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_ There followed a blessed week of work--a "human warious"
week, with something piquant lurking at every turn. A
week so busy, so kaleidoscopic in its quick succession of
events that my own troubles and grievances were pushed
into a neglected corner of my mind and made to languish
there, unfed by tears or sighs.
News comes in cycles. There are weeks when a city
editor tears his hair in vain as he bellows for a
first-page story. There follow days so bristling with
real, live copy that perfectly good stuff which, in the
ordinary course of events might be used to grace the
front sheet, is sandwiched away between the marine
intelligence and the Elgin butter reports.
Such a week was this. I interviewed everything from
a red-handed murderer to an incubator baby. The town
seemed to be running over with celebrities. Norberg, the
city editor, adores celebrities. He never allows one to
escape uninterviewed. On Friday there fell to my lot a
world-famous prima donna, an infamous prize-fighter, and
a charming old maid. Norberg cared not whether the
celebrity in question was noted for a magnificent high C,
or a left half-scissors hook, so long as the interview
was dished up hot and juicy, with plenty of quotation
marks, a liberal sprinkling of adjectives and adverbs,
and a cut of the victim gracing the top of the column.
It was long past the lunch hour when the prima donna
and the prize-fighter, properly embellished, were snapped
on the copy hook. The prima donna had chattered in
French; the prize-fighter had jabbered in slang; but the
charming old maid, who spoke Milwaukee English, was to
make better copy than a whole chorus of prima donnas, or
a ring full of fighters. Copy! It was such wonderful
stuff that I couldn't use it.
It was with the charming old maid in mind that
Norberg summoned me.
"Another special story for you," he cheerfully
announced.
No answering cheer appeared upon my lunchless
features. "A prize-fighter at ten-thirty, and a prima
donna at twelve. What's the next choice morsel? An
aeronaut with another successful airship? or a cash girl
who has inherited a million?"
Norberg's plump cheeks dimpled. "Neither. This time
it is a nice German old maid."
"Eloped with the coachman, no doubt?"
"I said a nice old maid. And she hasn't done
anything yet. You are to find out how she'll feel when
she does it."
"Charmingly lucid," commented I, made savage by the
pangs of hunger.
Norberg proceeded to outline the story with
characteristic vigor, a cigarette waggling from the
corner of his mouth.
"Name and address on this slip. Take a Greenfield
car. Nice old maid has lived in nice old cottage all her
life. Grandfather built it himself about a hundred
years ago. Whole family was born in it, and married in
it, and died in it, see? It's crammed full of
spinning-wheels and mahogany and stuff that'll make your
eyes stick out. See? Well, there's no one left now but
the nice old maid, all alone. She had a sister who ran
away with a scamp some years ago. Nice old maid has
never heard of her since, but she leaves the gate ajar or
the latch-string open, or a lamp in the window, or
something, so that if ever she wanders back to the old
home she'll know she's welcome, see?"
"Sounds like a moving picture play," I remarked.
"Wait a minute. Here's the point. The city wants to
build a branch library or something on her property, and
the nice old party is so pinched for money that she'll
have to take their offer. So the time has come when
she'll have to leave that old cottage, with its romance,
and its memories, and its lamp in the window, and go to
live in a cheap little flat, see? Where the old
four-poster will choke up the bedroom--"
"And the parlor will be done in red and green," I put
in, eagerly, "and where there will be an ingrowing
sideboard in the dining-room that won't fit in with the
quaint old dinner-set at all, and a kitchenette just off
that, in which the great iron pots and kettles that used
to hold the family dinners will be monstrously out of
place--"
"You're on," said Norberg.
Half an hour later I stood before the cottage, set
primly in the center of a great lot that extended for
half a square on all sides. A winter-sodden, bare enough
sight it was in the gray of that March day. But it was
not long before Alma Pflugel, standing in the midst of it,
the March winds flapping her neat skirts about her ankles,
filled it with a blaze of color. As she talked, a row of
stately hollyhocks, pink, and scarlet, and saffron,
reared their heads against the cottage sides. The chill
March air became sweet with the scent of heliotrope, and
Sweet William, and pansies, and bridal wreath. The naked
twigs of the rose bushes flowered into wondrous bloom so
that they bent to the ground with their weight of crimson
and yellow glory. The bare brick paths were overrun with
the green of growing things. Gray mounds of dirt grew
vivid with the fire of poppies. Even the rain-soaked
wood of the pea-frames miraculously was hidden in a hedge
of green, over which ran riot the butterfly beauty of the
lavender, and pink, and cerise blossoms. Oh, she did
marvelous things that dull March day, did plain German
Alma Pflugel! And still more marvelous were the things
that were to come.
But of these things we knew nothing as the door was
opened and Alma Pflugel and I gazed curiously at one
another. Surprise was writ large on her honest face as
I disclosed my errand. It was plain that the ways of
newspaper reporters were foreign to the life of this
plain German woman, but she bade me enter with a sweet
graciousness of manner.
Wondering, but silent, she led the way down the dim
narrow hallway to the sitting-room beyond. And there I
saw that Norberg had known whereof he spoke.
A stout, red-faced stove glowed cheerfully in one
corner of the room. Back of the stove a sleepy cat
opened one indolent eye, yawned shamelessly, and rose to
investigate, as is the way of cats. The windows were
aglow with the sturdy potted plants that flower-loving
German women coax into bloom. The low-ceilinged room
twinkled and shone as the polished surfaces of tables and
chairs reflected the rosy glow from the plethoric stove.
I sank into the depths of a huge rocker that must have
been built for Grosspapa Pflugel's generous curves. Alma
Pflugel, in a chair opposite, politely waited for this
new process of interviewing to begin, but relaxed in the
embrace of that great armchair I suddenly realized that
I was very tired and hungry, and talk-weary, and that
here; was a great peace. The prima donna, with her
French, and her paint, and her pearls, and the
prizefighter with his slang, and his cauliflower ear, and
his diamonds, seemed creatures of another planet. My
eyes closed. A delicious sensation of warmth and drowsy
contentment stole over me.
"Do listen to the purring of that cat!" I murmured.
"Oh, newspapers have no place in this. This is peace and
rest."
Alma Pflugel leaned forward in her chair. "You--you
like it?"
"Like it! This is home. I feel as though my mother
were here in this room, seated in one of those deep
chairs, with a bit of sewing in her hand; so near that I
could touch her cheek with my fingers."
Alma Pflugel rose from her chair and came over to
me. She timidly placed her hand on my arm. "Ah, I am so
glad you are like that. You do not laugh at the low
ceilings, and the sunken floors, and the old-fashioned
rooms. You do not raise your eyes in horror and say:
`No conveniences! And why don't you try striped wall
paper? It would make those dreadful ceilings seem
higher.' How nice you are to understand like that!"
My hand crept over to cover her own that lay on my
arm. "Indeed, indeed I do understand," I whispered.
Which, as the veriest cub reporter can testify, is no way
to begin an interview.
A hundred happy memories filled the little
low room as Alma Pflugel showed me her treasures. The
cat purred in great content, and the stove cast a rosy
glow over the scene as the simple woman told the story of
each precious relic, from the battered candle-dipper on
the shelf, to the great mahogany folding table, and
sewing stand, and carved bed. Then there was the old
horn lantern that Jacob Pflugel had used a century
before, and in one corner of the sitting-room stood
Grossmutter Pflugel's spinning-wheel. Behind cupboard
doors were ranged the carefully preserved blue-and-white
china dishes, and on the shelf below stood the clumsy
earthen set that Grosspapa Pflugel himself had modeled
for his young bride in those days of long ago. In the
linen chest there still lay, in neat, fragrant folds,
piles of the linen that had been spun on that
time-yellowed spinning-wheel. And because of the tragedy
in the honest face bent over these dear treasures, and
because she tried so bravely to hide her tears, I knew in
my heart that this could never be a newspaper story.
"So," said Alma Pflugel at last, and rose and walked
slowly to the window and stood looking out at the
wind-swept garden. That window, with its many tiny panes,
once had looked out across a wilderness, with an Indian
camp not far away. Grossmutter Pflugel had sat at that
window many a bitter winter night, with her baby in her
arms, watching and waiting for the young husband who was
urging his ox-team across the ice of Lake Michigan in the
teeth of a raging blizzard.
The little, low-ceilinged room was very still. I
looked at Alma Pflugel standing there at the window in
her neat blue gown, and something about the face and
figure--or was it the pose of the sorrowful head?--seemed
strangely familiar. Somewhere in my mind the resemblance
haunted me. Resemblance to--what? Whom?
"Would you like to see my garden?" asked Alma
Pflugel, turning from the window. For a moment I stared
in wonderment. But the honest, kindly face was
unsmiling. "These things that I have shown you, I can
take with me when I--go. But there," and she pointed
out over the bare, wind-swept lot, "there is something
that I cannot take. My flowers! You see that mound over
there, covered so snug and warm with burlap and sacking?
There my tulips and hyacinths sleep. In a few weeks,
when the covering is whisked off--ah, you shall see!
Then one can be quite sure that the spring is here. Who
can look at a great bed of red and pink and lavender and
yellow tulips and hyacinths, and doubt it? Come."
With a quick gesture she threw a shawl over her head,
and beckoned me. Together we stepped out into the chill
of the raw March afternoon. She stood a moment, silent,
gazing over the sodden earth. Then she flitted swiftly
down the narrow path, and halted before a queer little
structure of brick, covered with the skeleton of a
creeping vine. Stooping, Alma Pflugel pulled open the
rusty iron door and smiled up at me.
"This was my grandmother's oven. All her bread she
baked in this little brick stove. Black bread it was,
with a great thick crust, and a bitter taste. But it was
sweet, too. I have never tasted any so good. I like to
think of Grossmutter, when she was a bride, baking her
first batch of bread in this oven that Grossvater built
for her. And because the old oven was so very difficult
to manage, and because she was such a young thing--only
sixteen!--I like to think that her first loaves were
perhaps not so successful, and that Grosspapa joked about
them, and that the little bride wept, so that the young
husband had to kiss away the tears."
She shut the rusty, sagging door very slowly and
gently. "No doubt the workmen who will come to
prepare the ground for the new library will laugh and
joke among themselves when they see the oven, and they
will kick it with their heels, and wonder what the old
brick mound could have been."
There was a little twisted smile on her face as she
rose--a smile that brought a hot mist of tears to my
eyes. There was tragedy itself in that spare, homely
figure standing there in the garden, the wind twining her
skirts about her.
"You should but see the children peering over the
fence to see my flowers in the summer," she said. The
blue eyes wore a wistful, far-away look. "All the
children know my garden. It blooms from April to
October. There I have my sweet peas; and here my roses--
thousands of them! Some are as red as a drop of blood,
and some as white as a bridal wreath. When they are
blossoming it makes the heart ache, it is so beautiful."
She had quite forgotten me now. For her the garden
was all abloom once more. It was as though the Spirit of
the Flowers had touched the naked twigs with fairy
fingers, waking them into glowing life for her who never
again was to shower her love and care upon them.
"These are my poppies. Did you ever come out in the
morning to find a hundred poppy faces smiling at you, and
swaying and glistening and rippling in the breeze? There
they are, scarlet and pink, side by side as only God can
place them. And near the poppies I planted my pansies,
because each is a lesson to the other. I call my pansies
little children with happy faces. See how this great
purple one winks his yellow eye, and laughs!"
Her gray shawl had slipped back from her face and lay
about her shoulders, and the wind had tossed her hair
into a soft fluff about her head.
"We used to come out here in the early morning, my
little Schwester and I, to see which rose had unfolded
its petals overnight, or whether this great peony that
had held its white head so high only yesterday, was
humbled to the ground in a heap of ragged leaves. Oh, in
the morning she loved it best. And so every summer I
have made the garden bloom again, so that when she comes
back she will see flowers greet her.
"All the way up the path to the door she will walk in
an aisle of fragrance, and when she turns the handle of
the old door she will find it unlocked, summer and winter,
day and night, so that she has only to turn the knob and
enter."
She stopped, abruptly. The light died out of her
face. She glanced at me, half defiantly, half timidly,
as one who is not quite sure of what she has said. At
that I went over to her, and took her work-worn hands in
mine, and smiled down into the faded blue eyes grown dim
with tears and watching.
"Perhaps--who knows?--the little sister may come yet.
I feel it. She will walk up the little path, and try the
handle of the door, and it will turn beneath her fingers,
and she will enter."
With my arm about her we walked down the path toward
the old-fashioned arbor, bare now except for the tendrils
that twined about the lattice. The arbor was fitted with
a wooden floor, and there were rustic chairs, and a
table. I could picture the sisters sitting there with
their sewing during the long, peaceful summer afternoons.
Alma Pflugel would be wearing one of her neat gingham
gowns, very starched and stiff, with perhaps a snowy
apron edged with a border of heavy crochet done by the
wrinkled fingers of Grossmutter Pflugel. On the rustic
table there would be a bowl of flowers, and a pot of
delicious Kaffee, and a plate of German Kaffeekuchen,
and through the leafy doorway the scent of the
wonderful garden would come stealing.
I thought of the cheap little flat, with the ugly
sideboard, and the bit of weedy yard in the rear, and the
alley beyond that, and the red and green wall paper in
the parlor. The next moment, to my horror, Alma Pflugel
had dropped to her knees before the table in the damp
little arbor, her face in her hands, her spare shoulders
shaking.
"Ich kann's nicht thun!" she moaned. "Ich kann
nicht! Ach, kleine Schwester, wo bist du denn! Nachts
und Morgens bete ich, aber doch kommst du nicht."
A great dry sob shook her. Her hand went to her
breast, to her throat, to her lips, with an odd, stifled
gesture.
"Do that again!" I cried, and shook Alma Pflugel
sharply by the shoulder. "Do that again!"
Her startled blue eyes looked into mine. What do you
mean?" she asked.
"That--that gesture. I've seen it--somewhere--that
trick of pressing the hand to the breast, to the throat,
to the lips--Oh!"
Suddenly I knew. I lifted the drooping head and
rumpled its neat braids, and laughed down into the
startled face.
"She's here!" I shouted, and started a dance of
triumph on the shaky floor of the old arbor. "I know
her. From the moment I saw you the resemblance haunted
me." And then as Alma Pflugel continued to stare, while
the stunned bewilderment grew in her eyes, "Why, I have
one-fourth interest in your own nephew this very minute.
And his name is Bennie! "
Whereupon Alma Pflugel fainted quietly away in the
chilly little grape arbor, with her head on my shoulder.
I called myself savage names as I chafed her hands
and did all the foolish, futile things that distracted
humans think of at such times, wondering, meanwhile, if
I had been quite mad to discern a resemblance between
this simple, clear-eyed gentle German woman, and the
battered, ragged, swaying figure that had stood at the
judge's bench.
Suddenly Alma Pflugel opened her eyes. Recognition
dawned in them slowly. Then, with a jerk, she sat
upright, her trembling hands clinging to me.
"Where is she? Take me to her. Ach, you are sure--
sure?"
"Lordy, I hope so! Come, you must let me help you
into the house. And where is the nearest telephone?
Never mind; I'll find one."
When I had succeeded in finding the nearest drug
store I spent a wild ten minutes telephoning the
surprised little probation officer, then Frau Nirlanger,
and finally Blackie, for no particular reason. I
shrieked my story over the wire in disconnected,
incoherent sentences. Then I rushed back to the little
cottage where Alma Pflugel and I waited with what
patience we could summon.
Blackie was the first to arrive. He required few
explanations. That is one of the nicest things about
Blackie. He understands by leaps and bounds, while
others crawl to comprehension. But when Frau Nirlanger
came, with Bennie in tow, there were tears, and
exclamations, followed by a little stricken silence on
the part of Frau Nirlanger when she saw Bennie snatched
to the breast of this weeping woman. So it was that in
the midst of the confusion we did not hear the approach
of the probation officer and her charge. They came up
the path to the door, and there the little sister turned
the knob, and it yielded under her fingers, and the old
door swung open; and so she entered the house quite as
Alma Pflugel had planned she should, except that the
roses were not blooming along the edge of the sunken
brick walk.
She entered the room in silence, and no one could
have recognized in this pretty, fragile creature the
pitiful wreck of the juvenile court. And when Alma
Pflugel saw the face of the little sister--the poor,
marred, stricken face--her own face became terrible in
its agony. She put Bennie down very gently, rose, and
took the shaking little figure in her strong arms, and
held it as though never to let it go again. There were
little broken words of love and pity. She called her
"Lammchen" and "little one," and so Frau Nirlanger and
Blackie and I stole away, after a whispered consultation
with the little probation officer.
Blackie had come in his red runabout, and now he
tucked us into it, feigning a deep disgust.
"I'd like to know where I enter into this little
drayma," he growled. "Ain't I got nothin' t' do but run
around town unitin' long lost sisters an' orphans!"
"Now, Blackie, you know you would never have forgiven
me if I had left you out of this. Besides, you must
hustle around and see that they need not move out of that
dear little cottage. Now don't say a word! You'll never
have a greater chance to act the fairy godmother."
Frau Nirlanger's hand sought mine and I squeezed it
in silent sympathy. Poor little Frau Nirlanger, the
happiness of another had brought her only sorrow. And
she had kissed Bennie good-by with the knowledge that the
little blue-painted bed, with its faded red roses, would
again stand empty in the gloom of the Knapf attic.
Norberg glanced up quickly as I entered the city
room. "Get something good on that south side story?" he
asked.
"Why, no," I answered. "You were mistaken about
that. The--the nice old maid is not going to move, after
all." _
Read next: CHAPTER XV - FAREWELL TO KNAPFS'
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