Twenty years! So his fixed idea, his Moloch, to whom he had sacrificed work, wife, and children, his machine that was to have enabled them to live like princes, had been tried and failed, while he was still a happy schoolboy in Germany! He took the night train for home, and sat gazing into the blank darkness outside the window, his beloved model still carefully cherished upon his knees,—why, he scarcely knew. The conductor shook him twice before he heard the demand for his ticket, and then he only turned his head and stared stupidly, so that the other took the bit of pasteboard himself from the hat-band, where Leppel had mechanically placed it.
“He ain’t drunk,” the conductor said to the brakeman, afterwards, as they stood together on the front platform; “so he must be either crazy or a blank fool.”
The brakeman inspected Leppel through the glass of the door, and concerted measures with the conductor, to be taken if the supposed maniac should become violent. But there was no danger of violence from poor Leppel. He had not yet begun to realize what had happened to him; only he felt queer, and very numb and stupid.
The numbness and stupidity had not worn off when he stepped upon the platform, at Micklegard, of the station nearest his home. The model was heavy, and he was just alive enough to resolve to leave it at the ticket-office. The clerk was known to him, and recognized immediately the package of which he was asked to take charge.
“What?” he said with cheerful consternation, “fetched it back, after all? No go, eh?”
“No,” said Leppel, slowly and stupidly, “it was no go.” He walked away bent and draggingly. The clerk looked after him, then stowed the model carefully away on a high shelf. “Well, I’m blest!” he said. “I certainly am!”
It was barely daylight of a January morning, and in the upper windows of his home, when he reached it, shone a faint light. A feeble baby wail came down the staircase as he opened the door. Leppel was not too stupid to understand that. Another mouth to be fed; that was what the cry meant to the house-father who had thrown away his children’s daily bread in pursuit of a shadow. He climbed the steep stairs that led up directly from the little parlor to his bedroom door, where Dora met him, smiling kindly.
“She is doing well,” she said, “and it is another fine boy. But, oh!” as she noticed the look upon his face, “don’t tell her any bad news if you can help it.”
“If I can help it,” he said assentingly. His brain seemed only equal to repeating what was said to him. He went into the room, and sat upon a chair by Anna’s bedside. They had been bad friends for some time, but he was scarcely awake enough to dread her tongue now.
“Well,” she said angrily, “have you nothing to say? You might tell me you are glad I am safe through with it.”