Katy Gaumer
by Elsie Singmaster · English · Gutenberg #48501 · 472,072 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Katy Gaumer
Author: Elsie Singmaster
Release date: March 16, 2015 [eBook #48501]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KATY GAUMER ***
By Elsie Singmaster
KATY GAUMER. Illustrated.
GETTYSBURG. Illustrated.
WHEN SARAH WENT TO SCHOOL. Illustrated.
WHEN SARAH SAVED THE DAY. Illustrated.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
KATY GAUMER
[Illustration: (p. 334)
"IT'S BEAUTIFUL UP HERE, ISN'T IT, KATY?"]
KATY GAUMER
BY
ELSIE SINGMASTER
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY THE CENTURY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY ELSIE SINGMASTER LEWARS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published February 1915_
CONTENTS
I. THE GREAT NEWS 1
II. THE BELSNICKEL 17
III. THE GREAT MAN 32
IV. THE KOEHLERS' CHRISTMAS DAY 49
V. ANOTHER CHRISTMAS DAY 63
VI. THE MILLERSTOWN SCHOOL 88
VII. THE BEE CURE 105
VIII. WILLIAM KOEHLER MAKES HIS ACCUSATION FOR
THE LAST TIME 124
IX. CHANGE 143
X. KATY MAKES A PROMISE 153
XI. KATY FINDS A NEW AIM IN LIFE 159
XII. KATY BORROWS SO THAT SHE MAY LEND 169
XIII. EMPTINESS 192
XIV. KATY PLANS HER LIFE ONCE MORE 204
XV. AN OLD WAY OUT OF A NEW TROUBLE 219
XVI. BEVY PUTS A HEX ON ALVIN 235
XVII. ALVIN DOES PENANCE AND IS SHRIVEN 254
XVIII. A SILVER CHALICE 267
XIX. THE SQUIRE AND DAVID TAKE A JOURNEY BY NIGHT 281
XX. THE MYSTERY DEEPENS 300
XXI. THE SQUIRE AND DAVID TAKE A JOURNEY BY DAY 306
XXII. KATY IS TO BE EDUCATED AT LAST 321
NOTE.--The first two chapters were published as
a short story under the title of "The Belsnickel"
in the _Century Magazine_ for January, 1911.
KATY GAUMER
CHAPTER I
THE GREAT NEWS
EVERY Wednesday evening in winter Katy Gaumer went to the Millerstown
post-office for her grandfather's "Welt Bote," the German paper which
circulated among the Pennsylvania Germans of Millerstown. By six o'clock
she and Grandfather Gaumer and Grandmother Gaumer had had supper; by
half past six she had finished drying the dishes; by half past seven she
had learned her lessons for the next day; and then, a scarlet shawl
wrapped about her, a scarlet "nubia" on her head, scarlet mittens on her
hands, Katy set forth into Millerstown's safe darkness.
Sometimes--oh, the thrill that closed her throat and ran up and down her
spine and set her heart to throbbing and her eyes to dancing at sound of
that closed door!--sometimes it rained and she pushed her way out into
the storm as a viking might have pushed his boat from the shore into an
unfriendly sea; sometimes it snowed and she lifted her hot face so that
she might feel the light, cold flakes against her cheek; sometimes deep
drifts lay already on the ground and she flung herself upon them or into
them; sometimes she danced back to say a second good-bye so that she
might enjoy her freedom once more; sometimes she stole round under the
tall pine trees and knocked ponderously at the door, knowing perfectly
well that her grandmother and grandfather would only smile at each other
and not stir.
Sometimes she crossed the yard in snow to her knees to rap against the
kitchen window of Bevy Schnepp, who kept house for Great-Uncle Gaumer,
the squire. Bevy's real name was Maria Snyder, but Katy had renamed her
for one of the mythical characters of whom Millerstown held foolish
discourse, and the village had adopted the title. Bevy was little and
thin and a powerful worker. She was cross with almost every one in the
world, even with Katy whom she adored and spoiled. There was a tradition
in Millerstown that she was once about to be married, but that at the
ceremony her spirit rebelled. When the preacher asked her whether she
would obey, she cried out aloud, "By my soul, no!" and the match was
thereupon broken off. Bevy adorned her speech with many proverbs, and
she had an abiding faith in pow-wowing, and also in spooks, hexahemeron
cats, and similar mysterious creatures. She had named the squire's dog
"Whiskey" so that he could not be bewitched. She would as soon have
thrown her cabbage plants away as to have planted them in any other
planetary sign than that of the Virgin. She belonged, strangely enough,
to a newly established religious sect in Millerstown, that of the
Improved New Mennonites, who had no relation to the long-established
worthy followers of Menno Simons in other parts of the Pennsylvania
German section. It is difficult to understand how Bevy reconciled her
belief in the orthodox if sensational preaching of the Reverend Mr. Hill
with her use of such superstitious rhymes as
"Dulix, ix, ux,
Thou comest not over Pontio,
Pontio is over Pilato"--
to which she had recourse when trouble threatened.
Sometimes Katy untied "Whiskey" and they scampered wildly, crazily away
together. Katy did everything in the same unthinking, impetuous way.
Both she and Whiskey were young, both were irresponsible, both were
petted, indulged, and entirely care-free. Katy was the orphan child of
her grandparents' Benjamin; it was not strange that they could deny her
nothing. Of her mother and father she had no recollection; to her
grandparents she owed anything she might now be or might become.
To-night there was no snow upon the ground. The stars shone crisply; in
the west the young moon was declining; though it was December, the
season seemed more like autumn than like winter. Millerstown lay still
and lovely under its leafless trees; not in the quiet of perpetual
drowsiness,--Millerstown was stirring enough by day!--but in repose
after the day's labor and excitement. To the east of the village the
mountain rose somberly; to the south the pike climbed a hill toward the
church and the school-house; to the west and north lay the wide fields.
To the north might be seen the dim bulk of the blast furnace with the
great starlike light of the bleeder flame.
"I wonder what it looks like now from the top of the mountain,"
soliloquized Katy. "I would like to climb once in the dark night to the
Sheep Stable. I wonder if it is any one in all Millerstown brave enough
to go along in the dark. I wonder what the church looks like inside
without any light. I wonder--"
Awed by the quiet, Katy stood still under the pine trees at the gate.
She heard Whiskey whine to be let loose; she heard Bevy open the door of
the squire's kitchen.
"Katy, Katy Gaumer! Come here once, Katy Gaumer!"
Katy did not answer. Bevy had probably a cake for her or some molasses
candy; she could just as well put it in the putlock hole in the wall of
grandfather's house. A putlock hole is an aperture left by the removal
of a scaffolding. It is supposed to be filled in, but either the builder
of the old stone house had overlooked one of the openings, or the stone
placed there had fallen out. It now made a fine hiding-place for Katy's
treasures.
Katy had at this moment no time to give to Bevy. Her heart throbbed, her
hands clutched the gate. She did not know why she was always so thrilled
and excited when she was out alone at night.
"It is like Bethlehem," she whispered to herself, as she looked down the
street, then up at the sky. "The shepherds might be watching or the
kings might come."
Katy opened the gate.
"I love Millerstown," she declared. "I love Millerstown. I love
everybody and everything in Millerstown."
The post-office was next to the store and on the same street as
Grandfather Gaumer's. There are only three streets in the village, Main
Street and Locust and Church, and all the houses are built out to the
pavement in the Pennsylvania German fashion, so that the little
settlement does not cover much ground. Perhaps that was why Katy,
leaving Main Street and starting forth on Locust, came so soon to the
end of her spasm of affection. There did not seem to be enough of the
village to warrant any such fervent outpouring. At any rate, Katy's mood
changed.
"I am tired of Millerstown," she declared with equal fervor. "It is
dumb. It is quiet. Nothing ever happens in this place."
The residents of Locust Street were especially dull to Katy's thinking.
Dumb Coonie Schnable lived here and dumb Ellie Schindler, and Essie
Hill, whom she hated. Essie was the daughter of the pastor of the
Improved New Mennonites, of whom Bevy Schnepp was one. The preacher
himself was tall and angular and rather blank of countenance, but Essie
was small and pretty and pink and smooth of speech and by no means
"dumb." Once, being a follower of her father's religious practices,
Essie had risen in school and had prayed for forgiveness for Katy's
outrageous impudence to the teacher, and had thereupon become his
favorite forever. That Essie could really be what she seemed, that she
could like to hear her father shout about the Millerstown sinners, that
she could admire the silly, short-back sailor hat adorned with a Bible
verse, which was the head-covering of the older female members of the
Improved New Mennonite Church--this Katy could not, would not believe.
Essie was a hypocrite.
Sometimes the Improved New Mennonites might be heard singing or praying
hysterically. Katy had often watched them through the window, in company
with Ollie Kuhns and Billy Knerr and one or two other naughty boys and
girls, and had sometimes helped a little with the hysterical shrieking.
To-night the little frame building was dark, and here, as down on Main
Street, there was not a sound.
At the end of Locust Street, Katy went through a lane to Church Street,
and there again she stood perfectly still, her eyes gleaming, her ears
listening, listening, listening. On the mountain road above her, she
could see dimly a little white house, which seemed to hug the hillside
and to hold itself aloof from Millerstown. Here lived old Koehler, who
was not really very old, but who was crazy and who was supposed to have
stolen the beautiful silver communion service of Katy's church. The
children used to shout wildly at him, "Bring it back! Bring it back!"
and sometimes he ran after them. One sign of his lunacy was his constant
praying in all sorts of queer places and at queer times that the
communion service might be returned, when all he needed for the
answering of his prayer was to seek the service where he had hidden it
and to put it back in its place. The Millerstown children never carried
their mocking to his house, since they believed that he was able to set
upon them the swarms of bees that lived in hives in his little garden,
among which he went without fear. They said among themselves--at least
the romantic girls said--that he did not give his son, poor, handsome
Alvin, enough to eat.
Suddenly Katy's heart beat with a new thrill. There was no instinct
within her which was not awake or wakening. Her cheeks flushed, her
scarlet mittens clasped each other. She liked handsome Alvin because she
liked him--no better reason was given or required in Katy's feminine
soul.
"I think Alvin is grand," exclaimed Katy to herself. "I am sorry for
him. I think he is grand."
There was a sound, and Katy started. Suppose Alvin should come upon her
suddenly! She went on a few steps, then once more she stopped to listen.
Once more Millerstown was quiet, again she looked and listened.
Back in the shadows across the street stood a large, fine house, the
home of John Hartman, Millerstown's richest man. There were in that
house fine carpets and beautiful furniture. But in spite of their
possessions the Hartmans were not a happy family. Mrs. Hartman was
handsome and she had beautiful clothes and a sealskin coat to wear to
church, but she was disturbed if leaves drifted down on the grass in her
yard or if the coming of visitors made it necessary to let the sunlight
in on her thick carpets. Her only child, David, was sullen and stupid
and cross. Remembering the delightful bass singing of one Wenner in the
church choir, Katy had run away from home when a mere baby to visit the
church on a week day and from there John Hartman had driven her home.
Her grandmother to whom she had fled had insisted that he had not been
angry, but that he had only sent her back sternly and properly where she
belonged. But the impression was not quite persuaded away. Katy used to
pretend in some of her wild races that she was fleeing from John
Hartman.
Suddenly there was another sound. Some Millerstonian had opened a window
or had closed a shutter and Katy took to her heels. It amused her to
pretend once more that she was running away from John Hartman. In a
moment she had opened the door of the village store and had flashed in.
Round the stove sat four men, old and middle-aged; to the other three,
Caleb Stemmel was holding forth dismally, his voice low, dreary as his
mind, his mind dull as the dim room. Upon them Katy flashed in her
scarlet attire, her thin legs in their black stockings completing her
resemblance to a very gorgeous tanager or grosbeak. Katy had recovered
from all her thrills; she was now pure mischief and impertinence.
"Nothing," complained Caleb Stemmel, "nothing is any more like it was
when I was young."
"No, it is much better," commented the scarlet tanager.
"We took always trouble." Caleb paid no heed to the impertinent
interruption. "We had Christmas entertainments that were
entertainments--speeches and cakes and apples and a Belsnickel. But
these children and these teachers, they are too lazy and too
good-for-nothing."
Katy had no love for her teacher; she, too, considered him
good-for-nothing; but she had less love for Caleb Stemmel.
"We are going to have a Christmas entertainment that will flax [beat]
any of yours, Caleb Stemmel," she boasted.
"Yes, you will get up and say a few Dutch pieces and then you will go
home."
"Well, everything was Dutch when you were young. You ought to like
that!"
"Things should now be English," insisted Caleb. "But you are too lazy,
all of you, from the teacher down. You will be pretty much ashamed of
yourselves this year, that I can tell you."
Katy was already halfway to the door, her black legs flying. She would
waste no words on Caleb Stemmel. But now she turned and went back. Katy
was curious.
"Why this year?"
"Because," teased Caleb.
"That is a dumb answer! Why _because_?"
"Because it is some one coming."
"Who?"
"A visitor." Caleb pronounced it "wisitor."
"Pooh! What do I care for a 'wisitor'?" mocked Katy.
"This is one that you care for!"
"Who is it?"
"Don't you wish you knew?"
Katy stamped her foot.
"If you don't tell, I'll throw you with snow when the snow comes," she
threatened. Katy had respect for age in general, but not for Caleb
Stemmel.
Caleb did not answer until he saw that Danny Koser was about to tell.
"It is a governor coming," he announced impressively.
Katy drew a step closer, her face aglow. No eyes of tanager or grosbeak
could have shone blacker against brilliant plumage.
"Do you mean"--faltered Katy--"do you mean that my Uncle Daniel is
coming home once, my Uncle Daniel Gaumer?"
"The squire was here and he told us." Danny Koser was no longer to be
restrained. "Then he went to your gran'pop. He got a letter, the squire
did. What do you think of that now?"
"And what," jeered Caleb Stemmel,--"what will the governor think of
Dutch Millerstown and the Dutch entertainment and Dutch Katy; what--"
Once more had Katy reached the door at the other end of the long room.
She had a habit of forecasting her own actions; already she could see
herself pounding at the teacher's door, then racing home to her
grandfather's, her heart throbbing, throbbing, her whole being in the
glow of excitement which she loved, and of which she never had enough.
Suddenly she stopped, her hand on the latch. She had a secret, the whole
Millerstown school had a secret, but now it must be told. Every father
and mother in Millerstown would have to know if the great project,
really her great project, were to succeed. Since the news would have to
come out, it might as well be announced at once.
"We are going to have an English entertainment, Caleb Stemmel," she
cried. "It is planned this long time already; we have been practicing
for a month, Caleb Stemmel. We will have you in it; we will have you
say, 'A wery wenimous wiper jumped out of a winegar wat'; that will be
fine for you, Caleb. Aha! Caleb!"
Outside Katy paused and stretched forth her arms. There was still not a
soul in sight, there was still not a sound; she looked up the street and
down and could see the last house at each end. Then Katy started to run.
Ten minutes ago she had been only little Katy Gaumer, with lessons
learned for the morrow and bedtime near, hating the quiet village, a
good deal bored with life; now she was Katy Gaumer, the grandniece of
one of the great men of the world.
"I wonder what he will look like," said Katy. "I want to do something. I
want to be something. I want to make speeches. I want to be rich and
learned. I want to do _everything_. If he would only help me, I might be
_something_."
There was no one at hand to tell her that she was a vain child; no one
to remind her that she was only one of twenty-odd grandnieces and
nephews and that the governor of a Western State was after all not such
an important person, since there were many still higher offices in the
land. No Millerstonian would have so discounted Daniel Gaumer, who had
made his own way and had achieved greater success than any of his
Millerstown contemporaries. To Katy he was far more wonderful than the
President of the United States. If she could do well at the
entertainment--she, of course, had the longest and most important piece,
and she had also drilled the other children--if it only turned out well,
and if some one only said to the governor that success was due to her
efforts, he might persuade her grandfather to send her away to school;
he might--
But this was not the time to dream. With a fresh gasp for breath, Katy
ran on and hurled herself against the teacher's door, or rather against
the door of Sarah Ann Mohr, in whose house the teacher boarded. In an
instant she was in the kitchen where Sarah Ann and the teacher sat
together.
Sarah Ann was large and ponderous and good-natured. She was now reading
the paper and hemming a gingham apron by turns. Sarah Ann loved to read.
Her favorite matter was the inside page of the Millerstown "Star," which
always offered varied and interesting items of general news. Sarah Ann
was far less interested in the accounts of Millerstown's births and
deaths and marriages than she was in the startling events of the world
outside. Sarah Ann's taste inclined to the shocking and morbid. This
evening she had read many times about a man who had committed suicide by
sitting on a box of dynamite and lighting the fuse, and about a man
whose head was gradually becoming like that of a lion. When she observed
that the next item dealt with the remarkable invention of a young woman
who baked glass in her husband's pies, Sarah Ann laid down the paper to
compose her mind with a little sewing.
The teacher, who was small and slender and somewhat near-sighted, was
going painstakingly over a bundle of civil service examination
questions. He was only in Millerstown for a little while, acting as a
substitute and waiting for something to turn up. He was a Pennsylvania
German, but he would as soon have been called a Turk. He had changed his
name from Schreiner to Carpenter and the very sound of his native tongue
was hateful to him. He did not like Katy Gaumer; he did not like any
young, active, springing things.
Now he listened to Katy in astonishment. Katy flung herself upon Sarah
Ann.
"Booh! Don't look so scared. I will not eat you, Sarah Ann! And I am no
spook! I am only in a hurry. Teacher, I have told the people about the
English entertainment. It is out. I had to tell, because the children
must know their pieces better. Ollie Kuhns, he won't learn his until his
pop thrashes him a couple of times, and Jimmie Weygandt's mom will have
to make him learn with a stick, and then he will not know it anyhow,
perhaps, and they won't leave us have the Sunday School organ to
practice beforehand for the singing unless they know why it is, and
everybody must practice all the time from now on. You see, I _had_ to
tell."
The teacher looked at her dumbly. So did Sarah Ann.
"But _why_?" asked they together.
"Why?" repeated Katy, impatiently, as though they might have divined the
wonderful reason. "Why, because my Uncle Daniel is coming. Isn't that
enough?"
Sarah Ann laid down her apron.
"Bei meiner Seel'!" said she solemnly.
The teacher laid down his papers.
"The governor?" said he. He had heard of Governor Gaumer. He thought of
the appointments in a governor's power; he foresaw at once escape from
the teaching which he hated; he blessed Katy because she had proposed an
English entertainment. He blessed her inspired suggestion of parental
whippings for Ollie and Jimmie. "Sit down once, Katy, sit down."
It gave Katy another thrill of joy to be thus solicited by her enemy.
But now she could not stop.
"I must go first home and see my folks. Then I will come back."
At the squire's gate, Bevy Schnepp awaited her.
"Ach, come once in a little, Katy!"
"I cannot!"
"Just a little! I have something for you." Bevy put out a futile arm.
People were forever trying to catch Katy.
"No," laughed Katy. "I'll put a hex on you, Bevy! I'll bewitch you,
Bevy!"
Katy was gone, through her grandfather's gate, down the brick walk under
the pine trees to the kitchen where sat grandfather and grandmother and
the squire. Seeing them together, the two old men with their broad
shoulders and their handsome heads and the old woman with her kindly
face, a stranger would have known at once where Katy got her active,
erect figure and her curly hair and her dark eyes. All three were
handsome; all three cultivated as far as their opportunities would
allow; all three would have been distinguished in a broader circle than
Millerstown could offer. But here circumstances had placed them and had
kept them. Even the squire, whose desk was frequently littered with
time-tables, and who planned constantly journeys to the uttermost parts
of the earth, had scarcely ever been away from Millerstown.
Upon these three Katy rushed like a whirlwind.
"Is it true?" she demanded breathlessly in the Pennsylvania German which
the older folk loved, but which was falling into disuse among the young.
"Is what true?" asked grandfather and the squire together. They liked to
tease Katy, everybody liked to tease Katy.
"That my uncle the governor is coming?"
"Yes," said Grandfather Gaumer. "Your uncle the governor is coming."
CHAPTER II
THE BELSNICKEL
ON the afternoon of the entertainment there was an air of excitement,
both within and without the schoolroom. Outside the clouds hung low; the
winter wheat in the Weygandt fields seemed to have yielded up some of
its brilliant green; there was no color on the mountain-side which had
been warm brown and purple in the morning sunshine. A snowstorm was
brewing, the first of the season, and Millerstown rejoiced, believing
that a green Christmas makes a fat graveyard. But in spite of the
threatening storm nearly all Millerstown moved toward the schoolhouse.
The schoolroom was almost unrecognizable. The walls were naturally a
dingy brown, except where the blackboards made them still duller; the
desks were far apart; the distance from the last row, where the
ill-behaved liked to sit, to the teacher's desk, to which they made
frequent trips for punishment, seemed on ordinary days interminable.
This afternoon, however, there was neither dullness nor extra space. The
walls were hidden by masses of crowfoot and pine, brought from the
mountain; the blackboards had vanished behind festoons of red flags and
bunting. Into one quarter of the room the children were so closely
crowded that one would have said they could never extricate themselves;
into the other three quarters had squeezed and pressed their admiring
relatives and friends.
Grandfather and Grandmother Gaumer were here, the latter with a large
and mysterious basket, which she helped Katy to hide in the attic, the
former laughing with his famous brother. The governor had come on the
afternoon train, and Katy had scarcely dared to look at him. He was
tall,--she could see that without looking,--and he had a deep, rich
voice and a laugh which made one smile to hear it. "Mommy Bets" Eckert
was here, a generation older than the Gaumer men, and dear, fat Sarah
Ann Mohr, who would not have missed a Christmas entertainment for
anything you could offer her. There were half a dozen babies who cooed
and crowed by turns, and at them cross Caleb Stemmel frowned--Caleb was
forever frowning; and there was Bevy Schnepp, moving about like a
restless grasshopper, her bright, bead-like eyes on her beloved Katy.
"She is a fine platform speaker, Katy is," boasted Bevy to those nearest
her. "She will beat them all."
Alvin Koehler, tall, slender, good-looking even to the eyes of older
persons than Katy Gaumer, was an usher; his presence was made clear to
Katy rather by a delicious thrill than by visual evidence. It went
without saying that his crazy father had not come to the entertainment,
though none of his small businesses of bricklaying, gardening, or bee
culture need have kept him away. When Koehler was not at work, he spent
no time attending entertainments; he sat at his door or window, watching
the mountain road, and scolding and praying by turns.
Upon the last seat crouched David Hartman, sullen, frowning, as ever.
The school entertainment was not worth the attention of so important a
person as his father, and his mother could not have been persuaded to
leave the constant toil with which she kept spotless her great,
beautiful house.
Millerstown's young bachelor doctor had come, and he, too, watched Katy
as she flew about in her scarlet dress. The doctor was a Gaumer on his
mother's side, and from her had inherited the Gaumer good looks and the
Gaumer brains. Katy's Uncle Edwin and her Aunt Sally had brought their
little Adam, a beautiful, blond little boy, who had his piece to say on
this great occasion. Uncle Edwin was a Gaumer without the Gaumer brains,
but he had all the Gaumer kindness of heart. Of these two kinsfolk,
Uncle Edwin and fat, placid Aunt Sally, Katy did not have a very high
opinion. Smooth, pretty little Essie Hill had not come; her pious soul
considered entertainments wicked.
But Katy gave no thought to Essie or to her absence; her mind was full
of herself and of the great visitor and of Alvin Koehler. For Katy the
play had begun. The governor was here; he looked kind and friendly;
perhaps he would help her to carry out some of her great plans for the
future. Since his coming had been announced, Katy had seen herself in a
score of rôles. She would be a great teacher, she would be a fine lady,
she would be a missionary to a place which she called "Africay." No
position seemed beyond Katy's attainment in her present mood.
Katy knew her part as well as she knew her own name. It was called
"Annie and Willie's Prayer." It was long and hard for a tongue, which,
for all its making fun of other people, could not itself say th and v
with ease. But Katy would not fail, nor would her little cousin Adam,
still sitting close between his father and mother, whom she had taught
to lisp through "Hang up the Baby's Stocking." If only Ollie Kuhns knew
the "Psalm of Life," and Jimmie Weygandt, "There is a Reaper whose Name
is Death," as well! When they began to practice, Ollie always said,
"Wives of great men," and Jimmie always talked about "deas" for "death."
But those faults had been diligently trained out of them. All the
children had known their parts this morning; they had known them so well
that Katy's elaborate test could not produce a single blunder, but would
they know them now? Their faces grew whiter and whiter; the very pine
branches seemed to quiver with nervousness; the teacher--Mr. Carpenter,
indeed!--tried in vain to recall the English speech which he had written
out and memorized. As he sat waiting for the time to open the
entertainment, he frantically reminded himself that the prospect of
examinations had always terrified him, but that he invariably recovered
his wits with the first question.
Once he caught Katy Gaumer's eye and tried to smile. But Katy did not
respond. Katy looked at him sternly, as though she were the teacher and
he the pupil. She saw plainly enough what ailed him, and prickles of
fright went up and down her backbone. His speech was to open the
entertainment; if he failed, everybody would fail. Katy had seen panic
sweep along the ranks of would-be orators in the Millerstown school
before this. She had seen Jimmie Weygandt turn green and tremble like a
leaf; she had heard Ellie Schindler cry. If the teacher would only let
her begin the entertainment, she would not fail!
But the teacher did not call on Katy. No such simple way out of his
difficulty occurred to his paralyzed brain. The Millerstonians expected
the fine English entertainment to begin; the stillness in the room grew
deathlike; the moments passed, and Mr. Carpenter sat helpless.
Then, suddenly, Mr. Carpenter jumped to his feet, gasping with relief.
He knew what he would do! He would say nothing at all himself; he would
call upon the stranger. It was perfectly true that precedent put a
visitor's speech at the end of an entertainment, rather than at the
beginning, but the teacher cared not a rap for precedent. The stranger
should speak now, and thus set an example to the children. Hearing his
easy _th's_ and _v's_, they would have less trouble with their English.
Color returned to the teacher's cheeks; only Katy Gaumer realized how
terrified he had been. So elated was he that he introduced the speaker
without stumbling.
"It is somebody here that we do not have often with us at such a time,"
announced Mr. Carpenter. "It is a governor here; he will make us a
speech."
The governor rose, smiling, and Millerstown, smiling, also, craned its
neck to see. Then Millerstown prepared itself to hear. What it heard, it
could scarcely believe.
The governor had spoken for at least two minutes before his hearers
realized anything but a sharp shock of surprise. The children looked and
listened, and gradually their mouths opened; the fathers and mothers
heard, and at once elbows sought neighboring sides in astonished nudges.
Bevy Schnepp actually exclaimed aloud; Mr. Carpenter flushed a
brilliant, apoplectic red. Only Katy Gaumer sat un-moved, being too much
astonished to stir. She had looked at the stranger with awe; she
regarded him now with incredulous amazement.
The governor had been away from Millerstown for thirty years; he was a
graduate of a university; he had honorary degrees; the teacher had
warned the children to look as though they understood him whether they
understood him or not.
"If he asks you any English questions and you do not know what he means,
I will prompt you a little," the teacher had promised. "You need only to
look once a little at me."
But the distinguished stranger asked no difficult English questions; the
distinguished stranger did not even speak English; he spoke his own
native, unenlightened Pennsylvania German!
It came out so naturally, he seemed so like any other Millerstonian
standing there, that they could hardly believe that he was distinguished
and still less that he was a stranger. He said that he had not been in
that schoolroom for thirty years, and that if any one had asked him its
dimensions, he would have answered that it would be hard to throw a ball
from one corner to the other. And now from where he stood he could
almost touch its sides!
He remembered Caleb Stemmel and called him by name, and asked whether he
had any little boys and girls there to speak pieces, at which everybody
laughed. Caleb Stemmel was too selfish ever to have cared for anybody
but himself.
Still talking as though he were sitting behind the stove in the store
with Caleb and Danny Koser and the rest, the governor said suddenly an
astonishing, an incredible, an appalling thing. Mr. Carpenter, already a
good deal disgusted by the speaker's lack of taste, did not realize at
first the purport of his statement, nor did the fathers and mothers,
listening entranced. But Katy Gaumer heard! _He said that he had come a
thousand miles to hear a Pennsylvania German Christmas entertainment!_
He said that it was necessary, of course, for every child to learn
English, that it was the language of his fatherland; but that at
Christmas time they should remember that they had an older fatherland,
and that no nation felt the Christmas spirit like the Germans. It was a
time when everybody should be grateful for his German blood, and should
practice his German speech. He said that a man with two languages was
twice a man. He had been looking forward to this entertainment for
weeks; he had told his friends about it, and had made them curious and
envious; he had thought about it on the long journey; he knew that there
was one place where he could hear "Stille Nacht." He almost dared to
hope that this entertainment would have a Belsnickel. If old men could
be granted their dearest wish, they would be young again. This
entertainment, he said, was going to make him young for one afternoon.
The great man sat down, and at once the little man arose. Mr. Carpenter
did not pause as though he were frightened, he was no longer
panic-stricken; he was, instead, furious, furious with himself for
having called on Daniel Gaumer first, furious with Daniel Gaumer for
thus upsetting his teaching. He said to himself that he did not care
whether the children failed or not. He announced "Annie and Willie's
Prayer."
It seemed for a moment as though Katy herself would fail. She stared
into the teacher's eyes, and the teacher thought that she was crying. He
could not have prompted her if his life had depended upon it. He glanced
at the programme in his hand to see who was to follow Katy.
But Katy had begun. Katy's tears were those of emotion, not those of
fright. She wore a red dress, her best, which was even redder than her
everyday apparel; her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed, she moved
lightly; she felt as though all the world were listening, and as
though--if her swelling heart did not choke her before she began--as
though she might thrill the world. She knew how the stranger felt; this
was one of the moments when she, too, loved Millerstown, and her native
tongue and her own people. The governor had come back; this was his
home; should he find it an alien place? No, Katy Gaumer would keep it
home for him!
Katy bowed to the audience, she bowed to the teacher, she bowed to the
stranger--she had effective, stagey ways; then she began. To the staring
children, to the astonished fathers and mothers, to the delighted
stranger, she recited a new piece. They had heard it all their lives,
they could have recited it in concert. It was not "Annie and Willie's
Prayer"; it was not even a Christmas piece; but it was as appropriate to
the occasion as either. It was "Das alt Schulhaus an der Krick," and the
translation compared with the original as the original Christmas
entertainment compared with Katy Gaumer's.
"To-day it is just twenty years
Since I began to roam;
Now, safely back, I stand once more,
Before the quaint old schoolhouse door,
Close by my father's home."
Katy was perfectly self-possessed throughout; it must be confessed that
praised and petted Katy was often surer of herself than a child should
be. There were thirty-one stanzas in her recitation; there was time to
look at each one in her audience. At the fathers and mothers she did not
look at all; at Ollie Kuhns and Jimmie Weygandt and little Sarah Knerr,
however, she looked hard and long. She was still staring at Ollie when
she reached her desk, staring so hard that she scarcely heard the
applause which the stranger led. She did not sit down gracefully, but
hung halfway out of her seat, bracing herself with her arm round little
Adam and still gazing at Ollie Kuhns. She had ceased to be an actor; she
was now stage-manager.
The teacher failed to announce Ollie's speech, but no one noticed the
omission. Ollie rose, grinning. This was a beautiful joke to him. He
knew what Katy meant; he was always quick to understand. Katy was not
the only bright child in Millerstown. He knew a piece entitled "Der
Belsnickel," a description of the masked, fur-clad creature, the St.
Nicholas with a pelt, who in Daniel Gaumer's day had brought cakes for
good children and switches for the "nixnutzige." Ollie had terrified his
schoolmates a hundred times with his representation of "Bosco, the Wild
Man, Eats 'em Alive"; it would be a simple thing to make the audience
see a fearful Belsnickel.
And little Sarah Knerr, did she not know "Das Krischkindel," which told
of the divine Christmas spirit? She had learned it last year for a
Sunday School entertainment; now, directed by Katy, she rose and
repeated it with exquisite and gentle painstaking. When Sarah had
finished, Katy went to the Sunday School organ, borrowed for the
occasion, on which she had taught herself to play. There was, of course,
only one thing to be sung, and that was "Stille Nacht." The children
sang and their fathers and mothers sang, and the stranger led them all
with his strong voice.
Only Katy Gaumer, fixing one after the other of the remaining performers
with her eye, sang no more after the tune was started. There was Coonie
Schnable; she said to herself that he would fail in whatever he tried to
say. It would make little difference whether Coonie's few unintelligible
words were English or German. Coonie had always been the clown of the
entertainments of the Millerstown school; he would be of this one, also.
But Coonie did not fail. Ellie Schindler recited a German description of
"The County Fair" without a break; then Coonie Schnable rose. He had
once "helped" successfully in a dialogue. For those who know no
Pennsylvania German it must suffice that the dialogue was a translation
of a scene in "Hamlet." For the benefit of those who are more fortunate,
a translation is appended. Coonie recited all the parts, and also the
names of the speakers.
_Hamlet:_ Oh, du armes Schpook!
_Ghost:_ Pity mich net, aber geb mir now dei' Ohre,
For ich will dir amohl eppas sawga.
_Hamlet:_ Schwets rous, for ich will es now aw hera.
_Ghost:_ Und wann du heresht, don nemhst aw satisfaction.
_Hamlet:_ Well was is's? Rous mit!
_Ghost:_ Ich bin dei'm Dawdy sei' Schpook!
To the children Coonie's least word and slightest motion were
convulsing; now they shrieked with glee, and their fathers and mothers
with them. The stranger seemed to discover still deeper springs of
mirth; he laughed until he cried.
Only Katy, stealing out, was not there to see the end. Nor was she at
hand to speed little Adam, who was to close the entertainment with "Hang
up the Baby's Stocking." But little Adam had had his whispered
instructions. He knew no German recitation--this was his first essay at
speech-making--but he knew a German Bible verse which his Grandmother
Gaumer had taught him, "Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe, und Friede auf Erden,
und Den Menschen ein Wohlgefallen." (Glory to God in the Highest and on
earth, peace, good will toward men.) He looked like a Christmas spirit
as he said it, with his flaxen hair and his blue eyes, as the stranger
might have looked sixty years ago. Daniel Gaumer started the applause,
and as little Adam passed him, lifted him to his knee.
It is not like the Millerstonians to have any entertainment without
refreshments, and for this entertainment refreshments had been provided.
Grandmother Gaumer's basket was filled to the brim with cookies,
ginger-cakes, sand-tarts, flapjacks, in all forms of bird and beast and
fish, and these Katy went to the attic to fetch. She ran up the steps;
she had other and more exciting plans than the mere distribution of the
treat.
In the attic, by the window, sullen, withdrawn as usual, sat David
Hartman.
"You must get out of here," ordered Katy in her lordly way. "I have
something to do here, and you must go quickly. You ought to be ashamed
to sit here alone. You are always ugly. Perhaps"--this both of them knew
was flippant nonsense--"perhaps you have been after my cakes!"
David made no answer; he only looked at her from under his frowning
brows, then shambled down the steps and out the door into the cold, gray
afternoon. Let him take his sullenness and meanness away! Then Katy's
bright eyes began to search the room.
In another moment, down in the schoolroom, little Adam cried out and hid
his face against the stranger's breast; then another child screamed in
excited rapture. The Belsnickel had come! It was covered with the dust
of the schoolhouse attic; it was not of the traditional huge size--it
was, indeed, less than five feet tall; but it wore a furry coat--the
distinguished stranger leaped to his feet, saying that it was not
possible that that old pelt still survived!--it opened its mouth "like
scissors," as Ollie Kuhns's piece had said. It had not the traditional
bag, but it had a basket, Grandmother Gaumer's, and the traditional
cakes were there. It climbed upon a desk, its black-stockinged legs and
red dress showing through the rents of the old, ragged coat, and the
children surrounded it, laughing, begging, screaming with delight.
The stranger stood and looked at Katy. He did not yet realize how large
a part she had had in the entertainment, though about that a proud
grandfather would soon inform him; he saw the Gaumer eyes and the Gaumer
bright face, and he remembered with sharp pain the eyes of a little
sister gone fifty years ago.
"Who is that child?" he asked.
Katy's grandfather called her to him, and she came slowly, slipping like
a crimson butterfly from the old coat, which the other children seized
upon with joy. She heard the governor's question and her grandfather's
answer.
"It is my Abner's only child."
Then Katy's eyes met the stranger's bright gaze. She halted in the
middle of the room, as though she did not know exactly what she was
doing. Their praise embarrassed her, her foolish anger at David Hartman
hurt her, her head swam. Even her joy seemed to smother her. This great
man had hated Millerstown, as she hated Millerstown, sometimes, or he
would not have gone away; he had loved it as she did, or he would not
have come back to laugh and weep with his old friends. Perhaps he, too,
had wanted everything and had not known how to get it; perhaps he, too,
had wanted to fly and had not known where to find wings! A consciousness
of his friendliness, of his kinship, seized upon her. He would
understand her, help her! And like the child she was, Katy ran to him.
Indeed, he understood even now, for stooping to kiss her, he hid her
foolish tears from Millerstown.
CHAPTER III
THE GREAT MAN
ON ordinary Christmas days, when only the squire and the doctor and
Uncle Edwin and Aunt Sally and little Adam and Bevy Schnepp dined at
Grandfather Gaumer's, Grandmother Gaumer and Bevy prepared a fairly
elaborate feast. There was always a turkey, a twenty-five pounder with
potato filling, there were all procurable vegetables, there were always
cakes and pies and preserves and jellies without number. One gave one's
self up with cheerful helplessness to indigestion, one resigned one's
self to next day's headache--that is, if one were not a Gaumer. No
Gaumer ever had headache.
It cannot be claimed for Katy that she was of much assistance to her
elders on this Christmas Day, tall girl though she was. Grandfather
Gaumer and the governor started soon after breakfast to pay calls in the
village and her thoughts were with them. How glad every one would be to
see the governor; how they would press cakes and candy upon him; how he
would joke with them; how they would treasure what he said! What a
wonderful thing it was to be famous and to have every one admire you!
"I would keep the chair he sat in," said Katy. "I would put it away and
keep it."
Presently Katy saw Katy Gaumer coming back to her native Millerstown,
covered with honors, of what sort Katy did not exactly know, and going
about on Christmas morning to see the Millerstown Christmas trees and to
receive the homage of a delighted community.
Meanwhile, Katy tripped over her own feet and sent a dish flying from
the kitchen table, and started to fill the teakettle from the
milk-pitcher. Finally, to Bevy Schnepp's disgust, Katy spilled the salt.
Bevy was as much one of the party as the governor. She moved swiftly
about, her little face twisted into a knot, profoundly conscious of the
importance of her position as assistant to the chief cook on this great
day, her shrill voice now breathing forth commands, now recounting
strange tales. Grandmother Gaumer, to whose kitchen Bevy was a thrice
daily visitor, had long ago accustomed herself not to listen to the flow
of speech, and had thereby probably saved her own reason.
"You fetch me hurry a few coals, Katy. Now don't load yourself down so
you cannot walk! 'The more haste the less speed!' Adam, you take your
feet to yourself or they will get stepped on for sure. Gran'mom, your
pies! You better get them out or they burn to nothing! Go in where the
Putz is, Adam, then you are not all the time under the folks' feet.
Sally Edwin, you peel a few more potatoes for me, will you, Sally, for
the mashed potatoes? Mashed potatoes go down like nothing. Ach, I had
the worst time with my supper yesterday! The chicken wouldn't get, and
the governor was there. I tell you, the Old Rip was in it! But I carried
the pan three times round the house and then it done fine for me. Katy,
if you take another piece of celery, I'll teach you the meaning. To eat
my nice celery that I cleaned for dinner! And the hard, yet! If you want
celery, fetch some for yourself and clean it and eat it. I'd be ashamed,
Katy, a big girl like you! You want to be so high gelernt, you think you
are a platform speaker, yet you would eat celery out of the plate. Look
out, the salt, Katy! Well, Katy! Would you spill the salt, yet! Do you
want to put a hex on everything? I--"
"Bevy!" Katie exploded with alarm.
"What is it?" cried Bevy.
"Your mouth is open!"
"I--I--" Bevy gurgled, then gasped. Bevy was not slow on the uptake. "I
opened it, I opened it a-purpose to tell you what I think of you. I--"
But Katy, hearing an opening door, had gone, dancing into the
sitting-room, where, on great days like this, the feast was spread. The
room was larger than the kitchen; in the center stood the long table,
and in one corner was the Christmas tree with the elaborate "Putz," a
garden in which miniature sheep and cows walked through forests and
swans swam on glass lakelets. Before the "Putz," entranced, sat fat
Adam; near by, beside the shiny "double-burner," the governor and his
brothers and young Dr. Benner were establishing themselves. The governor
had still a hundred questions to ask.
Katy perched herself on the arm of her grandfather's chair, saying to
herself that Bevy might call forever now and she would not answer. The
odor of roasting turkey filled the house, intoxicating the souls of
hungry men, but it was not half so potent as this breath of power, this
atmosphere of the great world of affairs, which surrounded Great-Uncle
Gaumer. Katy's heart thumped as she listened; the great, vague plans
which she had made in the night seemed at one moment possible of
execution, at the next absolutely mad. Her face flushed and her skin
pricked as she thought of making known her desires; her heart seemed to
sink far below its proper resting-place. She listened to the governor
with round, excited eyes, now praying for courage, now yielding to
despair.
The governor's questions did not refer to the great world,--it seemed as
though the world had become of no account to him,--but to Millerstown,
the Millerstown of his youth, of apple-butter matches, of raffles, of
battalions, of the passing through of troops to the war, of the rough
preachers of a stirring age. He remembered many things which his
brothers had forgotten; they and the younger folk listened entranced. As
for Bevy, moving about on tiptoe, so as not to miss a word,--it was a
marvel that she was able to finish the dinner.
"He traveled on horseback," said the governor. "He had nothing to his
name in all the world but his horse and his old saddlebags, and he
visited the people whether they wanted him or not. At our house he was
always welcome,--he stayed once a whole winter,--and on Sundays he used
to give it to us in church, I can tell you! Everything he'd yell out
that would come into his mind. One Sunday he yelled at me, 'There you
stand in the choir, and you couldn't get a pig's bristle between your
teeth. Sing out, Daniel!'
"But he could preach powerfully! He made the people listen! There was no
sleeping in the church when he was in the pulpit. If the young people
did not pay attention, he called right out, 'John, behave! Susy, look at
me!'"
"We have such a preacher here," said Uncle Edwin in his slow way. "He is
a Improved New Mennonite. He--"
"They wear hats with Scripture on them, and they sing, 'If you love your
mother, keep her in the sky,'" interrupted Katy.
"'_Meet_ her in the sky,'" corrected Grandmother Gaumer. "That has some
sense to it."
"He won't read the words as they are written in the Bible," went on
Uncle Edwin, apparently not minding the interruption. He shared with the
rest of Katy's kin their foolish opinion of Katy. "He says the words
that are printed fine don't belong there, they are put in. It is like
riding on a bad road, his reading. It goes bump, bump. It sounds very
funny."
"He preaches on queer texts," said Katy. "He preached on 'She Fell in
Love with her Mother-in-Law.'"
"Now, Katy!" admonished Grandmother Gaumer.
Bevy Schnepp had endured as much as she could of insult to the
denomination to which she belonged and to the preacher under whom she
sat.
"Your Lutheran preachers have 'kein Saft und kein Kraft, kein Salz und
kein Peffer' [no sap and no strength, no salt and no pepper]," she
quoted. "They are me too leppish [insipid]. You must give these things a
spiritual meaning. It meant Naomi and Ruth."
The governor smiled his approval at Bevy. "Right you are, Bevy!" Then he
began to ask questions about his former acquaintances.
"What has come over John Hartman?"
"While he is so cross, you mean?" said Grandfather Gaumer. "I don't know
what has come over him. It is a strange thing. He is so long queer that
we forget he was ever any other way."
"Was he ugly this morning?" asked Grandmother Gaumer.
"He didn't ask us to come in and she didn't come to the door at all."
Bevy Schnepp, entering with laden hands, made sharp comment.
"She is afraid her things will get spoiled if the sun or the moon or the
cold air strikes them. She is crazy for cleanness. She will get yet like
fat Abby. Fat Abby once washed her hands fifteen times before breakfast,
and if he (her husband) touched the coffee-pot even to push it back with
his finger if it was boiling over, then she would make fresh."
"And do the Koehlers still live on the mountain?"
"There are only two Koehlers left," answered the squire, "William and
his boy." The squire shook his head solemnly. "It is a queer thing about
the Koehlers, too. The others were honest and right in their minds, but
William, he is none of these things."
"Not _honest_!" said the governor.
"About fifteen years ago he did some bricklaying at the church and he
had the key of the communion cupboard. The solid service was there and
while he was working it disappeared."
"Disappeared!" repeated the governor. "You mean he took it? What could
he do with it?"
"I don't know. Nobody knows. He goes about muttering and praying over
it. They say his boy hardly gets enough to eat. I can't understand it."
"He!" Bevy now had the great turkey platter in her arms; its weight and
her desire to express herself made her gasp. "He! He looks at a penny
till it is a twenty-dollar gold-piece. And you ought to see his boy! He
is for all the world like a girl. 'Like father, like son!' He'll do
something, too, yet."
Katy slid from the arm of her grandfather's chair, her cheeks aflame.
"You have to look at pennies when you are poor," she protested. "You
can't throw money round when you don't have it!"
Bevy slid the platter gently to its place on the table, then she faced
about.
"Now, listen once!" cried she with admiration. "You can't throw money
round when you don't have it, can't you? What do you know about it, you
little chicken?"
Katy's face flushed a deeper crimson. If looks could have slain, Bevy
would have dropped. Young Dr. Benner turned and looked at Katy suddenly
and curiously. She would have gone on expostulating had not Grandmother
Gaumer risen and the other Gaumers with her, all moving with one accord
toward the feast. There was time only for a secret and threatening
gesture toward Bevy, then Katy bent her head with the rest.
"'The eyes of all wait upon Thee,'" said Grandfather Gaumer in German.
"'Thou givest them their meat in due season.'"
Heartily the Gaumers began upon the Christmas feast, the feast beside
which the ordinary Christmas dinner was so poor and simple a thing. Here
was the turkey, done to a turn, here were all possible vegetables, all
possible pies and cakes and preserves. To these Grandmother Gaumer had
added a few common side-dishes, so that her brother-in-law might not
return to the West without a taste, at least, of all the staple foods of
his childhood. There was a slice of home-raised, home-cured ham; there
was a piece of smoked sausage; there was a dish of Sauerkraut and a dish
of "Schnitz und Knöpf,"--these last because the governor had mentioned
them yesterday in his speech. It was well that the squire lived next
door and that Bevy had her own stove to use as well as Grandmother
Gaumer's.
Bevy occupied the chair nearest the kitchen door. There are few class
distinctions in Millerstown, though one is not expected to leave the
station in life in which he was born. It was proper for Bevy to occupy
the position of maid and for little Katy to go to school. If Katy had
undertaken to live out, or Bevy to become learned, Millerstown would
have disapproved of both of them. When each remained in her place, they
were equal.
The governor tasted all the dishes serenely, and Grandmother Gaumer
apologized from beginning to end, as is polite in Millerstown. The
turkey might have been heavier--if he had, he would certainly have
perished long before Grandfather's axe was sharpened for him! The pie
might have been flakier, the sausage might have been smoked a bit
longer--it would have been sinful to add a breath of smoke to what was
already perfect.
"And then it wouldn't have been ready for to-day!" said the governor.
"But we might have begun earlier." Grandmother Gaumer would not yield
her point. "If we had butchered two days earlier, it would have been
better."
When human power could do no more, when Bevy had no more breath for
urgings, such as, "Ach, eat it up once, so it gets away!" or "Ach,
finish it; it stood round long enough already!" the Gaumers pushed back
their chairs and talked with mellower wit and softer hearts of old
times, of father and mother and grandparents, and of the little sister
who had died.
"She was just thirteen," said Governor Gaumer. "She was the liveliest
little girl! I often think if she had lived, she would have made of
herself something different from the other people in Millerstown. But
now she would have been an old woman, think of that!" The governor held
out his hand and Katy came across to him, her eyes filled with tears.
Katy was always easily moved. "Didn't she look like this one?"
"Yes," agreed Grandfather Gaumer. "That I always said."
The governor laid both his hands on Katy's shoulders.
"And what"--said he,--"what are you going to do in this world, Miss
Katy?"
Katy looked up at him with a deep, deep breath. She had thought that
yesterday held a great moment, but here was a much greater one. She
clasped her hands, she gasped again, she looked the governor straight in
the face. Here was her opportunity, the opportunity which she had begun
to think would never come.
"Ach," said Katy with a deep sigh, "when I am through the Millerstown
school, I should like to go to a big school and learn _everything_!"
The governor smiled upon her.
"Everything, Katy!"
"Yes," sighed Katy.
"Listen to her once!" cried Bevy Schnepp with pride.
"Can't you learn enough here?"
"I am already in the next to the highest class," explained Katy. "And
our teacher, he is not a very good one. He wants to be English and a
teacher ought to be English, but he is werry Germaner than the scholars.
He said to us in school, 'We are to have nothing but English here, _do
you versteh_?' That is exactly the way he said it to us. He says lots of
words that are not English. I want to be English. I--"
"Just listen now!" cried Bevy again, her hands piled high with dishes.
"I want to be well educated," finished Katy with glowing cheeks.
"And what would you do when you were educated?" asked the governor.
"I would leave Millerstown," said Katy.
"Why?" asked the governor.
"It would be no use having an education in Millerstown," answered Katy
with conviction. "You have no idea how slow Millerstown is."
"And where did you think you would go?"
"Perhaps to Phildel'phy," answered Katy. "Perhaps I would be a
missionary to Africay."
Strange sounds issued from the throats of Katy's kin.
"You are sure you could do nothing in Millerstown with an education?"
asked the governor.
"It is nothing to do here," explained Katy. "You can walk round
Millerstown a whole evening and you don't hear anything and you don't
see anything."
"Would she like _murders_?" demanded Bevy Schnepp.
"You go in the store and Caleb Stemmel and Danny Koser are too dumb and
lazy even to read the paper, and Sarah Ann Mohr is hemming and everybody
else is sleeping. The married people sit round and don't say anything,
and--"
"Do you want them to _fight_?" Bevy was not discouraged by being
ignored.
"You think it would be better to be a missionary?" said the governor.
"It would be better to be _anything_," declared Katy fervently. "I
_cannot stand_ Millerstown!" Katy clasped her hands and looked into the
face of her distinguished relative. "Oh, please, please make them send
me away to a big school! I prayed for it!" added Katy.
Over Katy's head the eyes of her elders met. The older folk thought of
the little girl who might have been something different, the squire
remembered the journeys he had planned in his youth and the years he had
waited to take them.
But to Katy's chagrin and bitter disappointment, no one said another
word about an education. Grandmother Gaumer suggested that Katy might
help Aunt Sally and Bevy with the dishes. Afterwards, Katy was called
upon to say her piece once more. When little Adam followed with his
Bible verse and was given equal praise, Katy's poor heart, sinking lower
and lower, reached the most depressed position which it is possible for
a heart to assume. Her cause was lost.
Then the governor prepared to start on his long journey to the West.
There he had grown sons and daughters and little grandchildren whom
these Eastern cousins might never see. He kissed Grandmother Gaumer and
his niece Sally and little Adam and Katy, and shook hands with Bevy
Schnepp, then he returned and kissed Grandmother Gaumer once more. There
was something solemn in his farewell; at sight of Grandmother Gaumer's
face Katy was keenly conscious once more of her own despair. From the
window she watched the three old men go down the street, the famous man
who had gone away from Millerstown and the two who had stayed. It seemed
to Katy that the two were less noble because of the obscurity of their
lives.
"Why did gran'pop stay here always?" she asked when she and her
grandmother were alone. "Why did uncle go away?"
"Gran'pop was the oldest, and he and the squire had to stay here. Uncle
had the chance to go."
"But--" Katy crossed to her grandmother's side. Everything was still in
the warm, pine-scented room. "But, grandmother, why do you cry?"
"I am not crying," said grandmother brightly.
"But you look--you look as if"--Katy struggled for words in which to
express her thoughts--"as if everything were finished!"
Grandmother sighed gently. "I am an old woman, Katy, and your uncle is
an old man. We may never see each other again."
"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" cried Katy. "This is a very sad Christmas!"
It was not the sadness of parting which made Katy cry. It was
unthinkable that anything should change for her. Everything would be the
same, always--alas, that it should be so! She, Katy Gaumer, with all her
smartness in school, and all her ability to plan and manage
entertainments, would stay here in this spot until she died. Grandmother
Gaumer, reproaching herself, comforted her for that which was not a
grief at all.
"We will be here a long time yet. And you are to go away to school,
and--"
Katy sprang to her feet.
"Who says it, gran'mom? Who says I dare go to school?"
"Your gran'pop said it, and your uncles said it when you were out with
Bevy. You are to study here till you are through with the highest class,
then you are to go away. Your uncle will find a school: he will send us
catalogues and he will give us advice."
Katy clasped her hands.
"I do not deserve it!"
"You said you prayed for it," reminded Grandmother Gaumer.
"But I prayed without faith," confessed Katy. "I did not believe for one
little minute it would ever come true in this world!"
"Well," said Grandmother Gaumer, "it is coming true."
Here for once was bliss without alloy, here was a rapture without
reaction. Christmas entertainments, at which one did well, ended; there
was no outlook from them, and it was the same with perfect recitations
in school. But this was different. One had the moment's complete joy,
one had also something much better.
"I must study," planned Katy. "I must learn. I must make"--alas, that
one's joy should be another's bitter trial!--"I must make that teacher
learn me everything he knows!"
It was dusk when Grandfather Gaumer came home.
"I told Katy," said Grandmother Gaumer.
"Daniel gave me two hundred dollars to put in the bank in Katy's name,"
announced Grandfather Gaumer solemnly. "It shall be spent for books and
to start Katy. He and the squire and I will see her through."
Katy flung herself upon her grandfather.
"I will learn everything," she promised. "I will make you proud of me.
Like it says in the Sunday School book, 'I will bring home my sheaves.'
And now," said Katy, "I am going to run out to the schoolhouse and
back."
In an instant she was gone, scarlet shawl about her, slamming the door.
Perhaps the two old people sitting together were not sorry to have her
away for a while. The day with its memories and its parting had been
hard, and the mere youthfulness of youth is sometimes difficult for age
to bear.
"Her legs fly like the arms of a windmill," said Grandfather Gaumer.
Then they sat silently together.
Already Katy was halfway out to the schoolhouse. The threatened snow had
fallen and the sky had cleared at sunset. There was still a faint, rosy
glow in the west, a glow which was presently dimmed by the brighter
light which spread over the landscape as the cinder ladle at the furnace
turned out its fiery charge upon the cinder bank. When that flame faded,
the stars were shining brightly; Katy stood in the road before the
schoolhouse and looked up at them and then round about her. The
schoolhouse, glorified by her recent triumph, was further sanctified by
her great hopes. Beside it on the hillside stood the little church,
where she had been confirmed and had had her first communion, where
during the long German sermons she had dreamed many dreams, and where
she had been thrilled by solemn watch-night services. Millerstown was
not without power to impress itself even upon one who hated it.
Now Katy raced down the hill. But she was not ready to go into the
house. She shrieked into Bevy Schnepp's kitchen window; she almost upset
Caleb Stemmel as he plodded to his place behind the stove in the store,
wishing that there were no Christmases; she ran once more to the end of
Locust Street and across to Church Street and looked through the thick
trees at the Hartman house. David had surely some handsome Christmas
gifts from his parents. Then, straining her eyes, she gazed up at the
little white house on the mountain-side. There was not much Christmas
there, that was certain, but Alvin was there, handsome, adorable. Alvin
would pay heed to her if she was going away, the one person in
Millerstown to be educated!
Then Katy stretched out her arms.
"Oh, dear Millerstown!" cried Katy. "Oh, dear, dumb Millerstown, I am
going away from you!"
CHAPTER IV
THE KOEHLERS' CHRISTMAS DAY
AT Grandfather Gaumer's house, where the governor dined; at the Weygandt
farm where there was another great family dinner; at the Kuhnses, where
Ollie still swelled proudly over yesterday's oratorical triumph; at
Sarah Ann Mohr's, where ten indigent guests filled themselves full of
fat duck,--indeed, one might say at every house in Millerstown, there
was feasting. The very air smelled of roasting and boiling and frying,
and the birds passing overhead stopped and settled hopefully on trees
and roofs.
But in the house of William Koehler, just above Millerstown on the
mountain road, there was no turkey or goose done to a turn, there were
no pies, there was no fine-cake. Here was no mother or grandmother to
make preserves or to compound mincemeat in preparation for this day of
days. What mother there had been was seldom thought of in the little
house.
Here the day passed like any other day, except that it was duller and
less tolerable. There was no school for Alvin and no work for his
father, and they had to spend the long hours together. Alvin did not
like school, but to-day he would cheerfully have gone before daylight
and have remained until dark. His father did not like holidays; they
removed the goal, for which he worked and of which he thought night and
day, a little farther away from him. He would have preferred to work
every day, even on Sundays.
William was a mason by trade, but when there was no mason work for him,
he was willing to turn his hand to anything which would bring him a
little money. Another mason had recently established himself in the
village, urged, it was supposed, by those who were unwilling to admit
Koehler to their houses for the occasional bits of plastering which had
to be done. There was no question that Koehler was very queer. Not only
was he likely to kneel down at any moment and begin to pray, but he did
other singular things. He had once worked until two o'clock in the
afternoon without his dinner, because his watch had stopped and he had
not sense enough to know it. It was not strange that thrifty Millerstown
agreed that he was not a safe person to have about.
Between him and his son there was little sympathy; there was, indeed,
seldom speech. Alvin was bitterly ashamed of his father, of his miserly
ways, of his shabby clothes, and above all, of his insane habit of
praying. William prayed incoherently about the communion service which
he was supposed to have stolen--at least, that was what seemed to be the
burden of his petition. Whether he prayed for grace to return it, or for
forgiveness for having taken it, Millerstown did not know, so confused
was his speech. Alvin's position was a hard one. He was humiliated by
the taunts of the Millerstown boys; he hated the poverty of his life; he
was certain that never had human being been so miserable.
Early on Christmas morning the two had had their breakfast together in
the kitchen of the little white house where they lived, and there Alvin
had made an astonishing request. Alvin was fond of fine clothes; there
was a certain red tie in the village store at which he had looked
longingly for days. Alvin was given to picturing himself, as Katy Gaumer
pictured herself, in conspicuous and important positions in the eyes of
men. Alvin's coveted distinction, however, was of fine apparel, and not
of superior education. He liked to be clean and tidy; he disliked rough
play and rough work which disarranged his clothes and soiled his hands.
"Ach, pop," he begged, "give me a Christmas present!" His eyes filled
with tears, he had been cruelly disappointed because he had found no way
to get the tie in time for the Christmas entertainment. "Everybody has a
Christmas present!"
"A Christmas present!" repeated William Koehler, his quick, darting eyes
shining with amazement. His were not mean features; he had the mouth of
a generous man, and his eyes were full and round. But between his brows
lay a deep depression, as though experience had moulded his forehead
into a shape for which nature had not intended it. If it had not been
for that deep wrinkle, one would have said that he was a gentle, kindly,
humorous soul. "A Christmas present!" said he again.
Without making any further answer, he rose and went out the kitchen door
and down the board walk toward the chicken house. He repeated the
monstrous request again and again, like a person of simple mind.
"A Christmas present! He asks me for a Christmas present!"
When he reached the chicken house, he stood still, leaning against the
fence. The chickens clustered about him with crowings and squawkings,
some flying to his shoulders. Birds and beasts and insects loved and
trusted poor William if human beings did not. It was possible for him to
go about among his bees and handle them as he would without fear of
stings.
Now he paid no heed to the flapping, eager fowl, except to thrust them
away from him. He stood leaning against the fence and looking down upon
the gray landscape. It was not yet quite daylight and the morning was
cloudy. The depression in his forehead deepened; he was looking fixedly
at one spot, John Hartman's house, as though he had never seen it
before, or as though he meant to fix it in his mind forever.
The Hartman house was always there. He had seen it a thousand times,
would see it a thousand times more. On moonlight nights, its wide roofs
glittered, on dark nights a gleaming lamp set on a post before the door
fixed it in place. In winter its light and its great bulk, in summer its
girdle of trees, distinguished it from all the other houses in
Millerstown. William Koehler could see it from every foot of his little
house and garden. It was before his eyes when he worked among his
plants, which seemed to love him also, and when he sat for a few minutes
on his porch, and when he tended his bees or fed his chickens.
Beyond the Hartman house he did not look. There the country spread out
in a wide, cultivated, varicolored plain, with the mountains bounding it
far away. To the right of the village was the little cemetery where his
wife lay buried, and near it the Lutheran church to which they had both
belonged, but he glanced at neither. Sometimes he could see John Hartman
helping his wife from the carriage when they returned from church, or
stamping the snow from his feet before he stepped into his buggy in the
stable yard. Often, at this sight, when there was no one within hearing,
William waved his arms and shouted, as though nothing but a wild sound
could express his emotion. He was not entirely free from the
superstitions in which Bevy and many other Millerstonians believed,
superstitions long since seared upon the souls of a persecuted
generation in the fatherland. He recited the strange verse, supposed to
ward away evil,--
"Dulix, ix, ux,
Thou comest not over Pontio,
Pontio is over Pilato!"--
and he carried about with him a little spray of five-finger grass as a
charm.
When John Hartman drove along the mountain road, his broad shoulders
almost filling his buggy, William had more than once shouted an insane
accusation at him. This Millerstown did not know. Koehler never spoke
thus unless they were alone, and Hartman told no one of the encounter.
One is not likely to tell the world that he has been accused of
stealing, even though the accuser is himself known to be a madman and a
thief. But John Hartman came presently to avoid the mountain road.
After a while William roused himself and fed his chickens and looked
once more at the house of John Hartman. There was smoke rising from the
chimney, and tears came into William's eyes, as though the smoke had
drifted across the fields and had blinded him. Suddenly he struck the
sharp paling a blow with his hard hand and spoke aloud, not with his
usual faltering and mumbling tongue, but clearly and straightforwardly.
William had found a help and a defense.
"I will tell him!" cried he. "This day I will tell my son, Alvin!"
All the long, snowy Christmas morning, Alvin sat about the house. He did
not read because he had no books, and besides, he did not care much for
books. Alvin was a very handsome boy, but he did not have much mind. He
did not sing or whistle on this Christmas morning because he was not
cheerful; he did not whittle because whittling would have wasted both
knife and stick, and his father would have reproved him. He did not walk
out because he was not an active boy like David Hartman, and he did not
visit because he was not liked in Millerstown. He did not take a boy's
part in the games; he was afraid to swim and dive; he whined when he was
hurt.
He looked out the window toward the Hartman house with a vague envy of
David, who had so much while he had so little. He watched his father's
parsimonious preparation of the simple meal--how Grandmother Gaumer and
Bevy Schnepp would have exclaimed at a Christmas dinner of butcher's
ham!
"Oh, the poor souls!" Grandmother Gaumer would have cried. "I might
easily have invited them to us to eat!"
"Where does the money go, then?" Bevy would have demanded. "He surely
earns enough to have anyhow a chicken on Christmas! Where does he put
his money? No sugar in the coffee! Just potatoes fried in ham fat for
vegetables!"
All the long afternoon, also, Alvin sat about the house. He did not
think again of the Hartmans; he did not think of Katy Gaumer, who
thought so frequently of him; he thought of the red tie and wished that
he had money to buy it.
All the long afternoon his father huddled close to the other side of the
stove and muttered to himself as though he were preparing whatever he
meant to tell Alvin. It must be either a very puzzling or a very long
story, or one which required careful rehearsing. When the sun, setting
in a clear sky, had touched the top of a mountain far across the plain,
he began to speak suddenly, as though he had given to himself the
departure of day for a signal. He did not make an elaborate account of
the strange events he had to relate; on the contrary, he could hardly
have omitted a word and have had his meaning clear. He said little of
Alvin's mother; he drew no deductions; he simply told the story.
"Alvin!" cried he, sharply.
Alvin looked up. His head had sunk on his breast; he was at this moment
half asleep. He was startled not alone by the tone of his father's
voice, but by his father's straightened shoulders, by his piercing
glance.
"I am going to tell you something!"
Alvin looked at his father a little eagerly. Perhaps his father was
going to give him a present, after all. It would take only a quarter to
buy the red tie. But it was a very different announcement which William
had to make. He began with an alarming statement.
"After school closes you are to work at the furnace. I let you do
nothing too long already, Alvin!"
"At the furnace!" Alvin's astonishment and alarm made him cry out. He
hated the sight of Oliver Kuhns and Billy Knerr when they came home all
grimy and black.
"I will tell you something," said his father again. "Listen good,
Alvin!"
Alvin needed no such command to make him hearken. Alvin had not much
will, but he was determining with all his power that he would never,
never work in the furnace. He did not observe how his father's cheeks
had paled above his black beard, and how steadily he kept his eyes upon
his son. The story William had to tell was not that of a man whose mind
was gone.
"You know the church?" said William.
"Of course."
"I mean the Lutheran church where I used to go, where my pop went."
"Yes."
"You go in at the front of the church, but the pulpit is at the other
end. There were once long ago two windows, one on each side of the
pulpit. They went almost down to the floor. From there the sun shone in
the people's eyes. You can't remember that, Alvin. That was before your
time."
Alvin sat still, sullenly. This conversation was, after all, only of a
piece with his father's strange mutterings; it had to do with no red
necktie.
"But now the Sunday School is there and those windows are gone this long
time. One is a door into the Sunday School, the other is a wall. I built
that wall, Alvin."
William paused as though for some comment, but Alvin said nothing.
"I was sitting where I am sitting now one evening and she [his wife] was
sitting where you are sitting and you were running round, and the
preacher climbed the hill to us and he came in and he said to me,
'William,' he said, 'it is decided that the big window is to be walled
up. When can you do it?' That was the way he said it, Alvin. I said to
him, 'I can do it to-morrow. I had other work for the afternoon at Zion
Church, but I can put it off.' She could have told you that that was
just what he said and what I said. I was in the congregation and there
was at that time no other mason but me in Millerstown. It was to be made
all smooth, so that nobody could ever tell there was a window there.
Then the preacher, he said to me,--she could tell you that, too, if she
were here,--he said, 'Come in the morning and I will give you the key of
the communion cupboard,' the little cupboard in the wall, Alvin. There
the communion set was kept. It was silver, real silver, all shiny."
William's hands began to tremble and he moistened his dry lips. William
spoke of objects which were to him manifestly holy. His son bent his
head now, not idly and indifferently, but stubbornly. He remembered the
names which the boys had shouted at his father; with all his soul he
recoiled from hearing his father's confession. "There was a silver
pitcher, so high, and a silver plate and a silver cup on a stem like a
goblet. The preacher put it away there and he locked the door always.
"But he gave me the key and I went to my work. I thought once I would
have to open the door and I stuck the key in the lock. It was a funny
key.
"But I didn't need to open the door. I took my dinner along--she could
tell you that. But I didn't need to open the door, and I took the key
out again and put it in my pocket, and when I finished I swept
everything up nice and locked the church door and came down the pike. It
was night already and I went to the preacher and gave him the two keys,
the church key and the other, and got my money. That quick he paid me,
Alvin. He said to me, 'Well, I guess you had a quiet day, William,' and
I said, 'Yes, nobody looked in at me but a little one.' That is what I
said to the preacher _then_, Alvin, exactly that, but it was not true.
But I thought it was true.
"Then I came home and I told her how nice and smooth I had made it--to
this day, you cannot see it was a window there. Now, listen, Alvin!"
The sunset sky was darkening, a rising wind rattled the door in its
latch. The little house was lonely on a winter night, even a bright
night like this. The boy began to be frightened, his father looked at
him with such dagger-like keenness.
"So it went for three weeks, Alvin, and then it was Sunday morning and
here I sat and there she sat and you were running round, and it came a
knock at the door and there was the preacher. I was studying my lesson
for the Sunday School. It was about Ananias. I had learned the answers
and the Golden Text, but it was not yet time to go. I always went to
church; I liked to go to church. Then there came this knocking, Alvin,
and it was the preacher. I thought perhaps he had come to give her the
communion while she wasn't very well and couldn't go down through the
snow. The preacher came in and he looked at me.
"'William,' said the preacher to me, 'do you remember how I gave you the
key to the cupboard when you fixed the wall?'
"'Why, yes,' I said. 'Of course!'
"'William,' said he to me, 'did you open the cupboard?'
"'Why, no,' I said. 'I didn't have to, Para [Pastor].'
"'Were you away from the church?'
"'No,' I said. 'I took my dinner. She can tell you that.'
"'Why, William,' said he to me, 'the communion set is gone! The
communion set is gone,' he said, 'gone!'
"I went with him to the church, Alvin, and I looked into the cupboard.
Everything was gone, Alvin, bag and all. Then I came home and after a
while they came. They wanted to talk, they wanted me to tell them
everything that had happened all day. But I couldn't tell them anything.
I had built the wall and a little one had talked to me, that was all.
There she sat and here I sat and it was dark. Then, Alvin, it came to
me! When I got halfway up the window, it was too high to go farther, and
I went out of the church to get boards and build a platform across
chairs so that I could reach. I was gone some little time, and when I
came back Hartman was going down the pike. It was Hartman that took the
communion set."
Alvin moved toward the side of his chair, and away from his father.
"Then I got up and went down the hill, and into Hartman's house I
walked. He was sitting by the table with his best clothes on to go to
church and she was there, too. They were always rich; they had
everything grand. I made tracks on her clean floor, and she looked sharp
at me, but I did not care. I spoke right up to him.
"'When I was building the wall in the church,' I said, 'I went out for a
few boards. In that time you were in the church and took the communion
set.'
"He did not look at me, Alvin; he just sat there.
"'What would I do with a communion set?' he said after a while to me.
"'I do not know what you would do with it,' I said back to him, 'but you
have it. You took it. God will punish you like Ananias.'
"Then, Alvin--" William laid a hand on his son's shrinking arm. "He went
to the preacher, and the preacher came to me and said I must be quiet.
That the preacher said to me! Then I went to church and prayed out loud
before all the people that God would punish the wicked. I did not
mention any names, Alvin; I obeyed the preacher in that! But God did not
punish him. Everything gets better and better for him all the time. Now,
I will punish him, Alvin, and you will help me. I have paid a lot to
detectives, but I have not yet enough. He must be watched; we must have
proof. I cannot save so much any more because I have not so much work.
Now, if you work at the furnace you will make a dollar a day. It will
take all we can earn, Alvin, _all_. I did without things that I need; I
have saved all I can, but I cannot save enough."
William broke off suddenly. The room was quite dark; where no light was
needed, none was made in William Koehler's house. William rose and went
stumbling about and lit the lamp, the lamp which Katy saw gleaming
against the dark side of the mountain. In its light poor William gazed
at his son with yearning. He seemed now perfectly sane.
Then William spoke in a hollow, astonished voice, the lamp rattling in
his hand.
"Don't you believe he took it, Alvin?"
"Why, no," stammered Alvin. "What would he want with it?"
CHAPTER V
ANOTHER CHRISTMAS DAY
IN the Hartman house on Christmas Day there was feasting, but no
rejoicing. Cassie Hartman was fully as able a cook as Grandmother
Gaumer, and she roasted as large a turkey and prepared almost as many
delicacies as Grandmother Gaumer and Bevy Schnepp prepared for their
great party. On the kitchen settle were gifts, a gold breastpin set with
a handsome diamond, a heavy gold watch-chain, a boy's suit, a gun, and a
five-dollar gold-piece. There were on them no affectionate inscriptions,
no good wishes. The breastpin was for Cassie, the watch-chain for John
Hartman, the other articles for David. There were no gifts from
outsiders--few Millerstonians would have ventured to offer gifts to the
rich Hartmans. In the parlor windows hung holly wreaths, the only bought
wreaths in Millerstown.
The Hartmans had asked no guests to their feast. John had long since
separated himself from the friends of his youth; as for Cassie, the
thought of the footprints of Christmas guests on her flag walk and her
carefully scrubbed porches would have made the day even more
uncomfortable than it was. Moreover, one could not entertain Christmas
company in the kitchen, however fine that kitchen might be, and in this
wintry weather fires would have to be made in the parlor and the
dining-room.
"Company would track dust so for me," Cassie would have said if any one
had suggested that some companions of his own age might do David good
and might not be a bad thing for his elders. "When you have fires, you
have ashes, and I would then have to clean my house in the middle of
winter when you cannot clean the carpets right."
Cassie Hartman was a beautiful woman, how beautiful Millerstown, which
set a higher value upon mere prettiness than upon beauty, did not know.
Her figure was tall and full and she bore herself with grace and
dignity. Her face with its even features and its full gray eyes was the
face of an austere saint, although her eyes, lifting when you addressed
her, seemed rather to hide her real character than reveal it. But her
character was austere and reserved, of that you were sure.
If Cassie's soul was a consecrated one, the gods to whom one would have
assigned her worship were Cleanliness and Order. The very progress of
her husband and son about the house annoyed her because it was masculine
and untidy. David knew better than to enter the kitchen with muddy
shoes, but his father was not so careful; therefore both trod upon an
upper layer of slightly worn rag carpet, superimposed upon the bright
and immaculate lower layer. In all other details but one of the
management of her house Cassie had her way. Her husband refused
stubbornly to leave the great walnut bed and the large room in which he
slept for a smaller room at the back of the house, as Cassie wished, so
that the great best bedrooms might be garnished day and night with their
proper spreads and counterpanes and shams.
Each of Cassie's days and hours had its appointed task. She could have
told how her time would be spent from now on until the last hour before
her passing, when the preacher would come in the proper Lutheran fashion
to give her the communion. The Church required no such ceremony, but
Cassie was a formalist in religion and required it for herself.
So the three Hartmans ate alone in their broad kitchen, John Hartman at
one end of the table, Cassie far away at the other, and David midway
between them. John Hartman's eyes were hardly lifted above his food; he
was an intolerably silent person. Cassie's eyes roved everywhere, from
her stove, which she could scarcely wait to blacken, toward her husband
who ate carelessly, and toward her son, who devoured his drumstick with
due regard for the clean cloth. The cloth was spotless and would
probably remain spotless, for an extra white cover had been laid beneath
the plates of John and David. But to-morrow it would go into the tub,
none the less. It was too good to be used every day, and it could not be
put away bearing even the slight wrinkles produced by unfolding. Cassie
had no more to say than her husband. There was really nothing for Cassie
to say. Her mental processes involved herself and her house, they
responded to no inspiration from without.
As for little David, he said nothing either. Katy Gaumer had been right
when she said that David was a cross boy. David was cross and sullen.
To-day, however, he was only solemn. David was deeply concerned about
his sins. He was not only a sinner in general, but he had sinned in a
very particular way, and he was unhappy. The turkey did not taste as a
Christmas turkey should, and his second slice of mince-pie was bitter.
When John Hartman had eaten all he could, he rose and put on his coat
and went out to his great barn to feed his stock. He went silently, as
was his wont.
When David had finished the last morsel of pie which he was able to
swallow, he, too, put on his hat and went toward the door, moving
silently and slouchingly. There he stood and nervously kicked the sill.
His eyes, gray like his mother's, looked out from under frowning,
knitted brows; he thrust his hands deep into his pockets and looked down
at the floor. This was Christmas Day; his parents had treated him
generously; he was convinced that he ought to confess to them his great
wickedness. He felt as though he might cry, and as though crying, if he
had a shoulder to lean on, would be a soothing and healing operation.
The assault of Katy Gaumer had sunk deep into his heart, as was natural
since he thought of Katy night and day, since he saw her wherever she
went in her red dress, now scolding, now laughing, and perpetually in
motion. He had fled to the attic of the schoolroom yesterday because she
had not spoken to him or looked at him, had even passed him with her
weight planted for an instant heavily on his foot without even
acknowledging his presence. And to the attic she had followed him and
had there taunted and insulted him! She had no business to say that he
was cross and ugly; he would be nice enough to her if she would return
the compliment. As for Grandmother Gaumer's cakes, he had better cakes
at home than Grandmother Gaumer could bake!
David's heart was sore, and David was inexpressibly lonely and
miserable. He was now certain that he would be happy if he could confess
his sins to his mother.
He forgot the last occasion of his appeal to her. Then his finger had
been cut, and he had been dizzy and had seized hold of her, and the
blood had fallen down on her new silk dress. He forgot her reproof; he
remembered only that he needed some sort of human tenderness. His father
did not often speak to him, but women were made, or should be made, of
different stuff from men. He had seen Susannah Kuhns sit with her great
Ollie upon her lap, and Ollie was older than he was by a year. He had
heard Katy Gaumer, who had been so outrageously cruel to him, cry over a
sick kitten, and Katy was herself often rocked like a baby on
Grandmother Gaumer's knee.
David forgot now not only the cut finger, but other repulses. He had no
claim on Grandmother Gaumer's embrace, and he would have hated to have
to sit on Susannah Kuhns's knee, but upon this tall, beautiful person
sitting by the table, he had a claim. Moreover, her embraces would have
been pleasant.
"Mom!" said David.
Cassie's eyes were now on the dishes before her. She liked to plan her
mode of attack upon a piece of work, and then proceed swiftly, keeping
her mind a blank to everything but the pleasure of seeing order grow
where disorder had been. Thus she liked to go through her fine house,
sweeping the rich carpets, polishing the carved furniture, letting the
sunlight in only long enough to show each infamous dust mote. Cassie was
in the midst of such planning now; she saw the dishes neatly piled, the
hot suds in the pan, her sleeves rolled above her elbows. She did not
answer David, did not even hear him.
"Mom!" said David again. He did not know now exactly what he had meant
to say. The necessity for confession had dwindled to a necessity for the
sound of his mother's voice. It was dismal to live in a house with
companions who seemed deaf and blind to one's existence. She _must_
speak to him!
At the second call, Cassie looked at her son. Cassie recognized dirt and
disorder, but she did not recognize any need of the human soul. The
needs of her own soul had been, Cassie thought, cruelly denied. At any
rate, its power of perception had failed.
"You stamp on that sill again and I'll have to scrub it, David! To spoil
things on Christmas!"
Cassie's voice contained no threat of punishment; it was merely mildly
exclamatory. The tone of it was not vibrant but wooden. It might have
been rich and beautiful in youth; now it expressed no emotion; it was
flat, empty. She did not ask David what he wanted, or why he addressed
her; she did not even wonder why he stopped in the doorway and stared at
her. She only frowned at him, until he closed the door, himself outside.
David had all the clothes he could wear, all the food he could eat; he
had the finest house, the richest father and the most capable mother in
Millerstown; what more could he wish to make him happy? His mother did
not speculate as to whether he was happy or not.
David crossed the yard in the freshly fallen snow and slammed the gate
behind him. Then he went toward the mountain road, and started to climb,
passing the house of the Koehlers, where William sat on one side of the
stove and Alvin on the other, the one muttering to himself, the other
half asleep. David kicked the snow as he walked, his head bent lower and
lower on his breast. He could see Katy Gaumer like a sprite in her red
dress with her flashing eyes and her pointing finger; he could see her
smiling at Alvin Koehler, whom he hated without dreaming that in that
son of a demented and dishonest father Katy Gaumer could have any
possible interest.
As he started up the steepest part of the hill, he began to talk aloud.
"I want her!" said poor little David. "I want Katy! I want Katy!"
Presently David left the road, and climbing over the worm fence into the
woodland, struck off diagonally among the trees. Still far above him, at
the summit of the little mountain, there was a rough pile of rocks which
formed a tiny cairn or cave. Before it was a small platform, parapeted
by a great boulder. Generations past had named the spot, without any
apparent reason, the "Sheep Stable." It was a favorite resort of David
Hartman. Here, in secret, far above Millerstown, he carried on the
wicked practices which he had meant to confess to his mother. From the
little plateau one could look for miles and miles over a wide, rich,
beautiful plain, could see the church spires of a dozen villages, the
smoke curling upward from three or four great blast furnaces, set in the
midst of wide fields, and could look far beyond the range of hills which
bounded the view of William Koehler on his lower level, to another
range. The Pennsylvania German made his home only in fertile spots. When
other settlers passed the thickly forested lands because of the great
labor of felling the trees and preparing the soil, he selected the
sections bearing the tallest trees and had as his own the fertile land
forever.
David did not look out over the wide, pure expanse upon which a few
flakes were still falling and beyond which the sun would soon sink
gorgeously, nor did he see the purple shadows under the pine trees, nor
observe the glancing motions of a squirrel, watching him from a bough
near by. He determined, desperately, firmly, that he would repent no
more; he would now return to his evil ways and get from them what
satisfaction he could.
He crept on hands and knees into the little cave and felt round under a
mass of dried leaves until his hands encountered the instruments of his
evil practices. Then David drew them forth, a stubby pipe, which he had
smoked once and which had made him deathly ill, and a pack of cards,
about whose mysterious and delightful use he knew nothing. He sat with
them in his hands on the sloping rock, wishing, poor little David, that
he knew how to be wickeder than he was!
Having fed his stock, John Hartman tramped for a little while round his
fields in the snow, then he returned to the kitchen and sat down by the
window with a newspaper. Cassie lay asleep on the settle. Custom forbade
her working on Christmas Day, and she never read, even the almanac. At
her, her husband looked once or twice inscrutably, then he laid his head
on the back of his tall chair and slept also. It was a scene at which
Katy Gaumer would have pointed as proof of the unutterable stupidity of
Millerstown.
When her husband slept, Cassie opened her eyes and looked at him with as
steady a gaze as that which he had bent upon her. Her mouth set itself
in a firm, straight line, her eyes deepened and darkened, her hands,
folded upon her breast, grasped her flesh. Surely between these two was
some great barrier of offense, given or suffered, of strange, wounded
pride, or insufferable humiliation! Presently Cassie's lids fell; she
turned her cheek against the hard back of the old settle and so fell
asleep also.
John Hartman owned four farms and a great stretch of woodland and a
granite quarry on the far side of the mountain and two farms and two
peach orchards and an apple orchard on this. A generation ago a large
deposit of fine iron ore had been discovered upon a tract of land owned
by his father. The deposit was not confined to his fields, but extended
to the lands of his neighbors. But while they sold ore and spent their
money, John Hartman's father, as shrewd a business man as his son, sold
and saved, and laid the foundation of his fortune. In a few years the
discovery of richer, more easily mined deposits in the West and the
cheap importation of foreign ores made the Millerstown ore for the time
not worth the mining. Hartman the elder then covered his mine breaches
and planted timber, and the growth set above the treasure underground
was now thick and valuable. John Hartman was also a director in a county
bank; he owned the finest, largest house in Millerstown; he had a
handsome and a capable wife, and a son who was strong in body and who
had a good mind. Apparently his position in life was secure, his comfort
certain.
John Hartman, however, was neither comfortable nor secure. The long-past
accusations of a poor, half-crazed workingman filled his waking hours
with apprehension and his nights with remorse. Of William Koehler and
his accusation John Hartman was afraid, for William's accusation was, at
least in part, true.
John Hartman had been walking away from the church on that bright
November day years ago, when his own David and Alvin Koehler were little
children and Katy Gaumer not much more than a baby. He had upon him, as
William had said, an air of guilt; he had refused to reply to William's
shouted greeting; he was at that moment rapidly becoming, if he was not
already, what William called him, a thief.
On that November day, a little while before William had shouted at him,
he had come down the pike and had seen William leave the church to get
the boards for his platform, and had thereupon entered the church with
no other impulse than the vague motions of a man sick at heart. A sin of
his earlier youth had risen suddenly from the grave where he thought it
buried, and now confronted him. In his pocket lay an accusing,
threatening letter, written with pale ink upon poor paper in an ignorant
way. The amount of money which it demanded, large as it was, did not
trouble him, since he was already possessor of his inheritance and
growing daily richer; it was the horror of the discovery of his sin.
Once cured of his obsession he had become a devout man, had taken
pleasure in the services of the church of his fathers, attending all her
meetings and contributing to all her causes. He had married a good woman
from a neighboring village, who knew nothing of the year he had spent
away from Millerstown; he had had a son; he was wholly happy.
He had gone during the latter part of the year which he spent away from
home, as a way of escaping from himself, to Europe. He had been only a
few weeks ashore, but he had seen during that time civilizations
different from anything he had dreamed of. He was most moved by great
churches--he saw Notre Dame of Amiens and Notre Dame of Paris--and by
the few great English estates of which he caught glimpses in his rapid
journey to Liverpool. That was the way a man should live, planted in one
place, like a great oak tree, the center of a wide group--a wife,
children, dependents. He should have his garden, his woodland, his great
house, his stables, his beautiful horses; he should pass the home place
on to a son who would perpetuate his name. With such a home and with a
worthy church to worship in, a man could ask for nothing else in the
world.
Repentant, healed, John Hartman had returned to Millerstown. There he
had married and had built his house, with great rooms at the front and
smaller rooms at the back for the servants who should make his wife's
life easy and dignified and should help to care for the little brothers
and sisters whom David was to have. Cassie had had a hard youth; her
father had been a disgrace to his children; she was quiet and stern and
not hopeful, even though John Hartman had lifted her to so high a place,
of very great happiness in this life. But Cassie's nature had seemed to
change in the glow of John Hartman's affection and in the enjoyment of
the luxuries with which he surrounded her. She became less silent; she
met her husband at times with a voluntary caress, which opened in his
heart new springs of happiness.
But here, into this blessed peace and security, into this great
planning, fell, like a dangerous explosive, the threatening letter.
Almost beside himself with fright, worn with three nights' sleepless
vigil, confused with the numerous plans for ridding himself of his
persecutor which he made only to reject, and aware that an immediate
answer must be sent, John Hartman approached the church where William
Koehler had been working.
The open door seemed to invite him to take refuge within. He kept
constantly touching the letter in his pocket. He meant to destroy it,
but it bore an address which he dared not lose. He had been sitting by
the roadside on a fallen log, holding the letter in his hand and writing
absent-mindedly upon it.
In the church he saw William's half-finished work and the curious key in
the little cupboard. As an elder, he had a right to open the door and to
take out the beautiful silver vessels, the extravagance of one
generation which had become the pride of the next. It seemed for an
instant as though a touch of the holy things might give him peace.
Untying the cord of the heavy bag as he laid it on top of William's
half-finished wall, he lifted out the silver chalice.
But the sight of the beautiful vessel gave him no relief, and the cool,
smooth surface made him shiver. He grasped it suddenly and involuntarily
cried out, "Oh, what shall I do! What _shall_ I do!"
The grip of his hand was so strong that the cup slipped from his fingers
and striking the top of William's wall, bounded into the dark aperture
which the building of the wall had made. He reached frantically after
it, and the gray bag, containing the pitcher and paten, struck by his
elbow, followed the silver cup.
For an instant the accident drove the more serious trouble from John
Hartman's mind. He had great reverence for the sacred vessels and he was
afraid that the fall had bruised their beautiful surfaces. He tried to
reach the bag, which lay uppermost, but it was just beyond the tips of
his fingers at the longest reach of his arm. He would have to get
William Koehler to help him, much as he disliked to confess to such
carelessness. William would be shocked and horrified.
Then, suddenly, John Hartman gave a sharp cry. In his struggle to reach
the gray bag, the letter had dropped from his pocket. He had not put it
back into its envelope after his last anguished reading; he could see it
now as it lay spread out below him in the darkness. His frantic eyes
seemed to read each word on the dim page. "Your wife will know about it,
and your little boy and all the country." If he called William to help
him, William might read the letter. Even if William made no actual
effort to decipher it, a single glance might reveal that some one was
threatening John Hartman.
He thought that he heard William coming through the new Sunday School
room and in panic, and without stopping to reason beyond the swift
conclusion that if William's attention were not called to them, he would
not see the bag and the letter far down in the narrow pit, he turned and
locked the cupboard door and went out the door of the church and down
the road. He did not reflect that William might easily discover that the
communion set was gone, that he might accidentally drop his trowel into
the deep hole and in reaching it find the dreadful letter, and that he
might give an alarm, and all be lost; his only thought was to get away.
He remembered dimly that he had brushed aside a little child in his rush
to the church door. When he reached the door, he held himself back from
running by a mighty effort and walked slowly down the pike, little Katy
Gaumer toddling fearfully behind him. It was easy to pretend that he did
not hear William call. Already he had planned how he would restore the
silver to its place. He knew that William was engaged that afternoon to
work at Zion Church; therefore the wall would not be closed that day.
At night he would go to the church with a hoe or rake and lift out the
sacred vessels and the dreadful letter, whose very proximity to them was
sacrilege. If the pitcher and the chalice and the plate had suffered
harm, he would explain that he had taken them to the jeweler to be
polished, and he would then have them repaired.
But William postponed his work at Zion Church, and that night, when John
Hartman stole back to replace the silver, the wall was finished and the
mortar set.
That night, also, John Hartman learned with absolute certainty that his
persecutor was dead, and his persecution at an end.
"They do not know that the communion set is gone," thought he.
"To-morrow I will find a way."
But in a sort of stupor, from which he roused himself now and then to
make wild and fruitless plans, John Hartman let the days go by. The blow
he had received had affected him not only mentally, but physically, and
he was slow to recover from it, past though the danger was. He went
about his farms, he looked earnestly upon his wife, he clasped his
little boy in his arms to assure himself that his two treasures were
real.
But the more certain he became that the ghost of the past was laid, the
more terribly did the present specter rise to harass him. Communion
Sunday was approaching, the loss of the communion service would be
discovered. There were moments when the distracted man prayed for a
miracle. He had been delivered from that other terror by an act of
Providence which was almost a miracle; would he not be similarly saved
in a situation in which he was innocent?
He thought of going at night and tearing the wall down and restoring the
service to its place, leaving the strange vandalism a mystery to
horrified Millerstown. How happy he should be to pay for the rebuilding
of the wall! But the task was too difficult, discovery too probable.
As the days passed, another way out of his trouble occurred to him. He
would go to William Koehler and tell him all his misery. William was a
good-natured, quiet soul, who could be persuaded to silence, or who
might set a price upon silence, if silence were a salable commodity.
William could easily find an excuse for doing his work over; it was well
known that he was foolishly particular. It never occurred to John that
suspicion of theft would probably fall upon honest, simple William, who
had had the key of the cupboard and who had been the whole day alone in
the church. He got no farther than his own terrible problem. He had
dropped the silver into the wall; both letter and silver were there
convicting him; he must find a way to get them both out and to put the
silver in its place.
But he allowed day after day to pass and did not visit William. William
was, after all, only a day laborer of the stupid family of Koehlers and
John was a property owner and an elder in the church; it would be
intolerably humiliating to make such a confession. Communion Sunday was
still two weeks away; there would be time for him to make some other
plan.
When Communion Sunday morning came, John had still no plan. Moving as in
a trance, he went with his wife to church, to find the congregation
gathered into wondering, distressed groups. The door of the little
cupboard was open, and beside it was the smooth, newly painted wall. It
was too late for John to ask William Koehler for help in his difficulty.
He did not realize that all about him his fellow church members were
whispering about William; he did not hear that William was accused, he
was so dazed by the fortunate complications of his own situation. They
did not dream of his agency! He would replace the set with a much more
beautiful one. This generation would pass away long before the wall
would be taken down and then the letter would be utterly destroyed by
age or dampness. He said to himself that God had been very good to him;
he even dared to thank Him during the confused, uneasy service which the
pastor conducted upon his return from the house of William Koehler.
And if William were accused, William had only to deny that he had seen
the communion service or that he had even opened the door! He might, if
worse came to worst, let them search his house. John wished
patronizingly that he could give William a little advice. He pitied
William.
By night this pity had changed to hate. For like the wildcats, whose
leap from above he had feared as a child when he walked the mountain
road, so William leaped upon him with his charge.
"You took it!" insisted William. "You stole the communion set!"
Here was ruin, indeed! But Cassie thought the man mad; she paid no
attention to his frantic words; she was concerned only about the state
of her snow-tracked floor. Hope leaped in the breast of John Hartman. No
living soul would believe such an accusation against him!
When William had gone, John put on his coat and went to the house of the
preacher. He even forced himself to use one of Millerstown's interesting
idioms, one of the last humorous expressions of John Hartman's life.
"William Koehler came to me and accused me of stealing the communion
service," said he. "There is one rafter too few or too many in his
little house."
The preacher shook his head.
"There is something very wrong with poor William," said he sorrowfully.
With a firm step John Hartman returned to his house. When it was time
for the evening service he went to church as was his custom.
John Hartman's bank account increased steadily; he added field to field
and orchard to orchard. His great safe in the dining-room held papers of
greater and greater value; his great Swiss barns with their deep
forebays and their mammoth haylofts were enlarged; his orchards bent
under their weight of fruit. But John Hartman did not say to his soul,
"Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." With his soul poor John
held a different sort of converse.
Desperately he tried to fix his mind upon his many affairs, so that he
might shut out the recollection of William Koehler and the sound of his
mad voice. He was afraid for a long time that he, John Hartman, might
rise suddenly in church and make rash confession, or that he might point
out to his fellow directors in the bank the black-bearded, sharp-eyed
face, which he saw looking at him over their shoulders, or that he might
shout out upon the street his secret.
Gradually he succeeded in thinking only of his work. The sudden
appearance of William Koehler gave him a strange trembling of the limbs
and an oppression about the heart, that was all. William made no further
accusation for a long time, and encounters could be avoided. Long before
William had begun to pray aloud, dropping down in front of the
post-office or at a street corner, Millerstown had become certain that
he was crazy. His unintelligible prayers betrayed nothing.
But, slowly, as his mind turned itself a little from its own
wretchedness, poor Hartman became aware of an enemy in his own
household. To his caresses his wife ceased to respond; she had become
once more the silent, cold woman of their earliest married life, whom he
had chosen because she and the woman who had victimized him were as far
apart as the poles in character and disposition. At first poor Hartman
thought that she felt his neglect of her during the weeks of his misery;
he tried now to be all the more tender and affectionate. If he could
only find here a refuge, if he could only lay before her his wretched
state! But confession to Cassie was impossible; one had only to look
upon her to see that!
Presently Hartman decided that she believed William's accusation, and he
became enraged with her because she would believe that to which no one
else in Millerstown would give an instant's credence. "Let her believe!"
said he then in his despair. She became in his mind a partner of William
against him. Let each do his worst; they could convict him of nothing.
In reality it was Hartman's earlier sin which was no more his secret. He
had delayed too long in answering the demand for money and a letter had
been written to Cassie also, and Cassie had hardened her heart against
him, hardened her heart even against her child. Cassie had had a sad
life; her heart was only a little softened as yet by her happiness.
"I will not care," cried poor Cassie. "I will henceforth set my heart
on nothing!"
Cassie was a woman of mighty will; her youth had trained her to
strength. When her child climbed her knee, she put him away from her;
when she remembered John Hartman's hopes for the occupation of the many
rooms he had built in his house, she shook her head with a deep,
choking, indrawn breath. It could never, never be!
But the human heart must have some object for its care or it will cease
to beat. Upon her possessions, her house, her carpets, her furniture,
Cassie set now her affection. These inanimate things had no power to
deceive, to betray, to torture. Gradually they became so precious that
her great rooms were like shrines, into which she went but seldom, but
to which her heart turned as she sat alone by her kitchen window with
her sewing or lay awake by her husband's side in the great wonderfully
bedecked walnut bed which, to her thinking, human use profaned.
Thus, in the same house, eating at the same table, sitting side by side
in church, watching their son grow into a young manhood which was as
silent as their middle age, the guilty man and the unforgiving woman had
lived side by side for almost fifteen years this Christmas Day. John
Hartman had built no great church, rising like a cathedral on the
hillside. He had not even presented the church with a communion service,
being afraid of rousing suspicion. He had gathered great store for
himself--an object in life toward which he had never aimed.
Millerstown suspected nothing, neither of the sin of John Hartman's
youth, nor of his strange connection with the disappearance of the
communion service, nor of poor Cassie's aching, hardening heart.
Millerstown, like the rest of the world, accepted people as they were;
it did not seek for excuses or explanations or springs of action. John
Hartman was a silent and taciturn man--few persons remembered that he
had been otherwise. Cassie was so unpleasantly particular about her
belongings that she would not invite her neighbors to quiltings and
apple-butter boilings, and so inhumanly unsocial that she would not
attend those functions at other houses. There was an end of the
Hartmans.
Gradually a second change came over John Hartman. His horror of
discovery became a horror of his sin; he was bowed with grief and
remorse.
"He has gone crazy over it!" he lamented. "William Koehler has gone
crazy over it. I wish"--poor Hartman spoke with agony--"I wish he had
proved it against me. Then it would all have been over long ago!"
When William Koehler's wife died, John Hartman struggled terribly with
himself, but could not bring himself to make confession. From an upper
window he watched the little cortège leave the house on the hill; he saw
William lift his little boy into the carriage; he saw the cortège
disappear in the whirling snow. But still he was silent.
When William in his insanity mortgaged his little house in order to pay
dishonest and thieving men to watch John Hartman, John Hartman secured
the mortgage and treasured it against the time when he would prove to
William that he had tried to do well by him. John Hartman also bought
other mortgages. When Oliver Kuhns, the elder, squandered his little
inheritance in the only spree of his life, John Hartman helped him to
keep the whole matter from Millerstown and restored to him his house.
When one of the Fackenthals, yielding to a mad impulse to speculate,
used the money of the school board and lost it, John Hartman gave him
the money in secret. Proud Emma Loos never knew that her husband had
wasted her little patrimony before he died. Sarah Benner never
discovered that for days threat of prison hung over her son and that
John Hartman helped him to make good what he had stolen.
But John Hartman's benefactions did not ease his soul. He came to see
clearly that he must have peace of mind or he would die. He no longer
thought of the disgrace to his wife and son; his thoughts had been for
so long fixed upon himself that he could put himself in the place of no
one else.
"To-morrow I will make this right," he would say, and forever,
"To-morrow, to-morrow!"
But the years passed and William Koehler grew more mad and John Hartman
more rich and more silent, and the silver service lay deep in the pit
between the church and the Sunday School. The little building was solid,
it was amply large, it would serve many generations. Katy Gaumer,
brushed out of his path by John Hartman as he sought the door that
November day, recalled nothing of the incident except that her childish
dignity had been wounded. It was Katy herself who said that nothing ever
happened in Millerstown!
Presently the beating of John Hartman's pulse quickened; it became
difficult for him to draw a long, free, comfortable breath. Dr. Benner,
whom he consulted, said that he must eat less and must walk more. John
Hartman said to himself that now, before another day passed, he would go
to the little house on the mountain-side and begin to set right the
awful wrong of his youth. But still he planned to go to-morrow instead
of to-day. Finally, one afternoon in May, he had his horse put into the
buggy and drove slowly up the mountain road.
CHAPTER VI
THE MILLERSTOWN SCHOOL
THE 24th of December, with its great Christmas entertainment, had closed
a term of average accomplishment in the Millerstown school. Alvin
Koehler and David Hartman, who composed the highest class, had been, the
one as idle, the other as sullen, as usual. The children had learned
about as much as the Millerstown children were accustomed to learn in an
equal time, they had been reprimanded about as often. The teacher had
roared at them with the vehemence usually required for the management of
such young savages as Coonie Schnable and Ollie Kuhns and Katy Gaumer.
Katy, in the second class, had not nearly enough to keep her busy; there
remained on her hands too many moments to be devoted to the invention of
mischief.
But now, suddenly, began a new era in the Millerstown school. Mr.
Carpenter, recovering at happy ease in his home in a neighboring village
from the strain put upon him by the stupidity and impertinence and
laziness of his pupils, was to be further irritated and annoyed.
School opened on New Year's morning, and Mr. Carpenter rose a little
late from his comfortable bed at Sarah Ann Mohr's and ate hurriedly his
breakfast of delicious panhaas and smoked sausage. Haste at meals always
tried the sybarite soul of Mr. Carpenter. He was cross because he had to
get up; he was cross because he had to teach school; he was cross at
Sarah Ann because she urged him to further speed. Sarah Ann always
mothered and grandmothered the teacher.
"You will come late, teacher. You will have to hurry yourself. It is not
a good thing to be late on New Year's already, teacher. New Year,"--went
on Sarah Ann in her provokingly placid way,--"New Year should be always
a fresh start in our lives."
Mr. Carpenter slammed the kitchen door; he would have liked to be one of
his own scholars for the moment and to have turned and made a face at
Sarah Ann. He was not interested in fresh starts. Taking his own
deliberate, comfortable time, he started out the pike.
Then, suddenly, the clear, sweet notes of the schoolhouse bell, whose
rope it was his high office to pull, astonished the ears of the
teacher. It was one of the impertinent boys,--Ollie Kuhns, in all
probability,--who thus dared to reprove his master.
"It will give a good thrashing for that one, whoever he is," Mr.
Carpenter promised himself. "He will begin the New Year fine. He will
ache on the New Year."
But the bell rang slowly, its stroke was not such as the arm of a strong
boy could produce. Indeed, Mr. Carpenter never allowed the boys to ring
the bell, because there responded at once to the sound the whole of
alarmed Millerstown seeking to rescue its children from fire. The bell
had, moreover, to Mr. Carpenter's puzzled ears, a solemn tone, as though
it portended things of moment. Faster Mr. Carpenter moved along, past
the Squire's where Whiskey barked at him, and he hissed a little at
Whiskey; past Grandfather Gaumer's, where he thought of Grandfather's
Katy and her ways with bitter disapproval, to the open spaces of the
pike.
The bell still rang solemnly, as Mr. Carpenter hurried across the yard
and up the steps.
In the vestibule of the schoolhouse, he stood still, dumb, paralyzed.
The ringer of the bell, the inventor of woe still unsuspected by Mr.
Carpenter, stood before him. During the Christmas holiday, Katy's best
dress had become her everyday dress; its red was redder than Katy's
cheeks, brighter than her eyes; it had upon her teacher the well-known
effect of that brilliant color upon certain temperaments. Mr.
Carpenter's cheeks began to match it in hue; he opened his lips several
times to speak, but was unable to bring forth a sound.
Katy gave the rope another long, deliberate pull, then she eased her
arms by letting them drop heavily to her sides. From within the
schoolroom the children, even Ollie Kuhns, watched in admiration and
awe. Katy was always independent, always impertinent, but she had never
before dared to usurp the teacher's place.
"Say!" Thus in a terrible voice did Mr. Carpenter finally succeed in
addressing his pupil. "Who told you you had the dare to ring this bell?"
To this question Katy returned no answer. With eased arms she brushed
vigorously until she had removed the lint which had gathered on her
dress, then she walked into the schoolroom, denuded now of its greens
and flags and reduced to the dullness of every day. Her teacher
continued his admonitions as he followed her up the aisle.
"I guess you think you are very smart, Katy. Well, you are not smart,
that is what you are not. I would give you a good whipping if I did
right, that is what I would do. I--"
To the amazement of her school-fellows, Katy, after lingering a moment
at her desk, followed Mr. Carpenter to the front of the room. She still
made no answer, she only approached him solemnly. Was she going, of her
own accord, to deliver herself up to punishment? Mr. Carpenter's heavy
rod had never dared to touch the shoulders of Katy Gaumer, whose whole
"Freundschaft" was on the school board.
The Millerstown school ceased speculating and gave itself to
observation. Upon the teacher's desk, Katy laid, one by one, three books
and a pamphlet. Then Katy spoke, and the sound of the school bell,
solemn as it had been, was not half so ominous, so filled with alarming
import as Katy's words. She stood beside the desk, she offered first one
book to the master, then another.
"Here is a algebray," explained Katy; "here is a geometry, here is a
Latin book. Here is a catalogue that tells about these things. I am
going to college; I must know many things that I never yet heard of in
this world. And you"--announced Katy--"you are to learn me!"
"What!" cried Mr. Carpenter.
"I am sorry for all the bad things I did already in this school." The
Millerstown children quivered with excitement; on the last seat Ollie
Kuhns pretended to fall headlong into the aisle. Alvin Koehler looked up
with mild interest from his desk which he had been idly contemplating,
and David Hartman blushed scarlet. Poor David's pipe had not yet cured
him of love. "I will do better from now on," promised Katy. "And
you"--again this ominous refrain--"you are to learn me!"
"You cannot study those things!" cried Mr. Carpenter in triumph. "You
are not even in the first class!"
"I will move to the first class," announced Katy. "This week I have
studied all the first class spelling. You cannot catch me on a single
word. I can spell them in syllables and not in syllables. I can say _l_,
_l_, or double _l_. I can say them backwards. I have worked also all the
examples in the first class arithmetic. The squire"--thus did Katy
dangle the chains of Mr. Carpenter's servitude before his disgusted
eyes--"the squire, he heard me the spelling, and the doctor, he looked
at my examples. They were all right. It will not be long before I catch
up with those two in the first class." Katy flushed a deeper red. Over
and over she said to herself, "I shall be in the first class with Alvin,
I shall be in the first class with Alvin!" Her knees began suddenly to
tremble and she started back to her desk, scarcely knowing which way she
went.
As she passed down the aisle, she felt upon her David Hartman's glance.
He sat in the last row, his head down between his shoulders. As Katy
drew near, his gaze dropped to the hem of her red dress. David's heart
thumped; it seemed to him that every one in the school must see that he
was in love with Katy Gaumer. He hated himself for it.
"Don't you want me in your class, David?" asked Katy foolishly and
flippantly. Katy spoke a dozen times before she thought once.
David looked up at her, then he looked down. His eyes smarted; he was
terrified lest he cry.
"I have one dumb one in my class already," said he. "I guess I can stand
another."
Katy dropped into her seat with a slam. The teacher's hand was poised
above the bell which called the school to order, and for Katy, at least,
there was to be no more ignoring of times and seasons.
"Dumb?" repeated Katy. "You will see who is the dumb one!"
With the loud ringing of the teacher's bell a new order began in the
Millerstown school. Its first manifestation was beneficent, rather than
otherwise. It became apparent that with Katy Gaumer orderly, the school
was orderly. The morning passed and then the afternoon without a pause
in its busy labors. No one was whipped, no one was sent to the corner,
no one was even reproved. A studious Katy seemed to set an example to
the school; a respectful Katy seemed to establish an atmosphere of
respect. Mr. Carpenter was wholly pleased.
But Mr. Carpenter's pleasure did not last. Mr. Carpenter became swiftly
aware of a worse condition than that of the past. Mr. Carpenter had been
lifted from the frying-pan and laid upon the fire.
To her teacher's dismay, Katy came early in the morning to ask
questions; she stayed in the schoolroom at recess to ask questions;
sometimes, indeed, she visited her afflicted teacher in the evenings to
ask questions. Katy enjoyed visiting him in the evenings, because then
Sarah Ann Mohr, sitting on the other side of the table, her delectable
Millerstown "Star" forgotten, her sewing in her lap, her lips parted,
burned before her favorite the incense of speechless admiration. Poor
Mr. Carpenter grew thin and white, and his little mustache drooped as
though all hope had gone from him. Mr. Carpenter learned to his bitter
sorrow that algebra and geometry were no idle threats, and Mr.
Carpenter, who had put his normal school learning, as he thought,
forever behind him, had to go painfully in search of it. The squire was
Katy's uncle, the doctor was her cousin; they were all on Katy's side;
they helped her with her lessons; they encouraged her in this morbid and
unhealthy desire for learning, and the teacher did not dare to refuse
her. The difficulties of the civil service examination appalled him; he
could never pass; he must at all costs keep the Millerstown school.
Occasionally, as of old, Katy corrected him, but now her corrections
were involuntary and were immediately apologized for.
"You must not say 'craddle'; you must say 'crawl' or 'creep,'" directed
Katy. "Ach, I am sorry! I did not mean to say that! But how"--this with
desperate appeal--"how can I learn if you do not make it right?"
Sometimes Katy threatened poor Mr. Carpenter with Greek; then Mr.
Carpenter would have welcomed the Socratic cup.
"My patience is all," he groaned. "Do they take me for a dictionary? Do
they think I am a encyclopædia?"
Still, through the long winter Katy's relatives continued to spoil her.
In Millerstown there has never been any objection to educating women
simply because they are women. The Millerstown woman has always had
exactly what she wanted. The normal schools and high schools in
Pennsylvania German sections have always had more women students than
men. If Katy wanted an education, she should have it; indeed, in the
sudden Gaumer madness, Katy should have had the moon if she had asked
for it and if her friends could have got it for her. Her grandfather and
grandmother talked about her as they sat together in the evenings while
Katy was extracting knowledge from the squire or from the doctor or from
Mr. Carpenter, never dreaming that they were rapidly ruining the
Benjamin of their old age. They had trained many children, and the
squire had admonished all Millerstown, but Katy was never admonished by
any of them. They liked her bright speech, they liked her ambition, they
allowed themselves the luxury of indulging her in everything she wanted.
"She is that smart!" Bevy Schnepp expressed the opinion of all Katy's
kin. "When she is high gelernt [learned], she will speak in many woices
[tongues]."
Of all her relatives none spoiled Katy quite so recklessly as young Dr.
Benner. There was not enough practice in healthy Millerstown to keep him
busy, and Katy amused and entertained him. He liked to take her about
with him in his buggy; he liked to give her hard problems, and to see to
what lengths of memorizing she could go. Dr. Benner had theories about
the education of children and he expounded them with the cheerful
conceit of bachelors and maiden ladies. Dr. Benner, indeed, had theories
about everything. It was absurd, to Dr. Benner's thinking, ever to
restrain a healthy child from learning.
"Let 'em absorb," said he. "They won't take more than is good for 'em."
Dr. Benner was nearly enough related to Katy to be called a cousin, yet
far enough removed to be stirred into something like jealousy at Katy's
enthusiastic defense of the Koehlers. Katy should have no youthful
entanglement--Dr. Benner remembered his own early development and
flushed shamefacedly--to prevent her from growing into the remarkable
person she might become. Dr. Benner decided that she must be got away
from Millerstown as soon as possible; she had been already too much
influenced by its German ways. Katy was meant for higher things. For a
while young Dr. Benner felt that, pruned and polished, Katy was meant
for him!
Meanwhile, Katy was to be saved from further contamination by being kept
constantly busy. It pleased him to see her devoted to algebra, and he
was constantly suggesting new departures in learning to her aspiring
mind. It was unfortunate that each new suggestion included a compliment.
"I believe you could sing, Katy," said he, one March day, as, with Katy
beside him, he drove slowly down the mountain road.
The landscape lay before them, wide, lovely, smiling, full of color in
the clear sunshine. Far away a bright spot showed where the sun was
reflected from the spires and roofs of the county seat; here and there
the blast furnaces lifted the smoky banner of prosperous times.
Katy's cheeks were red, her dark hair blew across her forehead; it was
with difficulty that she sat still beside the doctor. Spring was coming,
life was coming.
"Sing?" said Katy, "I sing? I would like that better than anything I can
think of in this world. I would rather be a singer than a missionary."
There was really nothing in the world that Katy would not have liked to
do, except to stay in Millerstown and be inconspicuous; there was
nothing in the world which she questioned her ultimate ability to do.
The doctor chuckled at Katy's comparison, which Katy had not intended to
be funny.
"A classmate of mine is coming to see me next week. He teaches singing,
and I'm going to get him to hear your voice. Won't that be fine, Katy?"
"Everything is fine," answered Katy.
The doctor's classmate arrived; for him Katy _oh'd_ and _ah'd_ through
an astonishingly wide range. The young man was enthusiastic over her
vocal possibilities.
"But he says you mustn't take lessons for another year," said Dr.
Benner.
Again he and Katy were driving down the mountain road. They had climbed
this afternoon to the Sheep Stable, and from there had gazed at the
glorious prospect and had counted through a glass the scattered villages
and the church spires in the county seat.
Katy's blood tingled in her veins. She had never dreamed that she could
_sing_! She had never seen a picture which was painted by hand or she
would now have been certain that she could become a great artist. She
determined that some day she would return to the Sheep Stable alone and
there sing for her own satisfaction. She had not sung her best for the
doctor's friend down in grandmother's parlor, her best meaning her
loudest. At the Sheep Stable there would be no walls to confine the
great sounds she would produce.
"I will sing so that they hear me at Allentown," she planned. "I have no
time now, but when I have time I will go once. It is so nice not to be
dumb," finished Katy with great satisfaction.
The winter passed like a dream. Presently an interesting change came
about in the Millerstown school and in its teacher. Perhaps Mr.
Carpenter was mortified, as well as driven into it, but there sprang up
somehow in his soul a decent, honest ambition. Delving painfully after
forgotten knowledge, he studied to some purpose, and it began to seem as
though even civil service questions might become easy and Mr. Carpenter
pass his examinations at last. For the first few weeks of the new
régime, he was able to keep only a lesson or two ahead of his pupils,
but, little by little, that space widened. As if in pure spite, Mr.
Carpenter learned his lessons. Then he assumed a superior and taunting
air. Katy at the Christmas entertainment had looked at him with no more
disgust than his face now expressed when his pupils gave wrong answers.
"'Gelt regiert die Welt, und Dummheit Millerstown'" (Gold rules the
world and stupidity Millerstown)! Thus Mr. Carpenter adapted a familiar
proverb in comment upon mistakes which he himself would have made a
month ago.
Mr. Carpenter's pupils followed him steadily. David Hartman was more
mature than the others and kept without difficulty at their head. As for
Katy, with the help which Katy had out of school hours, even a dull
child might have done well. It was help which was not unsuspected by
David, but David held his tongue. David felt a fierce, unwilling pride
in Katy's spirit.
But there was another sort of help being given and received which David
resented jealously and indignantly, hardly believing the evidence of his
own ears and eyes. David had taken some pleasure in the winter's work.
He sat daily beside Katy in class; it was not possible for her to be
always rude and curt. David was also puzzled and moved by a change in
his father. He often met his father's glance when he lifted his own eyes
suddenly, and it seemed to him that his father had come to realize his
existence. His heart softened; he was pathetically quick to respond to
signs of affection. It seemed to him that each day brought with it the
possibility of some new, extraordinary happening. Several times he was
on the point of putting his arm about his father's shoulders as he sat
with his paper. Without being conscious of it, John Hartman showed
outwardly the signs of the inward struggle. Never had his yearning,
repressed love for the boy so tortured him, never had it demanded so
insistently an outward expression. But he repressed himself a little
longer. When he should have made all right with William Koehler, then
would he yield to the impulses of fatherhood. That bound poor Hartman
had set himself.
Katy remembered all her life, even if Alvin Koehler did not, the day on
which Alvin set to work with diligence. He often looked at her
curiously, as if he could not understand her. But Alvin gave earnest
thought only to himself, to his hopeless situation with a half-mad and
dishonest father and the dismal prospect of working in the furnace. His
father seemed to be becoming more wild. There were times when Alvin
feared violence at his hands. He talked to himself all day long, making
frequent mention of John Hartman. Sometimes Alvin thought vaguely of
warning the squire or John Hartman himself about his father. He believed
less and less his father's crazy story.
Sometimes Alvin stared at Katy and blinked like an owl in his effort to
account for her alternate shyness and kindness. Alvin was not accustomed
to being treated kindly.
"And what will you do when you are educated?" he inquired.
"What will I do?" repeated Katy, her heart thumping as it always did
when Alvin spoke to her. "I will teach and I will earn a great deal of
money and travel over the whole world and buy me souvenirs. And I will
sing."
It was very pleasant to tell Alvin of her prospects. Perhaps he would
walk home with her from church on Sunday. Then how Essie Hill, in spite
of all her outward piety, would hate her! The secret of mild Essie's
soul was not a secret from Katy.
"Will you teach in a school like Millerstown?" asked Alvin.
"Millerstown! Never! It would have to be a bigger school than
Millerstown."
Alvin looked up at Mr. Carpenter. It was recess and Mr. Carpenter was
hearing a spelling class which had not learned its lesson for the
morning recitation. Mr. Carpenter did not appear at his best, judged by
the usually accepted standards of etiquette; he leaned back lazily in
his chair, his feet propped on his desk, his hands clasped above his
head; but to Alvin there was nothing inelegant in his attitude. Mr.
Carpenter was an enviable person; he never needed to soil his hands or
to have a grimy face or to carry a dinner pail.
"Teaching would be nice work," said Alvin drearily. "But I can never
learn this Latin. I am all the time getting farther behind. It gets
every day worse and worse."
"Oh, but you can learn it!" cried Katy, her face aglow. If he would
only, only, let her help! "I will show you. Here are my sentences for
to-day. The doctor went over them and he says they are all right." And
blushing, with her heart pounding more than ever, Katy returned to her
seat.
There was a difficult sentence in that day's lesson, a sentence over
which David Hartman had puzzled and on which he failed. Then the teacher
called on Alvin, simply as a matter of form. The school had begun to
giggle a little when they heard his name. But now up he rose, the dull,
the stupid, the ordinary, and read the sentence perfectly! At him David
Hartman stared with scarlet face. He expected that the teacher would
rise and annihilate Alvin, but the teacher passed to the next sentence.
Mr. Carpenter was at the present time angry at David; he was rather glad
he was discomfited. Such was the nature of Mr. Carpenter!
To Alvin David said nothing, but upon the shoulder of Katy Gaumer,
putting on her cloak in the cupboard after school, David laid a heavy
hand.
"You helped Alvin!" David's hand quivered with astonishment and anger
and from the touch of Katy's shoulder. "It is cheating. Some day I am
going to catch you at it before the whole school."
Before she could answer, if she could have made answer at all, David was
gone. She hated him; she would help Alvin all she liked until he had
caught up, and afterwards, too, if she pleased. Alvin had had no chance,
and David had everything, a rich father, fine clothes and money. It was
perfectly fair for her to help Alvin. She hated all the Hartmans. She
was furiously angry and it hurt to be angry. It did not occur to her to
be ashamed of Alvin who would accept a girl's translation. With a whirl
and a flirting of her skirts, Katy sailed through the door and down the
pike.
"You will sit in Millerstown!" she declared to the empty air. "But I am
going away! Nothing ever happens in Millerstown. Millerstown is nothing
worth!" Then Katy stood still, dizzy with all the glorious prospect of
life. "I am going away! I am going away!"
CHAPTER VII
THE BEE CURE
JANUARY and March and April passed, and still Mr. Carpenter and his
pupils studied diligently. David Hartman did not carry out his threat to
expose Katy; such a course would have been impossible. Day after day it
seemed more certain that his father was about to say to him some
extraordinary thing. He saw his father helping himself out of his buggy
with a hand on the dashboard; he saw that hand tremble. But his father
still said nothing. That May day when John Hartman would at last begin
to right the wrong he had done had not yet arrived.
In spite of all Katy's efforts she could not pass above David in school.
Alvin Koehler needed less and less help, now that he was convinced that
through learning lay the way to ease and comfort, to the luxurious
possession of several suits of clothes, to a seat upon a platform. Mr.
Carpenter would never have to do hard work; Alvin determined to model
his life after that of his teacher. He scarcely spoke to his father now,
and he grew more and more afraid of him.
In May the Millerstown school broke its fine record for diligence and
steady attendance. The trees were in leaf, the air was sweet, the sky
was dimmed by a soft haze, as though the creating earth smoked visibly.
Locust blooms filled the air with their wine-like perfume, flowers
starred the meadows. Grandmother Gaumer's garden inside its stone wall
was so thickly set with hyacinths and tulips and narcissus that one
wondered where summer flowers would find a place. Daily Katy gathered
armfuls of purple flags and long sprays of flowering currant and stiff
branches of japonica and bestowed them upon all who asked. Katy learned
her lessons in the garden and planned for the future in the garden and
thought of Alvin in the garden.
One day, unrest came suddenly upon the Millerstown boys; imprisonment
within four walls was intolerable. Even Katy, yearning for an education,
was affected by the warmth of the first real summer day, and Alvin
Koehler wished for once that he had learned to swim, so that he could go
with the other boys to bathe in Weygandt's dam. Alvin had not yet bought
the red necktie; money was more scarce than ever this spring. Alvin's
whole soul demanded clothes. He reflected upon the impression he had
made upon Katy Gaumer; he observed the blush which reddened the smooth
cheek of Essie Hill at his approach; he was increasingly certain that
his was an unusual and attractive personality.
All through the long May afternoon, Katy studied with great effort,
wishing that she, too, had played truant, and had climbed to the Sheep
Stable as she had long planned, there to discover the full volume of her
voice. She looked across at Alvin, but Alvin did not look back.
All the long afternoon Alvin gazed idly at his algebra, and all the long
afternoon David Hartman and Jimmie Weygandt and Ollie Kuhns and the two
Fackenthals and Billy Knerr and Coonie Schnable braved the wrath of Mr.
Carpenter and played truant. First they traveled to the top of the
mountain, then raced each other down over rock and fallen tree; and
then, hot and tired, plunged into Weygandt's dam, which was fed by a
cold stream from the mountain. When the water grew unendurable, they
came out to the bank, rubbed themselves to a glow with their shirts, and
hanging the shirts on bushes to dry, plunged back with shouts and
splashing.
Mr. Carpenter did not greatly regret their absence. Upon him, too,
spring fever had descended; he was too lazy to hear thoroughly the
lessons of the pupils who remained. When the lowest class droned its
"ten times ten iss a hundred," Mr. Carpenter was nodding; when they sang
out in drowsy mischief, "'laven times 'laven iss a hundred and 'laven,"
Mr. Carpenter was asleep.
Mr. Carpenter planned no immediate punishment for his insubordinate
pupils. The threat that he would tell their parents would be a powerful
and valuable weapon in his hands for the rest of the term. The
Millerstown parents had fixed theories about the heinousness of truancy.
But though Mr. Carpenter planned no punishment, punishment was meted
out.
The stroke of the gods was curiously manifested. The next morning the
disobedient seven ate their breakfasts in their several homes, in
apparently normal health, unless a sudden frown or twist of lip or an
outburst of bad temper might be said to constitute symptoms of disorder.
One or two clung closely to the kitchen stove, though the day was even
warmer than yesterday, and David Hartman visited surreptitiously the
cupboard in which his mother kept the cough medicine with which he was
occasionally dosed. With a wry face he took a long swallow from the
bottle. Ollie Kuhns hung round his neck the little bag filled with
asafoedita, which had been used in a similar manner for the baby's
whooping-cough, and Jimmie Weygandt applied to himself the contents of a
flask from the barn window, labeled "Dr. Whitcraft's Embrocation, Good
for Man and Beast."
All left their homes and walked down the street with the stiff
uprightness of carriage which had prevented their families from
realizing how grievously they were afflicted. But one and all, they
forgot their household chores. Billy Knerr's mother commanded him loudly
to return and to fill the coal bucket, but Billy walked on as calmly as
though he were deaf, and turned the corner into the alley with a
thankful sigh.
There his erectness vanished. He stood and rubbed his knee with a
mournful "By Hedes!" an exclamation of unknown origin and supposed
profanity much affected by him and his friends, and henceforth walked
with a limp. A little ahead was Ollie Kuhns, who, when shouted at,
turned round bodily and stood waiting as stiff and straight as a wooden
soldier. It was difficult to believe that this was the supple "Bosco,
the Wild Man, Eats 'em Alive," who rattled his chains and raised his
voice in terrifying howls in the schoolhouse cellar.
"Where have _you_ got it?" demanded Billy.
"In my neck. I cannot move my head an inch."
"I have it in my knee. Indeed, I thought I would never get out of bed.
My mom is hollering after me yet to fetch coal, but I could not fetch
coal if they would chop off my head for it."
"Do you suppose any one else has it like this?"
Billy did not need to answer. The alley through which they walked led
out to the pike, where moved before them a strange procession. The
vanquished after a battle could have worn no more agonized aspect, could
not have been much more strangely contorted.
"Both my arms are stiff," wailed Coonie Schnable. "It is one side as bad
as the other."
"I can't bend over," announced the older Fackenthal, woefully. "I gave
my little sister a penny to tie my shoes and not say anything."
"Did any of you tell your folks?" demanded Ollie. "Because if you did we
will all get thrashed."
A spirited "No!" answered the insulting question.
"I got one licking from my pop last week," mourned Billy Knerr. "That
will last, anyhow a while." The pain in Billy's knee was so sharp that
sometimes, in spite of all his efforts, tears rolled down his cheeks.
"You'll never catch me in that dam again, so you know it!"
"It wasn't the dam," said David Hartman, irritably. David could not
indicate a spot on his body which did not ache. "We were too hot and we
stayed too long. Ach! Ouch! I'll--" The other pupils of the Millerstown
school had crowded about the sufferers and had jostled against them and
David turned stiffly upon them with murder in his heart. But it was
impossible to pursue even the nearest offender, Alvin Koehler. Instead
David cried babyishly, "Just you wait once till I catch you!"
Not for the world would unsuspecting Alvin have jostled him
intentionally. He knew better than to offer to any schoolmate a gage to
physical conflict. They were too strong and there were too many of them.
He saw the jostled David speak to Billy Knerr; he saw Billy Knerr
approach him and he turned, ready for flight.
Then Alvin's eyes opened, his cheeks flushed. Billy called to him in a
tone which was almost beseeching, "Wait once, Alvin! Do you want to make
some money, Alvin?"
At once the red tie, still coveted and sighed for, danced before Alvin's
longing eyes. Money! he would do anything to make money! He stood still
and let Billy approach, not quite daring to trust him.
"What money?" he asked, hopefully, yet suspiciously.
"Come over here once," said Billy.
With great hope and at the same time with deadly fear, Alvin ventured
toward the afflicted crew.
"We have the rheumatism," explained Billy.
"Where?" asked Alvin stupidly.
"Where!" stormed Ollie, with a violence which almost ended the
negotiations. "Where! In our legs and our backs and our arms and our
eyelids." Ollie was not one to wait with patience. "We will give you a
penny each for a bee in a bottle. Will you sell us a bee in a bottle, or
won't you?"
Alvin's eyes glittered; fright gave place to joy. There has always been
a tradition in Millerstown that the sting of a bee will cure rheumatism.
The theory has nothing to do with witchcraft or pow-wowing; it seems
more like the brilliant invention of a practical joker. Perhaps
improvement was coincident with the original experiment, or perhaps the
powerful counter-irritant makes the sufferer forget the lesser woe. Bee
stings are not popular, it must be confessed; they are used as a last
resort, like the saline infusion, or like a powerful injection of
strychnia for a failing heart.
Strangers had often come to be stung by William Koehler's bees, but
Alvin had never heard that any of them were cured. Alvin himself had
tried the remedy once for a bruise with no good result. One patient had
used violent language and had demanded the return of the nickel which he
had given William, and William was weak enough to pass it over. But now
the red tie fluttered more and more enticingly before Alvin's eyes. If
he could earn seven cents by putting seven of his father's bees in
bottles, well and good. It made no difference if the patients were
deceived about the salutary effects of bee stings.
Then into the quickened mind of Alvin flashed a brilliant plan.
"I will do it for three cents apiece," he announced with craft. "I
cannot bann [charm] them so good as pop. They will perhaps sting me."
Alvin's daring _coup_ was successful.
"Well, three cents, then. But you must get them here by recess." Ollie
Kuhns groaned. He was not used to pain, and it seemed to him that his
agony was spreading to fresh fields. "Clear out or the teacher will get
you and he won't let you go. He's coming!"
With a great spring, Alvin dropped down on the other side of the stone
fence, and lay still until the teacher had shepherded his flock into the
schoolroom. By this time not only the red tie, but a whole new suit
dazzled the eyes of Alvin. Old man Fackenthal bottled his cough cure and
sold it all about the county. Why should not bees be bottled and labeled
and sold? If their sting was supposed to be so valuable a cure, they
would be a desired commodity. Alvin had told a lie when he had said he
could not "bann" bees as well as his father, for he had over them the
same hypnotic influence. He saw himself spending the rest of his life
raising them and catching them and bottling them and selling them. There
would have to be air holes through the corks of the bottles so that they
could breathe, and a few drops of honey within to nourish them, but with
these provisions they could be shipped far and wide.
"They would be powerful mad when they were let out," said Alvin to
himself, as he lay in the lee of the schoolhouse fence. "The people
would get their money's worth."
Alvin saw suddenly all the old people in the world stiff and sore and
all the young people afflicted like Ollie and his friends. He did not
wish for any of them such a fate. He had various weaknesses, but a
vindictive spirit was not one of them. He saw only the possibilities of
a great business. Hearing the schoolhouse bell, and knowing that all
were safely within doors, he started across the fields and up the
mountain-side.
The bargain was consummated in the woodshed, a little frame building
leaning against the blank wall of the schoolhouse. Alvin, hurrying back
from his house, scrambling over fences, weary from his long run, thought
that he was too early with the wares in the basket on his arm. Or could
it be, alas! that he was late and recess was over? That would be too
cruel! With relief he heard the sound of voices in the woodshed where
his patients awaited him.
The truants had endured an hour and a half of torture. They anticipated
punishment for yesterday's misdemeanor, and they had a deadly fear that
that punishment would be physical. Anxiously now from the woodshed,
where they could lie at their ease, they listened for Alvin.
"Perhaps he won't come back," suggested Billy Knerr. "Perhaps he cannot
catch the bees."
Recess was all over but five minutes, and the disheartened sufferers
were expecting the bell, when Alvin appeared. David Hartman had
collected the money against such necessity for haste, and, indeed, had
advanced most of it from his well-lined pocket. Only in such dire
trouble would he have treated with Alvin Koehler; only in this agony
would he have bought from any one such a pig in a poke. If he had been
himself, he would have made Alvin open the basket and would have
examined the contents to be sure that Alvin was playing fair. But now,
with only two minutes to cure himself and his friends of their agony,
there was no time for the ordinary inspection of the articles of trade.
The commodities exchanged hands; twenty-one pennies into Alvin's
outstretched palm, the basket into David's. It took David not much more
than one of his hundred and twenty seconds to open the basket lid, even
though it fitted closely and needed prying. A low, angry murmur, which
the boys had not heard in their pain, changed at once to a loud buzz,
and suddenly the hearts of the most suffering failed them. But the
basket lid was off, and with it came the lid of a fruit jar which stood
within. The bees were not in separate bottles--Alvin maintained stoutly
that separate bottles had not been stipulated--so that one sting could
be applied at a time, like a drop of medicine from a pipette; they were,
or, rather, they had been, in a broad-mouthed jar, whose lid, as I have
said, came off with the basket lid.
Moreover, at this instant the door of the woodshed, impelled by a gentle
May breeze, blew shut and the latch dropped on the outside. There were
seven boys penned into the woodshed and there were at least a hundred
bees. Alvin had been in too much of a hurry to count the precious things
he sold. He had held the jar before the outlet of the hive and the bees
had rushed into it. Granted that honey bees sting but once, and granted
that thirty of these bees did not sting at all, there were still ten for
each patient.
Wildly the frantic prisoners batted the bees about with their bare
hands. There were no hats, there was nothing in the empty woodshed which
could be used as a weapon. Piteously they yelled, from great David
Hartman to the eldest of the Fackenthals.
The uproar reached the ears of Alvin, who was just entering the
schoolhouse door and Alvin fled incontinently to the gate and down the
road. It penetrated to the schoolroom and brought Mr. Carpenter rushing
angrily out. He had rung the school bell; his pupils did not respond; he
thought now that their yells were yells of defiance. Emboldened by
yesterday's success they had arranged some new anarchy. Whatever may
have been the faults of Mr. Carpenter, he was physically equal to such a
situation, short and slender though he was. He tore open the woodshed
door; he caught Ollie Kuhns and shook him before any one could explain.
Then, as he reached for the collar of David Hartman, one of the bees,
which had not already committed suicide by stinging, lit on his hand.
The pain did little to pacify the teacher. The boys, seized one after
the other, had no shame strong enough to keep them from crying. Herded
into the schoolroom, David at the tail end with the teacher's grasp on
his ear, they forgot their rheumatism, they forgot the girls, they
forgot even Alvin himself, who was by this time flying down the road.
They laid their heads upon their desks, and Mr. Carpenter, dancing
about, demanded first of one, then of the other, an explanation of this
madness. Mr. Carpenter forgot his objections to Pennsylvania German; in
this moment of deep anguish he was compelled to have recourse to his
native tongue.
"What do you mean?" roared Mr. Carpenter. "What is this fuss? Are you
crazy? You will catch it! Be quiet! Go to your seats! It will give an
investigation of this! Ruhig!!"
In reality Mr. Carpenter himself was producing most of the confusion.
The grief of those at whom he stormed was silent; they still sat with
heads bent upon their desks. At them their schoolmates gaped, for them
the tender-hearted wept.
As Alvin flew down the pike he began to be frightened. He was not
repentant, not with twenty-one coppers in his pocket! He had a nickel
already and now the beautiful tie was his. He could not go at once to
purchase it for fear that the smitten army behind him might rally and
pursue, nor did he wish to hide his money about the house for fear that
his father might find it. He decided that he would get himself some
dinner and then go walking upon the mountain. It would be well to be
away from home until the time for his father's return. To his house the
lame legs of his schoolmates might follow him, there their lame arms
seize him, but to the Sheep Stable they could not climb. He did not
realize that, as he crossed the fields above his father's house, he was
for a moment plainly exposed to the view of the Millerstown school.
Tired, certain that he was out of reach of the enemy, Alvin lay down on
the great rock which formed the back of the little cave. His heart
throbbed; he was not accustomed to such strenuous exertion of body or to
such rapid and determined operations of mind. He was even a little
frightened by his own bravery and acuteness. He thought for a long time
of himself and for a little time of Katy Gaumer and Essie Hill; then,
deliciously comfortable in the spring sunshine, he fell asleep.
For three hours Alvin lay still on the great rock. Occasionally a
chestnut blossom drifted down on his cheek, and was brushed drowsily
away; occasionally the chatter of a squirrel, impatient of this human
intrusion, made him open his eyes heavily. But each time he dropped into
deeper sleep. The rock was hard, but Alvin was young and, besides, was
not accustomed to a soft bed.
At the end of three hours he woke suddenly. It seemed to him that a dark
cloud had covered the sun or that night had fallen. But a worse danger
than storm or darkness was at hand.
Above him, almost touching his own, bent an angry face.
"Get up!" commanded a stern voice, and Alvin slid off the rock and stood
up.
"Now, fight," David ordered. "I was stiff but I am not so much stiff any
more. But the stiffness you may have for advantage. One, two, three!"
Even with the handicap of stiffness, the advantage was upon the side of
David. He was strong; he was furiously and righteously angry; he had
been shamed in the eyes of Millerstown. Katy Gaumer had seen his
ignominy; she had whispered about him to Sarah Knerr. Alvin was a
coward; he had long been cheating; he had accepted the help of a girl.
Besides, Katy Gaumer was kind to him. For that crime his punishment had
long been gathering.
Automatically Alvin raised his fist. Below them was the steep,
rock-piled hillside; back of them was the rock wall of the Sheep Stable;
and there was no help nearer than Millerstown, far below in its girdle
of tender green. Even through the still air Alvin's cries could not be
heard in the valley. He cried out when David struck him; he begged for
mercy when David laid him on his back on the stony ground. He thought
that there was now no hope for him; he was certain that his last hour
had come. He expected that David would hurl him down over the edge of
the precipice to the sharp rocks far below. He closed his eyes and
moaned.
David had already determined to let his victim go. He was suddenly
deeply interested in certain sensations within himself; he was
distracted from his intention of administering to Alvin all the
punishment he deserved. He felt a strange, uplifted sensation, a
consciousness of strength; he was excited, thrilled. Never before in his
life had he acted so swiftly, so entirely upon impulse. The yielding
body beneath him, Alvin's fright, made him seem powerful to himself. The
world was suddenly a different place; he wanted now to be alone and to
think.
But David had no time to think. As unexpectedly as though sent from
heaven itself arrived the avenger. Katy Gaumer had found time dull and
heavy on her hands. Alvin had vanished; there would be the same lessons
for the next day since one third of the class was absent and one third
incapacitated. Katy was amused at the tears of David and his friends. A
bee sting was nothing, nor yet a little stiffness! Katy had been once
stung by a hornet and she had had a sprained ankle. Katy's heart was
light; she had had recently new compliments from the doctor about her
voice, and she had determined that this afternoon she would ascend to
the Sheep Stable and startle the wide valley with song.
Katy was not lame or afflicted; she climbed gayly the mountain road. Nor
was Katy afraid. She would not have believed that any evil could befall
one so manifestly singled out by Providence for good fortune. She sang
as she went; therefore she did not hear the wails of Alvin. Alvin cried
loudly as he lay upon the ground; therefore he did not hear the song of
Katy.
But Alvin felt suddenly the weight shoved from his body; he saw the
conqueror taken unawares, thrust in his turn upon the ground; and he had
wit and strength enough to scramble to his feet when the incubus was
removed.
"Shame on you!" cried the figure in the red dress to the figure prone
upon the ground. "Shame on you! You big, ugly boy, lie there!" Katy
almost wept in her wrath. It was unfortunate for Katy that she should
have been called upon to behold one toward whom her heart was already
unwisely inclined thus in need of pity and help.
To Alvin's amazement the conqueror, a moment ago mighty in his rage,
obeyed. The arrival of Katy, sudden as it was to him, was even more
sudden to David. David was overwhelmed, outraged. He had not wit to
move; he heard Katy's taunts, saw her stamp her foot; he heard her
command Alvin to come with her, saw her for an instant even take Alvin
by the hand, and saw Alvin follow her. His eyes were blinded; he rubbed
them cruelly, then he turned over on his face and dug his hands into the
ground. From poor David's hot throat there came again that childish
wail. Conquered thus, David was also spiritless; he began to cry, "I
want her! I want her! I want her!"
Aching, motionless, he lay upon the ground. With twitching tail the
squirrel watched from his bough, chattering again his disgust at this
queer human use of his abiding-place. The air grew cool, the blazing sun
sank lower, and David lay still.
Meanwhile, down the mountain road together went Katy Gaumer and Alvin
Koehler.
"He came on me that quick," gasped Alvin. He had brushed the clinging
twigs from his clothes and had smoothed his hair. His curls lay damp
upon his forehead, and his cheeks were scarlet, his chin uplifted.
Katy breathed hard.
"Well, I came on him quick, too!"
Alvin began to gasp nervously. Self-pity overwhelmed him.
"I have nothing in this world," mourned he. "This summer I will have to
work at the furnace. I will have a hard life."
"But I thought you were going to have an education!" cried Katy.
"I cannot," mourned Alvin. "It is no use to try. I am alone in the
world."
Katy turned upon him a glowing face.
"That is nonsense, Alvin! Everybody can have an education. There are
schools where you can study and work, too. It is so at the normal school
where they learn you to teach. I thought you were going to be a teacher,
Alvin!"
"I was," said Alvin. "I would like to be a teacher."
"I will find out about those schools," promised Katy, forever eager to
help, to plan. "I am going away; nothing would keep me in Millerstown.
You must surely go, Alvin!"
"David Hartman can have everything," wailed Alvin, his aching bones
making themselves felt. "He had no business to come after me. He has a
rich pop. He--"
"He has a horrible pop," answered Katy. "He chased me once when I was
little, and I never did him anything. Why, Alvin!" Katy stopped in the
dusty road. "There is David's pop in his buggy at your gate!"
Alvin grew deathly pale, he remembered his father's madness, his
threats, the crime which he had committed and which he blamed upon John
Hartman.
"What is it?" cried Katy. "What ails you, Alvin? He would not dare to
touch me now that I am big. Come!"
"No!" Alvin would not move. "Look once at him, Katy! Something is the
matter with him!"
"I am not afraid," insisted Katy bravely. "I am--he is sick, Alvin; he
is sitting quiet in his buggy." She went close to the wheel. "Mr.
Hartman!" She turned and looked at Alvin, then back at the figure in the
buggy. "His head hangs down, Alvin, and he will not answer me. I believe
he is dead, Alvin!"
Slowly Alvin moved to Katy's side. He laid a hand upon her arm--Katy
thought it was to protect her; in reality Alvin sought support in his
deadly fear.
"I believe it, too, Katy!"
Speechlessly the two gazed at each other. When Alvin had shouted wildly
for his father and Katy had joined her voice to his and there was no
answer, the two set off, hand in hand, running recklessly down the
mountain road.
CHAPTER VIII
WILLIAM KOEHLER MAKES HIS ACCUSATION FOR
THE LAST TIME
DUSK was falling when David started down the mountain road. He did not
walk rapidly; sometimes, in his weakness, he stumbled. Bad as his aches
had been when he climbed the mountain hours before, they were worse now,
and added to them was smart of soul. Every spot on his body upon which
Katy had laid her hand burned; she was continually before his eyes in
her kaleidoscopic motions, now running down the pike from school, now
storming at him as he lay on the ground. He tried to hate her, but he
could not. As he stumbled along, his feet kept time to a foolish wail,
"I want her! I want her!" The glow of triumph had faded entirely; David
was more morose, more sullen, more unhappy than ever. His anger with
Alvin had changed to a sly intention to scheme against him until he
could give him a greater punishment than a mere beating. He was not done
with Alvin! His own father was a rich and powerful man; Alvin's father
was a poor, half-witted thief. He thought for the first time with
satisfaction of his father's wealth.
The young moon overhead, the scent of spring in the air, the gentle
breeze against his cheek, all deepened his misery and loneliness. He
said to himself that he had no one in the world. In spite of his vague
conclusions about his father, his father was still the same. There are
persons whose success depends wholly upon their relations with the human
beings nearest to them. Given affection, they expand; denied it, their
souls contract, their powers fail. It is a weakness of the human
creature, but it is none the less real. Resentment was rapidly becoming
a settled attitude of David's mind; his father was postponing
dangerously that opening of his heart to his son of which he thought day
and night.
David wished now that he need not go home; he wished--poor little
David!--that he was dead. He would have his supper and he would go to
bed, and to-morrow there would be another bitter day. He would sit in
school and be conscious of Katy and Alvin and their knowing glances, and
love and hate would tear him asunder once more.
Then David stood still and looked down upon his house. Even though the
trees about it were thickly leafed, he could see lights in unaccustomed
places. The parlor was lighted; in that room David could not remember an
illumination in his lifetime. There were lights also in bedrooms--David
forgot his aches of body and soul in his astonishment. He slept over the
kitchen in one of the little rooms his father had provided for the day
when servants should attend upon the wants of his children; except for
his father's and mother's room the front of the house was never opened.
Had some great stranger come to visit--but that was unthinkable! Was
some one ill--but that would be no reason for the opening of the house!
David did not know what to make of the strange sight. He hurried down
the road, almost falling as he ran.
Then David stood still, looking stupidly at a dark wagon which stood
before the gate. He knew the ownership and the purpose of that vehicle,
but he could not connect it with his house. There dwelt only his father
and his mother and himself, and all of them were alive and well.
A group of children lingered near by, silent, staring at the dark wagon
and the brightly lighted windows. The Hartman house with its
illumination was as strange a phenomenon as the Millerstown children had
ever seen. To them David, still standing at his gate, put a question.
"What is the matter?"
Instantly a small, excited, feminine voice piped out an answer.
"Your father is dead."
"He was sitting in his buggy in the mountain road," another excited
voice went on. "They brought him down here and carried him in."
David went into the yard and along the flag walk, and for the first time
in his life entered his father's house by the wide-open front door,
through which various Millerstonians were passing in and out. This was a
great opportunity for Millerstown. Some one came out of the parlor,
leaving the door ajar, and David saw a long dark figure lying on a low
couch in the middle of the room. What there was to be known about his
father's death he gathered from the conversation of those about him. He
heard pitying exclamations, he felt that in a moment he would burst into
cries of shock and terror. Bitterness fled, he was soft-hearted, weak,
childlike. His father was gone, but there remained another person. He
must find her; in her lay his refuge; she must be his stay, as he must
henceforth be hers. Stumbling back through the hall toward the kitchen,
he sought his mother. He was aware of the kind looks of those about him;
his whole being was softened.
"Mother!" he meant to cry. "Oh, mother! mother!"
He felt her grief; he expected to find her prostrate on the old settle,
or sitting by the table with her head on her arm, weeping. He would
comfort her; he would be a good son to her; he truly loved her.
From the kitchen doorway he heard her voice, clear and toneless, the
voice of every day. She was giving orders to the Millerstown women who
had hastened in with offers of help,--to Grandmother Gaumer and Sarah
Knerr and Susannah Kuhns. She indicated certain jars of canned fruit
which were to be used for the funeral dinner, and planned for the
setting of raised cake and the baking of "fine cake." In Cassie's plan
for her life, she had prepared for this contingency; even now her iron
will was not broken, nor her stern composure lost. She moved about as
David had always seen her move, quiet, capable, self-centered. She shed
no tear; she seemed to David to take actual pleasure in planning and
contriving.
The frantic cry, already on David's lips, died silently away, his throat
stiffened, he drew a long breath. For an instant he stood still in the
doorway; then, with a bent and sullen head, he turned and crept back
through the hall to the front stairs, which had scarcely ever been
touched by his foot, and thence to his tiny room, where he knelt down by
his narrow bed. How terrible was the strange figure under the black
covering, with the blazing lights beating upon it, and the staring
villagers stealing in to look! It seemed incredible that his father
could lie still and suffer their scrutiny. He wished that he might go
down and turn them out. But he did not dare to trust his voice, and
besides, his mother accepted it all as though it were proper and right.
Then David forgot the intruders, forgot his mother. His father was dead,
of whom he had often thought unkindly, and his father was all he had in
the world. He would never be able to speak to him again, never be able
to lay a hand upon his shoulder as he sat reading his paper, never meet
again that sudden glance of incomprehensible distress. Death worked its
alchemy; now at last the poor father had his way with his son's heart.
"He was my father!" cried David. "I have no father!"
His breath choked, his heart seemed to smother him; he felt himself
growing light-headed as he knelt by the low bed. He had had nothing to
eat since noon; he had had since that time many things to suffer; he
thought suddenly in his exhaustion that perhaps he, too, was about to
die.
Presently there was a step in the hall and his heart leaped. Perhaps his
mother had come, perhaps she did not wish to show her grief to these
curious people. But the person outside knocked at the door and his
mother would not have knocked.
"What is it?" asked David.
"It is me," said Bevy. "I brought you a little something to eat."
Bevy waited outside, plate and glass in hand. She had seen David's
entrance and exit. Prompted now partly by kindness and sympathy, and
partly by an altogether human and natural curiosity to see as much of
the house and the bereaved family as she could, Bevy had carried him his
supper. But Bevy was not rewarded, as she had hoped.
"Put it down," commanded a voice from within. "Thank you."
Bevy made another effort.
"Do you want anything, David?"
"No, thank you," said the voice again.
"Yes, well," answered Bevy and went down the front steps. If Bevy could
have had her wish, her whole body would have been one great eye to take
in all this magnificence of thick carpets and fine furniture.
Then, while the mother for whom he hungered made her plans for the great
funeral feast, still customary in country sections, where mourners came
from a long distance, and while Katy Gaumer recounted to curious
Millerstown how she had found John Hartman sitting in his buggy by the
roadside, David ate the raised cake and drank the milk which Bevy
brought him. Then he sat down by the window and looked out into the dark
foliage which on this side touched the house. It had not been John
Hartman's plan to have his house grow damp in the shadow of overhanging
branches, but John Hartman had long since forgotten his plans for
everything.
Sitting here in the darkness, David thought of his father. The puzzle of
that strange character he could not solve, but one thing became clear to
his mind. He saw again that yearning gaze; he remembered from the dim,
almost impenetrable mist which surrounded his childhood, caresses,
laughter, the strong grasp of his father's arms. Finally he lay down on
the bed and went to sleep, a solemn, comforting conclusion in his heart.
"My father loved me," whispered David. "I am sure my father loved me."
A little later David's mother opened his door softly and entering stood
by his bed. She had not seen him in the kitchen; some one had told her
that he had come in and had gone to his room. She saw that he was
covered and that the night air did not blow upon him, and then she took
the empty plate and glass and went back to the kitchen.
Alvin Koehler need not have suspected his father of having had any hand
in the death of John Hartman. William Koehler was in the next village,
where he had half a day's work. While he worked he plotted and planned
and mumbled to himself about his wrongs. It was apoplexy which had
killed John Hartman as he drove up the mountain road; Dr. Benner told of
his warnings, recalled to the mind of Millerstown the scarlet flush
which had for a long time reddened John Hartman's face. If he had taken
the path so long avoided by him in order to confess his crime to the man
he had wronged and thus begin to make his peace with God, he had set too
late upon that journey, for his hour had been appointed. When William,
walking heavily, with his eyes on the ground, came home from Zion
Church, John Hartman lay already in the best room of his house, his
earthly account closed. When he heard the news of John Hartman's death,
William seemed stupefied; it was hard to believe that he understood what
was said to him.
It was not necessary that any provision should be made beyond the great
dinner for the entertainment of guests at the Hartman house.
Nevertheless, the house was cleaned and put in order from top to bottom
for its master's burying. Fluted pillow and sheet shams and lace-trimmed
pillow-cases were brought forth, great feather beds were beaten into
smoothness, elaborate quilts were unfolded from protective wrappings and
were aired and refolded and laid at the foot of beds covered with thick
white counterpanes. There was dusting and sweeping and scrubbing, and,
above all, a vast amount of cooking and baking. The funeral was to be
held in the morning, and afterwards there would be food at the Hartman
house for all those who wished to partake.
Cassie was fitted with a black dress, various bonnets were sent out from
the county seat for her to try, and over each was draped the long black
veil of widowhood,--this, to Cassie, in the opinion of Millerstown, a
crown of independence. Millerstown could form no judgment of Cassie's
feelings. If she had, like William Koehler, any moment of stupefaction,
or, like David, any wild outburst of grief, that fact was kept from a
curious world.
David also was fitted with a suit of black, and together he and his
mother rode in a closed carriage, sent from the county seat, down
through pleasant Millerstown in the May sunshine and out to the church
on the hill.
The service was long, as befitted the dignity of a man of prominence
like John Hartman who had always given liberally to charitable objects,
though he had become of late years an infrequent attendant at church
meetings. The preacher who had heard the accusation of William Koehler
was long since gone; the present pastor who lauded the Christian life of
the dead man knew nothing of any charge against him. He would scarcely
have known William by sight, so entirely had William separated himself
from the life of the village. The preacher had a deep, moving voice, he
spoke with feeling of the death of the righteous, and of the crown laid
up for them in heaven. Many of the congregation wept, some in
recollection of their own dead, some in sad anticipation of that which
must some day befall themselves, and some in grief for John Hartman. Two
men, sitting in opposite corners of the gallery, bowed their heads on
the backs of the benches before them so that their tears might drop
unseen. Oliver Kuhns, the elder, stayed at home from the funeral and at
home from his work, and watched from the window the procession entering
the church, and wept also. John Hartman was not without mourners who
called him blessed!
David and his mother sat in the front pew, near the body, which had been
placed before the pulpit. Upon David had settled a heavy weight of
horror. He had not yet accustomed himself to the fact of his father's
death. Only a few days before he had seen his father moving about, had
sought to read the enigmatic expression in his eyes. But here his father
lay, dead. Living he would never have suffered these stares, this
weeping. Upon David, also, rested the interested, inquisitive eyes. From
the gallery Katy Gaumer looked down upon him; from a seat near her Alvin
Koehler stared about. The smothering desire to cry rushed over David
once more; he slipped his hand inside his stiff collar as though to
choke off the rising sob. Beside him rose the black pillar of his
mother's crape; on the other side was the closed door of the
old-fashioned pew. He was imprisoned; for him there was no escape. The
service would never end; here he would be compelled to sit, forever and
ever.
Then, suddenly, to the startled eyes of David and of Millerstown, there
rose in the right-hand gallery the short, bent figure of a man. The
preacher did not see; Millerstown sat paralyzed. They had never been
really afraid of William Koehler, queer as he was, but now there was
madness in his face. His eyes blazed, his cheeks were pale, he had
scarcely touched food since he had heard of the death of his enemy. He
had not gone to work; he had sat in his little house talking to himself,
and praying that he might, after all, have some sort of revenge upon the
man who had wronged him. Several weeks ago he had consulted a new
detective, who, in the hope of getting a fee, or wishing to have an
excuse for getting rid of him, had given him fresh encouragement. The
sudden ending of his hopes was all the more cruel.
"I have something to say," he announced now in his shrill voice. "This
man lying here is not a good man. I have this to say about him.
He--he--"
Then poor William paused. Already, to his terror, in spite of his
practicing, the words were slipping away from him. He had planned to
tell the story carefully, impressing each detail upon the large
congregation which would gather at the funeral. They _must_ listen to
him. It would be useless to cry out suddenly the whole truth, that John
Hartman was a thief--he had tried that once, and had been silenced by
the preacher. The detective had said that he must get all his proofs
carefully together. He had arranged them in his poor, feeble mind; he
meant to speak as convincingly as the preacher himself. His eyes were
fixed on the smooth gray wall beside the pulpit cupboard; the sight of
it helped to keep his mind clear. There he had been working on the day
when the communion set was taken.
He rubbed his damp hands down the sides of his dusty suit, and a flush
came into his cheeks. He remembered clearly once more what he had to
say.
"I was building up the wall," he said with great precision. "I--"
Stupidly he halted. He began to grow frightened; the unfriendly faces
paralyzed his brain; the words he had planned so carefully slipped all
at once away from him. He pointed at the still figure lying in front of
the pulpit and burst into vehement, frantic speech.
"He stole the communion set!" he cried shrilly. "He stole it! He--"
Poor William got no further. Many persons rose. The two men in opposite
corners of the gallery who had wept started toward him; one of them
opened his lips, as though, like crazy William, he was about to address
the congregation. The paralyzed spectators came to their senses. Hands
were laid upon William. The deacons and elders of the church went toward
the gallery steps, Grandfather Gaumer among them. Even Alvin in his
mortification and shame had still feeling enough to go to his father's
side.
"Come away, pop!" he begged. "Ach, be quiet, pop, and come away!"
"He tells me to be quiet!" cried William in the same shrill tone. "My
son tells me to be quiet!"
Grandfather Gaumer laid a firm hand on his shoulder.
"Come with me, William."
But William was not to be got so quietly away. In the front pew young
David had risen. Was his father not now to have a decent burying?
David's face was aflame; he did not see the madness in the shivering
figure and the bright eyes of William Koehler. William belonged with his
son Alvin, and both were hateful.
But David had no chance to speak. The preacher foolishly held up a
forbidding hand to poor William.
"You cannot say such a thing at this time and not confess that it is not
true. The accused cannot answer for himself."
Poor William rubbed his hands over his eyes. He still had great respect
for the authority of preachers. Besides, he saw John Hartman suddenly as
a dead man, and since his trouble he had always been afraid of death. No
revenge could be visited upon this deaf, impassible object, that was
sure!
"Ach, I forget my mind!" wailed poor William. "I forget my mind!"
Then William could have been led unresisting away. But the preacher,
stupidly insistent, held up his hand again.
"Do you confess that your accusation is not true?" said he.
William placed a hand on either side of his forehead. It seemed as
though his head were bursting and he must hold it close together. There
was now a murmur of speech in the congregation. This terrible scene had
gone on long enough; John Hartman did not need defense from so absurd an
accusation. Then the murmur ceased.
"No!" cried William. "It is not true. I took the communion set myself!"
William was now led away, a final seal put upon the pit in which his
honesty and sanity lay buried. Another unforgivable offense was added to
the sum of unforgivable offenses of the son of William Koehler toward
young David. The confession did not help the Millerstown church to
recover its beautiful silver. William's insanity, the congregation
thought, was the only bar to its recovery.
John Hartman was laid in the grave which had been walled up by the mason
who had taken William Koehler's place in Millerstown, and which had been
lined with evergreens and life everlasting according to Millerstown's
tender custom. Over him prayers were said and another hymn was sung,
"Aus tiefer Noth shrei ich zu dir" (Out of the depths I cry to thee),
familiar to generations of Millerstown's afflicted. Then the procession
returned to John Harman's great house, whispering excitedly.
David sat in his room during the funeral dinner. David was queer; he was
not expected to do as other people did. His fury with the Koehlers took
his thoughts to some extent away from his grief.
That night Cassie did not sleep in the great, comfortable room at the
front of the house which she had shared with her husband, but in a room
even smaller than David's at the back. It contained, instead of the
great walnut four-poster, with its high-piled feather bed to which she
was accustomed, a little painted pine bedstead and a chaff bag; it was
on the north corner of the house and was cold in winter and deprived of
the breeze by the thick foliage in summer. Her husband's fortune was
left to her while she lived; afterwards it was to go to David. Cassie
was amply able to manage it, the investments were safe, the farmers had
been in her husband's employ many years; it was not likely that anything
would disturb the smooth, dull current of Cassie's life.
There was much discussion in Millerstown about whether it was safe for
the community to allow William Koehler to be at large; there was some
comment upon the cooking at the Hartman funeral dinner; then Millerstown
turned its attention to other things. Cassie had behaved just as she
might have been expected to behave. It was surprising, however, that she
had let Millerstown go so thoroughly through her house.
The day after the funeral David went back to the Millerstown school. He
did not glance in the direction of Katy and Alvin, though he could not
help realizing that Katy's skirts did not flirt so gayly past. Katy was
sorry for him, though she did not repent her treatment of him. Her
dresses had suddenly dropped several inches, her flying curls were
twisted up on her head, her eyes were brighter than ever. She was filled
with herself and her own concerns and opinions; she grew daily more
dictatorial, more lordly.
"I am going away!" said she, upon rising.
"I am going to be educated!" said she at noon.
"I can take education," said she at night. "I thank God I am not dumb!"
She and Grandmother Gaumer were increasingly busy with dressmakers'
patterns and with "Lists of Articles to be provided by Students." Life
was at high tide for Katy Gaumer.
Still David kept at the head of his class. In his mind a slow plan was
forming. He would think of Katy no more, of that he was determined, and
he would, as a means of accomplishing that end, leave Millerstown. His
mother was a rich woman; he could do anything in the world he liked. He
would first of all go to college. Afterwards he would study law.
In June he started late one Sunday afternoon to walk to the Sheep
Stable. Overwhelmed as he had been upon that spot, he loved it too well
to stay away. The heavenly prospect was part of his life's fabric and
would continue to be all his days.
As he passed the Koehler house, he heard a strange sound, apparently an
unending repetition of the same phrase. It was William Koehler at his
prayers--Millerstown knew now for what William prayed!
"God will punish _him_!" said David with a hot, dry throat. "If there is
a God"--thus said David in his foolish youth--"if there is a God, he
will punish him! Oh, I wish, I wish I could see my father!"
At the Sheep Stable, as one who opens the book of the dim past, David
took his pipe and cards from their hiding-place and hurled them far down
the mountain-side. He even managed to smile a little sorely at himself.
It was dark when he returned to the village. He did not like to walk
about in the early evenings, past the groups of Millerstonians on the
doorsteps; they talked about him, and he did not like to be talked
about. Now almost all Millerstown had gone to church. The pastor of the
Improved New Mennonites was conducting a meeting in a neighboring
village, but there was service in all the other churches. A few persons
sat on their doorsteps, listening quietly to the music which filled the
air,--the sound of the beautiful German hymns of the Lutherans and the
Reformed, and the less classic compositions of the New Baptists.
Millerstown was like a great common room on summer evenings, with the
friendly sky for ceiling.
Again the young moon rode high in the heavens; again David's young blood
throbbed in his veins; again the miserable, unmanly desire for the girl
who would have nothing to do with him began to devour him. He bit his
lips, wondering drearily where he should go and what he should do. The
night had just begun; he would not be sleepy for hours. Nothing invited
him to the kitchen or to the two little bedrooms to which Cassie had
restricted their living. He had no books, and books would have been
after all poor companions on such a night as this.
David was not an ill-looking boy; he had indeed the promise of growing
handsome as he grew older; he was many times richer than any other young
man of Millerstown. There were probably only two girls in the village to
whom these pleasant characteristics would make no appeal. The first of
these was Katy Gaumer. The second was smooth, pretty, blue-eyed Essie
Hill, the daughter of the preacher of the Improved New Mennonites, who
sat now demurely on her father's doorstep. Beside her David suddenly sat
himself down.
CHAPTER IX
CHANGE
IT sometimes happens that death gathers from a single spot a large
harvest in a year. We seem to have been forgotten; we learn to draw once
more the long, secure breath of youth; we almost believe that sorrow
will no more visit us.
For many months Millerstown had had scarcely a funeral. In security
Millerstown went about its daily tasks. Then, in May, John Hartman was
found dead along the mountain road.
In June there came a letter from the Western home of Great-Uncle Gaumer,
telling of a serious illness and the rapid approach of the end of his
life. A few days later, when a telegram announced his death, Grandfather
Gaumer himself dropped to the floor in the office of his brother the
squire and breathed no more. Dr. Benner, who was passing, heard from the
street the crash of his fall and the squire's loud outcry, and Bevy
rushed in from the kitchen. The doctor and the squire knelt beside him,
and still kneeling there, regarded each other with amazement.
Bevy Schnepp lifted her hands above her head and cried out, "Lieber
Himmel!" and stood as if rooted to the floor. "Who will tell her?"
The squire rose from his knees, pale and unsteady, and stood looking at
his brother as though the sight were incredible.
"Is there no life?" he asked the doctor in a whisper.
The doctor shook his head. "He was gone before he fell."
Bevy began to cry. "Ach, who will tell her?"
"I will tell her," answered the squire. Then he went round the house and
across to the other side of the homestead where Grandmother Gaumer and
Katy sat at their sewing.
There was a quantity of white material on Grandmother Gaumer's lap, and
her fingers moved the needle swiftly in and out. Katy was talking as she
hemmed a scarlet ruffle--Katy was always talking. She had been shocked
by the news of the governor's illness, but she believed that he would
get well. Besides, she had seen the governor only once in her life, and
her grandfather had assured her that her plans for her education need
not be changed. She could not be long unhappy over anything when all
these beautiful new clothes were being made for her and when she was
soon to leave dull Millerstown, and when Alvin Koehler had twice sat on
the doorstep with her. She had journeyed to the county seat with her
grandmother and there had made wonderful purchases.
"And the ladies in the stores are so fine, and so polite, and they show
you everything," said Katy. "When Louisa Kuhns went to Allentown she
said, 'the people are me so unpolite, they go always bumping and bumping
and they don't even say _uh_!' That is not true. I do not believe there
is anywhere in the world a politer place than Allentown.
"Louisa--" No gap between subjects halted Katy's speech; she leaped it
with a bound. "Louisa is very dumb. Now I do not believe myself that a
person can learn everything. But you can train your mind so that you can
understand everything if it is explained to you. You must keep your mind
all the time busy and you must be very humble. Louisa said that poetry
was dumb. Louisa cannot even understand, 'Where, oh, where are the
visions of morning?' Louisa thinks everything must be real. I said to
her I would be ashamed to talk that way. The realer poetry is the harder
it is. But Louisa! Ach, my! Gran'mom! The teacher said Louisa should
write 'pendulum' in a sentence, and Louisa wrote 'Pendulum Franklin is
dead'!"
"Do you like poetry, Katy?" asked Grandmother Gaumer.
"Some," answered Katy. "It is not the fault of the poetry that I cannot
understand it all. I want to understand everything. I do not mean,
gran'mom, that you cannot be good unless you understand everything. But
there is more in this world than being good. Sarah Ann is good, but
Sarah Ann has a pretty slow time in this world."
"Sarah Ann does many kind things."
"But the squire and gran'pop do more because they are smarter," said
Katy triumphantly. "When the people want advice, do they go to Sarah
Ann? They come to the squire or to gran'pop!"
Grandmother Gaumer smiled. Sometimes Katy talked in borrowed phrase
about a "larger vision" or "preparation for a larger life."
"Millerstown!" said Katy with a long sigh and a shake of the head. "I
could not stay forever in Millerstown, gran'mom. Think of the Sunday
School picnics with the red mint candy on the cakes and how Susannah and
Sarah Knerr try to have the highest layer cakes, and each wants the
preacher to eat. Think of the Copenhagen, gran'mom, and the Bingo and
the Jumbo, gran'mom!" In derision Katy began to sing, "A certain
farmer."
Grandmother Gaumer lean
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