The women present broke into loud sobs, but no one interfered with him; and he played with his new toy all through the pastor’s prayer and exhortation. Then some one lifted him up, and there in the box lay his mamma, white and still, with closed eyes. But this also was part of the game, thought Louis; and his baby laugh rang out strangely in the silent room. Then, as she took no notice, he pulled at her dress, saying impatiently, “Up! Up!” and when, for the first time in all his little life, she was deaf to his voice, his rosy lip quivered, and he burst into tears of helpless, hopeless, baby grief.
There followed a long drive in a close carriage,—quite a new experience, which he would have better enjoyed had the curtains been up, and his companions not quite so silent. He sat very still on his father’s knee, one dimpled hand clasped in that of Frau Anna, who sat beside him. The Price sisters were opposite, grieving sincerely for poor Dora, it is true; but they had been surprised that morning by a box from their old country home, containing such a store of eatables as would last them a long while, and grief and surprise together had so lightened the usual blank monotony of their faces that they looked almost happy.
This air of relief Karl Metzerott saw and resented, as he resented the garlanded shop windows, the bright faces of the passers-by, even the crisp air and sparkling sunshine. What right had the world to rejoice and be glad, when his young wife lay dead in her coffin, murdered by those very rich men whose gay carriages rattled past the hearse that bore her to her grave, in whose coffers lay buried the wealth that would have saved her?
From this day the shoemaker grew more silent and gloomy, less fond of the society of his fellows, more given to sullen brooding over the wrongs of the poor and the cruelty, oppression, and self-indulgence of the rich. It was well that to this temper Baby Louis served as a safety valve; for Karl kept stern silence when social questions were debated at Männerchor Hall or other places of friendly meeting. What did they know about it, he said scornfully, not one of whom had ever lost a Dora? Besides, until the time for action came, why waste one’s strength in words?
But he grew eloquent when Louis sat upon his knee in the late twilight, while he smoked his pipe; and the child, with grave blue eyes upraised to his father’s face, listened to tales of wrong and oppression as other children hearken to the woes of Cinderella or the terrible fate of Rothkäppchen.
They were always together. Metzerott rose very early, dressed Louis, prepared breakfast, and tidied the kitchen, all much more handily than could have been expected. Then father and son departed hand in hand to the shop, where all day long the child played happily with his few poor toys, or sat by his father’s side, watching, entranced, the movements of his skilful hands.
Metzerott asserted that the boy brought him good luck, and certainly his trade had greatly improved; but prosperity had rather a hardening than a softening effect, since it had come too late to save his wife.
And still he poured out all his anger, grief, and hardness of heart to little Louis, and felt, perhaps, gentler and more forgiving for the telling, like King David when he had cried to God in the Psalms for vengeance on his enemies.
CHAPTER VII.
“’VIDING.”
“Papa!” said Louis, one autumn evening. The child, just five years old, was perched, as usual, upon his father’s knee, his golden head nestled against his father’s breast. They were an oddly contrasted pair; Metzerott, with his powerful, yet apparently clumsy frame, brown, rugged face, and hair just beginning—though he was not yet forty years old—to be touched with gray, while Louis had his mother’s face, refined and spiritualized into absolute loveliness. His grave blue eyes could be merry enough at times; but as he lifted them now to his father’s face, there was a solemn purity in their gaze, at sight of which Metzerott drew the boy closer to his breast, in a sudden, irrational terror of losing him.