Many Kingdoms Part 20

"They's a photograph man right here in the hotel," she chirped, joyously. "He's next to the flower-shop, an' we can go right in through that little narrow hall."

They went, subsequently carrying home with them as their choicest treasure the cabinet photograph for which they had posed side by side, with the excitement of New York life shining in their honest eyes. In the evening the clerk suggested a concert.

"It's a fine one, at Carnegie Hall, right near here," he urged, cheerfully, "and Sembrich is to sing, with the Symphony Orchestra. You can get in for fifty cents if you don't mind sitting in the gallery.

You really ought to go, Mrs. Smith; you would enjoy it."

Mrs. Smith turned upon him an anxious eye.

"How far did you say 'twas?" she asked, warily.

"Oh, not ten minutes' ride. You take the car here at the corner--"

But the mention of the car blighted the budding purpose in Maria's soul.

"I feel real tired," she said, quickly, "but if my husband wants to go--"

Her husband loudly disavowed any such aspiration.

"We got a long journey before us to-morrow," he said, "an' I guess we better rest."

They rested in the Berkeley corridor, amid the familiar sights and scenes. The following morning found them equally disinclined for sight-seeing. Seated in their favorite chairs, they watched the throngs of happy people who came and went around them. Henry had added to the list of his acquaintances two more travelling men and the boy at the news-counter. His wife had heard in detail the sad story of her chambermaid's life, and a few facts and surmises about fellow-guests at the hotel.

Maria drew a long sigh when, after they had paid their bill the next day and bade farewell to the clerk and other new friends, they climbed into the cab which was to take them to the station.

"My, but it was interestin'!" she said, softly; adding, with entire conviction, "Henry, I 'ain't never had such a good time in my hull life! I really 'ain't!"

"Neither have I," avowed Henry, truthfully. "Wasn't it jest bully!"

On the train a sudden thought occurred to Mrs. Smith.

"Henry," she began, uneasily, "s'pose any one asks what we've SEEN in New York. What'll we tell 'em? You know, somehow we didn't seem t' git time t' see much."

Henry Smith was equal to the emergency.

"We'll say we seen so much we can't remember it," he said, shamelessly.

"Don't you worry one bit about that, Maria Smith. I've always heard that weddin' couples don't never really see nothin' on their weddin'

towers, anyhow--they gad an' gad, an' it don't do no good. We was wiser not to try!"

X

THE CASE OF KATRINA

My memory of Katrina goes back to the morning when, at the tender age of ten, she was violently precipitated into our cla.s.sroom. The motive power, we subsequently learned, was her brother Jacob, slightly older than Katrina, whose nervous system had abruptly refused the ordeal of accompanying her into the presence of the teacher. Pushing the door ajar until the opening was just large enough to admit her, he thrust her through, following her fat figure for a second with one anxious eye and breathing audibly in his excitement. The next instant the cheerful clatter of his hob-nailed boots echoed down the hall, followed by a whoop of relief as he emerged upon the playground.

It was Katrina's bearing as she stood, thus rudely projected into our lives, endeavoring to recover her equilibrium, and with thirty pairs of eyes fixed unswervingly upon her, that won my heart and Jessica's.

Owing to a fervid determination of our teacher to keep us well in view, we sat in the front row, directly facing her. Having, even in our extreme youth, a const.i.tutional distaste to missing anything, we undoubtedly stared at Katrina longer and harder than any of the others.

We smiled, too, largely and with the innocent abandon of childhood; and Katrina smiled back at us as if she also tasted a subtle flavor of the joke, lost to cruder palates. Then she shifted her tiny school-bag from one hand to the other, swept the room with a thoughtful glance, and catching sight of frantic gestures I was making, obeyed them by walking casually to an empty seat across from my own, where she sat down with deepening dimples and an air of finality.

Several moments subsequently our teacher, Miss Merrill, aroused herself from the trance into which she apparently had been thrown by the expeditiousness with which this incident was accomplished, and coming to Katrina's side, ratified the arrangement, incidentally learning the new pupil's name and receiving from her hand a card, written by the princ.i.p.al and a.s.signing her to our special grade. But long before these insignificant details were completed, Jessica and I had emptied Katrina's bag, arranged her books in her desk, lent her a pencil she lacked, indicated to her the boy most to be scorned and shunned, given her in pantomime the exact standing of Miss Merrill in the regard of her pupils, and accepted in turn the temporary loan of the spruce-gum with which she had happily provided herself. At recess the acquaintance thus auspiciously begun ripened into a warm friendship, and on the way home from school that night we made a covenant of eternal loyalty and love, and told one another the stories of our lives.

Jessica's and mine were distressingly matter-of-fact. We were both supplied with the usual complement of parents, brothers, and sisters, and, barring the melancholy condition that none of them, of course, understood our complex natures, we had nothing unusual to chronicle.

But Katrina's recital was of an interest. She was, to begin with, an orphan, living with two brothers and an old uncle in a large and gloomy house we had often noticed as it stood with its faded back turned coldly to Evans Avenue. Seemingly her pleasures and friends were few.

Once a month she went to the cemetery to put flowers on her father's and mother's graves. Katrina herself seemed uncertain as to whether this pilgrimage properly belonged in the field of pleasure or the stern path of duty; but Jessica and I cla.s.sified it at once, and dropped an easy tear. We hoped her uncle was grim and stern, and did not give her enough to eat. This, we felt, would have made the melancholy picture of Katrina's condition most satisfyingly complete. But when we sought eagerly for such details, Katrina, with shameless indifference to dramatic possibilities, painted for us an unromantic, matter-of-fact old German, kind to her when he remembered her existence, but submerged in his library and in scientific research. We further learned that they ate five meals a day at Katrina's home, with "coffee" and numerous accompaniments in between. Moreover, Katrina's school-bag bulged at the sides with German cakes of various shapes and composition. Our stern disapproval of these was tempered in time by the fact that she freely shared them with us. We were not surprised to discover also, though these revelations came later, that the old house-keeper had difficulty in keeping b.u.t.tons on the child's frocks, and that Katrina was addicted to surrept.i.tious consumption of large cuc.u.mber pickles behind her geography in school hours. These were small faults of an otherwise beautiful nature, and stimulating to our youthful fancy in the possibilities they suggested. Unquestioningly we accepted Katrina as a being to be loved, pitied, and spared the ruder shocks of life.

Lovingly we sharpened her pencils, cheerfully we covered her books, unenthusiastically but patiently we wrote her compositions; for Katrina's mind worked slowly, and literature was obviously not her forte. In return, Katrina blossomed and existed and shed on us the radiance of a smile which illumined the dim school-room even as her optimistic theories of life leavened our infant pessimism.

Time swept us on, out of childhood school-rooms into the dignified shades of the academy, and Katrina developed from a fat little girl with yellow braids into a plump young person with a rather ordinary complexion, some taste in dress, and a really angelic smile. As a possible explanation of her lack of interest in intellectual pursuits, she explained to us that she continued to attend school only because her uncle suggested nothing else. Whatever the reason, we were glad to have her there; and though we still did most of her work, and she carefully refrained from burdening her mind with academic knowledge, the tie between us was strengthened, if anything, by the fact. Jessica and I were already convinced that more was being put into us than two small heads could hold. It was a grateful as well as a friendly task to pa.s.s the surplus on to Katrina.

When we were seventeen, Jessica and I were told that we were to be sent East to college, and Katrina's uncle, first stimulating thought by pushing his spectacles back upon his brow, decided that she was already sufficiently burdened by education, and that the useful arts of the _Hausfrau_ should engage her attention forthwith. She should keep house for him and her brothers, he announced, until she carried out her proper mission in life by marrying and having babies. With this oracular utterance he closed further discussion by burying himself once more in his library, while Katrina came to tell us his decision.

She had looked forward to the pleasing social aspects of college life, so she seemed slightly disappointed, did Katrina, and the end of her nose held certain high lights. But aside from this evidence of sorrow she made no protest against the peremptory masculine shaping of her future. Stricken to the heart, Jessica and I stormed, begged, implored, wept. Katrina opposed to our eloquence the impa.s.sive front of a pink sofa-cushion.

"My uncle says it," she sighed, and was silent.

Jessica and I were not the natures to remain inactive at such a crisis.

We appealed to her brothers, who promptly declined to express any opinion in the matter beyond a general conviction that their uncle was right in all things. Baffled, we proceeded to beard the uncle in his den. We found him wearing worn carpet slippers, a faded dressing-gown, a serene expression, and an air of absorption in science which did not materially lift at our approach. He listened to us patiently, however, greeting our impa.s.sioned climaxes with long-drawn "ach so's," which Jessica subsequently confided to me brought to birth in her the first murderous impulse of a hitherto blameless life. Once we experienced high hopes, when Jessica, whose conscience had seemingly not accompanied us to the conference, dwelt feelingly on Katrina's unusual intellectual achievements at the academy. Her uncle grew very grave at this, and his "ach so's" rolled about in the bare old library like echoes of distant thunder.

"Ach, that is bad," he sighed; "I did not think it; I was careless. I should have taken her away sooner, is it not so? But she will quickly forget--yes, yes." His face cleared. "It will do her no harm," he went on. "It is not good that the women know too much. _Kirche, Kinder, und Kuchen_--that is best for them. Ach, yes."

There being obviously little to gain by prolonging this painful discussion, Jessica and I bore our outraged sensibilities to the calming atmosphere of our homes. And in due time, our trunks being packed and our farewells said, we departed to apply our thirsty lips to the fountain of knowledge flowing at the Eastern college, leaving Katrina to embark upon her domestic career.

Time and distance, we reminded Katrina, could be bridged by letters, and Katrina responded n.o.bly to the hint. She wrote every day at first, and we consumed most of our waking hours in inditing our replies. There seemed, indeed, little else to engage our attention in a community which was experiencing great difficulty in recalling our names and was in heathen darkness as to our brilliant achievements at the academy. As time pa.s.sed, however, we grew more busy. For a few months the necessity of a.s.serting our individuality to an extent which would at least prevent our being trodden upon in the halls engaged our attention, and after that a conscientious imitation of loved ones in the Junior cla.s.s occupied much time.

The great news of Katrina's engagement fanned into a fierce flame the warm embers of our friendship. Oh, joy, oh romance, oh, young, young love! We wrote Katrina forty pages of congratulations, and Katrina coyly but fully replied. We could almost see her rosy blushes as she bent over the pages of her long letters to us. Her future lord was a German, a professor in the Lutheran college in our native city, and, it seemed, though Katrina dwelt but lightly on the fact, somewhat past the first fine flush of youth. So much Katrina naively conveyed to us, with the further information that the wedding was to be early in February, because Professor von h.e.l.ler, the happy bridegroom, seemed unaccountably to be in haste, and had bought a home, to which he was anxious to take her.

There was much in all this to arouse our girlish enthusiasm; the charms of our beloved Juniors paled into temporary insignificance as we followed Katrina's love-affair. We could not go home for the wedding, for reasons which seemed sufficient to the faculty, and this was a bitter blow. But we spent more than we could afford on the wedding-present we sent Katrina, and we still occupied most of our waking hours writing to her.

The wedding, according to Katrina's account, was in the nature of a brilliant social function. She found time during her honeymoon to write us lengthy accounts of its splendors. She obviously had taken considerable satisfaction in the presence of the entire faculty of Professor von h.e.l.ler's college and in the effect of her gown, which was of white satin, with orange-blossoms. She also sent us a box of her wedding-cake, some of which we ate and upon the rest of which we conscientiously slumbered, experiencing horrible nightmares. Then, as the weeks pa.s.sed, her letters became less frequent, and we, in turn, whirling in the maelstrom of spring examinations, gave to her paradise the tribute of an occasional envious thought and respected her happy silence.

When we went home for our summer vacation our first caller, most properly, was Katrina. She was a subdued, rather chastened Katrina, whose thoughtful, slightly puzzled expression might have suggested to maturer minds that some, at least, of the vaunted joys of domestic life had thus far escaped her. She urged us to come to her at once--the next day, in fact--and we accepted her invitation with the alacrity it deserved. We could not dine with her, we explained, as Jessica's sister had thoughtlessly made another engagement for us; but we would come at two and remain until after five, unbosoming ourselves of the year's experiences in a long talk and listening to the wisdom that flowed from Katrina's lips.

The next day was very beautiful, and Jessica and I, casting off a haunting suspicion of our individual unimportance which we had not quite succeeded in leaving behind us at college, expanded joyfully, and lent ourselves to the charms of a sunlit world. The Lutheran fount of knowledge was on the edge of the city, and Katrina's home was a short distance beyond it. It was quite a country place, this home, over the big, bare lawn of which an iron dog fiercely mounted guard. A weather-beaten house confronted us, with a cold, forbidding expression.

We felt chilled as we opened the gate, but Katrina presented herself at the first click of its latch, and her welcome was so hospitable and eager that our temporary constraint vanished. Simultaneously we fell upon her neck; loudly we a.s.sured her of our envious delight; noisily we trooped into her hall. As we entered it, a large, cheerful room confronted us. Through its open door we could see soft, leather-covered easy-chairs and big windows overlooking distant hills. Jessica started toward this, but Katrina checked her with a gentle touch.

"Not there," she said, gravely; "that is my husband's study, and he may come in any moment. _This_ is our sitting-room."

She opened another door as she spoke, and we followed her dazedly across the threshold into a s.p.a.ce which, properly utilized, might have made a comfortable single sleeping-room. It was quite seven feet by nine and had one window, looking out on a dingy barn. The painted floor was partly covered by a rug. Katrina's zither stood stiffly in a corner, three chairs backed themselves sternly against the wall.

Katrina indicated two of these, and dropped on the third with her radiant smile.

"We use this as the sitting-room," she remarked, casually, "because my husband needs plenty of light and s.p.a.ce when he works. Oh, my dear girls!" she broke out; "you don't know how glad I am to see you! Tell me everything that has happened since we met--all about college and your friends there."

As she spoke, there was the sound of heavy footsteps in the hall, followed by the noisy opening and shutting of a door. The pushing about of chairs in the next room and the drop of a heavy body into one of them suggested that the professor was at home and in his study. Katrina corroborated this surmise.

"My husband," she murmured, with a little blush. "He is early to-day."