Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen (the reading list TXT) 📕

light summer clouds, gazing down upon the many-voiced tumult of the crowded city, with that calm philosophic abstraction which always characterizes the moon, as if she, up there in her airy heights, were so infinitely exalted above all the distracting problems and doubts that harass our poor human existence. We entered a concert garden, which was filled with gayly dressed pleasure seekers; somewhere under the green roof of the trees an orchestra was discoursing strains of German music to a Teutonic audience.

"_Donnerwetter_!" said Pfeifer, enthusiastically; "that is the symphony in _E flat_; pretty well rendered too. Only hear that"--and he began to whistle the air softly, with lively gesticulations "Come, let us go nearer and listen."

"No, let us stay here, uncle," remonstrated Hildegard. "I don't think it is quite nice to go so near. They are drinking beer there, and there are so many horrible people."

"Nonsense, child! Where did you get all those silly whims from? Where it is respectable for your uncle to go, I am sure it won't hurt you to follow."

We made our way through the throng, and stationed ourselves under a tree, from which we had a full survey of the merry company, seated at small tables, with huge foam-crowned mugs of beer before them. Suddenly a voice, somewhat louder than the rest, disentangled itself from the vague, inarticulate buzz, which filled the air about us. Swift as a flash my eyes darted in the direction from which the voice came. There, within a few dozen steps from us, sat Dannevig between two gaudily attired women; another man was seated at the opposite side of the table, and between them stood a couple of bottles and several half-filled glasses. The sight was by no means new to me, and still, in that moment, it filled me with unspeakable disgust. The knight of Dannebrog was as charmingly free-and-easy as if he were nestled securely in the privacy of his own fireside; his fine plumes were deplorably ruffled, his hat thrust back, and his hair hanging in tangled locks down over his forehead; his eyes were heavy, and a smile of maudlin happiness played about his mouth.

"Now, don't make yourself precious, my dear," he was saying, laying his arm affectionately around the waist of the woman on his right. "I like German kisses. I speak from experience. Angels have no business to be--"

"_Himmel_, what is the matter with the child," cried Pfeifer, in a voice of alarm. "Why, my dear, you tremble all over. I ought not to have made you go out with that headache. Wait here while I run for some water."

Before I could offer my services, he was gone, leaving me alone with Hildegard.

"Let us go," she whispered, with a long, shuddering sigh, turning a white face, full of fright, disgust, and pitiful appeal toward me.

"Shall we not wait for your uncle?" I asked.

"Oh, I cannot. Let us go," she repeated, seizing my arm, and clinging convulsively to me.

We walked slowly away, and were soon overtaken by Mr. Pfeifer.

"How do you feel now, child?" he inquired anxiously.

"Oh, I feel--I feel--unclean," she whispered and shuddered again.


VIII.


Two years passed, during which I completely lost sight of Dannevig. I learned that he had been dismissed from the service of the Immigration Company; that he played second violin for a few months at one of the lowest city theatres, and finally made a bold stroke for fame by obtaining the Democratic nomination for County Clerk. I was faithless enough, however, to call attention to the fact that he had never been naturalized, whereupon, a new caucus was called, and another candidate was put into the field.

The Pfeifers I continued to see frequently, and, at last, at Hildegard's own suggestion, told her the story I had so long withheld from her. She showed very little emotion, but sat pale and still with her hands folded in her lap, gazing gravely at me. When I had finished, she arose, walked the length of the room, then returned, and stopped in front of me.

"Human life seems at times a very flimsy affair, doesn't it?" she said, appealing to me again with her direct gaze.

"Yes, if one takes a cynical view of it," I answered.

She stood for a while pondering.

"Did I ever know that man?" she asked, looking up abruptly.

"You know best."

"Then it must have been very, very long ago."

A slight shiver ran through her frame. She shook my hand silently, and left the room.

One evening in the summer of 1870, just as the news from the Franco-Prussian war was arousing the enthusiasm of our Teutonic fellow-citizens, I was sauntering leisurely homeward, pondering with much satisfaction on the course history was taking. About half a mile from the Clark street bridge I found my progress checked by a crowd of men who had gathered on the sidewalk outside of a German saloon, and were evidently discussing some exciting topic. My journalistic instincts prompted me to stop and listen to the discussion.

"Poor fellow, I guess he is done for," some one was saying. "But they were both drunk; you couldn't expect anything else."

"Is any one hurt?" I asked, addressing my next neighbor in the crowd.

"Yes. It was a poor fool of a Dane. He got into a row with somebody about the war. Said he would undertake to whip ten Deutschers single-handed; that he had done so many a time in the Schleswig-Holstein war. Then there was some fighting, and he was shot."

I spoke a few words to the policeman at the door, and was admitted. The saloon was empty but in the billiard-room at its rear I saw a doctor in his shirt-sleeves, bending over a man who lay outstretched on a billiard-table. A bartender was standing by with a basin of water and a bloody towel.

"Do you know his name?" I inquired of the police officer.

"They used to call him Danish Bill," he answered. "Have known him for a good while. Believe his real name was Danborg, or Dan--something."

"Not Dannevig?" I cried.

"Dannevig? Yes, I guess you have got it."

I hastily approached the table. There lay Dannevig--but I would rather not describe him. It was hard to believe it, but this heavy-lidded, coarse-skinned, red-veined countenance bore a cruel, caricatured resemblance to the clean-cut, exquisitely modelled face of the man I had once called my friend. A death-like stupor rested upon his features; his eyes were closed, but his mouth half open.

"By Jove!" exclaimed the physician, in a burst of professional enthusiasm, "what a splendid animal he must have been! Hardly saw a better made man in all my life."

"But he is not dead!" I protested, somewhat anxiously.

"No; but he has no chance, that I can see. May last over to-morrow, but hardly longer. Does any one know where he lodges?"

No one answered.

"But, _Himmel_! he cannot stay here." The voice was the bartender's, but it seemed to be addressed to no one in particular.

"I have known him for years," I said. "Take him to my rooms; they are only a dozen blocks away."

A carriage was sent for, and away we drove, the doctor and I, slowly, cautiously, holding the still unconscious man between us. We laid him on my bed, and the doctor departed, promising to return before morning.

A little after midnight Dannevig became restless, and as I went to his side, opened his eyes with a look of full, startled consciousness.

"I'm about played out, old fellow, aint I?" he groaned.

I motioned to him to be silent.

"No," he went on, in a strained whisper, "it is no use now. I know well enough how I stand. You needn't try to fool me."

He lay for a while motionless, while his eyes wandered restlessly about the room. He made an effort to speak, but his words were inaudible. I stooped over him, laying my ear to his mouth.

"Can--can you lend me five dollars?"

I nodded.

"You will find--a pawnbroker's check--in my vest pocket," he continued. "The address is--is--on it. Redeem it. It is a ring. Send it--to--to the Countess von Brehm--with--with--my compliments," he finished with a groan.

We spent several hours in silence. About three o'clock the doctor paid a brief visit; and I read in his face that the end was near. The first sunbeams stole through the closed shutters and scattered little quivering fragments of light upon the carpet. A deep stillness reigned about us. As I sat watching the defaced ruin of what had been, to me at least, one of the noblest forms which a human spirit ever inhabited, the past moved in a vivid retrospect before my eye, and many strange reflections thronged upon me. Presently Dannevig called me and I stood again bowing over him.

"When you--bury me," he said in a broken whisper. "Carry my--cross of--Dannebrog--on a cushion after me." And again after a moment's pause: "I have--made a--nice mess of it, haven t I? I--I--think it would--have--have been better for--me, if--I had been--somebody else."

Within an hour he was dead. Myself and two policemen followed him to the grave; and the cross of Dannebrog, with a much soiled red ribbon, was carried on a velvet cushion after his coffin.



MABEL AND I.

(A PHILOSOPHICAL FAIRY TALE.)

I.


"I want to see things as they are," said I to Mabel.

"I don't see how else you can see them," answered Mabel, with a laugh. "You certainly don't see them as they are not."

"Yes, I do," said I. "I see men and things only as they _seem_. It is so exasperating to think that I can never get beyond the surface of anything. My friends may appear very good and beautiful to me, and yet I may all the while have a suspicion that the appearance is deceitful, that they are really neither good nor beautiful."

"In case that was so, I shouldn't want to know it," said Mabel. "It would make me very unhappy."

"That is where you and I differ," said I.

Mabel was silent for a moment, and I believe she was a little hurt, for I had spoken rather sharply.

"But what good would it do you, Jamie?" asked she, looking up at me from under her wide-brimmed straw hat.

"What would do me good?" said I, for I had quite forgotten what we had been talking about.

"To see things as they are. There is my father now; he knows a great deal, and I am sure I shouldn't care to know any more than he does."

"Well, that is where you and I differ," said I again.

"I wish you wouldn't be always saying 'that is where you and I differ.' Somehow I don't like to hear you say it. It doesn't sound like yourself."

And Mabel turned away from me, took up a leaf from the ground and began to pick it to pieces.

We were sitting, at the time when this conversation took place, up in the gorge not half a mile from the house where Mabel's father lived. I was a tutor in the college, about twenty-three years old, and I was very fond of German philosophy. And now, since I have told who I was, I suppose I ought to tell you something about Mabel. Mabel was,--but really it is impossible to say what she was, except that she was