"I wonder Mr. —— did not tell us." Again I failed to hear the name.
"For a very good reason, I suppose. He did not know."
"He is dead in love with her."
"Oh, you are so romantic!" said the other, whom I took from her figure and her feebleness to be the elder of the two.
"No; but any one can tell that at a glance."
"What a pity he could not marry her. Then we should be sure to see her as a bride."
The other laughed. "What an idea! We have nothing fit to go even to the church in."
"Why, we could go in the gallery. Oh, this bundle is so heavy! I don't believe I can ever get there to-day."
"Oh, yes, you can. Now come on. Don't give up. Here, rest it on the fence a moment."
As the lame one attempted to lift the bundle to rest it on the fence, it slipped to the ground, and she gave a little exclamation of fear.
"Oh, dear! suppose it should get soiled!"
I stepped forward and lifted it for her, and to my surprise found it very heavy. Then, as they thanked me, it occurred to me to offer to carry the bundle for them to the street car for which I supposed them bound. There was a little demur, and I added, "I am at Mrs. Kale's also. I have just come." This appeared to relieve one of them at least, but the other said, "Oh, but we are not going to the street car. We don't ride in street cars."
"Yes; it is so unhealthy," said the younger one. "People catch all sorts of diseases on the car."
Thinking them rather airy, I was about to hand the bundle back, but as I was going their way I offered to carry the bundles for both of them as far as I was going. This proved to be quite twenty blocks, for I could not in decency return the bundles. So we went on together, I feeling at heart rather ashamed to be lugging two large bundles through the streets for two very shabby-looking old women whose names I did not know. We soon, however, began to talk, and I drew out from them a good deal about Mrs. Kale and her kindness. Also, that they had seen much better days, to which one of them particularly was very fond of referring. It seemed that they had lived East—they carefully guarded the exact place—and had once had interests in a railroad which their father had built and largely owned. They were manifestly anxious to make this clearly understood. After his death they had lived on their dividends, until, on a sudden, the dividends had stopped. They found that the railroad with which their road connected had passed into new hands—had been "bought up" by a great syndicate, their lawyer had informed them, and refused any longer to make traffic arrangements with the road. This had destroyed the value of their property, but they had refused to sell their holdings at the low price offered—"As we probably ought to have done," sighed one of them.
"Not at all! I am glad we didn't," asserted the other.
"Well, sister, we got nothing—we lost everything, didn't we?"
"I don't know. I am only glad that we held out. That man knows that he robbed us."
"Well, that doesn't help us."
"Yes, it does. It helps me to know that he knows it."
"Who was it?" I asked.
"Oh, there was a syndicate. I only know the names of two of them—a man named Argand, and a man named Canter. And our lawyer was named McSheen."
Argand was a name which I recalled in connection with Mr. Poole's interest in the Railways in the case I have mentioned.
"Well, you held on to your stock. You have it now, then?" I foresaw a possible law-case against Argand, and wondered if he was the owner of the Argand Estate, which I had already heard of twice since my arrival.
"No," said one of them, "they bought up the stock of all the other people, and then they did something which cut us out entirely. What was it they did, sister?"
"Reorganized."
"And then we came on here to see about it, and spent everything else that we had in trying to get it back, but we lost our case. And since then——"
"Well, sister, we are keeping the gentleman. Thank you very much," said the younger of the two quickly, to which her sister added her thanks as well. I insisted at first on going further with them, but seeing that they were evidently anxious to be rid of me, I gave them their bundles and passed on.
Among the boarders one of those I found most interesting was a young man named Kalender, by whom I sat at the first meal after my arrival, and with whom I struck up an acquaintance. He was a reporter for a morning paper of very advanced methods, and he was pre-eminently a person fitted for his position: a cocky youth with a long, keen nose and a bullet head covered with rather wiry, black hair, heavy black brows over keen black eyes, and an ugly mouth with rather small yellowish teeth. He had as absolute confidence in himself as any youth I ever met, and he either had, or made a good pretence of having, an intimate knowledge of not only all the public affairs of the city, but of the private affairs of every one in the city. Before we had finished smoking our cigarettes he had given me what he termed "the lay out" of the entire community, and by his account it was "the rottenest —— town in the universe"—a view I subsequently had reason to rectify—and he proposed to get out of it as soon as he could and go to New York, which, to his mind, was the only town worth living in in the country (he having, as I learned later, lived there just three weeks).
His paper, he said frankly, paid only for sensational articles, and was just then "jumping on a lot of the high-flyers, because that paid," but "they" gave him a latitude to write up whatever he pleased, because they knew he could dress up anything—from a murder to a missionary meeting. "Oh! it don't matter what you write about," said he airily, "so you know how to do it"—a bit of criticism suggestive of a better-known critic.
I was much impressed by his extraordinary and extensive experience. In the course of our conversation I mentioned casually the episode of the delayed train and the private car.
"The Argands' car, you say?"
I told him that that was what some one had said.
"That would make a good story," he declared. "I think I'll write that up—I'd have all the babies dying and the mothers fainting and an accident just barely averted by a little girl waving a red shawl, see—while the Argand car dashed by with a party eating and drinking and throwing champagne-bottles out of the window. But I've got to go and see the Mayor to ascertain why he appointed the new city comptroller, and then I've got to drop by the theatre and give the new play a roast—so I'll hardly have time to roast those Argands and Leighs, though I'd like to do it to teach them not to refuse me round-trip passes next time I ask for them. I tell you what you do," he added, modestly, "you write it up—you say you have written for the press?"
"Oh! yes, very often—and for the magazines. I have had stories published in——"
"Well, that's all right." (Kalender was not a good listener.) "I'll look it over and touch it up—put the fire in it and polish it off. You write it up, say—about a column. I can cut it down all right—and I'll call by here for it about eleven, after the theatre."
It was a cool request—coolly made; but I was fool enough to accede to it. I felt much aggrieved over the treatment of us by the railway company, and was not sorry to air my grievance at the same time that I secured a possible opening. I accordingly spent all the afternoon writing my account of the inconvenience and distress occasioned the travelling public by the inconsiderateness of the railway management, discussing, by the way, the fundamental principle of ownership in quasi-public corporations, and showing that all rights which they claimed were derived from the people. I mentioned no names and veiled my allusions; but I paid a tribute to the kind heart of the Angel of Mercy who succored the children. I spent some hours at my composition and took much pride in it when completed. Then, as I had not been out at all to see the town, I addressed the envelope in which I had placed my story to Mr. Kalender, and leaving it for him, walked out into the wilderness.
On my return the paper was gone.
Next morning I picked up one paper after another, but did not at first find my contribution. An account of a grand ball the night before, at which an extraordinary display of wealth must have been made, was given the prominent place in most of them. But as I did not know the persons whose costumes were described with such Byzantine richness of vocabulary, I passed it by. The only thing referring to a railway journey was a column article, in a sensational sheet called The Trumpet, headed, BRUTALITY OF MILLIONAIRE BANKER. RAILWAY PRESIDENT STARVES POOR PASSENGERS. There under these glaring headlines, I at last discovered my article, so distorted and mutilated as to be scarcely recognizable. The main facts of the delay and its cause were there as I wrote them. My discussion of derivative rights was retained. But the motive was boldly declared to be brutal hatred of the poor. And to make it worse, the names of both Mr. Leigh and Mrs. Argand were given as having been present in person, gloating over the misery they had caused, while a young lady, whose name was not given, had thrown scraps out of the window for starving children and dogs to scramble for.
To say that I was angry expresses but a small part of the truth. The allusion to the young lady had made my blood boil. What would she think if she should know I had had a hand in that paper? I waited at red heat for my young man, and had he appeared before I cooled down, he would have paid for the liberty he took with me. When he did appear, however, he was so innocent of having offended me that I could scarcely bear to attack him.
"Well, did you see our story?" he asked gayly.
"Yes—your story—I saw——"
"Well, I had to do a little to it to make it go," he said condescendingly, "but you did very well—you'll learn."
"Thank you. I don't want to learn that," I said hotly, "I never saw anything so butchered. There was not the slightest foundation for all that rot—it was made up out of whole cloth." I was boiling about Miss Leigh.
"Pooh-pooh! My dear boy, you'll never make an editor. I never fake an interview," he said virtuously. "Lots of fellows do; but I don't. But if a man will give me two lines, I can give him two columns—and good ones, too. Why, we had two extras—what with that and the grand ball last night. The newsboys are crying it all over town."
"I don't care if they are. I don't want to be an editor if one has to tell such atrocious lies as that. But I don't believe editors have to do that, and I know reputable editors don't. Why, you have named a man who was a hundred miles away."
He simply laughed.
"Well, I'm quite willing to get the credit of that paper. That's business. We're trying to break down the Leigh interests, and the Argands are mixed up with 'em. Coll McSheen was in the office last night. He's counsel for the Argands, but—you don't know Coll McSheen?"
"I do not," I said shortly.
"He's deep. You know you write better than you talk," he added patronizingly. "I tell you what I'll do—if you'll write me every day on some live topic——"
"I'll never write you a line again on any topic, alive or dead, unless you die yourself, when I'll write that you are the biggest liar I ever saw except my Jeams."
I had expected he would resent my words, but he did not. He only laughed, and said, "That's a good line. Write on that."
I learned later that he had had a slight raise of salary on the paper he palmed off as his. I could only console myself with the hope that Miss Leigh would not see the article.
But Miss Leigh did see the appreciation of her father in the writing of which I had had a hand, and it cost me many a dark hour of sad repining.
X
A NEW GIRL
This is how the young lady heard of it. Miss Leigh had been at home but an hour or two and had only had time to change her travelling costume for a suit of light blue with a blue hat to match, which was very becoming to her, and order the carriage to drive down and get her father, when a visitor was announced: Miss Milly McSheen, an old schoolmate—and next moment a rather large, flamboyante girl of about Miss Leigh's own age or possibly a year or two older, bounced into the room as if she had been shot in out of one of those mediæval engines which flung men into walled towns.
She began to talk volubly even before she was actually in the room; she talked all through her energetic if hasty embrace of her friend, and all the time she was loosening the somewhat complicated fastening of a dotted veil which, while it obscured, added a certain charm to a round, florid, commonplace, but good-humored face in which smiled two round, shallow blue eyes.
"Well, my dear," she began while yet outside the door, "I thought you never were coming back! Never! And I believe if I hadn't finally made up my mind to get you back you would have stayed forever in that nasty, stuck-up city of Brotherly Love."
Miss Leigh a little airily observed that that title applied to Philadelphia, and she had only passed through Philadelphia on a train one night.
"Oh! well, it was some kind of love, I'll be bound, and some one's else brother, too, that kept you away so long."
"No, it was not—not even some one else's brother," replied Miss Leigh.
"Oh! for Heaven's sake, don't tell me that's wrong. Why, I've been practising that all summer. It sounds so grammatical—so New Yorkish."
"I can't help it. It may be New Yorkish, but it isn't grammatical," said Miss Leigh. "But I never expected to get back earlier. My Aunt had to look into some of her affairs in the East and had to settle some matters with a lawyer down South, a friend of my father's—an old gentleman who used to be one of her husband's partners and is her trustee or something, and I had to wait till they got matters settled."
"Well, I'm glad you are here in time. I was so afraid you wouldn't be, that I got Pa to telegraph and have your car put on the president's special train that was coming through and had the right-of-way. I told him that I didn't see that because your father had resigned from the directory was any reason why you shouldn't be brought on the train."
"Were we indebted to you for that attention?" Eleanor Leigh's voice had a tone of half incredulity.
"Yep—I am the power behind the throne just at present. Pa and old Mr. Canter have buried the hatchet and are as thick as thieves since their new deal, and Jim Canter told me his car was coming through on a special. Oh! you ought to hear him the way he says, My car, and throws his chest out! So I said I wanted him to find out where you were on the road—on what train, I mean—and pick you up, and he said he would."
"Oh! I see," said Miss Leigh, looking somewhat annoyed.
"He did, didn't he?"
"Yes."
"Well, you know Jim Canter is a very promising young man, much more so than he is a fulfiller. What are you so serious about? You look as——"
"Nothing—only I don't wish to be beholden to—I was just wondering what right we have to stop trains full of people who have paid for their tickets and——"
"What!" exclaimed the other girl in astonishment, "what right? Why, our fathers are directors, aren't they—at least, my father is—and own a block of the stock that controls——?"
"Yes; but all these people—who pay—and who had no breakfast?"
"Oh! don't you worry about them—they'll get along somehow—and if they pay they'll look out for themselves without your doing it. My way is to make all I can out of them and enjoy it while I can—that's what Pa says."
"Yes," said Miss Leigh acquiescingly, "but I'm not sure that it's right."
"You've been reading that man's articles," declared Miss McSheen. "I know—I have, too—everybody has—all the girls. I am a socialist—aren't they terribly striking! He's so good-looking. Pa says he's a Jew and an anarchist, and ought to be in jail."
"Are you speaking of Mr. Wolffert?"
"Yes, of course. Now you need not make out you don't know him; because they say——"
"Yes, I know him very well," said Miss Leigh, so stiffly that her guest paused and changed her tone.
"Well, anyhow, my dear, you are just in time. We are going to have the biggest thing we've ever had in this town. I've almost died laughing over it already."
"What is it?"
"Wait. I'm going to tell you all about it. You know it was all my idea. Harriet Minturn claims the whole credit for it now that I've made it go—says she first suggested it, and I assure you, my dear, she never opened her head about it till I had all the girls wild about it, and had arranged for the costumes and had gotten the Count to promise——"
"What is it?" interrupted her hostess again, laughing.
"Wait, my dear, I'm going to tell you all about it. The Count's a socialist, too. He says he is—but you mustn't tell that; he told me in the strictest confidence. Well, the Count's to go as courtier of the court of—what's the name of that old king or emperor, or whatever he was, that conquered that country—you know what I mean——"
"No, indeed, I do not—and I haven't the least idea what you are talking about."
"Oh! pshaw! I know perfectly well, and you do, too. The Count bet me I'd forget it and I bet him a gold cigar-holder I wouldn't—what is his name? Won't the Count look handsome with lace ruffles and gold braid all over his chest and coat-tails, and a cocked hat. He's been showing me the way they dance in his country. I almost died laughing over it—only it makes me so dizzy, they never reverse—just whirl and whirl and whirl. You know he's a real count? Yes, my father's taken the trouble to hunt that up. He said he wasn't 'going to let a d——d dago come around me without anybody knowing who or what he is.' Ain't that like Pa?"
"I—I—don't think I ever met your father," said Eleanor stiffly.
"Oh! that's a fact. Well, 'tis—'tis just exactly like him. As soon as the Count began to come around our house—a good deal—I mean, really, quite a good deal—you understand?" said the girl, tossing her blonde head, "what must Pa do but go to work and hunt him up. He thinks Jim Canter is a winner, but I tell him Jimmy's bespoke." She looked at her hostess archly.
"What did he find out?" inquired Miss Leigh coldly, "and how did he do it?"
"Why, he just ran him down," explained the girl easily, "just as he does anybody he wants to know about—put a man on him, you know."
"Oh! I see." Miss Leigh froze up a little; but the other girl did not notice it.
"Only this one was somebody on the other side, of course, and he found out that he's all right. He's a real count. He's the third son of Count Pushkin, who was—let me see—a counsellor of his emperor, the Emperor of Sweden."
"I didn't know they had an emperor in Sweden. He's a new one."
"Haven't they? Oh! well, maybe it was the King of Sweden, or the Emperor of Russia—I don't know—they are all alike to me. I never could keep them apart, even at Miss de Pense's. I only know he's a real count, and I won a hundred dollars from Pa on a bet that he was. And he hated to pay it! He bet that he was a cook or a barber. And I bet he wasn't. And, oh! you know it's an awfully good joke on him—for he was a waiter in New York for a while."
"A what?"
"A waiter—oh, just for a little while after he came over—before his remittances arrived. But I made Pa pay up, because he said cook or barber. I put it in this hat, see, ain't it a wonder?" She turned herself around before a mirror and admired her hat which was, indeed as Miss Leigh was forced to admit, "a wonder."
"You know it's just like the hat Gabrielle Lightfoot wears in the 'Star of the Harem' when she comes in in the balloon. I got her to let me copy it—exactly."
"You did? How did you manage that?"
"Why, you see, Jimmy Canter knows her, and he asked Harriet and me to supper to meet her, and I declare she nearly made me die laughing—you know she's a real sweet girl—Jimmy says she——"
"Who chaperoned you?" asked Miss Leigh, as she began to put on her gloves.
"Chaperon? My dear, that's where the fun came in—we didn't have any chaperon. I pretended that Harriet and the Count were married and called her Countess, and she was so flattered at being given the title that she was pleased to death—though you know, she's really dead in love with Jimmy Canter, and he hardly looks at her. If he's in love with any one—except Mr. James Canter, Jr.—it's with some one else I know." She nodded her head knowingly.
"I'm afraid I have to go now," said Miss Leigh, "my father expects me to come for him," she glanced at a jewelled watch. She had stiffened up slightly.
"Well, of course, you'll come?"
"To what?"
"To our ball—that's what it is, you know, though it's for a charity, and we make others pay for it. Why shouldn't they? I haven't decided yet what charity. Harriet wants it to be for a home for cats. You'd know she'd want that now, wouldn't you? She'll be in there herself some day. But I'm not going to let it go for anything she wants. She's claiming now that she got it up, and I'm just going to show her who did. I'm thinking of giving it to that young preacher you met in the country two years ago and got so interested in 't you got Dr. Capon to bring him here as his assistant."
"You couldn't give it to a better cause," said Miss Leigh. "I wonder how he is coming on?"
"I guess you know all right. But Pa says," pursued Miss McSheen without heeding further the interruption, "we are ruining the poor, and the reason they won't work is that we are always giving them money. You know they're striking on our lines—some of them? I haven't decided yet what to give it to. Oh! you ought to see the Doctor. He's the gayest of the gay. He came to see me the other day. It almost made me die laughing. You know he's dead in love with your Aunt. I used to think it was you; but Pa says I'm always thinking everybody is in love with you—even the Count—but he says—However——"
"I'll tell you what!" said Miss Leigh suddenly, "I'll come to the ball if you'll give the proceeds to Mr. Marvel for his poor people."
"Done! See there! what did I tell you! I thought you weren't so pious for nothing all on a sudden——"
"Milly, you're a goose," said Miss Leigh, picking up her sunshade.
"I'm a wise one, though—what was it our teacher used to tell us about the geese giving the alarm somewhere? But I don't care. I'm the treasurer and pay the bills. Pa says the man that holds the bag gets the swag. Bring your father. We'll get something grand out of him. He always gives to everything. I'll call him up and tell him to be sure and come. You know they've landed the deal. Pa says every one of them has made a pile. Your father might have made it, too, if he'd come in, but I think he was fighting them or something, I don't quite understand it—anyhow it's all done now, and I'm going to hold Pa up for the pearl necklace he promised to give me. There's a perfect beauty at Setter & Stoneberg's, only seventeen thousand, and I believe they'll take ten if it's planked down in cold cash. Pa says the way to get a man is to put down the cold cash before him and let him fasten his eye on it. If he's a Jew he says he'll never let it go. I tell him by the same token he must be a Jew himself; because he holds on to all the money he ever lays his eye on."
"Can I take you down-town anywhere?" inquired Miss Leigh, in a rather neutral voice.
"No, my dear, just let me fix my hat. I have to go the other way. In fact, I told the Count that I was going up to the park for a little spin, and he asked if he couldn't come along. I didn't want him, of course—men are so in the way in the morning, don't you think so? Is that quite right?" She gave her head a toss to test the steadiness of her hat.
"Quite," said Miss Leigh.
"Well, good-by. I'll count on you then. Oh! I tell you—among the entertainments, the Count is going to perform some wonderful sleight-of-hand tricks with cards. My dear, he's a magician! He can do anything with cards. Heavens! it's after one. The Count—good-by—good-by."
And as Miss Leigh entered her victoria the young lady rushed off, up the street, straining her eyes in the direction of the park.
That night "the ball," as Miss McSheen called it, came off and was a huge success, as was duly chronicled in all the morning papers next day with an elaboration of description of millinery in exact proportion to the degree of prominence of the wearer in the particular circle in which the editor or his reporter moved or aspired to move. Mrs. Argand stood first in "Wine-colored velvet, priceless lace," of the sort that reporters of the female sex deem dearest, and "diamonds and rubies" that would have staggered Sinbad, the sailor. Miss McSheen ran her a close second, in "rose-colored satin, and sapphires," spoken of as "priceless heirlooms." Miss Leigh shone lower down in "chiffon, lace, and pearls of great price." So they went columns-full, all priceless, all beautiful, all superlative, till superlatives were exhausted, and the imagination of the reporters ran riot in an excess of tawdry color and English.
Among the men especially lauded were, first, a certain Mr. James Canter, son and partner of "the famous Mr. Canter, the capitalist and financier," who gave promise of rivalling his father in his "notorious ability," and, secondly, a Count Pushkin, the "distinguished scion of a noble house of international reputation who was honoring the city with his distinguished presence, and was generally credited with having led captive the heart of one of the city's fairest and wealthiest daughters." So ran the record. And having nothing to do, I read that morning the account and dwelt on the only name I recognized, the young lady of the white chiffon and pearls, and wondered who the men were whose names stood next to hers.
XI
ELEANOR LEIGH
Miss Leigh also read the papers that morning and with much amusement till in one of them—the most sensational of all the morning journals—she came on an article which first made her heart stop beating and then set it to racing with sheer anger. To think that such a slander could be uttered! She would have liked to make mince-meat of that editor. He was always attacking her father.
A little later she began to think of the rest of the article! What was the truth? Did they have the right to stop the train and hold it back? This sort of thing was what a writer whom she knew denied in a series of papers which a friend of hers, a young clergyman who worked among the poor, had sent her and which the press generally was denouncing.
She had for some time been reading these papers that had been appearing in the press periodically. They were written by a person who was generally spoken of as "a Jew," but who wrote with a pen which had the point of a rapier, and whose sentences ate into the steely plate of artificial convention like an acid. One of the things he had said had stuck in her memory. "As the remains of animalculæ of past ages furnish, when compressed in almost infinite numbers, the lime-food on which the bone and muscle of the present race of cattle in limestone regions are built up, so the present big-boned race of the wealthy class live on the multitudinous class of the poor."
The summer before she had met the writer of these articles and he had made an impression on her which had not been effaced. She had not analyzed her feelings to ascertain how far this impression was due to his classical face, his deep, luminous eyes, and his impassioned manner, yet certain it is that all of these had struck her.
Perhaps, I should give just here a little more of Miss Eleanor Leigh's history as I came to know of it later on. How I came to know of it may or may not be divulged later. But, at least, I learned it. She was the daughter of a gentleman who, until she came and began to tyrannize over him, gave up all of his time and talents to building up enterprises of magnitude and amassing a fortune. He had showed abilities and ambition at college "back East," where he came from, and when he first struck for the West and started out in life, it was in a region and amid surroundings which were just becoming of more than local importance as they a little later grew under the guidance of men of action like himself, to be of more than sectional importance. The new West as it was then had called to him imperiously and he had responded. Flinging himself into the current which was just beginning to take on force, he soon became one of the pilots of the development which, changing a vast region where roamed Indians and buffalo into a land of cities and railways, shortly made its mark on the Nation and, indeed, on the world, and he was before long swept quite away by it, leaving behind all the intellectual ambitions and dreams he had ever cherished and giving himself up soul and body to the pleasure he got out of his success as an organizer and administrator of large enterprises. Wealth at first was important to him, then it became, if not unimportant, at least of secondary importance to the power he possessed. Then it became of importance again—indeed of supreme importance; for the power he wielded was now dependent on wealth and great wealth. His associates were all men of large interests, and only one with similar interests could lead them. New conditions had come about of late and new methods which he could neither employ nor contend against successfully.
As he looked back on it later it appeared a feverish dream through which he had passed. Its rewards were undeniable: luxury, reputation and power beyond anything he had ever conceived of. Yet what had he not sacrificed for them! Everything that he had once held up before his mind as a noble ambition: study, reading, association with the great and noble of all time; art and love of art; appreciation of all except wealth that men have striven for through the ages; friendship—domestic joy—everything except riches and the power they bring. For as he thought over his past in his growing loneliness he found himself compelled to admit that he had sacrificed all the rest. He had married a woman he loved and admired. He had given her wealth and luxury instead of himself, and she had pined and died before he awakened to the tragic fact. He had grieved for her, but he could not conceal from himself the brutal fact that she had ceased years before to be to him as necessary as his business. She had left him one child. Two others had died in infancy, and he had mourned for them and sympathized with her; but he never knew for years, and until too late, how stricken she had been over their loss. The child she had left him had in some way taken hold on him and had held it even against himself. She had so much of himself in her that he himself could see the resemblance; his natural kindness, his good impulses, his wilfulness, his resolution and ambition to lead and to succeed in all he undertook.
Even from the earliest days when she was left to him, Mr. Leigh was made aware by Eleanor that he had something out of the ordinary to deal with. The arrangement by which, on the death of her mother, she was taken by her half-aunt, Mrs. Argand, to be cared for, "because the poor child needed a mother to look after her," fell through promptly when the little thing who had rebelled at the plan appeared, dusty and dishevelled but triumphant, in her father's home that first evening, as he was preparing, after leaving his office, to go and see her. It was doubtless an auspicious moment for the little rebel; for her father was at the instant steeped in grief and loneliness and self-reproach. He had worked like fury all day to try to forget his loss; but his return home to his empty house had torn open his wounds afresh, and the echoing of his solitary foot-fall on the stair and in the vacant rooms had almost driven him to despair. Every spot—every turn was a red-hot brand on the fresh wound. No man had loved his wife more; but he awoke now when too late to the torturing fact that he had left her much alone. He had worked for her, leaving the enjoyment to the future; and she had died before the future came, in that desolate present which was to be linked forever to the irretrievable past. It was at this moment that he heard a familiar step outside his door. His heart almost stopped to listen. It could not be Eleanor—she was safe at her Aunt's, blocks away, awaiting the fulfilment of his promise to come to see her—and it was now dark. Could it be a delusion? His over-wrought brain might have fancied it. Next second the door burst open, and in rushed Eleanor with a cry—"Oh! Papa!"
"Why, Nelly! How did you come!"
"Slipped out and ran away! You did not come and I could not stay."
When the emotion of the first greeting was over, Mr. Leigh, under the strong sense of what he deemed his duty to the child, and also to the dear dead—which had led him at first to make the sacrifice of yielding to his sister-in-law's urgency, began to explain to the little girl the impropriety of her action, and the importance of her returning to her Aunt, when she had been so kind. But he found it a difficult task. Mr. Leigh believed in discipline. He had been brought up in a rigid school, and he knew it made for character; but it was uphill work with the little girl's arms clasped about his neck and her hot, tear-streaked little face pressed close to his as she pleaded and met his arguments with a promptness and an aptness which astonished him. Moreover, she had a strong advocate in his own heart, and from the first moment when she had burst in on his heart-breaking loneliness he had felt that he could not let her go again if she were unhappy.
"She would not go back," she asserted defiantly. "She hated her Aunt, anyhow—she was a hateful old woman who scolded her servants; and sent her up-stairs to her supper."
When to this her father promptly replied that she must go back, and he would take her, she as promptly changed her note.
"Very well, she would go back; he need not come with her; but she would die."
"Oh, no, you will not die. You will soon grow very fond of her."
"Then I shall grow very worldly, like her," said Miss Precocity.
"What makes you think that?"
"Because she is a worldly old woman—and you said so yourself."
"I said so! When?" demanded her father, with a guilty feeling of vague recollection.
"To Mamma once—when Mamma said something against her husband, you said that, and Mamma said you ought not to say that about her sister—and you said she was only her half-sister, anyhow, and not a bit like her—and now you want to send me back to her as if I were only your half-child."
The father smiled sadly enough as he drew the anxious little face close to his own.
"Oh! no—You are all mine, and my all. I only want to do what is right."
"Mamma wants me to stay with you—so it must be right."
The present tense used by the child struck the father to the heart.
"What makes you think that?" he asked with a sigh. The little girl was quick to catch at the new hope.
"She told me so the day before she died, when I was in the room with her; she said you would be lonely, and I must be a comfort to you."
Mr. Leigh gave a gasp that was almost a groan, and the child flung her arms about his neck.
"And I sha'n't leave you, my all-Papa, unless you drive me; I promised Mamma I would stay and take care of you, and I will. And you won't make me—will you? For I am your all-daughter—You won't, will you?"
"No, d——d if I do!" said the father, catching her to his heart, and trying to smother the oath as it burst from his lips.
As soon as she had quieted down, he went to her Aunt's to make the necessary explanation. He found it not the easiest task, for the good lady had her own ideas and had formed her plans, and the change was a blow to her amour propre. It was, in fact, the beginning of the breach between Mr. Leigh and his sister-in-law which led eventually to the antagonism between them.
"You are going to spoil that child to death!" exclaimed the affronted lady. This Mr. Leigh denied, though in his heart he thought it possible. It was not a pleasant interview, for Mrs. Argand was deeply offended. But Mr. Leigh felt that it was well worth the cost when, on his return home, he was greeted by a cry of joy from the top of the stair where the little girl sat in her dressing gown awaiting him. And when with a cry of joy she came rushing down, Cinderella-like, dropping her slipper in her excitement, and flung herself into his arms, he knew that life had begun for him anew.
Mr. Leigh was quite aware of the truth of Mrs. Argand's prophecy; but he enjoyed the spoiling of his daughter, which she had foretold, and he enjoyed equally the small tyrannies which the child exercised over him, and also the development of her mind as the budding years passed.
"Papa," she said one day, when she had asked him to take her somewhere, and he had pleaded, "business," "why do you go to the office so much?"
"I have to work to make money for my daughter," said her father, stating the first reason that suggested itself.
"Are you not rich enough now?"
"Well, I don't know that I am, with a young lady growing up on my hands," said her father smiling.
"Am I very expensive?" she asked with a sudden little expression of gravity coming over her face.
"No, that you are not, my dear—and if you were, there is no pleasure on earth to me like giving it to you. That is one of my chief reasons for working so steadily, though there are others."
"I have plenty of money," said Eleanor.
"Then you are happier than most people, who don't know when they have plenty."
"Yes—you see, all I have to do when I want anything is to go into a store and ask for it, and tell them I am your daughter, and they let me have it at once."
"Oh ho!" said her father, laughing, "so that is the way you buy things, is it? No wonder you have plenty. Well, you'd better come to me and ask for what you want."
"I think the other is the easier way, and as you say you like to give it to me, I don't see that it makes any difference."
Mr. Leigh decided that he had better explain the difference.
"I hate rich people," said Eleanor suddenly. "They are so vulgar."
"For example?" enquired her father looking with some amusement at the girl whose face had suddenly taken on an expression of severe priggishness.
"Oh! Aunt Sophia and Milly McSheen. They are always talking about their money."
Mr. Leigh's eyes were twinkling.
"You must not talk that way about your Aunt Sophia—she is very fond of you."
"She is always nagging at me—correcting me."
"She wants you to grow up to be a fine woman."
"Like her?" said Miss Eleanor pertly.
Mr. Leigh felt that it was wise to check this line of criticism, and he now spoke seriously.
"You must not be so critical of your Aunt. She is really very fond of you—and she was your mother's half-sister. You must respect her and love her."
"I love her, but I don't like her. She and Milly McSheen are just alike—always boasting of what they have, and do, and running down what others have, and do."
"Oh, well, it takes a great many people to make a world," said Mr. Leigh indulgently. Eleanor felt a want of sympathy and made another bid for it.
"Milly McSheen says that her father is going to be the richest man in this town."
"Ah! who is talking about money now?" said Mr. Leigh, laughing.
"I am not—I am merely saying what she said."
"You must not tell the silly things your friends say."
"No—only to you—I thought you said I must tell you everything. But, of course, if you don't wish me to—I won't."
Mr. Leigh laughed and took her on his knee. He was not quite sure whether she was serious or was only laughing at him, but, as he began to explain, she burst into a peal of merriment over her victory.
In appearance she was like her mother, only he thought her fairer—as fair as he had thought her mother in the days of his first devotion; and her deeper eyes and firmer features were an added beauty; the well-rounded chin was his own. Her eyes, deep with unfathomable depths, and mouth, firm even with its delicate beauty, had come from some ancestor or ancestress who, in some generation past, had faced life in its most exacting form with undaunted resolution and, haply, had faced death with equal calm for some belief that now would scarcely have given an hour's questioning. So, when she grew each year, developing new powers and charm and constancy, he began to find a new interest in life, and to make her more his companion and confidante than he had ever made her mother. He left his business oftener to see her than he had left it to see her mother; he took her oftener with him on his trips, and took more trips, that he might have her company. She sat at the head of his table, and filled her place with an ability that was at once his astonishment and his pride.
At one time, as she changed from a mere child to a young girl, he had thought of marrying again, rather with a view to giving her a guide and counsellor than for any other purpose. Her storminess, however, at the mere suggestion, and much more, her real grief, had led him to defer the plan from time to time, until now she was a young lady, and he could see for himself that she needed neither chaperon nor counsellor. He sometimes smiled to think what the consequences would have been had he taken to wife the soft, kindly, rather commonplace lady whom he had once thought of as his daughter's guardian. A domestic fowl in the clutches of a young eagle would have had an easier time.
One phase alone in her development had puzzled and baffled him. She had gone off one spring to a country neighborhood in another State, where she had some old relatives on her mother's side. Mr. Leigh had been called to Europe on business, and she had remained there until well into the summer. When she returned she was not the same. Some change had taken place in her. She had gone away a rollicking, gay, pleasure-loving, and rather selfish young girl—he was obliged to admit that she was both wilful and self-indulgent. Even his affection for her could not blind his eyes to this, and at times it had given him much concern, for at times there was a clash in which, if he came off victor, he felt it was at a perilous price—that, possibly, of a strain on her obedience. She returned a full-grown woman, thoughtful and self-sacrificing and with an aim—he was glad it was not a mission—and as her aim was to be useful, and she began with him, he accepted it with contentment. She talked freely of her visit; spoke warmly, and indeed, enthusiastically, of those she had met there. Among these were a young country preacher and a friend of his, a young Jew. But, though she spoke of both with respect, the praise she accorded them was so equal that he dismissed from his mind the possibility that she could have been seriously taken with either of them. Possibly, the Jew was the one she was most enthusiastic over, but she spoke of him too openly to cause her father disquietude. Besides, he was a Jew.
The preacher she plainly respected most highly, yet her account of his appearance was too humorous to admit a serious feeling for him, even though she had gotten him called to be one of Dr. Capon's assistants.
What had happened was that the girl, who had only "lain in the lilies and fed on the roses of life," had suddenly been dropped in an out-of-the-way corner in a country neighborhood in an old State, where there were neither lilies nor roses of the metaphorical kind, though a sufficiency of the real and natural kind, with which nature in compensatory mood atones to those who have of the metaphorical sort but thistles and brambles and flinty soil.
When she first landed there, after the very first excitement of being thrown into a wholly new situation, among strangers whom, though her relatives, she had always regarded much as she had regarded geographical places in distant lands, was over, she found herself, as it were, at a loss for occupation. Everything was so quiet and calm. She felt lost and somewhat bored. But after a little time she found occupation in small things, as on looking closely she discovered beauties in Nature which her first glance had failed to catch. The people appeared so novel, so simple, so wholly different from all whom she had known; the excitements and amusements and interests of her life in the city, or at summer watering-places, or in travelling, were not only unknown to them—as unknown as if they were in another planet, but were matters of absolute indifference. Their interest was in their neighbors, in the small happenings about them; and occurrences an hundred miles away were as distant to them as though they had taken place in another era. Among the few notabilities in this rural community was a young clergyman whom she always heard spoken of with respect—as much respect, indeed, as if he had been a bishop. What "Mr. Marvel thought" and what he said was referred to, or was quoted as something to be considered—so much so that she had insensibly formed a picture in her own mind of a quite remarkable looking and impressive person. When, at last, she met John Marvel, what was her amusement to discover, in place of her young Antinous, a stout, strapping young fellow, with rather bristly hair, very near-sighted and awkward, and exceedingly shy, a person as far from a man of the world as a stout, country-bred cart-horse would be from a sleek trick-pony. His timidity in her presence caused her endless amusement, and for lack of some better diversion and partly to scandalize her staid kinswomen, she set herself to tease him in every way that her fertile brain could devise.
Visiting the young clergyman at the time was a friend who came much nearer being in appearance what Eleanor had imagined John Marvel to be: a dark, slender young man with a classical face, but that its lines were stronger and more deeply graven, and unforgettable eyes. He had just come to visit Mr. Marvel and to get a needed rest, John Marvel said. He had been a worker among the poor, and his views were so different from any that Eleanor Leigh had ever heard as to appear almost shocking. He was an educated man, yet he had lived and worked as an artisan. He was a gentleman, yet he denounced vehemently the conditions which produced the upper class. But an even greater surprise awaited her when he announced that he was a Jew.
When John Marvel brought his friend to see Miss Eleanor Leigh, the first impression that she received was one of pleasure. He was so striking and unusual looking—with deep, burning eyes under dark brows. Then she was not sure that she liked him, she even thought she was sensible of a sort of repulsion. She had a feeling as if he were weighing her in his mind and, not approving of her, treated her at times with indifference, at times with a certain disdain. She was conscious of an antagonism as Wolffert showed scorn of conditions and things which she had been brought up to believe almost as much a necessary part of life as air and light. She promptly began to argue with him, but when she found that he usually had the best of the argument, she became more careful how she opened herself to his attack. He aroused in her the feeling of opposition. His scorn of the money-making spirit of the day led her to defend what she secretly held in contempt. And once when he had been inveighing against commercialism that set up Gods of Brass to worship, and declared that it was the old story of Nebuchadnezzar over again—and was the fore-runner to brotherhood with the beasts of the field, she wheeled on him, declaring that it was "only people who had no power to make money who held such views."
"Do you think that I could not make money if I wished to do so?" said Wolffert quietly, with an amused light in his eyes as they rested on her with an expression which was certainly not hostile; for her eagerness had brought warm blood to her cheeks and her eyes were sparkling with the glow of contention.
"Yes, if you were able you would be as rich as a Jew."
A yet more amused look came into Wolffert's eyes.
"Are all Jews rich?" he asked.
"Yes—all who are capable—you know they are."
"No, for I am a Jew and I am not rich," said Wolffert.
"What! You!—You a—Oh, I beg your pardon! I—" she blushed deeply.
"Pray don't apologize—don't imagine that I am offended. Would you be offended if I charged you with coming from a race of poets and philosophers and scientists—of a race that had given the world its literature and its religion?"
She burst out laughing.
"No; but I was such a fool—pray forgive me." She held out her hand and Wolffert took it and pressed it firmly—and this was the beginning of their friendship.
Wolffert walked home slowly that evening, that is, across the fields to the little farmhouse where John Marvel lived. He had food for thought.
When Eleanor Leigh saw John Marvel a few days later she told him of her conversation and the speech she had made to his friend. "You know," said John, "that he is rich or could be, if he chose to go home. His father is very rich."
"He is a new Jew to me," said Eleanor Leigh; "he is quite different from the typical Jew."
"I wonder if there is a typical Jew," questioned John to himself, and this set Eleanor wondering too.
But Eleanor Leigh found other causes for wonder in Wolffert besides the salient fact of his race which she had mentioned to her cousins, and they forced upon her the consciousness that she would have to readjust her ideas of many things as she had been compelled to do in regard to the appearance and aims of this singular people. Her idea of the Israelites had always been curiously connoted with hooked noses, foreign speech of a far from refined type, and a persistent pursuit of shekels by ways generally devious and largely devoted to shops containing articles more or less discarded by other people. Here she found a cultivated gentleman with features, if not wholly classical, at least more regular and refined than those of most young men of her acquaintance; speech so cultivated as to be quite distinguished, and an air and manner so easy and gracious as to suggest to her complete knowledge of the great world. No matter what subject was discussed between them, he knew about it more than any one else, and always threw light on it which gave it a new interest for her. He had a knowledge of the Literature and Art, not only of the ancients, but of most modern nations, and he talked to her of things of which she had never so much as heard. He had not only travelled extensively in Europe, but had travelled in a way to give him an intimate knowledge not merely of the countries, but of the people and customs of the countries which no one she had ever met possessed. He had crossed in the steerage of ocean-liners more than once and had stoked across both to England and the Mediterranean.
"But what made you do it?" she asked. "Did not you find it terrible?"
"Yes—pretty bad." Wolffert was at the moment showing her how tea was made in certain provinces along the Caspian Sea which he had visited not long before. "About as bad as it could be."
"Then what made you do it?"
"Well, I saved money by it, too."
What the other reason was she did not press him to give. She only thought, "That is the Jew of it." But after she had seen more of him she discovered that the other reason was that he might learn by personal experience what the condition was in the emigrant ships and the holes where the stokers lived deep down amid the coal-bunkers and the roaring furnaces, and further, that he might know the people themselves. Incidentally, he had learned there and elsewhere Italian and Russian, with the strange Hebraic faculty of absorbing whatever he came in touch with, but he thought no more of knowing that than of knowing Yiddish.
It was this study of conditions that finally gave her the key to his design in life, for it developed as their acquaintance grew that this clear-headed, cultivated, thoughtful man held strange views as to the ordinary things of life, the things which she had always accepted as fundamental and unchangeable as the solid earth or the vaguely comprehended but wholly accepted revolution of the spheres. In fact, he held that the conditions of modern life, the relations of people in mass, which she had somehow always considered as almost perfect and, indeed, divinely established, were absolutely outworn and fundamentally unrighteous and unjust. She at first did not take him seriously. She could not. To find a pleasant and, indeed, rather eloquent-spoken young man denounce as wicked and vile usurpation the establishment of competitive enterprises, and the accumulation of capital by captains of industry, appeared to her almost impious. Yet, there he sat with burning eyes and thrilling voice denouncing the very things she had always considered most commendable. "Why, that is Socialism, isn't it?" she asked, feeling that if she could convict him of this somewhat vaguely comprehended term she would prove her old foundations unshaken.
Wolffert smiled. He was very good-looking when he smiled. "No, not exactly—if it is, it is only an elementary and individual kind of Socialism; but it is Socialism so far as it is based on a profound desire to reconstruct society and to place it on a natural and equitable social foundation where every one shall have a chance to work and to reap the fruit of such work."
"What is Socialism?" she demanded suddenly.
"It is not what you mean by the term," he laughed. "It is not taking the property of those who have worked for it and giving to those who neither have worked nor will work—that is what you have in mind."
"Precisely," she nodded.
"It is—at least, the Socialism I mean—the application of the same method of general order by the people at large to labor and the product of labor: property—that is now employed in Government. The reconstruction of the present methods so that all should participate both in the labor, and in the product." He went on to picture glowingly the consequences of this Utopian scheme when all men should work and all should reap. But though he made it appear easy enough to him, Eleanor Leigh's practical little head saw the difficulties and the flaws much more readily than the perfect result which he appeared to find so certain.
"You cannot reconstruct human nature," she protested, "and when you shall have gotten your system thoroughly under way, those who have gotten in positions of power will use their advantage for their own benefit, and then you will still have to begin all over again." But Wolffert was certain of the result and pointed out the work of his friend John Marvel as a proof of his theory.
While, at first, the broad-shouldered young clergyman fled from her presence with a precipitation which was laughable, it was not long before he appeared to have steeled himself sufficiently against her shafts of good-natured persiflage to be able to tolerate her presence, and before a great while had passed, her friends began to tease her on the fact that wherever she went Mr. Marvel was pretty sure to appear. One of her old cousins, half-rallyingly and half-warningly, cautioned her against going too far with the young man, saying, "Mr. Marvel, my dear, is too good a man for you to amuse yourself with, and then fling away. What is simply the diversion of an hour for you, may become a matter of real gravity with him. He is already deeply interested in you and unless you are interested in him——"
"Why, I am interested in him," declared the girl, laughing. "Why, he tells me of all the old sick women and cats in the parish and I have an engagement to go around with him and see some old women to-morrow. You ought to see some that we went to visit the other day!"
"I know, my dear, but you must not make fun of his work. He is happy in it and is accomplishing a great deal of good, and if you should get him dissatisfied——"
"Oh, no, indeed; I gave him some money last week for a poor family to get some clothes so that they could come to church. They were named Banyan. They live near the mines. The whole family were to be christened next Sunday, and what do you suppose they did? As soon as they got the clothes they went last Sunday to a big baptizing and were all immersed! I was teasing him about that when you heard me laughing at him."
"The wretches!" exclaimed her cousin. "To think of their deceiving him so!"
"I know," said the girl. "But I think he minded the deception much more than the other. Though I charged him with being disappointed at not getting them into his fold, really, I don't think he minded it a bit. At least, he said he would much rather they had gone where they would be happy."
"Now, Mr. Marvel's friend, Mr. Wolffert, is a different matter. He appears quite able to take care of himself."
"Quite," said Miss Leigh dryly.
"But, my dear," said her cousin, lowering her voice, "they say he is a Jew."
"He is," said Eleanor.
"You know it?"
"Yes, he told me so himself."
"Told you himself! Why, I thought—! How did he come to tell you?"
"Why, I don't know. We were talking and I said something foolish about the Jews—about some one being 'as rich and stingy as a Jew,' and he smiled and said, 'Are all Jews rich—and stingy?' And I said, 'If they have a chance,' and he said, 'Not always. I am a Jew and I am not rich.' Well, I thought he was fooling, just teasing me—so I went on, and do you know he is not only a Jew, but Mr. Marvel says he is rich, only he does not claim his money because he is a Socialist. Mr. Marvel says he could go home to-morrow and his father would take him and lavish money on him; but he works—works all the time among the poor."
"Well, I must say I always liked him," said her cousin.
"But he isn't such good fun to tease as Mr. Marvel—he is too intense. Mr. Marvel does get so red and unhappy-looking when he is teased."
"Well, you have no right to tease him. He is a clergyman and should be treated with respect. You wouldn't dare to tease your rector in town—the great Dr.—What is his name?"
"Oh! wouldn't I? Dr. Bartholomew Capon. Why, he is one of the greatest beaux in town. He's always running around to see some girl—ogling them with his big blue eyes."
"Eleanor!" exclaimed her cousin reprovingly.
"Why, he'd marry any one of the Canter girls who would have him, or Aunt Sophia, or——"
"Eleanor, don't be profane."
The old lady looked so shocked that the girl ran over and kissed her, with a laugh.
"Why, I've told him so."
"Told him? You haven't!"
"Yes, I have. I told him so when he tried to marry me. Then he tried Aunt Sophia."
"What! Eleanor, you are incorrigible. You really are. But do tell me about it. Did he really court you? Why, he's old enough to be your——"
"Grandfather," interrupted the girl. "That's what I told him, substantially."
"Served him right, too. But he must be a fine preacher from what my old friend, Pansy Tipps, once wrote me. Did you ever meet Pansy Tipps? She and her sister live in your city. They went there years ago to press a claim they had to a large fortune left them by their father, Colonel Tipps, who used to be a very rich man, but left his affairs somewhat complicated, I gather from what Pansy writes me, or did write, for she does not write very often now. I wish you'd go and see them when you go back."
"I will," said Eleanor. "Where do they live?"
"At a Mrs. Kale's—she keeps a boarding-house—I don't know the exact location, and mislaid Pansy's letter a year or more ago, but you will have no difficulty in finding it. It must be in the fashionable quarter and I should think any one could tell you where she lives."
"I will find her," said Eleanor, laughing.
XII
JOHN MARVEL
When, a little later, a scourge of diphtheria broke out in a little mining camp not far from the home of Miss Leigh's relatives and she learned that John Marvel spent all his time nursing the sick and relieving their necessities as far as possible, she awakened to a realization of the truth of what her cousin had said, that under his awkward exterior lay a mine of true gold.
Day by day reports came of the spread of the deadly pestilence, making inroads in every family, baffling the skill and outstripping the utmost efforts of the local physician; day by day, the rumor came that wherever illness appeared there was John Marvel.
One afternoon Miss Leigh, who had ridden over in the direction of the mining village to try and get some information about the young clergyman, who, a rumor said, had been stricken himself the day before, came on him suddenly in a by-path among the hills. At sight of her he stopped and held up his hand in warning, and at the warning she reined in her horse.
"Don't come nearer," he called to her.
"What is the matter?" she asked. "How are you?" For even at that distance—perhaps, some fifty paces—she could see that he looked wretchedly worn and wan.
"Oh, I'm doing very well," he replied. "How are you? You must not come this way! Turn back!"
She began to rein her horse around and then, on a sudden, as his arm fell to his side, and, stepping a little out of the path, he leant against a tree, the whole situation struck her. Wheeling her horse back, she rode straight up to him though he stiffened up and waved her back.
"You are ill," she said.
"Oh, no. I am not ill, I am only a bit tired; that is all. You must not come this way—go back!"
"But why?" she persisted, sitting now close above him.
"Because—because—there is sickness here. A family there is down." He nodded back toward the curve around which he had just come. "The Banyan family are all ill, and I am just going for help."
"I will go—I, at least, can do that. What help? What do you want?"
She had tightened the rein on her horse and turned his head back.
"Everything. The mother and three children are all down; the father died a few days ago. Send the doctor and anything that you can find—food—clothing—medicine—some one to nurse them—if you can find her. It is the only chance."
"I will." She hesitated a moment and looked down at him, as if about to speak, but he waved her off. "Go, you must not stay longer."
He had moved around so that the wind, instead of blowing from him toward her, blew from the other side of her.
A moment later Eleanor Leigh was galloping for life down the steep bridle-path. It was a breakneck gait, and the path was rough enough to be perilous, but she did not heed it. It was the first time in all her life that she had been conscious that she could be of real use. She felt that she was galloping in a new world. From house to house she rode, but though all were sympathetic, there was no one to go. Those who might have gone, were elsewhere—or were dead. The doctor was away from home attending at other bedsides and, by the account given, had been working night and day until he could scarcely stand. Riding to the nearest telegraph station, the girl sent a despatch to a doctor whom she knew in the city where she lived, begging him to come or to send some one on the first train and saying that he would be met and that she would meet all his expenses. Then she sat down and wrote a note to her cousin. And two hours later, just as the dusk was falling, she rode up to the door of a country cabin back among the hills. As she softly pushed open the door, with her arm full of bundles, a form rose from the side of a bed and stood before her in the dusk of the room.
"My God! you must not come in here. Why have you come here?"
"To help you," said the girl.
"But you must not come in. Go out. You must," said John Marvel.