University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
JUST IN TIME.

At the close of the day on which Dennis received his
promotion, and his horizon was widened so unexpectedly,
Mr. Ludolph in passing out, noticed him engaged as usual
on one of Pat Murphy's old tasks. He stopped and
spoke kindly,—

“Well, Fleet, where am I going to find a man to fill
your place made vacant to-day?”

“Would you be willing to listen to a suggestion from
me?”

“Certainly.”

“If a young boy was employed to black boots, run errands,
and attend to minor matters, I think that by
industry I might for a while fill both positions. In a short
time the furnace will require no further attention. I am
a very early riser, and think that by a little good management,
I can keep the store in order and still be on hand
to attend to my counter when customers are about.”

Mr. Ludolph was much pleased with the proposition,
and said promptly,

“You may try it Fleet, and I will pay you accordingly.
Do you know of a boy who will answer?”

“I think I do, sir. There is a German lad in my mission
class that has interested me very much. His father
is really a superior artist, but is throwing himself away
with drink, and his mother is engaged in an almost hopeless
effort to support the family. They have seen much
better days, and their life seems very hard in contrast with
the past.”

“Can we trust such a boy? Their very necessities
may lead to theft.”

“They are not of the thieving sort, sir. I am satisfied
that they would all starve rather than touch a penny that
did not belong to them.”

“Very well, then, let him come and see me; but I will
hold you responsible for him.”

Mr. Ludolph being in a good humor was disposed to
banter Dennis, so he said—

“Do you find time to be a missionary, also? Are you
not in danger of becoming a “jack at all trades?”

“I am not entitled to the first character, and hope to
shun the latter. I merely teach a dozen boys in a mission
school on Sundays.”

“When you ought to be taking a good long nap, or
off on the lake for fresh air and a change.”

“I should be dishonest if I spent my Sabbaths in that
way.”

“How so?”

“I should give the lie to my profession and belief. I
must drop the name of Christian when I live for myself.”

“And if you should drop it, do you think you would
be much the loser?”

“Yes sir,” said Dennis with quiet emphasis.

“You are expecting great reward in some sort of a
paradise, for your mission work, etc.?”

“Nothing done for God is forgotten or unrewarded.”

“Believing that, it seems to me that you are looking
after self-interest as much as the rest of us,” said his employer
with a shrewd smile.

Looking straight into Mr. Ludolph's eyes, Dennis said
earnestly—

“Without boasting, I think that I can say that I try to
serve you faithfully. If you could see my heart, I am
sure you would find gratitude for your kindness, part of

my motive, as well as my wages. In the same manner,
while I do not lose sight of the rich rewards God promises
and daily gives for the little I can do for Him, I am certain
that I can do much out of simple gratitude and love,
and ask no reward.

“Ignorance is certainly bliss in your case, young
man. Stick to your harmless superstition as long as you
can.”

And he walked away muttering “Delusion, delusion!
I have not said a word or done a thing for him in which I
had not in view my interests only, and yet the poor young
fool sees in the main disinterested kindness. Little
trouble have the wily priests in imposing on such victims,
and so they get their hard earned wages and set them
propagating the delusion in mission schools, when mind
and body need change and rest. Suppose there is a supreme
being in the universe, what a monstrous absurdity
to imagine that he would trouble himself to reward this
Yankee youth for teaching a dozen ragamuffins in a tenement
house mission school.”

Thus Mr. Ludolph's soliloquy proved that his own pride
and selfishness had destroyed the faculty by which he
could see God. The blind are not more oblivious to
color, than he to those divine qualities which are designed
to win and enchain the heart. A man may sadly mutilate
his own soul.

At a dinner-table where coarse abundance was conspicuously
absent, and a few delicate dishes of the
choicest viands made the bill of fare, Mr. Ludolph and
his daughter discussed the events of the day.

“I am glad,” said the latter, “that he is willing to fill
Pat's place, for he keeps everything so clean. A dusty
slovenly store is my abomination. Then it shows that he
has no silly, uppish notions so common to these Americans.
(Though born here, Miss Ludolph never thought
herself otherwise than a German lady of rank.) But I

do not wish to see him blacking boots again. Yet he is
an odd genius. How comically he looked bowing to me
with one of Mr. Schwartz's big boot describing a graceful
curve on a level with his head. Let old Schwartz black his
own boots. He ought to as a punishment for carrying
around so much leather. This Fleet must have seen
better days, for he is as different from Pat Murphy as
bronze from cast iron. He is like all Yankees, however,
sharp after the dollar, though he seems more willing to
work for it than most of them.”

“I'll wager you a pair of gloves,” said her father,
“that they get a good percentage of it down at the mission
school. He is just the subject for a cunning priest,
because he sincerely believes in their foolery. He belongs
to a tribe now nearly extinct, I imagine—the martyrs,
who in old-fashioned times, died for all sorts of
delusions.”

“How time mellows and changes everything. There
is something heroic and worthy of art in the ancient martyrdoms,
while nothing is more repulsive than modern
fanaticism. It is a shame, though, that this young man,
with mother and sisters to support, should be robbed of
his hard earnings as was Pat Murphy by his priest, and I
will try to open his eyes some day.”

“I predict for you no success.”

“Why so?—he seems intelligent.”

“I have not studied character all my life in vain. He
would regard you, my fair daughter, as the devil tempting
him in the form of an angel of light.”

“He had better not be so plain spoken as yourself.”

“O, no need of Fleet's speaking; his face is like the
open page of a book.”

“Indeed! a face like a sign-board is a most unfortunate
one, I should think.”

“Most fortunate for us. I wish I could read every
one as I can Fleet.”

“You trust no one, I believe, father.”

“I believe what I see and know.”

“I wish I had your power of seeing and knowing. But
how did he get his artistic knowledge and taste.”

“That I have not inquired into fully, as yet. I think
he has an unusual native aptness for these things, and
gains hints and instruction where others would see nothing.
And as you say, in the better days past he may have
had some advantages.”

“Well, said she, “if my greyhound, Wolf here should
go to the piano and execute an opera, I should not have
been more astonished than I was this morning.”

And then their conversation glided off on other topics.

After dessert, Mr. Ludolph lighted a cigar and sat
down to the evening paper, while his daughter went to
the piano and evoked from it true after-dinner music—
light, brilliant, mirth-inspiring. Then both adjourned to
their private billiard-room.

The scene of our story now changes from Mr. Ludolph's
luxurious apartments in one of the most fashionable
hotels in the city to a forlorn attic in De Kovan
street. It is the scene of a struggle as desperate, as
heroic, against as tremendous odds as was ever carried on
in the days of the Crusades. But as the foremost figure
in this long, weary conflict, was not an armed and panoplied
knight, but merely a poor German woman, only God
and the angels took much interest in it. Still upon this
evening she was almost vanquished. She seemed to have
but one vantage point left on earth. For a wonder, her
husband was comparatively sober, and sat brooding
with head in his hands over the stove where a fire was
slowly dying out. The last coal they had was fast turning
to ashes. From a cradle came a low, wailing cry. It was
that of hunger. On an old chest in a dusky corner sat a

boy about thirteen. Though all else was in shadow, his
large eyes shone with unnatural brightness, and followed
his mother's feeble efforts at the wash-tub with that expression
of premature sadness so pathetic in childhood. Under
a rickety deal table three other and smaller children
were devouring some crusts of bread in a ravenous way
like half-famished young animals. In a few moments they
came out and clamored for more, around—not their father;
no intuitive turning to him for support—but the poor over-tasked
mother. The boy came out of his corner and tried
to draw them off and interest them in something else, but
they were like a pack of hungry little wolves. The boy's
face was almost as sharp and famine-pinched as his mother's,
but he seemed to have lost all thought of himself in
his sorrowful regard for her. As the younger children
clamored and dragged upon her, the point of endurance
was passed, and the poor woman gave way. With a despairing
cry she sank upon a chair and covered her face
with her apron.

“O mine Gott, O mine Gott,” she cried, “I can do not
von more stroke if ve all die.”

In a moment her son had his arms around her neck,
and said—

“O moder, don't cry, don't cry. Mr. Fleet said, God
would surely help us in time of trouble if we would only
ask Him.”

“I've ask Him, and ask Him, but de help don't come.
I can do no more,” and a tempest of despairing sobs
shook her gaunt frame.

“The boy seemed to have got past tears, and just fixed
his large eyes, full of reproach and sorrow, on his father.

The man rose and turned his bloodshot eyes slowly
around the room. The whole scene, with its meaning,
seemed to dawn upon him. His mind was not so clouded
by the fumes of liquor but that he could comprehend the

supreme misery of the situation. He heard his children
crying—fairly howling for bread. He saw the wife he had
sworn to love and honor, where she had fallen in her unequal
conflict, brave, but overpowered. He remembered
the wealthy burgher's blooming, courted daughter, that he
had lured away to marry him, a poor artist. He remembered
how in spite of her father's commands and mother's
tears, she had left home and luxury to follow him throughout
the world because of her faith in him, and love for
him—how under her inspiration he had risen to great
promise as an artist till fame and fortune became almost
a certainty, and then under the debasing influence of his
terrible appetite, he had dragged her down and down, till
now, prematurely old, broken in health, broken in heart, he
saw her fall helplessly before the hard drudgery that she
no longer had strength to perform. With a sickening horror
he remembered that he had taken even the pittance
she had wrung from that washtub, not to feed his children,
but his accursed appetite for drink. Even his purple,
bloated face grew livid as all the past rushed upon him,
and despair laid an icy hand upon his heart.

A desperate purpose formed itself within his mind.

Turning to the wall where hung a noble picture, a
lovely landscape, whose rich coloring, warm sunlight, and
rural peace, formed a sharp, strange contrast with the
meagre, famine-stricken apartment, he was about to lift
it down from its fastening when his hand was arrested by
a word—

“Father!”

He turned, and saw his son looking at him with his
great eyes full of horror and alarm, as if he were committing
a murder.

“I tell you I must, and I vill,” said he savagely.

His wife looked up, sprang to his side, and with her
hands upon his arm, said,

“No, Berthold, you must not, you shall not sell dat
picture.”

He silently pointed to his children crying for bread.

“Take de dress off my back to sell, but not dat picture.
Ve may as well die before him goes, for ve certainly
vill after. Dat is de only ting left of de happy past.
Dat, in Gott's hands, is my only hope for de future. Dat
picture tells you vat you vas, vat you might be still if you
would only let drink alone. Many's de weary day, many's
de long night, I've prayed dat dat picture vould vin you
back to your former self, ven tears and suffering vere in
vain. Leave him, and some day he vill tell you so plain
vat you are, and vat you can be, dat you break de horrid
spell dat chains you, and your artist-soul come again.
Leave him, our only hope, and sole bar against despair
and death. I vill go and beg a tousand times before dat
picture's sold; for if he goes, your artist-soul no more
come back, and you're lost, and ve all are lost.”

The man hesitated. His good angel was pleading with
him, but in vain.

Stamping his foot with rage and despair, he shouted
hoarsely, “It is too late, I am lost now.”

And he tore the picture from its fastening. His wife
sank back against the wall with a groan as if her very soul
was departing.

But before his rash steps could leave the desolation he
had made, he was confronted by the tall form of Dennis
Fleet.

The man stared at him for a moment as if he had been
an apparition, and then said in a hard tone,—

“Let me pass!”

Dennis had knocked for some time, but such had been
the excitement within, no one had regarded. He had,
therefore, heard the wife's appeal and its answer, and from
what he knew of the family from his mission scholar, the

boy Ernst, comprehended the situation in the main. When,
therefore, matters reached the crisis, he opened the door
and met the infatuated man as he was about to throw
away the last relic of his former self and happier life.
With great tact he appeared as if he knew nothing, and
quietly taking a chair he sat down with his back against
the door, thus barring egress. In a pleasant, affable tone,
he said,—

“Mr. Bruder, I came to see you on a little business
to-night; as I was in something of a hurry, and no one
appearing to hear my knock, I took the liberty of coming
in.”

The hungry little ones looked at him with their round
eyes of children's curiosity, and for a time ceased their
clamors. The wife sank into a chair and bowed her head
in her hands with the indifference of despair. Hope had
gone. A gleam of joy lighted up Ernst's pale face at the
sight of his beloved teacher, and he stepped over to his
mother and commenced whispering in her ear, but she
heeded him not. The man's face wore a sullen, dangerous,
yet irresolute expression. It was evident that he
half believed that Dennis was knowingly trying to thwart
him, and such was his mad frenzy he was ready for any
desperate deed.