Part 9

Mrs. Ganser grew slowly pale. "Your father," she at last succeeded in articulating. "Ach!" She lifted her arm, thick as a piano leg, and resumed the study of her new bonnet.

"Won't you welcome me, mother?" asked Feuerstein, his tone and attitude dignified appeal.

Mrs. Ganser shook her huge head vaguely. "See Peter," was all she said.

They went down stairs and waited, Lena silent, Feuerstein pacing the room and rehearsing, now aloud, now to himself, the scene he would enact with his father-in-law. Peter was in a frightful humor that evening. His only boy, who spent his mornings in sleep, his afternoons in speeding horses and his evenings in carousal, had come down upon him for ten thousand dollars to settle a gambling debt. Peter was willing that his son should be a gentleman and should conduct himself like one. But he had worked too hard for his money not to wince as a plain man at what he endured and even courted as a seeker after position for the house of Ganser. He had hoped to be free to vent his ill-humor at home. He was therefore irritated by the discovery that an outsider was there to check him. As he came in he gave Feuerstein a look which said plainly:

"And who are you, and how long are you going to intrude yourself?"

But Feuerstein, absorbed in the role he had so carefully thought out, did not note his unconscious father-in-law's face. He extended both his hands and advanced grandly upon fat, round Peter. "My father!" he exclaimed in his classic German. "Forgive my unseemly haste in plucking without your permission the beautiful flower I found within reach."

Peter stepped back and gave a hoarse grunt of astonishment. His red face became redder as he glared, first at Feuerstein, then at Lena. "What lunatic is this you've got here, daughter?" he demanded.

"My father!" repeated Feuerstein, drawing Lena to him.

Ganser's mouth opened and shut slowly several times and his whiskers bristled. "Is this fellow telling the truth?" he asked Lena in a tone that made her shiver and shrink away from her husband.

She began to cry. "He made me do it, pa," she whined. "I--I--"

"Go to your mother," shouted Ganser, pointing his pudgy finger tremulously toward the door. "Move!"

Lena, drying her eyes with her sleeve, fled. Feuerstein became a sickly white. When she had disappeared, Ganser looked at him with cruel little eyes that sparkled. Feuerstein quailed. It was full half a minute before Ganser spoke. Then he went up to Feuerstein, stood on tiptoe and, waving his arms frantically above his head, yelled into his face "Rindsvieh!"--as contemptuous an insult as one German can fling at another.

"She is my lawful wife," said Feuerstein with an attempt at his pose.

"Get the house aus--quick!--aus!--gleich!--Lump!--I call the police!"

"I demand my wife!" exclaimed Feuerstein.

Ganser ran to the front door and opened it. "Out!" he shrieked. "If you don't, I have you taken in when the police come the block down. This is my house! Rindsvieh!"

Feuerstein caught up his soft hat from the hall table and hurried out. As he passed, Ganser tried to kick him but failed ludicrously because his short, thick leg would not reach. At the bottom of the steps Feuerstein turned and waved his fists wildly. Ganser waved his fists at Feuerstein and, shaking his head so violently that his hanging cheeks flapped back and forth, bellowed:

"Rindsvieh! Dreck!"

Then he rushed in and slammed the door.

A SENSITIVE SOUL SEEKS SALVE

As Mr. Feuerstein left Hilda on the previous Sunday night he promised to meet her in Tompkins Square the next evening--at the band concert. She walked up and down with Sophie, her spirits gradually sinking after half-past eight and a feeling of impending misfortune settling in close. She was not conscious of the music, though the second part of the program contained the selections from Wagner which she loved best. She feverishly searched the crowd and the half-darkness beyond. She imagined that every approaching tall man was her lover. With the frankness to which she had been bred she made no concealment of her heart-sick anxiety.

"He may have to be at the theater," said Sophie, herself extremely uneasy. Partly through shrewdness, partly through her natural suspicion of strangers, she felt that Mr. Feuerstein, upon whom she was building, was not a rock.

"No," replied Hilda. "He told me he wouldn't be at the theater, but would surely come here." The fact that her lover had said so settled it to her mind.

They did not leave the Square until ten o'clock, when it was almost deserted and most of its throngs of an hour before were in bed sleeping soundly in the content that comes from a life of labor. And when she did get to bed she lay awake for nearly an hour, tired though she was. Without doubt some misfortune had befallen him--"He's been hurt or is ill," she decided. The next morning she stood in the door of the shop watching for the postman on his first round; as he turned the corner of Second Street, she could not restrain herself, but ran to meet him.

"Any letter for me?" she inquired in a voice that compelled him to feel personal guilt in having to say "No."

It was a day of mistakes in weights and in making up packages, a day of vain searching for some comforting explanation of Mr. Feuerstein's failure and silence. After supper Sophie came and they went to the Square, keeping to the center of it where the lights were brightest and the people fewest.

"I'm sure something's happened," said Sophie. "Maybe Otto has told him a story--or has--"

"No--not Otto." Hilda dismissed the suggestion as impossible. She had known Otto too long and too well to entertain for an instant the idea that he could be underhanded. "There's only one reason--he's sick, very sick--too sick to send word."