Self-Doomed. A Novel. Farjeon Benjamin Leopold

and whispered,

      "She is fooling you! She is not a young girl at all; she is an old witch! Put me in your waistcoat-pocket, and you will see what she really is."

      I did so, and the linnet ticked like a watch:

      "She loves-not you-not you-not you. She loves-a wolf-a wolf-a wolf."

      And through a pathway of light in the field of flowers ran Louisa, changed into a shrivelled old woman with gold boots on her feet, and after her raced Steven Wolf, who, catching her, flung her high in the air. I rushed with fury upon the monster, and he raised a great sheet of bright brass, and crashed it on my head-

      Bang! The din was enough to drive one crazy, and Louisa screaming at the top of her voice as she spun round and round in the air, with her golden boots-

      Bang! Bang! Bang! I jumped out of bed in a fright, and ran to the bedroom door and threw it open; and there I beheld old Anna sitting in the passage outside, crying in her loudest voice that every bone in her body was broken, while a lot of my best plates and dishes, all in little pieces, lay around her. She was coming down-stairs with a trayful of crockery in her arms when she tripped, and fell all the way down. That was the end of my dream. I could not help laughing heartily at it, which made old Anna cross-tempered the whole of the day.

      After breakfast I thought over my interview with Louisa, and of the new apprentice who would soon take up his abode with us. How his mother would grieve at parting from him! It would never have done for me to have married that trustful woman. She was so unworldly that she had never even asked me whether Gideon was to receive any wages during the seven years of his apprenticeship. It was an act of folly which would have made me angry had she been my wife; but she had been another man's, and he had broken her heart. That was as clear as the light which, shining through my shop-windows, had exposed her gray hairs to the eyes of one who, years ago, was ready to die for her. To think that, at any time of his life, a man should be so simple as to have such ideas!

      So Gideon Wolf came to me, and, being duly apprenticed, lived with me and learned my trade. Old Anna was against it from the first. I had taken the important step without consulting her, and the moment she set eyes on Gideon she prophesied that evil would come of his residence in the house.

      "Have not things gone on well enough to please you, Master Fink?" she asked.

      "They have always gone on well," I replied.

      "Then you must be growing avaricious in your old age," she remarked.

      "Old age has not come upon me yet, Anna," I said, "and if I had a grain of avariciousness in my body I would pluck it out by the root."

      Anna was as much a companion as a servant, and I had too great a respect for her to be angry at anything she said.

      "Why do you make the change, then, Master Fink?" I could not answer her without deceiving her, so I merely shrugged my shoulders and smiled.

      "Ah, you may smile," she continued, "and make light of it; but that won't alter what's done. Tell me one thing, Master Fink."

      "I will tell you many, Anna that is, as many as I can."

      "When you have a watch in good going order, one that has not lost or gained a minute for years, that you can depend upon as you can depend upon the sun, is it the act of a good workman, out of simple wilfulness, to take it to pieces and put it together again?"

      "I understand your meaning, Anna, but rely upon me-I have a good reason for what I have done. Let us not anticipate evil. Go down to your kitchen, and prepare for me my favorite dinner, French beans stewed sweet and sour. You have not your equal in that dish; you really make me enjoy my life."

      Before many months had passed I shared Anna's fears respecting Gideon Wolf. Little by little it was made clear to me that he had a thoroughly bad nature, that he was sly, greedy, envious, small-minded, mean-spirited. Occasionally I sent his mother a small sum of money which I said was due for services he had rendered; and you may be sure, in addition to this, that I paid him fair wages. But had I known how he would turn out, I would as soon have taken the son of the Arch Fiend himself for my apprentice as the son of Louisa Wolf. Too late did I discover that I had made a bad bargain.

      CHAPTER V

      RELATES HOW GIDEON WOLF WAS SEEN BY OLD ANNA PLAYING CARDS WITH THE DEVIL

      He grew into a tall, thin, sallow-faced young man, about as ill-favored as one of Pharaoh's lean kine; with large splay feet; with sandy hair; with a nose which looked as if it had been broken in the middle by a violent blow; with eyes as dull as the eyes of a fish; with a voice in which was never heard a note of natural gayety. Such men are a mistake in the world, and how any young woman can be drawn to them is a mystery which I defy students of human nature to satisfactorily explain. A mother's love for her ugly bantling is easily understood, but a fine young woman's, with bright eyes in her head, for such a scarecrow as Gideon Wolf is beyond ordinary comprehension. Yet they draw prizes these crooked-grained ones, while better men are left to sigh in vain.

      You have already heard how Gideon passed through his apprenticeship, and how I continued to employ him as a workman when his time was out. He was twenty-two years of age when, on a certain evening, old Anna, who had been out marketing, burst in upon me with a plump goose in her hand, and cried in a great heat,

      "Fine doings, Master Fink, fine doings! It is high time the world came to an end."

      "What, in Heaven's name, has put you in such a fever?" I inquired, looking up from the newspaper in which I was reading an account of a wonderful ox, which had a man's head growing out of one shoulder and a turtle out of the other. "Ah," I cried, in sudden fear, "that goose! You have been cheated. It is not a fresh goose; it ought to have been eaten days ago, and the dealer will not change it. Give it to me-I will go to him myself-"

      "No need to trouble, Master Fink," said Anna, in a slightly acid tone; "the goose is a good goose, and I bought it cheap. I should like to see the dealer who could take me in. Look at it."

      I did more than look at it. I poked its ribs; I felt its fat breast; my eyes glistened.

      "Already, Anna," I cried, joyously, "already I smell the stuffing!"

      "I don't deny it; I am fond of good cooking. It is nothing to be ashamed of; we were sent into the world to eat, as well as to do other things, and it is right that we should enjoy it."

      "It is not the goose that has put me in a fever," said Anna, "it is Gideon Wolf."

      I pricked up my ears. "Has he been behaving rudely to you, Anna?"

      "What!" she screamed, in a voice so shrill that I jumped in my chair. "He! A lamp-post like him! If he dared, I'd box his ears till I set them on fire!"