Stories of a Western Town

By Octave Thanet

Contents

THE BESETMENT OF KURT LIEDERS

A SILVER rime glistened all down the street.

There was a drabble of dead leaves on the sidewalk which was of wood, and on the roadway which was of macadam and stiff mud. The wind blew sharply, for it was a December day and only six in the morning. Nor were the houses high enough to furnish any independent bulwark; they were low, wooden dwellings, the tallest a bare two stories in height, the majority only one story. But they were in good painting and repair, and most of them had a homely gayety of geraniums or bouvardias in the windows. The house on the corner was the tall house. It occupied a larger yard than its neighbors; and there were lace curtains tied with blue ribbons for the windows in the right hand front room. The door of this house swung back with a crash, and a woman darted out. She ran at the top of her speed to the little yellow house farther down the street. Her blue calico gown clung about her stout figure and fluttered behind her, revealing her blue woollen stockings and felt slippers. Her gray head was bare. As she ran tears rolled down her cheeks and she wrung her hands.

"Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh, lieber Herr Je!" One near would have heard her sob, in too distracted agitation to heed the motorneer of the passing street-car who stared after her at the risk of his car, or the tousled heads behind a few curtains. She did not stop until she almost fell against the door of the yellow house. Her frantic knocking was answered by a young woman in a light and artless costume of a quilted petticoat and a red flannel sack.

"Oh, gracious goodness! Mrs. Lieders!" cried she.

Thekla Lieders rather staggered than walked into the room and fell back on the black haircloth sofa.

"There, there, there," said the young woman while she patted the broad shoulders heaving between sobs and short breath, "what is it? The house aint afire?"

"Oh, no, oh, Mrs. Olsen, he has done it again!" She wailed in sobs, like a child.

"Done it? Done what?" exclaimed Mrs. Olsen, then her face paled. "Oh, my gracious, you DON'T mean he's killed himself———"

"Yes, he's killed himself, again."

"And he's dead?" asked the other in an awed tone.

Mrs. Lieders gulped down her tears. "Oh, not so bad as that, I cut him down, he was up in the garret and I sus—suspected him and I run up and—oh, he was there, a choking, and he was so mad! He swore at me and—he kicked me when I—I says: 'Kurt, what are you doing of? Hold on till I git a knife,' I says—for his hands was just dangling at his side; and he says nottings cause he couldn't, he was most gone, and I knowed I wouldn't have time to git no knife but I saw it was a rope was pretty bad worn and so—so I just run and jumped and ketched it in my hands, and being I'm so fleshy it couldn't stand no more and it broke! And, oh! he—he kicked me when I was try to come near to git the rope off his neck; and so soon like he could git his breath he swore at me——"

"And you a helping of him! Just listen to that!" cried the hearer indignantly.

"So I come here for to git you and Mr. Olsen to help me git him down stairs, 'cause he is too heavy for me to lift, and he is so mad he won't walk down himself."

"Yes, yes, of course. I'll call Carl. Carl! dost thou hear? come! But did you dare to leave him Mrs. Lieders?" Part of the time she spoke in English, part of the time in her own tongue, gliding from one to another, and neither party observing the transition.

Mrs. Lieders wiped her eyes, saying: "Oh, yes, Danke schon, I aint afraid 'cause I tied him with the rope, righd good, so he don't got no chance to move. He was make faces at me all the time I tied him." At the remembrance, the tears welled anew.

Mrs. Olsen, a little bright tinted woman with a nose too small for her big blue eyes and chubby cheeks, quivered with indignant sympathy.

"Well, I did nefer hear of sooch a mean acting man!" seemed to her the most natural expression; but the wife fired, at once.

"No, he is not a mean man," she cried, "no, Freda Olsen, he is not a mean man at all! There aint nowhere a better man than my man; and Carl Olsen, he knows that. Kurt, he always buys a whole ham and a whole barrel of flour, and never less than a dollar of sugar at a time! And he never gits drunk nor he never gives me any bad talk. It was only he got this wanting to kill himself on him, sometimes."

"Well, I guess I'll go put on my things," said Mrs. Olsen, wisely declining to defend her position. "You set right still and warm yourself, and we'll be back in a minute."

Indeed, it was hardly more than that time before both Carl Olsen, who worked in the same furniture factory as Kurt Lieders, and was a comely and after-witted giant, appeared with Mrs. Olsen ready for the street.

He nodded at Mrs. Lieders and made a gurgling noise in his throat, expected to convey sympathy. Then, he coughed and said that he was ready, and they started.

Feeling further expression demanded, Mrs. Olsen asked: "How many times has he done it, Mrs. Lieders?"

Mrs. Lieders was trotting along, her anxious eyes on the house in the distance, especially on the garret windows. "Three times," she answered, not removing her eyes; "onct he tooked Rough on Rats and I found it out and I put some apple butter in the place of it, and he kept wondering and wondering how he didn't feel notings, and after awhile I got him off the notion, that time. He wasn't mad at me; he just said: 'Well, I do it some other time. You see!' but he promised to wait till I got the spring house cleaning over, so he could shake the carpets for me; and by and by he got feeling better. He was mad at the boss and that made him feel bad. The next time it was the same, that time he jumped into the cistern——"

"Yes, I know," said Olsen, with a half grin, "I pulled him out."

"It was the razor he wanted," the wife continued, "and when he come home and says he was going to leave the shop and he aint never going back there, and gets out his razor and sharps it, I knowed what that meant and I told him I got to have some bluing and wouldn't he go and get it? and he says, 'You won't git another husband run so free on your errands, Thekla,' and I says I don't want none; and when he was gone I hid the razor and he couldn't find it, but that didn't mad him, he didn't say notings; and when I went to git the supper he walked out in the yard and jumped into the cistern, and I heard the splash and looked in and there he was trying to git his head under, and I called, 'For the Lord's sake, papa! For the Lord's sake!' just like that. And I fished for him with the pole that stood there and he was sorry and caught hold of it and give in, and I rested the pole agin the side cause I wasn't strong enough to h'ist him out; and he held on whilest I run for help——"

"And I got the ladder and he clum out," said the giant with another grin of recollection, "he was awful wet!"

"That was a month ago," said the wife, solemnly.

"He sharped the razor onct," said Mrs. Lieders, "but he said it was for to shave him, and I got him to promise to let the barber shave him sometime, instead. Here, Mrs. Olsen, you go righd in, the door aint locked."

By this time they were at the house door. They passed in and ascended the stairs to the second story, then climbed a narrow, ladder-like flight to the garret. Involuntarily they had paused to listen at the foot of the stairs, but it was very quiet, not a sound of movement, not so much as the sigh of a man breathing. The wife turned pale and put both her shaking hands on her heart.

"Guess he's trying to scare us by keeping quiet!" said Olsen, cheerfully, and he stumbled up the stairs, in advance. "Thunder!" he exclaimed, on the last stair, "well, we aint any too quick."

In fact Carl had nearly fallen over the master of the house, that enterprising self-destroyer having contrived, pinioned as he was, to roll over to the very brink of the stair well, with the plain intent to break his neck by plunging headlong.

In the dim light all that they could see was a small, old man whose white hair was strung in wisps over his purple face, whose deep set eyes glared like the eyes of a rat in a trap, and whose very elbows and knees expressed in their cramps the fury of an outraged soul. When he saw the new-comers he shut his eyes and his jaws.

"Well, Mr. Lieders," said Olsen, mildly, "I guess you better git down-stairs. Kin I help you up?"

"No," said Lieders.

"Will I give you an arm to lean on?"

"No."

"Won't you go at all, Mr. Lieders?"

"No."

Olsen shook his head. "I hate to trouble you, Mr. Lieders," said he in his slow, undecided tones, "please excuse me," with which he gathered up the little man into his strong arms and slung him over his shoulders, as easily as he would sling a sack of meal. It was a vent for Mrs. Olsen's bubbling indignation to make a dive for Lieders's heels and hold them, while Carl backed down-stairs. But Lieders did not make the least resistance. He allowed them to carry him into the room indicated by his wife, and to lay him bound on the plump feather bed. It was not his bedroom but the sacred "spare room," and the bed was part of its luxury. Thekla ran in, first, to remove the embroidered pillow shams and the dazzling, silken "crazy quilt" that was her choicest possession.

Safely in the bed, Lieders opened his eyes and looked from one face to the other, his lip curling. "You can't keep me this way all the time. I can do it in spite of you," said he.

"Well, I think you had ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Lieders!" Mrs. Olsen burst out, in a tremble between wrath and exertion, shaking her little, plump fist at him.

But the placid Carl only nodded, as in sympathy, saying, "Well, I am sorry you feel so bad, Mr. Lieders. I guess we got to go now."

Mrs. Olsen looked as if she would have liked to exhort Lieders further; but she shrugged her shoulders and followed her husband in silence.

"I wished you'd stay to breakfast, now you're here," Thekla urged out of her imperious hospitality; had Kurt been lying there dead, the next meal must have been offered, just the same. "I know, you aint got time to git Mr. Olsen his breakfast, Freda, before he has got to go to the shops, and my tea-kettle is boiling now, and the coffee'll be ready—I GUESS you had better stay."

But Mrs. Olsen seconded her husband's denial, and there was nothing left Thekla but to see them to the door. No sooner did she return than Lieders spoke. "Aint you going to take off them ropes?" said he.

"Not till you promise you won't do it."

Silence. Thekla, brushing a few tears from her eyes, scrutinized the ropes again, before she walked heavily out of the room. She turned the key in the door.

Directly a savory steam floated through the hall and pierced the cracks about the door; then Thekla's footsteps returned; they echoed over the uncarpeted boards.

She had brought his breakfast, cooked with the best of her homely skill. The pork chops that he liked had been fried, there was a napkin on the tray, and the coffee was in the best gilt cup and saucer.

"Here's your breakfast, papa," said she, trying to smile.

"I don't want no breakfast," said he.

She waited, holding the tray, and wistfully eying him.

"Take it 'way," said he, "I won't touch it if you stand till doomsday, lessen you untie me!"

"I'll untie your arm, papa, one arm; you kin eat that way."

"Not lessen you untie all of me, I won't touch a bite."

"You know why I won't untie you, papa."

"Starving will kill as dead as hanging," was Lieders's orphic response to this.

Thekla sighed and went away, leaving the tray on the table. It may be that she hoped the sight of food might stir his stomach to rebel against his dogged will; if so she was disappointed; half an hour went by during which the statue under the bedclothes remained without so much as a quiver.

Then the old woman returned. "Aint you awful cramped and stiff, papa?"

"Yes," said the statue.

"Will you promise not to do yourself a mischief, if I untie you?"

"No."

Thekla groaned, while the tears started to her red eyelids. "But you'll git awful tired and it will hurt you if you don't get the ropes off, soon, papa!"

"I know that!"

He closed his eyes again, to be the less hindered from dropping back into his distempered musings. Thekla took a seat by his side and sat silent as he. Slowly the natural pallor returned to the high forehead and sharp features. They were delicate features and there was an air of refinement, of thought, about Lieders's whole person, as different as possible from the robust comeliness of his wife. With its keen sensitive-ness and its undefined melancholy it was a dreamer's face. One meets such faces, sometimes, in incongruous places and wonders what they mean. In fact, Kurt Lieders, head cabinet maker in the furniture factory of Lossing & Co., was an artist. He was, also, an incomparable artisan and the most exacting foreman in the shops. Thirty years ago he had first taken wages from the senior Lossing. He had watched a modest industry climb up to a great business, nor was he all at sea in his own estimate of his share in the firm's success. Lieders's workmanship had an honesty, an infinite patience of detail, a daring skill of design that came to be sought and commanded its own price. The Lossing "art furniture" did not slander the name. No sculptor ever wrought his soul into marble with a more unflinching conscience or a purer joy in his work than this wood-carver dreaming over sideboards and bedsteads. Unluckily, Lieders had the wrong side of the gift as well as the right; was full of whims and crotchets, and as unpractical as the Christian martyrs. He openly defied expense, and he would have no trifling with the laws of art. To make after orders was an insult to Kurt. He made what was best for the customer; if the latter had not the sense to see it he was a fool and a pig, and some one else should work for him, not Kurt Lieders, BEGEHR!

Young Lossing had learned the business practically. He was taught the details by his father's best workman; and a mighty hard and strict master the best workman proved! Lossing did not dream that the crabbed old tyrant who rarely praised him, who made him go over, for the twentieth time, any imperfect piece of work, who exacted all the artisan virtues to the last inch, was secretly proud of him. Yet, in fact, the thread of romance in Lieders's prosaic life was his idolatry of the Lossing Manufacturing Co. It is hard to tell whether it was the Lossings or that intangible quantity, the firm, the business, that he worshipped. Worship he did, however, the one or the other, perhaps the both of them, though in the peevish and erratic manner of the savage who sometimes grovels to his idols and sometimes kicks them.