⁂ N. Y. Commercial Advertiser, November, 1884.
I.
Leipsic is a grim old town with no sentimental associations. Schiller, to be sure, once lived there, but he had a bad time of it, in spite of the slippers and things with which Dora and Minna Stock tried to mollify his existence. The smoke which hangs over the Leipsic chimney-tops is dense, prosaic smoke, which refuses to fashion itself into fairy forms or airy castles in obedience to romantic fancy. Mr. Leonard Grover actually swore (in Latin, of course, for he was too well-mannered to swear in English), that it was the most irritating and pestiferous smoke he had ever encountered since he left his native town of Pittsburg, where a man, by the way, has a fine chance of studying the effects of smoke both upon linen and temperament. Mr. Grover was, however, cheerful by nature and refused to be permanently depressed. He was in Leipsic for a practical purpose, and could not afford to indulge in sentimental moods. And yet, in spite of his determination to stick to his science and his laboratory practice, he had unaccountable fits of loneliness, when from sheer despair he went to call upon Professor Bornholm, to whom he had had a letter of introduction and whose family had received him with much cordiality. He would have liked to call upon somebody else occasionally, but the fact was, during the six months he had been at the University he had made no acquaintance outside of his student circle, except the Bornholms. They seemed to like him so much that they refused to share him with anybody else; they even refrained from introducing him to the friends who might happen to call during his visits. Minchen, who was the artistic daughter and made wax-flowers, usually found some way of disposing of him when inconvenient callers of the gentler sex made their appearance. She usually brought a fictitious message from the Professor, who, having entrapped the young man into his study, proceeded to bore him to death with oxalates and chlorides and sulphuric acids.
Röschen, the poetic daughter, whose slippers were a little down at the heel, displaying to advantage the holes in her stockings, was wont to employ her mother as an accomplice and, on some pretext or other, lured the American into her garden, where there was the most delightful privacy for sentimental confidences. Gretchen, the youngest daughter, who was obliged to devote herself to domesticity, on account of the inconvenient talents of her sisters, was even at less pains to disguise her designs upon him, but told him frankly that Minchen and Röschen were—well, not at all as nice as they might be.
In one of these bursts of frankness Gretchen also confided to him that Röschen had written to a lady friend in America—a former pupil at the Conservatory who had boarded in the family—and had received from her a complete biography of his humble self, besides a computation of his income and economic prospects. It then required very little ingenuity, on his part, to conjecture why the sisters, in spite of their somewhat ostentatious amiability, frequently appeared to have been at loggerheads just as he entered. He had often heard the word Phœnix pass mysteriously between them, and much as his modesty rebelled, he was forced to the conclusion that he was, himself, the brilliant bird Phœnix, for the possession of which these fair enchantresses were privately contending. He had never before had the audacity to regard himself as a brilliant parti, and he had even had a grudge of long standing against Fate for having equipped him so poorly. Measured by the German standard, however, his modest patrimony suggested princely opulence; and its possessor became conscious of a certain agreeable expansion, peculiar to capitalists. Smile as he might at the smallness of the social conditions which allowed him to play the rôle of a Crœsus in the fancy of love-sick maids, he could not deny that he found it a pleasant thing to be the object of such tender rivalry. It seemed to add a cubit to his height and two to his self-esteem. He revelled in the sense of his desirability and watched with amusement the innocent manœuvres by which his fair entertainers checkmated each other, and in their zeal occasionally forgot that he, too, was a rational being, endowed with the faculty of criticism. There was another, however, who made this reflection for them; and that was their mamma—the Frau Professorin. She was becoming alarmed at the discord which prevailed in the family; for, being behind the scenes, as it were, she knew a good deal which Grover could not know, and which perhaps it would not have been well for him to know. Thus she found one day in Minchen’s room a drawing in which the American, in the character of Paris, was holding above his head an apple, with the inscription “$5,000 a year;” while three lovely goddesses in scanty attire were stretching out their hands and jumping frantically to reach it. The likenesses were unmistakable and the situation sufficiently pointed to need no commentary. The Frau Professorin was much impressed by it, and her interest, it is needless to say, was enlisted in behalf of the goddesses. She resented the reserved attitude of the shepherd, and was yet anxious to assist him in arriving at a decision. Minchen, now, with her charming talent for making counterfeit cucumbers in wax and sections of hard-boiled eggs, would be just the wife for a practical man like him. She would invest his home with an artistic flavor which he himself would be capable of appreciating, though powerless to supply. And yet Röschen, with her beautiful verses, her nonchalant toilets and her poetic sympathy for improprieties which, in practice, she was careful to shun, might be even more fitted than her sister to lift and ennoble a sordid American soul. It only remained to be considered whether Gretchen, who could grow enthusiastic over the decline of one cent in the price of butter, might not, after all, be a more kindred nature, and therefore suit him best of all.
The Frau Professorin was deeply engaged in these meditations when the maid handed her a small card, upon which was engraved the name, Leonard Grover. To conceal her agitation she threw a glance into the mirror and gave a few decorative touches to her person, before admitting the visitor. Then she put on her company smile and seated herself in a defensive attitude in the large, leather-covered easy-chair. She gave her hand graciously, without rising, to Grover as he entered.
“I hope your buffalo herds are prospering,” she said, after the exchange of a few preliminary civilities.
“My buffalo herds!” exclaimed the young man, laughing. Then, as it suddenly struck him that it might be a joke, he continued with zest: “Oh, yes, indeed, thank you; they are doing famously. They made quite a sensation as they were driven through the streets of New York, the other day, on their way from Chicago to the Kansas plains.”
“Indeed,” replied Mrs. Bornholm effusively; “allow me to congratulate you.”
“Thank you,” he stammered helplessly.