Читать книгу The Return of Peter Grimm - David Belasco - Страница 7

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"Hello, Kitty," he said. "Good-morning."

"Good-morning, Frederik," responded the girl, and started toward the stairs.

But the man intercepted her. Catching her playfully by the arm he tried to draw her toward him.

"You're pretty as a June rose to-day," he laughed.

Hartmann, instinctively, had half-risen from his chair. The girl, noting his movement and the frown gathering on his face, checked her impulse to retort, quietly disengaged herself from the newcomer's familiar grasp, and ran up the short stair flight that led into the gallery.

In no way offended, the man glanced after her with another short laugh, then turned to Hartmann.

"Where's my uncle?" he asked.

Hartmann looked up with elaborate slowness from the notes he was making of the newly opened mail. His eyes at last rested on the dapper figure before him, with the impersonal, faintly irritated gaze one might bestow on a yelping puppy.

"Mr. Grimm is outside," he answered. "He's watching my father spray the plum trees. The black knot's getting ahead of us this year."

"I wonder," grumbled Frederik, lounging across to the window, "if it's possible once a year to ask a simple question of any inmate of this cursedly dreary old place without getting a botanical answer."

"That's what we are here for—those of us that work," said Hartmann, returning to his note making.

"Work, work, work!" mocked Frederik. "When I inherit my beloved uncle's fortune, I shall buy up all the dictionaries and have that wretched word crossed out of them."

Hartmann made no reply. He did not seem to have heard. But Frederik, absently ripping to atoms a Richmond rose from the window table vase, continued his muttered tirade. An inattentive audience was better than none.

"Work!" he growled. "When people here aren't talking about it, they're doing it. Grubby, earthy work. And it was to prepare for this sort of thing that I loafed through Leyden and Heidelberg! Yes, and loafed through, creditably, too; even if Oom Peter did bully me into making a specialty of botany. Botany! Dry as dust. After the University and after my wanderjahr, I thought it would be another easy task to come here, and 'learn the business.' Easy! As easy as the treadmill. And as congenial."

"I wonder you don't tell Mr. Grimm all that. I'm sure it would interest him."

"My dear, worthy uncle, who builds such wonderful hopes on me? Not I. It would break his noble heart. I hope you quite understand, Hartmann, that I keep quiet only through fear of wounding him and not with any fear that he might bequeath the business elsewhere."

"Quite," returned Hartmann drily. "That's why I keep my mouth shut when he holds you up to me as a paragon of zeal and industry and asks me why I don't pattern myself after you. But, for all that, you're taking chances when you talk to me about him as you do."

"I'm not," contradicted Frederik. "I may not know botany. But I know men. You love me about as much as you love smallpox. But you belong to the breed that doesn't tell tales. Besides, I've got to speak the truth to some one, once in a while, if I don't want to explode. You're a splendid safety valve, Hartmann."

The secretary bent over his notes. His forehead veins swelled, and his face darkened. But he gave no overt sign of offence. Frederik, watching keenly, seemed disappointed.

"In New York," he pursued with a sigh, "they're just about thinking of waking up. And look at the time I'm routed out of bed! Say, Hartmann, I wish you would give Oom Peter a hint to oil his shoes. Every morning he wakes me up at five o'clock, creaking down the stairs. It's a sort of pedal alarm clock. Creak! Creak! Creak!—Ach, Gott! Even yet I can hardly keep one eye open. If ever it pleases Providence to give me my heritage, the first thing I'll do will be to sleep till noon. And then to go to sleep again."

He stared moodily out of the window into the glowing, flower-starred June world.

"How I loathe this pokey, dead old village!" he complained. "And what wouldn't I give to be back with the old Leyden crowd for one little night!"

He lurched over to the piano, sat carelessly, sidewise, on its stool, and, thrumming at the keyboard, fell to humming in a slurring, reminiscent fashion, the old Leyden University chorus:

"Ach, daar koonet ye amuseeren! Io vivat—Io vivat Nostorum sanitas, hoc estamoris porculum, Dolores est anti gotum—Io vivat—Io vivat Nostorum sanitas—!

"Say, Hartmann," he broke off from his jumble of Dutch and Hollandised Latin, "the old man is aging. He's aging fast."

"Who?" asked Hartmann absently, glancing up from his work. "Oh, your uncle? Yes, he is mellowing. He is changing foliage with the years."

"Changing foliage? Not he. He changes nothing. What was good enough forty years ago seems to him quite good enough to-day. He's as old-fashioned as his hats. And they're the oldest things since Noah's time. He's just as old-fashioned in his financial ways. In my opinion, for instance, this would be a capital time to sell out the business. But he——"

"Sell out?" echoed Hartmann in genuine horror. "Sell out a business that's been in his family for—why, man, he'd as soon sell his soul. This business is his religion."

"Yes, and that's why it is so flourishing in spite of his back-date customs. It's at the very acme of its prosperity now. Why, the plant must be worth an easy half million. Yes, and more. Lord, but it would sell now! One, two, three—Augenblick! By the way, speaking of selling—what was the last offer the dear old gentleman turned down from Hicks of Rochester?"

But Hartmann did not hear the question. He was staring at Frederik in open-mouthed astonishment.

"Sell out?" he repeated dully. "This is a new one—even from you. There isn't a day your uncle doesn't tell me how triumphantly you are going to carry on the business after he is gone. He——"

"Oh, I am!" sneered Frederik. "I am. Of course I am. How can you doubt it. Wait and see. It's a big name—'Peter Grimm.' And the old gentleman knows his business. He assuredly knows his business."

"I don't mind being the repository of your confidences about hating work," burst out Hartmann, "any more than I mind listening to the mewing of a sick cat. But when you strike this new vein, you'll have to choose another audience. I'm afraid I'd be likely to take sudden charge of the meeting and break the talented orator's neck."

He gathered up some of his papers and stamped out. Frederik looked after him uncertainly, took a step toward the door through which the secretary had just vanished, then thought better of the idea, laughed shortly, and drew out a cigarette. But a creaking of heavy shoes on the walk outside led him to slip the cigarette back into its case, and to bend interestedly over the pile of office mail Hartmann had opened.

If Kathrien had typified all that was dainty and alluring in the room's Dutch art, the man who now stamped in from the front vestibule, assuredly was typical of all old Holland's solidity. Stocky, of medium height, he was clad more as though he had copied the fashions depicted in a daguerrotype than those of the twentieth century. His black broadcloth was of no recent cut. His low, upright collar and broad cravat were of stock-like aspect, while a high hat such as he wore has certainly appeared in no show window since 1870.

Withal, there was nothing ludicrous or even incongruous about the costume. It belonged with the wearer. And while on another man it would have been absurd, on him it seemed the only logical apparel.

Peter Grimm halted in the vestibule, laboriously removed his rubbers, and dropped his heavy ash stick into its place on the rack. Then he carefully lifted the antique hat from his head, deposited it on a peg, and came forward into the room. The face, revealed as he left the vestibule's gloom for the bright sunlight, was at first glance hard, deeply lined, and stubborn; the effect accented by a set mouth, the little truculently alert eyes under bushy brows, and the slightly uptilted nose.

A second look, however, would have revealed, to any one who could read faces, a lovable and almost tender light behind the eye's sharp twinkle and a kindly, humorous twist to the stubborn mouth. Hot temper, the physiognomist would have read, and obstinacy. But there the catalogue of faults would have ended abruptly. The rest was warm heart, trustfulness, eager sympathy—an almost child-like friendliness toward the world at large that forever battled for mastery with native Dutch shrewdness.

There was far more kindness than shrewdness in the square old face just now, as Grimm noted his nephew's presence and his deep absorption in the contents of the mail. Frederik looked up as Grimm came forward.

"Good-morning, Oom Peter," said he.

"Good-morning, Fritzy," returned Grimm. "Hard at work, I see."

"Not so hard but that you were ahead of me. I felt unpardonably lazy when I heard you come downstairs at five."

"I'm sorry I woke you. Youngsters need their sleep. We old fellows have done about all the dozing we need to do; and we are coming so close to our Long Sleep that God gives us extra wakefulness for the little time left; so we may see as much as possible of this glorious old world of His."

"I ran over from the office——"

"Oh, I know why you ran over, Fritzy. A word with Kathrien—yes?"

"No, sir, I try to forget everything but work during business hours. I came to look for you. I've a suggestion——"

"Yes?"

Grimm's face lighted with the rare smile that played over its harsh outlines like sunshine. Each proof of his nephew's interest in the work was as tonic to him.

"I came over," went on Frederik, by hard mental calisthenics creating an impromptu suggestion, "to propose that we insert a full-page cut of your new tulip in our midsummer floral almanac."

"H'—m!" muttered Grimm doubtfully. "I don't see why we——"

"Oh, sir, the public's expecting it."

"What makes you think so?"

"Why," now quite at home with his newly evolved notion, "you've no idea the stir the tulip has made. We get letters from everywhere——"

"It didn't seem to me anything so extraordinary," said Grimm modestly, albeit hugely gratified. "I'll think over the plan. What have you been doing all day?"

Frederik glanced at the clock. It registered three minutes before nine.

"Oh, I've had a busy morning," he answered. "In the packing house. Lots of orders to attend to. It's never safe to trust the more important ones to subordinates."

"That's right," approved Grimm. "Fritzy, it does me good, all through, to see you taking hold of the business the way you're doing."

Further praise was cut short by old Marta, the housekeeper, who bustled in to attend to her regular nine o'clock duty of winding the chain-weighted Dutch clock.

As she drew up the weights with a grate and a whirr that made audible conversation quite out of the question, she formed a study, in clothes and visage, that might have stepped direct from a Franz Hals canvas.

There was nothing American or modern about the old woman. Nothing about her save her face had changed since the day, sixty years back, when an earlier Grimm, returning from a visit from the Fatherland, had brought her to Grimm Manor as maid for his young American wife. Her task accomplished, Marta turned dutifully to courtesy to her master.

"Huge moroche, Mynheer Grimm," she saluted him. "Komt ujuist eut di teum?"

"Ja," replied Peter, dropping into the tongue of his fathers, yet with an odd twinkle in his little eyes. "En ik bin hongerig.—Taking her morning exercise," he added, noting the performance with the clock weights.

"You are always making fun of me!" sniffed Marta, trying not to grin as she swept indignantly out of the room.

In her departure she nearly collided with Hartmann who was entering from the offices. Seating himself at the desk, dictation pad in hand, Hartmann asked:

"Are you ready for me, sir?"

"Yes," answered Grimm.—"No, I'm not. But I will be in a minute. There's something I'd forgotten. Wait——"

Cupping his hands about his mouth, Grimm wheeled to face the gallery and shouted a curiously high-pitched dissyllable:

"Ou—hoo!"

And, as though a sweeter, more silvery echo of the rough old voice, came from one of the gallery rooms an answering hail. Kathrien herself followed close upon her reply to the familiar signal call.

"Oh, Oom Peter!" she exclaimed, running lightly down the stairs and throwing her arms about his neck. "Good-morning. How careless I was not to come sooner and make your coffee. I didn't know you were in yet. You must be half starved."

She started for the dining-room. But Grimm's arm was about her waist, detaining her.

"This is the very busiest little woman you ever saw, Frederik," he announced. "She is forever thinking of things to do for me. And I'm never remembering to do anything for her."

"Shame!" cried Kathrien, "you do everything in this big world for me, Oom Peter, and you know it. I've got everything any girl's heart could ask."

"Oh, no, you haven't though," sagely contradicted Grimm. "Before you say that, wait till I give you some fine young chap for a husband. Hey, Frederik?"

She drew away from his embrace with gentle impatience.

"Don't, Oom Peter," she begged. "You're always talking about weddings lately. I don't know what's come over you."

"It's nesting time," Grimm defended himself. "Weddings are in the air. And then, I keep thinking of all the linen packed in my grandmother's chest upstairs. We must use it again some day. There, there, little girl! You shan't be teased any more. Only, I'll leave it to you, Fritzy, if she doesn't deserve a grand husband—this little girl of mine. If for no other reason, to pay for all she's done for me."

"Done for you?" laughed Kathrien. "Truly, I was forgetting that. I do you the great favour of letting you do everything for me."

"Nonsense! Who lays out my linen and brushes my clothes and fixes wonderful little dishes for me, and puts my slippers and dressing gown in front of the fire on cold nights, and puts flowers on my desk every day? And, best of all, Kindchen, who floods this old house of mine with the glory of Youth?"

"Youth?" she mocked with the true scorn of the young for their supreme gift. "Youth can't do very much. What does it amount to?"

"Nothing much," gravely answered her uncle. "Youth, as you say, is not anything worth mentioning. It is only the most priceless and most perishable treasure in God's storehouse. It is only the thing that means Beauty and Strength and Hope. It is the thing we all despise as long as we have it and would give our souls to get back as soon as we have lost it. No, as you say, Youth doesn't amount to much. It is only the nearest approach to Immortality that mortals have ever known. Why, where should I be now—a grouchy old bachelor like me—without Youth in my house? Why, Frederik, this girl has made me feel kindlier toward all other women."

"Oh, I have, have I?" demanded Kathrien, "that's more than I bargained for."

"Don't flatter yourself," he joked. "It's only the way one feels about a pet. One likes all the rest of the breed."

"That's true," broke in Hartmann, throwing himself into the conversation on impulse. "It's so. A man studies one girl and then presently he begins to notice the same little traits in them all. It makes one feel differently toward the rest of them."

He glanced shamefacedly back at his dictation pad as the others turned and stared at him in astonishment. But not before he had noted the shy smile that crept over Kathrien's face or the unpleasant glint in Frederik's pale eyes.

Hartmann so seldom took part in general conversation and was so reticent concerning every phase of sentiment, that Grimm was for the moment almost as astounded as though one of his own bulbs had burst into speech.

"An expert opinion," commented Frederik sneeringly. "And from a confirmed bachelor like James!"

"A confirmed bachelor?" Grimm innocently caught up the slur. "What a life! I know. I have been one ever since I can remember. When a bachelor wants to order a three-rib standing roast, who is to eat it? Why, I never had the right sort of a roast on my table until Katje came into the family. And now that you're here too, Fritzy, the roasts get bigger. But not big enough, even yet. Oh, we must find the husband for——"

"Oom Peter!" protested Kathrien. "You promised you wouldn't tease——"

"Tease?" repeated Grimm, as though he heard the word for the first time. "Why, how could you have imagined such a thing, child? I was only telling Frederik about the sort of roasts I like on my table. And speaking of tables, Fritzy, I like a nice long table with plenty of young people at it. And myself at the head, carving and carving, and seeing the plates passed round and round and round;—getting them back and back and back—There, there, Katje! They shan't tease you. We'll keep the table just as it is. For you and Fritz and me. A nice little circle. All in the family."

The telephone bell set up a purring. Hartmann picked up the receiver.

"Hello," he called. "Yes, this is Mr. Grimm's house.—Yes.—Wait one moment, please."

He put his palm over the transmitter and turned to Grimm.

"It's Hicks again, sir," he reported. "He wants to talk more with you about buying the business."

"Buying the business, hey?" snorted Grimm in sudden rage. "No! No! I've told him ten million times it's not on the market and never will be. Tell him so again."

"Mr. Grimm says," called Hartmann into the transmitter, "that the business is not for sale. He says—what?—Wait a minute. Mr. Grimm, he insists on speaking to you personally."

"He does, hey?" growled Peter, advancing upon the telephone as though upon an enemy that must be crushed at a blow.

"Hello!" he roared wrathfully into the instrument. "Hello?—What?—Why, my old friend, how are you?—And how are your plum trees doing? Mine, too. Well, we can only pray and use Bordeaux Mixture.—What?"

He paused to listen. Then he went on as if to humour a cross child.

"No, no—it's nonsense. Why, this business has been in the Grimm family for over a hundred years. Why should I sell? I'm going to arrange for it to stay in the family a hundred years longer.—Hey? What's that?—No, no. Of course not. Of course I don't propose to live a hundred years longer. But I propose that my plans shall. How can I make certain? Never mind how. I'm going to arrange all that. Yes, I know I'm a bachelor. You don't need to spend good money on long distance phoning, to remind me of that. Oh—good-bye!"

Grimm turned away from the table with a growl, to confront Kathrien.

"Why, girl!" he exclaimed, in quick concern. "You look as if you are going to cry. What is it? Tell Oom Peter!"