Chapter 6

The old man, irritated by the secret knowledge that he had nobody but himself to blame for the present dilemma, still more irritated, also, by this proof of what was always exceedingly displeasing to him,--his son's having adopted American standards and opinions,--broke out furiously with a wrath wholly disproportionate to the occasion,--

"You be tam, Johan Weitbreck. You tink we are fine gentlemen and ladies, like dese Americans dat is too proud to vork vid hands. I say tam dis country, vere day say all is alike, an' vork all; and ven you come here, it is dat nobody vill vork, if he can help, and vimmins ish shame to be seen vork. It is not shame to be seen vork; I vork, mein vife vork too, an' my childrens vork too, py tam!"

John walked away,--his only resource when his father was in a passion. John occupied that hardest of all positions,--the position of a full-grown, mature man in a father's home, where he is regarded as nothing more than a boy.

As he entered the kitchen and saw his pretty sister Carlen at the high spinning-wheel, walking back and forth drawing the fine yarn between her chubby fingers, all the while humming a low song to which the whirring of the wheel made harmonious accompaniment, he thought to himself bitterly: "Work, indeed! As if they did not work now longer than we do, and quite as hard! She's been spinning ever since daylight, I believe."

"Is it hard work spinning, Liebchen?" he asked.

Carlen turned her round blue eyes on him with astonishment. There was something in his tone that smote vaguely on her consciousness. What could he mean, asking such a question as that?

"No," she said, "it is not hard exactly. But when you do it very long it does make the arms ache, holding them so long in the same position; and it tires one to stand all day!"

"Ay," said John, "that is the way it tires one to reap; my back is near broke with it to-day."

"Has no one come to help yet?" she said.

"No!" said John, angrily, "and that is what I told father when he let Alf go. It is good enough for him for being so stingy and short-sighted; but the brunt of it comes on me,--that's the worst of it. I don't see what's got all the men. There have always been plenty round every year till now."

"Alf said he shouldn't be here next year," said Carlen, each cheek showing a little signal of pink as she spoke; but it was a dim light the one candle gave, and John did not see the flush. "He was going to the west to farm; in Oregon, he said."

"Ay, that's it!" replied John. "That's where everybody can go but me! I'll be going too some day, Carlen. I can't stand things here. If it weren't for you I'd have been gone long ago."

"I wouldn't leave mother and father for all the world, John," cried Carlen, warmly, "and I don't think it would be right for you to! What would father do with the farm without you?"

"Well, why doesn't he see that, then, and treat me as a man ought to be treated?" exclaimed John; "he thinks I'm no older than when he used to beat me with the strap."

"I think fathers and mothers are always that way," said the gentle, cheery Carlen, with a low laugh. "The mother tells me each time how to wind the warp, as she did when I was little; and she will always look into the churn for herself. I think it is the way we are made. We will do the same when we are old, John, and our children will be wondering at us!"

John laughed. This was always the way with Carlen. She could put a man in good humor in a few minutes, however cross he felt in the beginning.

"I won't, then!" he exclaimed. "I know I won't. If ever I have a son grown, I'll treat him like a son grown, not like a baby."

"May I be there to see!" said Carlen, merrily,--

"And you remember free The words I said to thee.

"Hold the candle here for me, will you, that's a good boy. While we have talked, my yarn has tangled."

As they stood close together, John holding the candle high over Carlen's head, she bending over the tangled yarn, the kitchen door opened suddenly, and their father came in, bringing with him a stranger,--a young man seemingly about twenty-five years of age, tall, well made, handsome, but with a face so melancholy that both John and Carlen felt a shiver as they looked upon it.

"Here now comes de hand, at last of de time, Johan," cried the old man. "It vill be that all can vel be done now. And it is goot that he is from mine own country. He cannot English speak, many vords; but dat is nothing; he can vork. I tolt you dere vould be mans come!"

John looked scrutinizingly at the newcomer. The man's eyes fell.

"What is your name?" said John.

"Wilhelm Rütter," he answered.

"How long have you been in this country?"

"Ten days."

"Where are your friends?"

"I haf none."

"None?"

"None."

These replies were given in a tone as melancholy as the expression of the face.

Carlen stood still, her wheel arrested, the yarn between her thumb and ringer, her eyes fastened on the stranger's face. A thrill of unspeakable pity stirred her. So young, so sad, thus alone in the world; who ever heard of such a fate?

"But there were people who came with you in the ship?" said John. "There is some one who knows who you are, I suppose."

"No, no von dat knows," replied the newcomer.

"Haf done vid too much questions," interrupted Farmer Weitbreck. "I haf him asked all. He stays till harvest be done. He can vork. It is to be easy see he can vork."

John did not like the appearance of things. "Too much mystery here," he thought. "However, it is not long he will be here, and he will be in the fields all the time; there cannot be much danger. But who ever heard of a man whom no human being knew?"

As they sat at supper, Farmer Weitbreck and his wife plied Wilhelm with questions about their old friends in Mayence. He was evidently familiar with all the localities and names which they mentioned. His replies, however, were given as far as possible in monosyllables, and he spoke no word voluntarily. Sitting with his head bent slightly forward, his eyes fixed on the floor, he had the expression of one lost in thoughts of the gloomiest kind.

"Make yourself to be more happy, mein lad," said the farmer, as he bade him good-night and clapped him on the shoulder. "You haf come to house vere is German be speaked, and is Germany in hearts; dat vill be to you as friends."

A strange look of even keener pain passed over the young man's face, and he left the room hastily, without a word of good-night.

"He's a surly brute!" cried John; "nice company he'll be in the field! I believe I'd sooner have nobody!"

"I think he has seen some dreadful trouble," said Carlen. "I wish we could do something for him; perhaps his friends are all dead. I think that must be it, don't you think so, mütter?"

Frau Weitbreck was incarnate silence and reticence. These traits were native in her, and had been intensified to an abnormal extent by thirty years of life with a husband whose temper and peculiarities were such as to make silence and reticence the sole conditions of peace and comfort. To so great a degree had this second nature of the good frau been developed, that she herself did not now know that it was a second nature; therefore it stood her in hand as well as if she had been originally born to it, and it would have been hard to find in Lancaster County a more placid and contented wife than she. She never dreamed that her custom of silent acquiescence in all that Gustavus said--of waiting in all cases, small and great, for his decision--had in the outset been born of radical and uncomfortable disagreements with him. And as for Gustavus himself, if anybody had hinted to him that his frau could think, or ever had thought, any word or deed of his other than right, he would have chuckled complacently at that person's blind ignorance of the truth.

"Mein frau, she is goot," he said; "goot frau, goot mütter. American fraus not goot so she; all de time talk and no vork. American fraus, American mans, are sheep in dere house."

But in regard to this young stranger, Frau Weitbreck seemed strangely stirred from her usual phlegmatic silence. Carlen's appeal to her had barely been spoken, when, rising in her place at the head of the table, the old woman said solemnly, in German,--

"Yes, Liebchen, he goes with the eyes like eyes of a man that saw always the dead. It must be as you say, that all whom he loves are in the grave. Poor boy! poor boy! it is now that one must be to him mother and father and brother."

"And sister too," said Carlen, warmly. "I will be his sister."

"And I not his brother till he gets a civiller tongue in his head," said John.

"It is not to be brother I haf him brought," interrupted the old man. "Alvays you vimmen are too soon; it may be he are goot, it may be he are pad; I do not know. It is to vork I haf him brought."

"Yes," echoed Frau Weitbreck; "we do not know."

It was not so easy as Carlen and her mother had thought, to be like mother and sister to Wilhelm. The days went by, and still he was as much a stranger as on the evening of his arrival. He never voluntarily addressed any one. To all remarks or even questions he replied in the fewest words and curtest phrases possible. A smile was never seen on his face. He sat at the table like a mute at a funeral, ate without lifting his eyes, and silently rose as soon as his own meal was finished. He had soon selected his favorite seat in the kitchen. It was on the right-hand side of the big fireplace, in a corner. Here he sat all through the evenings, carving, out of cows' horns or wood, boxes and small figures such as are made by the peasants in the German Tyrol. In this work he had a surprising skill. What he did with the carvings when finished, no one knew. One night John said to him,--

"I do not see, Wilhelm, how you can have so steady a hand after holding the sickle all day. My arm aches, and my hand trembles so that I can but just carry my cup to my lips."

Wilhelm made no reply, but held his right hand straight out at arm's length, with the delicate figure he was carving poised on his forefinger. It stood as steady as on the firm ground.

Carlen looked at him admiringly. "It is good to be so steady-handed," she said; "you must be strong, Wilhelm."

"Yes," he said, "I haf strong;" and went on carving.

Nothing more like conversation than this was ever drawn from him. Yet he seemed not averse to seeing people. He never left the kitchen till the time came for bed; but when that came he slipped away silent, taking no part in the general good-night unless he was forced to do so. Sometimes Carlen, having said jokingly to John, "Now, I will make Wilhelm say good-night to-night," succeeded in surprising him before he could leave the room; but often, even when she had thus planned, he contrived to evade her, and was gone before she knew it.

He slept in a small chamber in the barn,--a dreary enough little place, but he seemed to find it all sufficient. He had no possessions except the leather pack he had brought on his back. This lay on the floor unlocked; and when the good Frau Weitbreck, persuading herself that she was actuated solely by a righteous, motherly interest in the young man, opened it, she found nothing whatever there, except a few garments of the commonest description,--no book, no paper, no name on any article. It would not appear possible that a man of so decent a seeming as Wilhelm could have come from Germany to America with so few personal belongings. Frau Weitbreck felt less at ease in her mind about him after she examined this pack.

He had come straight from the ship to their house, he had said, when he arrived; had walked on day after day, going he knew not whither, asking mile by mile for work. He did not even know one State's name from another. He simply chose to go south rather than north,--always south, he said.

"Why?"

He did not know.

He was indeed strong. The sickle was in his hand a plaything, so swift-swung that he seemed to be doing little more than simply striding up and down the field, the grain falling to right and left at his steps. From sunrise to sunset he worked tirelessly. The famous Alf had never done so much in a day. Farmer Weitbreck chuckled as he looked on.

"Vat now you say of dat Alf?" he said triumphantly to John; "vork he as dis man? Oh, but he make swing de hook!"

John assented unqualifiedly to this praise of Wilhelm's strength and skill; but nevertheless he shook his head.

"Ay, ay," he said, "I never saw his equal; but I like him not. What carries he in his heart to be so sour? He is like a man bewitched. I know not if there be such a thing as to be sold to the devil, as the stories say; but if there be, on my word, I think Wilhelm has made some such bargain. A man could not look worse if he had signed himself away."

"I see not dat he haf fear in his face," replied the old man.

"No," said John, "neither do I see fear. It is worse than fear. I would like to see his face come alive with a fear. He gives me cold shivers like a grave underfoot. I shall be glad when he is gone."

Farmer Weitbreck laughed. He and his son were likely to be again at odds on the subject of a laborer.

"But he vill not go. I haf said to him to stay till Christmas, maybe always."

John's surprise was unbounded.

"To stay! Till Christmas!" he cried. "What for? What do we need of a man in the winter?"

"It is not dat to feed him is much, and all dat he make vid de knife is mine. It is home he vants, no oder ting; he vork not for money."

"Father," said John, earnestly, "there must be something wrong about that man. I have thought so from the first. Why should he work for nothing but his board,--a great strong fellow like that, that could make good day's wages anywhere? Don't keep him after the harvest is over. I can't bear the sight of him."

"Den you can turn de eyes to your head von oder way," retorted his father. "I find him goot to see; and," after a pause, "so do Carlen."

John started. "Good heavens, father!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, you need not speak by de heavens, mein son!" rejoined the old man, in a taunting tone. "I tink I can mine own vay, vidout you to be help. I was not yesterday born!"

John was gone. Flight was his usual refuge when he felt his temper becoming too much for him; but now his steps were quickened by an impulse of terrible fear. Between him and his sister had always been a bond closer than is wont to link brother and sister. Only one year apart in age, they had grown up together in an intimacy like that of twins; from their cradles till now they had had their sports, tastes, joys, sorrows in common, not a secret from each other since they could remember. At least, this was true of John; was he to find it no longer true of Carlen? He would know, and that right speedily. As by a flash of lightning he thought he saw his father's scheme,--if Carlen were to wed this man, this strong and tireless worker, this unknown, mysterious worker, who wanted only shelter and home and cared not for money, what an invaluable hand would be gained on the farm! John groaned as he thought to himself how little anything--any doubt, any misgiving, perhaps even an actual danger--would in his father's mind outweigh the one fact that the man did not "vork for money."

As he walked toward the house, revolving these disquieting conjectures, all his first suspicion and antagonism toward Wilhelm revived in full force, and he was in a mood well calculated to distort the simplest acts, when he suddenly saw sitting in the square stoop at the door the two persons who filled his thoughts, Wilhelm and Carlen,--Wilhelm steadily at work as usual at his carving, his eyes closely fixed on it, his figure, as was its wont, rigidly still; and Carlen,--ah! it was an unlucky moment John had taken to search out the state of Carlen's feeling toward Wilhelm,--Carlen sitting in a posture of dreamy reverie, one hand lying idle in her lap holding her knitting, the ball rolling away unnoticed on the ground; her other arm thrown carelessly over the railing of the stoop, her eyes fixed on Wilhelm's bowed head.

John stood still and watched her,--watched her long. She did not move. She was almost as rigidly still as Wilhelm himself. Her eyes did not leave his face. One might safely sit in that way by the hour and gaze undetected at Wilhelm. He rarely looked up except when he was addressed.

After standing thus a few moments John turned away, bitter and sick at heart. What had he been about, that he had not seen this? He, the loving comrade brother, to be slower of sight than the hard, grasping parent!

"I will ask mother," he thought. "I can't ask Carlen now! It is too late."

He found his mother in the kitchen, busy getting the bountiful supper which was a daily ordinance in the Weitbreck religion. To John's sharpened perceptions the fact that Carlen was not as usual helping in this labor loomed up into significance.

"Why does not Carlen help you, mütter?" he said hastily. "What is she doing there, idling with Wilhelm in the stoop?"

Frau Weitbreck smiled. "It is not alvays to vork, ven one is young," she said. "I haf not forget!" And she nodded her head meaningly.

John clenched his hands. Where had he been? Who had blinded him? How had all this come about, so soon and without his knowledge? Were his father and his mother mad? He thought they must be.

"It is a shame for that Wilhelm to so much as put his eyes on Carlen's face," he cried. "I think we are fools; what know we about him? I doubt him in and out. I wish he had never darkened our doors."

Frau Weitbreck glanced cautiously at the open door. She was frying sweet cakes in the boiling lard. Forgetting everything in her fear of being overheard, she went softly, with the dripping skimmer in her hand, across the kitchen, the fat falling on her shining floor at every step, and closed the door. Then she came close to her son, and said in a whisper, "The fader think it is goot." At John's angry exclamation she raised her hand in warning.

"Do not loud spraken," she whispered; "Carlen will hear."

"Well, then, she shall hear!" cried John, half beside himself. "It is high time she did hear from somebody besides you and father! I reckon I've got something to say about this thing, too, if I'm her brother. By----, no tramp like that is going to marry my sister without I know more about him!" And before the terrified old woman could stop him, he had gone at long strides across the kitchen, through the best room, and reached the stoop, saying in a loud tone: "Carlen! I want to see you."

Carlen started as one roused from sleep. Seeing her ball lying at a distance on the ground, she ran to pick it up, and with scarlet cheeks and uneasy eyes turned to her brother.

"Yes, John," she said, "I am coming."

Wilhelm did not raise his eyes, or betray by any change of feature that he had heard the sound or perceived the motion. As Carlen passed him her eyes involuntarily rested on his bowed head, a world of pity, perplexity, in the glance. John saw it, and frowned.

"Come with me," he said sternly,--"come down in the pasture; I want to speak to you."

Carlen looked up apprehensively into his face; never had she seen there so stern a look.

"I must help mütter with the supper," she said, hesitating.

John laughed scornfully. "You were helping with the supper, I suppose, sitting out with yon tramp!" And he pointed to the stoop.

Carlen had, with all her sunny cheerfulness, a vein of her father's temper. Her face hardened, and her blue eyes grew darker.

"Why do you call Wilhelm a tramp," she said coldly.

"What is he then, if he is not a tramp?" retorted John.

"He is no tramp," she replied, still more doggedly.

"What do you know about him?" said John.

Carlen made no reply. Her silence irritated John more than any words could have done; and losing self-control, losing sight of prudence, he poured out on her a torrent of angry accusation and scornful reproach.

She stood still, her eyes fixed on the ground. Even in his hot wrath, John noticed this unwonted downcast look, and taunted her with it.

"You have even caught his miserable hangdog trick of not looking anybody in the face," he cried. "Look up now! look me in the eye, and say what you mean by all this."

Thus roughly bidden, Carlen raised her blue eyes and confronted her brother with a look hardly less angry than his own.

"It is you who have to say to me what all this means that you have been saying," she cried. "I think you are out of your senses. I do not know what has happened to you." And she turned to walk back to the house.

John seized her shoulders in his brawny hands, and whirled her round till she faced him again.

"Tell me the truth!" he said fiercely; "do you love this Wilhelm?"

Carlen opened her lips to reply. At that second a step was heard, and looking up they saw Wilhelm himself coming toward them, walking at his usual slow pace, his head sunk on his breast, his eyes on the ground. Great waves of blushes ran in tumultuous flood up Carlen's neck, cheeks, forehead. John took his hands from her shoulders, and stepped back with a look of disgust and a smothered ejaculation. Wilhelm, hearing the sound, looked up, regarded them with a cold, unchanged eye, and turned in another direction.

The color deepened on Carlen's face. In a hard and bitter tone she said, pointing with a swift gesture to Wilhelm's retreating form: "You can see for yourself that there is nothing between us. I do not know what craze has got into your head." And she walked away, this time unchecked by her brother. He needed no further replies in words. Tokens stronger than any speech had answered him. Muttering angrily to himself, he went on down to the pasture after the cows. It was a beautiful field, more like New England than Pennsylvania; a brook ran zigzagging through it, and here and there in the land were sharp lifts where rocks cropped out, making miniature cliffs overhanging some portions of the brook's-course. Gray lichens and green mosses grew on these rocks, and belts of wild flag and sedges surrounded their base. The cows, in a warm day, used to stand knee-deep there, in shade of the rocks.

It was a favorite place of Wilhelm's. He sometimes lay on the top of one of these rocks the greater part of the night, looking down into the gliding water or up into the sky. Carlen from her window had more than once seen him thus, and passionately longed to go down and comfort his lonely sorrow.

It was indeed true, as she had said to her brother, that there was "nothing between" her and Wilhelm. Never a word had passed; never a look or tone to betray that he knew whether she were fair or not,--whether she lived or not. She came and went in his presence, as did all others, with no more apparent relation to the currents of his strange veiled existence than if they or he belonged to a phantom world. But it was also true that never since the first day of his mysterious coming had Wilhelm been long absent from Carlen's thoughts; and she did indeed find him--as her father's keen eyes, sharpened by greed, had observed--good to look upon. That most insidious of love's allies, pity, had stormed the fortress of Carlen's heart, and carried it by a single charge. What could a girl give, do, or be, that would be too much for one so stricken, so lonely as was Wilhelm! The melancholy beauty of his face, his lithe figure, his great strength, all combined to heighten this impression, and to fan the flames of the passion in Carlen's virgin soul. It was indeed, as John had sorrowfully said to himself, "too late" to speak to Carlen.