Metzerott, Shoemaker by Katharine Pearson Woods - HTML preview

CHAPTER VIII.
 “THAT, APART FROM US, THEY SHOULD NOT BE MADE PERFECT.”

There was no effort made to exact revenge for Louis Metzerott’s young life. Long before the police arrived (those at headquarters not having had the sense to mount them), his body, still held fast in his father’s arms, had been removed to his home; and there laid upon the bed from which only that morning—

Karl Metzerott allowed no hands but his own to touch the body of his son; and, when the blood had been washed from the cold form, it was the father alone who dressed it in the well-kept “Sunday suit,” and brushed back the fair hair from the white temples. Then he sat down beside the bed, dumbly despairing. His clothes, of a rough brown cloth, were stiff with patches of dark red, his hands were stained of the same fatal color, his rugged face was set, his eyes dull and glassy.

“Do I need to be told that I cannot keep him long?” he asked bitterly; “then let me keep him while I can; and leave me, all of you, let me be alone with my dead.”

For a night, a day, and then another night, without food or sleep, motionless, silent, brooding over thoughts too terrible for words, he sat there.

Forever, forever parted, never, nevermore to meet again. The gentle, strong, loving heart still forever, the blue eyes nevermore to read the secret of another’s sorrow, the busy hands folded uselessly on the wounded breast. Ah! that wound had not been useless; it had dispersed the mob more quickly than a hundred cannon.

Once and again, as the light flickered over the still features, he started forward, full of the wild thought that they had moved;—only to fall back the next moment into the blackness of a bitterer despair.

Dead, dead, body and soul, forever, forever, dead, dead!

In the dawn of the second morning there was a hand upon the lock, and the voice of Ernest Clare begged for admittance. With the sense that, of all men, this man he not merely dreaded but feared to see, the shoemaker’s spirit rose up bravely to defy this fear. He unbarred the door and stood aside for the guest to enter. He was prepared for grief, it was natural that any one should love his boy; and preaching he was ready to defy; but he had not anticipated the look of sorrowful triumph, as in a dear-bought victory, wherewith the clergyman bent to kiss the pale cold forehead.

“It is the death he would have chosen,” he said, turning to the father with almost a smile.

Karl Metzerott’s rugged features worked convulsively a moment, then the words burst from his lips as though they rent his heart in the speaking,—

“I chose it for him! I killed him!”

Ernest Clare turned his eyes aside from beholding the man’s agony; it was all he could do.

“I hate you,” continued the rough voice, harsh with grief; “yet, if I had followed your counsel, my boy would be now alive. The vengeance which I would have brought upon the guilty has lighted on the head of the innocent; yet you would have me believe in a God, who rules and judges the earth!”

“Tell me this,” said Ernest Clare, “while a man or woman lives who remembers Louis Metzerott, will there ever be another riot in Micklegard?”

“Another!” cried the father, “another! Allmächtiger Gott! ANOTHER!”

“You have called upon His name!” said Ernest Clare, “and you have felt His justice! How dare you deny that He is.”

Oh! the white, crushed, helpless, hopeless face that the shoemaker turned upon him.

“Have you no mercy?” he whispered.

And then Ernest Clare came swiftly towards him, and laid his strong hands upon the man’s shoulders.

“My brother,” he said, and his voice shook with its weight of tenderness, “my brother, God is very merciful; even His vengeance is mercy. He will give you back your son, the boy whom your sin has slain. In his youth you taught him to follow Christ; in his young manhood he followed Him even unto death. Follow Him yourself, and you will find your boy again. There is no death to those who love the Lord.”

“No death?” the tone was incredulous, yet it thrilled with a faint hope. “But even if—if all you say were true, it cannot—could not, help this longing, this terrible longing, to hear his voice again—only one word—to see him smile—oh, if he would but stir an eyelid or a finger,” cried Metzerott desperately, “it could not be so hard to bear—afterwards.”

Ernest Clare’s eyes were full of tears. “Do I not know!” he said, “I who have buried father and mother, and kissed the dead lips of the woman I love. Yet even then, when the desire of mine eyes was taken away at a blow,—even then—I felt that in Christ Jesus is neither death nor separation. And now, though I long sore for their smiles, and my heart will hunger for the sound of their dear voices, they are far nearer to me than when they lived on earth; and when I meet them again it will be in the closeness of a union whereof this world hardly dares to dream.”

For still a moment the strong, rugged nature held out; but, though blind to the beauty of the sun-ray, and cold to its genial warmth, it yielded to its death-dealing power.

Suddenly turning, he fell upon his knees by the side of his son, with his face upon the wounded bosom.

“Jesus Christ!” he cried, “Jesus Christ!” and broke into bitter sobbing; but when that fit was past he was as gentle as a little child.

George Rolf was never more seen in Micklegard; but after many years Paul Kellar, then a prosperous Western farmer and long since married again,—Paul Kellar wrote of a strange, solitary miner, who had long been one of the mysteries of that wild region, and who, when he had bravely died in defending his “pile” from a gang of horsethieves, was recognized by Paul himself as George Rolf. From these things many suspected whose hand fired the fatal pistol; but why will always remain a mystery.

“Prices” still flourishes; and Miss Sally, though in a ripe old age, has never laid down the reins of the kitchen department. It is believed that she is training Dora Kellar, who returned to Micklegard upon her father’s second marriage, to succeed her.

Henry Randolph would, no doubt, have been able to retrieve his losses but for the illness which followed his almost fatal accident; but, as none but himself had the key to his affairs, he found himself, when he recovered, shorn of his beams, and reduced to what he called and felt to be poverty, though to others it would have been at least a competency. He never again had “nerve” enough for Wall Street; but went abroad as soon as he was able to travel, and there he still lives—or at least exists. He is always present at any sale of art antiques, and is considered an authority, though he rarely buys; and it is reported that he also frequents such gaming-tables as are still allowed to cumber the earth, where he watches the play with a sort of awful fascination, though without the courage to risk more than a small sum on either red or black.

Pinkie nursed her father devotedly during his illness, but begged piteously not to be taken away from Aunt Alice when Mr. Randolph went abroad. The granting of this petition, Mrs. Richards was afterwards inclined to regret; for in the quiet of the desolate household the poor, lonely child fell into a sort of melancholy, from which she was only roused by a genuine and sensible attachment to Edgar Harrison, whom she soon afterwards married. The two families still form one household, and Pinkie’s children are at once the torment and the happiness of Dr. Richards and his wife, who scarcely realize that the names of grandfather and grandmother are mere brevet titles. The doctor’s experiments in theology have not been abandoned; but he is not likely in this life to get farther than that hope which, we are told, “maketh not ashamed;” hope, the twin sister of love.

Edgar makes a very good husband. Indeed, when Pinkie with tears tells the children stories of “Uncle Louis,” as they are taught to call him, and shows them the fair young face,—Freddy’s handiwork,—that hangs, garlanded with ivy, over her mantel-shelf,—Edgar sometimes tells himself that to Pinkie has been granted both the real and the ideal; the saint to reverence and adore, and the husband “for workadays” with whom she is far happier than she would ever have been with Louis; and, though Pinkie is much improved, it is quite possible that Edgar is right.

Frank’s marriage was not broken off by his father’s fall; for, though Mr. Dare made a demonstration or so in that direction, the fair and high-nosed Virginia showed such an unbroken front that the enemy was forced to retreat. She makes Frank an excellent wife, and they do, as people say, “a great deal of good with their money.”

Karl Metzerott and Ernest Clare work and wait for the day of the Lord, hand in hand. The shoemaker has grown very gentle, and is much beloved by children, to whom he tells stories by the hour of Louis and the Christ-child, until the small minds become at times confused, as to which one it was who ’vided the tin soldiers, and invited the Prices to share his dinner of soup. But, as to the filling of the shoes at Christmas, that Karl considers a vain superstition. The fathers and mothers do it, he says, and ought to have the credit of it. He is not yet able to see that, under the old legend, the truth, in its fairest form, lies sweetly hidden; but one day, perhaps, he will see even this.

Among all the children he has two favorites, the boy who was saved from the waves of the river, and Pinkie’s eldest son, who is called Louis, and who gazes into his face with blue, serious eyes, as he sits cross-legged upon the floor before the shoemaker’s bench. Well, well, Karl has no picture over his mantel-shelf wherewith to compare those eyes. He does not need one, he says.

Mr. Dare is still rich and prosperous.

Annie Rolf has never married.