"Oh, no need of Fleet"s speaking; his face is like the page of an open book."
"Indeed! a face like a sign-board is a most unfortunate one, I should think."
"Most fortunate for us. I wish I could read every one as I can Fleet."
"You trust no one, I believe, father."
"I believe what I see and know."
"I wish I had your power of seeing and knowing. But how did he get his artistic knowledge and taste?"
"That I have not inquired into fully, as yet. I think he has an unusual native aptness for these things, and gains hints and instruction where others would see nothing. And, as you say, in the better days past he may have had some advantages."
"Well," said she, caressing the greyhound beside her, "if Wolf here should go to the piano and execute an opera, I should not be more astonished than I was this morning."
And then their conversation glided off on other topics.
After dessert, Mr. Ludolph lighted a cigar and sat down to the evening paper, while his daughter evoked from the piano true after-dinner music--light, brilliant, mirth-inspiring. Then both adjourned to their private billiard-room.
The scene of our story now changes from Mr. Ludolph"s luxurious apartments in one of the most fashionable hotels in the city to a forlorn attic in De Koven Street. It is the scene of a struggle as desperate, as heroic, against as tremendous odds, as was ever carried on in the days of the Crusades. But as the foremost figure in this long, weary conflict was not an armed and panoplied knight, but merely a poor German woman, only G.o.d and the angels took much interest in it.
Still upon this evening she was almost vanquished. She seemed to have but one vantage-point left on earth. For a wonder, her husband was comparatively sober, and sat brooding with his head in his hands over the stove where a fire was slowly dying out. The last coal they had was fast turning to ashes. From a cradle came a low, wailing cry. It was that of hunger. On an old chest in a dusky corner sat a boy about thirteen. Though all else was in shadow, his large eyes shone with unnatural brightness, and followed his mother"s feeble efforts at the washtub with that expression of premature sadness so pathetic in childhood. Under a rickety deal table three other and smaller children were devouring some crusts of bread in a ravenous way, like half-famished young animals. In a few moments they came out and clamored for more, addressing--not their father; no intuitive turning to him for support--but the poor, over-tasked mother. The boy came out of his corner and tried to draw them off and interest them in something else, but they were like a pack of hungry little wolves. The boy"s face was almost as sharp and famine-pinched as his mother"s, but he seemed to have lost all thought of himself in his sorrowful regard for her. As the younger children clamored and dragged upon her, the point of endurance was pa.s.sed, and the poor woman gave way. With a despairing cry she sank upon a chair and covered her face with her ap.r.o.n.
"Oh, mine Gott, Oh, mine Gott," she cried, "I can do not von more stroke if ve all die."
In a moment her son had his arms around her neck, and said: "Oh, moder, don"t cry, don"t cry. Mr. Fleet said G.o.d would surely help us in time of trouble if we would only ask Him."
"I"ve ask Him, and ask Him, but der help don"t come. I can do no more;"
and a tempest of despairing sobs shook her gaunt frame.
The boy seemed to have got past tears, and just fixed his large eyes, full of reproach and sorrow, on his father.
The man rose and turned his bloodshot eyes slowly around the room. The whole scene, with its meaning, seemed to dawn upon him. His mind was not so clouded by the fumes of liquor but that he could comprehend the supreme misery of the situation. He heard his children crying--fairly howling for bread. He saw the wife he had sworn to love and honor, where she had fallen in her unequal conflict, brave, but overpowered.
He remembered the wealthy burgher"s blooming, courted daughter, whom he had lured away to marry him, a poor artist. He remembered how, in spite of her father"s commands and her mother"s tears, she had left home and luxury to follow him throughout the world because of her faith in him and love for him--how under her inspiration he had risen to great promise as an artist, till fame and fortune became almost a certainty, and then, under the debasing influence of his terrible appet.i.te, he had dragged her down and down, till now he saw her--prematurely old, broken in health, broken in heart--fall helplessly before the hard drudgery that she no longer had strength to perform.
With a sickening horror he remembered that he had taken even the pittance she had wrung from that washtub, to feed, not his children, but his accursed appet.i.te for drink. Even his purple, bloated face grew livid as all the past rushed upon him, and despair laid an icy hand upon his heart.
A desperate purpose formed itself within his mind.
Turning to the wall where hung a n.o.ble picture, a lovely landscape, whose rich coloring, warm sunlight, and rural peace formed a sharp, strange contrast with the meagre, famine-stricken apartment, he was about to take it down from its fastening when his hand was arrested by a word--"Father!"
He turned, and saw his son looking at him with his great eyes full of horror and alarm, as if he were committing a murder.
"I tell you I must, and I vill," said he, savagely.
His wife looked up, sprang to his side, and with her hands upon his arm, said, "No, Berthold, you must not, you shall not sell dot picture."
He silently pointed to his children crying for bread.
"Take der dress off my back to sell, but not dot picture. Ve may as vell die before him goes, for we certainly vill after. Dot is de only ding left of der happy past. Dot, in Gott"s hands, is my only hope for der future. Dot picture dells you vat you vas, vat you might be still if you vould only let drink alone. Many"s der veary day, many"s der long night, I"ve prayed dot dot picture vould vin you back to your former self, ven tears and sufferings vere in vain. Leave him, and some day he vill tell you so plain vat you are, and vot you can be, dot you break der horrid spell dot chains you, and your artist-soul come again. Leave him, our only hope, and sole bar against despair and death. I vill go and beg a dousand times before dot picture"s sold; for if he goes, your artist-soul no more come back, and you"re lost, and ve all are lost."
The man hesitated. His good angel was pleading with him, but in vain.
Stamping his foot with rage and despair, he shouted, hoa.r.s.ely, "It is too late I am lost now."
And he tore the picture from its fastening. His wife sank back against the wall with a groan as if her very soul were departing.
But before his rash steps could leave the desolation he had made, he was confronted by the tall form of Dennis Fleet.
The man stared at him for a moment as if he had been an apparition, and then said, in a hard tone, "Let me pa.s.s!"
Dennis had knocked for some time, but such was the excitement within no one had regarded the sound. He had, therefore, heard the wife"s appeal and its answer, and from what he knew of the family from his mission scholar, the boy Ernst, comprehended the situation in the main.
When, therefore, matters reached the crisis, he opened the door and met the infatuated man as he was about to throw away the last relic of his former self and happier life. With great tact he appeared as if he knew nothing, and quietly taking a chair he sat down with his back against the door, thus barring egress. In a pleasant, affable tone, he said: "Mr. Bruder, I came to see you on a little business to-night. As I was in something of a hurry, and no one appeared to hear my knock, I took the liberty of coming in."
The hungry little ones looked at him with their round eyes of childish curiosity, and for a time ceased their clamors. The wife sank into a chair and bowed her head in her hands with the indifference of despair.
Hope had gone. A gleam of joy lighted up Ernst"s pale face at the sight of his beloved teacher, and he stepped over to his mother and commenced whispering in her ear, but she heeded him not. The man"s face wore a sullen, dangerous, yet irresolute expression. It was evident that he half believed that Dennis was knowingly trying to thwart him, and such was his mad frenzy that he was ready for any desperate deed.
CHAPTER XVII
RESCUED
In a tone of suppressed excitement, which he tried in vain to render steady, Mr. Bruder said: "You haf der advantage of me, sir. I know not your name. Vat is more, I am not fit for bissiness dis night. Indeed, I haf important bissiness elsewhere. You must excuse me," he added, sternly, advancing toward the door with the picture.
"Pardon me, Mr. Bruder," said Dennis, politely. "I throw myself entirely on your courtesy, and must ask as a very great favor that you will not take away that picture till I see it, for that, in part, is what I came for. I am in the picture trade myself, and think I am a tolerably fair judge of paintings. I heard accidentally you had a fine one, and from the glimpse I catch of it, I think I have not been misinformed.
If it is for sale, perhaps I can do as well by you as any one else.
I am employed in Mr. Ludolph"s great store, the "Art Building." You probably know all about the place."
"Yes, I know him," said the man, calming down somewhat.
"And now, sir," said Dennis, with a gentle, winning courtesy impossible to resist, "will you do me the favor of showing me your picture?"
He treated poor Bruder as a gentleman, and he, having really been one, was naturally inclined to return like courtesy. Therefore he said, "Oh, certainly, since you vish to see him. I suppose I might as vell sell him to you as any von else."
Mr. Bruder was a man of violent impulses, and his mad excitement was fast leaving him under Dennis"s cool, business-like manner. To gain time was now the great desideratum.
The picture having been replaced upon the wall, Mr. Bruder held the lamp so as to throw upon it as good a light as possible.
Dennis folded his arms calmly and commenced its study. He had meant to act a part---to pretend deep interest and desire for long critical study---that he might secure more time, but in a few moments he became honestly absorbed in the beautiful and exquisitely finished landscape.
The poor man watched him keenly. Old a.s.sociations and feelings, seemingly long dead, awoke. As he saw Dennis manifest every mark of true and growing appreciation, he perceived that his picture was being studied by a discriminating person. Then his artist-nature began to quicken into life again. His eyes glowed, and glanced rapidly from Dennis to the painting, back and forth, following up the judgment on each and every part which he saw written in the young man"s face. As he watched, something like hope and exultation began to light up his sullen, heavy features; thought and feeling began to spiritualize and enn.o.ble what but a little before had been so coa.r.s.e and repulsive.
Ernst was looking at Dennis in rapt awe, as at a messenger from heaven.
The poor wife, who had listened in a dull apathy to the conversation, raised her head in sudden and intelligent interest when the picture was replaced upon the wall. It seemed that her every hope was bound up in that. As she saw Dennis and her husband standing before it---as she saw the face of the latter begin to a.s.sume something of its former look---her whole soul came into her great blue eyes, and she watched as if more than life were at stake.
If that meagre apartment, with its inmates, their contrasts of character, their expressive faces, could have then been portrayed, it would have made a picture with power to move the coldest heart.