Stories by American Authors Volume VIII Part 17

Was Herr Lebensfunke at home? No; he had said that he wasn't at home; but then, she thought he was in the long room where mamma went to sleep. Could he be seen? No, she thought not; he was very tired, and, in her own--Vogelein's--opinion, he was going to sleep too, just as mamma did. And the wizened little face, with its eldritch eyes and tangled hair, was withdrawn, and the door began to close. Ronald forced himself inside, and grasped the child's arm.

"Vogelein, don't you know me?"

The girl, in nowise startled, gravely set her flickering candle on the door-step, looked up at him wonderingly, as if he were an exhibition, and said she thought not, unless he had been asleep on the table.

"Good heavens!" cried Ronald, "can this child talk of nothing but people asleep on a table?"

But, as he spoke, a thought whirred through his brain. He drew the poor half-witted thing close to him and asked:

"Can Vogelein tell me something about mamma, and how she went to sleep?"

The child rambled on, pleased to find a listener to her foolish prattle. All he could connect into a narrative was, that the girl's mother, some seven or eight years before, had been drained of her life by the awful magnet, and that, as the child said, "the Herr Doctor ever since had talked just like mamma."

His dread was well founded, then. The old man's one dream and aim was to prolong his wretched life; could he doubt that he would not now make use of the means he had so unwisely thrown in his way? He turned about, half maddened.

"Girl!" he cried, "I must see the old man! Where is he?"

He couldn't see him, she whined. He was asleep up there, on the table.

At one o'clock he had said he would wake up.

He pushed past her, mounted to the long room, pressed open the unfastened door, and entered.

The old man and the corpse of his former self lay together under the light of a lamp that swung from the beam overhead. An insulated carbon point was directed to each white, still breast. From the old man's hand a cord ran to a key beyond, arranged to make or break connection at a touch. By it stood a clock, with a simple mechanism attached that bore upon a second key like the first, evidently planned to press upon it when the hands should mark a given hour. The child had said that he would wake at one, and it was now past midnight.

Ronald Wyde comprehended it all now. The wily old man's feeble life had been withdrawn into the great magnet, and mixed therein with what remained of his own. In less than an hour the key would fall, and the double stream would flow into and animate his young body, which would then wake to renewed life; while the cast-off sh.e.l.l beside it, worn to utter uselessness by a toilsome century, would be left to moulder as a mothed garment.

Surely no time was to be lost; his life depended upon instant action.

And yet, comprehending this, he went to work slowly, and as a somnambulist might, acting almost by instinct, and well knowing that a blunder now meant irrevocable death.

Carefully disengaging the cord from the old man's yet warm grasp, and setting the carbon point aside, he lifted the shrivelled corpse and bore it away, to cast it on the white rubbish-heap in one corner.

Returning to his work, he stripped himself, and laid down in the old man's place. As he did so, the distant Minster bells rang the three-quarters.

Was there yet time?

He braced his shoulders firmly against the bra.s.s plate under them, and moved the carbon point steadily back to its place, with its tip resting on his breast; the silk-wrapped wire that dangled between it and the magnet quivering, as he did so, as with conscious life.

Drawing a long breath, he tightened the cord, and heard a faint click as the key snapped down.

The same sharp sting as before instantly p.r.i.c.ked his breast, tingling thrills pulsed over him, beats of light and shadow swept before his eyes, and he lost all consciousness. For how long he knew not. At last he felt, rather than saw, the lamp-rays flickering above him, and opened his eyes as though waking from a tired sleep. Sitting up, he gave a fearful look around him, as if dreading what he might see. The drunkard's body lay stretched and motionless beside him, and the clock marked three. He was saved!

Slipping down from his perilous bed, he resumed the old familiar garments that belonged to him as Ronald Wyde, shuddering with emotion as he did so. Only pausing to give one look at the pale heap in the shadowy corner, and at the other sleeper under the now dying lamp, he quitted the room and locked its heavy door upon the two silent guardians of its life-secrets. When he reached the street, he found the rain had ceased to drop, and that the cold stars blinked over the slumbrous town.

Before noon he had taken leave of Frau Spritzkrapfen, turned buxom Lottchen scarlet all over by a hearty, sudden, farewell-kiss, and was far on his way from Freiberg, with its red-vined balcony and its dark laboratory, never again to visit it or them. And as the busy engine toiled and shrieked, and with each beat of its mighty steam-heart carried him further away, his thoughts flew back and cl.u.s.tered around witless, brown-eyed birdling. Poor child, he never learned her fate.

I heard this strange story from its hero, one sunny summer morning as we swept over the meadowy reaches of the Erie Railway, or hung along the cliffside by the wooded windings of the Susquehanna. When he had ended it, he smiled languidly, and, showing me his still-mutilated hand, said that the old doctor's job had been a sad bungle, after all.

In fact, the only physical proof that remained to verify his story, was a curved blue spot where the ingoing current from the magnet had carried particles from the carbon point and lodged them beneath the skin. Psychologically, he was sadly mixed up, he said; for, since that time, he had felt that four lives were joined in him--his own, the remnant of Herr Lebensfunke's miserable h.o.a.rd merged in that of poor birdling's mother, and, last of all, Hans Kraut's.

He left the cars soon afterward at Binghamton, watchfully followed by a stout, shabby man with a three days' beard stubbling his chin, who had occupied the seat in front of us, and had turned now and then to listen for a moment to Ronald's rapid narration.

A week later, and I heard that he was dead--having committed suicide in a fit of delirium soon after his admission to the Binghamton Inebriate Asylum. The attendant who made him ready for burial noticed a singular blue mark on his left breast, that looked, he said, a little like a horseshoe magnet.

OSGOOD'S PREDICAMENT.

BY ELIZABETH D. B. STODDARD.

_Harper's Magazine, June, 1863._

Osgood took a cane-bottomed chair whose edges had given way from the application of boot-soles, cane and umbrella ferules, and studied his predicament. He commenced this necessary study early in the morning in his room, which was in a boarding-house situated in this metropolis.

The early carts were taking their way down town through a blue haze, which in the country prefigured a golden day. The milkman, the walk-sweeper, and the rag-picker, were the only creatures moving in Osgood's neighborhood. The time was propitious for meditation and resolve, but Osgood's head was not ready. The still Champagne that he had drank the night before buzzed in his brain. With a gla.s.s of it in his hand, under a side gas-light, in the drawing-room of his Aunt Formica, he had proposed marriage to a handsome das.h.i.+ng girl, and the handsome das.h.i.+ng girl had accepted him. They swallowed the bubbles on the "beaker's brim," thinking it was the Cup of Life they were drinking from. Neither supposed that the moment was one of exhilaration or enthusiasm. Osgood never felt so serious, or so determined to face the music, as he called it, which was the short for a philosophical design to march boldly through life, and shoulder its necessities with a brave spirit and a martial air.

Osgood was intelligent, agreeable, and handsome. He had advanced no further into life than to give this impression. He knew nothing more of himself than that he was intelligent, handsome, and "plucky." He had no father or mother, but he had an aunt who had married Mr.

Formica; this pair, effete in themselves, belonged to that mysterious cla.s.s who are always able to get their relatives places under Government. When Osgood was eighteen they obtained a place in the Sub-Treasury, which yielded him the income of fifteen hundred dollars.

Aunt Formica expected a great deal from him in the way of deportment and dress. The exigencies of his position, she observed, compelled him to do as those around him did. Of course he never laid up any of his salary, but he kept out of debt, and in doing this he fulfilled the highest duty that came within his province. His a.s.sociates were young men who had more money than he, and who expected him to spend as much as they spent. The houses he visited were inhabited by people who took it for granted that all who came in contact with them were as rich as themselves. The Formica interest was large. When he went to Was.h.i.+ngton with his aunt, he went the rounds of the senators' houses and hotels in the way of calls, dinners, and parties. When he went to Boston with her he began his visits at the right hand of Beacon Street, and branched into the streets behind it, where as good blood abides, though it has not the same advantage of the air of the Common.

Wherever he went expense was involved, in the way of gloves, bouquets, cards, fees to errand boys, exchange of civilities in lunches, cigars, ale, brandy, sherry, stage, hack, and car fare, which he bore like a hero.

Lily Tree, the girl whom he proposed to marry, belonged to a family of the Formica species. It sailed through society all a-taut with convention, and was _comme il faut_ from stem to stern. Lily and Osgood had always known each other. They pa.s.sed through the season of hoop and ball, dancing-school, tableaux, and charades together; sympathized in each other's embryonic flirtations; and were such fast friends that no one ever dreamed of any danger to them from love. But as the wagon that goes from the powder-mill in safety innumerable times at last carries the keg which explodes it, so Osgood and Lily at last touched the divine spark which threw them out of their old world into one they had not antic.i.p.ated.

This was part of Osgood's predicament.

What made him do as he had done?

Why had Lily accepted him?

She would never, he argued, consent to go out of the area which bounded her ideas, and which comprised a small portion of New York, Boston, Was.h.i.+ngton, and the tour of Europe, which meant a week in London, six months in Paris, and ten days in Rome. Unless he descended from the Sub-Treasury, and sought some business, such as making varnish, glue, b.u.t.tons, soap, sarsaparilla, or sewing machines, could he marry? What shrewdness had he in the place of capital to bring to bear on the requirements of these Yankee callings? How he worried over the prospect which looked so pleasant the night before! Champagne, flowers, light, and perfume were gone from it. He pitied himself in his helplessness. The thought of Lily deprived of her delicate evening dresses, her diurnal bouquets, caramels, and her pecunious caprices, was not pleasant. He could not see her in any light that made her so agreeable as in the light that he must certainly cause her to lose.

Something practical must be done.

Naturally he looked into his pocket-book. There was eighteen dollars in it--all the money he had. It was the last day in the month, however, and he was ent.i.tled to draw one hundred and twenty-five dollars. He shut his pocket-book and looked into his closet. He found there several pairs of patent-leather boots and a brilliant dressing-gown. "Pooh!" he said, peevishly, and shut the door. He then examined his bureau: in its drawers were many socks, s.h.i.+rts, cravats, four sets of studs and sleeve-b.u.t.tons, and five scarf-pins. He rattled the studs and b.u.t.tons thoughtfully; but nothing came of it, and he closed the drawers. His eye then fell on a dress-coat which he had worn for the first time the evening before. He resolved to take the coat back to Wiedenfeldt, his tailor. This resolve was the nucleus probably of his future undertakings. He finished dressing and left the house. Before reaching Wiedenfeldt he purchased and drank a bottle of Congress Water. He also stopped at a favorite restaurant and made an excellent breakfast, and came away with a "Relampagos"--a small cigar of superior flavor--and three daily papers. His interview with Wiedenfeldt was satisfactory; the coat was taken back, and when he had settled the matter he felt as if a beginning had been made in a new and right direction.

That afternoon he drew his pay, and walked up town. The moment he entered his room his predicament fell upon him again, and his spirits sunk. He sat on the edge of his bed, so quiet in his misery that he began to hear the ticking of the watch in his pocket; it a.s.sociated itself in his mind with the sound and motion of railroad-cars. He felt himself traveling hundreds of miles away, listening all the while to a rhythmic sound, which said, "Many a mile, many a mile." Why should he not go "many a mile, many a mile," in reality? He went out immediately and bought a valise. After that his demeanor was settled and tranquil. He then wrote three notes--to his chief, his Aunt Formica, and Lily. The first was a note of resignation; the second conveyed the information to his aunt that he was sick of his place, had thrown it up, and was going out of town for a change of air. He regretted, when he began his note to Lily, that he had not sent her some flowers. A momentary impulse to go and see her stayed his hand; but he remembered that she must be at Mrs. Perche's "sit-down supper" that evening, and resumed writing. He begged her to enjoy herself, and not miss him while he was away. He did not know what to write besides, but put in a few chaotic expressions which might or might not mean a great deal.

While he put a few necessary articles in the valise he wondered where he should go, never dropping the thought that he must go somewhere.

The remainder of his wardrobe, including the brilliant dressing-gown, he packed in a trunk and locked it.

He rang the bell, and when the waiter came up asked for the landlady, Mrs. Semmes. The waiter thought that it was not too late to see her in her own parlor, and lingered, with his hand on his chin and his eyes on the valise.

"Jem," said Osgood, "I have left some boots in the closet, and some s.h.i.+rts in the drawers, which are at your service."

The alacrity with which Jem changed his att.i.tude and expression struck Osgood with a sense of pain. "How horribly selfish servants are!" he thought, taking his way down stairs. Mrs. Semmes hoped there was no trouble, and asked him to be seated. He looked at her earnestly; she was the only one to say farewell to. Never had he looked Mrs. Semmes in the face before; he had only seen the hand into which he had placed the price of his board.

"I came to tell you, Mrs. Semmes, that I am about to leave town for the present. Will you allow my trunk to remain here? If I do not return in a year and a day, break it open."

Mrs. Semmes promised to keep the trunk; took some money due her; wondered at his going away at that time of year, and asked him his destination.