Kellar, you”—
“Tina Kellar! I found my daughter shedding tears the other day at the news of her death! Do you blame me if the poor woman was overworked? What was I to do? She was too proud to take anything but work, else, I assure you, she should have had money enough and to spare; but she was well paid and well treated!”
“Well paid?” it was Karl Metzerott who replied, “and what right had you to the money you doled out to her? How did you get it? Robber! thief! swindler! we will hang you at your own door, and burn the house down over your head.”
Henry Randolph made one step in the direction of the speaker. “Do you think I do not know your voice?” he cried; “but for your son’s sake I forbear to call your name. Come on, cowards, thousands of you against one, and he unarmed. Come on, if you dare!”
The crowd swayed back and forth with angry murmurs, but did not advance. Henry Randolph turned quickly to his companion.
“Your turn,” he said in a low voice; “I scarcely think they have recognized you yet.”
Louis came forward out of the dense shadows that had hitherto protected him, to the front of the pillared veranda. The red light of a torch shone full upon his young, slender figure; never was there a fairer mark for a traitor!
He raised his hand to remove his hat, that his face might be clearly seen; but even as he did so,—a flash—a sharp, deadly ring—
Henry Randolph caught the falling figure in his arms,—shot through the heart.
“Fools! murderers! beast!” he cried in a voice nor man nor woman who heard it ever forgot, “you have killed the only true man among you! You have shot Louis Metzerott.”
Then, with a horrible cry, Karl Metzerott leaped upon the veranda, tearing his son’s body from the arms that sustained it, and hurling the sustainer back against a heavy marble vase, which swayed upon its pedestal, then fell sidewise upon Henry Randolph’s prostrate form. But, save that terrible cry, no sound came from the father’s lips as he pressed his hand upon the red stream that welled from his son’s bosom. And over all the throng there fell the silence of awe and horror, until it was broken by a single voice, the voice of the Herr Pastor.
“‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’ saith the Lord.”