The Return of Peter Grimm Part 2

THE HEIR

"h.e.l.lo, Kitty," he said. "Good-morning."

"Good-morning, Frederik," responded the girl, and started toward the stairs.

But the man intercepted her. Catching her playfully by the arm he tried to draw her toward him.

"You're pretty as a June rose to-day," he laughed.

Hartmann, instinctively, had half-risen from his chair. The girl, noting his movement and the frown gathering on his face, checked her impulse to retort, quietly disengaged herself from the newcomer's familiar grasp, and ran up the short stair flight that led into the gallery.

In no way offended, the man glanced after her with another short laugh, then turned to Hartmann.

"Where's my uncle?" he asked.

Hartmann looked up with elaborate slowness from the notes he was making of the newly opened mail. His eyes at last rested on the dapper figure before him, with the impersonal, faintly irritated gaze one might bestow on a yelping puppy.

"Mr. Grimm is outside," he answered. "He's watching my father spray the plum trees. The black knot's getting ahead of us this year."

"I wonder," grumbled Frederik, lounging across to the window, "if it's possible once a year to ask a simple question of any inmate of this cursedly dreary old place without getting a botanical answer."

"That's what we are here for--those of us that work," said Hartmann, returning to his note making.

"Work, work, work!" mocked Frederik. "When I inherit my beloved uncle's fortune, I shall buy up all the dictionaries and have that wretched word crossed out of them."

Hartmann made no reply. He did not seem to have heard. But Frederik, absently ripping to atoms a Richmond rose from the window table vase, continued his muttered tirade. An inattentive audience was better than none.

"Work!" he growled. "When people here aren't talking about it, they're doing it. Grubby, earthy work. And it was to prepare for this sort of thing that I loafed through Leyden and Heidelberg! Yes, and loafed through, creditably, too; even if Oom Peter did bully me into making a specialty of botany. Botany! Dry as dust. After the University and after my _wanderjahr_, I thought it would be another easy task to come here, and 'learn the business.' Easy! As easy as the treadmill. And as congenial."

"I wonder you don't tell Mr. Grimm all that. I'm sure it would interest him."

"My dear, worthy uncle, who builds such wonderful hopes on me? Not I. It would break his n.o.ble heart. I hope you quite understand, Hartmann, that I keep quiet only through fear of wounding him and not with any fear that he might bequeath the business elsewhere."

"Quite," returned Hartmann drily. "That's why I keep my mouth shut when he holds you up to me as a paragon of zeal and industry and asks me why I don't pattern myself after you. But, for all that, you're taking chances when you talk to me about him as you do."

"I'm not," contradicted Frederik. "I may not know botany. But I know men. You love me about as much as you love smallpox. But you belong to the breed that doesn't tell tales. Besides, I've got to speak the truth to some one, once in a while, if I don't want to explode. You're a splendid safety valve, Hartmann."

The secretary bent over his notes. His forehead veins swelled, and his face darkened. But he gave no overt sign of offence. Frederik, watching keenly, seemed disappointed.

"In New York," he pursued with a sigh, "they're just about thinking of waking up. And look at the time _I'm_ routed out of bed! Say, Hartmann, I wish you would give Oom Peter a hint to oil his shoes. Every morning he wakes me up at five o'clock, creaking down the stairs. It's a sort of pedal alarm clock. Creak! Creak! Creak!--_Ach, Gott!_ Even yet I can hardly keep one eye open. If ever it pleases Providence to give me my heritage, the first thing I'll do will be to sleep till noon. And then to go to sleep again."

He stared moodily out of the window into the glowing, flower-starred June world.

"How I loathe this pokey, dead old village!" he complained. "And what wouldn't I give to be back with the old Leyden crowd for one little night!"

He lurched over to the piano, sat carelessly, sidewise, on its stool, and, thrumming at the keyboard, fell to humming in a slurring, reminiscent fashion, the old Leyden University chorus:

"_Ach, daar koonet ye amuseeren! Io vivat--Io vivat Nostorum sanitas, hoc estamoris porculum, Dolores est anti gotum--Io vivat--Io vivat Nostorum sanitas--!_

"Say, Hartmann," he broke off from his jumble of Dutch and Hollandised Latin, "the old man is aging. He's aging fast."

"Who?" asked Hartmann absently, glancing up from his work. "Oh, your uncle? Yes, he is mellowing. He is changing foliage with the years."

"Changing foliage? Not he. He changes nothing. What was good enough forty years ago seems to him quite good enough to-day. He's as old-fashioned as his hats. And they're the oldest things since Noah's time. He's just as old-fashioned in his financial ways. In my opinion, for instance, this would be a capital time to sell out the business. But he----"

"Sell out?" echoed Hartmann in genuine horror. "Sell out a business that's been in his family for--why, man, he'd as soon sell his soul.

This business is his religion."

"Yes, and that's why it is so flourishing in spite of his back-date customs. It's at the very acme of its prosperity now. Why, the plant must be worth an easy half million. Yes, and more. Lord, but it _would_ sell now! One, two, three,--_Augenblick!_ By the way, speaking of selling,--what was the last offer the dear old gentleman turned down from Hicks of Rochester?"

But Hartmann did not hear the question. He was staring at Frederik in open-mouthed astonishment.

"Sell out?" he repeated dully. "This is a new one--even from you. There isn't a day your uncle doesn't tell me how triumphantly you are going to carry on the business after he is gone. He----"

"Oh, I am!" sneered Frederik. "I am. Of course I am. How can you doubt it. Wait and see. It's a big name--'Peter Grimm.' And the old gentleman knows his business. He a.s.suredly knows his business."

"I don't mind being the repository of your confidences about hating work," burst out Hartmann, "any more than I mind listening to the mewing of a sick cat. But when you strike this new vein, you'll have to choose another audience. I'm afraid I'd be likely to take sudden charge of the meeting and break the talented orator's neck."

He gathered up some of his papers and stamped out. Frederik looked after him uncertainly, took a step toward the door through which the secretary had just vanished, then thought better of the idea, laughed shortly, and drew out a cigarette. But a creaking of heavy shoes on the walk outside led him to slip the cigarette back into its case, and to bend interestedly over the pile of office mail Hartmann had opened.

If Kathrien had typified all that was dainty and alluring in the room's Dutch art, the man who now stamped in from the front vestibule, a.s.suredly was typical of all old Holland's solidity. Stocky, of medium height, he was clad more as though he had copied the fashions depicted in a daguerrotype than those of the twentieth century. His black broadcloth was of no recent cut. His low, upright collar and broad cravat were of stock-like aspect, while a high hat such as he wore has certainly appeared in no show window since 1870.

Withal, there was nothing ludicrous or even incongruous about the costume. It belonged with the wearer. And while on another man it would have been absurd, on him it seemed the only logical apparel.

Peter Grimm halted in the vestibule, laboriously removed his rubbers, and dropped his heavy ash stick into its place on the rack. Then he carefully lifted the antique hat from his head, deposited it on a peg, and came forward into the room. The face, revealed as he left the vestibule's gloom for the bright sunlight, was at first glance hard, deeply lined, and stubborn; the effect accented by a set mouth, the little truculently alert eyes under bushy brows, and the slightly uptilted nose.

A second look, however, would have revealed, to any one who could read faces, a lovable and almost tender light behind the eye's sharp twinkle and a kindly, humorous twist to the stubborn mouth. Hot temper, the physiognomist would have read, and obstinacy. But there the catalogue of faults would have ended abruptly. The rest was warm heart, trustfulness, eager sympathy,--an almost child-like friendliness toward the world at large that forever battled for mastery with native Dutch shrewdness.

There was far more kindness than shrewdness in the square old face just now, as Grimm noted his nephew's presence and his deep absorption in the contents of the mail. Frederik looked up as Grimm came forward.

"Good-morning, Oom Peter," said he.

"Good-morning, Fritzy," returned Grimm. "Hard at work, I see."

"Not so hard but that you were ahead of me. I felt unpardonably lazy when I heard you come downstairs at five."

"I'm sorry I woke you. Youngsters need their sleep. We old fellows have done about all the dozing we need to do; and we are coming so close to our Long Sleep that G.o.d gives us extra wakefulness for the little time left; so we may see as much as possible of this glorious old world of His."

"I ran over from the office----"

"Oh, I know why you ran over, Fritzy. A word with Kathrien--yes?"

"No, sir, I try to forget everything but work during business hours. I came to look for you. I've a suggestion----"

"Yes?"

Grimm's face lighted with the rare smile that played over its harsh outlines like sunshine. Each proof of his nephew's interest in the work was as tonic to him.