It may be that she hoped the sight of food might stir his stomach to rebel against his dogged will; if so she was disappointed;half an hour went by during which the statue under the bedclothes remained without so much as a quiver, Then the old woman returned. "Aint you awful cramped and stiff, papa?""Yes," said the statue.
"Will you promise not to do yourself a mischief, if I untie you?""No."
Thekla groaned, while the tears started to her red eyelids.
"But you'll git awful tired and it will hurt you if you don't get the ropes off, soon, papa!""I know that!"
He closed his eyes again, to be the less hindered from dropping back into his distempered musings. Thekla took a seat by his side and sat silent as he. Slowly the natural pallor returned to the high forehead and sharp features. They were delicate features and there was an air of refinement, of thought, about Lieders's whole person, as different as possible from the robust comeliness of his wife.
With its keen sensitive-ness and its undefined melancholy it was a dreamer's face. One meets such faces, sometimes, in incongruous places and wonders what they mean. In fact, Kurt Lieders, head cabinet maker in the furniture factory of Lossing & Co., was an artist. He was, also, an incomparable artisan and the most exacting foreman in the shops.
Thirty years ago he had first taken wages from the senior Lossing.
He had watched a modest industry climb up to a great business, nor was he all at sea in his own estimate of his share in the firm's success.
Lieders's workmanship had an honesty, an infinite patience of detail, a daring skill of design that came to be sought and commanded its own price. The Lossing "art furniture" did not slander the name.
No sculptor ever wrought his soul into marble with a more unflinching conscience or a purer joy in his work than this wood-carver dreaming over sideboards and bedsteads. Unluckily, Lieders had the wrong side of the gift as well as the right; was full of whims and crotchets, and as unpracti-cal as the Christian martyrs. He openly defied expense, and he would have no trifling with the laws of art. To make after orders was an insult to Kurt. He made what was best for the customer;if the latter had not the sense to see it he was a fool and a pig, and some one else should work for him, not Kurt Lieders, BEGEHR!
Young Lossing had learned the business practically.
He was taught the details by his father's best workman;and a mighty hard and strict master the best workman proved!
Lossing did not dream that the crabbed old tyrant who rarely praised him, who made him go over, for the twentieth time, any imperfect piece of work, who exacted all the artisan virtues to the last inch, was secretly proud of him.
Yet, in fact, the thread of romance in Lieders's prosaic life was his idolatry of the Lossing Manufacturing Co.
It is hard to tell whether it was the Lossings or that intangible quantity, the firm, the business, that he worshipped.
Worship he did, however, the one or the other, perhaps the both of them, though in the peevish and erratic manner of the savage who sometimes grovels to his idols and sometimes kicks them.
Nobody guessed what a blow it was to Kurt when, a year ago, the elder Lossing had died. Even his wife did not connect his sullen melancholy and his gibes at the younger generation, with the crape on Harry Lossing's hat. He would not go to the funeral, but worked savagely, all alone by himself, in the shop, the whole afternoon--breaking down at last at the sight of a carved panel over which Lossing and he had once disputed. The desolate loneliness of the old came to him when his old master was gone.
He loved the young man, but the old man was of his own generation;he had "known how things ought to be and he could understand without talking." Lieders began to be on the lookout for signs of waning consideration, to watch his own eyes and hands, drearily wondering when they would begin to play him false;at the same time because he was unhappy he was ten times as exacting and peremptory and critical with the younger workmen, and ten times as insolently independent with the young master.
Often enough, Lossing was exasperated to the point of taking the old man at his word and telling him to go if he would, but every time the chain of long habit, a real respect for such faithful service, and a keen admiration for Kurt's matchless skill in his craft, had held him back. He prided himself on keeping his word; for that reason he was warier of using it.
So he would compromise by giving the domineering old fellow a "good, stiff rowing." Once, he coupled this with a threat, if they could not get along decently they would better part!
Lieders had answered not a word; he had given Lossing a queer glance and turned on his heel. He went home and bought some poison on the way. "The old man is gone and the young feller don't want the old crank round, no more," he said to himself.
"Thekla, I guess I make her troubles, too; I'll git out!"That was the beginning of his tampering with suicide.
Thekla, who did not have the same opinion of the "trouble,"had interfered. He had married Thekla to have someone to keep a warm fireside for him, but she was an ignorant creature who never could be made to understand about carving. He felt sorry for her when the baby died, the only child they ever had;he was sorrier than he expected to be on his own account, too, for it was an ugly little creature, only four days old, and very red and wrinkled; but he never thought of confiding his own griefs or trials to her. Now, it made him angry to have that stupid Thekla keep him in a world where he did not wish to stay.
If the next day Lossing had not remembered how his father valued Lieders, and made an excuse to half apologize to him, I fear Thekla's stratagems would have done little good.
The next experience was cut out of the same piece of cloth.
