Krantz

“ Krantz has inserted a most biting epigram against me in his weekly publication; it alludes to my former calling, when I used to sell lemons and oranges. Curse the fool! Send him four Frederics-d’ors, and he will hold his tongue, I warrant you; he is nothing but a hungry scribbler, that for money would convert angels into devils, and devils into angels of light.
Since the last review in Silesia, the King is extremely suspicious and ill-tempered with the Prince, and all our party. He has him watched as closely as possible, and knows every one that [Pg 39] comes and goes. ”

“ Do not for a moment harbour a thought so injurious to one who lives but in your love. Suspect that fond and devoted creature! I blush for you, Philip Vanderdecken.”
“You are right, and I beg her pardon for allowing such feelings or thoughts to have for one moment overpowered me,” responded Philip; “but it is a hard case for a husband who loves as I do, to hear his wife’s name bandied about, and her character assailed by a contemptible wretch like this commandant.”
“It is, I grant; but still I prefer even that to a dungeon,” replied Krantz, “and so, good night.” ”

“ And I hope that you and I have “seen things” in the mirror, though perhaps we are not eighty-four and have no Emmy.
Then he went on getting ready for her till he was very tired—more tired, he thought, than he had ever been.
148Outside Mrs. Schwalm was whispering to Mrs. Krantz:
“No, they ain’t far apart! He’s mighty funny to-night. He is seeing things.”
At last he was ready to hang up their stockings on the brass nails which had been put into the mantel for this purpose when the house was built.
And, for something to surprise her, he took from behind that loose brick a gold coin. ”

“ You see that Doctor Bergius ’as got something up ’is sleeve. We can’t quite make ’im out. ’E’s a great one, ’e is. There ain’t a greater international crook on the Continent to-day. ’E was ragin’ mad because Krantz got the system away from ’im, and now ’e swears ’e’ll get even, and do the Casino one in the eye.”
“That reminds me,” said Hugh. “What happened that night after we got away?”
“Oh, they thought you’d got at a knife with your free ’and and cut the ropes. I joined the chase and ’eaded ’em in the wrong direction. You see my bein’ with Vulning was an idea of Krantz’s. ”

“ He studied law, theology and history at Rostock and Cologne, and after travelling through western and southern Europe was appointed professor, first of philosophy and subsequently of theology, in the university of Rostock, of which he was rector in 1482. ”

“ Crane was narrow, but he was straight; a man you could count on in the shifty game of college politics. He had never been out to get anything for himself. St. Peter would have said that nothing about the vulgar success of Outland’s idea could possibly matter to Crane, beyond gratifying his pride as a teacher and friend.
The park was deserted. The arc-lights were turned off. The leafless trees stood quite motionless in the light of the clear stars. The world was sad to St. Peter as he looked about him; the lake-shore country flat and heavy, Hamilton small and tight and airless. ”

“ Krone will tell you he deals out his poison without scruple, fills alms-houses without a pang of remorse, and proves that a politician-maker may do much to degrade society and remain in high favor with his friends of the bench of justice. On one side of the dungeon-like place stands a rickety old counter, behind which three savage-faced men stand, filling and serving incessant potions of deleterious liquor to the miserable beings, haggard and ragged, crowding to be first served. ”

“ I'll make you!" The Swede had grasped the gambler frenziedly at the throat, and was dragging him from his chair. The other men sprang up. The barkeeper dashed around the corner of his bar. There was a great tumult, and then was seen a long blade in the hand of the gambler. It shot forward, and a human body, this citadel of virtue, wisdom, power, was pierced as easily as if it had been a melon. The Swede fell with a cry of supreme astonishment.
The prominent merchants and the district-attorney must have at once tumbled out of the place backward. ”

“ Our alarm was not surprising, knowing as we did what a valiant fighter Crane was himself: as a socialist waving the red flag in the face of the world, as an artist forever rushing into the papers to defend his theories of art, as a man refusing to see his glory in passing by an offence. Not very long before, J. had exasperated him in print, by the honest expression of an opinion he did not happen to like, into threats of a big stick ready for attack the next time J. ventured upon his walks abroad. ”

“ Kreener had not been a great chemist he would have been a great painter, or perhaps a politician, or even a poet. Triumph was his birthright, and the fruits for which lesser men reached out in vain fell ripe into his hands.
The favourite meeting-place for these oddly assorted boon companions was the doctor's laboratory, which was divided from the house by a moderately large garden. Here on a Sunday evening one might meet the very “latest” composer, the sculptor bringing a new “message,” or the man destined to supplant with the ballet the time-worn operatic tradition. ”

“ Crane has made for himself a permanent place in literature. . . . Zola himself scarcely has surpassed its tremendous portrayal of throbbing, breathing, moving life."—New York Mail and Express.
"Mr. Crane's story should be read for the fidelity with which it portrays a life that is potent on this island, along with the best of us. It is a powerful portrayal, and, if somber and repellent, none the less true, none the less freighted with appeal to those who are able to assist in righting wrongs."—New York Times. ”

“ Krone is an intimate friend of more than one Councilman, and a man of much measure in the political world-that is, Mr. Krone is a politician-maker. When you say there exists too close an intimacy between the pugilist and the politician, Mr. Krone will bet twenty drinks with any one of his customers that he can prove such doctrines at fault. He can secure the election of his favorite candidate with the same facility that he can make an hundred paupers per week. You may well believe him a choice flower in the bouquet of the corporation ”

“ There’s the boat, and the pine-cone, and the shoes, and the book, and the old stocking;—all of them;—and I don’t know which to have first. Which would you, mother?”
“What’s all that?” said John Krinken.
“He says his things tell him stories,” said Mrs. Krinken; “and he’s told over one or two to me, and it’s as good as a book. I can’t think where the child got hold of them.”
“Why they told ’em to me, mother,” said Carl.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Krinken; “something told it to thee, child.”
[111]
“Who told ’em, Carl?” said his father. ”

“ Having learned from the noted violinist, Fritz Lieber, something of the nature of the package he was carrying and of the people to whom it was addressed, he should have moved with greater caution.
“Too late to think about that now,” he told himself. “Have to go to Crane and tell my story.”
130
Robert Crane, Jr., was District Manager of the Air Transportation Company. He was young, a college graduate, and son of a rich man. Curlie had seen little of him but had always feared him. Old men of long experience, whatever their importance in the world of affairs, never frightened him. ”

“ The old man stared speechlessly. His faculties seemed inhibited under the shock. The red faded out of his round face, left it ashen gray under the close-cropped white hair. Kranz, watching him narrowly, feared for his heart. He made a brusque little gesture as though seizing control of himself.
“Herr Gott! It’s—it’s his voice!” he gasped.
His eyes turned to Kranz and there was fear in them, a primitive fear of the supernatural. Trembling, he reeled rather than walked to the chair by the table with the telephone, dropped heavily into it. ”

“ Crane’s insistence; he grips a situation, an incident, much as Mr. Browning’s Italian wished to grasp Metternich; he squeezes emotion and colour out of it to the last drop; he is ferociously vivid; he knows the life he is writing about, and he knows his seamen too. ”

“ The north winds, which the pine cone says so shake the heads of the fir-trees in his country, never trouble anything in mine. The snow never lay on the glossy leaves of my parent oak. But no Norrska lived there; or if there did, I never knew her. Nobody came near us, unless a stray peasant now and then passed through. And when I was cut down, I was packed up and shipped off to England, and shifted from hand to hand, till John Krinken took it into his head, years ago, to make a sort of cork jacket of me, with one or two of my companions ”

“ Half an hour later he drew up before the bank, not conscious of the crowd which had gathered before the door.... He alighted. Judge Crane’s bag gripped in his hand, and forced his way to the door, unaware how he was compelled to force his way, or how exclamations and questions rained upon him from his excited neighbors.... He walked to the teller’s wicket and pushed the bag toward Gene.
“There it is,” he said. “I—got it back.” He paused, swayed, clung to the grating. “Judge Crane is—outside,” he finished, and then sank limply into a chair.... ”

“ And while I was thinking it over, and thinking sometimes these men that claimed they'd got a point of view were really lunatic, Craney came back. He must have had three hundred natives following him, and they camped on the beach and seemed to rejoice, for they danced and sang most of the night, while he and I sat on the deck and talked it over,
“This island,” says Craney, “is full of politics. I'll tell you. They had a king lately, and, according to accounts, he was old and fat, and his morals were bad. ”

“ Kline had done it all, for in Norway the men and boys carve a great deal, and very beautifully; and this bowl and spoon had been made for his little sister as he sat by her bedside, and Kline was very proud of them. The feathers on the duck’s head were beautifully done, and the bramble-berries looked pretty enough to eat. But Kline did not once look at them now, for something far prettier lay on the bed, and that was little Sneeflocken.”
“What did they call her that for?” said Carl. ”

“ The snow-birds are warm in our arms during the long night, for we have plenty of good clothes all the year round.’
“The beeches heard this speech, but were too frost-bound to make any answer.”
“What became of the discontented pine cone?” said Carl. “Did he throw himself into the fiord?”
“Yes,” said the cone,—“at least one night he tried to. But he fell on the shore instead—just dropped down at the foot of the fir tree; and there Kline found him one day, and picked him up and carried him into the house to show Flocken—he was such a large one. ”

“ Crane said, mildly; "the messages are not easy to get, nor are they concise and clear, like a telegram. Only occasionally does one get through, and then if it is informative we are duly grateful,—and not dissatisfied and clamoring for more."
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Crane; I am inexperienced, but I assure you I am not a scoffer. And of course, I believe your statements."
"Of course!" exclaimed Mrs. Crane, a little [Pg 65] crisply. "Surely we would not invent such a story!"
"No, indeed," said Shelby. "It is strange, you must admit. Have you had any further communications from Peter?" ”

“ Knös had his sword of fifteen hundredweights at his side, and with it he cut off all the troll's heads. But the fifteen hundredweights were half-an-ounce short, and the heads grew on again, and the troll took the princess, and carried her off with him.
One day as Knös was going along, he met a man carrying a church on his back. "You are a strong man, you are!" said Knös. "No, I am not strong," said he, "but Knös at the king's court, he is strong; for he can take steel and iron, and weld them together with his hands as though they were clay." ”

“ Mrs. Kronen saying nothing, smiling more and more without moving her face, growing bigger and stronger and taller as Mr. Corrie grumbled and Mr. Kronen fidgeted, cross and disappointed by the hall fire and then suddenly lifting her head and singing, a great flourish of clear strong notes filling the hall and pealing up through the house as she swept into the drawing-room.
Singing song after song to her own loud accompaniment, great emphatic sweeps of song, so that everyone came and sat about in the room listening and waiting, the men staring at the back of her head as she sat at the piano. ”

“ A change had come over the Celtic visage of the old man. He now seemed all eagerness; his eyes glowed.
"We'll let them fight," he answered stalwartly. "I can't put up with it any longer. I've stood this damned Swede till I'm sick. We'll let them fight."
VI THE men prepared to go out of doors. The Easterner was so nervous that he had great difficulty in getting his arms into the sleeves of his new leather-coat. As the cowboy drew his fur-cap down over his ears his hands trembled. In fact, Johnnie and old Scully were the only ones who displayed no agitation. ”

“ Crane. This was the sewing-room, you know. There’s Augusta’s chair, which she insisted was comfortable.”
“Thank you.” Mrs. Crane sat down, took off her gloves, and tucked wisps of damp hair up under her crocheted hat. Her bleak, plain face wore an expression of grievance.
“I’ve come without my husband’s knowledge, Doctor St. Peter, to ask you what you think can be done about our rights in the Outland patent. You know how my husband’s health has crippled us financially, and we never know when his trouble may come on worse again. ”