The Return of Peter Grimm, David Belasco [most popular ebook readers TXT] 📗

if he were trying to stamp the image of each of its familiar, pleasant features upon his memory.

Frederik, in the window seat, had been a silent onlooker to the strange scene. His pallid, thin face was set in an aspect of grieved wonder. And Peter Grimm, meeting his glance, sought to soften the young man's sorrow.

"Brace up, Fritzy," he said gaily. "It's nothing to look so down-in-the-mouth about. Doctors are apt to be wrong. They guess too much. When the guess is right they win a reputation for wisdom. When it's wrong--as it is nine times out of eight,--they say they knew it all along but thought it wasn't wise to tell the patient and his friends. Doctoring is a grand game,--for the man who has no sense of humour and can play it with a straight face. Now let's forget old Andrew's croakings. Go and get me some change for the circus, Fritzy. Enough for Willem and me to buy all the red-ink lemonade and popcorn and peanuts and candy we can eat. Get me a whole dollar, anyhow. And then, if there's any left over after the show, I can----"

"Oh, sir!" cried Frederik protestingly. "Are you going after all, Uncle? And with that child? Do you think it's wise to----?"

"Wise?" echoed Peter gleefully. "Of course it isn't wise. That's the glory of a circus. It's almost the one place where people can go and forget they were ever meant to be wise. And that's why I am going. That and because I wouldn't disappoint Willem. Miss a circus? Miss Billy Miller's Big Show? Not I. _You_ may be too old for such follies, Fritz. But I'll never be."

"But, sir," said Frederik, "in case you should be taken ill----"

"I won't be."

"With no companion but that half-witted----"

"Willem is not half-witted. He has as much sense as any boy of his age. And more, in many ways. Why do you dislike him so, Fritz?"

"Dislike him?" echoed Frederik uneasily. "I don't. Why should I?"

"When you came back from Europe and found him living with us," pursued Grimm, "you seemed annoyed. He tried to make friends with you at first. But you seemed always to rebuff him. Why? He's a lovable, interesting little chap. One would think you had some strong prejudice against him--or some reason----"

"Why, of course not. How could I have? The boy is nothing to me, one way or another, Uncle. As you're so fond of him, I'd be glad to do anything I could for him. As there's nothing I _can_ do, and as he seems actually afraid of me, for some silly childish reason or other, I let him alone."

Grimm's attention had already wandered and that same new look which Willem had first detected crept back into his lined face. But the sight of Kathrien coming in from her preparations for the one o'clock dinner brought him back to himself.

"Katje!" he hailed her. "Do you want to go to the circus with Willem and me?"

"_Ja!_" she laughed joyously. "_Natuerlich._"

"Good! One more member of the family who is no more grown up than I am! I want to see Mademoiselle Zarella, the human fly, and----"

He stopped to light the big meerschaum he had just filled. Then, going over to his favourite big armchair--a Dutch importation of a hundred years earlier, with pulpit back and high solid arms--he settled himself comfortably in it.

Peter Grimm was tired. And he wanted to think over the news he had so recently heard;--to dissect and analyse it and, if need be, to adjust himself to its awesome import. He sat back with half-closed eyes, puffing now and then mechanically at his pipe, his veiled glance resting here, there, and everywhere among the surroundings he loved.

The stable clock chimed the noon hour. The big, slow-swinging arms of the windmill slackened motion and stood still. A hush was in the air. The warm, lazy, wonderful hush of summer noon.

The midday sunlight gushed in unchecked through the wide windows, flooding the room with a glory of hazy golden light; bathing the dark old furniture with tints of rich warmth; glowing upon the roses that were arranged on desk and piano.

The Dutch clock on the wall struck twelve. A moment later, the little clock on the mantel jinglingly endorsed the sentiment. Then, save for the drowsy droning of the bees among the blossoms outside the open windows, there was no sound in all Grimm's world.

Even Kathrien and Frederik seemed silenced by the spell of summer noon magic. The girl was looking out across the sun-kissed gardens. Frederik was eyeing her in complacent satisfaction, his nimble brain busy with the tidings that might mean so much for him.

Kathrien turned from the window at last and seated herself idly at the piano. Her slender fingers drifted half-aimlessly over the keys. Frederik lounged over to the piano and stood looking down at her.

Presently she began to sing. Frederik joined in the song and their young voices blended sweetly in the old Dutch and English words:


"_Van een twee, een twee, nu
Ste-ken wij van wal:_
The bird so free in the heavens
Is but the slave of the nest.
For all must toil as God wills it,
Must laugh and toil and rest.

"The rose must blow in the gardens,
The bee must gather its store.
The cat must watch the mousehole,
And the dog must guard the door!"


As the voices died away, Peter Grimm came out of his tortuous reverie. He had reached a decision. And, having once made up his mind, he was not a man to delay the execution of any plan.

"Katje!" he called, with sharp eagerness.

Startled at his unwonted tone, the girl hurried across to him.

"Yes, Oom Peter?" she asked.

"Get me--the Staaten Bible, please. Quickly."

Wondering at the peremptory tone of the familiar request, Kathrien obeyed, bringing the heavy old book to the table at his side; and opening it, from long habit, at the closely written pages of the Grimm family genealogy.

"There!" said Peter, running his finger down the last record page until it stopped at the blank space just below his own name.

"Frederik!" he called. "Come here."

The young people stood, one at each side of his chair, awaiting the next move, more than a little astonished at the unwonted haste and eagerness in his tone.

"Katje," went on Grimm, almost feverishly, as he pointed again at the blank line beneath his birth announcement, "I want to see you married and happy."

"I _am_ happy, Uncle," she protested, "and----"

"And I want to see you happily _married_," he said.

"I--I don't know," she faltered. "I----"

"But _I_ know for you, little girl," he insisted, tapping the open page. "And under my name here, I want to see written: '_Married:--Kathrien and Frederik._' You will do as I wish, dear? It would make me so happy!"

"Why, Oom Peter," she faltered in distress, "of course there isn't anything I wouldn't do--gladly--to make you happy. But----"

"Kitty," urged Frederik, "you know I love you! You know----"

"Yes, yes, yes. Certainly she does," snapped Grimm, fretted at the interruption. "Everybody knows that."

Grimm caught the girl's look of dumb entreaty, misread it, manlike, and hurried on:

"Come, girl, we've no time to be coy. Promise me you'll consent, Katje. We'll make it a June wedding. We have ten days yet. And----"

"Oh, I _couldn't_!" protested the poor girl. "_Really_, I couldn't."

"Nonsense, little girl. It's the easiest thing in the world to get ready to be happy. Ten days is plenty. And you----"

"We can get your trousseau later," put in Frederik eagerly.

"Fritz!" cried the old man, exasperated. "_Will_ you keep out of this? Who is managing it? You or I? In ten days, then, Katje? _Please!_"

"Why," she stammered, wretchedly at a loss, "if it will make you so happy, Oom Peter--if it means so much to you----"

"It does. It _does_!"

"I owe everything to you----"

"Then give me the privilege of seeing you a happy, contented wife, and we will write 'Paid' across the bill."

"But why need I marry so terribly soon?"

"To gratify a cranky old man's whim, Katje. It means more to me than I can tell you. Frederik understands."

She looked from one to the other. On each face she read a fatuous eagerness. She knew the futility of pleading with Frederik. She knew still more surely the uselessness of trying to make Peter Grimm change his stubborn wishes. With a little catch in her breath, she gave up the hopeless, unequal fight.

"Very well," she assented.

"You will do it?" cried Peter Grimm joyfully.

"Yes, I--promise," she answered; and her voice was dead.

"Good!" sighed Grimm, as he picked up his pipe and leaned back again in the big chair's recesses, a smile of utter peace and contentment irradiating his square old face. "You've made me very, _very_ happy, Katje," he murmured, his eyes half-shut, his words trailing away almost into incoherence. "Very, very happy. I'm happier than ever I was in all my life--happier than ever I dreamed a man could be. I----"

He ceased to speak. The light on his face grew brighter, then slowly faded as a peaceful summer day fades. He settled a little lower in his chair and lay back there, very still. The gnarled hand that held the meerschaum relaxed.

The pipe fell clattering to the floor. Frederik stooped to pick it up. Kathrien, her eyes chancing to fall on Grimm's face, cried aloud in horror.

Frederik followed the direction of her gaze. He sprang toward his uncle, laid a hand over the old man's heart, and bent down toward the still, grey face that was upturned to his.

"Good God, Kitty!" he gasped. "He's _dead_!"

The girl had already flown toward the front door. Jerking it open she ran out on the steps. As she did so, she caught sight of McPherson coming away from a professional call at a house across the street.

"Doctor!" screamed Kathrien frantically. "_Doctor!_"

McPherson, next moment, had pushed past her into the living-room. Kneeling beside Grimm's body he made a swift examination.

As he rose to face the others, Willem burst into the house.

"Oom Peter! Oom Peter!" shrilled the child happily. "I got them!"

"Hush!" exclaimed McPherson.

The boy halted in the doorway, looking in puzzled dismay at the huddled form in the chair.

"What--what is----?" he began.

"He is dead," replied Frederik shortly.

Willem stood aghast for a second, while the curt announcement sank into his senses. Then in a burst of angry, rebellious wonder, the child cried:

"Dead? He can't be. He _can't_! Why, I've got our circus tickets!"


CHAPTER VIII


AFTERWARD

Grimm Manor was in mourning. And, far more to the dead man's honour, Grimm Manor _was_ mourning.

The last of the ancient line was dead. The Grimms had been the ruling spirits in the drowsy little up-State town for more than two centuries. From father to son, the hierarchy had been handed down.

In days when the district was a wilderness and when the Grimms fought wild animal and Indian, and in the days when it was a prosperous suburb and the Grimms fought "scale" and locust, it had been