|
Before summer had gone,
Winnipeg was reminded of the existence of
the foreign colony by the escape from the Provincial Penitentiary
of the Russian prisoner Kalmar. The man who could not be held by
Siberian bars and guards found escape from a Canadian prison easy.
That he had accomplices was evident, but who they were could not be
discovered. Suspicion naturally fell upon Simon Ketzel and Joseph
Pinkas, but after the most searching investigation they were
released and Winnipeg went back to its ways and forgot. The big
business men rebuilding fortunes shattered by the boom, the little
business men laying foundations for fortunes to be, the women
within the charmed circle of Society bound to the whirling wheel of
social functions, other women outside and striving to beg, or buy,
or break their way into the circle, and still other women who cared
not a pin's head whether they were within or without, being
sufficient for themselves, the busy people of the churches with
their philanthropies, their religious activities, striving to
gather into their several folds the waifs and strays that came
stumbling into their city from all lands--all alike, unaware of the
growing danger area in their young city, forgot the foreign colony,
its problems and its needs.
Meantime, summer
followed winter, and winter summer, the months and
years went on while the foreign colony grew in numbers and more
slowly in wealth. More slowly in wealth, because as an individual
member grew in wealth he departed from the colony and went out to
make an independent home for himself in one of the farming colonies
which the Government was establishing in some of the more barren
and forbidding sections of the country; or it may be, loving the
city and its ways of business, he rapidly sloughed off with his
foreign clothes his foreign speech and manner of life, and his
foreign ideals as well, and became a Canadian citizen, distinguished
from his cosmopolitan fellow citizen only by the slight difficulty
he displayed with some of the consonants of the language.
Such a man was Simon
Ketzel. Simon was by trade a carpenter, but he
had received in the old land a good educational foundation; he had,
moreover, a shrewd head for affairs, and so he turned his energies
to business, and with conspicuous success. For in addition to all
his excellent qualities, Simon possessed as the most valuable part
of his equipment a tidy, thrifty wife, who saved what her husband
earned and kept guard over him on feast days, saved and kept guard
so faithfully that before long Simon came to see the wisdom of her
policy and became himself a shrewd and sober and well-doing
Canadian, able to hold his own with the best of them.
His sobriety and
steadiness Simon owed mostly to his thrifty wife,
but his rapid transformation into Canadian citizenship he owed
chiefly to his little daughter Margaret. It was Margaret that
taught him his English, as she conned over her lessons with him in
the evenings. It was Margaret who carried home from the little
Methodist mission near by, the illustrated paper and the library
book, and thus set him a-reading. It was Margaret that brought
both Simon and Lena, his wife, to the social gathering of the
Sunday School and of the church. It was thus to little Margaret
that the Ketzels owed their introduction to Canadian life and
manners, and to the finer sides of Canadian religion. And through
little Margaret it was that those greatest of all Canadianising
influences, the school and the mission, made their impact upon the
hearts and the home of the Ketzel family. And as time went on it
came to pass that from the Ketzel home, clean, orderly, and
Canadian, there went out into the foul wastes about, streams of
healing and cleansing that did their beneficent work where they
went.
One of these streams
reached the home of Paulina, to the great good
of herself and her family. Here, again, it was chiefly little
Margaret who became the channel of the new life, for with Paulina
both Simon and Lena had utterly failed. She was too dull, too
apathetic, too hopeless and too suspicious even of her own kind to
allow the Ketzels an entrance to her heart. But even had she not
been all this, she was too sorely oppressed with the burden of her
daily toil to yield to such influence as they had to offer. For
Rosenblatt was again in charge of her household. In a manner best
known to himself, he had secured the mortgage on her home, and thus
became her landlord, renting her the room in which she and her
family dwelt, and for which they all paid in daily labour, and
dearly enough. Rosenblatt, thus being her master, would not let
her go. She was too valuable for that. Strong, patient, diligent,
from early dawn till late at night she toiled and moiled with her
baking and scrubbing, fighting out that ancient and primitive and
endless fight against dirt and hunger, beaten by the one, but
triumphing over the other. She carried in her heart a dull sense
of injustice, a feeling that somehow wrong was being done her; but
when Rosenblatt flourished before her a formidable legal document,
and had the same interpreted to her by his smart young clerk,
Samuel Sprink, she, with true Slavic and fatalistic passivity,
accepted her lot and bent her strong back to her burden without
complaint. What was the use of complaint? Who in all the city was
there to care for a poor, stupid, Galician woman with none too
savoury a reputation? Many and generous were the philanthropies of
Winnipeg, but as yet there was none that had to do with the dirt,
disease and degradation that were too often found in the environment
of the foreign people. There were many churches in the city rich in
good work, with many committees that met to confer and report, but
there was not yet one whose special duty it was to confer and to
report upon the unhappy and struggling and unsavoury foreigner
within their city gate.
Yes, there was one. The
little Methodist mission hard by the
foreign colony had such a committee, a remarkable committee in a
way, a committee with no fine-spun theories of wholesale reform, a
committee with no delicate nostril to be buried in a perfumed
handkerchief when pursuing an investigation (as a matter of fact,
that committee had no sense of smell at all), a committee of one,
namely, John James Parsons, the Methodist missionary, and he worked
chiefly with committees of one, of which not the least important
was little Margaret Ketzel.
It was through Margaret
Ketzel that Parsons got his first hold of
Paulina, by getting hold of her little girl Irma. For Margaret,
though so much her junior in years and experience, was to Irma a
continual source of wonder and admiration. Her facility with the
English speech, her ability to read books, her fine manners, her
clean and orderly home, her pretty Canadian dress, her beloved
school, her cheery mission, all these were to Irma new, wonderful
and fascinating. Gradually Irma was drawn to that new world of
Margaret's, and away from the old, sordid, disorderly wretchedness
of her own life and home.
After much secret
conference with all the Ketzels, and much patient
and skilful labour on the part of the motherly Lena, a great day at
length arrived for Irma. It was the day on which she discarded the
head shawl with the rest of the quaint Galician attire, and
appeared dressed as a Canadian girl, discovering to her delighted
friends and to all who knew her, though not yet to herself, a rare
beauty hitherto unnoticed by any. Indeed, when Mr. Samuel Sprink,
coming in from Rosenblatt's store to spend a few hurried minutes in
gorging himself after his manner at the evening meal, allowed
himself time to turn his eyes from his plate and to let them rest
upon the little maid waiting upon his table, the transformation
from the girl, slatternly, ragged and none too clean, that was wont
to bring him his food, to this new being that flitted about from
place to place, smote him as with a sudden blow. He laid down the
instruments of his gluttony and for a full half minute forgot the
steaming stew before him, whose garlic-laden odours had been
assailing his nostrils some minutes previously with pungent
delight. Others, too, of that hungry gorging company found
themselves disturbed in their ordinary occupation by this vision of
sweet and tender beauty that flitted about them, ministering to
their voracity.
To none more than to
Rosenblatt himself was the transformation of
Irma a surprise and a mystery. It made him uneasy. He had an
instinctive feeling that this was the beginning of an emancipation
that would leave him one day without his slaves. Paulina, too,
would learn the new ways; then she and the girl, who now spent long
hours of hard labour in his service, would demand money for their
toil. The thought grieved him sore. But there was another thought
that stabbed him with a keener pain. Paulina and her family would
learn that they need no longer fear him, that they could do without
him, and then they would escape from his control. And this
Rosenblatt dreaded above all things else. To lose the power to
keep in degradation the wife and children of the man he hated with
a quenchless hatred would be to lose much of the sweetness of life.
Those few terrible moments when he had lain waiting for the
uplifted knife of his foe to penetrate his shrinking eyeballs had
taken years from him. He had come back to his life older, weaker,
broken in nerve and more than ever consumed with a thirst for
vengeance. Since Kalmar's escape he lived in daily, hourly fear
that his enemy would strike again and this time without missing,
and with feverish anxiety he planned to anticipate that hour with a
vengeance which would rob death of much of its sting.
So far he had succeeded
only partially. Paulina and Irma he held in
domestic bondage. From the boy Kalman, too, he exacted day by day
the full tale of his scanty profits made from selling newspapers on
the street. But beyond this he could not go. By no sort of terror
could he induce Paulina to return to the old conditions and rent
floor space in her room to his boarders. At her door she stood on
guard, refusing admittance. Once, indeed, when hard pressed by
Rosenblatt demanding entrance, she had thrown herself before him
with a butcher knife in her hand, and with a look of such
transforming fierceness on her face as drove him from the house in
fear of his life. She was no longer his patient drudge, but a woman
defending, not so much her own, as her husband's honour, a tigress
guarding her young.
Never again did
Rosenblatt attempt to pass through that door, but
schooled himself to wait a better time and a safer path to compass
his vengeance. But from that moment, where there had been merely
contempt for Paulina and her family, there sprang up bitter hatred.
He hated them all--the woman who was his dupe and his slave, but
who balked him of his revenge; the boy who brought him the cents
for which he froze during the winter evenings at the corner of
Portage and Main, but who with the cents gave him fierce and
fearless looks; and this girl suddenly transformed from a timid,
stupid, ill-dressed Galician child, into a being of grace and
loveliness and conscious power. No wonder that as he followed her
with his eye, noting all this new grace and beauty, he felt uneasy.
Already she seemed to have soared far beyond his sordid world and
far beyond his grasp. Deep in his heart he swore that he would
find means to bring her down to the dirt again. The higher her
flight, the farther her fall and the sweeter would be his revenge.
"What's the matter wit
you, boss? Gone back on your grub, eh?"
It was his clerk,
Samuel Sprink, whose sharp little eyes had not
failed to note the gloomy glances of his employer.
"Pretty gay girl, our
Irma has come to be," continued the cheerful
Samuel, who prided himself on his fine selection of colloquial
English. "She's a beaut now, ain't she? A regular bird!"
Rosenblatt started. At
his words, but more at the admiration in
Samuel's eyes, a new idea came to him. He knew his clerk well,
knew his restless ambition, his insatiable greed, his intense
selfishness, his indomitable will. And he had good reason to know.
Three times during the past year his clerk had forced from him an
increase of salary. Indeed, Samuel Sprink, young though he was and
unlearned in the ways of the world, was the only man in the city
that Rosenblatt feared. If by any means Samuel could obtain a hold
over this young lady, he would soon bring her to the dust. Once in
Samuel's power, she would soon sink to the level of the ordinary
Galician wife. True, she was but a girl of fifteen, but in a year
or so she would be ready for the altar in the Galician estimation.
As these thoughts
swiftly flashed through his mind, Rosenblatt
turned to Samuel Sprink and said, "Yes, she is a fine girl. I
never noticed before. It is her new dress."
"Not a bit," said
Samuel. "The dress helps out, but it is the girl
herself. I have seen it for a long time. Look at her. Isn't she
a bird, a bird of Paradise, eh?"
"She will look well in
a cage some day, eh, Samuel?"
"You bet your sweet
life!" said Samuel.
"Better get the cage
ready then, Samuel," suggested Rosenblatt.
"There are plenty bird fanciers in this town."
The suggestion seemed
to anger Samuel, who swore an English oath
and lapsed into silence.
Irma heard, but heeded
little. Rosenblatt she feared, Samuel
Sprink she despised. There had been a time when both she and
Paulina regarded him with admiration mingled with awe. Samuel
Sprink had many attractions. He had always plenty of money to
jingle, and had a reputation for growing wealth. He was generous
in his gifts to the little girl--gifts, it must be confessed, that
cost him little, owing to his position as clerk in Rosenblatt's
store. Then, too, he was so clever with his smart English and his
Canadian manners, so magnificent with his curled and oily locks,
his resplendent jewelry, his brilliant neckties. But that was
before Irma had been brought to the little mission, and before she
had learned through Margaret Ketzel and through Margaret's father
and mother something of Canadian life, of Canadian people, of
Canadian manners and dress. As her knowledge in this direction
extended, her admiration and reverence for Samuel Sprink faded.
The day that Irma
discarded her Galician garb and blossomed forth
as a Canadian young lady was the day on which she was fully cured
of her admiration for Rosenblatt's clerk. For such subtle
influence does dress exercise over the mind that something of the
spirit of the garb seems to pass into the spirit of the wearer.
Self-respect is often born in the tailor shop or in the costumer's
parlour. Be this as it may, it is certain that Irma's Canadian
dress gave the final blow to her admiration of Samuel Sprink, and
child though she was, she became conscious of a new power over not
only Sprink, but over all the boarders, and instinctively she
assumed a new attitude toward them. The old coarse and familiar
horseplay which she had permitted without thought at their hands,
was now distasteful to her. Indeed, with most of the men it ceased
to be any longer possible. There were a few, however, and Samuel
Sprink among them, who were either too dull-witted to recognise the
change that had come to the young girl, or were unwilling to
acknowledge it. Samuel was unwilling also to surrender his
patronising and protective attitude, and when patronage became
impossible and protection unnecessary, he assumed an air of bravado
to cover the feeling of embarrassment he hated to acknowledge, and
tried to bully the girl into her former submissive admiration.
This completed the
revulsion in Irma's mind, and while outwardly
she went about her work in the house with her usual cheerful and
willing industry, she came to regard her admirer and would be
patron with fear, loathing, and contempt. Of this, however, Samuel
was quite unaware. The girl had changed in her manner as in her
dress, but that might be because she was older, she was almost a
woman, after the Galician standard of computation. Whatever the
cause, to Samuel the change only made her more fascinating than
ever, and he set himself seriously to consider whether on the
whole, dowerless though she would be, it would not be wise for him
to devote some of his time and energy to the winning of this
fascinating young lady for himself.
The possibility of
failure never entered Samuel's mind. He had an
overpowering sense of his own attractions. The question was simply
should he earnestly set himself to accomplish this end? Without
definitely making up his mind on this point, much less committing
himself to this object, Samuel allowed himself the pleasurable
occupation of trifling with the situation. But alas for Samuel's
peace of mind! and alas for his self-esteem! the daily presence of
this fascinating maiden in her new Canadian dress and with her new
Canadian manners, which appeared to go with the dress, quite swept
him away from his ordinary moorings, and he found himself tossed
upon a tempestuous sea, the helpless sport of gusts of passion that
at once surprised and humiliated him. It was an intolerably
painful experience for the self-centred and self-controlled Samuel;
and after a few months of this acute and humiliating suffering he
was prepared to accept help from almost any course.
At this point
Rosenblatt, who had been keeping a watchful eye upon
the course of events, intervened.
"Samuel, my boy," he
said one winter night when the store was
closed for the day, "you are acting the fool. You are letting a
little Slovak girl make a game of you."
"I attend to my own
business, all the same," growled Samuel.
"You do, Samuel, my
boy, you do. But you make me sorry for you,
and ashamed."
Samuel grunted,
unwilling to acknowledge even partial defeat to the
man whom he had beaten more than once in his own game.
"You desire to have
that little girl, Samuel, and yet you are
afraid of her."
But Samuel only snarled
and swore.
"You forget she is a
Galician girl."
"She is Russian,"
interposed Samuel, "and she is of good blood."
"Good blood!" said
Rosenblatt, showing his teeth like a snarling
dog, "good blood! The blood of a murdering Nihilist jail bird!"
"She is of good Russian
blood," said Samuel with an ugly look in
his face, "and he is a liar who says she is not."
"Well, well," said
Rosenblatt, turning from the point, "she is a
Galician in everything else. Her mother is a Galician, a low-bred
Galician, and you treat the girl as if she were a lady. This is
not the Galician manner of wooing. A bolder course is necessary.
You are a young man of good ability, a rising young man. You will
be rich some day. Who is this girl without family, without dower
to make you fear or hesitate? What says the proverb? 'A bone for
my dog, a stick for my wife.'"
"Yes, that is all
right," muttered Samuel, "a stick for my wife,
and if she were my wife I would soon bring her to time."
"Ho, ho," said
Rosenblatt, "it is all the same, sweetheart and
wife. They are both much the better for a stick now and then. You
are not the kind of man to stand beggar before a portionless Slovak
girl, a young man handsome, clever, well-to-do. You do not need
thus to humble yourself. Go in, my son, with more courage and with
bolder tactics. I will gladly help you."
As a first result of
Rosenblatt's encouraging advice, Samuel
recovered much of his self-assurance, which had been rudely
shattered, and therefore much of his good humour. As a further
result, he determined upon a more vigorous policy in his wooing.
He would humble himself no more. He would find means to bring this
girl to her place, namely, at his feet.
The arrival of a
Saint's day brought Samuel an opportunity to
inaugurate his new policy. The foreign colony was rigidly devoted
to its religious duties. Nothing could induce a Galician to engage
in his ordinary avocation upon any day set apart as sacred by his
Church. In the morning such of the colony as adhered to the Greek
Church, went en masse to the quaint little church which had come to
be erected and which had been consecrated by a travelling
Archbishop, and there with reverent devotion joined in worship,
using the elaborate service of the Greek rite. The religious
duties over, they proceeded still further to celebrate the day in
a somewhat riotous manner.
With the growth of the
colony new houses had been erected which far
outshone Paulina's in magnificence, but Paulina's still continued
to be a social centre chiefly through Rosenblatt's influence. For
no man was more skilled than he in the art of promoting sociability
as an investment. There was still the full complement of boarders
filling the main room and the basement, and these formed a nucleus
around which the social life of a large part of the colony loved to
gather.
It was a cold evening
in February. The mercury had run down till
it had almost disappeared in the bulb and Winnipeg was having a
taste of forty below. Through this exhilarating air Kalman was
hurrying home as fast as his sturdy legs could take him. His
fingers were numb handling the coins received from the sale of his
papers, but the boy cared nothing for that. He had had a good
afternoon and evening; for with the Winnipeg men the colder the
night the warmer their hearts, and these fierce February days were
harvest days for the hardy news boys crying their wares upon the
streets. So the sharp cold only made Kalman run the faster. Above
him twinkled the stars, under his feet sparkled the snow, the keen
air filled his lungs with ozone that sent his blood leaping through
his veins. A new zest was added to his life to-night, for as he
ran he remembered that it was a feast day and that at his home
there would be good eating and dance and song. As he ran he
planned how he would avoid Rosenblatt and get past him into
Paulina's room, where he would be safe, and where, he knew, good
things saved from the feast for him by his sister would be waiting
him. To her he would entrust all his cents above what was due to
Rosenblatt, and with her they would be safe. For by neither
threatening nor wheedling could Rosenblatt extract from her what
was entrusted to her care, as he could from the slow-witted
Paulina.
Keenly sensitive to the
radiant beauty of the sparkling night,
filled with the pleasurable anticipation of the feast before him,
vibrating in every nerve with the mere joy of living his vigorous
young life, Kalman ran along at full speed, singing now and then in
breathless snatches a wild song of the Hungarian plains. Turning a
sharp corner near his home, he almost overran a little girl.
"Kalman!" she cried
with a joyous note in her voice.
"Hello! Elizabeth
Ketzel, what do you want?" answered the boy,
pulling up panting.
"Will you be singing
to-night?" asked the little girl timidly.
"Sure, I will," replied
the lad, who had already mastered in the
school of the streets the intricacies of the Canadian vernacular.
"I wish I could come
and listen."
"It is no place for
little girls," said Kalman brusquely; then
noting the shadow upon the face of the child, he added, "Perhaps
you can come to the back window and Irma will let you in."
"I'll be sure to come,"
said Elizabeth to herself, for Kalman was
off again like the wind.
Paulina's house was
overflowing with riotous festivity. Avoiding
the front door, Kalman ran to the back of the house, and making
entrance through the window, there waited for his sister. Soon she
came in.
"Oh, Kalman!" she
cried, throwing her arms about him and kissing
him, "such a feast as I have saved for you! And you are cold.
Your poor fingers are frozen."
"Not a bit of it,
Irma," said the boy--they always spoke in
Russian, these two, ever since the departure of their father--
"but I am hungry, oh! so hungry!"
Already Irma was flying
about the room, drawing from holes and
corners the bits she had saved from the feast for her brother.
She spread them on the bed before him.
"But first," she cried,
"I shall bring to the window the hot stew.
Paulina," the children always so spoke of her, "has kept it hot for
you," and she darted through the door.
After what seemed to
Kalman a very long time indeed, she appeared
at the window with a covered dish of steaming stew.
"What kept you?" said
her brother impatiently; "I am starved."
"That nasty, hateful,
little Sprink," she said. "Here, help me
through." She looked flushed and angry, her "burnin' brown eyes"
shining like blazing coals.
"What is the matter?"
said Kalman, when he had a moment's leisure
to observe her.
"He is very rough and
rude," said the girl, "and he is a little
pig."
Kalman nodded and
waited. He had no time for mere words.
"And he tried to kiss
me just now," she continued indignantly.
"Well, that's nothing,"
said Kalman; "they all want to do that."
"Not for months, Kalman,"
protested Irma, "and never again, and
especially that little Sprink. Never! Never!"
As Kalman looked at her
erect little figure and her flushed face,
it dawned on him that a change had come to his little sister. He
paused in his eating.
"Irma," he said, "what
have you done to yourself? Is it your hair
that you have been putting up on your head? No, it is not your
hair. You are not the same. You are--" he paused to consider,
"yes, that's it. You are a lady."
The anger died out of
Irma's brown eyes and flushed face. A soft
and tender and mysterious light suffused her countenance.
"No, I am not a lady,"
she said, "but you remember what father
said. Our mother was a lady, and I am going to be one."
Almost never had the
children spoken of their mother. The subject
was at once too sacred and too terrible for common speech. Kalman
laid down his spoon.
"I remember," he said
after a few moments' silence. A shadow lay
upon his face. "She was a lady, and she died in the snow." His
voice sank to a whisper. "Wasn't it awful, Irma?"
"Yes, Kalman dear,"
said his sister, sitting down beside him and
putting her arms about his neck, "but she had no pain, and she was
not afraid."
"No," said the boy with
a ring in his voice, "she was not afraid;
nor was father afraid either." He rose from his meal.
"Why, Kalman,"
exclaimed his sister, "you are not half done your
feast. There are such lots of nice things yet."
"I can't eat, Irma,
when I think of that--of that man. I choke
here," pointing to his throat.
"Well, well, we won't
think of him to-night. Some day very soon,
we shall be free from him. Sit down and eat."
But the boy remained
standing, his face overcast with a fierce
frown.
"Some day," he
muttered, more to himself than to his sister, "I
shall kill him."
"Not to-day, at any
rate, Kalman," said his sister, brightening up.
"Let us forget it to-night. Look at this pie. It is from Mrs.
Fitzpatrick, and this pudding."
The boy allowed his
look to linger upon the dainties. He was a
healthy boy and very hungry. As he looked his appetite returned.
He shook himself as if throwing off a burden.
"No, not to-night," he
said; "I am not going to stop my feast for
him."
"No, indeed," cried
Irma. "Come quick and finish your feast. Oh,
what eating we have had, and then what dancing! And they all want
to dance with me," she continued,--"Jacob and Henry and Nicholas,
and they are all nice except that horrid little Sprink."
"Did you not dance with
him?"
"Yes," replied his
sister, making a little face, "I danced with him
too, but he wants me to dance with no one else, and I don't like
that. He makes me afraid, too, just like Rosenblatt."
"Afraid!" said her
brother scornfully.
"No, not afraid," said
Irma quickly. "But never mind, here is the
pudding. I am sorry it is cold."
"All right," said the
boy, mumbling with a full mouth, "it is fine.
Don't you be afraid of that Sprink; I'll knock his head off if he
harms you."
"Not yet, Kalman," said
Irma, smiling at him. "Wait a year or two
before you talk like that."
"A year or two! I shall
be a man then."
"Oh, indeed!" mocked
his sister, "a man of fifteen years."
"You are only fifteen
yourself," said Kalman.
"And a half," she
interrupted.
"And look at you with
your dress and your hair up on your head,
and--and I am a boy. But I am not afraid of Sprink. Only
yesterday I--"
"Oh, I know you were
fighting again. You are terrible, Kalman. I
hear all the boys talking about you, and the girls too. Did you
beat him? But of course you did."
"I don't know," said
her brother doubtfully, "but I don't think he
will bother me any more."
"Oh, Kalman," said his
sister anxiously, "why do you fight so
much?"
"They make me fight,"
said the boy. "They try to drive me off the
corner, and he called me a greasy Dook. But I showed him I am no
Doukhobor. Doukhobors won't fight."
"Tell me," cried his
sister, her face aglow--"but no, I don't want
to hear about it. Did you--how did you beat him? But you should
not fight so, Kalman." In spite of herself she could not avoid
showing her interest in the fight and her pride in her fighting
brother.
"Why not?" said her
brother; "it is right to fight for your rights,
and if they bother me or try to crowd me off, I will fight till I
die."
But Irma shook her head
at him.
"Well, never mind just
now," she cried. "Listen to the noise.
That is Jacob singing; isn't it awful? Are you going in?"
"Yes, I am. Here is my
money, Irma, and that is for--that brute.
Give it to Paulina for him. I can hardly keep my knife out of him.
Some day--" The boy closed his lips hard.
"No, no, Kalman,"
implored his sister, "that must not be, not now
nor ever. This is not Russia, or Hungary, but Canada."
The boy made no reply.
"Hurry and wash
yourself and come out. They will want you to sing.
I shall wait for you."
"No, no, go on. I shall
come after."
A shout greeted the
girl as she entered the crowded room. There
was no one like her in the dances of her people.
"It is my dance," cried
one.
"Not so; she is
promised to me."
"I tell you this
mazurka is mine."
So they crowded about
her in eager but good-natured contention.
"I cannot dance with
you all," cried the girl, laughing, "and so I
will dance by myself."
At this there was a
shout of applause, and in a moment more she was
whirling in the bewildering intricacies of a pas seul followed in
every step by the admiring gaze and the enthusiastic plaudits of
the whole company. As she finished, laughing and breathless, she
caught sight of Kalman, who had just entered.
"There," she exclaimed,
"I have lost my breath, and Kalman will
sing now."
Immediately her
suggestion was taken up on every hand.
"A song! A song!" they
shouted. "Kalman Kalmar will sing! Come,
Kalman, 'The Shepherd's Love.'" "No, 'The Soldier's Bride.'" "No,
no, 'My Sword and my Cup.'"
"First my own cup,"
cried the boy, pressing toward the beer keg in
the corner and catching up a mug.
"Give him another,"
shouted a voice.
"No, Kalman," said his
sister in a low voice, "no more beer."
But the boy only
laughed at her as he filled his mug again.
"I am too full to sing
just now," he cried; "let us dance," and,
seizing Irma, he carried her off under the nose of the disappointed
Sprink, joining with the rest in one of the many fascinating dances
of the Hungarian people.
But the song was only
postponed. In every social function of the
foreign colony, Kalman's singing was a feature. The boy loved to
sing and was ever ready to respond to any request for a song. So
when the cry for a song rose once more, Kalman was ready and eager.
He sprang upon a beer keg and cried, "What shall it be?"
"My song," said Irma,
who stood close to him.
The boy shook his head.
"Not yet."
"'The Soldier's
Bride,'" cried a voice, and Kalman began to sing.
He had a beautiful face with regular clean-cut features, and the
fair hair and blue grey eyes often seen in South Eastern Russia.
As he sang, his face reflected the passing shades of feeling in his
heart as a windless lake the cloud and sunlight of a summer sky.
The song was a kind of Hungarian "Young Lochinvar." The soldier
lover, young and handsome, is away in the wars; the beautiful
maiden, forced into a hateful union with a wealthy land owner, old
and ugly, stands before the priest at the altar. But hark! ere the
fateful vows are spoken there is a clatter of galloping hoofs, a
manly form rushes in, hurls the groom insensible to the ground,
snatches away the bride and before any can interfere, is off on a
coal-black steed, his bride before him. Let him follow who dares!
The boy had a voice of
remarkable range and clearness, and he
rendered the song with a verve and dramatic force remarkable in
one of his age. The song was received with wild cheers and loud
demands for more. The boy was about to refuse, when through the
crowding faces, all aglow with enthusiastic delight, he saw the
scowling face of Rosenblatt. A fierce rage seized him. He
hesitated no longer.
"Yes, another song," he
cried, and springing to the side of the
musicians he hummed the air, and then took his place again upon the
beer keg.
Before the musicians
had finished the introductory bars, Irma came
to his side and entreated, "Oh, Kalman, not that one! Not that
one!"
But it was as though he
did not hear her. His face was set and
white, his blue eyes glowed black. He stood with lips parted,
waiting for the cue to begin. His audience, to most of whom the
song was known, caught by a mysterious telepathy the tense emotion
of the boy, and stood silent and eager, all smiles gone from their
faces. The song was in the Ruthenian tongue, but was the heart cry
of a Russian exile, a cry for freedom for his native land, for
death to the tyrant, for vengeance on the traitor. Nowhere in all
the Czar's dominions dared any man sing that song.
As the boy's strong,
clear voice rang out in the last cry for
vengeance, there thrilled in his tones an intensity of passion that
gripped hard the hearts of those who had known all their lives long
the bitterness of tyranny unspeakable. In the last word the lad's
voice broke in a sob. Most of that company knew the boy's story,
and knew that he was singing out his heart's deepest passion.
When the song was
finished, there was silence for a few brief
moments; then a man, a Russian, caught the boy in his arms, lifted
him on his shoulder and carried him round the room, the rest of the
men madly cheering. All but one. Trembling with inarticulate
rage, Rosenblatt strode to the musicians.
"Listen!" he hissed
with an oath. "Do I pay you for this? No more
of this folly! Play up a czardas, and at once!"
The musicians hastened
to obey, and before the cheers had died, the
strains of the czardas filled the room. With the quick reaction
from the tragic to the gay, the company swung into this joyous and
exciting dance. Samuel Sprink, seizing Irma, whirled her off into
the crowd struggling and protesting, but all in vain. After the
dance there was a general rush for the beer keg, with much noise
and good-natured horse play. At the other end of the room,
however, there was a fierce struggle going on. Samuel Sprink,
excited by the dance and, it must be confessed, by an unusual
devotion to the beer keg that evening, was still retaining his hold
of Irma, and was making determined efforts to kiss her.
"Let me go!" cried the
girl, struggling to free herself. "You must
not touch me! Let me go!"
"Oh, come now, little
one," said Samuel pleasantly, "don't be so
mighty stiff about it. One kiss and I let you go."
"That's right, Samuel,
my boy," shouted Rosenblatt; "she only wants
coaxing just a little mucher."
Rosenblatt's words were
followed by a chorus of encouraging cheers,
for Samuel was not unpopular among the men, and none could see any
good reason why a girl should object to be kissed, especially by
such a man as Samuel, who was already so prosperous and who had
such bright prospects for the future.
But Irma continued to
struggle, till Kalman, running to her side,
cried, "Let my sister go!"
"Go away, Kalman. I am
not hurting your sister. It's only fun.
Go away," said Sprink.
"She does not think it
fun," said the boy quietly. "Let her go."
"Oh, go away, you
leetle kid. Go away and sit down. You think
yourself too much."
It was Rosenblatt's
harsh voice. As he spoke, he seized the boy by
the collar and with a quick jerk flung him back among the crowd.
It was as if he had fired some secret magazine of passion in the
boy's heart. Uttering the wild cry of a mad thing, Kalman sprang
at him with such lightning swiftness that Rosenblatt was borne back
and would have fallen, but for those behind. Recovering himself,
he dealt the boy a heavy blow in the face that staggered him for a
moment, but only for a moment. It seemed as if the boy had gone
mad. With the same wild cry, and this time with a knife open in
his hand, he sprang at his hated enemy, stabbing quick, fierce
stabs. But this time Rosenblatt was ready. Taking the boy's stabs
on his arm, he struck the boy a terrific blow on the neck. As
Kalman fell, he clutched and hung to his foe, who, seizing him by
the throat, dragged him swiftly toward the door.
"Hold this shut," he
said to a friend of his who was following him
close.
After they had passed
through, the man shut the door and held it
fast, keeping the crowd from getting out.
"Now," said Rosenblatt,
dragging the half-insensible boy around to
the back of the house, "the time is come. The chance is too good.
You try to kill me, but there will be one less Kalmar in the world
to-night. There will be a little pay back of my debt to your
cursed father. Take that--and that." As he spoke the words, he
struck the boy hard upon the head and face, and then flinging him
down in the snow, proceeded deliberately to kick him to death.
But even as he threw
the boy down, a shrill screaming pierced
through the quiet of the night, and from the back of the house a
little girl ran shrieking. "He is killing him! He is killing
him!"
It was little Elizabeth
Ketzel, who had been let in through the
back window to hear Kalman sing, and who, at the first appearance
of trouble, had fled by the way she had entered, meeting Rosenblatt
as he appeared dragging the insensible boy through the snow. Her
shrieks arrested the man in his murderous purpose. He turned and
fled, leaving the boy bleeding and insensible in the snow.
As Rosenblatt
disappeared, a cutter drove rapidly up.
"What's the row, kiddie?"
said a man, springing out. It was Dr.
Wright, returning from a midnight trip to one of his patients in
the foreign colony. "Who's killing who?"
"It is Kalman!" cried
Elizabeth, "and he is dead! Oh, he is dead!"
The doctor knelt beside
the boy. "Great Caesar! It surely is my
friend Kalman, and in a bad way. Some more vendetta business, I
have no doubt. Now what in thunder is that, do you suppose?" From
the house came a continuous shrieking. "Some more killing, I
guess. Here, throw this robe about the boy while I see about
this."
He ran to the door and
kicked it open. It seemed as if the whole
company of twenty or thirty men were every man fighting. As the
doctor paused to get his bearings, he saw across the room in the
farthest corner, Irma screaming as she struggled in the grasp of
Samuel Sprink, and in the midst of the room Paulina fighting like a
demon and uttering strange weird cries. She was trying to force
her way to the door.
As she caught sight of
the doctor, she threw out her hands toward
him with a loud cry. "Kalman--killing! Kalman--killing!" was all
she could say.
The doctor thrust
himself forward through the struggling men,
crying in a loud voice, "Here, you, let that woman go! And you
there, let that girl alone!"
Most of the men knew
him, and at his words they immediately ceased
fighting.
"What the deuce are you
at, anyway, you men?" he continued, as
Paulina and the girl sprang past him and out of the door. "Do you
fight with women?"
"No," said one of the
men. "Dis man," pointing to Sprink, "he mak
fun wit de girl."
"Mighty poor fun," said
the doctor, turning toward Sprink. "And
who has been killing that boy outside?"
"It is that young devil
Kalman, who has been trying to kill Mr.
Rosenblatt," replied Sprink.
"Oh, indeed," said the
doctor, "and what was the gentle Mr.
Rosenblatt doing meantime?"
"Rosenblatt?" cried
Jacob Wassyl, coming forward excitedly. "He
mak for hurt dat boy. Dis man," pointing to Sprink, "he try for
kiss dat girl. Boy he say stop. Rosenblatt he trow boy back. Boy
he fight."
"Look here, Jacob,"
said Dr. Wright, "you get these men's names--
this man," pointing to Sprink, "and a dozen more--and we'll make
this interesting for Rosenblatt in the police court to-morrow
morning."
Outside the house the
doctor found Paulina sitting in the snow
with Kalman's head in her lap, swaying to and fro muttering and
groaning. Beside her stood Irma and Elizabeth Ketzel weeping
wildly. The doctor raised the boy gently.
"Get into the cutter,"
he said to Paulina. Irma translated. The
woman ran without a word, seated herself in the cutter and held out
her arms for the boy.
"That will do," said
the doctor, laying Kalman in her arms. "Now
get some shawls, quilts or something for your mother and yourself,
or you'll freeze to death, and come along."
The girl rushed away
and returned in a few moments with a bundle of
shawls.
"Get in," said the
doctor, "and be quick."
The men were crowding
about.
"Now, Jacob," said the
doctor, turning to Wassyl, who stood near,
"you get me those names and we'll get after that man, you bet! or
I'm a Turk. This boy is going to die, sure."
As he spoke, he sprang
into his cutter and sent his horse off at a
gallop, for by the boy's breathing he felt that the chances of life
were slipping swiftly away. |
