CHAPTER XXI

THE SQUIRE AND DAVID TAKE A JOURNEY BY DAY

DAVID and the squire had not gone far in their search for Alvin before David's mind changed. He did not care to seek him at the house of the little Improved New Mennonite or to ask the squire to take the long walk to Alvin's house on the mountainside. It would be better to follow the squire's suggestion and wait until morning.

"Then we will drive out to the poorhouse and see Koehler himself. He is the one to see. You'd better stay here to-night with me."

David shook his head. He wished to be alone; he had set a task for himself. Perhaps some letter or document had escaped him among those in his father's safe, some letter or document which could throw light on the strange past.

But David found nothing. He entered again into his great house, locked its doors, and opened the iron safe. There he read through ledgers and day books and mortgages and deeds in vain. He found nothing but the orderly papers of a careful business man. He looked again at the letter upon which the secret had been written, he held it up between him and the lamp, but the original writing was gone forever. It had been a letter,--of that there was no doubt,--his father's writing followed the spaces of a margin, but the text of the letter was gone.

In the morning the two men drove out the country road to the almshouse. The fields were green, wild roses and elder were in bloom, the air was sweet. A man could ask nothing better of fate than to be given a home and work in such a spot.

"They say Koehler has grown quieter," said the squire. "He doesn't rave and pray this long time."

David did not answer. If another had visited such shame upon him, it would have been a long time before he would have grown quiet. David was now pale, now scarlet; he moistened his lips as though he were feverish. Reparation must be made, but what adequate reparation could be offered? Of money there was plenty, and Alvin, alas! could be satisfied with money; Alvin would probably never understand the awful hurt which had been done him. But his father--how could reason be returned to him?

In his corner in the almshouse garden they found William. The almshouse was a pleasant place with shady lawns and comfortable porches upon which old men could smoke their pipes and old women could sit knitting or shelling peas, or helping in other ways with the work for the large family. William Koehler never sat with the rest. He worked all day and then went back to his room like any self-respecting laborer. He was disinclined to speak; he was happiest on long, sunny days when he could be in the garden from dawn till twilight.

Now he was on his knees, weeding his cabbage plants. Another man would have done the work quickly with a hoe, but not so William. The delightful labor lasted longer if he pulled each weed by hand. Frequently he paused, to press down the soil a little more solidly about the roots of a plant or to say what sounded like an encouraging word. Thus had he been accustomed to talk to his chickens and his bees.

When the squire and David approached, he looked up from his work with a frown. At David he merely glanced; at the squire he stared. When he recognized him, he smiled faintly and rose from his knees.

"Well, William," said the squire, cheerfully. "Do you know me?"

"To be sure I know you."

"Come over here and sit down, William."

"I am very busy this morning," objected William, uneasily.

He answered the squire in Pennsylvania German. The years which had almost anglicized Millerstown had had no educating effect upon the residents of the county home.

"But I want to talk to you a little."

The squire took him in a friendly way by the arm, at which an expression of terror came into William's eyes, and he jerked away from the squire's grasp.

"I will come," he promised. "But I will come myself."

The squire led the way across the lawn to the shade of a great tree where two benches were placed at right angles. Upon one the squire and David sat down, upon the other William. The line between William's eyes deepened, his lips trembled, he pressed his hands, palm to palm, between his knees. The squire and David looked at each other. The squire, too, had grown pale; he shook his head involuntarily over the task which they were beginning. He, too, had had a share in William's condemnation, as had all Millerstown. The squire felt helpless. He remembered the mocking boys, the scornful, incredulous people; he recalled the gradual taking away of William's business by the new mason whom Millerstown imported and encouraged. The squire thought as David had of the years that could never be returned, of the reason which could never be restored. He took a long time to begin what he had to say. When William half rose as though to escape back to his garden, the squire came to himself and his duty with a start.

"William, do you remember anything about the window that you plastered shut in the church and about the communion set?"

William lifted his hands, then joined them on his breast. He shook now as with palsy. David, watching him, looked away to hide his tears. David was young, the wreck of William Koehler seemed a unique, horrible case.

Presently William answered in a low voice.

"God told me to be quiet. I prayed and prayed and God told me to be quiet. I am quiet now."

"But, William, you must tell us what you can remember. It will be for your good."

William opened his arms in a wild gesture, then clasped his hands again.

"A voice told me to forget it. I prayed till I heard a voice telling me to be quiet. You are tempting me! You are tempting me to disobey God. God said to be quiet about it!" He covered his face with his hands and began to weep aloud in a terrible way.

David crossed the little space between them and sat down beside him.

"You didn't take the communion set," he said. "We know you didn't take it."

William Koehler drew his hands away from his eyes and looked round at the young face beside him. Some tone of the voice startled him.

"Who are you?" he asked in astonishment. As he put the question he moved slowly and cautiously away, as though he planned to flee. "What do you mean to do with me?"

Together David and the squire rose. It was clear that William had heard as much as he could endure. His hands twitched, his eyes were as wild as any lunatic's.

"It doesn't make any difference who I am," said David, steadily. "You are to remember that all the people know you did not take the communion set. You are to think of that all the time."

Again William began to weep, but in a different way.

"I cannot think of it," he sobbed. "God told me not to think of it. God told me to forgive him. I have forgiven him."

As the squire and David drove through the gate, William was kneeling once more among his cabbages. Sometimes he stopped and rubbed his head in a puzzled way, then his hands returned to caress the young plants.

Almost silently the two men drove back to Millerstown and up to the little white house on the mountain road. Standing before the door, David saw once more its littleness, its meanness. It seemed as though it could never have been altogether proof against the storms of winter. Looking back at his own great mansion among the trees he shivered. Imagination woke within him; he comprehended something of the lonely misery of poor William. It was a salutary though dreadful experience for David.

Alvin answered their knock at once. In a half-hearted, inefficient way he was trying to put the house into habitable condition. For the first time in his life he thought with respect of his father and of his father's work. His father could have applied the needed plaster and boards skillfully and quickly.

When Alvin saw who stood without he looked at them blankly. The difference between his worn clothes and David's fine apparel hurt him. He was always afraid of the squire. Together the three sat down on the porch. Here David was the spokesman. To him the squire listened with admiration and respect.

"Alvin, the communion service has been found."

Alvin looked at them more blankly than ever. The affair of the communion service belonged to the dim past; since he had thought of the communion service he had been away to school, and had been educated and jilted, and cruelly maltreated by Bevy Schnepp, and had become engaged once more. It was a long time before Alvin could remember the very close relation he bore to the communion service. When he remembered, his heart sank. He recalled clearly his father's trying, desperate appeal on Christmas Day so long ago. Had they come to make him pay for his father's theft?

"Your father insisted that my father had been in the church and had taken it," explained David.

"I never believed it," cried Alvin at once. He was now terrified. Were they going to make him suffer for his father's madness. "I never believed it! Pop could never get me to believe it," he assured them earnestly.

"But it is true, Alvin," insisted David. "Your father had nothing to do with it. He spoke the truth when he said that he knew nothing about it. A great wrong was done your father. I want to try to make part of it right with you and him."

Alvin gaped at them. It was difficult to comprehend this amazing offer.

"I have been to see your father, Alvin," David went on. "I hope you will forgive my father and me."

David spoke steadily. The request was easy to make now; even greater humbling of himself would have been easy.

Alvin responded in his own way. He remembered his long poverty, his lack of the things he wanted, the cruel price he had had to pay for his first beautiful red necktie.

"My father spent a great deal of money for detectives," he said, ruefully.

"That will be restored to him," said David. "Everything that I can do, I will do, Alvin."

When their errand was made perfectly clear to Alvin, he was terrified again, now by his good fortune. He was to have money, money to do what he liked with, more money than he actually needed! The mortgage was to be destroyed--the mention of that instrument had alarmed him for the moment. Was he only to be relieved of a burden of whose existence he had been to this time unaware? But there was more to come! The sum his father had spent was to be guessed at liberally and was to be put on interest for his father's support, and Alvin himself was to have recompense.

"Do you like teaching?" asked David. "Is there anything you would rather do?"

Alvin clasped his hands as though to assure himself by physical sensation that he was awake and that the words he heard were real. He cherished no malice, hoarded no hatred--that much could be said for Alvin who failed in many other ways.

"Oh, how I would like to have a store!" he cried. "If I could borrow the money from you to have a store, a store to sell clothes and shoes and such things! I do not like teaching. I am not a teacher. The children are naughty all the time for me. I--" Suddenly Alvin halted. No more in this world could he go his own sweet way; liberty now offered was already curtailed. A fixed star controlled now the steady orbit of his life. His bright color faded. "We would better talk to her about it," said he.

David Hartman forgot for an instant the Pennsylvania German idiom. It is an evidence of the monogamous nature of the true Pennsylvania German that the personal pronoun of the third person, used alone, applies but to one human being.

"To her?" repeated David, puzzled.

"Yes, to Essie Hill. I am going to be married to Essie Hill." Alvin rose. "Perhaps we could go down there," he proposed hesitatingly.

Together the trio went down the mountain road. The squire drove the buggy, Alvin and David walked. The squire kept ahead, so that the curtains on the back of the buggy sheltered him from the view of his companions. Thus hidden, he laughed until the buggy shook. To the squire Alvin could never be a tragic figure; he belonged on the stage of comedy or broad farce.

When the squire reached the house of the preacher of the Improved New Mennonites, he dismounted, tied his horse, and awaited the arrival of the young men. Then the three went in on the board walk to the kitchen, where Essie was singing, "They ask us why we're happy." Again the squire's face quivered.

Essie received her three guests in her calm, composed way. She put the interesting scallops on the edge of her cherry pie with a turn of her thumb, and invited the three gentlemen to have seats. Essie was neither an imaginative nor an inquisitive person. Her life was ordered, her thoughts did not circle far beyond herself. The tragedy suggested by the juxtaposition of these three persons did not occur to her. She sat primly with her hands folded and heard her visitors for their cause. Her eyes narrowed as she listened to David's statement of Alvin's desire for a store. It was true that Alvin did not like teaching, was not a success as a teacher. Essie had intended to think out some other way for him to earn the family living. Selling fine clothes would not be a sin like wearing them; indeed, one could preach a sermon by refraining from what was so near at hand and so tempting. That such a policy might be damaging to the family pocketbook, Essie did not realize for the moment. Essie was always most anxious that the sermon should be preached. Millerstown, however, fortunately for Alvin's success as a haberdasher, was set in its iniquity as far as the wearing of good clothes was concerned.

"I think it would be a very good thing for Alvin to have a store," said she.

"I want to do everything I can to make up for the past," explained David. "I can't make it right entirely. I wish I could."

To Essie the balancing of accounts always appealed.

"That is right," said she.

"But there is Alvin's father," David went on. "We cannot leave him where he is if he can be persuaded to come away. He doesn't understand yet that we have discovered that he was not guilty, but we hope he may."

Essie answered without pause. Essie had as clear an idea of her own duty as she had of other people's--a rather uncommon quality.

"We will take him home to us," said she.

When the interview was over, David went with the squire to partake of Bevy's dinner. The squire and his two companions had not been unobserved in their progress through Millerstown. Sarah Ann Mohr, on her way to David's house with a loaf of fresh bread and a Schwenkfelder cake and two pies and a mess of fresh peas from her garden and with great curiosity in her kindly heart about David's future movements, saw the three, and stood still in her tracks and cried out, "Bei meiner Sex!" which meaningless exclamation well expressed the confusion of her mind. When they vanished into Essie's kitchen, she cried out, "What in the world!"--and, basket in hand, plates rattling, instant destruction threatening her pies, she flew back to the house of Susannah Kuhns. Susannah hurried to the house of Sarah Knerr, and together all sought Bevy, as the only woman connected with any of the three men. Other Millerstonians saw them assembled and the conference grew in numbers.

"The squire and David and Alvin Koehler together at the Mennonite's!" cried Susannah.

"Perhaps he is to marry her and Alvin," suggested a voice at the edge of the crowd.

"David used to sit with her, too, sometimes," Sarah Knerr reminded the others. "Perhaps there is trouble and it will give a court hearing."

"Humbug!" cried Bevy. "You don't know anything about it!"

Bevy, of course, knew nothing about it either.

Almost bursting with curiosity, Bevy made her noodle soup. It was only because she was not a literary person that the delicious portions of dough which gave the soup its name were not cut into exclamation points and question marks. Bevy was suffering; when the squire brought David home with him, her uneasiness became distressing to see. Presently she was thrown into a state bordering on insanity.

David laid down his fork and looked across the table at her restless figure.

"Bevy," said he in an ordinary tone, "the communion set has been found."

"What!" screamed Bevy.

All her speculations had arrived at no such wonderful conclusion as this. The squire looked startled; he had wondered how the report would first reach Millerstown.

"Did Koehler tell?" demanded Bevy. "Did he tell where he put it? Is it any good yet? Will they use it? Did you come to it by accident? Did--" Bevy's breath failed.

"Koehler had nothing to do with it," said David. "My father put it into the hole made by plastering up the window in the church. There it lay all these years."

"He never meant to take it!" screamed Bevy.

"No," agreed David; "I do not believe he meant to take it."

"What _did_ he mean?"

"I do not know."

"Doesn't anybody know?"

"Nobody knows," interposed the squire. "Now, Bevy, get the pie."

Immediately Bevy started for her kitchen. When after a few minutes she had not reappeared, the squire followed her. The kitchen was empty, no Bevy was to be seen; but from across the yard a loud chattering issued from Edwin's Sally's kitchen.

In the evening the squire and the preacher came and sat with David on his porch. The communion set had been taken from its hiding-place and the preacher's wife had polished it until it was once more bright and beautiful. Millerstown dropped in by twos and threes to behold it, each with his own eyes. The squire and the preacher and David talked about many things of interest to Millerstown and to the world at large. When the two men went away together, they said that David had astonished them.

Later in the evening another man entered the gate and came up to the porch. Oliver Kuhns, the elder, sat down in the chair which the squire had left.

"I heard a strange thing to-day," said he, brokenly. "I cannot understand it. When I was in great trouble, your father helped me. If you want I shall tell Millerstown, I will. I took my money when my father died and went to New York and bad people got me, and when I came home to my wife and little children, I had nothing. Your father lent it to me so she should not find it out, and he would never take it again."

"He would not want you to tell Millerstown," said David.

As Oliver Kuhns, the elder, went out the gate, Jacob Fackenthal came in. He would not sit down.

"Your pop saved me from jail, David," said he. "Anything I can do for you, I will. Nobody in Millerstown believes that he meant to take the communion set. If you will stay in Millerstown, Millerstown will show you what it thinks."

After a long time David went into the great house, through the front door, up the broad stairway to the handsome room which he had selected for his own. He could not understand his mother and father; still, in a measure, they put him away from them. Dimly he comprehended their tragedy, error on one side, refusal to forgive on the other, and heartbreak for both. He thought long of his father and mother. But when he went to sleep, he was thinking of William Koehler and his son Alvin and planning the fitting-out of a little store and the planting of a garden and the purchasing of a flock of chickens and several hives of bees. Old ghosts were laid, old unhappinesses forgotten; from David's consciousness there had vanished even Katy Gaumer, who in a strange way had brought him a blessing.