THE FORTUNE HUNTER(闯世界的人)

VIP免费

2024-12-25 0 0 315.91KB 93 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

THE FORTUNE HUNTER

THE FORTUNE

HUNTER

By DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

THE FORTUNE HUNTER

CHAPTER I

ENTER MR. FEUERSTEIN

On an afternoon late in April Feuerstein left his boarding-house in

East Sixteenth Street, in the block just beyond the eastern gates of

Stuyvesant Square, and paraded down Second Avenue.

A romantic figure was Feuerstein, of the German Theater stock

company. He was tall and slender, and had large, handsome features.

His coat was cut long over the shoulders and in at the waist to show his

lines of strength and grace. He wore a pearl-gray soft hat with rakish

brim, and it was set with suspicious carelessness upon bright blue, and

seemed to blazon a fiery, sentimental nature. He strode along, intensely

self-conscious, not in the way that causes awkwardness, but in the way

that causes a swagger. One had only to glance at him to know that he

was offensive to many men and fascinating to many women.

Not an article of his visible clothing had been paid for, and the ten-cent

piece in a pocket of his trousers was his total cash balance. But his heart

was as light as the day. Had he not youth? Had he not health? Had he

not looks to bewitch the women, brains to outwit the men? Feuerstein

sniffed the delightful air and gazed round, like a king in the midst of

cringing subjects. ``I feel that this is one of my lucky days,'' said he to

himself. An aristocrat, a patrician, a Hochwohlgeboren, if ever one was

born.

At the Fourteenth-Street crossing he became conscious that a young

man was looking at him with respectful admiration and with the anxiety of

one who fears a distinguished acquaintance has forgotten him.

Feuerstein paused and in his grandest, most gracious manner, said: ``Ah!

Mr. Hartmann--a glorious day!''

Young Hartmann flushed with pleasure and stammered, ``Yes--a

GLORIOUS day!''

``It is lucky I met you,'' continued Feuerstein. ``I had an appointment

at the Cafe Boulevard at four, and came hurrying away from my lodgings

THE FORTUNE HUNTER

with empty pockets--I am so absent-minded. Could you convenience me

for a few hours with five dollars? I'll repay you to-night--you will be at

Goerwitz's probably? I usually look in there after the theater.''

Hartmann colored with embarrassment.

``I'm sorry,'' he said humbly, ``I've got only a two-dollar bill. If it

would--''

Feuerstein looked annoyed. ``Perhaps I can make that do. Thank

you--sorry to trouble you. I MUST be more careful.''

The two dollars were transferred, Feuerstein gave Hartmann a

flourishing stage salute and strode grandly on. Before he had gone ten

yards he had forgotten Hartmann and had dismissed all financial care--had

he not enough to carry him through the day, even should he meet no one

who would pay for his dinner and his drinks? ``Yes, it is a day to back

myself to win--fearlessly!''

The hedge at the Cafe Boulevard was green and the tables were in the

yard and on the balconies; but Feuerstein entered, seated himself in one of

the smoke-fogged reading-rooms, ordered a glass of beer, and divided his

attention between the Fliegende Blatter and the faces of incoming men.

After half an hour two men in an arriving group of three nodded coldly to

him. He waited until they were seated, then joined them and proceeded

to make himself agreeable to the one who had just been introduced to him-

-young Horwitz, an assistant bookkeeper at a department store in Twenty-

third Street. But Horwitz had a ``soul,'' and the yearning of that secret

soul was for the stage. Feuerstein did Horwitz the honor of dining with

him. At a quarter past seven, with his two dollars intact, with a loan of

one dollar added to it, and with five of his original ten cents, he took

himself away to the theater. Afterward, by appointment, he met his new

friend, and did him the honor of accompanying him to the Young German

Shooters' Society ball at Terrace Garden.

It was one of those simple, entirely and genuinely gay entertainments

that assemble the society of the real New York--the three and a half

millions who work and play hard and live plainly and without pretense,

whose ideals center about the hearth, and whose aspirations are to retire

THE FORTUNE HUNTER

with a competence early in the afternoon of life, thenceforth placidly to

assist in the prosperity of their children and to have their youth over again

in their grandchildren.

Feuerstein's gaze wandered from face to face among the young women,

to pause at last upon a dark, handsome, strong-looking daughter of the

people. She had coal-black hair that curled about a low forehead. Her

eyes were dreamy and stormy. Her mouth was sweet, if a trifle petulant.

``And who is she?'' he asked.

``That's Hilda Brauner,'' replied Horwitz. ``Her father has a

delicatessen in Avenue A. He's very rich--owns three flat-houses. They

must bring him in at least ten thousand net, not to speak of what he makes

in the store. They're fine people, those Brauners; none nicer anywhere.''

``A beautiful creature,'' said Feuerstein, who was feeling like a prince

who, for reasons of sordid necessity, had condescended to a party in Fifth

Avenue. ``I'd like to meet her.''

``Certainly,'' replied Horwitz. ``I'll introduce her to you.''

She blushed and was painfully ill at ease in presence of his grand and

lofty courtesy--she who had been used to the offhand manners which

prevail wherever there is equality of the sexes and the custom of frank

sociability. And when he asked her to dance she would have refused had

she been able to speak at all. But he bore her off and soon made her

forget herself in the happiness of being drifted in his strong arm upon the

rhythmic billows of the waltz. At the end he led her to a seat and fell to

complimenting her--his eyes eloquent, his voice, it seemed to her, as

entrancing as the waltz music. When he spoke in German it was

without the harsh sputtering and growling, the slovenly slurring and

clipping to which she had been accustomed. She could answer only with

monosyllables or appreciative looks, though usually she was a great talker

and, as she had much common sense and not a little wit, a good talker.

But her awe of him, which increased when she learned that he was on the

stage, did not prevent her from getting the two main impressions he

wished to make upon her--that Mr. Feuerstein was a very grand person

indeed, and that he was condescending to be profoundly smitten of her

THE FORTUNE HUNTER

charms.

She was the ``catch'' of Avenue A, taking prospects and looks together,

and the men she knew had let her rule them. In Mr. Feuerstein she had

found what she had been unconsciously seeking with the Idealismus of

genuine youth--a man who compelled her to look far up to him, a man

who seemed to her to embody those vague dreams of a life grand and

beautiful, away off somewhere, which are dreamed by all young people,

and by not a few older ones, who have less excuse for not knowing where

happiness is to be found. He spent the whole evening with her; Mrs.

Liebers and Sophie, with whom she had come, did not dare interrupt her

pleasure, but had to stay, yawning and cross, until the last strain of Home,

Sweet Home.

At parting he pressed her hand. ``I have been happy,'' he murmured

in a tone which said, ``Mine is a sorrow-shadowed soul that has rarely

tasted happiness.''

She glanced up at him with ingenuous feeling in her eyes and managed

to stammer: ``I hope we'll meet again.''

``Couldn't I come down to see you Sunday evening?''

``There's a concert in the Square. If you're there I might see you.''

``Until Sunday night,'' he said, and made her feel that the three

intervening days would be for him three eternities.

She thought of him all the way home in the car, and until she fell

asleep. His sonorous name was in her mind when she awoke in the

morning; and, as she stood in the store that day, waiting on the customers,

she looked often at the door, and, with the childhood-surviving faith of

youth in the improbable and impossible, hoped that he would appear. For

the first time she was definitely discontented with her lot, was definitely

fascinated by the idea that there might be something higher and finer than

the simple occupations and simple enjoyments which had filled her life

thus far.

In the evening after supper her father and mother left her and her

brother August in charge, and took their usual stroll for exercise and for

the profound delight of a look at their flat-houses--those reminders of

THE FORTUNE HUNTER

many years of toil and thrift. They had spent their youth, she as cook, he

as helper, in one of New York's earliest delicatessen shops. When they

had saved three thousand dollars they married and put into effect the plan

which had been their chief subject of conversation every day and every

evening for ten years-- they opened the ``delicatessen'' in Avenue A, near

Second Street. They lived in two back rooms; they toiled early and late

for twenty-three contented, cheerful years --she in the shop when she was

not doing the housework or caring for the babies, he in the great clean

cellar, where the cooking and cabbage-cutting and pickling and spicing

were done. And now, owners of three houses that brought in eleven

thousand a year clear, they were about to retire. They had fixed on a

place in the Bronx, in the East Side, of course, with a big garden, where

every kind of gay flower and good vegetable could be grown, and an arbor

where there could be pinochle, beer and coffee on Sunday afternoons. In

a sentence, they were honorable and exemplary members of that great

mass of humanity which has the custody of the present and the future of

the race--those who live by the sweat of their own brows or their own

brains, and train their children to do likewise, those who maintain the true

ideals of happiness and progress, those from whom spring all the workers

and all the leaders of thought and action.

They walked slowly up the Avenue, speaking to their neighbors,

pausing now and then for a joke or to pat a baby on the head, until they

were within two blocks of Tompkins Square. They stopped before a five-

story tenement, evidently the dwelling-place of substantial, intelligent,

self-respecting artisans and their families, leading the natural life of busy

usefulness. In its first floor was a delicatessen-- the sign read ``Schwartz

and Heilig.'' Paul Brauner pointed with his long- stemmed pipe at the one

show-window.

``Fine, isn't it? Beautiful!'' he exclaimed in Low-German--they and

almost all their friends spoke Low-German, and used English only when

they could not avoid it.

The window certainly was well arranged. Only a merchant who

knew his business thoroughly--both his wares and his customers--could

THE FORTUNE HUNTER

have thus displayed cooked chickens, hams and tongues, the imported

sausages and fish, the jelly-inclosed paste of chicken livers, the bottles and

jars of pickled or spiced meats and vegetables and fruits. The spectacle

was adroitly arranged to move the hungry to yearning, the filled to regret,

and the dyspeptic to rage and remorse. And behind the show-window lay

a shop whose shelves, counters and floor were clean as toil could make

and keep them, and whose air was saturated with the most delicious odors.

Mrs. Brauner nodded. ``Heilig was up at half-past four this

morning,'' she said. ``He cleans out every morning and he moves

everything twice a week.'' She had a round, honest face that was an

inspiring study in simplicity, sense and sentiment.

``What a worker!'' was her husband's comment. ``So unlike most of

the young men nowadays. If August were only like him!''

``You'd think Heilig was a drone if he were your son,'' replied Mrs.

Brauner. She knew that if any one else had dared thus to attack their boy,

his father would have been growling and snapping like an angry bear.

``That's right!'' he retorted with mock scorn. ``Defend your

children! You'll be excusing Hilda for putting off Heilig next.''

``She'll marry him--give her time,'' said Mrs. Brauner. ``She's

romantic, but she's sensible, too--why, she was born to make a good wife

to a hard-working man. Where's there another woman that knows the

business as she does? You admit on her birthdays that she's the only real

helper you ever had.''

``Except you,'' said her husband.

``Never mind me.'' Mrs. Brauner pretended to disdain the

compliment.

Brauner understood, however. ``We have had the best, you and I,''

said he.

``Arbeit und Liebe und Heim. Nicht wahr?'' Otto Heilig appeared in

his doorway and greeted them awkwardly. Nor did their cordiality lessen

his embarrassment. His pink and white skin was rosy red and his frank

blue-gray eyes shifted uneasily. But he was smiling with eager

friendliness, showing even, sound, white teeth.

THE FORTUNE HUNTER

``You are coming to see us to-morrow?'' asked Mrs. Brauner--he

always called on Sunday afternoons and stayed until five, when he had to

open shop for the Sunday supper rush.

``Why--that is--not exactly--no,'' he stammered. Hilda had told him

not to come, but he knew that if he admitted it to her parents they would

be severe with her. He didn't like anybody to be severe with Hilda, and

he felt that their way of helping his courtship was not suited to the modern

ideas. ``They make her hate me,'' he often muttered. But if he resented

it he would offend them and Hilda too; if he acquiesced he encouraged

them and added to Hilda's exasperation.

Mrs. Brauner knew at once that Hilda was in some way the cause of

the break in the custom. ``Oh, you must come,'' she said. ``We'd feel

strange all week if we didn't see you on Sunday.''

``Yes--I must have my cards,'' insisted Brauner. He and Otto always

played pinochle; Otto's eyes most of the time and his thoughts all the time

were on Hilda, in the corner, at the zither, playing the maddest, most

romantic music; her father therefore usually won, poor at the game though

he was. It made him cross to lose, and Otto sometimes defeated his own

luck deliberately when love refused to do it for him.

``Very well, then--that is--if I can-- I'll try to come.''

Several customers pushed past him into his shop and he had to rejoin

his partner, Schwartz, behind the counters. Brauner and his wife walked

slowly home--it was late and there would be more business than Hilda and

August could attend to. As they crossed Third Street Brauner said:

``Hilda must go and tell him to come. This is her doing.''

``But she can't do that,'' objected Mrs. Brauner. ``She'd say it was

throwing herself at his head.''

``Not if I send her?'' Brauner frowned with a seeming of severity.

``Not if I, her father, send her--for two chickens, as we're out?'' Then he

laughed. His fierceness was the family joke when Hilda was small she

used to say, ``Now, get mad, father, and make little Hilda laugh!''

Hilda was behind the counter, a customer watching with fascinated

eyes the graceful, swift movements of her arms and hands as she tied up a

THE FORTUNE HUNTER

bundle. Her sleeves were rolled to her dimpled elbows, and her arms

were round and strong and white, and her skin was fine and smooth. Her

shoulders were wide, but not square; her hips were narrow, her wrists, her

hands, her head, small. She looked healthy and vigorous and useful as

well as beautiful.

When the customers had gone Brauner said: ``Go up to Schwartz

and Heilig, daughter, and ask them for two two-pound chickens. And tell

Otto Heilig you'll be glad to see him to-morrow.''

``But we don't need the chickens, now. We--'' Hilda's brow

contracted and her chin came out.

``Do as I tell you,'' said her father.

``MY children shall not sink to the disrespect of these days.''

``But I shan't be here to-morrow! I've made another engagement.''

``You SHALL be here to-morrow! If you don't wish young Heilig

here for your own sake, you must show consideration for your parents.

Are they to be deprived of their Sunday afternoon? You have never done

this before, Hilda. You have never forgotten us before.''

Hilda hung her head; after a moment she unrolled her sleeves, laid

aside her apron and set out. She was repentant toward her father, but she

felt that Otto was to blame. She determined to make him suffer for it--

how easy it was to make him suffer, and how pleasant to feel that this big

fellow was her slave! She went straight up to him. ``So you

complained of me, did you?'' she said scornfully, though she knew well

that he had not, that he could not have done anything that even seemed

mean.

He flushed. ``No--no,'' he stammered. ``No, indeed, Hilda. Don't

think--''

She looked contempt. ``Well, you've won. Come down Sunday

afternoon. I suppose I'll have to endure it.''

``Hilda, you're wrong. I will NOT come!'' He was angry, but his

mind was confused. He loved her with all the strength of his simple,

straightforward nature. Therefore he appeared at his worst before her--

usually either incoherent or dumb. It was not surprising that whenever it

THE FORTUNE HUNTER

was suggested that only a superior man could get on so well as he did, she

always answered: ``He works twice as hard as any one else, and you

don't need much brains if you'll work hard.''

She now cut him short. ``If you don't come I'll have to suffer for it,''

she said. ``You MUST come! I'll not be glad to see you. But if you

don't come I'll never speak to you again!'' And she left him and went to

the other counter and ordered the chickens from Schwartz.

Heilig was wretched,--another of those hideous dilemmas over which

he had been stumbling like a drunken man in a dark room full of furniture

ever since he let his mother go to Mrs. Brauner and ask her for Hilda. He

watched Hilda's splendid back, and fumbled about, upsetting bottles and

rattling dishes, until she went out with a glance of jeering scorn.

Schwartz burst out laughing.

``Anybody could tell you are in love,'' he said. ``Be stiff with her,

Otto, and you'll get her all right. It don't do to let a woman see that you

care about her. The worse you treat the women the better they like it.

When they used to tell my father about some woman being crazy over a

man, he always used to say, `What sort of a scoundrel is he?' That was

good sense.''

Otto made no reply. No doubt these maxims were sound and wise;

but how was he to apply them? How could he pretend indifference when

at sight of her he could open his jaws only enough to chatter them, could

loosen his tongue only enough to roll it thickly about? ``I can work,'' he

said to himself, ``and I can pay my debts and have something over; but

when it comes to love I'm no good.''

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

THEFORTUNEHUNTER1THEFORTUNEHUNTERByDAVIDGRAHAMPHILLIPSTHEFORTUNEHUNTER2CHAPTERIENTERMR.FEUERSTEINOnanafternoonlateinAprilFeuersteinlefthisboarding-houseinEastSixteenthStreet,intheblockjustbeyondtheeasterngatesofStuyvesantSquare,andparadeddownSecondAvenue.AromanticfigurewasFeuerstein,oftheGermanTheat...

展开>> 收起<<

THE FORTUNE HUNTER(闯世界的人).pdf

共93页,预览19页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

THE FORTUNE HUNTER(闯世界的人)

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: