Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 January 1915 — The DUTCHMAN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The DUTCHMAN

By George Randolph Chester

"Iss an architect lifs here?” Mr. Brandon Meade, deep Ih hia continuous plans for booming the nye little city of Holden, stopped abruptly, jerked hia black cigar from between his teeth, and surveyed the youthful stranger through the gently falling flakes. “Fellow hero calls himself one; he’s a contractor, and runs a planing mill besides,” he replied. The other made an indescribable little gesture with his hands and shoulders and head, not exactly of contempt, but more of pity and sorrow. "Then iss no chance,” he said with weary resignation. "Are you an architect?” asked Meade in his turn. "What you call —draftsman," replied the other. "Designer, to originate; cathedral, residence, anything; details, perspective, water-color, everything.” “Good,” approved Meade with awakening interest. “We need something like that in Holden. "What’s your name?” he demanded. "Conrad Hoehler.” "Well Conrad whatever-your-last-name-is—Hayler’s as near as I can get to it —you ought to starve. I have to see a man in ten minutes.” He snapped open his watch, looked at it, snapped it shut, snapped it open once more, took a second look, and Jammed it back into his pocket. "You can’t expect me to miss a business engagement because you’re too haughty to eat when you’re hungry. Come along with me” The boy—he was scarcely more than that —looked at him in solemn perplexity, but followed as he was told to do. Notwithstanding his announcement that he had no time to waste, Meade turned with his quick, nervous stride down the side street, at right angles to the direction in which he had been hurrying, and wheeled into the hallway of an old, rickety, frame building. Up one flight of stairs he stalked into an office where, near the window, a big rough table, littered with paper and drawing materials, was tilted upon rude trestles. A cheerful wood fire was burning in an old-fashioned stove;

but there wad'no one in the room, and Meade plunged into the next office through the communicating door, which was open. This was a lawyer’s* office, if one might Judge from the yellow-backed books which filled three cases, and here sat two men with their feet on opposite sides of a flat-top desk, chatting lastly. “Where’s Harper?” Meade briskly demanded. “He’s out of town. Brandy,” drawled the loan-faced man at the far tide of the desk; “Harper’s gone to mortgage Us immortal soul tor another new machine, and I’m keeping up his fire so this room won’t he so beastly cold

when he open* our dec® tomorrow morning.” ■ / *. r* - .* “Harper’s an ass; tell him I said so!” Meade retorted, and turned back into the architect's office. He found Conrad, his hands clasped behind him, inspecting the materials upon the table with greedy eyes. "Nice pickle you’ve got me Into,” fussed Meade: "I suppose i have to stand around now till you earn your breakfast; and my time's worth money. Where are my plans, I wonder?” With a ruthless hand he began to open and scatter about the office several small rolls of tough manila-pa-per drawings until he found the ones for which he had been searching. They were the first and second story plans of a moderate-sized house, arranged side by side upon one sheet; and this he spread upon the table in front of Conrad. "There,” he said; “see what you can do toward designing an outside for that house; just a rough, free-hand sketch.” In spite of the draftsman’s apparent deliberateness, they had not long to wait; for presently he put pencil to the block of paper and, with deft, sure strokes, not one mark wasted, sketched, in perfect perspective, a house fitting the plans that he had seen; its roof simple to avoid snowpockets, its eaves and porches wide to afford shade in summer, its lines simple and squat for the fiat grounds. The ornamentation, massed against broad, plain surfaces, was exquisite iu its suggested detail and placed with consummate art. Meade, as the last strokes were put down, could scarcely wait “Look at that!” he exclaimed in triumph “to hia friends. “Harper couldn’t make a drawing like that in two years!” As young Conrad added a chimney and lined in the wide porch-steps, Meade was for jerking the sketch from under his fingers, but the artist held up his right hand solemnly. “You shoult wait,” he calmly commanded; and, with a few deft lines, suggested a sidewalk, a lawn, some trees and clouds; then, having drawn a waving line about it to circumscribe the plane of his picture, he detached the sheet from the block and handed it over, with the pencil upon it. The three bent over it in profound respect. “That is certainly some house,” pronounced Hyde/ “I don’t know how to say lovely,” drawled Eastman, "but I’m willing to pronounce that, a mighty decent design.” “DecentT” repeated Meade: “It’s great!” •

ii. Of course they called him “the Dutchman” after* he had become an intimate part of the life of Holden, for there was almost no foreign element in the town. Eight dollars a week and his board Harper paid Conrad, aad the boy was satisfied. “I am more worth," he said, adding philosophically, “but It lss not here the money. If you have not profit of my work that I do, then I you call it?—no goot" Harper, with whom economy was a stern necessity, brought a cot into the office, and for a week Conrad slept ‘upon this cot, taking his meals at a nearby restaurant During that week Harper studied his draftsman closely, and Mrs. Harper made two unobtrusive trips to-the office for the same purpose. On Sunday Conrad was taken to the Harper home and formally installed. “He’s simply a revelation, Sam,” Mrs. Harper pronounced in surprise after the first week. "After you get used to the dialect you begin to discover that he’s well educated; he’B artistic to his finger-tips, a poet -in feeling, a lover of severely good music; he sings divinely, and little Elsie fairly loves him. She makes him rock her to sleep every noon before he goes back to work.” It was the good-fellowship of this couple, together with their unwavering affection, which made Conrad turn hlB admiration of them to the same degree of worship that he had already bestowed upon four-year-old Elsie. His lines were cast in pleasant places indeed, and he thrust hjs roots deeply into the sqil. t At first he had to overcome the same contemptuous prejudice that had bestowed upon him the title of “the Dutchman.” Mrs. Harper introduced him to some nice girls, but secretly they laughed at his broken English; and Blanche Reynolds, by whom he was at once speechlessly smitten, openly flouted him; whereat Mrs. Harper wanted to shake her. With the young men he was in Bomewh&t less though even here he was Btill an alien until one evening when, in passing the library, one of a group of young men made some laughing remark, loud enough to be. overheard, about "the Dutchman.” Conrad wheeled immediately and came back. "Not Dutchman —German!” he de. dared, marching directly up tQ the one who had spoken. It was Price Reynolds, her brother. "It iss not disgrace to be Dutchman, either, but it is disgrace the way you say it. I am Dutchman no more! and you hear it!*' The other laughed. 'Keep your collar on, Dutchy,” he admonished with amused tolerance. "I am not Dutchman. I have said!” insisted Conrad. "I challench you!” They repaired to Hyde’s barn. Heretofore fights in Holden had been swift, unexpected, spontaneous affairs, and they had,been fought out with great rigor in an entirely impromptu manner; but this was a decided novelty, mt which even the sworn officers of tfc* peace winked complacently. When the . ... . . -V* '• ~ V— -

battle was waged, an hour later, Hyde’s bam was full to overflowing with enthusiastic spectators. Candor compels the admission that Conrad was worsted in the encounter, but that was not the—point. He had-fought gamely from beginning to end. That was his initiation. From that day he was admitted to be a man among men, Without any regard whatever to nationality or habit of speech; and where the boys led, followed the girls. Through them he patiently plddded to Blanche Reynolds, ,and having secured her frank favor there was nothing more in this world that he wanted. He was the acknowledged suitor of the handsomest, the most brilliant, the most wonderfully endowed girl In all -the world; he lived In a home atmosphere that to him was divine; his work was not only congenial; it was his life, and his employers—precious thing to this vivid emotionalist —trusted him implicitly. Both to save expense and to concentrate energy*, the office had been moved down to the mill, where Conrad became not only designer and draftsman, but timekeeper. One evening Harper asked for his time-book. Perched on a high stool. Harper read him the items one by one; that on such a date one workman had put iu nine hours, another six, another two, and bo on through the spring and the early summer. “That cannot be,” objected Conrad at one point, raising his head; “Wright has not work nine hours by the 29th. That day he has been hurt.” "That’s so,” admitted Harper, confused. . “I'm looking at the wrong line. It was on the SSth he worked nine hours.” “Ja, but on the 28th you ha#, read it seven hours.” "That was a mistake, too,” said Harper impatiently. “Make it nine.” Conrad looked troubled. The whole time-lift had an unfamiliar look to Mm, and It bothered him that his usu.ally photographic memory should be confused. It did not occur to him for an instant to suspect that Harper

was reading the Items willfully wrong; that he was deliberately adding several dollars a day to Meade’s account.

HI. When they were through, after three solid hours of toil, Harper sent Conrad home ahead of him while he counted up the new record. As revised, the book showed over a thousand dollars still due him from Meade —enough tb tide him over this desperate pinch in which he found himself. Musing in pallid-faced self-loathing over this, his first departure from rectitude, he did a thing Inexplicable even in one of his careless habits. He destroyed the old book, abstractedly tearing it up page by page and dropping it iu the wastebasket In the morning came Conrad, and recognized those scraps at once. On the table lay the new book where Harper had left it the night before. Mechanically obeying the inexorable logic of the. situation, Conrad picked some of the scraps from the basket and compared entries. Every legible word was damning. Here, on the 16th, was Turner, on the old book three hours, in the new book nine. Wright was in the new book for nine hours on that date, and in the old one his name was not written down at all, for he had been at work on another job. Then Harper came In, strangely shaken, though trying to preserve an air of easy nonchalance. "I have Just had a settlement with Meade,” he began in a voice intended to be quiet and cheery, “and what do yon think'the fellow did? Offered me a five-hundred-dollar bonus for the good work we have done! “Here’s your back pay, Conrad,” he said. "I’m sorry to have kept you waiting so long.” Conrad hacked away from the check as if it were an unclean thing. "No, no!” he cried. ‘That money, I want it not! It is not goot money. I saw in the basket this morning the book where you tore it up. You has been a t’ief; I am part t’ief;” and slipping his -instruments into his pockets

he started toward the door. “Goot-by,” he said brokenly. Harper was ash-white under the accusation that he could not resent. "Where are you going ?” be stammered. “I do not know. Away like I came," answered Conrad. "I forglf you,” and he was gone. Harper was still sitting rigidly upon the stool when Meade came bustling In fire minutes later. N ' "Got a new Job for you, Sam,” he said. ‘‘l’ve made Parsons consent to tear down the rickety old buildings on his corner and put up a good business block.' Say, what’s the matter with you, anyhow?” Harper had not moved. He had been gazing at Meade with fixed eyes, like one in a horror-stricken trance; but now he drew from his pocket the check that Meade had given him but an hour before and proffered it. “I stole it,” he numbly confessed. U I falsified the time.” "Oh, climb down from your perch!" Meade whipped out with no abatement whatever of his crisp manner. ‘‘Now, what’s all this about? Tell me like a sane man. "You say you falsified those time entries,” he went on. "I glanced them over while you were at my office. They were all in Conrad’s writing.” “Gad!” exclaimed Harper. “For the moment I had forgotten him. I read off those items to him from the old book last night, changing them as I went along. He found out this morning what I’d had him do and he called me a thief and left. God knows what it cost him. There’s a girl hers that—well, after he went away I had to renege.” “Away?" yelled Meade. "What do you mean by ‘away?’ Not that he’B going to leave Holden?” “Just that,” affirmed Harper. "He said he couldn’t look my wife and me In the face and tell on me, and couldn’t look you in the face and not tell.” “Put away your books! We’ve got to stop Conrad. We’ve got to overtake that Dutchman, 1 tell you!”

IV. They were Just about to leave the office when suddenly the door opened and Blanche Reynolds, a trifle pale and much. too anxious for frivolous embarrassment, stood before them. “Is Mr. Hoehler here?” she asked, glancing swiftly about the office. It was notable that, though knowing no German, she pronounced his name with a perfect mastery of the difficult sound of the modulated vowel. Harper shook his head and glanced at Meade with a miserable sense of guilt. “He is gone," he faltered. “He left about half an hour ago.”

“I got such a curious note from him," she explained. "He met my brother on the street and. cave it to him. Why did he go?" “It was a —& point of honor," Harper lamely told her. It was splendid to see the way the girl squared her shoulders, and how her eyes flashed, though she grew paler still. “He has done nothing wrong,” she declared. "I know!” "Bless your heart, no!” exploded Meade. “He couldn’t if he tried. Now don’t you worry about Conrad, because his friends are not going to let him get away,” and he bustled outside with his usual spluttering energy. Bewildered, not able to understand any of it, the girl went out upon the street, scarcely reflecting that she was going with them. Walking at the side of Harper, with Meade forging nervously on ahead, during the next four blocks she lost herself in the knowledge of how much, how very much, she cared! As they turned the corner toward the station Meade, who was in advance, gave an exclamation of surprise, for there,, but half a block ahead of them, and going in the same direction, was Conrad. He was walking slowly along the shady street, his head down, his shoulders drooped, his pockets bulging with his portable possessions. Blanche, all thought for conventions swept away in this overwrought moment, flew swiftly after him. “Oh, Conrad!” she called, as she overtook him and put her hand on wg arm. He whirled, and a passing teamster, with a jovial cast of stopped his horses and looked backward with a grin, for it was quite unusual in the streets Of Holden to see a young man sob and clasp a young lady in his arms. "Ach, ich sterbe suer dich! —I die for you!" cried the young man,' stopping even then, in his consideration of her, to translate; but when Meade and Harper came up he drew her arm within his own and turned his back upon them and walked away. She was going with him quite contentedly . She did not know what these men had done, hut if Conrgd held them in contempt she scorned them! "Wait a minute!” commanded Meade, and * caught Conrad by the shoulder, instantly understanding his quandary. “Everything’s all right my boy. Harper told me all about it Look here," and he thrust before Conrad’s eyes the check that Harper had returned to him. "Harper’s an ’honest man. So-are you; so am I; sd’s Miss Reynolds. Let’s all shake hands. Now we’re all four going back to the office and talk it over. By the way, Conrad, what are you doing here? We expected to find you four miles down the track by tbto.thne,’' ~ Conrad smiled through hi* "tears. ’ "*I could not go, and 1 00,11(1 not stay!" he exclaimed, “Four, five, tU

times I have walked from that corner to the station and back." Tears were in Blanche’s eyes, too; but now she, too. laughed. "And now none of us, not even yourself, win ever know whether you would really have gone away or come back," she said with the faintest trace of Jealousy, which, however, was lost at once in sympathy for the distress to which he had been put. “Poor boy, you must have been in an agony oA perplexity. Look at this!” and proud '

of him for his very error and the perturbation that had caused it, she die played his note. “Mein schoenes Liebchen,” it began, “from all happiness 1 am going awayt* but that was as far as Meade or Hlpper—or Blanche herself, for that matter —could read it, for the rest of tt was all in most tumultuous German.

“Are You an Architect?”

Sketched, In Perfect Perspective, a House Fitting the Plane He Had Seen.

" Is Mr. Hoehler Here?"

“Where Are You Going?" He Stainmered.