Chapter 3

And before night it certainly is true that the one person most deeply interested in the discovery and punishment of Gottlieb's crime--that is to say, Hans Kuhn--did know all about it; which fact would seem surprising, considering how skilfully Gottlieb had gone about his work, were it not remembered that his unwitting accessory had been the little round Brunswicker widow, and were it not known that little round widows--Brunswick born or born elsewhere--as a class are incapable of keeping a secret.

This excellent woman, to do her justice, had followed Gottlieb's orders to the letter. He had warned her not to tell the loose apprentice that his chest had been searched; and, so far as that apprentice was concerned, wild horses might have been employed to drag that little round widow to pieces--at least she might have permitted the wild horses to be hitched up to her--before ever an indiscreet word would have passed her lips. But when Hans Kuhn, for whom she entertained a high respect, and for whom she had also that warmly friendly feeling which trig middle-aged widows not seldom manifest towards good-looking young men, came to her in a fine state of wrath, and told her that his chest had been ransacked (he did not tell her of his loss, for he had not himself observed it), she did not consider that she violated any confidence in telling him everything that had occurred. It was all a mistake, she said; the Herr Brekel had gone into the wrong room; she must set the matter right at once; that bad young man might be a thief, after all. Hans felt a cold thrill run through him at the widow's words. But he controlled himself so well that she did not suspect his inward perturbation; and she accepted in as good faith his offer to inform the Herr Brekel of his error as she did, a day later, his assurance that the matter had been satisfactorily adjusted, and that the innocence of the apprentice had been proved.

And then Hans returned to his violated chest, and found that the dread which had assailed his soul was founded in substantial truth--the recipe was gone! In itself the loss of the recipe was no very great matter, for he knew it by heart; but that Gottlieb--who had also a cellar full of rich old honey-cake--should have gained possession of it was a desperate matter indeed. Here instantly was an end to the hope of successful rivalry that Hans had cherished; and with the wreck of his luck in trade, as it seemed to him in the first shock of his misfortune, away in fragments to the four winds of heaven was scattered every vestige of probability that he would have luck in love. Being so suddenly confronted with a compound catastrophe so overwhelming, even a bolder baker than Hans Kuhn very well might have been for a time aghast.

But as his wits slowly came together again Hans perceived that the game was not by any means lost, after all; on the contrary, it looked very much as though he had it pretty well in his own hands. Gottlieb was a thief, and all that was needed to complete the chain of evidence against him was his first baking of lebkuchen; for that as clearly would prove him to be in possession of the stolen recipe as what the widow could tell would prove that he had created for himself an opportunity to steal it. The most agreeable way of winning a father-in-law is not by force of threatening to hale him to a police court, but it is better to win him that way than not to win him at all, Hans thought; and he thought also that this was one of the occasions when it was quite justifiable to fight the devil with fire. So his spirits rose, and now he longed for, as eagerly as in the first moments of his loss he had dreaded, the production of such lebkuchen at the Café Nürnberg as would prove the proprietor of that highly respectable establishment to be neither more nor less than a robber.

Hans was both annoyed and surprised as time passed on and the "cakes succulent but damnatory" were not forthcoming from Gottlieb's oven. He himself went on making unsatisfactory lebkuchen of bad materials by a good formula, and Gottlieb continued to make unsatisfactory lebkuchen by a bad formula of the best materials. Orthodox German palates found nothing to commend and much to reprobate in both results. This was the situation for several weeks. Hans could not understand it at all. The subject was a delicate one to broach to Minna during their short but blissful interviews about dusk in the central fastnesses of Tompkins Square, at which interviews Aunt Hedwig winked and Herr Sohnstein openly connived by keeping watch for them against Gottlieb's possible appearance; for Hans had determined that until he had positive proof to go upon he would keep secret, and most of all from Minna, the dreadful fact of her father's crime. Therefore did he remain in a state of very harrowing uncertainty, with his plan of campaign completely brought to a stand.

During this period a heavy cloud hung over the Café Nürnberg. Gottlieb came fitfully to his meals; and when he did come, he ate almost nothing. Each day he grew more and more morose; each night, when poor Aunt Hedwig was not kept awake by her own sorrowful thoughts, her slumbers were, broken by hearing her brother pacing heavily the floor of the adjoining room. In some sort he made up for his loss of sleep at night by sleeping of an evening in the little room back of the shop, falling into restless naps (when he should have been restfully smoking his long pipe), from which he would wake with a start and sometimes with a cry of alarm, and would dart furtive horrified glances at Aunt Hedwig and Herr Sohnstein: who were doing nothing of a horrifying nature, only sitting cozily close together, more or less enfolded in each other's arms. It was a little inconsiderate on the part of the lovers, and very-hard on Minna, this extremely open love-making; for Minna's love-making necessarily was by fitful snatches amid the bleak desolations of Tompkins Square. They would try to comfort each other, she and Hans, as they stood cheerlessly under the chill lee of the music stand; but their outlook was a dreary one, and their efforts in this direction were not crowned with any great success. Sometimes as Minna came home again along the west side of the square, and saw in Spengler's window the wreaths of highly-artificial immortelles with the word "Ruhe" upon them in vivid purple letters, she fairly would fall to crying over the thought that until she should become a fit subject for such a wreath there was small chance that any real rest would be hers.

However, all this is aside from Gottlieb's horrified looks as he waked from his troubled slumbers--looks which would disappear as he became thoroughly aroused, but only to return again after his next uneasy nap. One day he startled Aunt Hedwig by asking her if she believed in ghosts. Remembering his severe words in condemnation of her casual reference to these supernatural beings, it was with some hesitation that she replied that she did. Still more to her surprise, Gottlieb turned away from her hurriedly, yet not so hurriedly but that she saw a strange, scared look upon his face, and in a low and trembling voice replied: "And so do I!"

And now the fact may as well be admitted frankly that a ghost was the disturbing element that was making Gottlieb's life go wrong; that, as there seemed to be every reason to believe, was hurrying him towards the grave: for a middle-aged German who refuses to eat, whose regular sleep forsakes him, and who actually gives up smoking, naturally cannot be expected to remain long in this world.

It was the ghost of his dead wife. At first she appeared to him only in his dreams, standing beside the desk in which he had placed the stolen recipe for making lebkuchen, and holding down the lid of that desk with a firm but diaphanous white hand. Presently she appeared to him quite as clearly in his waking hours. Her face still wore an expression at once tender and reproachful; but every day the look of tenderness diminished, while the look of reproach grew stronger and more stern. Each time that he sought to open the desk that he might take thence the recipe and make his crime a practical business success, the figure assumed an air so terribly menacing that his heart failed him, and he gave over the attempt.

This, then, was the all-sufficient reason why the good lebkuchen that would have proved Gottlieb a thief was not for sale at the Café Nürenburg; and this was the reason why Gottlieb himself, broken down by loss of food and sleep and by the nervous wear and tear incident to forced companionship with an angry ghost, was drawing each day nearer and nearer to that dark portal through which bakers and all other people pass hence into the shadowy region whence there is no return.

Gottlieb Brekel never had been an especially pious man. As became a reputable German citizen, he had paid regularly the rent of a pew in the Church of the Redemptorist Fathers in Third Street; but, excepting on such high feasts as Christmas and Easter, he usually had been content to occupy it and to discharge his religious duties at large vicariously. Aunt Hed-wig's bonnet invariably was the most brilliantly conspicuous feature of the entire congregation, just as the prettiest face in the entire congregation invariably was Minna's. But now that Gottlieb was confronted with a spiritual difficulty, it occurred to him that he might advantageously resort in his extremity to spiritual aid. He had no very clear notion how the aid would be given; he was not even clear as to how he ought to set about asking for it; and he was troubled by the conviction that in order to obtain it he must not only repent of his sin, but must make atonement by restitution--a possibility (for the devil still had a good grip upon him) that made him hesitate a long while before he set about purchasing ease for his conscience at so heavy a material cost. However, his good angel at last managed to pluck up some courage--it was high time--and, strengthened by this tardily given assistance, he betook himself in search of consolation within church walls.

The Church of the Redemptorist Fathers is a very beautiful church, and at all times--save through the watches of the night and through one mid-day hour--its doors stand hospitably open, silently inviting poor sinners, weary and heavy laden with their sins, to enter into the calm of its quiet holiness and there find rest. Tall, slender pillars uphold its vaulted roof, in the groinings of which lurk mysterious shadows. Below, a warm, rich light comes through the stained-glass windows: whereon are pictured the blessed St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, founder of the Redemptorist Congregation, blessedly instructing the chubby-faced choristers; and the Venerable Clement Hofbauer, "primus in Germania" of the Redemptorists, all in his black gown, kneeling, praying no doubt for the outcast German souls for the saving of which he worked so hard and so well; and (a picture that Minna dearly loved) St. Joseph and the sweet Virgin and the little Christ-child fleeing together through the desert from the wrath of the Judean king. And ranged around the walls on perches high aloft are statues of various minor saints and of the Twelve Apostles; of which Minna's favorite was the Apostle Matthias, because this saint, with his high forehead tending towards baldness, and his long gray beard and gray hair, and his kindly face, and even the axe in his hand (that was not unlike a baker's peel), made her think always of her dear father. The pew that Gottlieb paid for so regularly, and so irregularly occupied, was just beneath the statue of this saint; which, however, gave Minna less pleasure than would have been hers had not the next saint in the row been the Apostle Simon with his dreadful saw. It must have hurt so horribly to be sawed in two, she thought. In the dusky depths of the great chancel gleamed the white marble of the beautiful altar, guarded by St. Peter with his keys and St. Paul with his naked two-edged sword; and above the altar was the dead Christ on Calvary, with His desolate mother and the despairing Magdalene and St. John the divine.

Into this beautiful church it was that Gottlieb, led thither by his good angel, entered; and the devil--raging in the terrible but impotent fashion that is habitual with devils when they see slipping away from their snares the souls which they thought to win to wickedness--of course was forced to remain outside. But what feelings of keen repentance filled this poor sinning baker's heart within that holy place, what good resolves came to him, what light and refreshment irradiated and cheered his darkened, harried soul--all these are things which better may be suggested here than written out in full. For these things are so real, so sacred, and so beautiful with a heavenly beauty, that they may not lightly be used for decorative purposes in mere romance.

Let it suffice, then, to tell--for so is our poor human stuff put together that trivial commonplace facts often exhibit most searchingly the changes for good or for evil which have come to pass in our inmost souls--that Gottlieb, on returning to the Café Nürnberg, ate a prodigious dinner; and after his dinner, for the first time in a fortnight, smoked a thoroughly refreshing pipe.

Over his dinner and his pipe he was silent, manifesting, however, a sort of sheepishness and constraint that were not less strange in the eyes of Aunt Hedwig and Minna than was the sudden revival of his interest in tobacco and food. As he smoked, a pleasant thought came to him. When he had knocked the ashes from his pipe he ordered Minna, surlily, to bring him his hat and coat; he must pay a visit to that rascal Sohnstein, he said; and so went out. He left the two women lost in wonder; and Aunt Hed-wig, because of his characterization of her dear Sohnstein as a rascal, disposed to weep. And yet, somehow, they both felt that the storm was breaking, and that clear weather was at hand. There was nobody in the shop just then; and the two, standing behind the rampart of freshly-baked cakes that was high heaped up upon the counter, embraced each other and mingled tears, which they knew--by reason of the womanly instinct that was in them--were tears of joy.

And that very evening the prophecy of happiness that was in their joyful sorrow was happily fulfilled.

Gottlieb did not return to the Café Nürnberg until after nine o'clock. With him came Herr Sohnstein. They both were very grave and silent, yet both exhibited a most curious twinklesomeness in their eyes. Neither Aunt Hedwig nor Minna could make anything of their strange mood; and Aunt Hedwig was put to her trumps completely when she was sure that she saw her brother--who was whispering to Herr Sohnstein behind the pie-counter--poke the notary in the ribs. As to the joint chuckle at that moment of those two mysterious men there could be no doubt; she heard it distinctly! 14

Still further to Aunt Hedwig's surprise, for the Café Nürnberg never was closed before ten o'clock, and usually remained open much later, Gottlieb himself began to put up the shutters; and when this work was finished he came back into the shop and locked behind him the double front door. Almost as he turned the key there was a knock outside, as though somebody actually had been waiting in the street for the signal that the closing of the shutters gave.

"Another rascal would come in already, Sohn-stein," said Gottlieb, gruffly. "Open for him, but lock the door again. I must go up-stairs."

Gottlieb, with a queer smile upon his face, left the little back room; and a moment later Minna uttered a cry of surprise, as Herr Sohnstein unlocked the door and her own Hans entered the shop. What, she thought, could all these wonders mean? As for Aunt Hedwig, she had sunk down into her big armchair and her bright black eyes seemed to be fairly starting from her head.

Herr Sohnstein locked the door again, as he had been ordered to do, and then brought Hans through the shop and into the little back room. Hans evidently was not a party to the mystery, whatever the mystery might be. He looked at Minna as wonderingly as she looked at him, and he was distressingly ill at ease. But there was no time for either of them to ask questions, for as Hans entered the room from the shop, Gottlieb returned to it. In his hand Gottlieb held the brown old parchment on which the lebkuchen recipe was written; the smile had left his face; he was very pale. For a moment there was an awkward pause. Then Gottlieb, trembling a little as he walked, crossed the room to where Hans stood and placed the parchment in his hands. And it was in a trembling, broken voice that Gottlieb said:

"Hans, a most wicked man have I been. But my dead Minna has helped me, and here I give again to thee what I stole from thy chest--I who was a robber." Then Gottlieb covered his face with his hands, and presently each of his bony knuckles sparkled with a pendant tear.

"My own dear father!" said Minna; and her arms were around him, and her head was pressed close upon his breast.

"My own good brother, thou couldst not be a thief!" said Aunt Hedwig; and, so saying, clasped her stout arms around them both.

"My good old friend! all now is right again," said Herr Sohnstein; who then affected to put his arms around the three, but really embraced only Aunt Hedwig. However, there was quite enough of Aunt Hedwig to fill even Herr Sohnstein's long arms; and he made the average of his one-third of an embrace all right by bestowing it with a threefold energy.

The position of Hans as he regarded this affectionately writhing group (that was not unsuggestive of the Laöcoon: with a new motive, a fourth figure, a commendable addition of draperies, and a conspicuous lack of serpents) would have been awkward under any circumstances; and as the circumstances were sufficiently awkward to begin with, he was very much embarrassed indeed. To Aunt Hed-wig's credit be it said that she was the first (after Minna, of course; and Minna could not properly act in the premises) to perceive his forsaken condition.

"Come, Hans," said the good Hedwig, her voice shaken by emotion and the tightness of Herr Sohn-stein's grip about her waist.

"Thou hadst better come, Hans," added Herr Sohnstein, jollily.

"_Wilt_ thou come, Hans--and forgive me?" Gottlieb asked.

But it was not until Minna said, very faintly, yet with a heavenly sweetness in her voice: "Thou _mayst_ come, Hans!" that Hans actually came.

And then for a while there was such hearty embracing of as much of the other four as each of them could grasp that the like of it all for good-will and lovingness never had been seen in a bakery before. And Gottlieb's good angel exulted greatly; and the devil, who had lingered about the premises in the hope that even at the eleventh hour the powers of evil might get the better of the powers of good, acknowledged his defeat with a howl of baffled rage: and then fled away in a blue flame and a flash of lightning that made the waters of the East River (which stream he was compelled to wade, thanks to General Newton, who took away his stepping-stones) fairly hiss and bubble. And never did he dare to show so much as the end of his wicked nose in the Café Nürnberg again!

"But thou wilt not take from me this little one, my daughter, Hans?" Gottlieb asked, when they had somewhat disentangled themselves. "Thou wilt come and live with us, and be my partner, and together we will make the good lebkuchen once more. Is it not so?"

Hans found this a trying question. He looked at Herr Sohnstein, doubtfully. "Ah," said Herr Sohnstein, "thou meanest that a very hard-hearted, money-lending man has hired a shop for thee and has made it the most splendid bakery and the finest restaurant on all the East Side, eh? And thou art afraid that this man, this old miser man, will keep thee to thy bargainings, already?"

Hans gave a deprecating nod of assent.

"Well, my boy Hans," Herr Sohnstein continued, with great good-humor, and sliding his arm well around Aunt Hedwig's generous waist again as he spoke--"well, my boy Hans, let me tell thee that that bad old miser man is not one-half so bad as thou wouldst think. Dost thou remember that when he had a garden made upon the roof of that fine bakery, and thou toldst to him that to make a garden there was to waste his money, what he said? Did he not say that if he made the garden God would send the flowers? And when that fine sign was made with 'Nürnberger Bäkerei' upon it, and thou toldst to him that to take that name of Nürnberg was not fair to his old friend, did he not tell thee that with his old friend he would settle that matter so that there should be no broken bones? For did he not know already that for these five years past it has been the wish of Gottlieb's heart to leave this old bakery--where his lease ends this very coming May--and to have just such a new fine bakery upon the Square as now you two together will have? Ah, this bad old miser man is not afraid but that his miser money will come back to him again; and he is not such a fool but that he had faith in his good friend Gottlieb, and knew that all would end well. And now, truly, all will be happiness: for Gottlieb, who has gained a good son, can spare to me this dear Hed-wig, his sister, and he will come to church with us and see us all married in one bright day."

Aunt Hedwig looked up into Herr Sohnstein's face as he ended this long speech--not so fine, perhaps, as some of the speeches which he had delivered in the criminal courts, but much more moving and a great deal more genuine than the very best of them--and, with her eyes filling with happy tears, said to him: "And it is to thee that we owe it, this happiness!"

But Herr Sohnstein's face grew grave and his voice grew reverent as he answered: "It is not so, my Hedwig. We owe our happiness to the good God who has taken away the evil that was in our dear Gottlieb's heart." They all were very quiet for a little space, and upon the silence broke the sweet sound of the clock bell in the near-by church-tower.

When the last stroke had sounded Herr Sohnstein spoke again, and in his customary jolly tone: "As for these young ones here, we will unlock the door and let them walk out and look for a little at the music-stand that they love so well in the Square. And Hedwig shall sit beside me while we smoke our pipes, Gottlieb, eh? It is a long time already, old friend, since thou and I have sat together and smoked our pipes."

End of Project Gutenberg's A Romance Of Tompkins Square, by Thomas A. Janvier