Chapter 2

But the lebkuchen dream of Gottlieb's youth remained unrealized; still unattained was the goal that twenty years before had seemed so near. However, being a stout-hearted baker of the solid Nürnberg strain, he did not at all surrender hope. Each year he added to his stock of honey-cake; and he knew that when fortune favored him at last, as he still believed that fortune would favor him, he would have in store such honey-cake as would enable him to make lebkuchen fit to be eaten by the Kaiser himself!

After the affair of the broken peel there was a coolness between Gottlieb and the elder apprentice, which, increasing, led to a positive coldness, and then to a separation. And then it was that Fate put a large spoke in all the wheels which ran in the Café Nürnberg by bringing into Gottlieb's employment a ruddy young Nürnberger, lately come out of that ancient city to America, named Hans Kuhn.

It was not chance that led Hans to earn his living in a bakery when he came to New York. He was a born baker: a baker by choice, by force of natural genius, by hereditary right. Back in the dusk of the Middle Ages, as far as ever the traditions of his family and the records of the Guild of Bakers of Nürnberg ran, all the men of his race had been bakers, and famous ones at that. A cumulative destiny to bake was upon him, and he loved baking with all his heart. It was no desire to abandon his craft that had led him to leave Nürnberg and cross the ocean; rather was he moved by a noble ambition to build up on a broad and sure foundation the noble art of baking in the New World. And it had chanced, moreover, that in the conscription he had drawn an unlucky number.

When this young man entered the Café Nürnberg--being drawn thither by its display of the name of his own native city--and asked for a job, his air was so frank, his talk about baking so intelligent, that Gottlieb took kindly to him at once; and Minna, sitting demurely at her accounts in the little wire cage over which was a fine tin sign inscribed in golden letters with the word "Cashier," was mightily well pleased, in a demure and proper way, at sight of his ruddy cheeks and bushy shock of light-brown hair and little yellow mustache and honest blue eyes. When he told, in answer to Gottlieb's questions, that he was the grandson of the very baker in Nürnberg whose delicious lebkuchen Gottlieb had eaten when he was a boy, and that a part of his bakerly equipment was the lebkuchen recipe that had come down in his family from the baker genius, his remote ancestor, who had invented it--well, when he had told this much about himself, it is not surprising that Gottlieb fairly jumped for joy, and engaged him, not as his apprentice, but as his assistant, on the spot.

It was rather dashing to Gottlieb's enthusiasm, however, that his assistant--thereby manifesting a shrewd worldly wisdom--declined immediately to impart his secret. He would make all the lebkuchen that was required, he said, but for the present he need not tell how it was made--possibly the Herr Brekel might not be satisfied with it, after all. But the Herr Brekel was satisfied with it, and so was all the neighborhood when the first batch of lebkuchen was baked and placed on sale. Indeed, as the fame of this delicious lebkuchen went abroad, the coming of the new baker was accepted by all Germans with discriminating palates as one of the most important events that ever had occurred on the East Side. The work of the young man who drove the bread-wagon was so greatly increased that he organized a strike, uniting in his own person the several functions of strikers, walking delegates, district assembly, and executive committee. And when the strike collapsed--that is to say, when the young man was discharged summarily--Gottlieb really did find it necessary to hire two new young men, and to buy an extra horse and wagon. Morally speaking, therefore (although the original young man, who remained out of employment for several weeks, and had a pretty hard time of it, did not think so), the strike was a complete success.

As a matter of course no well-set-up, right-thinking young fellow of three-and-twenty could go on baking lebkuchen in the same bakery with Minna Brekel for any length of time without falling in love with her. Nor was it reasonable to suppose that even Minna, who had treated casual apprentices and wagon-driving young men with a seemly scorn, would continue to sit in the seat of the scornful when siege in form was laid to her heart by a properly ruddy-cheeked and blue-eyed assistant baker, whose skill was such that he could make lebkuchen fit to be eaten by the German portion of the saints in Paradise. At the end of three months the feelings of these young people towards each other were quite clearly defined in their own minds; at the end of six months, as they were sitting together one afternoon in the little back room at a time when the shop happened to be empty, things came to the pleasing crisis that they both for a considerable period had foreseen.

But then, unfortunately, came a storm--that neither of them had foreseen at all--that shook the Café Nürnberg to its very foundations!

Gottlieb was the storm, and he moved over a wide area with great rapidity and violence. He was central, naturally, over Hans and Minna: the first of whom, after being denounced with great energy as a viper who had been warmed to the biting point, was ordered to take himself off without a single instant's delay, and never to darken the doors of the Café Nürnberg again; and the second of whom was declared to be a baby fool, who must be kept locked up in her own third-story back room, and fed on nothing more appetizing than pumpernickel and water until she came to her senses. In the outer edges of the storm the apprentices and the young men who drove the wagons found themselves most hotly involved; and a very violent gust swept down upon Aunt Hedwig and Herr Sohnstein, who surely were as innocent in the premises as any two people quite satisfactorily engaged in earnest but somewhat dilatory love-making of their own very well could be. Indeed, this storm was an ill wind that blew a famous blast of luck to Herr Sohnstein: for Aunt Hedwig, being dreadfully upset by her brother's outbreak, went of her own accord to Herr Sohnstein for sympathy and consolation--and found both in such liberal quantities, and with them such tender pleadings to enter a matrimonial haven where storms should be unknown, that presently, smiling through her tears, she uttered the words of consent for which the excellent notary had waited loyally through more than a dozen weary years. It was Herr Sohn-stein's turn to be upset then. He couldn't believe, until he had soothed himself with a phenomenal number of pipes, that happiness so perfect could be real.

Possibly one reason why Gottlieb's storm was so violent was that he could not give any good reason for it. Hans really was a most estimable young man; he came of a good family; as a baker he was nothing short of a genius. All this Gottlieb knew, and all this he frequently had said to Aunt Hedwig and to Herr Sohnstein, and, worst of all, to Minna. As each of these persons now pointed out to him, in order to be consistent in his new position he must eat a great many of his own words; and he would have essayed this indigestible banquet willingly had he been convinced that thus he really could have proved that Hans was a viper and all the other unpleasant things which he had called him in his wrath. In truth, Gottlieb was, and in the depths of his heart he knew that he was, neither more nor less than a dog in the manger. His feeling simply was that Minna was his Minna, and that neither Hans nor anybody else had any right to her. This was not a position that admitted of logical defence; but it was one that he could be ugly and stick to: which was precisely what he did.

Minna did not remain long a prisoner in her own room, feeding upon pumpernickel and water and bitter thoughts. Aunt Hedwig and Herr Sohnstein succeeded in putting a stop to that cruelty. And these elderly lovers, whose fresh love had made them of a sudden as young as Minna herself, and had filled thera with a warm sympathy for her, laid their heads together and sought earnestly to circumvent in her interest her father's stern decree. It was a joy to see this picture, in the little room back of the shop, of middle-aged love-making; and it was a little startling to find how the new youth that their love had given them had filled them with a quite extravagantly youthful recklessness. Herr Sohnstein, who was well known as a grave, sedate, and unusually cautious notary, seriously suggested (though he did not explain exactly how this would do it) that they should make an effort to bring Gottlieb to terms by burning down the bakery. And Aunt Hedwig, whose prudent temperament was sufficiently disclosed in the fact that she had hesitated in the matter of her own love affair for upward of a dozen years, not less seriously advanced the proposition that they all should elope from the Café Nürnberg and set up a rival establishment! Herr Sohnstein did not make any audible comment upon this violent proposal of Aunt Hedwig's, but it evidently put an idea into his head.

As Gottlieb happened to be walking along the south side of Tompkins Square, a fortnight or so after the tempest, he found his steps arrested by a great sign that lay face downward on trestles across the sidewalk, in readiness for hoisting in place upon the front of a smart new shop. Inside the shop he saw painters and paper-hangers at work; and on the large plate-glass window a man was gluing white letters with a dexterous celerity. The letters already in place read "Nürnberger Lebku--" And as to this legend he saw "chen" added, he rolled out a stout South German oath and stamped upon the ground. But far stronger was the oath that he uttered as the big sign was swung upward, and he read upon it, in golden German letters:

That the Recording Angel blotted out with his tears the fines which he was compelled on this occasion to record against Gottlieb Brekel in Heaven's high chancery is highly improbable. In the only known case of such lachrymic erasure the provocation to profanity was a commendable moral motive that was eminently unselfish. But when Gottlieb Brekel swore roundly in his native German all the way from the south-west corner of Tompkins Square to the corner of Third Street and the Bowery; and from that point, when he had transacted his business there, all the way back to the Café Nürnberg in Avenue B, his motives could not in any wise be regarded as moral, and selfishness lay at their very root.

Gottlieb already found himself involved in serious difficulties with the many customers who bought his lebkuchen; for with the departure of Hans he had been compelled to fall back upon his own resources, and with the most lamentable results. Great quantities of his first baking were returned to him, with comments in both High German and Low German of a very uncomplimentary sort. His second baking--saving the relatively inconsiderable quantities consumed by the omnivorous children of St. Bridget's School--simply remained upon his hands unsold. And now, to make his humiliation the more complete, here was his discharged assistant setting up as his rival; and with every probability that the attempted rivalry would be crowned with success. Really there was something, perhaps, to be said in palliation of Gottlieb's profanity after all.

When he told at home that evening of Hans Kuhn's upstart pretensions, his statements were received with an ominous silence. Aunt Hedwig only coughed slightly, and continued her knitting with more than usual energy. Herr Sohnstein only moved a little in his chair and puffed a little harder than usual at his pipe. Minna, who was in her wire cage in the shop settling her cash, only bent more intently over her books. But when Gottlieb went a step further and said, looking very keenly at Herr Sohnstein as he said it, that some great rascal must have lent Hans the money to make his fine start, Aunt Hedwig at once bristled up and said with emphasis that rascals, neither great nor small, were in the habit of lending their money to deserving young men; and Herr Sohnstein, a little sheepishly perhaps, and mumbling a little in his gray mustache, ventured the statement that this was a free country already, and people living in it were at liberty to lend their money to whom they pleased; and Minna, looking up from her books--Gottlieb's back was turned towards her--blew a most unfilial kiss from the tips of her chubby fingers to Herr Sohnstein right over her father's shoulder. All of which goes to show that something very like open war had broken out in the Café Nürnberg, and that the once united family dwelling therein was fairly divided into rival camps.

Gottlieb's dreary case was made a little less dreary when he found that the lebkuchen which Hans produced in his fine new bakery was distinctly an inferior article; not much better, in fact, than Gottlieb's own. To any intelligent baker the reason for this was obvious: Hans was making his lebkuchen with new honey-cake. Thus made, even by the best of recipes, it could not be anything but a failure. Gottlieb gave a long sigh of relief as he realized this comforting fact, and at the same time thought of his own great store of honey-pots--there were hundreds of them now--all ready and waiting to his hand. But his feeling of satisfaction passed quickly to one of impotent rage as he recognized his own powerlessness, for all his wealth of honey-pots, to make lebkuchen which would be eaten by anybody but the tough-palated children from St. Bridget's School. He was alone, smoking, in the little room back of the shop as this bitter thought came to him; in his rage he struck the table beside him a blow so sounding that the family cat, peacefully slumbering behind the stove, sprang up with a yell of terror and made but two jumps to the open door. Coming on top of all his other trials--the revolt of his own little Minna, the defection of Aunt Hedwig, and the almost open enmity of Herr Sohnstein--this compulsory surrender of all his hope of honest fame was indeed a deadly blow.

Gottlieb smoked on in sullen anger; his heart torn and tortured, and his mind filled with a confusion of bitter evil thoughts. And presently--for the devil is at every man's elbow, ready to take advantage of any sudden weakness, or turn to his own purposes any too great strength--these thoughts grew more evil and more clear: until they fairly resolved themselves into the determination to steal from Hans the recipe for making lebkuchen, and so to crush completely his rival and at the same time to make certain his own fortune and fame.

Of course the devil did not plant the notion of theft in Gottlieb's mind in this bald fashion; for the devil is a most considerate person, and ever shows a courteous disposition to spare the feelings of those whom he would lead into sin. No: the temptation that he suggested was the subtle and ingenious one that Gottlieb should proceed to recover his own stolen property! His logic was admirable: Hans had been Gottlieb's assistant; and as such Gottlieb had owned him and his recipe as well. When Hans went away and took the recipe with him, he took that which still belonged to his master. Therefore, triumphantly argued the devil, Gottlieb had a perfect right to regain the recipe either by fair means or by foul. And finally, as a bit of supplementary devil-logic, the thought was suggested that inasmuch as Hans certainly must know the recipe by heart, the mere loss of the paper on which it was written would not be any real loss to him at all! It is only fair to Gottlieb's good angel to state that during this able presentment of the wrong side of the case he did venture to hint once or twice--in the feeble, perfunctory sort of way that unfortunately seems to be characteristic of good angels when their services really are most urgently required--that the whole matter might be compromised satisfactorily to all the parties in interest by permitting Hans to marry Minna, and by then taking him into partnership in the bakery. And it is only just to Gottlieb to state that to these fainthearted suggestions of his good angel he did not give one moment's heed.

Now the devil is a thorough-going sort of a person, and having planted the evil wish in Gottlieb's soul he lost no time in opening to him an evil way to its accomplishment. When Hans, a stranger in New York, had come to work at the Cafe Nürnberg, Gottlieb had commended him to the good graces of a friend of his, a highly respectable little round Brunswicker widow who let lodgings, and in the comfortable quarters thus provided for him Hans ever since had remained. In this same house lodged also one of Gottlieb's apprentices--a loose young fellow, for whose proper regulation the widow more than once had been compelled to seek his master's counsel and aid. In this combination of circumstances, to which the devil now directed his attention, Gottlieb saw his opportunity. It was easy to make the widow believe that the loose young apprentice had taken the short step from looseness to crime, and that a suspicion of theft rested upon him so heavily as to justify the searching of his room; it was easy to make the widow keep guard below while Gottlieb searched; and it was very easy then to search, not for imaginary stolen goods in the chest of the apprentice, but for that which he himself wanted to steal from the chest of Hans Kuhn. As to opening the chest there was no difficulty at all. Gottlieb had half a dozen Nürnberg locks in his house, and he had counted, as the event proved correctly, upon making the key of one of these locks serve his turn. And in the chest, without any trouble at all, he found a leather wallet, and in the wallet the precious recipe--written on parchment in old High German that he found very difficult to read, and dated in Nürnberg in the year 1603. Gottlieb was pale as death as he went down-stairs to the widow; and his teeth fairly chattered as he told her that he had made a mistake. He tried to say that the apprentice was not a thief--but the word _dieb_ somehow stuck in his throat. Keen chills penetrated him as he almost ran through the streets to his home. For the devil, who heretofore had been in front of him and had only beckoned, now was behind him and was driving him with a right goodwill.

When he entered the room at the back of the shop, where Minna was sewing, and where Herr Sohnstein, with his arm comfortably around Aunt Hedwig's waist, was smoking his long pipe, he created a stir of genuine alarm. As Aunt Hedwig very truly said, he looked as though he had seen a ghost. Herr Sohnstein, of a more practical turn of mind, asked him if he had been knocked down and robbed; and the word _beraubt_ grated most harshly upon Gottlieb's ears. But what cut him most of all was the way in which Minna--forgetting all his late unkind-ness at sight of his pale, frightened face--sprang to him with open arms, and with all the old love in her voice asked him to tell her what had gone wrong. Under these favoring conditions, Gottlieb's good angel bestirred himself somewhat more vigorously, and for a moment it seemed not impossible that right might triumph over wrong. But the devil bustled promptly upon the scene, and of course had things all his own way again in a moment. It certainly is most unfortunate that good angels, as a rule, are so weak in their angelic knees!

Gottlieb pushed Minna away from him roughly; addressed to Aunt Hedwig the impolite remark that ghosts only were seen by women and fools; in a surly tone informed Herr Sohnstein that policemen still were plentiful in the vicinity of Tompkins Square; and then, having planted these barbed arrows in the breasts of his daughter, his sister, and his friend, sought the retirement of his own upper room. As he left them, Minna buried her face in Aunt Hedwig's capacious bosom and cried bitterly, and Aunt Hedwig also cried; and Herr Sohnstein, laying aside for the moment his pipe, put his arms protectingly around them both. They all were very miserable.

In the upper room, where the air seemed so stifling that he had to open the window wide in order to breathe, Gottlieb was very miserable too. He was fleeing into Tarshish, this temporarily wicked baker; and just as fell out in the case of that other one who fled to Tarshish, his flight was a failure: for this little world of ours is far too small to give any one a chance to run away from committed sin.

Gottlieb tried to divert his thoughts from his crime, and at the same time tried to reap its reward by studying the stolen recipe; but his attempt was not successful. The cramped letters, brown with age, on the brown parchment, danced before his eyes; and the quaint, intricate High German phraseology became more and more involved. He could make nothing of it at all. And the thought occurred to him that perhaps he never would be able to make anything of it--that, without losing any part of the penalty justly attendant upon his crime, the crime itself might prove to be, so far as the practical benefit that he sought was concerned, absolutely futile. As this dreadful possibility arose before his mind a faintness and giddiness came over him. The room seemed to be whirling around him; life seemed to be slipping away from him; there was a strange, horrible ringing in his ears. He leaned forward over the table at which he was sitting and buried his face in his hands.

Then, possibly, Gottlieb fell asleep, though of this he never felt really sure. What is quite certain is that he saw, as clearly as he ever saw her in life, his dear dead Minna; but with a face so sad, so reproachful, so full of piteous entreaty, that his blood seemed to stand still, while a consuming coldness settled upon his heart. He struggled to speak with her, to assure her that he would repair the evil that he had done, to plead for forgiveness; but, for all his striving, no other words would come to his lips save those which a little while before he had spoken so roughly to poor Aunt Hedwig: "The only people who see ghosts are women and fools!"

And then, of a sudden, he found himself still seated at the table, the brown parchment still spread out before him, and the faint light of early morning breaking into the room. The window was wide open, as he had left it, and he was chilled to the marrow; he had a shocking cold in the head; there were rheumatic twinges in all his joints as he arose. What with the physical misery arising from these causes, and the moral misery arising from his sense of committed sin, he was in about as desperately bad a humor with himself as a man could be. He was in no mood to make another effort to read the difficult German of the recipe, the cause of all his troubles. The sight of it pained him, and he thrust it hurriedly into an old desk in which were stored (and these also were a source of pain to him) several generations of uncollected bills--practical proofs that the adage in regard to the impossibility of simultaneously possessing cakes and pennies does not always hold good.

He locked the desk and put the key in his pocket; and then returned the key to the lock and left it there, as the thought occurred to him that the locking of this desk, that never in all the years that he had owned it had been locked before, might arouse suspicion. It seemed most natural to Gottlieb that his actions should be regarded with suspicion; he had a feeling that already his crime must be known to half the world.