_ CHAPTER XIV. "I CAN'T GET IT ACROSS"
The door of Willem's room opened, and Dr. McPherson came out on the landing. He moved slowly, hesitatingly, as though impelled by some force outside his logical comprehension.
Still walking as if drawn forward half against his will, the doctor descended the stairs to the big living-room. At the stair-foot stood Peter Grimm, with outstretched hands to receive him.
"Well, Andrew," said the Dead Man, in the tone of banter that had never in life failed to "get a rise" out of his medical crony, "I apologise. You were right. I was mistaken. I didn't know what I was talking about. So I've come back, as I promised, to keep our compact and to apologise. You see, I----"
"Well, Doctor," asked Kathrien, looking back into the room at sound of McPherson's steps, "how is Willem?"
"Better," answered McPherson. "He's dropped off to sleep again. I'm still a bit puzzled about his case. It's----"
"Andrew!
Andrew!" interrupted the Dead Man, almost fiercely. "I've got a message to deliver, but I can't get it across. This sort of thing is your own beloved specialty. Now's your chance. The chance you've always been longing for. Tell her I don't want her to marry Frederik! Tell her I----"
"A puzzling condition," continued McPherson, unhearing. "I can't quite grasp the meaning----"
"What meaning?" demanded Peter Grimm. "Mine? Try again. Tell her I don't want her to----"
"But," went on McPherson, drawing out pad and fountain pen, "I'll leave this prescription for one of the gardeners to take over to the druggist's. I'll leave it as I go out. I'll be back in--Why, what's up, Kathrien? What has happened? Oh, you've thought it over, eh? That's good. That's the way it should be. I left you all tears and now I find you all smiles. It----"
"Yes," answered Kathrien, half ashamed at her own oddly changed spirits. "I am happier for some reason. Much,
much happier than I've been for days and days. I've--I've had such a strange feeling this past few minutes!"
"Have, eh?" asked McPherson curiously. "H'm! So have I. It's in the air, I suppose. I've been as restless as a hungry mouse. Something, for instance, seemed to draw me downstairs here. I can't explain it."
"I can," exulted Peter Grimm. "I'm beginning to be felt!"
"Doctor," hesitated Kathrien, looking nervously about her into the dimmer corners of the lamplit room, "just a little while ago, I--I thought I heard Oom Peter call me.--I was upstairs in my room. And it seemed to me I could hear that dear old call he used to give. It was so vivid, so distinct, so real! It was my imagination, of course. I'm so used to hearing Oom Peter's voice in this room that sometimes I forget for a moment that he isn't here. But--but some one
must have called me. I couldn't have imagined it
all. Isn't it strange to hear a call like that and then look around and find no one is there?"
"It is a phenomenon well recognised in modern science," affirmed McPherson. "I could cite you a hundred instances of it. Not all from imaginative persons either, Kathrien!" he added solemnly. "I have the firm conviction that in a very short time I shall hear from Peter!"
"I hope so," sighed the Dead Man in whimsical despair.
"He made the compact I told you about," continued McPherson, "and Peter Grimm never broke his word. He will come back. Be sure of that. But what I want is some positive proof,--some absolute test to prove his presence when he comes. Poor old Peter! Bless his kind, obstinate heart! If he keeps that compact with me and comes back, do you know what I shall ask him first?"
"You poor, blind, deaf, old Scotchman!" laughed Peter Grimm. "Open your eyes and your ears! You are like the man who lay down at the edge of the river and died of thirst."
"What would you ask him first, Doctor?" queried the girl as McPherson paused with dramatic effect, awaiting the question.
"First of all," said the doctor, "I shall ask him: 'Peter, in the next world does our work go on just where we left it off here?'"
"Well," returned Peter Grimm thoughtfully, "that question is rather a poser, isn't it?"
"It is a difficult question to answer, I admit," mused McPherson, following what he deemed to be the trend of his own thoughts. "I realise that."
"You heard me?" cried the Dead Man, with sudden excitement. "You
heard? Come! We're getting results at last, you and I!"
"Results," murmured the doctor abstractedly, "are----What was I saying? Oh, yes. In the life-to-come, for instance, am I to be a bone-setter and is he to keep on being a tulip man?"
"It stands to reason, Andrew, doesn't it?" suggested Peter Grimm. "What chance would a beginner have with a fellow who knew his business before he was born? Hey?"
With the merrily victorious air that he had ever assumed when he had scored a telling point in their old-time discussions, Peter surveyed the doctor.
"I believe, Katje," mused McPherson after a moment's consideration, "that it is possible to have more than one chance at our life work. It never occurred to me before, but----"
"There!" exclaimed the Dead Man. "You caught
that! Now, why can't you get that message about Kathrien's marriage? Try, man! Try!"
"Kathrien," said McPherson, suddenly shifting from conjecture to everyday conditions, "have you thought over what I said to you about this marriage with Frederik?"
"He
did get it!" muttered Peter Grimm.
"Yes," rejoined Kathrien, "I have thought it over, Doctor. And I thank you with all my heart. But----"
"Well?"
"I shall go on with it. I shall be married, just as Oom Peter wished me to. I shan't go back on my promise."
McPherson growled in futile disgust.
"Don't give up, Andrew!" exhorted Peter Grimm. "Don't give up!
Make her see it your way. A girl can always change her mind. Try again.
Andrew!"
The last word was almost a cry. For McPherson, with a shrug of his shoulders, accepted defeat in surly silence and was tramping across to the hat rack, where he began to gather up his outdoor raiment.
"Oh, Andrew!
Andrew!" he pleaded, following him up. "Don't throw away the fight so easily! Tell her to----"
"Good-bye, Kathrien," said the doctor at the threshold. "If you choose to make toad-pie of your life, it's no business of mine. I'll drop in later for a good-night look at Willem."
"Good-night, Doctor," answered Kathrien, "and--thank you again."
With a wordless grunt, McPherson went out, leaving Peter Grimm staring hopelessly after him.
"I see I can't depend on
you, Andrew," murmured the Dead Man, "in spite of your psychic lore and your belief in my return. Why is it they can all understand--or
half understand--the unimportant things I say, and yet be deaf to my message? It is like picking out the simple words in a foreign book and then not know what the story is about. Marta--Kathrien--McPherson--they all fail me. I must find some other way."
He turned slowly toward the door of the office. The door almost immediately opened and James Hartmann came into the room. The young man had a pen behind his ear and a half-written memorandum of sales in his hand. He had evidently risen from his work and entered the living-room on an unplanned impulse.
Kathrien had seated herself in a chair by the fire and was gazing drearily into the red embers.
"Look at her, lad!" breathed Peter Grimm. "She is so pretty--so young--so lonely! Look! There are kisses tangled in that gold hair of hers where it curls about her forehead and neck. Hundreds of them. And her lips are made for kisses. See how dainty and sweet and heart-broken she is. She is dreaming of
you, James. Are you going to let her go? Why, who could resist such a girl?
You're not going to let her go! You feel what I am saying to you. You won't give her up. She loves you, boy. And you realise now that you can't live without her. Speak! Speak to her!"
"Miss Kathrien!" said Hartmann earnestly; then halted, frightened at his own temerity.
The girl looked up quickly. At sight of him she flushed and rose impulsively to face him.
"Oh, James!" she cried. "I'm so glad--so
glad to see you!"
As their hands met the man's hesitancy fled.
"I
felt that you were in here," said he. "All at once I seemed to know you were here and alone. And before I realised what I was doing, I came in. I didn't mean to."
"Didn't mean to come and see me while you were here?" she echoed in reproach. "Why not?"
"For the same reason I didn't stay when I was here before. I----"
"Why did you go away that time?" she demanded. "Why did you go without a word of good-bye to--to any of us?"
"Tell her, boy," adjured Peter Grimm. "Don't mind
my feelings."
"Your uncle sent me away," blurted Hartmann, "but it was partly at my own request."
"Oom Peter sent you away? Why?"
"I told him the truth again."
"Oh! One of your usual hot arguments that used to worry me so? I remember how excited you both used to get. Was it about the superiority of potatoes to orchids this time?"
"No. The superiority of one person to the whole world."
But she did not catch his meaning. She was looking up at the big athletic body and the clean, strong face, with an absurd longing to creep into the man's arms for shelter as might a tired child.
"It's so
good to see you back," she said.
"I'm only here for a few hours," he answered. "Just long enough to put one or two details of the business to rights. Then I'm going away again--this time for good."
"No! Where are you going?"
"Father and I are going to try our luck on our own account. I've a few thousands from a legacy that came to me last month from my grandmother. And father has saved a tidy little sum, too. We're going to start in with small fruits and market gardening. We haven't decided just where."
"It will be so strange--so different--so lonely and
empty when I come back," she mourned, "with Uncle and you both gone. It seems as if the blessed old home was all broken up. It can never be the same again. I don't know how I can muster courage to come into this house after----"
"It will be easier after the first wrench. Everything is easier than we think it's going to be. And, Kathrien," he went on, steadying his voice by a supreme effort, "I hope you'll be happy--beautifully happy."
Neither of them realised that her hand had somehow slipped into his and was resting very contentedly in the big, firm grasp.
"Whether I'm happy or not," replied Kathrien miserably, "it's the only thing to do. Please try to believe that. Oh, James, he died smiling at me--thinking of me--loving me. And just before he went he had begged me to marry Frederik. I shall never forget the wonderful look of happiness in his eyes when I promised. It was all he wanted in life. He said he'd never been so happy before. He smiled up at me for the very last time, with his dear face all alight. And there he sat, smiling, after he was gone. The smile of a man leaving this life absolutely satisfied--at peace!"
"I know. Marta told me. I----"
"It's like a hand on my heart, hurting it almost unbearably when I question doing anything he wanted. It has always been so with me ever since I was a baby. I never could bear to go against his wishes. And now that he's gone--why, I
must keep my word. I couldn't meet him in the Hereafter if I didn't keep that last sacred promise to him. I couldn't say my prayers at night. I couldn't speak his name in them. Oom Peter trusted me. He depended on me. He did everything for me. I must do this for him."
"No, no!" exclaimed the Dead Man. "You are wrong. Tell her so, James!"
"I wanted you to know this, James," finished Kathrien, "because--because----"
A gush of tears blotted out Hartmann's tense, wretched face and choked her hesitating utterance.
"Have you told Frederik that you don't love him?" asked Hartmann, forcing himself to resist the yearning to gather her into his arms and kiss away her tears. "Does he know?"
She nodded, her face buried in her hands.
"And Frederik is willing to take you like that? On those terms?"
Another dumb nod of the pretty, fluffy little head, with its face still convulsed and hidden.
"The yellow dog!" burst forth Hartmann.
"You flatter him," sadly assented Peter Grimm.
"Look here, Kathrien," hurried on Hartmann, "I didn't mean to say a word of this to-day,--or ever. Not a word. But the instant I came in here from the office just now, something made me change my mind. I knew all at once I
must talk to you. You looked so little, so young, so helpless, all huddled up there by the fire. Kathrien, you've never had to think for yourself. You don't know what you are doing in going on with this blasphemous, loveless marriage. Why, dear, you are making the most terrible mistake possible to a woman. Marriage
with love is often a tragedy. Without love it is a hell. A horror that will deepen and grow more dreadful with every year."
"Do you suppose I don't understand that?" she whispered. "Don't make it harder for me."
"Your uncle was wrong to ask such a sacrifice. Why should you wreck your life to carry out his pig-headed plans?"
"Oh!"
"Not strong enough yet," advised Peter Grimm. "Go on, lad."
"You are going to be wretched for the rest of your days, just to please a dead man who can't even know about it," insisted Hartmann. "Or if he
does know, you may be certain he sees the affair more sanely by this time and is bitterly sorry he made you promise."
"He assuredly is," acquiesced Peter Grimm. "I wish I'd known in other days that you had so much sense. Go ahead!"
"You mustn't speak so, James," reproved Kathrien, deeply shocked. "I----"
"Yes, he must," contradicted the Dead Man. "Go on, James. Stronger!"
"But I
must speak so!" declared Hartmann, swept on by a power he could not understand. "I'll speak my mind. I don't care how fond you were of your uncle or how much he did for you. It was not right for him to ask this sacrifice of you. The whole thing was the blunder of an obstinate old man!"
"No! You mustn't!"
"I loved him, too," said Hartmann. "As much in my own way, perhaps, as you did. Though he and I never agreed on any subject under the sun. But, in spite of all my affection for him, I know and always knew he
was an obstinate old man. Obstinate as a mule. It was the Dutch in him, I suppose."
Peter Grimm nodded emphatic approval.
"Do you know why I was sent away?" rushed on Hartmann, still upheld and goaded along by that incomprehensible impulse. "Do you know why I quarrelled with your uncle?"
"No."
"Because I told him I loved you. He asked me. I didn't tell him because I had any hopes. I hadn't. I haven't now. Oh, girl, I don't know why I'm talking to you like this. I love you. And my arms are aching for you."
He stepped toward her, arms out as he spoke. She retreated, frightened, to where Peter Grimm stood surveying the lover with keen approbation.
"No, no!" she warned. "You mustn't, James. It isn't right--don't."
Her next backward step brought her close to Peter Grimm. And the Dead Man, with a swift motion of his hand, waved her forward into her lover's outstretched arms.
Through no conscious volition of her own, Kathrien sped straight onward, unswerving, unfaltering into the strong circle of those arms for whose warm refuge she had so guiltily felt herself longing.
"No!" she panted, in dutiful resistance.
But the negation was lost against Hartmann's broad breast as he pressed her closely to him.
"I love you!" he repeated over and over in a daze of rapture.
Then in awed wonder:
"And you love
me, Kathrien!"
"No, no--don't make me say it, dear heart!"
"I
shall make you say it. It is true. You do love me!"
"What matter if I do?" wailed the girl. "It wouldn't change matters."
"Kathrien!"
"Please don't say anything more. I can't bear it."
Gently, reluctantly, she sought to release herself from that wonderful embrace. But Hartmann now needed no Spirit Guest to urge him to hold his own.
"I'm not going to let you go," he cried, kissing her white, upturned face till the red glowed back into it. "I won't give you up, Kathrien. I
won't give you up!"
"You must," she insisted, struggling more fiercely against herself than against him. "You must, dear. I can't break my promise to Oom Peter. I----"
The front door opened. The lovers sprang apart. Frederik entered, glancing quickly from one to the other of them.
"Oh!" he observed. "You in here, Hartmann? I thought I'd find you in the office. I've some unopened mail of my uncle's to glance over. Then I'll join you there."
Hartmann took the broad hint, nodded, and left the room. Frederik's eyes followed him steadily until the door closed behind the young intruder. Then he turned to where Kathrien crouched, panting, bewildered, trembling. Frederik abruptly went over to her, and, before she could guess his purpose, kissed her full on the lips.
Involuntarily the girl recoiled as from some loathly thing.
"Don't!" she exclaimed, fighting for her shaken self-control. "Please don't!"
"Why not?" he snapped.
She did not answer.
"Has Hartmann been talking to you?"
She moved toward the stair-foot.
"Just a moment, please," Frederik interposed, hurrying forward to catch up with her before she could gain the safety of the stairway.
"Hartmann
has been talking to you. What has he been saying?"
He had seized her hand as she made to mount the stairway. As she did not reply to his question, he repeated it, adding:
"Do you really imagine, Kathrien, that you care for that--fellow?"
"I'd rather not talk about it, please, Frederik," she pleaded.
"No? But it is necessary. Do you----"
She broke away from his suddenly rough grip and fled up the stairway to her own room. As the door shut behind her, Frederik, with clouded face and working lips, strode over to the desk. He passed close by Peter Grimm. But the Dead Man was still staring blankly after Kathrien.
"Oh, Katje," he muttered, "even Love could not get my message to you! Less influence would be needed to change the fate of a nation than the mind of one good woman. I think a good woman--a
good woman,--is more stubborn than anything else in the Universe. Not excepting myself. When she has made up her mind to do
right,--which invariably means to sacrifice herself and thereby make as many other people wretched as possible--not even a Spirit from the Other World can influence her."
With a despairing shrug of the shoulders he turned toward his nephew, and his face hardened. Frederik had seated himself at the desk. He had drawn out the little handful of personal letters that had arrived that afternoon for Peter Grimm and those that Mrs. Batholommey had put into the drawer for safe keeping.
One letter after another Frederik cut open, glanced over, and either put back into the drawer or laid under a paperweight on the desk. Peter Grimm crossed to the opposite side of the desk and stood looking down at him with set face and sad, reproving gaze.
"Frederik Grimm," said the Dead Man at last, his voice low but infinitely impressive, "my beloved nephew! You sit there opening my mail with the heart of a stone. You are saying to yourself: 'He is gone; there will be fine times ahead.' But there is one thing you have forgotten, Frederik: The Law of Reward and Punishment. Your hour has come--
to think!"
Frederik, unheeding, continued to open, read, and sort the letters before him.
At the Dead Man's last words, his nephew picked from the heap a blue envelope, ripped it open, and pulled out the enclosures:--a single sheet of blue paper and a cheap photograph.
"Oh, my God! Oh, my
God!" he babbled over and over, foolishly, staring from letter to photograph. "Here's luck! What luck it is! Anne Marie to my uncle! Lord! If he'd lived to read it! If he had read it! Out I'd have been kicked! One--two--three--
Augenblick! Out into the street! Oh, what unbelievable luck! If she'd written to him ten days earlier! Ten little days!"
His hand shaking, he picked up the letter again, spread it wide, and began to read it, Peter Grimm standing behind him, looking over the reader's shoulder.
"Dear Mr. Grimm," the letter ran, "I have not written because I can't help Willem. And I am ashamed. Don't be too hard upon me, sir, in your thoughts. At first I often went hungry. And then the few pennies I had saved for him were spent. Now I see that I can never hope to get him back. Willem is far better off with you. I know he is. But, oh, how I wish I could just see him again!
Once. Perhaps I could come there in the night time and no one would know----"
"Oh!" breathed Peter Grimm, between tight clenched teeth. "The pity of it! The
pity of it!"
"Who's that?" cried Frederik, looking up with a start of terror from his perusal of the letter.
The young man peered about the shadows beyond the radius of the lamp, a nervous dread at his heart.
"Who's in the room!" he demanded, glancing behind him.
Then with a self-contemptuous shake of his head he muttered angrily:
"That's queer. I could have sworn somebody was looking over my shoulder. Bah! My nerves are going bad!"
He returned to the reading of the letter.
"I met some one from home to-day," went on Anne Marie's epistle. "If there's any truth in the rumour that Kathrien is going to marry Frederik,
it mustn't be, Mr. Grimm. It must
not. She must not marry him. For Frederik is my little boy's fa----"
"There
is some one here!" muttered Frederik, laying down the letter.
Calming his disordered nerves once more, he glanced furtively up toward Willem's room in the bedroom gallery above his head. Then he picked up the photograph and looked at it long with eyes full of trouble and apprehension. It was the full-length cabinet likeness of a plainly dressed young woman with a pretty, slack face. And the face's weakness was half redeemed by a stamp of settled sadness that was not devoid of a certain dignity.
Frederik turned the photograph over. On the back he read:
"
For my little boy, from Anne Marie."
His mouth twitched. Throngs of memories were crowding in upon him. And the eyes of the Dead Man were boring to his very soul. Something very like Conscience was stirring within him. He laid the photograph face downward on the table and he bent his head forward upon his hands.
The young man was not a melodrama villain. He was not even a scoundrel, in the broad sense of the term. Weak, lazy, pleasure loving, he was what Peter Grimm had all unconsciously made him. As a dilettante, a man of leisure, or even comfortably engaged in some easy, congenial life work and with pleasant home surroundings, he would probably have developed few undesirable traits.
From boyhood he had been under the influence and orders of Peter Grimm. To be under Peter Grimm's supervision entailed one of three courses, according to the character of the person concerned: either to yield gracefully and gratefully to the old man's kindly but iron domination and find therein love and protection,--as had Kathrien; or to use the right of personal thought and individuality, and therefore to clash forever with Peter,--as had James Hartmann; or to seem for policy's sake to bend, while really living one's own life;--as had Frederik.
Peter Grimm was the slave and apostle of Order, Work, and Method. Frederik loved ease, luxury, artistic surroundings. Yet he was too wise to antagonise his uncle, who had the power to leave him one day the master of all these pleasant things he craved. So he had adapted himself outwardly to a path he loathed. And, by the wayside, he had secretly sought such pleasures as his nature craved.
Anne Marie had chanced to be by the wayside.
What had followed was rendered tragic chiefly by Anne Marie's innate goodness and by Peter Grimm's fierce morality.
Frederik dared not risk the loss of a future fortune by admitting his fault or by marrying the woman for whom, at the time, he had really cared. In a shiftless way and with straitly limited income, he had done what he could do for her. The sacrifices these helps had entailed and the constant fear of exposure and of consequent disinheritance had in time made the thought of Anne Marie a horror to him.
When he had gone, at Peter Grimm's command, to Leyden and Heidelberg to study botany, Frederik had hoped to close the unsavoury incident for all time.
On his return he had found Willem installed at the Grimm home, a living, ever-present menace and reminder to him. And, despite a soft heart and a normally decent nature, Frederik had, little by little, been forced by his own past and his own hopes into a course that at times was hateful to him. Ten thousand men, far worse than he, walk the streets of every big city and sleep snug o' nights with no grinning Conscience-Skull to break their rest. A thousand well-meaning, harmless sons of dominating and domineering parents are forced, as was he, into by-roads as hateful to them. To be cast by Fate to enact the Villain, when one has not the temperament, the aptitude, nor the desire for the unsavoury role, falls to more men's lot than the world realises.
It had fallen to Frederik Grimm's. Wherefore, sick at heart, he sat with his head in his hands. And Peter Grimm read his thoughts as from a printed page.
"Once more a spark of manhood is alight in your soul," whispered the Dead Man. "It is not too late. Nothing is ever too late. Turn back!"
Frederik looked up, half-listening. His hand crept out to the letter.
"Follow the impulse that is in your heart," begged the Dead Man. "Follow it! Take the little boy in your arms. Declare him to all the world as your own. Go down on your knees and ask his mother's forgiveness. Ah, do it, lad, so that I can go back still trusting you,--still believing in you,--blessing you!
Frederik!"
"Yes," answered Frederik, starting up. "What is it?"
He glanced about the room unseeingly, then looked toward the outer door and called:
"Come in!"
"That's curious!" he mused, settling back in his chair. "I thought I heard some one at--
Who's at the door? " he called again.
"
I am at the door," replied the Dead Man in solemn vehemence. "
I, Peter Grimm. The uncle who loved you and whom you tricked. Anne Marie is at the door,--the little girl who is ashamed to come home. Willem is at the door--your own flesh and blood--
nameless! Katje, sobbing her heart out,--James--all of us.
All! We are all at the door, Frederik! At the door of your conscience. Ah, don't keep us waiting!" _