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Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories
by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
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"No," I answered, beguiled into a lighter mood by his own levity. "It might be well for you if you were more of one. But as Paris correspondent, we could never engage you, at least not on the terms you propose. But even if I should succeed in getting a place for you, do you know English enough to write with ease?"

"I see you are disposed to give vent to your native scepticism toward me. But I never knew the thing yet that I could not do. At first, perhaps, I should have to depend somewhat upon your proof-reading, but before many months, I venture to say, I could stand on my own legs."

After some further parley it was agreed that I should exert myself in his behalf, and after a visit to the pawnbroker's, where Dannevig had deposited his dignity, we parted with the promise to meet again at dinner.

IV.

It was rather an anomalous position for a knight of Dannebrog, a familiar friend of princes and nobles, and an ex-habitue of the Cafe Anglais, to be a common reporter on a Chicago republican journal. Yet this was the position to which (after some daring exploits in book-reviewing and art criticism) my friend was finally reduced. As an art-critic, he might have been a success, if western art had been more nearly in accord with his own fastidious and exquisitely developed taste. As it was, he managed in less than a fortnight to bring down the wrath of the whole artistic brotherhood upon our journal, and as some of these men were personal friends of the principal stockholders in the paper, his destructive ardor was checked by an imperative order from the authorities, from whose will there is no appeal. As a book-reviewer he labored under similar disadvantages; he stoutly maintained that the reading of a volume would necessarily and unduly bias the critic's judgment, and that a man endowed with a keen, literary nose could form an intelligent opinion, after a careful perusal of the title-page, and a glance at the preface. A man who wrote a book naturally labored under the delusion that he was wiser or better than the majority of his fellow-creatures, in which case you would do moral service by convincing him of his error, inhumanity continued to encourage authorship at the present rate, obscurity would soon become a claim to immortality. If a writer informed you that his work "filled a literary void," his conceit was reprehensible, and on moral grounds he ought to be chastised; if he told you that he had only "yielded to the urgent request of his friends," it was only fair to insinuate that his friends must have had very long ears. Nevertheless, Dannevig's reviews were for about a month a very successful feature of our paper. They might be described as racy little essays, bristling with point and epigram, on some subject suggested by the title-pages of current volumes. At the end of that time, however, books began to grow scarce in our office, and before another month was at an end, we had no more need of a reviewer. My friend was then to have his last trial as a reporter.

One of his first experiences in this new capacity was at a mass-meeting preceding an important municipal election. Not daring to send his "copy" to the printer without revision, I determined to sacrifice two or three hours' sleep, and to await his return. But the night wore on, the clock struck twelve, one, and two, and no Dannevig appeared. I began to grow anxious; our last form went to press at four o'clock, and I had left a column and a half open for his expected report. Not wishing to resort to dead matter, I hastily made some selections from a fresh magazine, and sent them to the foreman.

The next day, about noon, a policeman brought me the following note, written in pencil, on a leaf torn from a pocket-book.

DEAR FRIEND;

I made a speech last night (and a very good one too) in behalf of oppressed humanity, but its effect upon my audience was, to say the least, singular. Its results, as far as I am personally concerned were also somewhat unpleasant. Looking at myself in my pocketglass this morning, I find that my nose has become disproportionately prominent, besides showing an abnormal lateral development If you would have the goodness to accompany the obliging gentleman, who is the bearer of this, to my temporary lodgings, I will further explain the situation to you. By the way, it is absolutely necessary that you should come.

Yours in haste,

VICTOR J. ST. D. DANNEVIG, R.D.O.[A]

[Footnote A: Knight of the Order of Dannebrog.]

I found Dannevig, as I had expected, at the so-called Armory (the city prison), in pleasant converse with half-a-dozen policemen, to whom he was describing, with inimitable grace and good-humor, his adventures of the preceding night. He was too absorbed in his narrative to notice my arrival, and I did not choose to interrupt him.

"You can imagine, gentlemen," he was saying, accompanying his words with the liveliest gesticulations, "how the rude contact of a plebeian fist with my tender skin must have impressed me. Really gentlemen, I was so surprised that I literally lost my balance. I was, as you are no doubt aware, merely asserting my rights as a free citizen to protest against the presumptions of the unprincipled oligarchy which is at present ruling this fair city. My case is exactly parallel to that of Caius Gracchus, who, I admit, reaped a similar reward."

"But you were drunk," replied a rude voice from his audience. "Dead drunk."

"Drunk," ejaculated Dannevig, with a gesture of dignified deprecation. "Now, I submit it to you as gentlemen of taste and experience: how would you define that state of mind and body vulgarly styled 'drunk?' I was merely pleasantly animated, as far as such a condition can be induced by those vulgar liquids which you are in the habit of imbibing in this benighted country. Now, if I had had the honor of your acquaintance in the days of my prosperity, it would have given me great pleasure to raise your standard of taste regarding wines and alcoholic liquors. The mixed drinks, which are held in such high esteem in this community, are, in my opinion, utterly demoralizing."

Thinking it was high time to interrupt this discourse, I stepped up to the orator, and laid my hand on his shoulder.

"Dannevig," I said, "I have no time to waste Let me settle this business for you at once."

"In a moment I shall be at your service," he answered, gracefully waving his hand; and for some five minutes more he continued his harangue on the corrupting effects of mixed drinks.

After a visit to the court-room, a brief examination, and the payment of a fine, we took our departure. Feeling in an exceptionally amiable mood, Dannevig offered me his arm, and as we again passed the group of policemen at the door he politely raised his dilapidated hat to them, and bade them a pleasant good-morning. The cross of Dannebrog, with its red ribbon, was dangling from the button-hole of his coat, the front of which was literally glazed with the stains of dried punch.

"My type of countenance, as you will observe," he remarked, as we hailed a passing omnibus, "presents some striking deviations from the classic ideal; but it is a consoling reflection that it will probably soon resume its normal form."

Of course, all the morning as well as the evening papers, recounted, with flaming headings, Dannevig's oration, and his ignominious expulsion from the mass-meeting, and the most unsparing ridicule was showered both upon him and the journal which, for the time, he represented. One more experience of a similar nature terminated his career as a journalist; I dared no longer espouse his cause and he was dismissed in disgrace. For some weeks he vanished from my horizon, and I began to hope that he had again set his face toward the Old World, where talents of the order he possessed are at higher premium in the social market. But in this hope I was to be grievously disappointed.

V.

One day, just as I had ordered my lunch at a restaurant much frequented by journalists, a German, named Pfeifer, one of the largest stockholders in our paper, entered and seated himself at the table opposite me. He was a somewhat puffy and voluminous man with a very round bald head, and an air of defiant prosperity about him. He had retired from the brewery business some years ago, with a very handsome fortune.

"I have been hunting for you high and low," he began in his native tongue. "You know there is to be a ball in the Turnverein to-morrow night,—a very grand affair, they say. I suppose they have sent you tickets."

"Yes, two."

"And are you going?"

"I had half made up my mind to send Fenner or some one else."

Mr. Pfeifer here grew superfluously confidential and related to me in a mysterious whisper his object in seeking me. The fact was, he had a niece really ein allerliebstes Kind, who had come from Milwaukee to visit him and was to spend the winter with him. Now, to be honest, he knew very few young gentlemen whom he would be willing to have her associate with, and the poor child had set her heart on going to the Turn-ball to-morrow. Would I kindly overlook the informality of his request, and without telling the young lady of his share in the proceeding, offer her my escort to the ball? Would I be responsible for her and bring her home in good season? And to avert Fraulein Pfeifer's possible suspicions, would I come and dine at his house to-night and make her acquaintance?

To refuse the acquaintance of a young lady who even remotely answered to the description of "a very lovely child," was contrary to my principles, and I need not add that I proved faithful to them in the present instance.

A German, even if he be not what one would call a cultivated man, has nevertheless a certain sombre historic background to his life which makes him averse to those garish effects of barbaric splendor that impress one so unpleasantly in the houses of Americans whose prosperity is unsupported by a corresponding amount of culture. This was my first reflection on entering Mr. Pfeifer's drawing-room, while in my heart I begged the proprietor's pardon for the patronizing attitude I found myself assuming toward him. The heavy, solid furniture, the grave and decorously mediocre pictures, and the very tint of the walls wore an air of substantial, though somewhat lugubrious comfort. His niece, too, although her form was by no means lacking in grace, seemed somehow to partake of this all-pervading air of Teutonic solidity and homelike comfort. She was one of those women who seemed born to make some wretched man undeservedly happy. (I always feel a certain dim hostility to any man, even though I may not know him, who marries a charming and lovable woman; it is with me a foregone conclusion that he has been blessed beyond his deserts.) There was a sweet matronliness and quiet dignity in her manner, and beneath the placid surface of her blue eyes I suspected hidden depths of pure maidenly sentiment. The cast of her countenance was distinctly Germanic; not strikingly beautiful, perhaps, but extremely pleasing; there was no discordant feature in it, no loud or harsh suggestion to mar the subdued richness of the whole picture. Her blond hair was twisted into a massive coil on the top of her head, and the unobtrusive simplicity and taste of her toilet were merely her character (as I had conceived it) translated into millinery. My feelings, as I stood gazing at her, unconsciously formulated themselves into the well-known benediction of Heine's, which I could with difficult keep from quoting:

"Mir ist als ob ich die Haende, Auf's Haupt dir legen sollt', Betend dass Gott dich erhalte, So rein mid schoen und hold."

I observed with quiet amusement, though in a very sympathetic spirit, that she did not manage her train well; and from the furtive attention she was ever bestowing upon it, I concluded that her experience with long dresses must have been of recent date. I noticed, too, as she came forward to salute me, that her hands were not unused to toil; but for this I only honored her the more.

The dinner was as serious and substantial as everything else in Mr. Pfeifer's house, and passed off without any notable incident. The host persisted in talking business with me, which the young lady, at whose side I sat, accepted as a matter-of-course, making apparently no claim whatever upon the smallest share of my attention. When the long and tedious meal was at an end, upon her uncle's suggestion, she seated herself at the piano, and sang in a deep, powerful contralto, Schubert's magnificent arrangement of Heine's song of unrequited love:

"Ich grolle nicht, und wenn das Herz auch bricht, Ewig verlornes Lieb! ich grolle nicht. Wie du auch strahlst in Diamantenpracht, Es fallt kein Strahl in deines Herzens Nacht."

There was a pathos and passion in her voice which fairly startled me, and when I hastened to her side to thank her for the pleasure she had given me, she accepted my compliments with a beautiful, unaffected enthusiasm, as if they were meant only for the composer, and were in no respect due to her.

"There is such a depth of suffering in every word and note," she said with glowing cheeks. "He bears her no ill-will, he says, and still you feel how the suppressed bitterness is still rankling within him."

She then sang "Auf Fluegeln des Gesanges," whereupon we sat down and talked music and Heine for the rest of the evening. Mr. Pfeifer, reclining in his capacious easy-chair, smoked on with slow, brooding contentment, and now and then threw in a disparaging remark regarding our favorite poet.

"He blackguarded his country abominably," he said. "And I have no respect for a man who can do that. Besides, he was a miserable, renegade Jew, and as I never like to have any more to do with Jews than I can possibly help, I have never read any of his books."

"But, uncle," retorted his niece, warmly, "he certainly could not help being a Jew. And there was no one who loved Germany more ardently than he, even though he did say severe things about it."

"That is a thing about which you can have no opinion, Hildegard," said Pfeifer, with paternal decision; and he blew a dense cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.

Miss Hildegard looked rebellious for an instant, but accepted the verdict of superior wisdom with submissive silence. The old man gave me a little confidential wink as if to say:

"There is a model girl for you. She knows that women should not speak in meeting."

"What a delightfully fresh and unspoiled girl," I reflected, as I wended my way homeward through the still moonlight; "so true-hearted, and genuine, and unaffected. And still beneath all that sweet, womanly tranquillity there are strong slumbering forces, which some day will startle some phlegmatic countryman of hers, who takes her to be as submissive as she looks."

VI.

Some fifteen minutes after the appointed hour I called with a carriage for Fraulein Hildegard, whom, to my wonder, I found standing in all the glory of her ball-toilet (for she was evidently afraid to sit down) in the middle of the sombre drawing-room. I had been prepared to wait for a good half-hour, and accordingly felt a little provoked at myself for my seeming negligence.

"I do not mind telling you," she said, as I sat compressed in a corner of the carriage, striving to reduce myself to the smallest practicable dimensions, "that this is my first ball. I don't know any of the gentlemen who will be there to-night, but I know two or three Milwaukee ladies who have promised to come, so, even if I don't dance much, I shall not feel lonely."

"Of course you will give me the first chance at your card," I answered. "How many dances will you grant me?"

"As many as you want. Uncle was very explicit in impressing upon me that I am to obey you unquestioningly and have no will of my own."

"That was very unkind of him. I shall be unwilling to claim any privilege which you do not of your own free will bestow upon me."

"I didn't mean it so," she answered, impulsively, and by the passing light of a gas-lamp I caught a glimpse of her beaming, innocent face. "I shall not be apt to forget that I am indebted to your kindness for all the pleasure I shall have to-night, and if you wish to dance with me, of course it is very kind of you."

"Well, that is not much better," I murmured, ruefully, feeling very guilty at heart. "On that ground I should be still more reluctant to assert my claim on you."

"Oh, what a bungler I am!" she exclaimed with half-amused regret. "The truth is, I am so glad, and when I am very happy I always make blundering speeches."

As we entered the magnificently lighted and decorated hall, I noticed, to my dismay, that the company was a little more mixed than I had anticipated. I had, therefore, no scruples in putting down my name for four waltzes and a quadrille. I observed, too, that my fair partner attracted much attention, partly, perhaps, on account of her beauty, and partly on account of her superb toilet. Her dress was of satin, of a cool, lucid, sea-green tint, such as one sees in the fjords of Norway on a bright summer's day; the illusion was so perfect that in dancing with her I expected every moment to see sea-weeds and pale-green things sprouting up along its border, and the white bunches of lilies-of-the-valley in her hair, as they wafted their faint fragrance toward me, seemed almost an anomaly. She danced, not with vehement abandon, but with an airy, rhythmical grace, as if the music had entered into her soul and her limbs were but obeying their innate tuneful impulse. When we had finished the first waltz, I left her in the company of one of her Milwaukee friends and started out in quest of some acceptable male partner whose touch of her I should not feel to be a positive desecration. I had reached about the middle of the hall when an affectionate slap on my shoulder caused me to turn around.

"Dannevig!" I exclaimed, with frigid amazement "By Jove! Where do you come from? You are as unexpected as a thunderclap from a cloudless sky."

"Which was a sign that Jupiter was wroth," replied Dannevig, promptly, "and required new sacrifices. Now the sacrifice I demand of you is that you shall introduce me to that charming little girl you have had the undeserved luck of securing."

"You choose your metaphors well," I remarked, calmly. "But, as you know, even the Romans with all their reputed hardness of heart, were too conscientious to tolerate human sacrifices. And I, being, in the present instance, the pontifex, would never be a party to such an atrocity."

The transformation which Dannevig's face underwent was almost terrible. A look of perfectly animal savageness distorted for a brief moment his handsome features; his eyes flashed, and his brow was one mass of wrinkles.

"Do you mean to say that you refuse to introduce me?" he asked, in a hoarse whisper.

"That is exactly what I mean to say," I answered, with well-feigned coolness.

"And do you really suppose," he continued, while his brow slowly relaxed, "that you can prevent me from making that girl's acquaintance, if I have made up my mind to thwart you?"

"I don't suppose anything of the kind," was my reply. "But you know me well enough to be aware that you cannot browbeat me. She shall, at all events, not owe your acquaintance to me."

Dannevig stood for a while, pondering; then with one of those sudden transitions of feeling which were so characteristic of him, he continued in a tone of good-fellowship:

"Come, now; this is ridiculous! You have been dining on S——'s leathery beef-steak, which I have so frequently warned you against, and, what is worse, you have had mince pie for dessert. Your digestion is seriously deranged. For old friends like you and me to quarrel over a little chit of a girl, is as absurd as committing suicide because you have scratched your hand with a pin. If your heart is really engaged in this affair, then I wont interfere with you. I wish you luck, although judging by what I have seen, I should say you might have made a better choice. Au revoir."

He skipped lightly down the floor, and was lost in the crowd. Having selected some journalistic friends as partners for Fraulein Hildegard, and listened with great patience to their rhapsodies over her beauty and loveliness, I stationed myself at the upper end of the hall, and in philosophic discontent watched the dancers. Dannevig's parting words had filled me with vague alarm; I knew that they were insincere, and I suspected that he was even now at work to accomplish some disastrous intention. At this moment a couple came whirling straight toward me; a pale-green satin, train swept over my feet, and the cross of the order of Dannebrog sent a swift flash into my very eyes. A fierce exclamation escaped me; my blood was in tumult. I began to feel dangerous. As the usual accelerated rush of violins and drums announced that the dance was near its end, I did not dare to seek my fair partner, and I had no pleasure to feign when I saw her advancing, with a light and eager step, to where I was standing. She was evidently too preoccupied to notice the change I had undergone since our last parting.

"Now," she said, with as near an approach to archness as a woman of her type is capable of, "you must not think me odd if I do something that may seem to you a little bit unconventional. It is only your own kindness to me which encourages me to ask a favor, which I shouldn't wonder if you would rather grant than not. The fact is, there is a gentleman who wishes very much to dance with me, and my card is already full. Now, would you mind giving up one of yours? I know, in the first place, that it was from a sense of duty that—that—that you took so many," she finished desperately, as I refused to come to her aid.

"We will not discuss my motives, Fraulein," I said, with as much friendliness as I had at my command. "But, before granting your not unreasonable request, you must be good enough to tell me who the gentleman is who is to profit by my sacrifice."

"His name is Mr. Dannevig. He is a knight of Dannebrog, and moreover, as he tells me, an intimate friend of yours."

"Tell him, then, Fraulein, that he might have presumed sufficiently upon our friendship to prefer his request in person, instead of sending you as his messenger."

The color sprang to her cheeks; she swept abruptly around, and with an air of outraged majesty, marched defiantly down the hall.

The night wore on. The hour for supper came, and politeness forced me to go and find Miss Pfeifer. Then we sat down in a corner, and ate and chattered in a heedless, dispirited fashion, dwelling with feigned interest on trifling themes, and as by a tacit agreement avoiding each other's glances. Then some gentleman came to claim her, and I was almost glad that she was gone. And yet, in the very next moment a passionate regret came over me, as for a personal loss, and I would fain have called her back and told her, with friendly directness my reasons for interfering so rudely with her pleasure.

I do not know how long I sat thus idly nursing my discontent, and now and then, as my anger blazed up, muttering some fierce execration against Dannevig. What was this girl to me, after all? I was certainly not in love with her. And if she chose to ruin herself, what business had I to prevent her? But then, she was a woman, and a sweet and pure and true-hearted woman; it was, at all events, my duty to open her eyes, and I vowed that, even though she should hate me for it, I would tell her the truth. I looked at my watch; it was a few minutes past two. With a sting of self-reproach, I remembered my promise to Mr. Pfeifer, and resolved not to shirk the responsibility I had voluntarily assumed. I hastened up the hall, then down again, surveyed the dancers, sent a girl into the dressing-room with a message; but Fraulein Hildegard was nowhere to be seen. A horrible thought flashed through me. I seized my hat, and rushed down into the restaurant. There, in an inner apartment, divided from the public room by drooping curtains, I found her, laughing and chatting gayly with Dannevig over a glass of Champagne and a dish of ice-cream.

"Fraulein," I said, approaching her with grave politeness, "I am sorry to be obliged to interrupt this agreeable tete-a-tete. But the carriage has arrived, and I must claim the pleasure of your company."

"Now, really," she exclaimed, with impulsive regret, while her eyes still hung with a fascinated gaze on Dannevig's face, "is it, then, so necessary that we should go just now? Do you really insist upon it? Mr. Dannevig was just telling me some charming adventures of his life in Denmark."

"I am happy to say," I answered, "that I am so well familiar with Mr. Dannevig's adventures as to be quite competent to supplement his fragmentary statements. I shall be very happy to continue the entertainment—"

"Sacr—r-r-e nom de Dieu!" Dannevig burst forth, leaping up from his seat. "This is more than I can bear!" and he pulled a card from his portmonnaie and flung it down on the table before me. "May I request the honor of a meeting?" he continued, in a calmer voice. "It is high time that we two should settle our difficulties in the only way in which they are capable of adjustment."

"Mr. Dannevig," I replied, with a cool irony which I was far from feeling, "the first rule of the code of honor, to which you appeal, is, as you are aware, that the combatants must be equals in birth and station. Now, you boast of being of royal blood, while I have no such claim to distinction. You see, therefore, that your proposition is absurd."

Miss Hildegard had in the meanwhile risen to take my proffered arm, and with a profound bow to the indignant hero we moved out of the room. During our homeward ride hardly a word was spoken; the wheels rattled away over the uneven pavement and the coachman snapped his whip, while we sat in opposite corners of the carriage, each pursuing his or her own lugubrious train of thought. But as we had mounted together the steps to Mr. Pfeifer's mansion, and I was applying her latchkey to the lock, she suddenly held out her hand to me, and I grasped it eagerly and held it close in mine.

"Really," she said in a tone of conciliation, "I like you too well to wish to quarrel with you. Won't you please tell me candidly why you objected to my dancing with Mr. Dannevig?"

"With all my heart," I responded warmly; "if you will give me the opportunity. In the meanwhile you will have to accept my reasons on trust, and believe that they were very weighty. You may feel assured that I should not have run the risk of offending you, if I had not felt convinced that Dannevig is a man whose acquaintance no young lady can claim with impunity. I have known him for many years, and I do not speak rashly."

"I am afraid you are a very severe judge," she murmured sadly. "Good-night."

VII.

During the next months many rumors of Dannevig's excesses reached me from various sources. He had obtained a position as interpreter for one of the Immigration Companies, and made semi-monthly excursions to Quebec, taking charge of the immigrants, and conducting them to Chicago. The opportunity for revealing his past history to Miss Pfeifer somehow never presented itself, although I continued to call frequently, and spent many delightful evenings with her and her uncle. However, I consoled myself with the reflection that the occasion for such a revelation no longer existed, and I had no desire needlessly to persecute a man whose iniquities could, at all events, harm no one but himself. And still, knowing from experience his talent for occult diplomacy, I took the precaution (without even remotely implicating Miss Hildegard) to put Mr. Pfeifer on his guard. One evening, as we were sitting alone in his library enjoying a confidential smoke, I related to him, merely as part of the secret history of our paper, some of Dannevig's questionable exploits while in our employ. Pfeifer was hugely entertained, and swore that Dannevig was the most interesting rascal he had ever heard of.

A few days later I was surprised by a call from Dannevig, who seemed again to be in the full bloom of prosperity. And yet, that inexpressible flavor of aristocracy, and that absolute fineness of type which at our first meeting had so fascinated me, had undergone some subtle change which was almost too fleeting for words to express. To put it bluntly, he had not borne transplantation well. Like the finest European grapes, he had thriven in our soil, but turned out a coarser product than nature intended. He talked with oppressive brilliancy about everything under the sun, patronized me (as indeed he had always done), and behaved with a certain effusive amiability, the impudence of which was simply masterly.

"By the way," he cried, with fine unconcern, "speaking of beer, how is your friend, Miss Pfeifer? Her old man, I believe, owns a good deal of stock in this paper, quite a controlling interest, I am told."

"It will not pay to make love to her on that ground, Dannevig," I answered, gravely, knowing well enough that he had come on a diplomatic errand. "Mr. Pfeifer is, in the first place, not her father, and secondly, he has at least a dozen other heirs."

"Make love to Miss Pfeifer!" he exclaimed, with a hearty laugh. "Why, I should just as soon think of making love to General Grant! Taking her all in all, bodily and mentally, there is a certain Teutonic heaviness and tenacity about her—a certain professorial ponderosity of thought which would give me a nightmare. She is the innocent result of twenty generations of beer-drinking."

"Suppose we change the subject, Dannevig," I interrupted, rather impatiently.

"Well, if you are not the oddest piece I ever did come across!" he replied, laughingly. "You don't suppose she is a saint, do you?"

"Yes, I do!" I thundered, "and you would greatly oblige by never mentioning her name again in my presence, or I might be tempted to do what I might regret."

"Heavens!" he cried, laying hold of the door-knob. "I didn't know you were in your dangerous mood to-day. You might at least have given a fellow warning. Suppose, henceforth, when you have your bad days, you post a placard on the door, with the inscription: 'Dangerous—must not be crossed.' Then I might know when not to call. Good-morning."

* * * * *

On the lake shore, a short distance north of Lincoln Park, Mr. Pfeifer had a charming little villa where he spent the summer months in idyllic drowsiness, exhibiting a spasmodic interest in the culture of European grapes. Here I found myself one Saturday evening in the middle of June, having accepted the owner's invitation to stay over Sunday with him. I rang the door-bell, and inquired for Mr. Pfeifer. He had unexpectedly been called in to town, the servant informed me, but would return presently; the young lady I would probably find in the garden. As I was not averse to a tete-a-tete with Miss Hildegard just then, I threaded my way carefully among the flower-beds, whose gorgeous medley of colors gleamed indistinctly through the twilight. A long bar of deep crimson traced itself along the western horizon, and here and there a star was struggling out from the faint, blue, nocturnal dimness. Green and red and yellow lights dotted the surface of the lake, and the waves beat, with a slow, gurgling rhythm, against the strand beneath the garden fence; now and then the irrational shrieks of some shrill-voiced little steamer broke in upon the stillness like an inappropriately lively remark upon a solemn conversation. I had half forgotten my purpose, and was walking aimlessly on, when suddenly I was startled by the sound of human voices, issuing apparently from a dense arbor of grape-vines at the lower end of the walk.

"Why will you not believe me, darling?" some one was saying. A great rush of emotion—fear, anguish, hatred, shook my very soul. "Your scepticism would make Tyndall tear his hair. Angels have no business to be so sceptical. You are always doubting me, always darkening my life by your irrational fears."

"But, Victor," answered another voice, which was none other than Hildegard's, "he is certainly a very good man, and would not tell me anything he believed to be untrue. Why, then, did he warn me so solemnly against you? Even though I love you, I cannot help feeling that there is something in your past which you hide from me."

"If you will listen to that white-livered hypocrite, it is useless for me to try to convince you. But, if you must know it,—though, mind you, I tell you this only because you compel me,—I once interfered, because my conscience forced me to do so, in a very disgraceful love-affair of his in Denmark. He has hated me ever since, and is now taking his vengeance. I will give you the details some other time. Now, are you satisfied?"

"No, Victor, no. I am not. It is not because I have been listening to others, that I torment you with these ungrateful questions. Sometimes a terrible dread comes over me, and though my heart rebels against it, I cannot conquer it. I feel as if some dark memory, some person, either living or dead, were standing between us, and would ever keep you away from me. It is terrible, Victor, but I feel it even now."

"And then all my love, my first and only abiding passion, my life, which I would gladly lay down at your feet—all goes for naught, merely because a foolish dream has taken possession of you. Ah, you are ill, my darling, you are nervous."

"No, no, do not kiss me. Not to-night, Victor, not to-night."

The horrible discovery had completely stunned me. I stood as if spell-bound, and could neither stir nor utter a sound. But a sudden rustling of the leaves within broke through the torpor of my senses, and, with three great strides, I stood at the entrance to the arbor. Dannevig, instantly recognizing me, slipped dexterously out, and in the next moment I heard him leaping over the fence, and running away over the crisp sand. Miss Hildegard stood still and defiant before me in the twilight, and the audible staccato of her breath revealed to my ears the agitation which the deepening shadows hid from my eyes. An overwhelming sense of compassion came over me, as for one who had sustained a mortal hurt that was beyond the power of healing. Alas, that simplicity and uprightness of soul, and the boasted womanly intuitions, should be such poor safeguards against the wiles of the serpent! And yet, I knew that to argue with her at this moment would be worse than vain.

"Fraulein," I said, walking close up to her, and laying my hand lightly on her arm, "with all my heart I deplore this."

"Pray, do not inconvenience yourself with any such superfluous emotion," she answered, in a tone, the forced hauteur of which was truly pathetic. "I wish to hear no accusations of Mr. Dannevig from your mouth. What he does not choose to tell me himself, I will hear from no one else."

"I have not volunteered any revelations, Fraulein," I observed. "Moreover, I see you are posing for your own personal gratification. You wish to convince yourself of your constancy by provoking an attack from me. When love has reached that stage, Miss Hildegard, then the patient is no longer absolutely incurable. Now, to convince you that I am right, will you have the kindness to look me straight in the eyes and tell me that there is no shadow of doubt in your heart as to Mr. Dannevig's truthfulness; that, in other words, you believe that on one occasion he assumed the attitude of indignant virtue toward me, and in holy horror rebuked my profligacy. Dare you meet my eye, and tell me that?"

"Yes," she exclaimed, boldly stepping out into the moonlight, and meeting my eye with a steady gaze; but slowly and gradually the tears would gather, her underlip would quiver, and with a sudden movement she turned around, and burst out weeping.

"Oh, no! I cannot! I cannot!" she sobbed, sinking down upon the green sod.

I stood long gazing mournfully at her, while the sobs shook her frame; there was a child-like, hearty abandon in her grief, which eased my mind, for it told me that her infatuation was not so hopeless, nor her hurt so great as I had feared.

* * * * *

The next evening when dinner was at an end, Mr. Pfeifer proposed a walk in the park. Hildegard pleaded a headache, and wished to be excused.

"Nonsense, child," said Pfeifer, with his usual good-humored peremptoriness. "If you have a headache, so much the more ought you to go. Put on your things now, and don't keep us waiting any longer than you can help."

Hildegard submitted with demure listlessness, and soon re-appeared in her walking costume.

The daylight had faded, and the evening was in its softest, most ethereal mood. The moon was drifting lazily among the light summer clouds, gazing down upon the many-voiced tumult of the crowded city, with that calm philosophic abstraction which always characterizes the moon, as if she, up there in her airy heights, were so infinitely exalted above all the distracting problems and doubts that harass our poor human existence. We entered a concert garden, which was filled with gayly dressed pleasure seekers; somewhere under the green roof of the trees an orchestra was discoursing strains of German music to a Teutonic audience.

"Donnerwetter!" said Pfeifer, enthusiastically; "that is the symphony in E flat; pretty well rendered too. Only hear that"—and he began to whistle the air softly, with lively gesticulations "Come, let us go nearer and listen."

"No, let us stay here, uncle," remonstrated Hildegard. "I don't think it is quite nice to go so near. They are drinking beer there, and there are so many horrible people."

"Nonsense, child! Where did you get all those silly whims from? Where it is respectable for your uncle to go, I am sure it won't hurt you to follow."

We made our way through the throng, and stationed ourselves under a tree, from which we had a full survey of the merry company, seated at small tables, with huge foam-crowned mugs of beer before them. Suddenly a voice, somewhat louder than the rest, disentangled itself from the vague, inarticulate buzz, which filled the air about us. Swift as a flash my eyes darted in the direction from which the voice came. There, within a few dozen steps from us, sat Dannevig between two gaudily attired women; another man was seated at the opposite side of the table, and between them stood a couple of bottles and several half-filled glasses. The sight was by no means new to me, and still, in that moment, it filled me with unspeakable disgust. The knight of Dannebrog was as charmingly free-and-easy as if he were nestled securely in the privacy of his own fireside; his fine plumes were deplorably ruffled, his hat thrust back, and his hair hanging in tangled locks down over his forehead; his eyes were heavy, and a smile of maudlin happiness played about his mouth.

"Now, don't make yourself precious, my dear," he was saying, laying his arm affectionately around the waist of the woman on his right. "I like German kisses. I speak from experience. Angels have no business to be—"

"Himmel, what is the matter with the child," cried Pfeifer, in a voice of alarm. "Why, my dear, you tremble all over. I ought not to have made you go out with that headache. Wait here while I run for some water."

Before I could offer my services, he was gone, leaving me alone with Hildegard.

"Let us go," she whispered, with a long, shuddering sigh, turning a white face, full of fright, disgust, and pitiful appeal toward me.

"Shall we not wait for your uncle?" I asked.

"Oh, I cannot. Let us go," she repeated, seizing my arm, and clinging convulsively to me.

We walked slowly away, and were soon overtaken by Mr. Pfeifer.

"How do you feel now, child?" he inquired anxiously.

"Oh, I feel—I feel—unclean," she whispered and shuddered again.

VIII.

Two years passed, during which I completely lost sight of Dannevig. I learned that he had been dismissed from the service of the Immigration Company; that he played second violin for a few months at one of the lowest city theatres, and finally made a bold stroke for fame by obtaining the Democratic nomination for County Clerk. I was faithless enough, however, to call attention to the fact that he had never been naturalized, whereupon, a new caucus was called, and another candidate was put into the field.

The Pfeifers I continued to see frequently, and, at last, at Hildegard's own suggestion, told her the story I had so long withheld from her. She showed very little emotion, but sat pale and still with her hands folded in her lap, gazing gravely at me. When I had finished, she arose, walked the length of the room, then returned, and stopped in front of me.

"Human life seems at times a very flimsy affair, doesn't it?" she said, appealing to me again with her direct gaze.

"Yes, if one takes a cynical view of it," I answered.

She stood for a while pondering.

"Did I ever know that man?" she asked, looking up abruptly.

"You know best."

"Then it must have been very, very long ago."

A slight shiver ran through her frame. She shook my hand silently, and left the room.

One evening in the summer of 1870, just as the news from the Franco-Prussian war was arousing the enthusiasm of our Teutonic fellow-citizens, I was sauntering leisurely homeward, pondering with much satisfaction on the course history was taking. About half a mile from the Clark street bridge I found my progress checked by a crowd of men who had gathered on the sidewalk outside of a German saloon, and were evidently discussing some exciting topic. My journalistic instincts prompted me to stop and listen to the discussion.

"Poor fellow, I guess he is done for," some one was saying. "But they were both drunk; you couldn't expect anything else."

"Is any one hurt?" I asked, addressing my next neighbor in the crowd.

"Yes. It was a poor fool of a Dane. He got into a row with somebody about the war. Said he would undertake to whip ten Deutschers single-handed; that he had done so many a time in the Schleswig-Holstein war. Then there was some fighting, and he was shot."

I spoke a few words to the policeman at the door, and was admitted. The saloon was empty but in the billiard-room at its rear I saw a doctor in his shirt-sleeves, bending over a man who lay outstretched on a billiard-table. A bartender was standing by with a basin of water and a bloody towel.

"Do you know his name?" I inquired of the police officer.

"They used to call him Danish Bill," he answered. "Have known him for a good while. Believe his real name was Danborg, or Dan—something."

"Not Dannevig?" I cried.

"Dannevig? Yes, I guess you have got it."

I hastily approached the table. There lay Dannevig—but I would rather not describe him. It was hard to believe it, but this heavy-lidded, coarse-skinned, red-veined countenance bore a cruel, caricatured resemblance to the clean-cut, exquisitely modelled face of the man I had once called my friend. A death-like stupor rested upon his features; his eyes were closed, but his mouth half open.

"By Jove!" exclaimed the physician, in a burst of professional enthusiasm, "what a splendid animal he must have been! Hardly saw a better made man in all my life."

"But he is not dead!" I protested, somewhat anxiously.

"No; but he has no chance, that I can see. May last over to-morrow, but hardly longer. Does any one know where he lodges?"

No one answered.

"But, Himmel! he cannot stay here." The voice was the bartender's, but it seemed to be addressed to no one in particular.

"I have known him for years," I said. "Take him to my rooms; they are only a dozen blocks away."

A carriage was sent for, and away we drove, the doctor and I, slowly, cautiously, holding the still unconscious man between us. We laid him on my bed, and the doctor departed, promising to return before morning.

A little after midnight Dannevig became restless, and as I went to his side, opened his eyes with a look of full, startled consciousness.

"I'm about played out, old fellow, aint I?" he groaned.

I motioned to him to be silent.

"No," he went on, in a strained whisper, "it is no use now. I know well enough how I stand. You needn't try to fool me."

He lay for a while motionless, while his eyes wandered restlessly about the room. He made an effort to speak, but his words were inaudible. I stooped over him, laying my ear to his mouth.

"Can—can you lend me five dollars?"

I nodded.

"You will find—a pawnbroker's check—in my vest pocket," he continued. "The address is—is—on it. Redeem it. It is a ring. Send it—to—to the Countess von Brehm—with—with—my compliments," he finished with a groan.

We spent several hours in silence. About three o'clock the doctor paid a brief visit; and I read in his face that the end was near. The first sunbeams stole through the closed shutters and scattered little quivering fragments of light upon the carpet. A deep stillness reigned about us. As I sat watching the defaced ruin of what had been, to me at least, one of the noblest forms which a human spirit ever inhabited, the past moved in a vivid retrospect before my eye, and many strange reflections thronged upon me. Presently Dannevig called me and I stood again bowing over him.

"When you—bury me," he said in a broken whisper. "Carry my—cross of—Dannebrog—on a cushion after me." And again after a moment's pause: "I have—made a—nice mess of it, haven t I? I—I—think it would—have—have been better for—me, if—I had been—somebody else."

Within an hour he was dead. Myself and two policemen followed him to the grave; and the cross of Dannebrog, with a much soiled red ribbon, was carried on a velvet cushion after his coffin.



MABEL AND I.

(A PHILOSOPHICAL FAIRY TALE.)

I.

"I want to see things as they are," said I to Mabel.

"I don't see how else you can see them," answered Mabel, with a laugh. "You certainly don't see them as they are not."

"Yes, I do," said I. "I see men and things only as they seem. It is so exasperating to think that I can never get beyond the surface of anything. My friends may appear very good and beautiful to me, and yet I may all the while have a suspicion that the appearance is deceitful, that they are really neither good nor beautiful."

"In case that was so, I shouldn't want to know it," said Mabel. "It would make me very unhappy."

"That is where you and I differ," said I.

Mabel was silent for a moment, and I believe she was a little hurt, for I had spoken rather sharply.

"But what good would it do you, Jamie?" asked she, looking up at me from under her wide-brimmed straw hat.

"What would do me good?" said I, for I had quite forgotten what we had been talking about.

"To see things as they are. There is my father now; he knows a great deal, and I am sure I shouldn't care to know any more than he does."

"Well, that is where you and I differ," said I again.

"I wish you wouldn't be always saying 'that is where you and I differ.' Somehow I don't like to hear you say it. It doesn't sound like yourself."

And Mabel turned away from me, took up a leaf from the ground and began to pick it to pieces.

We were sitting, at the time when this conversation took place, up in the gorge not half a mile from the house where Mabel's father lived. I was a tutor in the college, about twenty-three years old, and I was very fond of German philosophy. And now, since I have told who I was, I suppose I ought to tell you something about Mabel. Mabel was,—but really it is impossible to say what she was, except that she was very, very charming. As for the rest, she was the daughter of Professor Markham, and I had known her since my college days when she was quite a little girl. And now she wore long dresses; and, what was more, she had her hair done up in a sort of Egyptian pyramid on the top of her head. The dress she had on to-day I was particularly fond of; it was of a fine light texture, and the pattern was an endless repetition of a small, sweet-brier bud, with two delicate green leaves attached to it.

I had spread a shawl out on the ground where Mabel was sitting, for fear she should soil her fine dress. A large weeping-willow spread its branches all around us, and drooped until it almost touched the ground, so that it made a sort of green, sunlit summer-house, for Mabel and me to live in. Between the rocks at our feet a clear brook came rushing down, throwing before it little showers of spray, which fell like crystal pearls on the water, sailed down the swift eddies and then vanished in the next whirlpool. A couple of orioles in brand-new yellow uniforms, with black epaulets on their shoulders, were busy in the tree over our heads, but stopped now and then in their work to refresh themselves with a little impromptu duet.

"Work and play Make glad the day,"—

that seemed to be their philosophy, and Mabel and I were quite ready to agree with them, although we had been idling since the early dawn. But then it was so long since we had seen each other, that we thought we could afford it.

"Somehow," said Mabel at last (for she never could pout long at a time), "I don't like you so well since you came back from Germany. You are not as nice as you used to be. What did you go there for, anyway?"

"Why," I responded, quite seriously, "I went there to study; and I did learn a good deal there, although naturally I was not as industrious as I might have been."

"I can readily believe that. But, tell me, what did you learn that you mightn't just as well have learned at home?"

I thought it was no use in being serious any longer; so I tossed a pebble into the water, glanced up into Mabel's face and answered gayly:

"Well, I learned something about gnomes and pigmies and elves and fairies and salamanders, and—"

"And what?" interrupted Mabel, impatiently.

"And salamanders," repeated I. "You know the forests and rivers and mountains of Germany are full of all sorts of strange sprites, and you know the people believe in them, and that is one of the things which make life in the Old World so fascinating. But here we are too prosy and practical and business-like, and we don't believe in anything except what we can touch with our hands, and see with our eyes, and sell for money."

"Now, Jamie, that is not true," responded Mabel, energetically; for she was a strong American at heart, and it didn't take much to rouse her. "I believe, for instance, that you know a great deal although not as much as my father; but I can't see your learning with my eyes, neither can I touch it with my hands—"

"But I hope I can sell it for money," interrupted I, laughing.

"No, joking aside. I don't think we are quite as bad as you would like to make us out."

"And then you think, perhaps, that the gnomes and river-sprites would be as apt to thrive here as in the Old World?"

"Who knows?" said Mabel, with an expression that seemed to me half serious and half playful. "But I wish you would tell me something about your German sprites. I am so very ignorant in such things, you know."

I stretched myself comfortably on the edge of the shawl at Mabel's feet, and began to tell her the story about the German peasant who caught the gnome that had robbed his wheat-field.

"The gnomes wear tiny red caps," I went on, "which make them invisible. They are called tarn-caps, or caps of darkness. The peasant that I am telling about had a suspicion that it was the gnomes who had been stealing his wheat. One evening, he went out after sunset (for the gnomes never venture out from their holes until the sun is down) and began to fight in the air with his cane about the borders of the field. Then suddenly he saw a very tiny man with knee-breeches and large frightened eyes, turning a somersault in the grass right at his feet. He had struck off his cap, and then, of course, the gnome was no longer invisible. The peasant immediately seized the cap and put it into his pocket; the gnome begged and implored to get it back, but instead of that, the peasant caught him up in his arms and carried him to his house, where he kept him as a captive until the other gnomes sent a herald to him and offered him a large ransom. Then the gnome was again set free and the peasant made his fortune by the transaction."

"Wouldn't it be delightful if such things could ever happen here?" exclaimed Mabel, while her beautiful eyes shone with pleasure at the very thought.

"I should think so," said I. "It is said, too, that if there are gnomes and elves in the neighborhood, they always gather around you when you talk about them."

"Really?" And Mabel sent a timid glance in among the large mossy trunks of the beeches and pines.

"Tell me something more, Jamie," she demanded, eagerly.

Mabel had such a charming way of saying "Jamie," that I could never have opposed a wish of hers, whatever it might be. The professor called me James, and among my friends I was Jim; but it was only Mabel who called me Jamie. So I told her all I knew about the nixies, who sang their strange songs at midnight in the water; about the elves, who lived in the roses and lilies, and danced in a ring around the tall flowers until the grass never grew there again; and about the elf-maiden who led the knight astray when he was riding to his bride on his wedding-day. And all the while Mabel's eyes seemed to be growing larger; the blood burned in her cheeks, and sometimes she shuddered, although the afternoon was very warm. When I had finished my tale, I rose and seated myself at her side. The silence suddenly seemed quite oppressive; it was almost as if we could hear it. For some reason neither Mabel nor I dared to speak; but we both strained our ears listening to something, we did not know what. Then there came a strange soft whisper which filled the air all about us, and I thought I heard somebody calling my name.

"They are calling you, Jamie," whispered Mabel.

"Calling me? Who?" said I.

"Up there in the tree. No, not there. It is down in the brook. Everywhere."

"Oh," cried I, with a forced laugh. "We are two great children, Mabel. It is nothing."

Suddenly all was silent once more; but the wood-stars and violets at my feet gazed at me with such strange, wistful eyes, that I was almost frightened.

"You shouldn't have done that, Jamie," said Mabel. "You killed them."

"Killed what?"

"The voices, the strange, small voices."

"My dear girl," said I, as I took Mabel's hands and helped her to rise. "I am afraid we are both losing our senses. Come, let us go. The sun is already down. It must be after tea-time."

"But you know we were talking about them," whispered she, still with the same fascinated gaze in her eyes. "Ah, there, take care! Don't step on that violet. Don't you see how its mute eyes implore you to spare its life?"

"Yes, dear, I see," answered I; and I drew Mabel's arm through mine, and we hurried down the wood-path, not daring to look back, for we had both a feeling as if some one was walking close behind us, in our steps.

II.

It was a little after ten, I think, when I left the professor's house, where I had been spending the evening, and started on my homeward way.

As I walked along the road the thought of Mabel haunted me. I wondered whether I ever should be a professor, like her father, and ended with concluding that the next best thing to being one's self a professor would be to be a professor's son-in-law. But, somehow, I wasn't at all sure that Mabel cared anything about me.

"Things are not what they seem," I murmured to myself, "and the real Mabel may be a very different creature from the Mabel whom I know."

There was not much comfort in that thought, but nevertheless I could not get rid of it. I glanced up to the big round face of the moon, which had a large ring of mist about its neck; and looking more closely I thought I saw a huge floundering body, of which the moon was the head, crawling heavily across the sky, and stretching a long misty arm after me. I hurried on, not caring to look right or left; and I suppose I must have taken the wrong turn, for as I lifted my eyes, I found myself standing under the willow-tree at the creek where Mabel and I had been sitting in the afternoon. The locusts, with their shrill metallic voices, kept whirring away in the grass, and I heard their strange hissing sh-h-h-h-h, now growing stronger, then weakening again, and at last stopping abruptly, as if to say: "Didn't I do well?" But the blue-eyed violets shook their heads, and that means in their language: "No, I don't think so at all." The water, which descended in three successive falls into the wide, dome-shaped gorge, seemed to me, as I stood gazing at it, to be going the wrong way, crawling, with eager, foamy hands, up the ledges of the rock to where I was standing.

"I must certainly be mad," thought I, "or I am getting to be a poet."

In order to rid myself of the painful illusion, which was every moment getting more vivid, I turned my eyes away and hurried up along the bank, while the beseeching murmur of the waters rang in my ears.

As I had ascended the clumsy wooden stairs which lead up to the second fall, I suddenly saw two little blue lights hovering over the ground directly in front of me.

"Will-o'-the-wisps," said I to myself. "The ground is probably marshy."

I pounded with my cane on the ground, but, as I might have known, it was solid rock. It was certainly very strange. I flung myself down behind the trunk of a large hemlock. The two blue lights came hovering directly toward me. I lifted my cane,—with a swift blow it cut the air, and,—who can imagine my astonishment? Right in front of me I saw a tiny man, not much bigger than a good-sized kitten, and at his side lay a small red cap; the cap, of course, I immediately snatched up and put it in a separate apartment in my pocket-book to make sure that I should not lose it. One of the lights hastened away to the rocks and vanished before I could overtake it.

There was something so very funny in the idea of finding a gnome in the State of New York, that the strange fear which had possessed me departed and I felt very much inclined to laugh. My blow had quite stunned the poor little creature; he was still lying half on his back, as if trying to raise himself on his elbows, and his large black eyes had a terrified stare in them, and seemed to be ready to spring out of their sockets.

"Give—give me back my cap," he gasped at last, in a strange metallic voice, which sounded to me like the clinking of silver coins.

"Not so fast, my dear," said I. "What will you give me for it?"

"Anything," he cried, as he arose and held out his small hand.

"Then listen to me," continued I. "Can you help me to see things as they are? In that case I shall give you back your cap, but on no other condition."

"See things as they are?" repeated the gnome, wonderingly.

"Yes, and not only as they seem," rejoined I, with emphasis.

"Return here at midnight," began he, after a long silence. "Upon the stone where you are sitting you shall find what you want. If you take it, leave my cap on the same spot."

"That is a fair bargain," said I. "I shall be here promptly at twelve. Good-night."

I had extended my palm to shake hands with my new friend, but he seemed to resent my politeness; with a sort of snarl, he turned a somersault and rolled down the hill-side to where the rocks rise from the water.

I need not say that I kept my promise about returning. And what did I find? A pair of spectacles of the most exquisite workmanship; the glasses so clear as almost to deceive the sight, and the bows of gold spun into fine elastic threads.

"We shall soon see what they are good for," thought I, as I put them into the silver case, the wonderful finish of which I could hardly distinguish by the misty light of the moon.

The little tarn-cap I, of course, left on the stone. As I wandered homeward through the woods, I thought, with a certain fierce triumph, that now the beauty of Mabel's face should no more deceive me.

"Now, Mabel," I murmured, "now I shall see you as you are."

III.

At three o'clock in the afternoon I knocked at the door of the professor's study.

"Come in," said the professor.

"Is—is Mabel at home?" asked I, when I had shaken hands with the professor and seated myself in one of his hard, straight-backed chairs.

"She will be down presently," answered he "There is The Nation. You may amuse yourself with that until she comes."

I took up the paper; but the spectacles seemed to be burning in my breast-pocket, and although I stared intently at the print, I could hardly distinguish a word. What if I tried the power of the spectacles on the professor? The idea appeared to me a happy one, and I immediately proceeded to put it into practice. With a loudly beating heart, I pulled the silver case from my pocket, rubbed the glasses with my handkerchief, put them on my nose, adjusted the bows behind my ears, and cast a stealthy glance at the professor over the edge of my paper. But what was my horror! It was no longer the professor at all. It was a huge parrot, a veritable parrot in slippers and dressing-gown! I dared hardly believe my senses. Was the professor really not a man, but a parrot? My dear trusted and honored teacher, whom I had always looked upon as the wisest and most learned of living men, could it be possible that he was a parrot? And still there he sat, grave and sedate, a pair of horn spectacles on his large, crooked beak, a few stiff feathers bristling around his bald crown, and his small eyes blinking with a sort of meaningless air of confidence, as I often had seen a parrot's eyes doing.

"My gnome has been playing a trick on me," I thought. "This is certainly not to see things as they are. If I only had his tarn-cap once more, he should not recover it so cheaply."

"Well, my boy," began the professor, as he wheeled round in his chair, and knocked the ashes out of his pipe on the polished andirons which adorned the empty fire-place. "How is the world using you? Getting over your German whims, eh?"

Surely the spectacles must in some mysterious way have affected my ears too. The professor's voice certainly did sound very curious—very much like the croak of some bird that had learned human language, but had no notion of what he was saying. The case was really getting serious. I threw the paper away, stared my teacher full in the face, but was so covered with confusion that I could hardly utter two coherent words.

"Yes, yes,—certainly,—professor," I stammered. "German whims?—I mean things as they are—and—and not as they seem—das Ding an sich—beg your pardon—I am not sure, I—I comprehended your meaning—beg your pardon?"

"My dear boy," croaked the professor, opening his beak in great bewilderment, and showing a little thick red tongue, which curved upward like that of a parrot, "you are certainly not well. Mabel! Mabel! Come down! James is ill! Yes, you certainly look wretchedly. Let me feel your pulse."

I suppose my face must have been very much flushed, for the blood had mounted to my head and throbbed feverishly in my temples. As I heard the patter of Mabel's feet in the hall, a great dread came over me. What if she too should turn out to be somebody else—a strange bird or beast? No, not for all the world would I see Mabel—the dear, blessed Mabel—any differently from what she had always seemed to me. So I tore the spectacles from my nose, and crammed them into the case, which again I thrust into my pocket. In the same instant Mabel's sweet face appeared in the door.

"Did you call me, papa?" she said; then, as she saw me reclining on the sofa, where her father (now no longer a parrot) had forced me to lie down, there came a sudden fright into her beautiful eyes, and she sprang to my side and seized my hand in hers.

"Are you ill, Jamie?" she asked, in a voice of unfeigned anxiety, which went straight to my heart. "Has anything happened to you?"

"Hush, hush!" said the professor. "Don't make him speak. It might have proved a serious attack. Too much studying, my dear—too much studying. To be sure, the ambition of young men nowadays is past belief. It was different in my youth. Then, every young man was satisfied if he could only make a living—found a home for himself, and bring up his family in the fear of God. But now, dear me, such things are mere nursery ambitions."

I felt wretched and guilty in my heart! To be thus imposing upon two good people, who loved me and were willing to make every sacrifice for my comfort! Mabel had brought a pillow, and put it under my head; and now she took out some sort of crochet-work, and seated herself on a chair close by me. The professor stood looking at his watch and counting my pulse-beats.

"One hundred and five," he muttered, and shook his bald head. "Yes, he has fever. I saw it at once, as he entered the room."

"Professor," I cried out, in an agony of remorse, "really I meant nothing by it. I know very well that you are not a parrot—that you are—"

"I—I—a parrot!" he exclaimed, smiling knowingly at Mabel. "No, I should think not. He is raving, my dear. High fever. Just what I said. Won't you go out and send Maggie for the doctor? No, stop, I shall go myself. Then he will be sure to come without delay. It is high time."

The professor buttoned his coat up to his chin, fixed his hat at the proper angle on the back of his head, and departed in haste.

"How do you feel now, Jamie dear?" said Mabel, after awhile.

"I am very well, I thank you, Mabel," answered I. "In fact, it is all nonsense. I am not sick at all."

"Hush, hush! you must not talk so much," demanded she, and put her hand over my mouth.

My excitement was now gradually subsiding, and my blood was returning to its usual speed.

"If you don't object, Mabel," said I, "I'll get up and go home. There's nothing whatever the matter with me."

"Will you be a good boy and keep quiet," rejoined she, emphasizing each word by a gentle tap on my head with her crochet-needle.

"Well, if it can amuse you to have me lying here and playing sick," muttered I, "then, of course, I will do anything to please you."

"That is right," said she, and gave me a friendly nod.

So I lay still for a long while, until I came once more to think of my wonderful spectacles, which had turned the venerable professor into a parrot. I thought I owed Mabel an apology for what I had done to her father, and I determined to ease my mind by confiding the whole story to her.

"Mabel," I began, raising myself on my elbow, "I want to tell you something, but you must promise me beforehand that you will not be angry with me."

"Angry with you, Jamie?" repeated she, opening her bright eyes wide in astonishment. "I never was angry with you in my life."

"Very well, then. But I have done something very bad, and I shall never have peace until I have confided it all to you. You are so very good, Mabel. I wish I could be as good as you are."

Mabel was about to interrupt me, but I prevented her, and continued:

"Last night, as I was going home from your house, the moonlight was so strangely airy and beautiful, and without quite intending to do it, I found myself taking a walk through the gorge. There I saw some curious little lights dancing over the ground, and I remembered the story of the peasant who had caught the gnome. And do you know what I did?"

Mabel was beginning to look apprehensive.

"No, I can't imagine what you did," she whispered.

"Well, I lifted my cane, struck at one of the lights, and, before I knew it, there lay a live gnome on the ground, kicking with his small legs."

"Jamie! Jamie!" cried Mabel, springing up and gazing at me, as if she thought I had gone mad.

Then there was an unwelcome shuffling of feet in the hall, the door was opened, and the professor entered with the doctor.

"Papa, papa!" exclaimed Mabel, turning to her father. "Do you know what Jamie says? He says he saw a gnome last night in the gorge, and that—"

"Yes, I did!" cried I, excitedly, and sprang up to seize my hat. "If nobody will believe me, I needn't stay here any longer. And if you doubt what I have been saying, I can show you—"

"My dear sir," said the doctor.

"My dear boy," chimed in the professor, and seized me round the waist to prevent me from escaping.

"My dear Jamie," implored Mabel, while the tears started to her eyes, "do keep quiet, do!"

The doctor and the professor now forced me back upon the sofa, and I had once more to resign myself to my fate.

"A most singular hallucination," said the professor, turning his round, good-natured face to the doctor. "A moment ago he observed that I was not a parrot, which necessarily must have been suggested by a previous hallucination that I was a parrot."

The doctor shook his head and looked grave.

"Possibly a very serious case," said he, "a case of ——," and he gave it a long Latin name, which I failed to catch. "It is well that I was called in time. We may still succeed in mastering the disease."

"Too much study?" suggested the professor. "Restless ambition? Night labor—severe application?"

The doctor nodded and tried to look wise. Mabel burst into tears, and I myself, seeing her distress, could hardly refrain from weeping. And still I could not help thinking that it was very sweet to see Mabel's tears flowing for my sake.

The doctor now sat down and wrote a number of curiously abbreviated Latin words for a prescription, and handed it to the professor, who folded it up and put it into his pocket-book.

Half an hour later, I lay in a soft bed with snowy-white curtains, in a cozy little room upstairs. The shades had been pulled down before the windows, a number of medicine bottles stood on a chair at my bedside, and I began to feel quite like an invalid—and all because I had said (what nobody could deny) that the professor was not a parrot.

IV.

I soon learned that the easiest way to recover my liberty was to offer no resistance, and to say nothing more about the gnome and the spectacles. Mabel came and sat by my bedside for a few hours every afternoon, and her father visited me regularly three times a day, felt my pulse and gave me a short lecture on moderation in study, on the evil effects of ambition, and on the dangerous tendencies of modern speculation.

The gnome's spectacles I kept hidden under my pillow, and many a time when Mabel was with me I felt a strong temptation to try their effect upon her. Was Mabel really as good and beautiful as she seemed to me? Often I had my hand on the dangerous glasses, but always the same dread came over me, and my courage failed me. That sweet, fair, beautiful face,—what could it be, if it was not what it seemed? No, no, I loved Mabel too well as she seemed, to wish to know whether she was a delusion or a reality. What good would it do me if I found out that she too was a parrot, or a goose, or any other kind of bird or beast? The fairest hope would go out of my life, and I should have little or nothing left worth living for. I must confess that my curiosity often tormented me beyond endurance, but, as I said, I could never muster courage enough either to conquer it or to yield to it. Thus, when at the end of a week I was allowed to sit up, I knew no more about Mabel's real character than I had known before. I saw that she was patient, kind-hearted, sweet-tempered,—that her comings and goings were as quiet and pleasant as those of the sunlight which now stole in unhindered and again vanished through the uncurtained windows. And, after all, had I not known that always? One thing, however, I now knew better than before, and that was that I never could love anybody as I loved Mabel, and that I hoped some time to make her my wife.

A couple of days elapsed, and then I was permitted to return to my own lonely rooms. And very dreary and desolate did they seem to me after the pleasant days I had spent, playing sick, with Mabel and the professor. I did try once or twice the effect of my spectacles on some of my friends, and always the result was astonishing. Once I put them on in church, and the minister, who had the reputation of being a very pious man, suddenly stood before me as a huge fox in gown and bands. His voice sounded like a sort of a bark, and his long snout opened and shut again in such a funny fashion that I came near laughing aloud. But, fortunately, I checked myself and looked for a moment at a couple of old maids in the pew opposite. And, whether you will believe me or not, they looked exactly like two dressed-up magpies, while the stout old gentleman next to them had the appearance of a sedate and pious turkey-cock. As he took out his handkerchief and blew his nose—I mean his bill—the laughter again came over me, and I had to stoop down in the pew and smother my merriment. An old chum of mine, who was a famous sportsman and a great favorite with the ladies, turned out to be a bull-dog, and as he adjusted his neck-tie and pulled up his collar around his thick, hairy neck, I had once more to hide my face in order to preserve my gravity.

I am afraid, if I had gone on with my observations, I should have lost my faith in many a man and woman whom I had previously trusted and admired, for they were probably not all as good and amiable as they appeared. However, I could not help asking myself, as Mabel had done, what good such a knowledge would, in the end, do me. Was it not better to believe everybody good, until convinced to the contrary, than to distrust everybody and by my suspicion do injustice to those who were really better than they seemed? After all, I thought, these spectacles are making me morbid and suspicious; they are a dangerous and useless thing to possess. I will return them to their real owner.

This, then, was my determination. A little before sunset I started for the gorge, and on my way I met a little girl playing with pebbles at the roadside. My curiosity once more possessed me. I put on the gnome's spectacles and gazed intently at the child. Strange to say no transformation occurred. I took off the glasses, rubbed them with my handkerchief, and put them on once more. The child still remained what it seemed—a child; not a feature was changed. Here, then, was really a creature that was neither more nor less than it seemed. For some inconceivable reason the tears started to my eyes; I took the little girl up in my arms and kissed her. My thoughts then naturally turned to Mabel; I knew in the depth of my heart that she, too, would have remained unchanged. What could she be that was better than her own sweet self—the pure, the beautiful, the blessed Mabel?

When the sun was well set, I sat down under the same hemlock-tree where I had first met the gnome. After half an hour's waiting I again saw the lights advancing over the ground, struck at random at one of them and the small man was once more visible. I did not seize his cap, however, but addressed him in this manner:

"Do you know, you curious Old World sprite, what scrapes your detestable spectacles brought me into? Here they are. Take them back. I don't want to see them again as long as I live."

In the next moment I saw the precious glasses in the gnome's hand, a broad, malicious grin distorted his features, and before I could say another word, he had snatched up his cap and vanished.

A few days later, Mabel, with her sweet-brier dress on, was again walking at my side along the stream in the gorge, and somehow our footsteps led us to the old willow-tree where we had had out talk about the German gnomes and fairies.

"Suppose, Jamie," said Mabel, as we seated ourselves on the grass, "that a good fairy should come to you and tell you that your highest wish should be fulfilled. What would you then ask?"

"I would ask," cried I, seizing Mabel's hand "that she would give me a good little wife, with blue eyes and golden hair, whose name should be Mabel."

Mabel blushed crimson and turned her face away from me to hide her confusion.

"You would not wish to see things as they are, then," whispered she, while the sweetest smile stole over her blushing face.

"Oh, no, no!" exclaimed I. "But what would you ask, Mabel?"

"I," answered she, "would ask the fairy to give me a husband who loved me well, if—if his name was—Jamie."

A little before supper-time we both stole on tip-toe into the professor's study. He was writing, as usual, and did not notice us. Mabel went up to his chair from behind and gently put her hands over his eyes, and asked if he could guess who it was. He, of course, guessed all the names he could think of, except the right one.

"Papa," said Mabel, at last, restoring to him once more the use of his eyes, "Jamie and I have something we want to tell you."

"And what is it, my dear?" asked the professor, turning round on his chair, and staring at us as if he expected something extraordinary.

"I don't want to say it aloud," said Mabel. "I want to whisper it."

"And I, too," echoed I.

And so we both put our mouths, one on each side, to the professor's ears, and whispered.

"But," exclaimed the old man, as soon as he could recover his breath, "you must bear in mind that life is not a play,—that—that life is not what it seems—"

"No, but Mabel is," said I.

"Is,—is what?"

"What she seems," cried I.

And then we both laughed; and the professor kissed Mabel, shook my hand, and at last all laughed.



HOW MR. STORM MET HIS DESTINY.

I.

Huet' dich vor Maegdelein, Soehnelein, Soehnelein.—HEINE.

I do not know why people always spoke of my friend Edmund Storm as a confirmed bachelor, considering the fact that he was not far on the shady side of thirty. It is true, he looked considerably older, and had to all appearances entered that bloomless and sapless period which with women is called "uncertain age." Nevertheless, I had a private conviction that Storm might some fine day shed this dry and shrunken chrysalis, and emerge in some brilliant and unexpected form. I cannot imagine what ground I had for such a belief; I only know that I always felt called upon to combat the common illusion that he was by nature and temperament set apart for eternal celibacy, or even that he had ceased to be agitated by matrimonial aspirations. I dimly felt that there was a sort of refined cruelty in thus excluding a man from the common lot of the race; men often have pity but seldom love for those who either from eccentricity or peculiar excellence separate themselves from the broad, warm current of human life, having no part in the errors, ideals, and aspirations of their more commonplace brethren. Even a slight deviation from the physical type of common manhood and womanhood, as for instance, the possession of a sixth toe or finger, would in the eyes of the multitude go far toward making a man morally objectionable. It was, perhaps, because I wished to save my friend Storm from this unenviable lot that I always contended that he was yet a promising candidate for matrimony.

Edmund Storm was a Norseman by birth, but had emigrated some five or six years before I made his acquaintance. Our first meeting was brought about in rather a singular manner. I had written an article in one of our leading newspapers, commenting upon the characteristics of our Scandinavian immigrants and indulging some fine theories, highly eulogistic of the women of my native land. A few days after the publication of this article, my pride was seriously shocked by the receipt of a letter which told me in almost so many words that I was a conceited fool, with opinions worthy of a bedlam. The writer, who professed to be better informed, added his name and address, and invited me to call upon him at a specified hour, promising to furnish me with valuable material for future treatises on the same subject. My curiosity naturally piqued, and, swallowing my humiliation I determined to obey the summons. I found some satisfaction in the thought that my unknown critic resided in a very unfashionable neighborhood, and mentally put him down as one of those half-civilized boors whom the first breath of our republican air had inflated a good deal beyond their natural dimensions. I was therefore somewhat disconcerted when, after having climbed half a dozen long staircases, I was confronted with a pale, thin man, of calm, gentlemanly bearing, with the unmistakable stamp of culture upon his brow. He shook my hand with grave politeness, and pointing to a huge arm-chair of antediluvian make, invited me to be seated. The large, low-ceiled room was filled with furniture of the most fantastic styles;—tables and chairs with twisted legs and scrolls of tarnished gilt; a solid-looking, elaborately carved chiffonier, exhibiting Adam and Eve in airy dishabille, sowing the seeds of mischief for an unborn world; a long mirror in broad gilt frame of the most deliciously quaint rococo, calling up the images of slim, long-waisted ladies and powdered gentlemen with wristbands of ancient lace, silk stockings, and gorgeous coats, a la Louis XV. The very air seemed to be filled with the vague musty odor of by-gone times, and the impression grew upon me that I had unawares stepped into a lumber-room, where the eighteenth century was stowed away for safe-keeping.

"You see I have a weakness for old furniture," explained my host, while his rigid features labored for an instant to adjust themselves into something resembling a smile. I imagined I could hear them creaking faintly in the effort like tissue-paper when crumpled by an unwary hand. I almost regretted my rudeness in having subjected him to the effort. I noticed that he spoke with a slow, laborious enunciation, as if he were fashioning the words carefully in his mouth before making up his mind to emit them. His thin, flexible lips seemed admirably adapted for this purpose.

"It is the only luxury I allow myself," he continued, seeing that I was yet ill at ease. "My assortment, as you will observe, is as yet a very miscellaneous one, and I do not know that I ever shall be able to complete it."

"You are a fortunate man," remarked I, "who can afford to indulge such expensive tastes."

"Expensive," he repeated musingly, as if that idea had never until then occurred to him. "You are quite mistaken. Expensive, as I understand the term, is not that which has a high intrinsic worth, but that which can only be procured at a price considerably above its real value. In this sense, a hobby is not an expensive thing. It is, as I regard it, one of the safest investments life has to offer. An unambitious man like myself, without a hobby, would necessarily be either an idler or a knave. And I am neither the one nor the other. The truth is, my life was very poorly furnished at the start, and I have been laboring ever since to supply the deficiency. I am one of those crude colorless, superfluous products which Nature throws off with listless ease in her leisure moments when her thoughts are wandering and her strength has been exhausted by some great and noble effort."

Mr. Storm uttered these extraordinary sentiments, not with a careless toss of the head, and loud demonstrative ardor, but with a grave, measured intonation, as if he were reciting from some tedious moral book recommended by ministers of the gospel and fathers of families. His long, dry face, with its perpendicular wrinkles, and the whole absurd proportion between his longitude and latitude, suggested to me the idea that Nature had originally made him short and stout, and then, having suddenly changed her mind, had subjected him to a prolonged process of stretching in order to adapt him to the altered type. I had no doubt that if I could see those parts of his body which were now covered, they would show by longitudinal wrinkles the effects of this hypothetical stretching. His features in their original shape may have been handsome, although I am inclined to doubt it; there were glimpses of fine intentions in them, but, as a whole, he was right in pronouncing them rather a second-rate piece of workmanship. His nose was thin, sharp, and aquiline, and the bone seemed to exert a severe strain upon the epidermis, which was stretched over the projecting bridge with the tensity of a drum-head. I will not reveal what an unpleasant possibility this niggardliness on Nature's part suggested to me. His eyes (the only feature in him which was distinctly Norse) were of a warm gray tint, and expressed frank severity. You saw at once that, whatever his eccentricities might be, here was a Norseman in whom there was no guile. It was these fine Norse eyes which at once prepossessed me in Storm's favor. They furnished me approximately with the key-note to his character; I knew that God did not expend such eyes upon any but the rarest natures. Storm's taste for old furniture was no longer a mystery; in fact, I began to suspect that there lurked a fantastic streak of some warm, deep-tinged hue somewhere in his bony composition, and my fingers began to itch with the desire to make a psychological autopsy.

"Apropos of crude workmanship," began my host after a pause, during which he had been examining his long fingers with an air of criticism and doubtful approbation. "You know why I wrote to you?"

I confessed that I was unable to guess his motive.

"Well, then, listen to me. Your article was written with a good deal of youthful power; but it was thoroughly false. You spoke of what you did not know. I thought it was my duty to guard you from future errors, especially as I felt that you were a young man standing upon the threshold of life, about to enter upon a career of great mischief or great usefulness. Then you are of my own blood—but there is no need of apologies. You have come, as I thought you would."

"It was especially my sentiments regarding Norsewomen, I believe, that you objected to," I said hesitatingly; for in spite of his fine eyes, my friend still impressed me as an unknown quantity, and I mentally labelled him x, and determined by slow degrees to solve his equation.

"Yes," he answered; "your sentiments about Norsewomen, or rather about women in general. They are made very much of the same stuff the world over. I do not mind telling you that I speak from bitter experience, and my words ought, therefore, to have the more weight."

"Your experience must have been very wide," I answered by way of pleasantry, "since, as you hint, it includes the whole world."

He stared for a moment, did not respond to my smile, but continued in the same imperturbable monotone:

"When God abstracted that seventh or ninth rib from Adam, and fashioned a woman of it, the result was, entre nous, nothing to boast of. I have ever ceased to regret that Adam did not wake up in time to thwart that hazardous experiment. It may have been necessary to introduce some tragic element into our lives, and if that was the intention, I admit that the means were ingenious. To my mind the only hope of salvation for the human race lies in its gradual emancipation from that baleful passion which draws men and women so irresistibly to each other. Love and reason in a well-regulated human being, form at best an armed neutrality, but can never cordially co-operate. But few men arrive in this life at this ideal state, and women never. As it is now, our best energies are wasted in vain endeavors to solve the matrimonial problem at the very time when our vitality is greatest and our strength might be expended with the best effect in the service of the race, for the advancement of science, art, or industry."

"But would you then abolish marriage?" I ventured to ask. "That would mean, as I understand it, to abolish the race itself."

"No," he answered calmly. "In my ideal state, marriage should be tolerated; but it should be regulated by the government, with a total disregard of individual preferences, and with a sole view to the physical and intellectual improvement of the race. There should be a permanent government commission appointed, say one in each State consisting of the most prominent scientists and moral teachers. No marriage should be legal without being approved and confirmed by them. Marriage, as it is at present, is, in nine cases out of ten, an unqualified evil; as Schopenhauer puts it, it halves our joys and doubles our sorrows—"

"And triples our expenses," I prompted, laughing.

"And triples our expenses," he repeated gravely. "Talk about finding your affinity and all that sort of stuff! Supposing the world to be a huge bag, as in reality it is; then take several hundred million blocks, representing human beings, and label each one by pairs, giving them a corresponding mark and color. Then shake the whole bag violently, and you will admit that the chances of an encounter between the two with the same label are extremely slim. It is just so with marriage. It is all chance—a heartless, aimless, and cruel lottery. There are more valuable human lives wrecked every hour of the day in this dangerous game than by all the vices that barbarism or civilization has ever invented."

I hazarded some feeble remonstrance against these revolutionary heresies (as I conceived them to be), but my opponent met me on all sides with his inflexible logic. We spent several hours together without at all approaching an agreement, and finally parted with the promise to dine together and resume the discussion the next day.

This was the beginning of my acquaintance with the pessimist, Edmund Storm.

II.

"Freundschaft, Liebe, Stein der Weisen, Diese Dreie hoert' ich preisen, Und ich pries und suchte sie, Aber ach! ich fand sie nie."—HEINE.

During the next two years there was never a week, and seldom a day, when I did not see Storm. We lunched together at a much-frequented restaurant not far from Wall street, and my friend's sarcastic epigrams would do much to reconcile me to my temperance habits by supplying in a more ethereal form the stimulants with which others strove to facilitate or to ruin their digestions.

"Existence is even at best a doubtful boon," he would say while he dissected his beefsteak with the seriousness of a scientific observer. "A man's philosophy is regulated by his stomach. No amount of stoicism can reconcile a man to dyspepsia. If our nationality were not by nature endowed with the digestion of a boa-constrictor, I should seriously consider the propriety of vanishing into the Nirvana."

I often wondered what could be the secret of Storm's liking for me; for that he liked me, in his own lugubrious fashion, there could be no doubt. As for myself, I never could determine how far I reciprocated his feeling. I should hardly say that I loved him, but his talk fascinated me, and it always irritated me to hear any one speak ill of him. He was the very opposite of what the world calls "a good fellow;" he did not slap you on the shoulder and salute you with a "Hallo, old boy!" and I am inclined to think that he would have promptly resented any undue familiarity. He was a man of the most exact habits, painfully conscientious in all his dealings, and absolutely devoid of vices, unless, indeed, his extravagance in the purchase of old furniture might be classed under that head. To people of slipshod habits, his painstaking exactness was of course highly exasperating, and I often myself felt that he was in need of a redeeming vice. If I could have induced him to smoke, take snuff, or indulge in a little innocent gambling, I believe it would have given me a good deal of satisfaction. Once, I remember, I exerted myself to the utmost to beguile him into taking a humorous view of a mendacious tramp, who, after having treated us to a highly pathetic autobiography, importuned us for a quarter. But no, Storm could see nothing but the moral hideousness of the man, lectured him severely, and would have sent him away unrewarded, if I had not temporarily suspended my principles.

During our continued intercourse, I naturally learned a good deal about my friend's previous life and occupation. He was of very good family, had enjoyed an excellent university education, and had the finest prospects of a prosperous career at home, when, as far as I could ascertain, he took a sudden freak to emigrate. He had inherited a modest fortune, and now maintained himself as cashier in a large tea importing house in the city. He read the newspapers diligently, apparently with a view to convincing himself of the universal wretchedness of mankind in general and the American people in particular, had a profound contempt for ambition of every sort, believed nothing that life could offer worthy of an effort, except—old furniture.

In the autumn of 187- he was taken violently ill with inflammation of the lungs, and I naturally devoted every evening to him that I could spare from my work. He suffered acutely, but was perfectly calm and hardly ever moved a muscle.

"I seldom indulge in the luxury of whining," he said to me once, as I was seated at his bedside. "But, if I should die, as I believe I shall, it would be a pity if the lesson of my life should be lost to humanity. It is the only valuable thing I leave behind me, except, perhaps, my furniture, which I bequeath to you."

He lay for a while looking with grave criticism at his long, lean fingers, and then told me the following story, of which I shall give a brief resume.

* * * * *

Some ten years ago, while he was yet in the university, he had made the acquaintance of a young girl, Emily Gerstad, the daughter of a widow in whose house he lived. She was a wild unruly thing, full of coquettish airs, frivolous as a kitten, but for all that, a phenomenon of most absorbing interest. She was a blonde of the purest Northern type, with a magnificent wealth of thick curly hair and a pair of blue eyes, which seemed capable of expressing the very finest things that God ever deposited in a woman's nature. It was useless to disapprove of her, and to argue with her on the error of her ways was a waste of breath: her moral nature was too fatally flexible. She could assume with astonishing facility a hundred different attitudes on the same question, and acted the penitent, the indifferent, the defiant, with such a perfection of art as really to deceive herself. And in spite of all this, poor Storm soon found that she had wound herself so closely about his heart, that the process of unwinding, as he expressed it, would require greater strength and a sterner philosophy than he believed himself to possess. He had always been shy of women, not because he distrusted them, but because he was painfully conscious of being, in point of physical finish, a second-rate article, a bungling piece of work, and naturally felt his disadvantages more keenly in the presence of those upon whom Nature had expended all her best art. He was, according to his own assertion, an idealist by temperament, and had kept a sacred chamber in his heart where the vestal fire burned with a pure flame. Now the deepest strata of his being were stirred, and he loved with an overwhelming fervor and intensity which fairly frightened him. In a moment of abject despair he proposed to Emily, and to his surprise was accepted. And what was more, it was no comedy on her part; he even now believed that she really loved him. All the turbulent forces of her being were toned down to a beautiful, womanly tenderness. She clung to him with a passionate devotion which seemed to be no less of a surprise to herself than it was to him—clung to his stronger self, perhaps, as a refuge from her own waywardness, listened with a sweet, shame-faced happiness to his bright plans for their common future, and shared his pleasures and his light disappointments with an ardor and an ever ready sympathy, as if her whole previous life had been an education for this one end—to be a perfect wife and to be his wife.

But alas, their happiness was of brief duration. At the end of a year he had finished his legal studies, and passed a brilliant examination. An excellent situation was obtained for him in a small town on the sea-coast, whither he removed and began to prepare for the foundation of his home. It was here he contracted his taste for quaint furniture, all that was now left to him of his happiness—nay, of his life. Suddenly, at the end of eight months, she ceased writing to him—a fact which after all, argued well for her sincerity; full of apprehension, he hastened to the capital and found her engaged to a young lieutenant,—a dashing, hare-brained fellow, covered all over with gilt embroidery, undeniably handsome, but otherwise of very little worth. At least that was Storm's impression of him; he may have done him injustice, he added, with his usual conscientiousness. A man who sees the whole structure of his life tumbling down over his head is not apt to take a charitable view of the author of the ruin. A week later, Storm was on his way to America,—that was the end of the story.

Yes, if my friend had died, according to his promise, the story would have ended here; but, as for once, he broke his word, I am obliged to add the sequel. I noticed that for some time after his recovery he kept shy of me. As he afterward plainly told me, he felt as if I had purloined a piece of his most precious private property, in sharing a grief which had hitherto been his own exclusive treasure.

III.

Fuercht' dich nicht, du liebes Kindchen, Vor der boesen Geister Macht; Tag und Nacht, du liebes Kindchen, Halten Engel bei dir Wacht.—HEINE.

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