Stories of a Western Town
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10 STORIES OF
A WESTERN TOWN
by OCTAVE THANET
CONTENTS
The Besetment of Kurt Lieders
The Face of Failure
Tommy and Thomas
Mother Emeritus
An Assisted Providence
Harry Lossing
THE BESETMENT OF
KURT LIEDERS
A SILVER rime glistened all down the street.
There was a drabble of dead leaves on the sidewalk which was
of wood, and on the roadway which was of macadam and stiff mud.
The wind blew sharply, for it was a December day and only six
in the morning. Nor were the houses high enough to furnish any
independent bulwark; they were low, wooden dwellings, the tallest
a bare two stories in height, the majority only one story.
But they were in good painting and repair, and most of them
had a homely gayety of geraniums or bouvardias in the windows.
The house on the corner was the tall house. It occupied a larger
yard than its neighbors; and there were lace curtains tied
with blue ribbons for the windows in the right hand front room.
The door of this house swung back with a crash, and a woman darted out.
She ran at the top of her speed to the little yellow house
farther down the street. Her blue calico gown clung about
her stout figure and fluttered behind her, revealing her blue
woollen stockings and felt slippers. Her gray head was bare.
As she ran tears rolled down her cheeks and she wrung her hands.
"Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh, lieber Herr Je!" One near would have heard
her sob, in too distracted agitation to heed the motorneer of
the passing street-car who stared after her at the risk of his car,
or the tousled heads behind a few curtains. She did not stop
until she almost fell against the door of the yellow house.
Her frantic knocking was answered by a young woman in a light
and artless costume of a quilted petticoat and a red flannel sack.
"Oh, gracious goodness! Mrs. Lieders!" cried she.
Thekla Lieders rather staggered than walked into the room and fell
back on the black haircloth sofa.
"There, there, there," said the young woman while she patted the broad
shoulders heaving between sobs and short breath, "what is it?
The house aint afire?"
"Oh, no, oh, Mrs. Olsen, he has done it again!" She wailed in sobs,
like a child.
"Done it? Done what?" exclaimed Mrs. Olsen, then her face paled.
"Oh, my gracious, you DON'T mean he's killed himself ------"
"Yes, he's killed himself, again."
"And he's dead?" asked the other in an awed tone.
Mrs. Lieders gulped down her tears. "Oh, not so bad as that,
I cut him down, he was up in the garret and I sus--suspected him
and I run up and--oh, he was there, a choking, and he was so mad!
He swore at me and--he kicked me when I--I says: 'Kurt, what are you
doing of? Hold on till I git a knife,' I says--for his hands was
just dangling at his side; and he says nottings cause he couldn't,
he was most gone, and I knowed I wouldn't have time to git
no knife but I saw it was a rope was pretty bad worn and so--
so I just run and jumped and ketched it in my hands, and being I'm
so fleshy it couldn't stand no more and it broke! And, oh! he--
he kicked me when I was try to come near to git the rope off his neck;
and so soon like he could git his breath he swore at me ----"
"And you a helping of him! Just listen to that!"
cried the hearer indignantly.
"So I come here for to git you and Mr. Olsen to help me git
him down stairs, 'cause he is too heavy for me to lift,
and he is so mad he won't walk down himself."
"Yes, yes, of course. I'll call Carl. Carl! dost thou hear? come!
But did you dare to leave him Mrs. Lieders?" Part of the time she
spoke in English, part of the time in her own tongue, gliding from
one to another, and neither party observing the transition.
Mrs. Lieders wiped her eyes, saying: "Oh, yes, Danke schon, I aint
afraid 'cause I tied him with the rope, righd good, so he don't got
no chance to move. He was make faces at me all the time I tied him."
At the remembrance, the tears welled anew.
Mrs. Olsen, a little bright tinted woman with a nose too small for her
big blue eyes and chubby cheeks, quivered with indignant sympathy.
"Well, I did nefer hear of sooch a mean acting man!" seemed to her
the most natural expression; but the wife fired, at once.
"No, he is not a mean man," she cried, "no, Freda Olsen, he is not
a mean man at all! There aint nowhere a better man than my man;
and Carl Olsen, he knows that. Kurt, he always buys a whole ham and a
whole barrel of flour, and never less than a dollar of sugar at a time!
And he never gits drunk nor he never gives me any bad talk.
It was only he got this wanting to kill himself on him, sometimes."
"Well, I guess I'll go put on my things," said Mrs. Olsen,
wisely declining to defend her position. "You set right still
and warm yourself, and we'll be back in a minute."
Indeed, it was hardly more than that time before both Carl Olsen,
who worked in the same furniture factory as Kurt Lieders,
and was a comely and after-witted giant, appeared with Mrs. Olsen
ready for the street.
He nodded at Mrs. Lieders and made a gurgling noise in his throat,
expected to convey sympathy. Then, he coughed and said that he was ready,
and they started.
Feeling further expression demanded, Mrs. Olsen asked:
"How many times has he done it, Mrs. Lieders?"
Mrs. Lieders was trotting along, her anxious eyes on the house
in the distance, especially on the garret windows. "Three times,"
she answered, not removing her eyes; "onct he tooked Rough on Rats
and I found it out and I put some apple butter in the place of it,
and he kept wondering and wondering how he didn't feel notings,
and after awhile I got him off the notion, that time.
He wasn't mad at me; he just said: 'Well, I do it some other time.
You see!' but he promised to wait till I got the spring
house cleaning over, so he could shake the carpets for me;
and by and by he got feeling better. He was mad at the boss
and that made him feel bad. The next time it was the same,
that time he jumped into the cistern ----"
"Yes, I know," said Olsen, with a half grin, "I pulled him out."
"It was the razor he wanted," the wife continued, "and when
he come home and says he was going to leave the shop and he aint
never going back there, and gets out his razor and sharps it,
I knowed what that meant and I told him I got to have some bluing
and wouldn't he go and get it? and he says, 'You won't git another
husband run so free on your errands, Thekla,' and I says I don't
want none; and when he was gone I hid the razor and he couldn't
find it, but that didn't mad him, he didn't say notings;
and when I went to git the supper he walked out in the yard
and jumped into the cistern, and I heard the splash and looked
in and there he was trying to git his head under, and I called,
'For the Lord's sake, papa! For the Lord's sake!' just like that.
And I fished for him with the pole that stood there and he was
sorry and caught hold of it and give in, and I rested the pole
agin the side cause I wasn't strong enough to h'ist him out;
and he held on whilest I run for help ----"
"And I got the ladder and he clum out," said the giant with another grin
of recollection, "he was awful wet!"
"That was a month ago," said the wife, solemnly.
"He sharped the razor onct," said Mrs. Lieders, "but he said it
was for to shave him, and I got him to promise to let the barber
shave him sometime, instead. Here, Mrs. Olsen, you go righd in,
the door aint locked."
By this time they were at the house door. They passed in and
ascended the stairs to the second story, then climbed a narrow,
ladder-like flight to the garret. Involuntarily they had paused
to listen at the foot of the stairs, but it was very quiet,
not a sound of movement, not so much as the sigh of a man breathing.
The wife turned pale and put both her shaking hands on her heart.
"Guess he's trying to scare us by keeping quiet!" said Olsen, cheerfully,
and he stumbled up the stairs, in advance. "Thunder!" he exclaimed,
on the last stair, "well, we aint any too quick."
In fact Carl had nearly fallen over the master of the house,
that enterprising self-destroyer having contrived, pinioned as
he was, to roll over to the very brink of the stair well,
with the plain intent to break his neck by plunging headlong.
In the dim light all that they could see was a small, old man whose
white hair was strung in wisps over his purple face, whose deep set
eyes glared like the eyes of a rat in a trap, and whose very elbows
and knees expressed in their cramps the fury of an outraged soul.
When he saw the new-comers he shut his eyes and his jaws.
"Well, Mr. Lieders," said Olsen, mildly, "I guess you better
git down-stairs. Kin I help you up?"
"No," said Lieders.
"Will I give you an arm to lean on?"
"No."
"Won't you go at all, Mr. Lieders?"
"No."
Olsen shook his head. "I hate to trouble you, Mr. Lieders,"
said he in his slow, undecided tones, "please excuse me,"
with which he gathered up the little man into his strong arms and slung
him over his shoulders, as easily as he would sling a sack of meal.
It was a vent for Mrs. Olsen's bubbling indignation to make
a dive for Lieders's heels and hold them, while Carl backed
down-stairs. But Lieders did not make the least resistance.
He allowed them to carry him into the room indicated by his wife,
and to lay him bound on the plump feather bed. It was not his bedroom
but the sacred "spare room," and the bed was part of its luxury.
Thekla ran in, first, to remove the embroidered pillow shams and
the dazzling, silken "crazy quilt" that was her choicest possession.
Safely in the bed, Lieders opened his eyes and looked from one face
to the other, his lip curling. "You can't keep me this way all the time.
I can do it in spite of you," said he.
"Well, I think you had ought to be ashamed of yourself,
Mr. Lieders!" Mrs. Olsen burst out, in a tremble between wrath
and exertion, shaking her little, plump fist at him.
But the placid Carl only nodded, as in sympathy, saying, "Well, I am
sorry you feel so bad, Mr. Lieders. I guess we got to go now."
Mrs. Olsen looked as if she would have liked to exhort Lieders further;
but she shrugged her shoulders and followed her husband in silence.
"I wished you'd stay to breakfast, now you're here,"
Thekla urged out of her imperious hospitality; had Kurt been
lying there dead, the next meal must have been offered,
just the same. "I know, you aint got time to git Mr. Olsen
his breakfast, Freda, before he has got to go to the shops,
and my tea-kettle is boiling now, and the coffee'll be ready--
I GUESS you had better stay."
But Mrs. Olsen seconded her husband's denial, and there
was nothing left Thekla but to see them to the door.
No sooner did she return than Lieders spoke. "Aint you going
to take off them ropes?" said he.
"Not till you promise you won't do it."
Silence. Thekla, brushing a few tears from her eyes, scrutinized
the ropes again, before she walked heavily out of the room.
She turned the key in the door.
Directly a savory steam floated through the hall and pierced
the cracks about the door; then Thekla's footsteps returned;
they echoed over the uncarpeted boards.
She had brought his breakfast, cooked with the best of her homely skill.
The pork chops that he liked had been fried, there was a napkin on
the tray, and the coffee was in the best gilt cup and saucer.
"Here's your breakfast, papa," said she, trying to smile.
"I don't want no breakfast," said he.
She waited, holding the tray, and wistfully eying him.
"Take it 'way," said he, "I won't touch it if you stand till doomsday,
lessen you untie me!"
"I'll untie your arm, papa, one arm; you kin eat that way."
"Not lessen you untie all of me, I won't touch a bite."
"You know why I won't untie you, papa."
"Starving will kill as dead as hanging," was Lieders's orphic
response to this.
Thekla sighed and went away, leaving the tray on the table.
It may be that she hoped the sight of food might stir his stomach
to rebel against his dogged will; if so she was disappointed;
half an hour went by during which the statue under the bedclothes
remained without so much as a quiver,
Then the old woman returned. "Aint you awful cramped and stiff, papa?"
"Yes," said the statue.
"Will you promise not to do yourself a mischief, if I untie you?"
"No."
Thekla groaned, while the tears started to her red eyelids.
"But you'll git awful tired and it will hurt you if you don't
get the ropes off, soon, papa!"
"I know that!"
He closed his eyes again, to be the less hindered from dropping
back into his distempered musings. Thekla took a seat by his side
and sat silent as he. Slowly the natural pallor returned to the high
forehead and sharp features. They were delicate features and there
was an air of refinement, of thought, about Lieders's whole person,
as different as possible from the robust comeliness of his wife.
With its keen sensitive-ness and its undefined melancholy it was a
dreamer's face. One meets such faces, sometimes, in incongruous places
and wonders what they mean. In fact, Kurt Lieders, head cabinet maker
in the furniture factory of Lossing & Co., was an artist. He was, also,
an incomparable artisan and the most exacting foreman in the shops.
Thirty years ago he had first taken wages from the senior Lossing.
He had watched a modest industry climb up to a great business, nor was
he all at sea in his own estimate of his share in the firm's success.
Lieders's workmanship had an honesty, an infinite patience of detail,
a daring skill of design that came to be sought and commanded its
own price. The Lossing "art furniture" did not slander the name.
No sculptor ever wrought his soul into marble with a more unflinching
conscience or a purer joy in his work than this wood-carver dreaming
over sideboards and bedsteads. Unluckily, Lieders had the wrong side
of the gift as well as the right; was full of whims and crotchets,
and as unpracti-cal as the Christian martyrs. He openly defied expense,
and he would have no trifling with the laws of art. To make after
orders was an insult to Kurt. He made what was best for the customer;
if the latter had not the sense to see it he was a fool and a pig,
and some one else should work for him, not Kurt Lieders, BEGEHR!
Young Lossing had learned the business practically.
He was taught the details by his father's best workman;
and a mighty hard and strict master the best workman proved!
Lossing did not dream that the crabbed old tyrant who rarely
praised him, who made him go over, for the twentieth time,
any imperfect piece of work, who exacted all the artisan
virtues to the last inch, was secretly proud of him.
Yet, in fact, the thread of romance in Lieders's prosaic
life was his idolatry of the Lossing Manufacturing Co.
It is hard to tell whether it was the Lossings or that
intangible quantity, the firm, the business, that he worshipped.
Worship he did, however, the one or the other, perhaps the both
of them, though in the peevish and erratic manner of the savage
who sometimes grovels to his idols and sometimes kicks them.
Nobody guessed what a blow it was to Kurt when, a year ago,
the elder Lossing had died. Even his wife did not connect
his sullen melancholy and his gibes at the younger generation,
with the crape on Harry Lossing's hat. He would not go to
the funeral, but worked savagely, all alone by himself, in the shop,
the whole afternoon--breaking down at last at the sight of a carved
panel over which Lossing and he had once disputed. The desolate
loneliness of the old came to him when his old master was gone.
He loved the young man, but the old man was of his own generation;
he had "known how things ought to be and he could understand
without talking." Lieders began to be on the lookout for signs
of waning consideration, to watch his own eyes and hands,
drearily wondering when they would begin to play him false;
at the same time because he was unhappy he was ten times as
exacting and peremptory and critical with the younger workmen,
and ten times as insolently independent with the young master.
Often enough, Lossing was exasperated to the point of taking
the old man at his word and telling him to go if he would,
but every time the chain of long habit, a real respect for such
faithful service, and a keen admiration for Kurt's matchless
skill in his craft, had held him back. He prided himself on
keeping his word; for that reason he was warier of using it.
So he would compromise by giving the domineering old fellow
a "good, stiff rowing." Once, he coupled this with a threat,
if they could not get along decently they would better part!
Lieders had answered not a word; he had given Lossing a queer
glance and turned on his heel. He went home and bought some
poison on the way. "The old man is gone and the young feller
don't want the old crank round, no more," he said to himself.
"Thekla, I guess I make her troubles, too; I'll git out!"
That was the beginning of his tampering with suicide.
Thekla, who did not have the same opinion of the "trouble,"
had interfered. He had married Thekla to have someone to keep
a warm fireside for him, but she was an ignorant creature
who never could be made to understand about carving. He felt
sorry for her when the baby died, the only child they ever had;
he was sorrier than he expected to be on his own account, too, for it
was an ugly little creature, only four days old, and very red
and wrinkled; but he never thought of confiding his own griefs
or trials to her. Now, it made him angry to have that stupid
Thekla keep him in a world where he did not wish to stay.
If the next day Lossing had not remembered how his father
valued Lieders, and made an excuse to half apologize to him,
I fear Thekla's stratagems would have done little good.
The next experience was cut out of the same piece of cloth.
He had relented, he had allowed his wife to save him;
but he was angry in secret. Then came the day when open
disobedience to Lossing's orders had snapped the last thread
of Harry's patience. To Lieders's aggrieved "If you ain't
satisfied with my work, Mr. Lossing, I kin quit," the answer
had come instantly, "Very well, Lieders, I'm sorry to lose you,
but we can't have two bosses here: you can go to the desk."
And when Lieders in a blind stab of temper had growled a prophecy
that Lossing would regret it, Lossing had stabbed in turn:
"Maybe, but it will be a cold day when I ask you to come back."
And he had gone off without so much as a word of regret.
The old workman had packed up his tools, the pet tools
that no one was ever permitted to touch, and crammed
his arms into his coat and walked out of the place
where he had worked so long, not a man saying a word.
Lieders didn't reflect that they knew nothing of the quarrel.
He glowered at them and went away sore at heart. We make
a great mistake when we suppose that it is only the affectionate
that desire affection; sulky and ill-conditioned souls often
have a passionate longing for the very feelings that they repel.
Lieders was a womanish, sensitive creature under the surly mask,
and he was cut to the quick by his comrades' apathy.
"There ain't no place for old men in this world," he thought,
"there's them boys I done my best to make do a good job,
and some of 'em I've worked overtime to help; and not one of 'em
has got as much as a good-by in him for me!"
But he did not think of going to poor Thekla for comfort,
he went to his grim dreams. "I git my property all straight
for Thekla, and then I quit," said he. Perhaps he gave himself
a reprieve unconsciously, thinking that something might happen
to save him from himself. Nothing happened. None of the "boys"
came to see him, except Carl Olsen, the very stupidest man
in the shop, who put Lieders beside himself fifty times a day.
The other men were sorry that Lieders had gone, having a genuine
workman's admiration for his skill, and a sort of underground
liking for the unreasonable old man because he was so absolutely
honest and "a fellow could always tell where to find him."
But they were shy, they were afraid he would take their pity
in bad part, they "waited a while."
Carl, honest soul, stood about in Lieders's workshop, kicking the
shavings with his heels for half an hour, and grinned sheepishly,
and was told what a worthless, scamping, bragging lot the "boys"
at Lossing's were, and said he guessed he had got to go home now;
and so departed, unwitting that his presence had been a consolation.
Mrs. Olsen asked Carl what Lieders said; Carl answered simply,
"Say, Freda, that man feels terrible bad."
Meanwhile Thekla seemed easily satisfied. She made no outcry
as Lieders had dreaded, over his leaving the shop.
"Well, then, papa, you don't need git up so early in the morning
no more, if you aint going to the shop," was her only comment;
and Lieders despised the mind of woman more than ever.
But that evening, while Lieders was down town (occupied, had she
known it, with a codicil to his will), she went over to the Olsens
and found out all Carl could tell her about the trouble in the shop.
And it was she that made the excuse of marketing to go out
the next day, that she might see the rich widow on the hill
who was talking about a china closet, and Judge Trevor, who had
asked the price of a mantel, and Mr. Martin, who had looked
at sideboards (all this information came from honest Carl);
and who proposed to them that they order such furniture of the best
cabinet-maker in the country, now setting up on his own account.
He, simple as a baby for all his doggedness, thought that they
came because of his fame as a workman, and felt a glow of pride,
particularly as (having been prepared by the wife, who said,
"You see it don't make so much difference with my Kurt 'bout
de prize, if so he can get the furniture like he wants it,
and he always know of the best in the old country") they all
were duly humble. He accepted a few orders and went to work
with a will; he would show them what the old man could do.
But it was only a temporary gleam; in a little while he grew
homesick for the shop, for the sawdust floor and the familiar
smell of oil, and the picture of Lossing flitting in and out.
He missed the careless young workmen at whom he had grumbled,
he missed the whir of machinery, and the consciousness
of rush and hurry accented by the cars on the track outside.
In short, he missed the feeling of being part of a great whole.
At home, in his cosey little improvised shop, there was none
to dispute him, but there was none to obey him either.
He grew deathly tired of it all. He got into the habit
of walking around the shops at night, prowling about his
old haunts like a cat. Once the night watchman saw him.
The next day there was a second watchman engaged.
And Olsen told him very kindly, meaning only to warn him,
that he was suspected to be there for no good purpose.
Lieders confirmed a lurking suspicion of the good Carl's own,
by the clouding of his face. Yet he would have chopped his
hand off rather than have lifted it against the shop.
That was Tuesday night, this was Wednesday morning.
The memory of it all, the cruel sense of injustice, returned with such
poignant force that Lieders groaned aloud.
Instantly, Thekla was bending over him. He did not know whether to laugh
at her or to swear, for she began fumbling at the ropes, half sobbing.
"Yes, I knowed they was hurting you, papa; I'm going to loose one arm.
Then I put it back again and loose the other. Please don't be bad!"
He made no resistance and she was as good as her word.
She unbound and bound him in sections, as it were; he watching
her with a morose smile.
Then she left the room, but only to return with some hot coffee.
Lieders twisted his head away. "No," said he, "I don't eat none
of that breakfast, not if you make fresh coffee all the morning;
I feel like I don't eat never no more on earth."
Thekla knew that the obstinate nature that she tempted was proof
against temptation; if Kurt chose to starve, starve he would
with food at his elbow.
"Oh, papa," she cried, helplessly, "what IS the matter with you?"
"Just dying is the matter with me, Thekla. If I can't die one way
I kin another. Now Thekla, I want you to quit crying and listen.
After I'm gone you go to the boss, young Mr. Lossing--
but I always called him Harry because he learned his trade
of me, Thekla, but he don't think of that now--and you tell him old
Lieders that worked for him thirty years is dead, but he didn't
hold no hard feelings, he knowed he done wrong 'bout that mantel.
Mind you tell him."
"Yes, papa," said Thekla, which was a surprise to Kurt;
he had dreaded a weak flood of tears and protestations.
But there were no tears, no protestations, only a long look at him
and a contraction of the eyebrows as if Thekla were trying to think
of something that eluded her. She placed the coffee on the tray
beside the other breakfast. For a while the room was very still.
Lieders could not see the look of resolve that finally smoothed
the perplexed lines out of his wife's kind, simple old face.
She rose. "Kurt," she said, "I don't guess you remember this is
our wedding-day; it was this day, eighteen year we was married."
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