Stories of a Western Town [8]
his youth and the struggles of the early days of the firm; he related a dozen tales of young Lossing, all illustrating some admirable trait that he certainly had not praised at the time. Never had he so opened his heart in regard to his own ideals of art, his own ambitions. And Thekla listened, not always comprehending but always sympathizing; she was almost like a comrade, Kurt thought afterward. The next morning, he was surprised to have her appear equipped for the street, although it was bitterly cold. She wore her garb of ceremony, a black alpaca gown, with a white crocheted collar neatly turned over the long black, broadcloth cloak in which she had taken pride for the last five years; and her quilted black silk bonnet was on her gray head. When she put up her foot to don her warm overshoes Kurt saw that the stout ankles were encased in white stockings. This was the last touch. "Gracious, Thekla," cried Kurt, "are you going to market this day? It is the coldest day this winter!" "Oh, I don't mind," replied Thekla, nervously. Then she had wrapped a scarf about her and gone out while he was getting into his own coat, and conning a proffer to go in her stead. "Oh, well, Thekla she aint such a fool like she looks!" he observed to the cat, "say, pussy, WAS it you out yestiddy?" The cat only blinked her yellow eyes and purred. She knew that she had not been out, last night. Not any better than her mistress, however, who at this moment was hailing a street-car. The street-car did not land her anywhere near a market; it whirled her past the lines of low wooden houses into the big brick shops with their arched windows and terra-cotta ornaments that showed the ambitious architecture of a growing Western town, past these into mills and factories and smoke-stained chimneys. Here, she stopped. An acquaintance would hardly have recognized her, her ruddy cheeks had grown so pale. But she trotted on to the great building on the corner from whence came a low, incessant buzz. She went into the first door and ran against Carl Olsen. "Carl, I got to see Mr. Lossing," said she breathlessly. "There ain't noding ----" "No, Gott sei dank', but I got to see him." It was not Carl's way to ask questions; he promptly showed her the office and she entered. She had not seen young Harry Lossing half a dozen times; and, now, her anxious eyes wandered from one dapper figure at the high desks, to another, until Lossing advanced to her. He was a handsome young man, she thought, and he had kind eyes, but they hardened at her first timid sentence: "I am Mrs. Lieders, I come about my man ----" "Will you walk in here, Mrs. Lieders?" said Lossing. His voice was like the ice on the window-panes. She followed him into a little room. He shut the door. Declining the chair that he pushed toward her she stood in the centre of the room, looking at him with the pleading eyes of a child. "Mr. Lossing, will you please save my Kurt from killing himself?" "What do you mean?" Lossing's voice had not thawed. "It is for you that he will kill himself, Mr. Lossing. This is the dird time he has done it. It is because he is so lonesome now, your father is died and he thinks that you forget, and he has worked so hard for you, but he thinks that you forget. He was never tell me till yesterday; and then--it was-- it was because I would not let him hang himself ----" "Hang himself?" stammered Lossing, "you don't mean ----" "Yes, he was hang himself, but I cut him, no I broke him down," said Thekla, accurate in all the disorder of her spirits; and forthwith, with many tremors, but clearly, she told the story of Kurt's despair. She told, as Lieders never would have known how to tell, even had his pride let him, all the man's devotion for the business, all his personal attachment to the firm; she told of his gloom after the elder Lossing died, "for he was think there was no one in this town such good man and so smart like your fader, Mr. Lossing, no, and he would set all the evening and try to draw and make the lines all wrong, and, then, he would drow the papers in the fire