Part 22

"Oh, no," said Ingigerd very decidedly.

Frederick felt something like cold iron enter his soul. He seemed to himself to be a sword-swallower unable immediately to extract the steel from his body.

"No, we have not," he, too, said, "though I for my part should like Miss Hahlström to give up the stage because she has a delicate constitution. But she maintains she needs the sensation of it. And when I see the offers she receives, I do not know whether I have the right to persuade her against her will."

"Don't, Doctor von Kammacher, don't!" cried Mr. Lilienfeld. "Miss Hahlström, Doctor von Kammacher, let me take up the cudgels for you against Webster and Forster--bloodsuckers, I tell you--and they've insulted the lady, besides. I assure you, they are the source of a lot of vile rumours about her."

"Mention names," said Frederick, turning white. "I shall have no difficulty, I fancy, in finding a second, and I hope the same code of honour holds for gentlemen here as in Europe."

"Tush--tush!" The impresario lifted his fat hands in pacification, and it seemed to Frederick as if the business man's round head, set low between his shoulders, were trying to make signs to him, as if he were winking his eyes furtively and were suppressing a broad smile, unexpectedly upsetting his business zeal and gravity. "You make entirely too much of it." He looked Frederick straight in the face in a peculiar way with a significant expression in his large round eyes. Then he continued: "For an engagement of twenty evenings in cities to be decided upon, I offer you one hundred and fifty dollars more per evening than anybody else has yet offered you, the engagement to begin inside of four days. If you are agreed, we can go to the lawyer this minute."

Within less than half an hour Frederick and Ingigerd were standing in a huge elevator, which was to take them to the fifth floor of a New York City office building. Ingigerd was the only woman in the elevator, and it pleased her that for her sake the nineteen gentlemen in the car held their hats in their hands.

"If you have never before seen such a thing," Lilienfeld said to Frederick, "the offices of a big American lawyer will astonish you. This is a law firm, two partners, Brown and Samuelson; but Brown's a nincompoop and Samuelson is the whole thing."

The offices of the famous New York lawyer, Samuelson, were partitioned off with wood and ground glass from an immense hall, a writing factory, in which there was a horde of assistants working typewriters. Samuelson made the impression of a man of nearly forty. He was not very tall, had a bad, pallid complexion, and wore a short, pointed beard. The clothes of this man, whose share of the firm's income was estimated at three hundred thousand dollars a year, though of the correct cut, were by no means new; in fact, they were rather shabby, and his entire appearance suggested that he was scarcely a model of American cleanliness. He spoke in a very low, thick voice, as if suffering from a sore throat.

Within less than fifteen minutes, the contract between Lilienfeld and Ingigerd had been concluded, a contract, which owing to the fact that Ingigerd was a minor, was no more valid than the contract with Webster and Forster. Samuelson showed that he was informed of all the details of the case of Hahlström _vs._ Webster and Forster. When the question of their demands arose, he merely smiled with an air of great disdain and said:

"We will quietly lie low and let them make the advance."

When Ingigerd and Frederick were sitting alone together in a closed cab on the way home, he put his arms about her passionately.

"If you dance on the stage, Ingigerd, I'll go out of my mind. I feel as if you and I and our love would be exposed in the pillory. If it were I instead of you, it would not be half so hard to stand."

The poor young scholar began again to pour out before the little vampire all the anguish he had been suffering, this time with hot kisses and embraces.

"I am a drowning man. If you do not hold your hand out to me I shall sink forever. You are stronger than I am. You can save me. The world is nothing to me. What I lost is nothing, was nothing and will always be nothing to me, if only I can exchange it for you. Come with me, and you shall be all in all to me, the one thing of significance in my life."

"You are not weak," the girl whispered with a dying-away look in her eyes. She breathed heavily, her narrow lips parted, and that fatal, seductive smile spread over her languishing face, like a mask.

"Take me! Run away with me!"

For a time they were silent as the cab rolled along easily on its rubber tires.

"They can wait a long while for you, Ingigerd," Frederick at length said. "To-morrow we shall be with Peter Schmidt in Meriden."

But she laughed. Yes, she laughed at him, and Frederick clearly saw he had melted her body, not her soul; or a soul was a thing this girl did not possess.

The cab came to a halt in front of the club-house. Frederick seemed to have lost his speech. Without saying a word, he escorted Ingigerd to the door, pressed her hand, and returned to the cab. He chose a place at random, and called to the coachman to drive him there.

XII

Frederick crouched in a corner of the cab. In a passion of shame, he called himself the vilest names. He removed his slouched hat, which he had not yet replaced by the New York chimney-pot, wiped the sweat from his brow, and beat his fist against his forehead.

"My poor father! Within a month, I shall probably be no more nor less than the official kept man of a prostitute. Everybody will know me and pay homage to me. Every German barber in New York will tell his patrons who my father is, and who I am, and what I live by, and whom I am running after. I shall become that worthless little fiend's lap dog, her monkey to perform tricks for her, her procurer. The German colonies in every city, large or small, that we visit will behold in me a typical example of the loathsome degree to which a scion of the German nobility can sink, into what a cesspool of vice a man who was once a good man, husband, and father can descend."

While being bowled rapidly down Broadway, Frederick, in his state of introspection and shame, looked blindly upon the houses as they glided by. Suddenly he started up from his crouching position. The sign of the Hoffman House had struck his eye and recalled the appointment the men on the _Hamburg_ had made. He consulted his watch, and found it was just about the time they had set, between twelve and one. He called to the driver, but before the horse could be brought to a stop, the cab had rolled some distance beyond the hotel. Frederick got out, paid the coachman, and in a few moments was inside the well-known New York bar-room.

He saw a long bar, marble slabs, marble wainscoting, polished brass, polished silver, shining mirrors, on which there was not the smallest speck of dust, very many shining glasses, empty glasses, glasses with straws sticking in them, and glasses partially filled with bits of ice. Bar-keepers in spotless white linen prepared the famous American drinks, innumerable in variety, with a dexterity bordering on art and a stolidity out of which nothing could shake them.

The wall behind the bar was studded within reaching distance with an array of gleaming polished metal taps; back of the bar were the passageways to the pantries and kitchen. Oil paintings hung above the taps and doorways. Over the heads of the business men standing or leaning at the bar, with derbies or silk hats shoved back from their foreheads, Frederick saw a delicious woman's figure by Courbet; sheep by Troyon; a bright seascape with clouds by Dupré; several choice pieces by Daubigny, sheep on a dune landscape, a pool reflecting the full moon hanging low over the horizon and two cud-chewing oxen; a Corot--a tree, a cow, water, a glorious evening sky; a Diaz--a pond, old birches, light reflected in the water; a Rousseau--a gigantic tree in a storm; a Millet--a pot with turnips, pewter spoons and knives; a dark portrait by Delacroix; another Courbet, a landscape; a small Bastien-Lepage, a girl and a man in the grass with a great deal of light; and many other excellent pictures. He was so fascinated that he almost forgot his recent experience and his purpose in coming.

In his complete absorption, he was only vaguely annoyed by a rather loud group, whose boisterous laughter and restlessness contrasted sharply with the quiet demeanour of the other guests. Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder, started, looked around and met the eyes of a man whose bearded face seemed coarse and unfamiliar. Cocktails and other good drinks had shot his peony complexion with a bluish tinge.

"What's the matter?" the stranger said. "Don't you know me--Captain Butor?"

Captain Butor, the man to whom Frederick owed his life! And now he also recognised the other members of the noisy group. There were Arthur Stoss and his valet, Bulke, in inconspicuous black livery, sitting a little off from the others. There were Doctor Wilhelm, and the painter Jacob Fleischmann, and Wendler, the _Hamburg's_ engineer, and two sailors from the _Roland_, wearing new suits and caps. They had already been engaged on another steamer of the same line and had been presented with a fair sum of money.

The men all greeted Frederick like an old friend. Arthur Stoss, for the benefit of a New York gentleman, was retailing his old story, that he intended in a short while to give up touring and retire. He made frequent loud references to his wife, evidently considering it very worth while to publish as widely as possible the fact that he, the man without arms, actually possessed a wife.

"I have met with the most tremendous success this time," he said. "Last night the audience stormed the stage and lifted me on their shoulders to the tune of '1492,' the song they sing every evening in the Metropolitan Theatre."

"1492"--wherever he turned his eyes, on the streets and open squares, Frederick read advertisements of the ballad, a product of the vaudeville stage, in which the discovery of America, four hundred years after the landing of Columbus, was interpreted in the patriotic sense of the new nation that had since arisen.

"Well, Doctor von Kammacher, how are you?" asked Doctor Wilhelm. "How have you spent your time?"

"Oh, so, so," Frederick replied, shrugging his shoulders. He did not know how he came to frame this summary dismissal of a time so rich in content. Strange to say, here on land, in the Hoffman bar, little or none of his former impulse remained to entrust confidences to his fellow-physician.

"How's our little girl?" Doctor Wilhelm inquired, smiling significantly.

"I do not know," Frederick returned with an expression of cool astonishment, and added: "Whom do you mean?"

As his answers to all their inquiries were equally curt and stiff, it was impossible to start a conversation. He himself in the first few minutes did not understand why he had come. It was extremely disturbing to him that the other men in the bar-room recognised the group as the survivors of the _Roland_. Stoss by himself, the man without arms, the well-known marksman, would have been conspicuous.

Stoss could drink holding a glass between his teeth; but he was not touching liquor to-day. Nevertheless, he was in a treating mood, a circumstance by which Captain Butor, Wendler, Fleischmann and the sailors profited to toast one another freely. Nor did Doctor Wilhelm require much urging.

In an undertone he informed Frederick that _The Staats-Zeitung_ in its issue of the morning before had opened a collection for Fleischmann, and a sum had already come in such as the poor fellow in his whole life had probably never before seen. At last Frederick laughed, and heartily. He understood why Fleischmann was drinking heavily, with so determined a manner, and why he was puffing himself like a turkey.

"What do you think of that stuff, Doctor von Kammacher?" he asked, pointing to the paintings and snorting disdainfully. "To call such stuff art! Millions and millions are spent on getting those things over from France. They palm the trash off on the Americans. I'll wager that if one of us Germans in Munich, Dresden, or Berlin were to do no better than that, or that"--he pointed at random to several pictures--"we'd put him in the A B C class."

"Perfectly true," said Frederick, laughing.

"Just you wait," cried Fleischmann. "I'll show the Americans a thing or two. German art--"

But Frederick ceased to listen. His only impression after the lapse of some time was, that in the meanwhile Fleischmann had misused the same words, "German art," an endless number of times. Turning to Doctor Wilhelm he said unblushingly:

"Do you remember the way this howling dog, this creature laughing like a lunatic, rose up out of the waves beside our boat?"

Captain Butor and Wendler, who had been laughing mightily over something, now stepped up with brimming eyes, as if they deemed the time had come to be serious for a few moments in the company of the two physicians.

"Did you hear, gentlemen, that Newfoundland fishermen have sighted corpses and floating fragments of the _Roland_?" said Captain Butor. "Life-preservers from the _Roland_ have also been found. The corpses and fragments are said to have been washed on a sand reef, where a lot of sharks and birds are hovering and swarming. The fishermen say the sharks and birds are what first attracted their attention."

"What is your opinion, Captain?" asked Doctor Wilhelm. "Do you think anybody from the _Roland_ beside ourselves will turn up dead or alive?"

As to living persons, the captain would not commit himself.

"It may be," he said, "that one or two of the life-boats were carried farther south and entered calm waters. Only, in that case, they were not in the course of the large steamers, and they may not have met a vessel for three or four days. Derelicts, fragments, and corpses are usually carried south by the Labrador Current until they meet the Gulf Stream, which carries them to the northeast. If they turn northward with the Gulf Stream at the Azores, they may soon reach the coast of Scotland."

"Then there is a chance," said Frederick, "that our magnificent Captain von Kessel may still find a grave in some Scotch potter's field."

"We poor captains," said Butor, who looked more like a German horse-car conductor than a captain. "They ask us to command the sea and the storm, like our Lord Jesus Christ, and if we cannot, we have the choice of drowning in the ocean or hanging on land."

Arthur Stoss joined them, and said:

"Do you remember when the _Roland_ began to sink, were the bulkheads shut down?"

Frederick reflected and said, "No, they weren't."

"I am of the same impression," said Stoss. "The sailors declare they know nothing about it."

"We carried out whatever orders we received," said the sailors.

Fleischmann put in his word:

"The bulkheads were not closed down. I never saw the captain, and I don't know what sort of man he was. But the bulkheads were not closed. My place was next to a family of Russian Jewish emigrants. We felt an awful shock, and a crashing and crunching as if the ship had run against a great rock. The panic broke out immediately. All lost their heads and went clean out of their minds. We were hurled against one another and against the walls. Here you can see how I was bruised." He rolled up his sleeves. "There was a dark girl belonging to the Russian Jewish family who saw to it that time should not hang heavy on my hands during the trip." Doctor Wilhelm looked at Frederick significantly. "She wouldn't let go of me. She was hoarse from screaming. Finally, all she could do was pant. She hung on to me, and, as I said, kept panting, 'Either you'll go down with me or you'll save me.' What could I do? I really had to give her one over her head."

"Yes," said Wendler, "what is a man to do in a case like that? Here's to you, gentlemen!"

All touched glasses. Frederick turned pale, and the others laughed heartily.

"By the way, Doctor von Kammacher," said Stoss, "I just thought of that Hahlström girl. Really, you ought to persuade her to come to an agreement with Webster and Forster. If you keep her from dancing, you will be interfering with her future."

"I?" queried Frederick. "What an idea! What business is it of mine?"

Stoss, without heeding him, continued:

"Webster and Forster are, as a rule, very decent. But their influence and connections are incalculable. Woe to the man or woman that incurs their displeasure."

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Stoss, but you may as well spare your breath. I am by no means the girl's guardian. Nor am I at all fitted to be a trafficker in men or girls."

"Oh, oh, oh! Why so severe?" said Stoss. The others, including Doctor Wilhelm, chimed in; which only heightened Frederick's brusqueness. "Don't you know there's lots of money in that little witch just now? As the American business man says, 'There's money in it.' Don't forget we're in the dollar land, where you can't rest until the ground has been completely exhausted and the last nugget of gold has been extracted."

Frederick was outraged. He felt like taking his hat and running away. In his present mood, he could scarcely conceive why he had come to meet these people. To turn the conversation and give vent to his spite and ill humour, and also for a nobler reason, he suddenly began to speak of the maid, Rosa, denouncing the American newspapers for having said almost nothing of the heroic girl.

"It would be of far more importance to me to do something for her than for any other woman. I'm not a man to bargain and haggle; but if a collection was made and they did not collect for Rosa, then they neglected a true heroine of the _Roland_."

"What do you mean by that? What do you mean?" Fleischmann demanded somewhat rudely, afraid of losing his booty.

Here Bulke intervened.

"Remember, Mr. Fleischmann, Rosa was the first to see you. If Rosa hadn't dragged you out of the water--she's as strong as a bear--the rest of us in the boat might merely have struck you over the head with our oars and let you sink."

"You're talking nonsense, you numskull," said Fleischmann, withdrawing and turning toward the wall with the pictures. "I keep seeing nothing but those two moonstruck oxen." He referred to one of the wonderful Daubignys.

Frederick paid and took leave, declining, as politely as he could, their proposition that they all lunch together.

XIII

When alone on the street, Frederick felt some disgust with himself for lacking humour. Were those innocent men to blame if he happened to have rasped nerves? Since it was Frederick's way, as soon as he perceived that he had done a wrong, to set resolutely to work to undo it to the full extent of his ability, he decided, after coming to the conclusion that the fault had been his, to lunch with his shipmates after all. He had been walking about eight minutes. He now turned back, accelerating his pace, and within five minutes the sign of the Hoffman House was again in sight. Broadway as usual was crowded, and the two endless chains of yellow cable cars with short spaces between were perpetually moving by each other. It was cold and windy. There was a great din and bustle on the streets, and into the din and bustle Frederick saw his friends of the _Roland_ and the _Hamburg_ step from the bar. As he was about to wave to them, he slipped and stumbled on a piece of fruit on the pavement.

"Don't fall, Doctor von Kammacher!" a woman's voice cried. "How do you do?" On regaining his equilibrium Frederick found himself face to face with a beautiful, dignified young lady hidden behind a veil and wearing a fur hat and coat. He slowly recognised Miss Eva Burns. "I'm in luck," she said. "I very rarely come to this part of the city. It just so happened that I had to buy something near here, and I am on the way now to my restaurant. I always take my meals in a restaurant, because I loathe boarding-houses. By chance, too, I am later than usual. A little lady whom you know, Miss Hahlström, visited the studio with Mr. Franck and kept me three quarters of an hour longer than I am accustomed to stay."

"Do you take your meals alone, Miss Burns?"

"Yes," she said, somewhat taken aback at the abrupt question. "Does that seem strange to you?"

"Oh, no, not at all," Frederick hastened to assure her. "The astonished expression on my face was merely due to my stumbling and to this unexpected meeting with you. The reason I inquired whether you eat alone was because I wanted to ask you if you had any objections to my lunching with you."

"I should be very glad if you were to, Doctor von Kammacher."

The stately couple attracted much attention from passers-by. Frederick was tall and rather broad and carried himself well, and his hair and beard may have gone rather too long without the application of the shears. Eva Burns was almost as tall. She was a brunette, suggesting in her face and figure, which bore no resemblance to the wasp-like figures of the American women, a race and type more in accordance with the Titian ideal of feminine beauty.

"Would you mind waiting here a minute?" Frederick asked. "You see those people over there getting into the car? Some of them God in his inscrutable ways destined to be fellow-passengers of mine on the _Roland_, the others my rescuers. I should not like to meet them again." When the little company was safely aboard the car on the way to Brooklyn, he said: "I am profoundly grateful--" and stopped.

"Because you were rescued from those men in the car?" Miss Burns laughed.