CHAPTER V

THE DOCTOR

The next day was Sunday. Ivan took Felix and Raune through the workmen's colony to show them the dwelling-houses, which were cl.u.s.tered together like a village. This village had been made by Ivan's father. The district had been formerly occupied by the very poorest, who eat nothing but potatoes; but now the miners who lived here were well-fed and well-lodged. Each pitman had his own cottage and fruit-garden.

When the three men came to the house in which Evila lived they stood still and looked into the little yard beyond. They felt obliged to do so, first, because the door stood open, and secondly, because in the yard a scene was going on of which they were unseen spectators.

Peter Saffran was beating Evila. The lover held his betrothed by her long black hair, which fell over her shoulders nearly to the ground.

He had the rich ma.s.ses gathered up in his left hand and wound round his wrist, while in his right hand he had a thick plaited cord with which he struck the poor girl over the shoulders, neck, and back. As he did so, his eyes expanded until nearly all the white was visible, his eyebrows almost touched one another, his countenance grew white with rage, and through his open lips his white teeth looked like those of an infuriated tiger. At each blow of the rope he growled out--

"So you will have your own way, will you? You will defy me, will you?"

The girl made no protest against her lover's violence. She did not cry, neither did she beg him to spare her. She pressed her ap.r.o.n to her lips, and looked at her cruel persecutor with eyes full of the most divine compa.s.sion.

"What a beast!" cried Felix. "And he is her lover!"

"Just so," replied Ivan, indifferently.

"But you should interfere; you should not allow that pretty child to be ill-used by the savage."

Ivan shrugged his shoulders. "He has the right; she is his betrothed, and if I were to interfere he would beat her more. Besides, don't you see he has been at the brandy flask? There would be no use in reasoning with him."

"Well, I shall reason with him to some purpose," returned Felix. "I am not going to stand by and see that pretty creature beaten."

"You will do no good, I warn you. The underground laborer has no respect for men in black coats."

"We shall soon see as to that. Do me the favor to call out 'doctor' as soon as you see me take the fellow by his arm."

As he spoke, the elegantly attired Felix rushed across the narrow pa.s.sage which led to the yard, and confronted the infuriated savage.

"You brute!" he cried. "Let go that girl. Why do you beat her?"

Saffran answered phlegmatically, "What is that to you? She is my betrothed." He smelled fearfully of brandy.

"Ah, so you are thinking of marrying, are you?" returned Felix, looking at the Hercules, to whose shoulder he hardly reached. "And how is it that you are not on military service, my friend?"

The cord slipped from Peter's hand. "I could not pa.s.s," he said, in a low voice. "I have it in black and white. I am not fit."

"Could not pa.s.s--not fit--when you can use your arms so well? Who was the upright doctor that gave you that certificate in black and white?

Such muscles--" He touched with the tips of his gray gloves the starting muscles on the brawny arm.

"Doctor!" called out Ivan.

When Peter heard this exclamation, and felt the pressure of Felix's fingers, he let go his hold of Evila's hair. She was free.

"You just wait till to-morrow, young man," continued Felix, shaking his cane before Peter's nose--"till to-morrow, and you shall have a second examination. I shall be curious to find out what is the secret impediment which makes _you_ unfit to serve your country. That is my business here."

Peter began suddenly to squint.

Felix burst out laughing. "Two can play that game, young man," and he, too, fell to squinting. "I shall pay you a visit to-morrow."

At this Peter took to his heels, and making one rush of it, was soon over the wall of the yard, and never ceased running until he reached the wood.

Ivan was astonished at the result of Felix's interference. He, who was twice as strong mentally and physically as this effeminate town-bred man, would have been routed signally, and behold, the weak one in gray gloves had chased the savage from the field, and was master of the situation! He felt vexed, yet he wished to conceal his vexation. He saw Felix calmly conversing with Evila, whose deliverer he had been.

Ivan was not going to stand open-mouthed looking at the hero.

"Let us go on," he said to Raune. "Herr Kaulmann can follow us if he wishes."

Herr Kaulmann was not inclined to continue his walk. A full hour afterwards, when they were returning, he met them. He said he had been looking everywhere for them without effect. He had done a good morning's work in their absence. Finding himself alone in the yard with the girl, he had spoken to her in a sympathizing tone.

"My poor child, what did you do to that brute, that he should ill-use you so cruelly?"

The girl dried her eyes with the corner of her ap.r.o.n and made an effort to smile. It was a piteous attempt, tragic in its effort to hide her sufferings.

"Oh, sir, the whole thing was only a joke. He only pretended to strike me."

"A nice joke! Look at the welts his blows have made."

He took from his pocket a little case, which held his pocket-comb, a dandified affair with a small looking-gla.s.s, which he held before her eyes.

Evila reddened over face and neck when she saw the disfiguring marks of her lover's affection. She spoke with some anger in her voice--

"Sir, you have been very kind, and I will tell you all about it. I have a little brother who is a cripple. As soon as father died mother married again. Her husband was a drunkard, and when he was tipsy he would beat us and tear my hair. Once he threw my brother, who was only three years old, down a height, and since then he has been crippled.

His bones are bent and weak, and he has to go on crutches; his breath, too, is affected; he can hardly breathe from asthma, and this was stepfather's doing. But that did not soften him; on the contrary, he persecuted the poor baby, and it was ten times worse after mother died. How many blows I have had to bear, and glad I was to get them if I could only spare the child! At last stepfather fell from the shaft; he was drunk, and he broke his neck. A good thing it was, too; and since then we have lived alone, and what I earn does for us both. But now I am going to marry Peter, and Peter hates my poor crippled brother. He says he must go out and beg; that an object like him on crutches could stand at the church-door on Sundays, and in the market on week-days, and get pence enough to support himself. Oh, it is shameful of him! And to-day we had a quarrel about it. He came to take me to church, where we were to be called for the third time. I was nearly ready, but I said I should first give my little brother some warm milk, and I went to fetch it. The boy was sitting on the doorstep waiting for it.

"'Warm milk!' cried Peter, in a rage. 'I will give him what will make him fat!' and then he struck the child and tore at his ear as if he would tear it from his head. The child has a peculiarity--strange for a child--he never cries, although you might beat him to death. He opens his eyes and his mouth, but says nothing, and gives out no sound. I implored Peter to let the poor thing alone, for I loved him.

This set him in a horrible rage.

"'Then let the dwarf go packing!' he screamed. 'Give him a beggar's wallet, and let him beg from door to door; there never was a more unsightly cripple than he is, so let him bring home something for his keep, the scarecrow!'"

The tears ran down the girl's face as she told this.

"How can he help being so ugly and deformed?" she went on. "It was not G.o.d who made him so, it was stepfather; and so I told Peter, and that I would rather he would beat me than that he should touch the child.

"'And I will beat you,' he said, 'if you say another word'; and then he seized hold of the child and kicked him. 'Get out of my sight, you little monster of ugliness!' he said. 'Go to the church-door and beg, or I will eat you.' And he made such a horrible face that my poor little brother shrieked with fright. I could not stand seeing him tortured in this way. I took him from him, and would have covered him up in my arms, but he ran and hid himself in the chimney. I _was_ very angry.

"'If you torment him like this,' I said, 'I shall break with you.'

"Then he seized me by my hair and fell to beating me, as you saw. Now he will do it every day."

"No, no," returned Felix. "The fellow will have to serve his term; a muscular giant like him cannot shirk military duty. If every one did that, who the deuce would defend the country and the emperor? It cannot be winked at--"

"Then are you really a doctor?" said Evila, doubting.

"Of course I am, when I say I am."