CHAPTER XVII.
TOM’S INTERVENTION
About eight o’clock that evening Tom Everest ran in to bring Berty some rare wild flowers that he had found in an excursion to the country.
“How is your grandmother?” he asked. “I hear she is ill.”
“Better,” whispered Berty. “Bonny is with her, but I’ve got another trouble.”
“What is it?” inquired Tom, tenderly.
They were standing in the front hall, and he bent his head low to hear what she said.
“There’s a tramp out in the wood-shed,” she went on, “and I don’t know what to do with him.”
“I’ll go put him out,” said Tom, promptly starting toward the back hall.
“No, no, I don’t want him put out. Come back, Tom. I want you to help me do something for him. Just think, he was once a doctor. He cured other people, and couldn’t cure himself. He drinks like a fish.”
“Well, I’ll find a place for him to disport himself other than this,” said Tom, decidedly. “He isn’t going to spend the night in your back yard.”
“Oh, Tom, don’t be foolish. He is as quiet as a lamb. He hasn’t been drinking to-day.”
“I tell you, Berty, he’s got to come out. If you make a fuss, I’ll call Bonny down.”
“Why, Tom Everest, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Your face is as red as a beet. What about the Golden Rule?”
“I beg your pardon, Berty,” said Tom, trying to look calm, “but I know more about tramps than you do. This fellow may be a thief.”
“Tom—suppose you were the thief, and the thief were you? Would you like him to talk about you that way?”
“Yes, I’d enjoy it. Come, Berty, lead the way.”
“What do you want to do with him?” asked the girl, curiously.
“Put him in the street.”
“Well, suppose he is a thief. He may rob your neighbour’s house.”
“My neighbour can look out for himself.”
“You don’t mean that,” said Berty, quickly. “Please do find this man a good place for the night. Keep him out of harm.”
“But, Berty, it won’t do any good. I know those fellows. They are thoroughly demoralized. You might just as well let this one go.”
“Go where?” asked the girl, quickly.
“To his appointed place.”
The two young people stood staring at each other for a few minutes, then Berty said, seriously, “Tom Everest, you are a moral, upright man.”
Tom modestly cast his eyes to the oilcloth on the floor.
“How many other young men are there like you in the republic?” pursued Berty.
“I don’t know,” he said, demurely.
“How many tramps are there?”
“I don’t know that—thousands and thousands, I guess.”
“Well, suppose every honest young man took a poor, miserable tramp under his protection. Suppose he looked out for him, fed him, clothed him, and kept him from being a prey on society?”
“I should say that would be a most undesirable plan for the young men,” said Tom, dryly. “I’d be afraid they’d get demoralized themselves, and all turn tramps. It’s easier to loaf than to work.”
“Tom,” said Berty, firmly, “this is my tramp. I found him, I brought him home, I have a duty toward him. I can’t protect all the tramps in the Union, but I can prevent this one from going on and being a worry to society. Why, he might meet some timid girl to-morrow and frighten her to death.”
“Oho! he tried to scare you, did he?” asked Tom, keenly.
“He asked me for money,” repeated Berty, “but of course I didn’t let him have it.”
“Tell me all about it.”
When she finished, Tom laughed softly. “So this is the gentleman you want me to befriend?”
“Do you feel revengeful toward him?” asked Berty.
“I’d like to horsewhip him.”
“That’s the way I felt at first. Then I said to myself, ‘Berty Gravely, you’ve got to get every revengeful feeling out of your head before you can benefit that man. What’s the use of being angry with him? You only stultify yourself. Try to find out how you can do him good.’”
“Oh, Berty,” interposed Tom, with a gesture of despair, “don’t talk mawkish, sickly sentimentality to me. Don’t throw honey water over tin cans, and expect them to blossom like the rose.”
“They will blossom, they can blossom,” said Berty, persistently, “and even if they won’t blossom, take your old tin cans, clean them, and set them on end. Don’t kick them in the gutter.”
“What do you want me to do?” asked Tom, helplessly. “I see you have some plan in your mind.”
This was Berty’s chance, and for a few minutes she so staggered him by her eloquence that he sank on the staircase, and, feebly propping his head on his hand, stared uninterruptedly at her.
“I’ve been thinking hard,” she said, in low, dramatic tones, “very, very hard for two hours, as I sat by Grandma’s bed. What can we do for wrecks of humanity? Shall we pet them, coddle them, spoil them, as you speak of doing? Not at all. We’ve got to do something, but we mustn’t be foolish. This tramp is like some wet, soggy piece of wood floating down our river. It doesn’t know, feel, nor care. You mustn’t give it a push and send it further down the stream, but pull it ashore, and—and—”
“And dry it, and make a fire and burn it,” said Tom, briskly. “I don’t like your simile, Berty.”
“It was unfortunate,” said the girl. “I will start again. I approve of societies and churches and clubs—I think they do splendid work, and if, in addition to what they do, every one of us would just reach out a helping hand to one solitary person in the world, how different things would be. We would have a paradise here below. It’s wicked, Tom, to say, ‘That is a worthless person, let him go—you can do nothing for him.’ Now I’ve got a plan for this tramp, and I want you to help me.”
“I know you have, and I wouldn’t mind hearing it, but I don’t think I’ll help you, Berty. I don’t favour the gentry of the road.”
“This is my plan,” said Berty, unheedingly; “but first let me say that I will make a concession to you. You may take the tramp with you, put him in a comfortable room for the night, see that he has a good bed, and a good breakfast in the morning.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” murmured the young man. “You are so very kind.”
“Don’t give him any money,” continued Berty, seriously, “and if you can keep him locked up without hurting his feelings, I wish you would—but don’t blight his self-respect.”
“His what?” asked Tom, mildly.
“His self-respect—even an animal must be protected in that way. Don’t you know that a dog gets well a great deal quicker, if you keep up his good opinion of himself?”
“Does he?” murmured Tom. “I—I don’t know. I fear I have sometimes helped to lessen a dog’s good opinion of himself.”
“And, furthermore,” pursued Berty, “I want that tramp to stay in Riverport. He’s going to be my tramp, Tom, and yours, too, if you will be good.”
“Oh, I will be good, Berty, extra good to deserve a partnership like that.”
“And you and I will look out for him. Now I’ve been wondering what employment we can find for him, for of course you know it isn’t good for any man to live in idleness.”
“Just so, Berty.”
“Well, we must be very cautious about what work we find for him, for he hasn’t worked for years.”
“Something light and genteel, Berty.”
“Light, but not so very genteel. He isn’t proud. He’s only unaccustomed to work. He talked quite frankly about himself.”
“Oh—did he?”
“Yes, and do you know what I have decided?”
“No, I’m sure I don’t.”
“Well, I have just found the very thing for him, and I dare say, if you have any money laid aside, you may want to invest in it. First of all, I want you to hire Bobbetty’s Island.”
“Bobbetty’s Island—out in the river—old man Bobbetty’s?”
“The same, Tom.”
“Ghost thrown in?”
“I want you to hire it,” said Berty, severely, “and get some of your friends to make up a party, and go down there and put up a big, comfortable camp for our tramp to live in.”
“Why the island, Berty?” inquired Tom, in a suppressed voice. “Why not set him up in Grand Avenue. There’s a first-class family mansion to let there, three doors from us.”
“Tom Everest, will you stop your fooling. Our tramp is to live on the island because if he were in the town he would spend half his time in drinking-places.”
“But won’t the river be suggestive, Berty? It would to me, and I’m not a drinking man.”
“No, of course not—he will have his work to do, and twice a week I want you to row over yourself, or get some one to go and bring him to town, for he would go crazy if he were left there alone all the time.”
“I wonder you don’t get a companion for him.”
“I’m going to try. He has a wife, a nice woman in New Hampshire, who left him on account of his drinking habits. He says she will come back to him if he gets a good situation and promises to reform.”
“Has he promised?” asked Tom, acutely.
“He said he would think about it. I rather liked him for the hesitation, for of course he is completely out of the way of continuous application to anything.”
“And what business, may I ask, are you going to establish him in? You seemed to be hinting at something.”
“I am going to start a cat farm, and put him in charge,” replied Berty, with the air of one making a great revelation.
“A cat farm,” echoed Tom, weakly, then, entirely collapsing, he rolled over on his side on the staircase and burst into silent and convulsive laughter.
CHAPTER XVIII.
TRAMP PHILOSOPHY
“What are you two giggling about?” asked a sudden voice, and Berty, looking up from the hall, and Tom, from the staircase, saw Bonny standing on the steps above them.
“Meow, meow,” murmured Tom, in a scarcely audible voice.
“What’s up with him, Berty?” asked Bonny, good-naturedly.
“I think his head must be growing weak,” said the girl. “Everything lately seems to amuse him. If you hold up a finger, he goes into fits of laughter.”
“Poor Tom,” said Bonny, “and once he was a joy to his friends—I say, old man, uncurl yourself and tell us the joke.”
“Go ’way, Berty,” ejaculated Tom, partly straightening himself, “go ’way. You hate to see me laugh. Just like all girls. They haven’t any more sense of humour than sticks.”
“Bonny,” said Berty, turning to her brother, “how is Grandma?”
“Asleep, and resting quietly.”
“I’ll go sit beside her,” said the girl; then, turning to her visitor, “Tom Everest, are you going to do that commission for me, or are you not? I’ve stood a good deal from you to-night. Just one word more, and I take it from you and give it to Bonny.”
“I’m ready and willing if it’s anything good,” said the light-haired boy.
“Sha’n’t have it, Bonny,” said Tom, staggering to his feet. “That jewel is mine. I’ll love and cherish him, Berty, until to-morrow afternoon, then I’ll report to you.”
“Good night, then,” said Berty, “and don’t make a noise, or you’ll wake Grandma.”
“Come on, Bonny, let’s interview Berty’s treasure,” exclaimed Tom, seizing his hat.
“What is it?” inquired Bonny, curiously, following him through the hall.
“A black pearl. Didn’t she tell you?”
“No, I haven’t been here long. We were busy at the works.”
Without speaking, Tom led the way down the back staircase, through the lower hall, and out to the wood-shed at the back of the house.
“Listen to it,” he said to Bonny, with his hand on the door-knob.
“Who is snoring in there?” said the boy, quickly.
“One of your sister’s bits of driftwood. I’ve got to haul this one into port.”
“I wish Berty would look out for number one, and let number two, and three, and four, and five, take care of themselves,” said the lad, irritably. Then he suddenly recollected himself. “I suppose I am a brute, but I do hate dirty people. Berty is an angel compared with me.”
“Hello,” said Tom, opening the door and scratching a match to light the candle in a lantern hanging near him.
There was no response. Tom held the lantern and pushed the sleeping man with his foot.
“Here, you—wake up.”
The man rolled over, blinking at them in the light. “Hello, comrade, what you want?”
“Get up,” said Tom, commandingly.
“What for?” asked the sleeper, yawningly.
“To get out of this. I’ll find you another sleeping-place.”
“Oh, come, comrade,” said the man, remonstratingly, “this is cruelty to animals. I was having the sleep of my life—like drugged sleep—takes me back to my boyhood. Move on, and let me begin again. Your diamonds are safe to-night. I’ve had a first-class supper, and I’m having a first-class sleep. I wouldn’t get up to finger the jewels of the Emperor of Russia.”
“Get up,” said Tom, inexorably.
“Let him stay,” said Bonny. “I’m going to be here all night. If he gets dangerous, I’ll take the poker.”
“Oh, you’re going to stay all night,” remarked Tom. “Very good, then. I’ll come early in the morning and get him out of this.”
“Talking about me, gentlemen?” asked the man, sleepily.
Tom and Bonny stared at him.
“I haven’t done anything bad yet,” said the tramp, meekly, “unless I may have corrupted a few of those guinea-pigs by using bad language. They’re the most inquisitive creatures I ever saw. Stuck their noses in my food, and most took it away from me.”
“Who are you?” asked Bonny, abruptly.
“A poor, broken-down sailor, sir,” whined the man. “Turned out of his vessel the first day in port, because he had a little weakness of the heart.”
“I heard you were a doctor,” interposed Tom.
“So I was this afternoon, sir. That nice young lady said I looked like a sailor, so I thought I’d be one to please her.”
“You’re a first-class liar, anyway,” said Tom.
The man rolled over on his back and sleepily blinked at him. “That I am, sir. If you’d hear the different stories I tell to charitable ladies, you’d fall down in a fit. They’re too funny for words.”
Bonny was staring at him with wide-open eyes. He had never spoken to a tramp before in his life. If he saw one on the right side of the street, he immediately crossed to the left.
“I say,” he began, with a fastidious curl of his lip, “it must be mighty queer not to know in the morning where you are going to lay your head at night. Queer, and mighty uncomfortable.”
“So it is, young man, till you get used to it,” responded the tramp, amiably.
Bonny’s countenance expressed the utmost disdain, and suddenly the tramp raised himself on an elbow. “Can you think of me, my fine lad, young and clean and as good-looking as you are?”
“No, I can’t,” said Bonny, frankly.
“Fussy about my tailor,” continued the man. “Good heavens, just think of it—I, bothering about the cut of my coat. But I was, and I did, and I’ve come down to be a trailer over the roads.”
“How can persons take a jump like that?” said the boy, musingly.
“It isn’t a jump,” pursued the tramp, lazily, “it’s a slide. You move a few inches each day. I’m something of a philosopher, and I often look back on my career. I’ve lots of time to think, as you may imagine. Now, gentlemen, you wouldn’t imagine where my slide into trampdom began.”
“You didn’t start from the gutter, anyway,” remarked Bonny, “for you talk like a gentleman.”
“You’re right, young man. I can talk the slang of the road. I’ve been broken to it, but I won’t waste it on you, for you wouldn’t understand it—well, my first push downward was given me by my mother.”
“Your mother?” echoed Bonny, in disgust.
“Yes, young sir—one of the best women that ever lived. She held me out to the devil, when she allowed me to kick the cat because it had made me fall.”
“Nonsense,” said Bonny, sharply.
“Not nonsense, but sound sense, sir. That was the beginning of the lack of self-restraint. Did I want her best cap to tear to ribbons? I got it.”
“Oh, get out,” interposed Tom, crossly. “You needn’t tell us that all spoiled children go to the bad.”
“Good London, no,” said the man, with a laugh. “Look at our millionaires. Could you find on the face of the earth a more absolute autocrat, a more heartless, up-to-date, determined-to-have-his-own-way, let-the-rest-of-you-go-to-the-dogs kind of a man, than the average American millionaire?”
The two young men eyed each other, and Bonny murmured, “You are an extremist.”
“It began away back,” continued the tramp, now thoroughly roused from his sleepy condition. “When our forefathers came from England, they brought that ugly, I’m-going-to-have-my-own-way spirit with them. Talk about the severity of England precipitating the Revolution. If they hadn’t made a revolution for us, we’d made one to order. Did you ever read about the levelling spirit of those days? I tell you this American nation is queer—it’s harder for a real, true blue son of the soil to keep straight, than it is for the son of any other nation under the heaven. We lack self-restraint. We’ll go to the bad if we want to, and none shall hinder us.”
The tramp paused for a minute in his semi-lazy, semi-animated discourse, and Tom, feeling that some remark was expected from him, said feebly, “You’re quite a moralizer.”
The tramp did not hear him. “I tell you,” he said, extending a dirty hand, “we’re the biggest, grandest, foolishest people on earth. We’re the nation of the future. We’ll govern the earth, and at the same time fail in governing ourselves. Look at the lynchings we have. The United States has the highest murder rate of any civilized country in the world. The average American will be a decent, moral, pay-his-bills sort of man, and yet he’ll have more tolerance for personal violence than a Turk has.”
“You’re a queer man,” said Bonny, musingly.
“We’ve got to have more law and order,” pursued the tramp. “The mothers have got to make their little ones eat their mush, or porridge, as they say over the line in Canada—not fling it out the window to the dogs. I tell you that’s where it begins, just where every good and bad thing begins—in the cradle. The average mother has too much respect for the squallings of her Young America. Let her spank him once in awhile, and keep him out of sight of the eagle.”
“Do you suppose,” said Bonny, solemnly, “that if you had been well spanked you would not be lying here?”
“Suppose,” repeated the tramp, leaning back, “I don’t suppose anything about it. I know it. If my mother and father had made me mind them, and kept me in nights, and trained me into decent, self-respecting manhood, I’d be standing beside you to-night, young sirs, beside you—beyond you—for I guess from your bearing you are only young men of average ability, and I tell you I was a power, when I’d study and let the drink alone.”
“You must have had a strange mother,” remarked Bonny.
The tramp suddenly raised himself again, and his sunburnt face grew redder. “For the love of Heaven,” he said, extending one ragged arm, “don’t say a word against her. The thought of her is the only thing that moves me. She loved me, and, unclean, characterless wretch that I am, she would love me yet if she were still alive.”
The man’s head sank on his arm, but not quickly enough. Tom and Bonny had both seen glistening in his eyes, not the one jewel they were jestingly in search of, but two priceless jewels that were not pearls, but diamonds.
“Come on, Bonny,” said Tom, roughly, as he drew him from the shed.
“Tom,” remarked Bonny, softly, as they went slowly up-stairs, “Berty wants you to do something for that fellow, doesn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think it is of any use?”
“No.”
“Are you going to try?”
“Yes.”
Bonny made no further remarks until some time later, when they were standing on the front door-step, then he asked, thoughtfully, “What does Berty want you to do, Tom?”
“Start a cat-farm.”
“A cat-farm! What kind of cats?”
“Gutter cats, back yard cats, disreputable cats, I should guess from the character of the superintendent she has chosen,” replied Tom, gruffly.
“The superintendent being the tramp,” said Bonny, slyly.
“There’s no one else in question,” responded Tom.
“I think you are wrong about the nature of the beasts,” continued Bonny. “I believe Berty means pet cats—Angoras, and so on.”
“What sort are they?”
“Do you mean to say you haven’t noticed them? It’s the latest cry among the women—‘Give me a long-haired cat!’ Mrs. Darley-James has a beauty—snow-white with blue eyes.”
“All nonsense—these society women don’t know what to do to kill time.”
“They’re not all society women that have them. Old Mrs. McCarthy has a pair of dandies—and I find that the women who take up cat-culture are more kind to back yard tabbies.”
“Maybe you’re right, Bonny. I don’t call round on these women as you do.”
“Well,” said Bonny, apologetically, “I don’t see any harm in putting on your best coat and hat, and doing a woman who has invited you to her house the compliment of calling on her day.”
“Oh, dressing up,” said Tom, “is such a nuisance.”
“You can’t call on many that you’d be bothered with calling on without it. Sydney Gray tried calling on Margaretta on her day in a bicycle suit. He had ridden fifty miles, and was hot and dusty and perspiring. He had the impudence to go into Margaretta’s spick and span rooms and ask for a cup of tea. She was so sweet to him that he came away hugging himself—but he never got asked there again, and every once in awhile he says to some one, ‘Queer, isn’t it, that Mrs. Stanisfield gives me the go-by. I don’t know what I’ve done to offend her.’”
“Suppose we come back to Berty,” observed Tom. “If all the women here have cats, what does she want to start a farm for?”
“The women aren’t all supplied. The demand is increasing, and many would buy here that wouldn’t send away for one. Berty is more shrewd than you think. These cats sell for five and six dollars apiece at the least, and some are as high as twenty. I shouldn’t a bit wonder if it would turn out to be a good business speculation.”
“Well, then, you just meet some of the fellows in my office to-morrow evening and arrange for a house and lot for this man who is to boss the cats,” said Tom, dryly.
“All right, I’ll come—maybe Roger will, too.”
“Good night,” said Tom, “I’m off.”
“Good night,” returned Bonny, laconically, and, standing with his hands thrust in his pockets, he was looking down the street, when Tom suddenly turned back.
“I say, Bonny, your grandmother must have a good history of the Revolution.”
“She has two or three.”
“Ask her to lend me one, will you? I half forget what I learned in school.”
“Yes, sir; I’ll bring it to-morrow.”
Tom really went this time, and as he quickly disappeared from sight, Bonny, from his station on the door-step, kept muttering to himself, “Slipping through life, slipping through life. How easy to get on that greased path!”
“What are you saying to yourself?” asked a brisk voice.
Bonny, turning sharply, found Berty beside him.
“Nothing much—only that I was hungry. Let’s see what’s in the pantry.”
“Bonny, if I show you where there is a pie, the most beautiful pumpkin pie you ever saw, will you help me with my tramp?”
“I’ll do it for half a pie,” said Bonny, generously. “Come on, you young monkey.”
CHAPTER XIX.
AT THE BOARD OF WATER-WORKS
“There she comes,” murmured one of the clerks, in the board of water-works offices.
“Who?” murmured the other clerk.
“The beggar-girl,” responded the first one.
The chairman of the board heard them, and looked fearfully over his shoulder.
Roger, Tom, and Bonny knew that Berty’s frequent visits to the city hall had gained for her a nickname, occasioned by the character of her visits. She was always urging the claims of the poor, hence she was classed with them. They carefully shielded from her the knowledge of this nickname, and supposed she knew nothing of it.
However, she did know. Some whisper of the “beggar-girl” had reached her ears, and was a matter of chagrin to her.
The chairman of the board of water-works knew all about her. He knew that if the clerks had seen her passing along the glass corridor outside his office she was probably coming to him; she probably wanted something.
One clerk was his nephew, the other his second cousin, so he was on terms of familiarity with them, and at the present moment was in the outer office discussing with them the chances that a certain bill had of passing the city council.
The door of his own inner office stood open, but of what use to take refuge there? If the beggar-girl really wished to see a man on business, she always waited for him.
He looked despairingly about him. A high, old-fashioned desk stood near. Under it was a foot-stool. As a knock came at the door, he ungracefully folded his long, lank limbs, quickly sat down on the foot-stool, and said, in a low voice, “I’ve gone to Portland for a week!” Then he fearfully awaited results.
Berty, followed by her friend, the mongrel pup, walked into the room and asked if Mr. Morehall were in.
“No,” said the second cousin, gravely, “he has been called to Portland on important business—will be gone a week.”
The girl’s face clouded; she stood leaning against the railing that separated the room into two parts, and, as she did so, her weight pushed open the gate that the second cousin had just hastily swung together.
The pup ran in, and being of quick wits and an inquiring disposition wondered what that man was doing curled up in a corner, instead of being on his feet like the other two.
He began to sniff round him. Perhaps there was something peculiar about him. No—he seemed to be like other men, a trifle anxious and red-faced, perhaps, but still normal. He gave a playful bark, as if to say, “I dare you to come out.”
Berty heard him, and turned swiftly. “Mugwump, if you worry another rat, I’ll never give you a walk again.”
The two young men were in a quandary. Whether to go to the assistance of their chief, or whether to affect indifference, was vexing their clerical souls. Berty, more quick-witted than the pup, was prompt to notice their peculiar expressions.
“Please don’t let him worry a rat,” she said, beseechingly, “it makes him so cruel. Rats have a dreadfully hard time! Oh, please call him off. He’s got it in his mouth. I hear him.”
The chairman, in his perplexity, had thrown him a glove from his pocket, and Mugwump was mouthing and chewing it deliciously.
“He’ll kill it,” exclaimed Berty. “Oh! let me in,” and before the confused clerks could prevent her, she had pushed open the gate and had followed the dog.
Her face was a study. Low down on the floor sat the deceiving chairman, with Mugwump prancing before him.
“Mr. Morehall!” she exclaimed; then she stopped.
The chairman, with a flaming face, unfolded his long limbs, crawled out of his retreat, stumbled over the dog, partly fell, recovered himself, and finally got to his feet. After throwing an indignant glance at the two clerks, who were in a pitiable state of restrained merriment, he concentrated his attention on Berty. She blushed, too, as she divined what had been the case.
“You were trying to hide from me,” she said, after a long pause.
He could not deny it, though he stammered something about it being a warm day, and the lower part of the desk being a cool retreat.
“Now you are telling me a story,” said Berty, sternly, “you, the chairman of the board of water-works—a city official, afraid of me!”
He said nothing, and she went on, wistfully, “Am I, then, so terrible? Do you men all hate the beggar-girl?”
Her three hearers immediately fell into a state of shamefacedness.
“What have I done?” she continued, sadly, “what have I done to be so disliked?”
No one answered her, and she went on. “When I lived on Grand Avenue and thought only of amusing myself, everybody liked me. Why is it that every one hates me since I went to River Street and am trying to make myself useful?”
To Mr. Morehall’s dismay, her lip was quivering, and big tears began to roll down her cheeks.
“Come in here,” he said, leading the way to his own room.
Berty sat down in an armchair and quietly continued to cry, while Mr. Morehall eyed her with distress and increasing anxiety.
“Have a glass of water, do,” said the tall man, seizing a pitcher near him, “and don’t feel bad. Upon my word, I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“It—it isn’t you only,” gasped Berty. “It is everybody. Please excuse me, but I am tired and worried this morning. I’ve had some sick friends on our street—that’s what I came to see you about. The autumn is starting in so dry that we are almost choked with dust. River Street hasn’t been watered for a week.”
“Hasn’t it?” said Mr. Morehall, slowly.
“Grand Avenue was always watered,” continued Berty, as she rested her head against the back of the chair, “even soaked. I never thought about dust in summer. Why is River Street neglected?”
“River Street citizens don’t pay such heavy taxes,” suggested Mr. Morehall.
“But they pay all they can, sir.”
“Poor people are shiftless,” said the official, with a shrug of his shoulders.
“That’s what everybody says,” exclaimed Berty, despairingly. “All well-to-do people that I talk to dismiss the poorer classes in that way. But poor people aren’t all shiftless.”
“Not all, perhaps,” said Mr. Morehall, amiably, and with inward rejoicing that Berty was wiping away her tears.
“And there must be poor people,” continued Berty. “We can’t all be rich. It’s impossible. Who would work for the prosperous, if all were independent?”
“What I meant,” replied Mr. Morehall, “was that poverty is very often the result of a lack of personal exertion on the part of the poor.”
“Yes, sir, but I am not just now advocating the cause of the helpless. It is rather the claims of the respectable poor. I know heaps of people on River Street who have only a pittance to live on. Their parents had only the same. They are not dissipated. They work hard and pay what they can to the city. My argument is that these poorer children of the city should be especially well looked after, just as in a family the delicate or afflicted child is the most petted.”
“Now you are aiming at the ideal,” said Mr. Morehall, with an uneasy smile.
“No, sir, not the ideal, but the practical. Some one was telling me what the city has to spend for prisons, hospitals, and our asylums. Why, it would pay us a thousandfold better to take care of these people before they get to be a burden on us.”
“They are so abominably ungrateful,” muttered Mr. Morehall.
“And so would I be,” exclaimed Berty, “if I were always having charity flung in my face. Let the city give the poor their rights. They ask no more. It’s no disgrace to be born poor. But if I am a working girl in River Street I must lodge in a worm-eaten, rat-haunted tenement-house. I must rise from an unwholesome bed, and put on badly made, uncomfortable clothing. I must eat a scanty breakfast, and go to toil in a stuffy, unventilated room. I must come home at night to my dusty, unwatered street, and then I must, before I go to sleep, kneel down and thank God that I live in a Christian country—why, it’s enough to make one a pagan just to think of it! I don’t see why the poor don’t organize. They are meeker than I would be. It makes me wild to see River Street neglected. If any street is left unwatered, it ought to be Grand Avenue rather than River Street, for the rich have gardens and can go to the country, while the poor must live on the street in summer.”
“Now you are oppressing the rich,” said Mr. Morehall, promptly.
“Heaven forbid,” said the girl, wearily. “Equal rights for all—”
“The poor have a good friend in you,” he said, with reluctant admiration.
“Will you have our street watered, sir?” asked Berty, rising.
“I’ll try to. I’ll have to ask for an appropriation. We’ll want another cart and horse, and an extra man.”
“That means delay,” said Berty, despairingly, “and in the meantime the dust blows about in clouds. It enters the windows and settles on the tables and chairs. It chokes the lungs of consumptives struggling for breath, and little babies gasping for air. Then the mothers put the windows down, and they breathe over and over again the polluted air. And this is stifling autumn weather—come spend a day in River Street, sir.”
“Miss Gravely,” said the man, with a certain frank bluntness and good-will, “excuse my plain speaking, but you enthuse too much. Those poor people aren’t made of the same stuff that you are. They don’t suffer to the extent that you do under the same conditions.”
Berty was about to leave the room, but she turned round on him with flashing eyes. “Do you mean to say that God has created two sets of creatures—one set with fine nerves and sensitive bodies, the other callous and unsensitive to comfort or discomfort?”
“That’s about the measure of it.”
“And where would you draw the line?” she asked, with assumed calmness.
Mr. Morehall did not know Berty well. His family, though one of the highest respectability, moved in another circle. If he had had the pleasure of an intimate acquaintance with the energetic young person before him, he would have known that her compressed lips, her half-closed eyes, and her tense forehead betokened an overwhelming and suppressed anger.
Therefore, unaware of the drawn sword suspended over his head, he went on, unsuspiciously. “To tell the truth, I think there’s a lot in heredity. Now there are some families you never find scrabbling round for something to eat. I never heard of a poor Gravely, or a Travers, or a Stanisfield, or a Morehall. It’s in the blood to get on. No one can down you.”
He paused consequentially, and Berty, biting her lip, waited for him to go on. However, happening to look at the clock, he stopped short. This talk was interesting, but he would like to get back to business.
“Mr. Morehall,” said Berty, in a still voice, “do you know that there are a legion of poor Traverses up in the northern part of the State, that Grandma used to send boxes to every month?”
“No,” he said, in surprise, “I never heard that.”
“And old Mr. Stanisfield took two of his own cousins out of the poorhouse three years ago, and supports them?”
“You astonish me,” murmured the confused man.
“And, moreover,” continued Berty, with a new gleam in her eye, “since you have been frank with me, I may be frank with you, and say that two of the people for whom I want River Street made sweet and wholesome are old Abner Morehall and his wife, from Cloverdale.”
“Abner Morehall!” exclaimed the man, incredulously.
“Yes, Abner Morehall, your own uncle.”
“But—I didn’t know—why didn’t he tell?—” stammered Mr. Morehall, confusedly.
“Yes—why do you suppose he didn’t tell you?” said Berty. “That’s the blood—the better blood than that of paupers. He was ashamed to have you know of his misfortune.”
“He thought I wouldn’t help him,” burst out her companion, and, with shame and chagrin in his eyes, he sat down at the table and put his hand to his head. “It’s those confounded notes,” he said, at last. “I often told him he ought never to put his name to paper.”
“It was his generosity and kindness—his implicit faith in his fellow men,” continued Berty, warmly; “and now, Mr. Morehall, can you say that ‘blood,’ or shrewdness, or anything else, will always keep misfortune from a certain family? Who is to assure you that your great-great-grandchildren will not be living on River Street?”
No one could assure the disturbed man that this contingency might not arise, and, lifting his head, he gazed at Berty as if she were some bird of ill-omen.
“You will come to see your relatives, I suppose?” she murmured.
He made an assenting gesture with his hand.
“They are two dear old people. They give tone to the street—and you will send a watering-cart this afternoon?”
He made another assenting gesture. He did not care to talk, and Berty slipped quietly from his office.
CHAPTER XX.
SELINA’S WEDDING
Selina Everest and the Mayor were married.
On one of the loveliest of autumn mornings, the somewhat mature bride had been united in the holy bonds of matrimony to the somewhat mature bridegroom, and now, in the old family mansion of the Everests, they were receiving the congratulations of their numerous friends. Selina had had a church wedding. That she insisted on, greatly to the distress and confusion of her modest husband. He had walked up the aisle of the church as if to his hanging. One minute he went from red to purple, from purple to violent perspiration, the next he became as if wrapped in an ice-cold sheet, and not until then could he recover himself.
But now it was all over. This congratulatory business was nothing compared to the agonizing experience of being in a crowded church, the shrinking target for hundreds of criticizing, shining, awful eyes.
Yes, he was in an ecstasy to think the ordeal was over. Selina never would have made him go through it, if she had had the faintest conception of what his sufferings would be.
She had enjoyed it. All women enjoy that sort of thing. They are not awkward. How can they be, with their sweeping veils and trailing robes? He had felt like a fence-post, a rail—anything stiff, and ugly, and uncomfortable, and in his heart of hearts he wondered that all those well-dressed men and women had not burst into shouts of laughter at him.
Well, it was over—over, thank fortune. He never had been so glad to escape from anything in his life, as he had been to get out of the church and away from the crowd of people. That alone made him blissfully happy, and then, in addition, he had Selina.
He looked at her, and mechanically stretched out a hand to an advancing guest. Selina was his now. He not only was out of that church and never would have to go into it again for such a purpose as he had gone this morning, but Selina Everest was Mrs. Peter Jimson.
He smiled an alarming smile at her, a smile so extraordinarily comprehensive, that she hurriedly asked under her breath if he were ill.
“No,” he said, and, in so saying, clasped the hand of the advancing friend with such vigour, that the unhappy man retreated swiftly with his unspoken congratulations on his lips.
“I’m not ill,” he muttered. “I’m only a little flustered, Selina.”
“Here’s Mrs. Short,” she said, hastily, “be nice to her. She’s a particular friend of mine.”
“A fine day, ma’am,” murmured the Mayor; “yes, the crops seem good—ought to have rain, though.”
Over by a French window opening on the lawn, Berty and Tom were watching the people and making comments.
“Always get mixed up about a bride and groom,” volunteered Tom. “Always want to congratulate her, and hope that he’ll be happy. It’s the other way, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” murmured Berty. “Oh, isn’t it a dream to think that they’re both happy?”
“Makes one feel like getting married oneself,” said Tom.
“Yes, doesn’t it? A wedding unsettles me. All the rest of the day I wish I were a bride.”
“Do you?” exclaimed Tom, eagerly.
“Yes, and then the next day I think what a goose I am. Being married means slavery to some man. You don’t have your own way at all.”
“Men never being slaves to their wives,” remarked Tom.
“Men are by nature lordly, overbearing, proud-spirited, self-willed, tyrannical and provoking,” said Berty, sweepingly.
But Tom’s thoughts had been diverted. “Say, Berty, where do those Tomkins girls get money to dress that way? They’re visions in those shining green things.”
“They spend too much of their father’s money on dress,” replied Berty, severely. “Those satins came from Paris. They are an exquisite new shade of green. I forget what you call it.”
“I guess old Tomkins is the slave there,” said Tom; then, to avoid controversy, he went on, hastily, “You look stunning in that white gown.”
“I thought perhaps Selina would want me for a bridesmaid,” said Berty, plaintively, “but she didn’t.”
“Too young and foolish,” said Tom, promptly; “but, I say, Berty, where did you get the gown?”
“Margaretta gave it to me. I was going to wear muslin, but she said I shouldn’t.”
“What is it anyway?” said Tom, putting out a cautious finger to touch the soft folds.
“It’s silk, and if you knew how uncomfortable I am in it, you would pity me.”
“Uncomfortable! You look as cool as a cucumber.”
“I’m not. I wish I had on a serge skirt and a shirt-waist.”
“Let me get you something to eat,” he said, consolingly. “That going to church and standing about here are tiresome.”
“Yes, do,” said Berty. “I hadn’t any breakfast, I was in such a hurry to get ready.”
“Here are sandwiches and coffee to start with,” he said, presently coming back.
“Thank you—I am so glad Selina didn’t have a sit-down luncheon. This is much nicer.”
“Isn’t it! You see, she didn’t want speeches. On an occasion like this, the Mayor would be so apt to get wound up that he would keep us here till midnight.”
Berty laughed. “And they would have lost their train.”
“There isn’t going to be any train,” said Tom, mysteriously.
“Aren’t they going to New York?”
“No.”
“To Canada?”
“No.”
“To Europe?”
“No—Jimson says he isn’t going to frizzle and fry in big cities in this lovely weather, unless Selina absolutely commands, and she doesn’t command, so he’s going to row her up the river to the Cloverdale Inn.”
Berty put down her cup and saucer and began to laugh.
“Where are those sandwiches?” asked Tom, trying to peer round the cup.
“Gone,” said Berty, meekly.
He brought her a new supply, then came cake, jellies, sweets, and fruit in rapid succession.
Berty, standing partly behind a curtain by the open window, kept her admirer so busy that at last he partly rebelled.