Stories of a Western Town Part 2

The dinner was more elaborate than common, and Thekla had broached a bottle of her currant wine. She gravely drank Lieders's health. "And many good days, papa," she said.

Lieders felt a queer movement of pity. After the table was cleared, he helped his wife to wash and wipe the dishes as his custom was of a Sunday or holiday. He wiped dishes as he did everything, neatly, slowly, with a careful deliberation. Not until the dishes were put away and the couple were seated, did Thekla speak.

"Kurt," she said, "I got to talk to you."

An inarticulate groan and a glance at the door from Lieders. "I just got to, papa. It aint righd for you to do the way you been doing for so long time; efery little whiles you try to kill yourself; no, papa, that aint righd!"

Kurt, who had gotten out his pencils and compa.s.ses and other drawing tools, grunted: "I got to look at my work, Thekla, now; I am too busy to talk."

"No, Kurt, no, papa"--the hands holding the blue ap.r.o.n that she was embroidering with white linen began to tremble; Lieders had not the least idea what a strain it was on this reticent, slow of speech woman who had stood in awe of him for eighteen years, to discuss the horror of her life; but he could not help marking her agitation. She went on, desperately: "Yes, papa, I got to talk it oud with you. You had ought to listen, 'cause I always been a good wife to you and nefer refused you notings. No."

"Well, I aint saying I done it 'cause you been bad to me; everybody knows we aint had no trouble."

"But everybody what don't know us, when they read how you tried to kill yourself in the papers, they think it was me. That always is so. And now I never can any more sleep nights, for you is always maybe git up and do something to yourself. So now, I got to talk to you, papa. Papa, how could you done so?"

Lieders twisted his feet under the rungs of his chair; he opened his mouth, but only to shut it again with a click of his teeth.

"I got my mind made up, papa. I tought and I tought. I know WHY you done it; you done it 'cause you and the boss was mad at each other. The boss hadn't no righd to let you go------"

"Yes, he had, I madded him first; I was a fool. Of course I knowed more than him 'bout the work, but I hadn't no right to go against him. The boss is all right."

"Yes, papa, I got my mind made up"--like most sluggish spirits there was an immense momentum about Thekla's mind, once get it fairly started it was not to be diverted--"you never killed yourself before you used to git mad at the boss. You was afraid he would send you away; and now you have sent yourself away you don't want to live, 'cause you do not know how you can git along without the shop. But you want to get back, you want to get back more as you want to kill yourself. Yes, papa, I know, I know where you did used to go, nights. Now"--she changed her speech unconsciously to the tongue of her youth--"it is not fair, it is not fair to me that thou shouldst treat me like that, thou dost belong to me, also; so I say, my Kurt, wilt thou make a bargain with me? If I shall get thee back thy place wilt thou promise me never to kill thyself any more?"

Lieders had not once looked up at her during the slow, difficult sentences with their half choked articulation; but he was experiencing some strange emotions, and one of them was a novel respect for his wife.

All he said was: "'Taint no use talking. I won't never ask him to take me back, once."

"Well, you aint asking of him. _I_ ask him. I try to git you back, once!"

"I tell you, it aint no use; I know the boss, he aint going to be letting womans talk him over; no, he's a good man, he knows how to work his business himself!"

"But would you promise me, Kurt?"

Lieders's eyes blurred with a mild and dreamy mist; he sighed softly.

"Thekla, you can't see how it is. It is like you are tied up, if I don't can do that; if I can then it is always that I am free, free to go, free to stay. And for you, Thekla, it is the same."

Thekla's mild eyes flashed. "I don't believe you would like it so you wake up in the morning and find ME hanging up in the kitchen by the clothes-line!"

Lieders had the air of one considering deeply. Then he gave Thekla one of the surprises of her life; he rose from his chair, he walked in his shuffling, unheeled slippers across the room to where the old woman sat; he put one arm on the back of the chair and stiffly bent over her and kissed her.

"Lieber Herr Je!" gasped Thekla.

"Then I shall go, too, pretty quick, that is all, mamma," said he.

Thekla wiped her eyes. A little pause fell between them, and in it they may have both remembered vanished, half-forgotten days when life had looked differently to them, when they had never thought to sit by their own fireside and discuss suicide. The husband spoke first; with a reluctant, half-shamed smile, "Thekla, I tell you what, I make the bargain with you; you git me back that place, I don't do it again, 'less you let me; you don't git me back that place, you don't say notings to me."

The ap.r.o.n dropped from the withered, brown hands to the floor. Again there was silence; but not for long; ghastly as was the alternative, the proposal offered a chance to escape from the terror that was sapping her heart.

"How long will you give me, papa?" said she.

"I give you a week," said he.

Thekla rose and went to the door; as she opened it a fierce gust of wind slashed her like a knife, and Lieders exclaimed, fretfully, "what you opening that door for, Thekla, letting in the wind? I'm so cold, now, right by the fire, I most can't draw. We got to keep a fire in the base-burner good, all night, or the plants will freeze."

Thekla said confusedly that something sounded like a cat crying. "And you talking like that it frightened me; maybe I was wrong to make such bargains------"

"Then don't make it," said Lieders, curtly, "I aint asking you."

But Thekla drew a long breath and straightened herself, saying, "Yes, I make it, papa, I make it."

"Well, put another stick of wood in the stove, will you, now you are up?" said Lieders, shrugging his shoulders, "or I'll freeze in spite of you! It seems to me it grows colder every minute."

But all that day he was unusually gentle with Thekla. He talked of his youth and the struggles of the early days of the firm; he related a dozen tales of young Lossing, all ill.u.s.trating some admirable trait that he certainly had not praised at the time. Never had he so opened his heart in regard to his own ideals of art, his own ambitions. And Thekla listened, not always comprehending but always sympathizing; she was almost like a comrade, Kurt thought afterward.

The next morning, he was surprised to have her appear equipped for the street, although it was bitterly cold. She wore her garb of ceremony, a black alpaca gown, with a white crocheted collar neatly turned over the long black, broadcloth cloak in which she had taken pride for the last five years; and her quilted black silk bonnet was on her gray head. When she put up her foot to don her warm overshoes Kurt saw that the stout ankles were encased in white stockings. This was the last touch.

"Gracious, Thekla," cried Kurt, "are you going to market this day? It is the coldest day this winter!"

"Oh, I don't mind," replied Thekla, nervously. Then she had wrapped a scarf about her and gone out while he was getting into his own coat, and conning a proffer to go in her stead.

"Oh, well, Thekla she aint such a fool like she looks!" he observed to the cat, "say, p.u.s.s.y, WAS it you out yestiddy?"

The cat only blinked her yellow eyes and purred. She knew that she had not been out, last night. Not any better than her mistress, however, who at this moment was hailing a street-car.

The street-car did not land her anywhere near a market; it whirled her past the lines of low wooden houses into the big brick shops with their arched windows and terra-cotta ornaments that showed the ambitious architecture of a growing Western town, past these into mills and factories and smoke-stained chimneys. Here, she stopped. An acquaintance would hardly have recognized her, her ruddy cheeks had grown so pale.

But she trotted on to the great building on the corner from whence came a low, incessant buzz. She went into the first door and ran against Carl Olsen. "Carl, I got to see Mr. Lossing," said she breathlessly.

"There ain't noding----"

"No, Gott sei dank', but I got to see him."

It was not Carl's way to ask questions; he promptly showed her the office and she entered. She had not seen young Harry Lossing half a dozen times; and, now, her anxious eyes wandered from one dapper figure at the high desks, to another, until Lossing advanced to her.

He was a handsome young man, she thought, and he had kind eyes, but they hardened at her first timid sentence: "I am Mrs. Lieders, I come about my man----"

"Will you walk in here, Mrs. Lieders?" said Lossing. His voice was like the ice on the window-panes.

She followed him into a little room. He shut the door.

Declining the chair that he pushed toward her she stood in the centre of the room, looking at him with the pleading eyes of a child.

"Mr. Lossing, will you please save my Kurt from killing himself?"

"What do you mean?" Lossing's voice had not thawed.

"It is for you that he will kill himself, Mr. Lossing. This is the dird time he has done it. It is because he is so lonesome now, your father is died and he thinks that you forget, and he has worked so hard for you, but he thinks that you forget. He was never tell me till yesterday; and then--it was--it was because I would not let him hang himself----"

"Hang himself?" stammered Lossing, "you don't mean----"

"Yes, he was hang himself, but I cut him, no I broke him down," said Thekla, accurate in all the disorder of her spirits; and forthwith, with many tremors, but clearly, she told the story of Kurt's despair. She told, as Lieders never would have known how to tell, even had his pride let him, all the man's devotion for the business, all his personal attachment to the firm; she told of his gloom after the elder Lossing died, "for he was think there was no one in this town such good man and so smart like your fader, Mr. Lossing, no, and he would set all the evening and try to draw and make the lines all wrong, and, then, he would drow the papers in the fire and go and walk outside and he say, 'I can't do nothing righd no more now the old man's died; they don't have no use for me at the shop, pretty quick!' and that make him feel awful bad!" She told of his homesick wanderings about the shops by night; "but he was better as a watchman, he wouldn't hurt it for the world! He telled me how you was hide his dinner-pail onct for a joke, and put in a piece of your pie, and how you climbed on the roof with the hose when it was afire. And he telled me if he shall die I shall tell you that he ain't got no hard feelings, but you didn't know how that mantel had ought to be, so he done it right the other way, but he hadn't no righd to talk to you like he done, nohow, and you was all righd to send him away, but you might a shaked hands, and none of the boys never said nothing nor none of them never come to see him, 'cept Carl Olsen, and that make him feel awful bad, too! And when he feels so bad he don't no more want to live, so I make him promise if I git him back he never try to kill himself again. Oh, Mr. Lossing, please don't let my man die!"