The Fortune Hunter

Chapter IV. A Bold Dash and a Disaster

Mr. Feuerstein's evening was even more successful than his afternoon. Brauner was still grumbling. Mr. Feuerstein could not possibly be adjusted in his mind to his beloved ideals, his religion of life--"Arbeit und Liebe und Heim." Still he was yielding and Hilda saw the signs of it. She knew he was practically won over and was secretly inclined to be proud that his daughter had made this exalted conquest. All men regard that which they do not know either with extravagant awe or with extravagant contempt. While Brauner had the universal human failing for attaching too much importance to the department of human knowledge in which he was thoroughly at home, he had the American admiration for learning, for literature, and instead of spelling them with a very small "l," as "practical" men sometimes do with age and increasing vanity, he spelled them with huge capitals, erecting them into a position out of all proportion to their relative importance in the life of the human animal.

Mr. Feuerstein had just enough knowledge to enable him to play upon this weakness, this universal human susceptibility to the poison of pretense. All doubt of success fled his mind, and he was free to indulge his vanity and his contempt for these simple, unpretending people. "So vulgar!" he said to himself, as he left their house that night--he who knew how to do nothing of use or value. "It is a great condescension for me. Working people--ugh!"

As he strolled up town he was spending in fancy the income from at least two, perhaps all three, flat-houses--"The shop's enough for the old people and that dumb ass of a brother. I'll elevate the family. Yes, I think I'll run away with Hilda to-morrow--that's the safest plan."

Otto had guessed close to the truth about Feuerstein's affairs. They were in a desperate tangle. He had been discharged from the stock company on Saturday night. He was worthless as an actor, and had the hostility of the management and of his associates. His landlady had got the news promptly from a boarder who paid in part by acting as a sort of mercantile agency for her in watching her very uncertain boarders. She had given him a week's notice, and had so arranged matters that if he fled he could not take his meager baggage. He was down to eighty-five cents of a borrowed dollar. He owed money everywhere in sums ranging from five dollars to twenty-five cents. The most of these debts were in the form of half-dollar borrowings. He had begun his New York career with loans of "five dollars until Thursday--I'm a little pressed." Soon it became impossible for him to get more than a dollar at a time even from the women, except an occasional windfall through a weak or ignorant new acquaintance. He clung tenaciously to the fifty-cent basis--to go lower would cheapen him. But for the last two weeks his regular levies had been of twenty-five cents, with not a few descents to ten and even five cents.

He reached Goerwitz's at ten o'clock and promenaded slowly through both rooms twice. Just as he was leaving he espied an acquaintance who was looking fiercely away from him as if saying: "I don't see you, and, damn you, don't you dare see me!" But Feuerstein advanced boldly. Twelve years of active membership in that band of "beats" which patrols every highway and byway and private way of civilization had thickened and toughened his skin into a hide. "Good evening, Albers," he said cordially, with a wave of the soft, light hat. "I see you have a vacant place in your little circle. Thank you!" He assumed that Albers had invited him, took a chair from another table and seated himself. Social courage is one of the rarest forms of courage. Albers grew red but did not dare insult such a fine-looking fellow who seemed so hearty and friendly. He surlily introduced Feuerstein to his friends--two women and two men. Feuerstein ordered a round of beer with the air of a prince and without the slightest intention of paying for it.

The young woman of the party was seated next to him. Even before he sat he recognized her as the daughter of Ganser, a rich brewer of the upper East Side. He had placed himself deliberately beside her, and he at once began advances. She showed at a glance that she was a silly, vain girl. Her face was fat and dull; she had thin, stringy hair. She was flabby and, in the lazy life to which the Gansers' wealth and the silly customs of prosperous people condemned her, was already beginning to expand in the places where she could least afford it.

He made amorous eyes at her. He laughed enthusiastically at her foolish speeches. He addressed his pompous platitudes exclusively to her. Within an hour he pressed her hand under the table and sighed dramatically. When she looked at him he started and rolled his great eyes dreamily away. Never before had she received attentions that were not of the frankest and crudest practical nature. She was all in a flutter at having thus unexpectedly come upon appreciation of the beauties and merits her mirror told her she possessed. When Mrs. Schoenberg, her aunt, rose to go, she gave Feuerstein a chance to say in a low aside: "My queen! To-morrow at eleven--at Bloomingdale's." Her blush and smile told him she would be there.

All left except Feuerstein and a youth he had been watching out of the corner of his eyes--young Dippel, son of the rich drug-store man. Feuerstein saw that Dippel was on the verge of collapse from too much drink. As he still had his eighty-five cents, he pressed Dippel to drink and, by paying, induced him to add four glasses of beer to his already top-heavy burden.

"Mus' go home," said Dippel at last, rising abruptly.

Feuerstein walked with him, taking his arm to steady him. "Let's have one more," he said, drawing him into a saloon, gently pushing him to a seat at a table and ordering whisky. After the third large drink, Dippel became helpless and maudlin and began to overflow with generous sentiments. "I love you, Finkelstern, ol' man," he declared tearfully. "They say you're a dead beat, but wha' d'I care ?"

"Finkelstern," affecting drunkenness, shed tears on Dippel's shoulder, denied that he was a "beat" and swore that he loved Dippel like a brother. "You're my frien'," he said. "I know you'd trust me to any amount."

Dippel took from his trousers pocket a roll of bills several inches thick. Feuerstein thrilled and his eyes grew eloquent as he noted tens and twenties and at least one fifty. Slowly, and with exaggerated care, Dippel drew off a ten. "There y'are, ol' dead beat," he said. "I'll stake you a ten. Lots more where that came from--soda-fountain counter's reg'lar gol' mine."

In taking off the ten, he dropped a twenty. It fluttered to the floor and the soldier of fortune, the scorner of toil and toilers, slid his foot over it as swiftly and naturally as a true aristocrat always covers an opportunity to get something somebody else has earned. He put the ten in his pocket, when Dippel's eyes closed he stooped and retrieved the twenty with stealth--and skill. When the twenty was hidden, and the small but typical operation in high finance was complete, he shook Dippel. "I say, old man," he said, "hadn't you better let me keep your money for you? I'm afraid you'll lose it."

Dippel slowly unclosed one eye and gave him a look of glassy cunning. He again drew the roll from his pocket, and, clasping it tightly in his fist, waved it under Feuerstein's nose. As he did it, he vented a drunken chuckle. "Soda fountain's gol' mine, Fishenspiel," he said thickly. "No, you don't! I can watch my own roll." He winked and chuckled.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Fishy," he went on, with a leer. Then he took off another ten and handed it to Feuerstein. "Good fel', Fishy," he mumbled, "'f y' are a dead beat."

Feuerstein added the ten to the thirty and ordered more whisky. Dippel tried to doze, but he would not permit it. "He mustn't sleep any of it off," he thought.

When the whisky came Dippel shook himself together and started up. "G'-night," he said, trying to stand, look and talk straight. "Don't f'rget, y'owe me ten dollarses--no, two ten dollarses."

"Oh, sit down," coaxed Feuerstein, taking him by the arm. "It's early yet."

Dippel shook him off with much dignity. "Don' touch me!" he growled. "I know what I'm 'bout. I'm goin' home." Then to himself, but aloud: "Dippy, you're too full f'r utterance--you mus' shake this beat." Again to Feuerstein:

"G'night, Mr. Funkelshine--g'night. Sit there till I'm gone."

Feuerstein rose to follow and Dippel struck at him. The waiter seized each by the shoulder and flung them through the swinging doors. Dippel fell in a heap on the sidewalk, but Feuerstein succeeded in keeping to his feet. He went to the assistance of Dippel.

"Don't touch me," shouted Dippel.

"Police! Police!"

Feuerstein looked fearfully round, gave Dippel a kick and hurried away. When he glanced back from a safe distance Dippel was waving to and fro on his wobbling legs, talking to a cabman.

"Close-fisted devil," muttered Feuerstein. "He couldn't forget his money even when he was drunk. What good is money to a brute like him?" And he gave a sniff of contempt for the vulgarity and meanness of Dippel and his kind.

Early the next morning he established a modus vivendi with his landlady by giving her ten dollars on account. He had an elaborate breakfast at Terrace Garden and went to Bloomingdale's, arriving at eleven precisely. Lena Ganser was already there, pretending to shop at a counter in full view of the appointed place. They went to Terrace Garden and sat in the Stube. He at once opened up his sudden romantic passion. "All night I have walked the streets," he said, "dreaming of you." When he had fully informed her of the state of his love-maddened mind toward her, he went on to his most congenial topic--himself.

"You have heard of the Freiherr von Feuerstein, the great soldier?" he asked her.

Lena had never heard of him. But she did not know who was German Emperor or even who was President of the United States. She, therefore, had to be extremely cautious. She nodded assent.

"My uncle," said Feuerstein impressively. His eyes became reflective. "Strange!" he exclaimed in tender accents, soliloquizing-- "strange where romance will lead us. Instead of remaining at home, in ease and luxury, here am I--an actor--a wanderer --roaming the earth in search of the heart that Heaven intended should be wedded to mine." He fixed his gaze upon Lena's fat face with the expression that had made Hilda's soul fall down and worship. "And--I have found it!" He drew in and expelled a vast breath. "At last! My soul is at rest."

Lena tried to look serious in imitation of him, but that was not her way of expressing emotion. She made a brief struggle, then collapsed into her own mode--a vain, delighted, giggling laugh.

"Why do you smile?" he asked sternly. He revolted from this discord to his symphony.

She sobered with a frightened, deprecating look. "Don't mind me," she pleaded. "Pa says I'm a fool. I was laughing because I'm happy. You're such a sweet, romantic dream of a man."

Feuerstein was not particular either as to the quality or as to the source of his vanity-food. He accepted Lena's offering with a condescending nod and smile. They talked, or, rather, he talked and she listened and giggled until lunch time. As the room began to fill, they left and he walked home with her.

"You can come in," she said. "Pa won't be home to lunch to-day and ma lets me do as I please."

The Gansers lived in East Eighty-first Street, in the regulation twenty-five-foot brownstone house. And within, also, it was of a familiar New York type. It was the home of the rich, vain ignoramus who has not taste enough to know that those to whom he has trusted for taste have shockingly betrayed him. Ganser had begun as a teamster for a brewery and had grown rapidly rich late in life. He happened to be elected president of a big Verein and so had got the notion that he was a person of importance and attainments beyond his fellows. Too coarse and narrow and ignorant to appreciate the elevated ideals of democracy, he reverted to the European vulgarities of rank and show. He decided that he owed it to himself and his family to live in the estate of "high folks." He bought a house in what was for him an ultra-fashionable quarter, and called for bids to furnish it in the latest style. The results were even more regardless of taste than of expense--carpets that fought with curtains, pictures that quarreled with their frames and with the walls, upholstery so bellicose that it seemed perilous to sit upon.

But Feuerstein was as impressed as the Gansers had been the first time they beheld the gorgeousness of their palace. He looked about with a proprietary sense-- "I'll marry this little i***t," he said to himself. "Maybe my nest won't be downy, and maybe I won't lie at my ease in it!"

He met Mrs. Ganser and had the opportunity to see just what Lena would look and be twenty years thence. Mrs. Ganser moved with great reluctance and difficulty. She did not speak unless forced and then her voice seemed to have felt its way up feebly through a long and painfully narrow passage, emerging thin, low and fainting. When she sat--or, rather, as she sat, for she was always sitting--her mountain of soft flesh seemed to be slowly collapsing upon and around the chair like a lump of dough on a mold. Her only interest in life was disclosed when she was settled and settling at the luncheon table. She used her knife more than her fork and her fingers more than either. Feuerstein left soon after luncheon, lingering only long enough to give Lena a theatrical embrace. "Well, I'll not spend much time with those women, once I'm married," he reflected as he went down the steps; and he thought of Hilda and sighed.

The next day but one he met Lena in the edge of the park and, after gloomy silence, shot with strange piercing looks that made her feel as if she were the heroine of a book, he burst forth with a demand for immediate marriage.

"Forty-eight hours of torment!" he cried. "I shall not leave you again until you are securely mine."

He proceeded to drop vague, adroit hints of the perils that beset a fascinating actor's life, of the women that had come and gone in his life. And Lena, all a-tremble with jealous anxiety, was in the parlor of a Lutheran parsonage, with the minister reading out of the black book, before she was quite aware that she and her cyclonic adorer were not still promenading near the green-house in the park. "Now," said Feuerstein briskly, as they were once more in the open air, "we'll go to your father."

"Goodness gracious, no," protested Lena. "You don't know him--he'll be crazy --just crazy! We must wait till he finds out about you--then he'll be very proud. He wanted a son-in-law of high social standing--a gentleman."

"We will go home, I tell you," replied Feuerstein firmly--his tone was now the tone of the master. All the sentiment was out of it and all the hardness in it.

Lena felt the change without understanding it. "I bet you, pa'll make you wish you'd taken my advice," she said sullenly.

But Feuerstein led her home. They went up stairs where Mrs. Ganser was seated, looking stupidly at a new bonnet as she turned it slowly round on one of her cushion-like hands. Feuerstein went to her and kissed her on the hang of her cheek. "Mother!" he said in a deep, moving voice.

Mrs. Ganser blinked and looked helplessly at Lena.

"I'm married, ma," explained Lena.

"It's Mr. Feuerstein." And she gave her silly laugh.

Mrs. Ganser grew slowly pale. "Your father," she at last succeeded in articulating. "Ach!" She lifted her arm, thick as a piano leg, and resumed the study of her new bonnet.

"Won't you welcome me, mother?" asked Feuerstein, his tone and attitude dignified appeal.

Mrs. Ganser shook her huge head vaguely. "See Peter," was all she said.

They went down stairs and waited, Lena silent, Feuerstein pacing the room and rehearsing, now aloud, now to himself, the scene he would enact with his father-in-law. Peter was in a frightful humor that evening. His only boy, who spent his mornings in sleep, his afternoons in speeding horses and his evenings in carousal, had come down upon him for ten thousand dollars to settle a gambling debt. Peter was willing that his son should be a gentleman and should conduct himself like one. But he had worked too hard for his money not to wince as a plain man at what he endured and even courted as a seeker after position for the house of Ganser. He had hoped to be free to vent his ill-humor at home. He was therefore irritated by the discovery that an outsider was there to check him. As he came in he gave Feuerstein a look which said plainly:

"And who are you, and how long are you going to intrude yourself?"

But Feuerstein, absorbed in the role he had so carefully thought out, did not note his unconscious father-in-law's face. He extended both his hands and advanced grandly upon fat, round Peter. "My father!" he exclaimed in his classic German. "Forgive my unseemly haste in plucking without your permission the beautiful flower I found within reach."

Peter stepped back and gave a hoarse grunt of astonishment. His red face became redder as he glared, first at Feuerstein, then at Lena. "What lunatic is this you've got here, daughter?" he demanded.

"My father!" repeated Feuerstein, drawing Lena to him.

Ganser's mouth opened and shut slowly several times and his whiskers bristled. "Is this fellow telling the truth?" he asked Lena in a tone that made her shiver and shrink away from her husband.

She began to cry. "He made me do it, pa," she whined. "I--I--"

"Go to your mother," shouted Ganser, pointing his pudgy finger tremulously toward the door. "Move!"

Lena, drying her eyes with her sleeve, fled. Feuerstein became a sickly white. When she had disappeared, Ganser looked at him with cruel little eyes that sparkled. Feuerstein quailed. It was full half a minute before Ganser spoke. Then he went up to Feuerstein, stood on tiptoe and, waving his arms frantically above his head, yelled into his face "Rindsvieh!"-- as contemptuous an insult as one German can fling at another.

"She is my lawful wife," said Feuerstein with an attempt at his pose.

"Get the house aus--quick!--aus!-- gleich!--Lump!--I call the police!"

"I demand my wife!" exclaimed Feuerstein.

Ganser ran to the front door and opened it. "Out!" he shrieked. "If you don't, I have you taken in when the police come the block down. This is my house! Rindsvieh!"

Feuerstein caught up his soft hat from the hall table and hurried out. As he passed, Ganser tried to kick him but failed ludicrously because his short, thick leg would not reach. At the bottom of the steps Feuerstein turned and waved his fists wildly. Ganser waved his fists at Feuerstein and, shaking his head so violently that his hanging cheeks flapped back and forth, bellowed:

"Rindsvieh! Dreck!"

Then he rushed in and slammed the door.