The Men Who Wrought

by Ridgwell Cullum

He had received a letter that morning. He had read it at once. It was written in German, but the address upon the outer envelope was in a bold English handwriting. After reading it he straightened up his meagre room in a preoccupied fashion. His big, foreign-looking eyes were more than usually reflective, and a curious pucker of thought had drawn his shaggy brows together. Then, as was his rule, he passed out of the house, greeting the ragged fragments of humanity, who owed—and rarely yielded—obedience to Mrs. Clark, in his friendly fashion, and set out on what appeared to be his daily pursuit of employment. He returned at noon.

He read his letter again, and sat thinking about it until he was disturbed by one of the children. Then he again set forth. Nor did he return to his abode until darkness had closed in, and the army of small children had been bestowed for the night in their various nooks and corners of the lower premises.

He lit the cheap oil lamp on his table, seated himself in the unstable old basket-chair beside his uninviting bed, and settled himself for a third perusal of his letter.

It was a long letter, and it was signed "Vita." It was written in a striking feminine hand, which moulded the spidery German characters into something unusually strong and characteristic. He displayed a mild wonder that German characters supervened the signature. But the wonder passed as he read, lost in the gravity of alarm which steadily grew in his eyes as he turned each page.

He paused during this third reading at several of the paragraphs. He reread them, as though he would penetrate the last fraction of their significance. And at each pause, at each rereading, his disquiet grew.

That letter had a grave effect upon him. So much so that he forgot time, he forgot that he had yet to go out and seek food at some ham-and-beef shop, and that he was hungry. The final paragraph of the letter perhaps affected him most of all, and gave him an unease of heart which none of the rest could have done. It was a paragraph which opened up for his scrutiny the depths of a woman's soul in the first great rush of a passionate love. He had read this with deep emotion, and a great sympathy. And as he read it he felt something of the wrong which, through him and his efforts, was being inflicted upon the woman whom it was his paternal right to cherish and protect. Then, in the last lines of this outpouring, he received the final blow which brought him a realization. It was an example of the wonderful magnanimity and self-sacrifice of a woman's love. It was the renunciation of all her hopes and yearnings in the interests of the man upon whom she had bestowed the wealth and treasure of her woman's heart.

He mechanically folded up the letter and returned it to an inner pocket. He rose with a sigh, and gazed about him uncertainly. The meaning of his sordid surroundings passed him by. His thoughts were on so many other things which filled his active faculties, leaving no room for the consideration of his own comforts. He even forgot that he had not eaten since noon. He extracted a sheet of paper from a small locked hand-grip, and set about writing a brief message—a message such as he had been asked for. He enclosed it in an envelope and addressed it to Redwithy Farm in Buckinghamshire.

He had just completed his task when the stairs outside his door creaked under a heavy footfall. The next moment there was a knock at his door.

Two minutes later Ruxton Farlow, clad in workman's clothes, occupied the protesting wicker-chair, while Prince von Hertzwohl contented himself with a seat upon the unyielding bed. The oil lamp shone dully upon the table and threw into dim relief two faces, whose strength and suggestion of mentality suited ill the quality of the clothes which covered the bodies beneath them.

To Von Hertzwohl it was as though some miracle of a none too pleasant nature had been performed. In view of his letter from Vita, Ruxton Farlow was the last person he desired to see. On the other hand, he had been waiting anxiously to hear from him, or see him on the subject of the happenings at the yards, of which the whole town of Dorby had become aware.