The Fortune Hunter

Chapter VI. Tragedy in Tompkins Square

After another talk with Travis, Feuerstein decided that he must give up Hilda entirely until this affair with the Gansers was settled. Afterward--well, there would be time to decide when he had his five thousand. He sent her a note, asking her to meet him in Tompkins Square on Friday evening. That afternoon he carefully prepared himself. He resolved that the scene between her and him should be, so far as his part was concerned, a masterpiece of that art of which he knew himself to be one of the greatest living exponents. Only his own elegant languor had prevented the universal recognition of this and his triumph over the envy of professionals and the venality of critics.

It was a concert night in Tompkins Square, and Hilda, off from her work for an hour, came alone through the crowds to meet him. She made no effort to control the delight in her eyes and in her voice. She loved him; he loved her. Why suppress and deny? Why not glory in the glorious truth? She loved him, not because he was her conquest, but because she was his.

Mr. Feuerstein was so absorbed in his impending "act" that he barely noted how pretty she was and how utterly in love--what was there remarkable in a woman being in love with him? "The women are all crazy about me," was his inward comment whenever a woman chanced to glance at him. As he took Hilda's hand he gave her a look of intense, yearning melancholy. He sighed deeply. "Let us go apart," he said. Then he glanced gloomily round and sighed again.

They seated themselves on a bench far away from the music and the crowds. He did not speak but repeated his deep sigh.

"Has it made you worse to come, dear?" Hilda asked anxiously. "Are you sick?"

"Sick?" he said in a hollow voice. "My soul is sick--dying. My God! My God!" An impressive pause. "Ah, child, you do not know what suffering is--you who have lived only in these simple, humble surroundings."

Hilda was trembling with apprehension. "What is it, Carl? You can tell me. Let me help you bear it."

"No! no! I must bear it alone. I must take my dark shadow from your young life. I ought not to have come. I should have fled. But love makes me a coward."

"But I love you, Carl," she said gently.

"And I have missed you--dreadfully, dreadfully!"

He rolled his eyes wildly. "You torture me!" he exclaimed, seizing her hand in a dead man's clutch. "How can I speak?"

Hilda's heart seemed to stand still. She was pale to the lips, and he could see, even in the darkness, her eyes grow and startle.

"What is it?" she murrmured. "You know I--can bear anything for you."

"Not that tone," he groaned. "Reproach me! Revile me! Be harsh, scornful--but not those tender accents."

He felt her hand become cold and he saw terror in her eyes. "Forgive me," she said humbly. "I don't know what to say or do. I--you look so strange. It makes me feel all queer inside. Won't you tell me, please?"

He noted with artistic satisfaction that the band was playing passionate love-music with sobs and sad ecstasies of farewell embraces in it. He kissed her, then drew back. "No," he groaned. "Those lips are not for me, accursed that I am."

She was no longer looking at him, but sat gazing straight ahead, her shoulders bent as if she were crouching to receive a blow. He began in a low voice, and, as he spoke, it rose or fell as his words and the distant music prompted him. "Mine has been a luckless life," he said. "I have been a football of destiny, kicked and flung about, hither and yon. Again and again I have thought in my despair to lay me down and die. But something has urged me on, on, on. And at last I met you."

He paused and groaned--partly because it was the proper place, partly with vexation. Here was a speech to thrill, yet she sat there inert, her face a stupid blank. He was not even sure that she had heard.

"Are you listening?" he asked in a stern aside, a curious mingling of the actor and the stage manager.

"I--I don't know," she answered, startling. "I feel so--so--queer. I don't seem to be able to pay attention." She looked at him timidly and her chin quivered. "Don't you love me any more?"

"Love you? Would that I did not! But I must on--my time is short. How can you say I do not love you when my soul is like a raging fire?"

She shook her head slowly. "Your voice don't feel like it," she said. "What is it? What are you going to say?"

He sighed and looked away from her with an irritated expression. "Little stupid!" he muttered--she didn't appreciate him and he was a fool to expect it. But "art for art's sake"; and he went on in tones of gentle melancholy. "I love you, but fate has again caught me up. I am being whirled away. I stretch out my arms to you--in vain. Do you understand?" It exasperated him for her to be so still--why didn't she weep?

She shook her head and replied quietly:

"No--what is it? Don't you love me any more?"

"Love has nothing to do with it," he said, as gently as he could in the irritating circumstances. "My mysterious destiny has--"

"You said that before," she interrupted. "What is it? Can't you tell me so that I can understand?"

"You never loved me!" he cried bitterly.

"You know that isn't so," she answered. "Won't you tell me, Carl?"

"A specter has risen from my past--I must leave you--I may never return--"

She gave a low, wailing cry--it seemed like an echo of the music. Then she began to sob--not loudly, but in a subdued, despairing way. She was not conscious of her grief, but only of his words--of the dream vanished, the hopes shattered.

"Never?" she said brokenly.

"Never!" he replied in a hoarse whisper.

Mr. Feuerstein looked down at Hilda's quivering shoulders with satisfaction. "I thought I could make even her feel," he said to himself complacently. Then to her in the hoarse undertone: "And my heart is breaking."

She straightened and her tears seemed to dry with the flash of her eyes. "Don't say that--you mustn't!" She blazed out before his astonished eyes, a woman electric with disdain and anger. "It's false-- false! I hate you--hate you--you never cared--you've made a fool of me--"

"Hilda!" He felt at home now and his voice became pleading and anguished. "You, too, desert me! Ah, God, whenever was there man so wretched as I?" He buried his face in his hands.

"Oh, you put it on well," she scoffed. "But I know what it all means."

Mr. Feuerstein rose wearily. "Farewell," he said in a broken voice. "At least I am glad you will be spared the suffering that is blasting my life. Thank God, she did not love me!"

The physical fact of his rising to go struck her courage full in the face.

"No--no," she urged hurriedly, "not yet --not just yet--wait a few minutes more--"

"No--I must go--farewell!" And he seated himself beside her, put his arm around her.

She lay still in his arms for a moment, then murmured: "Say it isn't so, Carl--dear!"

"I would say there is hope, heart's darling," he whispered, "but I have no right to blast your young life. And I may never return."

She started up, her face glowing.

"Then you will return?"

"It may be that I can," he answered. "But--"

"Then I'll wait--gladly. No matter how long it is, I'll wait. Why didn't you say at first, `Hilda, something I can't tell you about has happened. I must go away. When I can, I'll come.' That would have been enough, because I--I love you!"

"What have I done to deserve such love as this!" he exclaimed, and for an instant he almost forgot himself in her beauty and sweetness and sincerity.

"Will it be long?" she asked after a while.

"I hope not, bride of my soul. But I can not--dare not say."

"Wherever you go, and no matter what happens, dear," she said softly, "you'll always know that I'm loving you, won't you?" And she looked at him with great, luminous, honest eyes.

He began to be uncomfortable. Her complete trust was producing an effect even upon his nature. The good that evil can never kill out of a man was rousing what was very like a sense of shame. "I must go now," he said with real gentleness in his voice and a look at her that had real longing in it. He went on: "I shall come as soon as the shadow passes--I shall come soon, Herzallerliebste!"

She was cheerful to the last. But after he had left she sat motionless, except for an occasional shiver. From the music- stand came a Waldteufel waltz, with its ecstatic throb and its long, dreamy swing, its mingling of joy with foreboding of sadness. The tears streamed down her cheeks. "He's gone," she said miserably. She rose and went through the crowd, stumbling against people, making the homeward journey by instinct alone. She seemed to be walking in her sleep. She entered the shop--it was crowded with customers, and her father, her mother and August were bustling about behind the counters. "Here, tie this up," said her father, thrusting into her hands a sheet of wrapping paper on which were piled a chicken, some sausages, a bottle of olives and a can of cherries. She laid the paper on the counter and went on through the parlor and up the stairs to her plain, neat, little bedroom. She threw herself on the bed, face downward. She fell at once into a deep sleep. When she awoke it was beginning to dawn. She remembered and began to moan. "He's gone! He's gone! He's gone!" she repeated over and over again. And she lay there, sobbing and calling to him.

When she faced the family there were black circles around her eyes. They were the eyes of a woman grown, and they looked out upon the world with sorrow in them for the first time.