“He’d be better off,” said Mrs. Schwalm, referring to the possible death of old Liebereich.
“You don’t mean you’d be?” grinned Hermann Schlimm.
He had drifted into Mrs. Krantz’s kitchen, among the women, after the funeral. No one gave him any attention.
Old Liebereich’s wife had just been buried, and they were met to pay Mrs. Krantz their respects. She had been the “next-door neighbor” through Mrs. Liebereich’s illness.
There was some strawberry preserve presently, and some “field tea.”
Then Mrs. Krantz said to Mrs. Schwalm:
“You had better go now.”
Mrs. Schwalm was “next door” on the other side. She would now housekeep for old Liebereich for a week. Then Mrs. Engwein, who lived next to Mrs. Krantz, would take her turn, and so on while old Liebereich lived—which it was thought would not be long. For no one ever went to “the poor-house” or “the home” from this German vicinage.
These things were so well understood that they were not even discussed at this gathering. But there was a well-defined understanding that the brief management of old Liebereich would be difficult. Mrs. Schwalm rose to go.
“He won’t fold his britches unless you make him,” warned Mrs. Krantz.
“And I’ve heared,” said another, “that he never hangs ’em on the back of a cheer if he kin put ’em on the floor.”
Old Liebereich had an odious reputation for this sort of thing.
“You know Emmy she spoiled him.”
“If he didn’t do things, she done ’em.”
“That’s a good way to spoil ’em!”
Mrs. Krantz warned again:
“You got to keep the clock on him all the time, or it’s no use. At six he’s got to eat his supper. You’ll have to push him right in his cheer, and see that he gits things in his mouth. If you don’t, you’ll have to clean ’em off the floor. Seven, to bed with him. Yisterday he says to me, says he: ‘I ain’t no dog-gone baby! Lemme alone! I kin git to bed myself.’ But I had him asleep by that time.”
Mrs. Schwalm sighed. It was plain that she was going to a house of trouble. But it was her duty, and she would do it, as they all would.
I do not know at what point, precisely, along the pike, east and west from old Liebereich, the “next-door neighbor” obligation ceased. It was very far. Nevertheless, before the year which succeeded the death of his wife had passed, its courtesies had been exhausted. Each neighbor had served two turns, and each had murmured dismally at the prospect of a third. Finally, they all joined in discussing out-and-out rebellion against custom and Liebereich.
Indeed, one morning the doctor, whose business it was to keep the people up to their duties, found an interregnum. He brought Mrs. Krantz from her house to old Liebereich’s as one does a detected criminal.
“I’ve had three turns a’ready,” she defended.
“The man has had no breakfast,” said the doctor. “He must eat while he lives!”
“Well, he’d be better off, and so would we, if he was—”
The doctor stopped her with a solemn up-lifted finger:
“‘Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’”
She thought it made no difference that she gave grudgingly. But old Liebereich felt the touch of impatience. And he saw that she swept the dirt into a corner, stood the broom where it did not belong, and left the stale water in his pitcher.
“You git out!” he quavered senilely. “I kin housekeep for myself!”
“Git your other leg in your britches, or I’ll—”
He did it so suddenly, in his fright, that Mrs. Krantz’s humor returned, and she laughed. She was dressing him. He broke out afresh at this evidence of safety:
“I built this here house before I was twenty-one or you was born—I did. My mother she says, says she: ‘Bill, soon it will be a man in the house. Don’t you think you’d better git the house? You and Emmy’s mighty thick.’ I took the hint. And, on the morning I got twenty-one, here I was! And, begosh, there”—he pointed to the other side of the fireplace—“was Emmy! She and me done it all—together. She drawed the plan. You see them bricks that ain’t the right color? Emmy laid ’em! Yessir! With her little hands—and a trowel—and mortar! They are all right except the color. I says, says I, ‘Take ’em right out!’ But she threw the mortar on me, and it went in my hair and eyes, and she had to wash it out—that’s why they was never changed. And I’m glad they wasn’t. Whenever I look at ’em—one of ’em’s a little loose—I kin see my Emmy laying ’em! Well, you never see nothing as nice, I’ll bet you, as Emmy laying bricks! Old Gaertner made the bricks—out there where the boys swim now. That was all clay once. None of the ground clods like you git in bricks nowadays! It’s too long for you to remember, I expect. You not more’n sixty-five or so.” Then his mind flew back to the cause of his rebellion, and he was all the more angry that he had forgotten it in thinking of Emmy. “And now you want to boss me! I won’t stand it. Git out! You’re just a spring chicken.”
“You shut up!” cried Mrs. Krantz.
At this anathema he gasped in fresh fear.
“Betsy,” he said humbly when he could speak, “you’re too young to talk to me like that!”
“I’m going on seventy!” snapped Mrs. Krantz; which boast was untrue.
“So?”
Old Liebereich caught the insincerity and turned to inspect her.
“’Tain’t so!” he said, with old-fashioned passion against a lie. “You think you kin shut me up that-a-way and I’ll go to bed easy! You git right out!”
“If you don’t take keer I will!” cried the exasperated housekeeper. “Let’s see what the Lord says!”
She closed her eyes and put a finger on a text of the Bible which lay open there, meaning, if it were favorable, to take him at his word and leave the consequences to heaven.
But what she read was:
“Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
When seven o’clock came, old Liebereich, unrebuked, still reviled her and her housekeeping. For the Scriptures had spoken and the woman knew her duty. She did it. And not a word delayed or hastened by an instant old Liebereich’s relentless progress to bed.
Even when he was there he said:
“You can’t keep no house! My Emmy kin beat you all! Look at that!”
It was an andiron which had become dull.
“When my Emmy gits back you kin go to grass!”
But the last word was mumbled in the delicious sleep Mrs. Krantz had brought him.
Then Mrs. Krantz humbly polished the dulled andiron, cleaned the dirt out of the corners, restored the broom to its rightful corner, folded old Liebereich’s trousers and hung them over the back of a chair, lighted the lamp, shaded it, looked again at that scriptural text, as if to ask whether every cross had been borne, then went out, to return at five in the morning. For old Liebereich was permitted to sleep late. He was no trouble when he slept.
Now, while old Liebereich sleeps, I shall tell you some things you ought to know. In the idiom of the vicinage he was considered “funny,” which means only queer. Happiness had made him so, they said. His most constant and odious boast was that he had loved his wife for eighty years. It began, he said, when he was four and she was born.
And old Liebereich did not know that she was dead. Something had dulled his faculties when they told him she would die, and now he believed (as they told him, so that he would not “bother” them) that she was at her sister’s in Maryland to get well, and would be home soon. So the curious jerk of his head toward the door by the fireplace meant only that he was vigilant for his wife’s return. The neighbors thought it part of his aberration.
But even the little intelligence he retained made out this return to have been logically too long delayed. It was no longer “very soon,” as they had at first told him; it was scarcely “soon,” as they had at last told him.
And Christmas was coming!
“Do you think she will be here for Christmas?” he asked each one of them.
They assured him of this.
“Then I’ll hang up the old stockings and su’prise her!”
Here, again, I must explain that they had always cherished the element of surprise in their Christmas giving.
You will have seen that old Liebereich was living too long for his neighbors. I must be careful how I put their sentiments into words, so that no injustice be done them. I think I had better say that it began to seem to them like effrontery for him to live on. They said oftener now and with greater unction that he would be better off. And they answered Hermann Schlimm’s query (in the second paragraph of this story), when he repeated it, with accumulating anger now.
But you are not to suppose that old Liebereich was made unhappy by the least knowledge of this. On the contrary, nothing of it reached him. He found another reason for their brusqueness. They were simply women—and unlike Emmy.
One day, Mrs. Schwalm, wearily responding to his questions about his wife, asked him why he did not write to her. This at least, she thought cunningly, would consume time, keep him quiet, and give death added opportunity.
Now, in all his thoughts there had never been that one.
“Why, you see,” he said, “Emmy and me was never apart for a day. It was no need to write. And,” he went on, “I ain’t no scholar. But—say—you got any ink?”
The letter was a secret office which he attended to himself. It took many days. But he was very happy afterward, and delivered it to Mrs. Schwalm and Mrs. Krantz, who were to get a stamp and mail it.
“What we going to do with it?” whispered Mrs. Schwalm. “Burn it?”
“No. Open it.”
However, Mrs. Schwalm, who was known to be sentimental, opposed this.
“But it’s got to be answered.”
This was so. Mrs. Krantz cumulated her arguments.
“He’ll ask for the answer a dozen times a day till you’re crazy!”
“Well, anyhow, let’s wait a little. He may die any day,” was the way Mrs. Schwalm temporized.
“You’re interfering with the Lord’s business!” chided the curious Mrs. Krantz, finally.
So, while they went away with this letter which was never to be mailed, old Liebereich sat by the fire in the fireplace which he had built, and rocked gently, and sang old German songs, and would not go to bed, but fell asleep there. And even in his sleep he was found singing:
None of us will ever agree with those old German wives, I think. How could old Liebereich ever be better off—how could any one—than singing old German songs by the fire and waiting for the coming of his wife—and Christmas?
And he got an answer to his letter. It told him very briefly not to worry, that she would be home at Christmas. It was signed “Emmy.”
For the wives had said among themselves that God would understand. Just as if they understood God! If He should take him, all would be well. If not, He would find a way.
It was because they thought God would understand that they had opened that pitiful letter of old Liebereich’s. He spoke of his loneliness; how he had waited for her without complaint; how, now, he could wait no longer. At the end he told her, with the imperiousness of a husband, that she must come home. They read this; they saw the childish blots; they knew where his half-palsied hands had missed the line, then recovered it; finally they read the boyish signature—with dry eyes.
Then they wrote that reply.
I hope that neither you nor I could have done this—with dry eyes.
But the night before Christmas arrived, and old Liebereich’s wife had not come. Nevertheless, he had no doubt. No one had ever lied to him except Mrs. Krantz. And he had never lied. And here was her letter. There was her name.
They came in and found him reading the letter.
“My Emmy never fooled me yit,” he told them exultingly. “She’ll come. Only she’s late a little.”
He put the letter in their eyes.
“Don’t it say she’ll be home at Christmas?”
And I hope that neither you nor I have ever had that happen to us—such a letter thrust into our eyes!
When they whispered among themselves he grew cunning, and pretended to sing, while he listened. What he heard made him think that she was already come, but was in hiding to surprise him. Something was to happen the moment he went to sleep. And he fancied that they meant to bring her in at that moment. Well, he liked that. No surprise he had ever planned himself was quite so fine. Emmy was to be his Christmas gift!
But what they had spoken about was the paleness of his old face, and how he had recently “failed.” For he could not sleep now, or eat, for watching and waiting.
And old Liebereich carried his cunning on to a desperate end. He pretended to be prodigiously sleepy. Yet, when they would have hustled him off to bed, he suddenly and savagely rebelled, stamped his feet, and put them out of the house, in a specious fury they could not withstand.
“I kin put myself to bed,” he cried happily after them. “I ain’t no dog-gone baby. I won’t be bossed in my own house!”
But the moment he had closed the door upon them he laughed.
And when he pulled down the blinds he did not know that he shut out their peeping eyes.
It all had made him tired.
He unlocked the door by the fireplace, presently, and lighted two new candles. Then he got from the bottom drawer the night-shirt with the blue feather-stitching about the collar, and put it on. His trousers lay on the floor.
“Now,” he laughed defiantly, “what will Mrs. Schwalm say? Let her say it!”
For you must know that such things as this adorned night-shirt had been banished to the bottom drawer, since his commandeering, as far too frivolous for his years. You will also observe that old Liebereich expected Mrs. Schwalm to see him in this garment and to rebuke him. But it was about this that he was so very reckless. For at the moment of its discovery his wife would have arrived, and then, in his own words, they might all go to grass!
But this obliges me to speak of old Liebereich’s cunning plan, or, which perhaps is better, to let him tell it for you as he now told it to himself in the kitchen of the house he and Emmy had built.
“They’ll bring her in that door by the fireplace, all dressed for Christmas. And they’ll all be crowding in behind her to see what I’ll do. Well, they’ll see! Oh, they’ll see! I wish it would be early morning and the sun come through the door. I expect I kin wait that much longer. And mebby the bells’ll ring. They’ll sneak her right up to my bed, and then they’ll holler, ‘Merry Christmas, Liebereich! Wake up!’
“But I’ll fool ’em. I’ll hug Emmy right afore ’em all, and let ’em know that I’ve fooled ’em! And I’ll laugh at Mrs. Schwalm. So will Emmy. And after that—” Now what could there be after that? “After that we’ll just be happy. That’s all.”
Meanwhile he tidied the room as it had never been tidied before, and then fixed his thick white hair about his face in the fashion which Emmy liked.
At last he held up both candles and looked at himself in the mirror, and there were pink spots on his cheek-bones, and the bit of blue about his neck went very well with his faded eyes. Old Liebereich wagged his head with the satisfaction of a dandy at what he saw.
Suddenly he started away from the mirror, then back to it. Then he laughed.
“I thought it was you, Emmy. And you looked like that first day when you saw your face in it. Sixteen. I wouldn’t like you to come back looking sixteen, and me eighty-four. No, I ain’t quite ready for you yit, Emmy; I must get clean sheets. But we ain’t far apart now no more!”
He went close to the mirror to whisper this. He still was not sure that he did not see her there.
And I hope that you and I have “seen things” in the mirror, though perhaps we are not eighty-four and have no Emmy.
Then he went on getting ready for her till he was very tired—more tired, he thought, than he had ever been.
Outside Mrs. Schwalm was whispering to Mrs. Krantz:
“No, they ain’t far apart! He’s mighty funny to-night. He is seeing things.”
At last he was ready to hang up their stockings on the brass nails which had been put into the mantel for this purpose when the house was built.
And, for something to surprise her, he took from behind that loose brick a gold coin. It had the date of 1825 on it. There was a hole in it, and through the hole a narrow blue ribbon.
But now he stopped and his heart heaved.
“It was to cut the baby’s teeth on.”
After a while:
“We was going to call him Billy if he was a boy—Emmy if she was a girl.”
Again:
“But there never was no baby.”
And then, at last:
“But there never was no baby.”
He put the coin in the toe of Emmy’s stocking and went to bed and closed his eyes—to watch. And his last words were:
“Tired—tired—tired—Emmy!”
He dozed and made himself wake so often, and nothing had happened, that he grew afraid and much more tired. And the red went out of his cheeks, and he could feel his face becoming very cold.
He dozed a long time, at last without waking.
Then they outside, seeing this, came in—all those neighbors—stealthily, whispering and going toward his bed. Some one brought a candle and held it so close to his eyes that it scorched and tortured him. He woke; he was tremendously terrified by their stealth, but he did not understand at all—he who had never had such thoughts as theirs.
They did not know that he was awake.
“He is better off,” said one of them.
“He died easy,” said another.
Then, suddenly, old Liebereich understood. He did not quiver. But his heart was bursting.
“I don’t know about that,” said a wary one.
Some one took Liebereich’s hand from under the covers.
“’Sh! He’s only asleep,” the voice whispered.
Another sighed a disappointment.
“Touch his feet,” said one.
This was done, and the same verdict reached. He was not yet dead.
“He still thinks she’ll come!”
There was a laugh somewhere.
“Look at the night-shirt!”
“How long is she dead now?”
They left him then, and he could breathe a moment. They put into his stocking some things they had brought—simple things—at the last a spiral of pink-and-white candy.
But there was no laughter—only silence. Once more they were doing their duty. And once more—for only the second sad time in his long life—old Liebereich understood.
“It ain’t much,” said a pitying one.
“It’s enough,” said another, crossly.
The last one said—to comfort both:
“He’ll never know no better.”
Then they came and looked at him again.
“Yes—only asleep.”
Another voice said:
“In the morning, I expect. Often they sleep away.”
A doubting young woman said:
“Mebby it just happened now and he ain’t cold yet.”
But her elders, who had seen death often, only frowned.
Then they went out.
Old Liebereich lay very still. He was icy cold. The feet and hands they had touched would not get warm. He felt yet their cold touch. Two tears stole down his cheeks. His heart was still filled to bursting. Yet he lay quite still. Presently something like content came and stayed, and smoothed the sorrow from his face, and made it beautiful.
Then, without the least warning, the door opened again, directly in his eyes, and everything was quite as he had fancied it. Like a picture in its frame, there stood his wife dressed for Christmas. And she was well and happy—by the smiles on her face. And the morning had come, as he had wished; for, as the door opened, the sun behind her smote away the darkness, and it seemed as if she had come down to him on those sheaves of glittering javelins. And yes, closely crowding behind her, came the very people he knew would come, filling all the door and making a background for his picture. Such a background! He forgave them all at once. For he must have dreamed those other, sadder things. And, more,—and better still,—the bells of the little town were jangling out their Christmas madrigal. (You know how dear the bells are to Germans!)
“Like a picture in its frame, there stood his wife”
And old Liebereich, too, did everything just as he had planned it. He lay quietly in his bed until they shouted, “Merry Christmas, Liebereich! Wake up!” Then he rose and took his wife in his arms and laughed at them,—in the very faces of them all!—and told them how cunningly he had fooled them. Precisely as he had planned.
And he had two recollections of the moment. One was that Mrs. Schwalm smiled when she saw the blue feather-stitched night-shirt; the other was that his wife was the prettiest of them all. After that came the vast happiness—all as he had planned.
For all of this, from the second opening of that door, old Liebereich had only dreamed. But, quite as they had said, he would never know better, for he never woke.
And when the neighbors indeed came through that door again in the morning, with guilt upon them, with stealth, wondering whether he were now dead, while it was yet dark, holding candles once more to his eyes, old Liebereich met them with such a beautiful, smiling, heaven-touched face that, one and all, they dropped to their knees. And their eyes were not dry.
And I am no longer sure of that philosophy, a few pages past, where we agreed that nothing could be better than to wait for old Liebereich’s wife—and Christmas.
Or maybe the German wives are right, and he is better off?
For perhaps he hears sweeter music than the Christmas bells; perhaps there is a more glorious light than the morning sun in that doorway; perhaps the background of his picture is crowded with fairer faces than those of his former neighbors. God knows! Perhaps immortal youth has, in truth, come. Perhaps he does, indeed, embrace his wife. Else what is the use of heaven? God knows!