The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862

Even more than she suspected, Josephine had been moved by the secret Paul had confided to her—of Scheffer's new ambition. No new ambition was it, she could testify. In the fulness of time the bud had come to flower, and on the same stem fair fruits were ripening.

And now, it was he who would relieve her of the anxiety she felt on Cromwell's behalf. She kept these things in her heart.

IV

Cromwell strolled into Scheffer's shop within the week. When Scheffer saw him coming, he satisfied himself at a glance that the visit was an unsuggested one.

There was only one other person in the world whose appearance within his doors could so much disturb the master of the place as Harry Cromwell's. That one was Josephine. Let her but come, and it was a day indeed.

But the disturbance created by her presence was very different from that excited by the entrance of this student. He, inadvertently, or otherwise, and it mattered not which, set Scheffer's heart into such a fume of jealousy, as perhaps the heart of philosopher never knew before. For, it was generally supposed among those who were interested in the affairs transacted on the point of space occupied by these people, that Cromwell's ambition was less undefined than that of young men generally. In short, that he was already, though alone in the world, burdened in mind with family cares—looking upon himself, even then, as the oldest son of the widow Mitchell.

He had said frankly, that he could not afford to give so much of his life to preparatory study as would be required if he chose any one of the professions open to him. He must go to work in some direction where the rewards of labor were sooner obtained.

When Cromwell came into the shop, August advanced to wait upon him. Cromwell was in a cheerful mood. He stretched his hand across the counter, and shook hands with his old acquaintance, as if he were thinking of days when the little white house of Daniel Scheffer stood between two cottages, occupied respectively by families of equal poverty and condition—the Cromwells and the Mitchells.

It wasn't often that they met in these days, he said; and he looked about him with a sort of surprise not disagreeable to Scheffer, for there was nothing offensive in it. Scheffer was always ready to make allowance for the little vanities and weaknesses of others. He was not surprised that Cromwell, handsome as he was, and brilliant intellectually, as he was proving himself to be, should overlook old times and old friends. Present times, and cares, and neighbors, would, of course, engage him to the neglect of what was past and gone.

'Prospering as usual!' said Harry, 'How do you manage it, August? for I am going to launch out into the world, and I can't expect to succeed more suddenly than you have.'

August answered, taking the praise as if it were well meant, and he knew it was well earned:

'By sticking to a thing, when I have made up my mind it is best. It's the only way I know of, Harry. I thought, from all I had heard, that you had found that out.'

'Don't trust report. I've done little yet to satisfy a man; got a few prizes; what do you suppose I care for them?'

'You care for what they mean to other folks,' said Scheffer.

'Not much, I assure you. A little praise, like music, is pleasant. But a man can't live on sound. Show me your seven-league boots, Scheffer; I'm going to take a stroll around the world.'

'What do you mean?' asked Scheffer, without moving.

'I'm going over the ocean.'

'India rubber soles?' asked Scheffer, again speaking in his quietest manner, but really feeling great excitement.

Cromwell laughed. 'I suppose they have iron-bound boots, even in Paris; but I thought I'd like to take something out of your shop with me; something of your own make, if possible. Do you know, Scheffer, you've had more to do with me, a vast deal, than you ever supposed? I've had the feeling that you were watching me as often as ever I got into lazy ways, just as if you stood by that window and searched me out across the grounds, no matter where I was lurking. I shall take my time when I am well rid of you. But I'll have the boots for a token; and when I am tired and sick of my work, as I shall be a hundred times, I'll pretend that you put some magic into the soles. Give them to me with a strong squeak.'

Cromwell laughed, but he was at least two thirds in earnest.

Still August did not stir. 'Are you really going away?' he asked.

'If I'm a live man, next week.'

'Going to France?'

'To France. To Paris for one year. In five years I shall be home again, and I mean to bring with me two or three cabinets of minerals, worth thousands of dollars apiece.'

Cromwell's eyes flashed; they fell on Scheffer, who stood silent, motionless, a cold shiver running over him from his head to his feet.

'What, then, brave fellow?' asked August. It was well to know the worst, and Harry seemed to be in a communicative mood.

'Why, what are you working for?'

'Because I've nothing else to do,' said Scheffer, with a shrug. 'I hate to be idle.'

'No; you are making your fortune; you'll have a house and a family some day. It's written, a hundred girls would think the chance beyond their desert; or they might think so.'

'Yes; well—I don't want a hundred girls.'

'Nor one, I suppose.'

Behind this idle talk the gravest and sharpest scrutiny was bestowed by each man on his fellow. Both were thinking of Josephine, but neither would name her.

'You're a philosopher, Paul says,' continued Cromwell. 'Paul is always talking about you. I don't like to leave that boy; but knowing that you are his friend should make me comfortable. Beside, I couldn't do anything for the lad, if he stood in need of a ten-penny bit.'

Cromwell laughed, but not in recklessness—in pride.

'How can you afford to travel, then?' asked Scheffer.

'Oh, I shall go as some other good fellows have gone—on foot; for I shall work my passage, and get somehow from Havre to Paris.'

'What next?'

'Hard work, you know.'

'Yes; I know what hard work means. But do you? Such hard work as this will be?'

'Do you take me for a dunce? Of course I know; and I shall tell you how I did it, five years from now.'

Then Scheffer said, not hesitating—for anything like a doubtfulness of manner on his part would have defeated his design:

'I want to invest some money, Harry. Take a couple of hundred for me, and buy some of the specimens; or find them, if you like that better. You shall sell them, when you get back, and pay me a percentage, whatever you can afford.'

There was no delay in the answer. It had all the readiness, and the sound, of sincerity.

'Sooner from you, August, than from any other man; but not from any man. I should feel that I was mortgaged. I must begin my own master, as I told Josephine Mitchell. What I bring to her shall be fruit from the tree of my own planting.'

August, for a moment, was like a man struck dumb; but when he spoke, he was the philosopher again.

'That's all foolishness,' he said, in a gentle voice; but there was no tenderness in it: it was but the firmness of self-control that made the voice so mild, and the expostulation, so deliberate. 'It's like using an old tool, when you have a new invention that would save half the labor. You'd laugh at a man for that.'

'Laugh away! But I must go out my own man, Scheffer. You'd do the same thing. Don't talk about it. Have you any of those boots I asked for?'

Scheffer found a pair. He named the price. Cromwell paid for them, and shook his hand when they separated; for, in the press of business, he said, it might be he should not find time to call on his old friend again.

The young men did not meet again. But a fortnight after Cromwell sailed, Scheffer was called upon to pay a note at the bank; a note that bore his own signature, and stated that, for 'value received, I promise to pay to the order of Henry Cromwell, four hundred dollars.'

The demand was made in such a manner, and at such a time, as to vex Scheffer to the utmost.

Cromwell, it seemed, could not consent to accept a favor at his hands; yet he could condescend to make that manner of use of him! He paid the sum due on the note, but at the same time was beset by a sore temptation.

This was the temptation, and this his resistance: If Harry had gone, leaving anywhere, in any woman's heart, a hope in him, should he not dispel it? Should he not convince her that it rested on a foundation looser than the sand? He did not do so! When Paul spoke now and then of Cromwell, and prophesied proudly of him, August took the words as an echo of Josephine's thought, and said to himself:

'Oh! well; it makes no difference.'

But, for all that, he kept on with his studies, and sometimes on Sunday would walk past the college grounds on Monumental square; for that was also walking past the cottage occupied by Josephine.

V

The college, in those days, could have produced no student more industrious than August.

He advanced with rapid strides through the elementary books, for he chose to begin at the beginning, and he was proud of his progress. But he kept his studies secret. He would risk nothing by reporting his own progress. No man should honor his future to the prejudice of his past. The story of Minerva, born to the prerogatives of wisdom, was more attractive to him than that life which 'grew in grace, and in favor with God and man.'

He had no plans in reference to future studies. His tutor was fairly puzzled; for he was not long in discovering that it was not the delight of knowledge, but the ends which knowledge may serve, that prompted to such industry.

One evening Paul threw himself on one of the red-plush sofas Scheffer had transferred to his private apartment. He was in one of those serious moods that had become frequent since Cromwell went away; or, rather, since he had come into this near relation with a working and prosperous man.

'It's easy enough to be poor for one's self,' said the anxious youngster; 'but whether one ought to be poor, when money is to be honestly made, and at only a trifling risk, though by desperate hard work—that's the question.'

'H'm!' said Scheffer.

'Well,' said Paul, irritated by his seeming indifference, 'a fellow is in a deuced bad plight, if he has to plead poverty, when he ought to be able to help one or two beside himself! I envy you, Scheffer. I envy you every time I come here. You can do so much! You could leap all the college gates in no time, if you were fool enough to try.'

'I'm not,' said Scheffer. 'I know I can't work with many irons in the fire—never could. And I've nothing to complain of. I'm prospering, as you say. That's the chief thing, I suppose. Folks seem to think so. I'm one of the million; I must do as the rest—build a house, and marry a wife some day. But not till I can support her like a lady, I tell you, Paul.'

There was the difference of many years between the man and the boy, but to no other person was Scheffer in the habit of saying such things.

'I'd like to see Madam Scheffer,' said Paul, with a quiet laugh. Scheffer was indulgent toward that mirth; he smiled as he said:

'Be patient, as I am, and you shall see her. There was a Mrs. Scheffer once—my mother that was; if there's another like her—I believe there is!'

'Can't you draw me her portrait?'

'Perhaps I could, if I cared.'

'But you don't care. Well, I can get it out of Josephine; she remembers your mother.'

Paul looked so much like his sister when he named the name of Josephine and of his mother in one breath, that Scheffer could not refuse him.

'Medium size,' he said, 'and built to last. Graceful, as any mother would have been—if—as she was, in spite of hard work—it was her nature, and her nature was a strong one. She has light hair, that curls as if it liked to, and her eyes are blue. It is a fair face, Paul, and she has a kind smile.'

'But tell me her name; for you need not say it's a fancy sketch.'

'May be not; but that, you see, is my secret.'

There was no such thing, in reality, as intruding further on this ground. Still, half embarrassed, Mitchell persisted:

'Where is she, though?'

'Where? I can't tell that.'

'With Cromwell?'

'It may be.'

'Would you trust her with him?'

'Is he not to be trusted?' asked August, so quickly as to startle Paul.

If Paul was to be startled—but he was not. The teller in the bank had told him—(Paul was one of those persons with whom acquaintances of every quality lodge their secrets)—of the note Scheffer had taken up with so little fuss and so much amazement. He saw that August for a moment suspected that he knew the facts, but he was not yet prepared to confess such knowledge; for he knew as well as Scheffer what Harry Cromwell was to Josephine. So he answered:

'I should say so, August—if any man on earth could be.'

'So I supposed,' said Scheffer, quietly; and Paul hurried back to the old queer topic, and said, half in jest: 'You mean to keep house, Scheffer, I'll be bound.'

Scheffer's dark face brightened; he would share with Paul his pleasant dream—the pleasant dream he cherished, though his sober sense denied its possibility, and his consistent realism charged upon him the special folly of fools.

'Aye,' said he; 'there'll be a library in it—but more select than that of the Atheneum you were wishing for! You shall have the freedom of my house, lad—I'll not forget how kind you've been to me. I shall have a flower garden, and a yard deep enough for shade trees like those—but you don't remember the place.'

Scheffer got up and walked away to the window.

'I've not the slightest doubt that you'll do everything you say! I vow I wouldn't like to be the man to stand in your way to anything.'

Scheffer came back, and sat on the sofa beside Paul. His voice had an almost fatherly tenderness in it when he began to speak, and it took no colder tone.

'You were saying something about an improvement you could suggest in some of the tools we use. Here they are. What did you mean?' He pulled out a box from underneath the sofa.

Paul took the box, and looked over its contents; but it was easy to see that he was in search of nothing. He was soon through his investigation, and restored the box to its place. Then he looked at Scheffer, and laughed.

But Scheffer answered the look by one that seemed to say that he expected an explanation; whereupon Paul, now grave enough, stirred by a sudden confidence, pulled from his pocket a box much smaller than that which held August's tools, and passed it into his friend's hands. Scheffer took it, but he did not attempt to loosen the cord that secured the cover. Then Paul said:

'You do not really suppose that I am the only idle person in the world. I have been at work longer than Josephine, though you might not believe it; but what I have done, no one has yet seen. If I had the money, Scheffer! I'd—well—look at the thing! I want you should study it, of course.'

August, however, was in no haste. He was more desirous to learn the meaning of what Paul had said about Josephine. But that could not be asked by him; and so he unfastened the cord, opened the box, and beheld within a miniature machine, whose meaning no one in the world, Paul Mitchell excepted, could explain. That was Paul's thought of pride.

'That's my secret,' said he. 'That's my beauty! and I'd build a house for it, if I had the money, to be sure, as you are going to do for yours. How do you like it?'

'Explain; then I can tell you.' It was still the father-voice that spoke; but the tone was that of a man whose son has forestalled hope, and justified the most vague of ambitious wishes.

'That, Scheffer, is a contrivance for printing. Will you please to examine it? It's to be used henceforth, for all time, understand! by bankers in their banks, and by all men of great business. See—'

He arose, and brought near to the sofa a small table, on which he placed the machine. Then he set it in motion. 'For numbering notes, and so on. Does it work, August?'

Scheffer, though admiring and amazed, said not a word, but sat down before the machine, and studied it in every part.

His judgment was satisfied when at last he gave it.

'It's worth money to you, Mitchell.'

'Do you believe it, Scheffer? Worth money. Oh, my goodness!'

'Paul, you expected that.'

'I knew it; but to hear you say so, makes me feel like a man. Then I shall do for my mother what you did for yours, and get Josephine out of that school-teaching freak of hers. She has actually gone and done it, Scheffer.... Worth money, eh? Then I shall do some things as well as others, Mr. Scheffer.'

Scheffer smiled. He understood this exultation too well not to share it and to be deeply moved by it.

'I suppose so,' said he. 'I always believed in you.'

'Well, then, look here.'

Paul's voice broke; he looked on the floor, and was a long time in producing the second box. When he had fairly drawn it forth, he gave a sudden and wonderful look at Scheffer, that penetrated like fire to the heart of the man.

'There,' said he, 'that's my pet. That's the Rachel of this Jacob. Look close, and see what you'll do with it, supposing you turn lockpick some day.'

It was a veritable lock. He drew out a chain of keys, a hundred of them.

'Now,' said he, in a low voice, 'you may ransack the town, as I've done, and get all your keys together. I want to see if you can find one, or contrive one with any locksmith's help, that will fit into that lock. I'll give you a month to try it. I'd give another man six. But you'll do the work of six in a sixth of the time. It's a lock on a new principle, and the principle is mine, because I applied it first. Eh? Hang it! If I had the money I wouldn't be so beggarly poor as I am. But I've had to beg and borrow, and almost steal, to get these things, that were in my brain, into a decent shape, as you see them. When I get started, Scheffer, you shall inspect all my inventions.'

'Then you are started,' said August. 'Don't say that again, I'd mortgage my stock but you should have what you need to help you. Have you any tools to work with, my son?'

'Oh, yes; that is, my neighbor has. He keeps a carpenter's shop, you know. I'm a capital hand at borrowing.'

'Have you got a room at home where you can work?'

'Acres of room! You've seen the house.'

'I've walked past it sometimes,' answered Scheffer, with a smile.

'Well, it isn't such a mite of a place as you'd think. There's room enough.'

'It looks pretty and snug. I have often admired those flower beds; the place don't look much like others in the same row: one might know that. Paul, I've seen the time when I'd thought the man who offered me help was an angel. I'm older than you are. Of course you must experiment, and where's the merit of carrying plans about in your head a dozen years, waiting a chance to prove whether they're worth anything or not? Tell me now, do you want any money?'

'No,' Paul answered quickly, yet with inward hesitation. 'I'll come to you, though,' he added, 'when I do. I'll let you know the very day. But I I have something to study out yet. I'm going to get patents, you know.'

VI

Paul returned home, and in a musing mood seated himself under the grapevine that grew on the brick wall in the rear of the cottage, the sole ornament and pride of the narrow yard. He may have been here an hour, when he heard strange noises in the house, then a heavy closing of the street door, and the voice of Josephine calling him. In the lobby stood an open iron-bound chest. A glance at the box explained it to Paul; but he said nothing—not a word—in explanation to Josephine or his mother, who stood expressing surprise and wonder, while he found the key and opened the heavy lid. They saw it was a tool chest.

Paul was the first to speak; for when he exhibited the contents, a deeper silence seemed to fall upon the women.

'It's no mistake,' he said to his mother. 'This belongs to August Scheffer. He has lent it to me. Isn't it kind of him? For I told him I had to borrow when I worked.'

'No,' said Paul's mother. 'It's anything but kind. You could waste time enough in such doings, Paul, without getting a tempter into the house. What do you want of tools? Do you get along with your books so fast you don't know what to do with your time? August Scheffer is just like his father, he never, as long as he lived, found out the use of money; if he had, his wife wouldn't have been left a beggar.'

'And August would never have been himself,' said Paul. 'That would have been a pity.'

'No,' said Josephine; 'he would always have been himself.'

'Don't talk like a simpleton, child. You are old enough to see that August might have been a very different man from what he is, if his father before him hadn't always this same ridiculous way of throwing the money he earned about like dust.'

'Well, mother—' began Paul: he hesitated, but a glance at Josephine decided him. 'I can tell you that if Harry Cromwell comes to any good, you and every one else will have to thank Scheffer for it.'

Josephine looked at Paul with serious, curious interest; but he saw that she was not greatly excited by what he had said. He looked at his mother, and resolved to say no more. And by that resolution he would have held, but for his mother's words.

'We shall never hear the end of that,' said she. 'Scheffer's father signed for Oliver Cromwell; but what of that? he lost his money. Better men have done as much for worse; but I don't know that it deserved to be talked of to all generations.'

'It was a generous act,' said Paul. 'But August has beat his father at that, I can tell you, if you want to hear.'

'Some slander, I suppose,' said the mother. 'I suppose every young man within fifty miles is jealous of Harry; it's well he has gone far enough to get rid of it all.'

'Well, mother, keep your good opinion of him. It isn't from Scheffer I heard it. You don't want to know what a noble fellow he is;' and he wound up with August's frequent saying, 'it makes no difference.'

'I want to hear what you are going to do with this box, though,' said Mrs. Mitchell. 'There's not a room in the house big enough to hold it.'

Paul plead for a corner of his own room; a startling proposal, indeed, for those who heard it, the 'room' being hardly an apology for a closet. He pleads well, however, for he carried the point, and space was in some way provided; and Mrs. Mitchell, who had hopes of a future for her children that should throw a glory round their unfolding and her closing years, heard the boy say, with, some sort of faith: 'Oh, mother, you don't know yet what a genius you've got in your boy;' and when she left him he was still laughing over the boast. But Josephine saw that as he stooped over the chest there were tears in his eyes.

For that reason she did not leave him to rejoice alone over his treasure. And for the reason that she did not leave him, he said to her, observing with what interest she took up one bright tool after another from its place:

'Scheffer has bought this box for me. You see, don't you, the tools were never used before? Not one of them.'

'Yes,' said Josephine, 'that's easy to be seen.'

'I must keep them and use them, I suppose!'

'You intend to do it, Paul. Are you trying to deceive me? Do you suppose I don't know that of course he had a reason for sending them to you! People are not in the habit of sending such things to boys who don't know how to use them.'

'But, Josephine, I shall pay him for them.'

'Yes, or else I shall, Paul. But let him enjoy the gift; for I know how it pleased him to send it.'

'And I won't serve him as another fellow did, too proud to accept a favor of him till he should get beyond sight and sound, so stingy of his thanks. That's what your Cromwell did! I hate the hateful fellow.'

'My Cromwell? Did he that?' But Josephine neither swooned, nor cried, nor blushed; was not overwhelmed with shame, nor indignation, nor distress. Some such exhibition, that should be as a confession, Paul had looked for, trembling, when the daring deed was done, of exposing a lover's baseness to the woman he loved.

'Yes,' said Paul, cooled somewhat by his sister's calmness. 'I knew I ought to let you know. But I thought I never could. He wouldn't take the money August offered him, but he got it from the bank, on a forged note.'