 | CHAPTER XXVIII.
MISS LUDOLPH COMMITS A THEFT. Barriers burned away |  |
28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
MISS LUDOLPH COMMITS A THEFT.
Mr. Ludolph on his return found Christine suffering
from a nervous horror of the small-pox. From her indiscreet
and callous maid, intent on her own safety, and preparing
to extenuate her own flight should her fears prove
true, Christine learned that the city was full of this loathsome
disease, and her feelings were harrowed by exaggerated
instances of its virulent and contagious character.
“But you will surely stay with me,” pleaded Christine.
“Mademoiselle could not expect dat.”
“Heartless!” muttered Christine. Then she said,
“Won't you go for Susie Winthrop? O how I would like
to see her now.”
“She vould not come, no von vould come who knew.”
Christine wrung her hands and cried, “O I shall die
alone and deserted of all.”
“No you shall not,” said her father, entering at that
moment; “so do not give way, my dear. Leave the room,
stupid!” (to the maid, who again gladly escaped, resolving
not to enter till the case was decided). “I have secured
the best of physicians, and the best of nurses, and by to-night
or to-morrow morning we will know about what to
expect. I cannot help hoping still that it is only a severe
cold.”
And he told her of Dennis' offer of his mother's services.
“I am sure I would like her, for somehow I picture to
myself a kind motherly person. What useful creatures
those Fleets are. They are on hand in emergencies when
one so needs help. It seemed very nice to have young
Fleet my humble servant; but really, father, he deserves
promotion.”
“He shall have it, and I doubt not will be just as
ready to do your bidding as ever. It is only commonplace
people whose heads are turned by a little prosperity.
Fleet knew he was a gentleman before he came to
the store.”
“Father, if I should have the small-pox and live, would
my beaut—would I become a fright?”
“Not necessarily. Let us hope for the best. Make
the most of the world, and never endure evils till they
come, are my maxims. Half of suffering is anticipation of
possible or probable evil.”
“Father,” said Christine abruptly, “I believe you are
right, you must be right, and have given me the best comfort
and hope that truthfully can be given. But this is a
strange cruel world. We seem the sport of circumstances,
the victims of hard, remorseless laws. One bad person
can frightfully injure another person” (a spasm distorted
her father's face). “What accidents may occur! Worst
of all are those horrible, subtle, contagious diseases which
none can see or guard against! Then to suffer, die, corrupt,—faugh!
To what a disgusting end, to what a lame
and impotent conclusion does the noble creature, man,
come! My whole nature revolts at it. For instance, here
am I a young girl, capable of the highest enjoyment, with
everything to live for, and lured forward by the highest
hopes and expectations; and yet in spite of all the safeguards
you can place around me, my path is in the midst
of dangers, and now perhaps I am to be rendered hideous,
fills me with loathing. What I fear has happened, and
may happen again. And what compensation is there for it
all?—what can enable one to bear it all? O that I could
believe in a God and a future happier life.”
“And what kind of a God would He be who, having
the power to prevent, permits, or orders, as the Bible
teaches, all these evils? I am a man of the world, and
pretend to nothing saint-like or chivalric, but do you think
I am capable of going to Mr. Winthrop and striking down
his daughter Susie with a loathsome disease? And yet if
a minister or priest should come here, he would begin to
talk about the mysterious providence, and submission to
God's will. If I am to have a God, I want one at least
better than myself.”
“You must be right,” said Christine, with a weary
moan. “There is no God, and if there were, in view of
what you say, I could only hate and fear Him. How chaotic
the world is! But it is hard.” After a moment she
added shudderingly, “It is horrible. I did not think of
these things when well.”
“Get well and forget them again, my dear. It is the
best you can do.”
“If I get well,” said Christine almost fiercely, “I shall
get the most I can out of life, cost what it may,” and she
turned her face to the wall.
A logical result of his teaching, but for some reason it
awakened in Mr. Ludolph a vague foreboding.
The hours dragged on, and late in the afternoon the
hard-driven physician appeared, examined his patient and
seemed relieved.
“If there is no change for the worse,” he said cheerily,
“if no new symptoms develop by to-morrow, I can pronounce
this merely a severe cold, caused by state of system
gave an opiate and bowed himself out.
Long and heavily Christine slept. The night that Dennis
filled with agonizing prayer and thought, was to her a
blank. While he in his strong Christian love brought
heaven nearer to her, while he resolved on that which would
give her a chance for life—happy life, here and hereafter,
she was utterly unconscious. No vision or presentiment
of good, like a struggling ray of light, found access to her
darkened spirit. So heavy was the stupor induced by the
opiate, that her sleep seemed like the blank she so feared,
when her pleasurable ambitious life should end in nothingness.
So I suppose God's love meditates good, and resolves
on life and joy for us, while our hearts are sleeping, dead
to Him—dead in trespasses and sins—benumbed and paralyzed
so that only His love can awaken them. Like a
vague yet hope-inspiring dream, this truth often enters the
minds of those who are wrapped in the spiritual lethargy
that may end in death. God wakes, watches, loves, and
purposes good for them. When most unconscious, perhaps
another effort for our salvation has been resolved
upon in the councils of heaven.
But ambition more than love, earthly hopes rather than
heavenly, kept Mr. Ludolph an anxious watcher at Christine's
side that night. A smile of satisfaction illumined
his somewhat haggard face as he saw the fever pass away
and the dew of natural moisture come out on Christine's
brow, but there was no thankful glance upward. Immunity
from loathsome disease was due only to chance and
the physician's skill, by his creed.
The sun was shining brightly when Christine awoke,
and by a faint call startled her father from a doze in the
great arm-chair.
“How do you feel, my dear?” he asked.
She languidly rubbed her heavy eyes, and said “she
thought she was better—she felt no pain.” The opiate
had not yet lost its effect. But soon she greatly revived,
and when the Doctor came he found her decidedly better,
and concluded that she was merely suffering from a severe
cold, and would soon regain her usual health.
Father and daughter were greatly relieved, and their
spirits rose.
“I really feel as if I ought to thank somebody,” said
Christine. “I am not going to thank the Doctor, for I
know what a bill is coming, so I will thank you. It was
very kind of you to sit up the long night with me.”
Even Mr. Ludolph had to remember that he had
thought as much of himself as of her, in his anxiety.
“Another lease of life,” said Christine, dreamily looking
into the future, “and as I said last night, I mean to
make the most of it.”
“I can best guide you in doing that,” said her father,
looking into his daughter's face with keen scrutiny.
“I believe you, and intend to give you the chance.
When can we leave this detested land, this city of shops
and speculators? To think that I, Christine Ludolph, am
sick, idle and perhaps have endangered all by reason of
foolish exposure in a Brewer's tawdry, money-splashed
house! Come, father, when is the next scene in the brief
drama to open? I am impatient to go home to our beloved
Germany and enter on real life.”
“Well, my dear, if all goes well, we can enter on our
true career a year from next Fall—a short year and a half.
Do not blame the delay, for it will enable us to live in Germany
in almost royal style. I never was making money
so rapidly as now. I have invested in that which cannot
depreciate, and thus far has advanced beyond belief—
me from twenty to a hundred per cent. At the same
time I could sell out in a month. So you see you have
only to coöperate—to preserve health and strength—to
enjoy all that money can insure; and money can buy
about everything.”
Christine's eyes sparkled as the future opened before
her, and she said with emphasis, “If I could preserve
health and strength, I would live a thousand years.”
“You can do much toward it. Every chance is in favor
of prudence and wise action;” and much relieved, her
father went to the store.
Business had accumulated, and in complete absorption
he gave himself to it. With an anxiety beyond
expression, Dennis, flushed and trembling, ventured to
approach.
Merely glancing to see who it was, Mr. Ludolph, with
his head bent over his writing, said:
“Miss Ludolph is better—no fear of small-pox, I
think—you need not write to your mother—greatly
obliged.”
It was well for Dennis that his employer did not
look up. The open face of Mr. Ludolph's clerk expressed
more than friendly interest in his daughter's health.
He went to his tasks with a mountain of fear lifted from
his heart.
But the thought of her lying alone and sick at the
hotel, seemed very pathetic to him. Love filled his heart
with more sympathy for Christine upon her luxurious
couch, in rapid convalescence, than for all the hopeless
suffering of Chicago. What could he do for her? She
seemed so far off, so high and distant, that he could not
reach her. If he ventured to send anything, prudence
whispered that she would regard it as an impertinence.
its Grand Vizier.
Going by a fruit-store in the afternoon he saw some
elegant strawberries, the first in from the South. He
bought a basket, decorated it with German ivy obtained
at a flower-stand, and spirited it up-stairs to his room as
if it were the most dangerous of contraband. In a disguised
hand he wrote on a card—“For Miss Ludolph.”
Calling Ernst, who had little to do at that hour of the day,
he said—
“Ernst, my boy, take this parcel to Le Grand Hotel,
and say it is for Miss Christine Ludolph. Tell them to
send it right up, but on no account—remember, on no
account, tell any one who sent it. Carry it carefully in just
this manner.”
Ernst was soon at his destination, eager to do anything
for his friend.
After all, the day had proved a long one for Christine.
Unaccustomed to the restraints of sickness, the enforced
inaction was very wearisome. Mind and body both
seemed weak. The sources of chief enjoyment when well,
seemed powerless to contribute much now. In silken
robe she reclined in arm-chair, or languidly sauntered about
the room. She took up a book only to throw it down
again. Her pencil fared no better. Ennui gave to her
fair young face the expression of one who had tried the
world for a century and found it wanting.
She was leaning her elbow on the window-sill, gazing
vacantly into the street, when Ernst appeared.
“Janette,” she said suddenly, “do you see that boy?
He is employed at the store; go bring him up here, I want
him,' and with more animation than she had shown that
day, she got out materials for a sketch.
“I must get that boy's face,” she said, “before good
living destroys all his artistic merit.”
Ernst was unwilling to come, but the maid almost dragged
him up.
“What have you got there?” asked Miss Ludolph with
a reassuring smile.
“Something for Miss Ludolph,” stammered the boy,
looking very embarrassed.
Christine carefully opened the parcel and then exclaimed
with delight:
“Strawberries, as I live! the very ambrosia of the gods.
Pa sent them, did he not?”
“No,” said the boy hanging his head.
“Who did, then?” said Christine looking at him keenly.
He shuffled uneasily but made no answer.
“Come, I insist on knowing,” she cried, her wilful
spirit and curiosity both aroused.
The boy was pale and frightened, and she was mentally
taking notes of his face.
But he said doggedly, “I can't tell.”
“But I say you must. Don't you know that I am Miss
Ludolph?”
“I don't care what you do to me,” said the little fellow,
beginning to cry, “I won't tell.”
“Why won't you tell, my boy?” said Christine cunningly
in a wheedling tone of voice.
Before he knew it, the frightened, bewildered boy fell
into the trap, and he sobbed:
“Because Mr. Fleet told me not to, and I wouldn't
disobey him to save my life.”
A look of surprise, and then a broad smile at the whole
thing, stole over the young girl's face,—at the gift, the
messenger, and at him who sent it. It was indeed a fresh
and unexpected little episode, breaking the monotony of
the day—as fresh and pleasing to her as one of the luscious
berries so grateful to her parched mouth.
“You need not tell me,” she said soothingly, “if Mr.
Fleet told you not to.”
The boy saw the smile, and in a moment realized that
he had been tricked out of the forbidden knowledge.
His little face glowed with honest indignation, and
looking straight at Miss Ludolph with his great eyes flashing
through the tears, he said:
“You stole that from me.”
Even she colored a little and bit her lip under the
merited charge. But all this made him all the more interesting
as an art study, and she was now sketching
away rapidly.
She coolly replied, however: “You don't know the
world very well, yet, my little man.”
The boy said nothing, but stood regarding her with his
unnaturally large eyes filled with anger, reproach, and
wonder.
“Oh,” thought Christine, “if I could only paint that
expression!”
“You seem a great friend of Mr. Fleet,” she said,
studying and sketching him as if he had been an inanimate
object.
The boy made no answer.
“Perhaps you do not know that I am a friend—friendly,”
she added, correcting herself, “to Mr. Fleet also.”
“Mr. Fleet never likes to have his friends do wrong,”
said the boy doubtingly.
Again she colored a little, for Ernst's pure and reproachful
face made her feel that she had done a mean
thing, but she laughed and said:
“You see I am not in his mission class, and have never
had the instruction that you have. But after all, why do
you think Mr. Fleet better than other people?”
“By what he does.”
“That is a fair test; what has he done?”
“He saved us all from starving, and worse than starving.”
Then with feminine tact she drew from him his story,
and it was told with the natural pathos of childhood and
deep feeling, and his gratitude caused him to dwell on the
part Dennis had taken with a simple eloquence, while his
rich and loved German accent made it all the more interesting
to Christine. She dropped her pencil, and when
he closed, her eyes, that were seldom moistened by the dew
of sympathy, were wet.
“Good-bye, my child,” she said in a voice so kind and
sweet that it seemed as if another person had spoken.
“You shall come again, and then I shall finish my sketch.
When I get well I shall go to see your father's picture.
Do not be afraid; neither you nor Mr. Fleet will be the
worse for the strawberries, and you may tell him that they
have done me much good.”
When Dennis, wondering at Ernst's long absence, heard
from him his story, his mind was in a strange tumult, and
yet the result of his effort seemed favorable. But he
learned more fully than ever that Christine was not perfect,
and that her faultless beauty and taste were but the
fair mask of a deformed spirit. But he dwelt in hope on
the feeling she had shown at Ernst's story.
“She seemed to have two hearts,” said the boy, “a
good, kind one way inside the cold, hard outside one.”
“That is about the truth,” thought Dennis. “Good-night,
Ernst. I don't blame you, my boy, For you did
the best you could.”
He had done better than Dennis knew.
| CHAPTER XXVIII.
MISS LUDOLPH COMMITS A THEFT. Barriers burned away | |