“Out of a book Dr. Archie gave me to read. It’s all English but that. Did you ever see it before?” she asked, watching his face.
“Yes. A long time ago,” he muttered, scowling. “Ovidius!” He took a stub of lead pencil from his vest pocket, steadied his hand by a visible effort, and under the words:
“Lente currite, lente currite, noctis equi,”
he wrote in a clear, elegant Gothic hand,—
“Go slowly, go slowly, ye steeds of the night.”
He put the pencil back in his pocket and continued to stare at the Latin. It recalled the poem, which he had read as a student, and thought very fine. There were treasures of memory which no lodging-house keeper could attach. One carried things about in one’s head, long after one’s linen could be smuggled out in a tuning-bag. He handed the paper back to Thea. “There is the English, quite elegant,” he said, rising.
Mrs. Kohler stuck her head in at the door, and Thea slid off the stool. “Come in, Mrs. Kohler,” she called, “and show me the piece-picture.”
The old woman laughed, pulled off her big gardening gloves, and pushed Thea to the lounge before the object of her delight. The “piece-picture,” which hung on the wall and nearly covered one whole end of the room, was the handiwork of Fritz Kohler. He had learned his trade under an old-fashioned tailor in Magdeburg who required from each of his apprentices a thesis: that is, before they left his shop, each apprentice had to copy in cloth some well known German painting, stitching bits of colored stuff together on a linen background; a kind of mosaic. The pupil was allowed to select his subject, and Fritz Kohler had chosen a popular painting of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. The gloomy Emperor and his staff were represented as crossing a stone bridge, and behind them was the blazing city, the walls and fortresses done in gray cloth with orange tongues of flame darting about the domes and minarets. Napoleon rode his white horse; Murat, in Oriental dress, a bay charger. Thea was never tired of examining this work, of hearing how long it had taken Fritz to make it, how much it had been admired, and what narrow escapes it had had from moths and fire. Silk, Mrs. Kohler explained, would have been much easier to manage than woolen cloth, in which it was often hard to get the right shades. The reins of the horses, the wheels of the spurs, the brooding eyebrows of the Emperor, Murat’s fierce mustaches, the great shakos of the Guard, were all worked out with the minutest fidelity. Thea’s admiration for this picture had endeared her to Mrs. Kohler. It was now many years since she used to point out its wonders to her own little boys. As Mrs. Kohler did not go to church, she never heard any singing, except the songs that floated over from Mexican Town, and Thea often sang for her after the lesson was over. This morning Wunsch pointed to the piano.
“On Sunday, when I go by the church, I hear you sing something.”
Thea obediently sat down on the stool again and began, “Come, ye Disconsolate.” Wunsch listened thoughtfully, his hands on his knees. Such a beautiful child’s voice! Old Mrs. Kohler’s face relaxed in a smile of happiness; she half closed her eyes. A big fly was darting in and out of the window; the sunlight made a golden pool on the rag carpet and bathed the faded cretonne pillows on the lounge, under the piece-picture. “Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal,” the song died away.