Part 10

"Let's go and see," said Sophie, as if she had not planned it hours before.

Hilda hesitated. "It might look as if I--" She did not finish.

"But you needn't show yourself," replied Sophie. "You can wait down the street and I'll go up to the door and won't give my name."

Hilda clasped her arm more tightly about Sophie's waist and they set out. They walked more and more swiftly until toward the last they were almost running. At the corner of Fifteenth Street and First Avenue Hilda stopped. "I'll go through to Stuyvesant Square," she said, "and wait there on a bench near the Sixteenth Street entrance. You'll be quick, won't you?"

Sophie went to Mr. Feuerstein's number and rang. After a long wait a slovenly girl in a stained red wrapper, her hair in curl-papers and one stocking down about her high-heeled slipper, opened the door and said: "What do you want? I sent the maid for a pitcher of beer."

"I want to ask about Mr. Feuerstein," replied Sophie.

The girl's pert, prematurely-wrinkled face took on a quizzical smile. "Oh!" she said. "You can go up to his room. Third floor, back. Knock hard--he's a heavy sleeper."

Sophie climbed the stairs and knocked loudly. "Come!" was the answer in German, in Mr. Feuerstein's deep stage-voice.

She opened the door a few inches and said through the crack: "It's me, Mr. Feuerstein--Sophie Liebers--from down in Avenue A--Hilda's friend."

"Come in," was Mr. Feuerstein's reply, in a weary voice, after a pause. From Ganser's he had come straight home and had been sitting there ever since, depressed, angry, perplexed.

Sophie pushed the door wide and stood upon the threshold. "Hilda's over in Stuyvesant Square," she said. "She thought you might be sick, so we came. But if you go to her, you must pretend you came by accident and didn't see me."

Mr. Feuerstein reflected, but not so deeply that he neglected to pose before Sophie as a tragedy-king. And it called for little pretense, so desperate and forlorn was he feeling. Should he go or should he send Sophie about her business? There was no hope that the rich brewer would take him in; there was every reason to suspect that Peter would arrange to have the marriage quietly annulled. At most he could get a few thousands, perhaps only hundreds, by threatening a scandal. Yes, it would be wise, on the whole, to keep little Hilda on the string.

"I am very ill," he said gloomily, "but I will go."

Sophie felt hopeful and energetic again. "I won't come up to her till you leave her."

"You are a good girl--a noble creature." Mr. Feuerstein took her hand and pretended to be profoundly moved by her friendship.

Sophie gave him a look of simplicity and warm-heartedness. Her talent for acting had not been spoiled by a stage experience. "Hilda's my friend," she said earnestly. "And I want to see her happy."

"Noble creature!" exclaimed Mr. Feuerstein. "May God reward you!" And he dashed his hand across his eyes.

He went to the mirror on his bureau, carefully arranged the yellow aureole, carefully adjusted the soft light hat. Then with feeble step he descended the stairs. As he moved down the street his face was mournful and his shoulders were drooped--a stage invalid. When Hilda saw him coming she started up and gave a little cry of delight; but as she noted his woebegone appearance, a very real paleness came to her cheeks and very real tears to her great dark eyes.

Mr. Feuerstein sank slowly into the seat beside her. "Soul's wife," he murmured. "Ah--but I have been near to death. The strain of the interview with your father--the anguish--the hope--oh, what a curse it is to have a sensitive soul! And my old trouble"--he laid his hand upon his heart and slowly shook his head--"returned. It will end me some day."

Hilda was trembling with sympathy. She put her hand upon his. "If you had only sent word, dear," she said reproachfully, "I would have come. Oh--I do love you so, Carl! I could hardly eat or sleep--and--"

"The truth would have been worse than silence," he said in a hollow voice. He did not intend the double meaning of his remark; the Gansers were for the moment out of his mind, which was absorbed in his acting. "But it is over for the present--yes, over, my priceless pearl. I can come to see you soon. If I am worse I shall send you word."

"But can't I come to see you?"

"No, bride of my dreams. It would not be--suitable. We must respect the little conventions. You must wait until I come."

His tone was decided. She felt that he knew best. In a few minutes he rose. "I must return to my room," he said wearily. "Ah, heart's delight, it is terrible for a strong man to find himself thus weak. Pity me. Pray for me."

He noted with satisfaction her look of love and anxiety. It was some slight salve to his cruelly wounded vanity. He walked feebly away, but it was pure acting, as he no longer felt so downcast. He had soon put Hilda into the background and was busy with his plans for revenge upon Ganser--"a vulgar animal who insulted me when I honored him by marrying his ugly gosling." Before he fell asleep that night he had himself wrought up to a state of righteous indignation. Ganser had cheated, had outraged him--him, the great, the noble, the eminent.

Early the next morning he went down to a dingy frame building that cowered meanly in the shadow of the Criminal Court House. He mounted a creaking flight of stairs and went in at a low door on which "Loeb, Lynn, Levy and McCafferty" was painted in black letters. In the narrow entrance he brushed against a man on the way out, a man with a hangdog look and short bristling hair and the pastily-pallid skin that comes from living long away from the sunlight. Feuerstein shivered slightly--was it at the touch of such a creature or at the suggestions his appearance started? In front of him was a ground-glass partition with five doors in it. At a dirty greasy pine table sat a boy--one of those child veterans the big city develops. He had a long and extremely narrow head. His eyes were close together, sharp and shifty. His expression was sophisticated and cynical. "Well, sir!" he said with curt impudence, giving Feuerstein a gimlet-glance.

"I want to see Mr. Loeb." Feuerstein produced a card--it was one of his last remaining half-dozen and was pocket-worn.

The office boy took it with unveiled sarcasm in his eyes and in the corners of his mouth. He disappeared through one of the five doors, almost immediately reappeared at another, closed it mysteriously behind him and went to a third door. He threw it open and stood aside. "At the end of the hall," he said. "The door with Mr. Loeb's name on it. Knock and walk right in."