VIII.
Two years passed, during which I completely lost sight of Dannevig. I learned that he had been dismissed from the service of the Immigration Company; that he played second violin for a few months at one of the lowest city theatres, and finally made a bold stroke for fame by obtaining the Democratic nomination for County Clerk. I was faithless enough, however, to call attention to the fact that he had never been naturalized, whereupon, a new caucus was called, and another candidate was put into the field.
The Pfeifers I continued to see frequently, and, at last, at Hildegard's own suggestion, told her the story I had so long withheld from her. She showed very little emotion, but sat pale and still with her hands folded in her lap, gazing gravely at me. When I had finished, she arose, walked the length of the room, then returned, and stopped in front of me.
"Human life seems at times a very flimsy affair, doesn't it?" she said, appealing to me again with her direct gaze.
"Yes, if one takes a cynical view of it," I answered.
She stood for a while pondering.
"Did I ever know that man?" she asked, looking up abruptly.
"You know best."
"Then it must have been very, very long ago."
A slight shiver ran through her frame. She shook my hand silently, and left the room.
One evening in the summer of 1870, just as the news from the Franco-Prussian war was arousing the enthusiasm of our Teutonic fellow-citizens, I was sauntering leisurely homeward, pondering with much satisfaction on the course history was taking. About half a mile from the Clark street bridge I found my progress checked by a crowd of men who had gathered on the sidewalk outside of a German saloon, and were evidently discussing some exciting topic. My journalistic instincts prompted me to stop and listen to the discussion.
"Poor fellow, I guess he is done for," some one was saying. "But they were both drunk; you couldn't expect anything else."
"Is any one hurt?" I asked, addressing my next neighbor in the crowd.
"Yes. It was a poor fool of a Dane. He got into a row with somebody about the war. Said he would undertake to whip ten Deutschers single-handed; that he had done so many a time in the Schleswig-Holstein war. Then there was some fighting, and he was shot."
I spoke a few words to the policeman at the door, and was admitted. The saloon was empty but in the billiard-room at its rear I saw a doctor in his shirt-sleeves, bending over a man who lay outstretched on a billiard-table. A bartender was standing by with a basin of water and a bloody towel.
"Do you know his name?" I inquired of the police officer.
"They used to call him Danish Bill," he answered. "Have known him for a good while. Believe his real name was Danborg, or Dan—something."
"Not Dannevig?" I cried.
"Dannevig? Yes, I guess you have got it."
I hastily approached the table. There lay Dannevig—but I would rather not describe him. It was hard to believe it, but this heavy-lidded, coarse-skinned, red-veined countenance bore a cruel, caricatured resemblance to the clean-cut, exquisitely modelled face of the man I had once called my friend. A death-like stupor rested upon his features; his eyes were closed, but his mouth half open.
"By Jove!" exclaimed the physician, in a burst of professional enthusiasm, "what a splendid animal he must have been! Hardly saw a better made man in all my life."
"But he is not dead!" I protested, somewhat anxiously.
"No; but he has no chance, that I can see. May last over to-morrow, but hardly longer. Does any one know where he lodges?"
No one answered.
"But, Himmel! he cannot stay here." The voice was the bartender's, but it seemed to be addressed to no one in particular.
"I have known him for years," I said. "Take him to my rooms; they are only a dozen blocks away."
A carriage was sent for, and away we drove, the doctor and I, slowly, cautiously, holding the still unconscious man between us. We laid him on my bed, and the doctor departed, promising to return before morning.
A little after midnight Dannevig became restless, and as I went to his side, opened his eyes with a look of full, startled consciousness.
"I'm about played out, old fellow, aint I?" he groaned.
I motioned to him to be silent.
"No," he went on, in a strained whisper, "it is no use now. I know well enough how I stand. You needn't try to fool me."
He lay for a while motionless, while his eyes wandered restlessly about the room. He made an effort to speak, but his words were inaudible. I stooped over him, laying my ear to his mouth.
"Can—can you lend me five dollars?"
I nodded.
"You will find—a pawnbroker's check—in my vest pocket," he continued. "The address is—is—on it. Redeem it. It is a ring. Send it—to—to the Countess von Brehm—with—with—my compliments," he finished with a groan.
We spent several hours in silence. About three o'clock the doctor paid a brief visit; and I read in his face that the end was near. The first sunbeams stole through the closed shutters and scattered little quivering fragments of light upon the carpet. A deep stillness reigned about us. As I sat watching the defaced ruin of what had been, to me at least, one of the noblest forms which a human spirit ever inhabited, the past moved in a vivid retrospect before my eye, and many strange reflections thronged upon me. Presently Dannevig called me and I stood again bowing over him.
"When you—bury me," he said in a broken whisper. "Carry my—cross of—Dannebrog—on a cushion after me." And again after a moment's pause: "I have—made a—nice mess of it, haven t I? I—I—think it would—have—have been better for—me, if—I had been—somebody else."
Within an hour he was dead. Myself and two policemen followed him to the grave; and the cross of Dannebrog, with a much soiled red ribbon, was carried on a velvet cushion after his coffin.
MABEL AND I.
(A PHILOSOPHICAL FAIRY TALE.)
"I want to see things as they are," said I to Mabel.
"I don't see how else you can see them," answered Mabel, with a laugh. "You certainly don't see them as they are not."
"Yes, I do," said I. "I see men and things only as they seem. It is so exasperating to think that I can never get beyond the surface of anything. My friends may appear very good and beautiful to me, and yet I may all the while have a suspicion that the appearance is deceitful, that they are really neither good nor beautiful."
"In case that was so, I shouldn't want to know it," said Mabel. "It would make me very unhappy."
"That is where you and I differ," said I.
Mabel was silent for a moment, and I believe she was a little hurt, for I had spoken rather sharply.
"But what good would it do you, Jamie?" asked she, looking up at me from under her wide-brimmed straw hat.
"What would do me good?" said I, for I had quite forgotten what we had been talking about.
"To see things as they are. There is my father now; he knows a great deal, and I am sure I shouldn't care to know any more than he does."
"Well, that is where you and I differ," said I again.
"I wish you wouldn't be always saying 'that is where you and I differ.' Somehow I don't like to hear you say it. It doesn't sound like yourself."
And Mabel turned away from me, took up a leaf from the ground and began to pick it to pieces.
We were sitting, at the time when this conversation took place, up in the gorge not half a mile from the house where Mabel's father lived. I was a tutor in the college, about twenty-three years old, and I was very fond of German philosophy. And now, since I have told who I was, I suppose I ought to tell you something about Mabel. Mabel was,—but really it is impossible to say what she was, except that she was very, very charming. As for the rest, she was the daughter of Professor Markham, and I had known her since my college days when she was quite a little girl. And now she wore long dresses; and, what was more, she had her hair done up in a sort of Egyptian pyramid on the top of her head. The dress she had on to-day I was particularly fond of; it was of a fine light texture, and the pattern was an endless repetition of a small, sweet-brier bud, with two delicate green leaves attached to it.
I had spread a shawl out on the ground where Mabel was sitting, for fear she should soil her fine dress. A large weeping-willow spread its branches all around us, and drooped until it almost touched the ground, so that it made a sort of green, sunlit summer-house, for Mabel and me to live in. Between the rocks at our feet a clear brook came rushing down, throwing before it little showers of spray, which fell like crystal pearls on the water, sailed down the swift eddies and then vanished in the next whirlpool. A couple of orioles in brand-new yellow uniforms, with black epaulets on their shoulders, were busy in the tree over our heads, but stopped now and then in their work to refresh themselves with a little impromptu duet.
"Work and play
Make glad the day,"—
that seemed to be their philosophy, and Mabel and I were quite ready to agree with them, although we had been idling since the early dawn. But then it was so long since we had seen each other, that we thought we could afford it.
"Somehow," said Mabel at last (for she never could pout long at a time), "I don't like you so well since you came back from Germany. You are not as nice as you used to be. What did you go there for, anyway?"
"Why," I responded, quite seriously, "I went there to study; and I did learn a good deal there, although naturally I was not as industrious as I might have been."
"I can readily believe that. But, tell me, what did you learn that you mightn't just as well have learned at home?"
I thought it was no use in being serious any longer; so I tossed a pebble into the water, glanced up into Mabel's face and answered gayly:
"Well, I learned something about gnomes and pigmies and elves and fairies and salamanders, and—"
"And what?" interrupted Mabel, impatiently.
"And salamanders," repeated I. "You know the forests and rivers and mountains of Germany are full of all sorts of strange sprites, and you know the people believe in them, and that is one of the things which make life in the Old World so fascinating. But here we are too prosy and practical and business-like, and we don't believe in anything except what we can touch with our hands, and see with our eyes, and sell for money."
"Now, Jamie, that is not true," responded Mabel, energetically; for she was a strong American at heart, and it didn't take much to rouse her. "I believe, for instance, that you know a great deal although not as much as my father; but I can't see your learning with my eyes, neither can I touch it with my hands—"
"But I hope I can sell it for money," interrupted I, laughing.
"No, joking aside. I don't think we are quite as bad as you would like to make us out."
"And then you think, perhaps, that the gnomes and river-sprites would be as apt to thrive here as in the Old World?"
"Who knows?" said Mabel, with an expression that seemed to me half serious and half playful. "But I wish you would tell me something about your German sprites. I am so very ignorant in such things, you know."
I stretched myself comfortably on the edge of the shawl at Mabel's feet, and began to tell her the story about the German peasant who caught the gnome that had robbed his wheat-field.
"The gnomes wear tiny red caps," I went on, "which make them invisible. They are called tarn-caps, or caps of darkness. The peasant that I am telling about had a suspicion that it was the gnomes who had been stealing his wheat. One evening, he went out after sunset (for the gnomes never venture out from their holes until the sun is down) and began to fight in the air with his cane about the borders of the field. Then suddenly he saw a very tiny man with knee-breeches and large frightened eyes, turning a somersault in the grass right at his feet. He had struck off his cap, and then, of course, the gnome was no longer invisible. The peasant immediately seized the cap and put it into his pocket; the gnome begged and implored to get it back, but instead of that, the peasant caught him up in his arms and carried him to his house, where he kept him as a captive until the other gnomes sent a herald to him and offered him a large ransom. Then the gnome was again set free and the peasant made his fortune by the transaction."
"Wouldn't it be delightful if such things could ever happen here?" exclaimed Mabel, while her beautiful eyes shone with pleasure at the very thought.
"I should think so," said I. "It is said, too, that if there are gnomes and elves in the neighborhood, they always gather around you when you talk about them."
"Really?" And Mabel sent a timid glance in among the large mossy trunks of the beeches and pines.
"Tell me something more, Jamie," she demanded, eagerly.
Mabel had such a charming way of saying "Jamie," that I could never have opposed a wish of hers, whatever it might be. The professor called me James, and among my friends I was Jim; but it was only Mabel who called me Jamie. So I told her all I knew about the nixies, who sang their strange songs at midnight in the water; about the elves, who lived in the roses and lilies, and danced in a ring around the tall flowers until the grass never grew there again; and about the elf-maiden who led the knight astray when he was riding to his bride on his wedding-day. And all the while Mabel's eyes seemed to be growing larger; the blood burned in her cheeks, and sometimes she shuddered, although the afternoon was very warm. When I had finished my tale, I rose and seated myself at her side. The silence suddenly seemed quite oppressive; it was almost as if we could hear it. For some reason neither Mabel nor I dared to speak; but we both strained our ears listening to something, we did not know what. Then there came a strange soft whisper which filled the air all about us, and I thought I heard somebody calling my name.
"They are calling you, Jamie," whispered Mabel.
"Calling me? Who?" said I.
"Up there in the tree. No, not there. It is down in the brook. Everywhere."
"Oh," cried I, with a forced laugh. "We are two great children, Mabel. It is nothing."
Suddenly all was silent once more; but the wood-stars and violets at my feet gazed at me with such strange, wistful eyes, that I was almost frightened.
"You shouldn't have done that, Jamie," said Mabel. "You killed them."
"Killed what?"
"The voices, the strange, small voices."
"My dear girl," said I, as I took Mabel's hands and helped her to rise. "I am afraid we are both losing our senses. Come, let us go. The sun is already down. It must be after tea-time."
"But you know we were talking about them," whispered she, still with the same fascinated gaze in her eyes. "Ah, there, take care! Don't step on that violet. Don't you see how its mute eyes implore you to spare its life?"
"Yes, dear, I see," answered I; and I drew Mabel's arm through mine, and we hurried down the wood-path, not daring to look back, for we had both a feeling as if some one was walking close behind us, in our steps.