It was on the following day that a less important member of society than Miss Minster resolved to also pay a visit to the milliner’s shop.
Ben Lawton’s second wife—for she herself scarcely thought of “Mrs. Lawton” as a title appertaining to her condition of ill-requited servitude—had become possessed of some new clothes. Their monetary value was not large, but they were warm and respectable, with bugle trimming on the cloak, and a feather rising out of real velvet on the bonnet; and they were new all together at the same time, a fact which impressed her mind by its novelty even more than did the inherent charm of acquisition.
To go out in this splendid apparel was an obvious duty. Where to go was less clear. The notion of going shopping loomed in the background of Mrs. Lawton’s thoughts for a while, but in a formless and indistinct way, and then disappeared again. Her mind was not civilized enough to assimilate the idea of loitering around among the stores when she had no money with which to buy anything.
Gradually the conception of a visit to her step-Jessica took shape in her imagination.
Perhaps the fact that she owed her new clothes to the bounty of this girl helped forward this decision. There was also a certain curiosity to see the child who was Ben’s grandson, and so indirectly related to her, and for whose anomalous existence there was more than one precedent in her own family, and who might turn out to resemble her own little lost Alonzo. But the consideration which primarily dictated her choice was that there was no other place to go to.
Her reception by Jessica, when she finally found her way by Samantha’s complicated directions to the shop, was satisfactorily cordial. She was allowed to linger for a time in the show-room, and satiate bewilderment over the rich plumes, and multi-colored velvets and ribbons there displayed; then she was taken into the domestic part of the building, where she was asked like a real visitor to take off her cloak and bonnet, and sat down to enjoy the unheard-of luxury of seeing somebody else getting a “meal of victuals” ready. The child was playing by himself back of the stove with some blocks. He seemed to take no interest in his new relation, and Mrs. Lawton saw that if Alonzo had lived he would not have looked like this boy, who was blonde and delicate, with serious eyes and flaxen curls, and a high, rather protuberant forehead.
The brevet grandmother heard with surprise from Lucinda that this five-year-old child already knew most of his letters. She stole furtive glances at him after this, from time to time, and as soon as Jessica had gone out into the store and closed the door she asked:
“Don’t his head look to you like water on the brain?”
Lucinda shook her head emphatically: “He’s healthy enough,” she said.
“And his name’s Horace, you say?”
“Yes, that’s what I said,” replied the girl.
Mrs. Lawton burned to ask what other name the lad bore, but the peremptory tones of her daughter warned her off. Instead she remarked: “And so he’s been livin’ in Tecumseh all this while? They seem to have brung him up pretty good—teachin’ him his A B C’s and curlin’ his hair.”
“He had a good home. Jess paid high, and the people took a liking to him,” said Lucinda.
“I s’pose they died or broke up housekeepin’,” tentatively suggested Mrs. Lawton.
“No: Jess wanted him here, or thought she did.” Lucinda’s loyalty to her sister prompted her to stop the explanation at this. But she herself had been sorely puzzled and tried by the change which had come over the little household since the night of the boy’s arrival, and the temptation to put something of this into words was too strong to be mastered.
“I wish myself he hadn’t come at all,” she continued from the table where she was at work. “Not but that he’s a good enough young-one, and lots of company for us both, but Jess ain’t been herself at all since she brought him here. It ain’t his fault—poor little chap—but she fetched him from Tecumseh on account of something special; and then that something didn’t seem to come off, and she’s as blue as a whetstone about it, and that makes everything blue. And there we are!”
Lucinda finished in a sigh, and proceeded to rub grease on the inside of her cake tins with a gloomy air.
In the outer shop, Jessica found herself standing surprised and silent before the sudden apparition of a visitor whom she had least of all expected—Miss Kate Minster.
The bell which formerly jangled when the street door opened had been taken off because it interfered with the child’s mid-day sleep, and Jessica herself had been so deeply lost in a brown study where she sat sewing behind the counter that she had not noted the entrance of the young lady until she stood almost within touch. Then she rose hurriedly, and stood confused and tongue-tied, her work in hand. She dropped this impediment when Miss Minster offered to shake hands with her, but even this friendly greeting did not serve to restore her self-command or induce a smile.
“I have a thousand apologies to make for leaving you alone all this while,” said Kate. “But—we have been so troubled of late—and, selfish like, I have forgotten everything else. Or no—I won’t say that—for I have thought a great deal about you and your work. And now you must tell me all about both.”
Miss Minster had seated herself as she spoke, and loosened the boa about her throat, but Jessica remained standing. She idly noted that no equipage and coachman were in waiting outside, and let the comment drift to her tongue. “You walked, I see,” she said.
“Yes,” replied Kate. “It isn’t pleasant to take out the horses now. The streets are full of men out of work, and they blame us for it, and to see us drive about seems to make them angry. I suppose it’s a natural enough feeling; but the boys pelted our coachman with snowballs the other day, while my sister and I were driving, and the men on the corner all laughed and encouraged them. But if I walk nobody molests me.”
The young lady, as she said this with an air of modest courage, had never looked so beautiful before in Jessica’s eyes, or appealed so powerfully to her liking and admiration. But the milliner was conscious of an invasion of other and rival feelings which kept her face smileless and hardened the tone of her voice.
“Yes, the men feel very bitterly,” she said. “I know that from the girls. A good many of them—pretty nearly all, for that matter—have stopped coming here, since the lockout, because your money furnished the Resting House. That shows how strong the feeling is.”
“You amaze me!”
There was no pretence in Miss Kate’s emotion. She looked at Jessica with wide-open eyes, and the astonishment in the gaze visibly softened and saddened into genuine pain. “Oh, I am so sorry!” she said. “I never thought of that. Tell me—what can be done? How can we get that cruel notion out of their heads? I did so truly want to help the girls. Surely there must be some way of making them realize this. The closing of the works, that is a business matter with which I had nothing to do, and which I didn’t approve; but this plan of yours, that was really a pet of mine. It is only by a stupid accident that I did not come here often, and get to know the girls, and show them how interested I was in everything. When Mr. Tracy spoke of you yesterday, I resolved to come at once, and tell you how ashamed I was.”
Jessica’s heart was deeply stirred by this speech, and filled with yearnings of tenderness toward the beautiful and good patrician. But some strange, undefined force in her mind held all this softness in subjection.
“The girls are gone,” she said, almost coldly. “They will not come back—at least for a long time, until all this trouble is forgotten.”
“They hate me too much,” groaned Kate, in grieved self-abasement.
“They don’t know you! What they think of is that it is the Minster money; that is what they hate. To take away from the men with a shovel, and give back to the girls with a spoon—they won’t stand that!” The latent class-feeling of a factory town flamed up in Jessica’s bosom, intolerant and vengeful, as she listened to her own words. “I would feel like that myself, if I were in their place,” she said, in curt conclusion.
The daughter of the millions sat for a little in pained irresolution. She was conscious of impulses toward anger at the coldness, almost the rudeness, of this girl whom she had gone far out of and beneath her way to assist. Her own class-feeling, too, subtly prompted her to dismiss with contempt the thought of these thick-fingered, uncouth factory-girls who were rejecting her well-meant bounty. But kindlier feelings strove within her mind, too, and kept her for the moment undecided.
She looked up at Jessica, as if in search for help, and her woman’s heart suddenly told her that the changes in the girl’s face, vaguely apparent to her before, were the badges of grief and unrest. All the annoyance she had been nursing fled on the instant. Her eyes moistened, and she laid her hand softly on the other’s arm.
“You at least mustn’t think harshly of me,” she said with a smile. “That would be too sad. I would give a great deal if the furnaces could be opened to-morrow—if they had never been shut. Not even the girls whose people are out of work feel more deeply about the thing than I do. But—after all, time must soon set that right. Tell me about yourself. You are not looking well. Is there nothing I can do for you?”
An answering moisture came into Jessica’s eyes as she met the other’s look. She shook her head, and withdrew her wrist from the kindly pressure of Kate’s hand.
“I spoke of you at length with Mr. Tracy,” Kate went on, gently. “Do believe that we are both anxious to do all we can for you, in whatever form you like. You have never spoken about more money for the Resting House. Isn’t your store about exhausted? If it is, don’t hesitate for a moment to let me know. And mayn’t I go and see the house, now that I am here? You know I have never been inside it once since you took it.”
For a second or two Jessica hesitated. It cost her a great deal to maintain the unfriendly attitude she had taken up, and she was hopelessly at sea as to why she was paying this price for unalloyed unhappiness. Yet still she persisted doggedly, and as it were in spite of herself.
“It’s a good deal run down just now,” she said. “Since the trouble came, Lucinda and I haven’t kept it up. You’d like better to see it some time when it was in order; that is, if I—if it isn’t given up altogether!”
The despairing intonation of these closing words was not lost upon Kate. She looked up quickly.
“Why do you speak like that?” she said. “Are you discouraged, Jessica? Oh, I hope it isn’t as bad as that!”
“I’m thinking a good deal of going away. You and Miss Wilcox can put somebody else here, and keep open the house. It doesn’t need me. My heart isn’t in it any more.”
The girl forced herself through these words with a mournful effort. The hot tears came to her eyes before she had finished, and she turned away abruptly, walking behind the counter to the front of the shop.
Miss Minster rose and went to her. “There is something you are not telling me, my child,” she urged with tender earnestness. “What is it? Are you in trouble? Tell me. Let me help you!”
“There is nothing—nothing at all,” Jessica made answer. “Only I am not happy here. It was a mistake to come. And there are—other things—that were a mistake, too.”
“Why not confide in me, dear? Why not let me help you?”
“How could you help me?” The girl spoke with momentary impatience. “There are things that money can’t help.”
The rich young lady drew herself up instinctively, and tightened the fur about her neck. The words affected her almost like an affront.
“I’m very sorry,” she said, with an obvious cooling of manner. “I did not mean money alone. I had hoped you felt I was your friend. And I still want to be, if occasion arises. I shall be very much grieved, indeed, if you do not let me know, at any and all times, when I can be of use to you.”
She held out her hand, evidently as an indication that she was going. Jessica saw the hand through a mist of smarting tears, and took it, not daring to look up. She was filled with longings to kiss this hand, to cry out for forgiveness, to cast herself upon the soft shelter of this sweet friendship, so sweetly proffered. But there was some strange spell which held her back, and, still through the aching film of tears, she saw the gloved hand withdrawn. A soft “good-by” spread its pathos upon the silence about her, and then Miss Minster was gone.
Jessica stood for a time, looking blankly into the street. Then she turned and walked with unconscious directness, as in a dream, through the back rooms and across the yard to the Resting House. She had passed her stepmother, her sister, and her child without bestowing a glance upon them, and she wandered now through the silent building aimlessly, without power to think of what she saw. Although the furniture was still of the most primitive and unpretentious sort, there were many little appliances for the comfort of the girls, in which she had had much innocent delight. The bath-rooms on the upper floor, the willow rocking-chairs in the sitting-room, the neat row of cups and saucers in the glassfaced cupboard, the magazines and pattern books on the table—all these it had given her pleasure to contemplate only a fortnight ago. Now they were nothing to her. She noted that the fire in the base-burner had gone out, though the reservoir still seemed full of coal. She was conscious of a vague sense of fitness in its having gone out. The fire that had burned within her heart was in ashes, too. She put her apron to her eyes and wept vehemently, here in solitude.
Lucinda came out, nearly an hour later, to find her sister sitting disconsolate by the fireless stove, shivering with the cold, and staring into vacancy.
She put her broad arm with maternal kindness around Jessica’s waist, and led her unresisting toward the door. “Never mind, sis,” she murmured, with clumsy sympathy. “Come in and play with Horace.”
Jessica, shuddering again with the chill, buried her face on her sister’s shoulder, and wept supinely. There was not an atom of courage remaining in her heart.
“You are low down and miserable,” pursued Lucinda, compassionately. “I’ll make you up some boneset tea. It’ll be lucky if you haven’t caught your death a-cold out here so long.” She had taken a shawl, which hung in the hallway, and wrapped it about her sister’s shoulders.
“I half wish I had,” sobbed Jessica. “There’s no fight left in me any more.”
“What’s the matter, anyway?”
“If I knew myself,” the girl groaned in answer, “perhaps I could do something; but I don’t. I can’t think, I can’t eat or sleep or work. O God! what is the matter with me?”
A SOMBRE excitement reigned in Thessaly next day, when it became known that the French-Cana-dian workmen whom the rolling-mill people were importing would arrive in the village within the next few hours. They were coming through from Massachusetts, and watchful eyes at Troy had noted their temporary halt there and the time of the train they took westward. The telegraph sped forward the warning, and fully a thousand idle men in Thessaly gathered about the dépôt, both inside and on the street without, to witness the unwelcome advent.
Some indefinite rumors of the sensation reached the secluded milliner’s shop on the back street, during the day. Ben Lawton drifted in to warm himself during the late forenoon, and told of the stirring scenes that were expected. He was quick to observe that Jessica was not looking well, and adjured her to be careful about the heavy cold which she said she had taken. The claims upon him of the excitement outside were too strong to be resisted, but he promised to look in during the afternoon and tell them the news.
The daylight of the November afternoon was beginning imperceptibly to wane before any further tidings of the one topic of great public interest reached the sisters. One of the better class of factory-girls came in to gossip with Lucinda, and she brought with her a veritable budget of information. The French Canadians had arrived, and with them came some Pinkerton detectives, or whatever they were called, who were said to be armed to the teeth. The crowd had fiercely hooted these newcomers and their guards, and there had been a good deal of angry hustling. For awhile it looked as if a fight must ensue; but, somehow, it did not come off. The Canadians, in a body, had gone with their escort to the row of new cottages which the company had hired for them, followed by a diminishing throng of hostile men and boys. There were numerous personal incidents to relate, and the two sisters listened with deep interest to the whole recital.
When it was finished the girl still sat about, evidently with something on her mind. At last, with a blunt “Can I speak to you for a moment?” she led Jessica out into the shop. There, in a whisper, with repeated affirmations and much detail, she imparted the confidential portion of her intelligence.
The effect of this information upon Jessica was marked and immediate. As soon as the girl had gone she hastened to the living-room, and began hurriedly putting on her boots. The effort of stooping to button them made her feverish head ache, and she was forced to call the amazed Lucinda to her assistance.
“You’re crazy to think of going out such a day as this,” protested the girl, “and you with such a cold, too.”
“It’s got to be done,” said Jessica, her eyes burning with eagerness, and her cheeks flushed. “If it killed me, it would have to be done. But I’ll bundle up warm. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.” Refusing to listen to further dissuasion she hastily put on her hat and cloak, and then with nervous rapidity wrote a note, sealed it up tightly with an envelope, and marked on it, with great plainness, the address: “Miss Kate Minster.”
“Give this to father when he comes,” she cried, “and tell him—”
Ben Lawton’s appearance at the door interrupted the directions. He was too excited about the events of the day to be surprised at seeing the daughter he had left an invalid now dressed for the street; but she curtly stopped the narrative which he began.
“We’ve heard all about it,” she said. “I want you to come with me now.”
Lucinda watched the dominant sister drag on and button her gloves with apprehension and solicitude written all over her honest face. “Now, do be careful,” she repeated more than once.
As Jessica said “I’m ready now,” and turned to join her father, the little boy came into the shop through the open door of the living-room. A swift instinct prompted the mother to go to him and stoop to kiss him on the forehead. The child smiled at her; and when she was out in the street, walking so hurriedly that her father found the gait unprecedented in his languid experience, she still dwelt curiously in her mind upon the sweetness of that infantile smile.
And this, by some strange process, suddenly brought clearness and order to her thoughts. Under the stress of this nervous tension, perhaps because of the illness which she felt in every bone, yet which seemed to clarify her senses, her mind was all at once working without confusion.
She saw now that what had depressed her, overthrown her self-control, impelled her to reject the kindness of Miss Minster, had been the humanization, so to speak, of her ideal, Reuben Tracy. The bare thought of his marrying and giving in marriage—of his being in love with the rich girl—this it was that had so strangely disturbed her. Looking at it now, it was the most foolish thing in the world. What on earth had she to do with Reuben Tracy? There could never conceivably have entered her head even the most vagrant and transient notion that he—no, she would not put that thought into form, even in her own mind. And were there two young people in all the world who had more claim to her good wishes than Reuben and Kate? She answered this heartily in the negative, and said to herself that she truly was glad that they loved each other. Yes, she was glad! She bit her lips, and insisted on repeating this to her own thoughts.
But why, then, had the discovery of this so unnerved her? She answered the question only vaguely. It must have been because the idea of their happiness made the isolation of her own life so miserably clear; because she felt that they had forgotten her and her work in their new-found concern for each other. Yes, that would be the reason. She was all over that weak folly now. She had it in her power to help them, and dim, half-formed wishes that she might give life itself to their service flitted across her mind.
She had spoken never a word to her father all this while, and had seemed to take no note either of direction or of what and whom she passed; but she stopped now in front of the doorway in Main Street which bore the law-sign of Reuben Tracy. “Wait for me here,” she said to Ben, and disappeared up the staircase.
Jessica made her way with some difficulty up the second flight. Her head burned with the exertion, and there was a novel numbness in her limbs; but she gave this only a passing thought.
The door of the office was locked. On the panel was tacked a white half-sheet of paper. It was not easy to decipher the inscription in the failing light, but she finally made it out to be:
“Called away until noon to-morrow (Friday).”
The girl leaned against the door-sill for support. In the first moment or two it seemed to her that she was going to swoon. Then resolution came back to her, and with it a new store of strength, and she went down the stairs again slowly and in terrible doubt as to what should now be done.
The memory suddenly came to her of the one other time she had been in this stairway, when she had stood in the darkness with her little boy, gathered up against the wall to allow the two Minster ladies to pass. Upon the heels of this chased the recollection—with such lack of sequence do our thoughts follow one another—of the singularly sweet smile her little boy had bestowed upon her, half an hour since, when she kissed him.
The smile had lingered in her mind as a beautiful picture. Walking down the stairs now, in the deepening shadows, the revelation dawned upon her all at once—it was his father’s smile! Yes, yes—hurriedly the fancy reared itself in her thoughts—thus the lover of her young girlhood had looked upon her. The delicate, clever face; the prettily arched lips; the soft, light curls upon the forehead; the tenderly beaming blue eyes—all were the same.
Often—alas! very often—this resemblance had forced itself upon her consciousness before. But now, lighted up by that chance babyish smile, it came to her in the guise of a novelty, and with a certain fascination in it. Her head seemed to have ceased to ache, now that this almost pleasant thought had entered it. It was passing strange, she felt, that any sense of comfort should exist for her in memories which had fed her soul upon bitterness for so long a time. Yet it was already on the instant apparent to her that when she should next have time to think, that old episode would assume less hateful aspects than it had always presented before.
But now there was no time to think.
At the street door she found her father leaning against a shutter and discussing the events of the day with the village lamplighter, who carried a ladder on his shoulder, and reported great popular agitation to exist.
Jessica beckoned Ben summarily aside, and put into his hands the letter she had written at the shop. “I want you to take this at once to Miss Minster, at her house,” she said, hurriedly. “See to it that she gets it herself. Be sure you wait for an answer. Don’t say a word to any living soul. Do just what she tells you to do. I’ve said you can be depended upon. If you show yourself a man, it may make your fortune. Now, hurry; and I do hope you will do me credit!”
Under the spur of this surprising exhortation, Ben walked away with unexampled rapidity, until he had overtaken the lamplighter, from whom he borrowed some chewing tobacco.
The girl, left to herself, began walking irresolutely down Main Street. The flaring lights in the store windows seemed to add to the confusion of her mind. It had appeared to be important to send her father away at once, but now she began to regret that she had not kept him to help her in her search. For Reuben Tracy must be found at all hazards.
How to go to work to trace him she did not know. She had no notion whatever as to who his intimate friends were. The best device she could think of would be to ask about him at the various law-offices; for she had heard that however much lawyers might pretend to fight one another in court, they were all on very good terms outside.
Some little distance down the street she came upon the door of another stairway which bore a number of lawyers’ signs. The windows all up the front of this building were lighted, and without further examination she ascended the first flight of stairs. The landing was almost completely dark, but an obscured gleam came from the dusty transoms over three or four doors close about her. She knocked on one of these at random, and in response to an inarticulate vocal sound from within, opened the door and entered.
It was a square, medium-sized room in which she found herself, with a long, paper-littered table in the centre, and tall columns of light leather-covered books rising along the walls. At the opposite end of the chamber a man sat at a desk, his back turned to her, his elbows on the desk, and his head in his hands. The shaded light in front of him made a mellow golden fringe around the outline of his hair.
A sudden bewildering tumult burst forth in the girl’s breast as she looked at this figure. Then, as suddenly, the recurring mental echoes of the voice which had bidden her enter rose above this tumult and stilled it. A gentle and comforting warmth stole through her veins. This was Horace Boyce who sat there before her—and she did not hate him!
During that instant in which she stood by the door, a whole flood of self-illumination flashed its rays into every recess of her mind. This, then, was the strange, formless opposing impulse which had warred with the other in her heart for this last miserable fortnight, and dragged her nearly to distraction. She recognized it now, and welcomed it.
The bringing home of her boy had revived for her, by occult and subtle processes, the old romance in which his father had been framed, as might a hero be by sunlit clouds. She hugged the thought to her heart, and stood looking at’ him motionless and mute.
“Well, who is it? What is wanted?” he called out, querulously, without changing his posture.
Jessica moved slowly toward him. It was as if a magic voice drew her forward in a dream—herself all rapt and dumb.
Irritably impressed by the continued silence, Horace lifted his head, and swung abruptly around in his chair. His own shadow obscured the features of his visitor. He saw only that it was a lady, and rose hesitatingly to his feet.
“Excuse me,” he mumbled, “I was busy with my thoughts, and did not know who it was.”
“Do you know now?” Jessica heard herself ask, as in a trance. The balmy warmth in her own heart told her that she was smiling.
Horace took a step or two obliquely forward, so that the light fell on her face. He peered with a confounded gaze at her for a moment, then let his arms fall limp at his sides.
“In the name of the dev—” he began, confusedly, and then bit the word short, and stared at her again. “Is it really you?” he asked at last, reassured in part by her smile.
“Are you sorry to see me?” she asked in turn. Her mind could frame nothing but these soft little meaningless queries.
The young man seemed in doubt how best to answer this question. He turned around and looked abstractedly at his desk; then with a slight detour he walked past her, opened the door, and glanced up and down the dark stairway. When he had closed the door once more, he turned the key in the lock, and then, after momentary reflection, concluded to unlock it again.
“Why, no; why should I be?” he said in a more natural voice, as he returned and stood beside her. Evidently her amiability was a more difficult surprise for him to master than her original advent, and he studied her face with increasing directness of gaze to make sure of it.
“Come and sit down here,” he said, after a few moments of this puzzled inspection, and resumed his own chair. “I want a good look at you,” he explained, as he lifted the shade from the lamp.
Jessica felt that she was blushing under this new radiance, and it required an effort to return his glance. But, when she did so, the changes in his face and expression which it revealed drove everything else from her mind. She rose from her chair upon a sudden impulse, and bent over him at a diffident distance. As she did so, she had the feeling that this bitterness in which she had encased herself for years had dropped from her on the instant like a discarded garment.
“Why, Horace, your hair is quite gray!” she said, as if the fact contained the sublimation of pathos.
“There’s been trouble enough to turn it white twenty times over! You don’t know what I’ve been through, my girl,” he said, sadly. The novel sensation of being sympathized with, welcome as it was, greatly accentuated his sense of deserving compassion.
“I am very sorry,” she said, softly. She had seated herself again, and was gradually recovering her self-possession. The whole situation was so remarkable, not to say startling, that she found herself regarding it from the outside, as if she were not a component part of it. Her pulses were no longer strongly stirred by its personal phases. Most clear of all things in her mind was that she was now perfectly independent of this or any other man. She was her own master, and need ask favors from nobody. Therefore, if it pleased her to call bygones bygones and make a friend of Horace—or even to put a bandage across her eyes and cull from those bygones only the rose leaves and violet blossoms, and make for her weary soul a bed of these—what or who was to prevent her?
Some inexplicable, unforeseen revulsion of feeling had made him pleasant in her sight again. There was no doubt about it—she had genuine satisfaction in sitting here opposite him and looking at him. Had she so many pleasures, then, that she should throw this unlooked-for boon deliberately away?
Moreover—and here the new voices called most loudly in her heart—he was worn and unhappy. The iron had palpably entered his soul too. He looked years older than he had any chronological right to look. There were heavy lines of anxiety on his face, and his blonde hair was powdered thick with silver.
“Yes, I am truly sorry,” she said again. “Is it business that has gone wrong with you?”
“Business—family—health—sleep—everything!” he groaned, bitterly. “It is literally a hell that I have been living in this last—these last few months!”
“I had no idea of that,” she said, simply. Of course it would be ridiculous to ask if there was anything she could do, but she had comfort from the thought that he must realize what was in her mind.
“So help me God, Jess!” he burst out vehemently, under the incentive of her sympathy, “I’m coming to believe that every man is a scoundrel, and every woman a fool!”
“There was a long time when I thought that,” she said with a sigh.
He looked quickly at her from under his brows, and then as swiftly turned his glance away. “Yes, I know,” he answered uneasily, tapping with his fingers on the desk.
“But we won’t talk of that,” she urged, with a little tremor of anxiety in her tone. “We needn’t talk of that at all. It was merely by accident that I came here, Horace. I wanted to ask a question, and nothing was further from my head than finding you here.”
“Let’s see—Mart Jocelyn had this place up to a couple of months ago. Was it he you came to see? I didn’t know you knew him.”
“No, you foolish boy!” she said, with a smile which had a ground tone of sadness. “I never heard of him before. It was simply any lawyer I was looking for. But what I wanted to say was that I am not angry with you any more. I’ve learned a host of bitter lessons since we were—young together, and I’m too much alone in the world to want to keep you an enemy. You don’t seem so very happy yourself, Horace. Why shouldn’t we two be friends again? I’m not talking of anything else, Horace—understand me. But it appeals to me very strongly, this idea of our being friends again.”
Horace looked meditatively at her, with softening eyes. “You’re the best of the lot, dear old Jess,” he said at last, smiling candidly. “Truly I’m glad you came—gladder than I can tell you. I was in the very slough of despond when you entered; and now—well, at least I’m going to play that I am out of it.”
Jessica rose with a beaming countenance, and laid her hand frankly on his shoulder. “I’m glad I came, too,” she said. “And very soon I want to see you again—when you are quite free—and have a long, quiet talk.”
“All right, my girl,” he answered, rising as well. The prospect seemed entirely attractive to him. He took her hand in his, and said again: “All right. And must you go now?”
“Oh, mercy, yes!” she exclaimed, with sudden recollection. “I had no business to stay so long! Perhaps you can tell me—or no—” She vaguely put together in her mind the facts that Tracy and Horace had been partners, and seemed to be so no longer. “No, you wouldn’t know.”
“Have I so poor a legal reputation as all that?” he said, lightly smiling. “Hang it all! One’s friends, at least, ought to dissemble their bad opinions.”
“No, it wasn’t about law,” she explained, stum-blingly. “It’s of no importance. I must hurry now. Good-by for the time.”
He would have drawn her to him and kissed her at this, but she gently prevented the caress, and released herself from his hands.
“Not that,” she said, with a smile in which still some sadness lingered. “I would rather not that. It is better so. And—good-by, Horace, for the time.”
He went with her to the door, lighting the hall gas that she might see her way down the stairs. When she had disappeared, he walked for a little up and down the room, whistling softly to himself. It was undeniable that the world seemed vastly brighter to him than it had only a half-hour before. Mere contact with somebody who liked him for himself was a refreshing novelty.
“A damned decent sort of girl—considering everything!” he mused aloud, as he locked up his desk for the day.
To come upon the street again was like the confused awakening from a dream. With the first few steps Jessica found herself shivering in an extremity of cold, yet still uncomfortably warm. A sudden passing spasm of giddiness, too, made her head swim so that for the instant she feared to fall. Then, with an added sense of weakness, she went on, wearily and desponding.
The recollection of this novel and curious happiness upon which she had stumbled only a few moments before took on now the character of self-reproach. The burning headache had returned, and with it came a pained consciousness that it had been little less than criminal in her to weakly dally in Horace’s office when such urgent responsibility rested upon her outside. If the burden of this responsibility appeared too great for her to bear, now that her strength seemed to be so strangely leaving her, there was all the more reason for her to set her teeth together, and press forward, even if she staggered as she went.
Only—where to find Reuben Tracy! The search had been made cruelly hopeless by that shameful delay; and she blamed herself with fierceness for it, as she racked her brain for some new plan, wondering whether she ought to have asked Horace or gone into some of the other offices.
There were groups of men standing here and there on the comers—a little away from the full light of the street-lamps, as if unwilling to court observation. These knots of workmen had a sinister significance to her feverish mind. She had the clew to the terrible mischief which some of them intended—which no doubt even now they were canvassing in furtive whispers—and only Tracy could stop it, and she was powerless to find him!
There came slouching along the sidewalk, as she grappled with this anguish of irresolution, a slight and shabby figure which somehow arrested her attention. It was a familiar enough figure—that of old “Cal” Gedney; and there was nothing unusual or worthy of comment in the fact that he was walking unsteadily by himself, with his gaze fixed intently on the sidewalk. He had passed again out of the range of her cursory glance before she suddenly remembered that he was a lawyer, and even some kind of a judge.
She turned swiftly and almost ran after him, clutching his sleeve as she came up to him, and breathing so hard with weakness and excitement that for the moment she could not speak.
The ’squire looked up, and angrily shook his arm out of her grasp. “Leave me alone, you hussy,” he snarled, “or I’ll lock you up!”
His misconstruction of her purpose cleared her mind. “Don’t be foolish,” she said, hurriedly. “It’s a question of perhaps life and death! Do you know where Reuben Tracy is? Or can you tell me where I can find out?”
“He don’t want to be bothered with you, wherever he is,” was the surly response. “Be off with you!”
“I told you it was a matter of life and death,” she insisted, earnestly. “He’ll never forgive you—you’ll never forgive yourself—if you know and won’t tell me.”
The sincerity of the girl’s tone impressed the old man. It was not easy for him to stand erect and unaided without swaying, but his mind was evidently clear enough.
“What do you want with him?” he asked, in a less unfriendly voice. Then he added, in a reflective undertone: “Cur’ous’t I sh’d want see Tracy, too.”
“Then you do know where he is?”
“He’s drove out to ’s mother’s farm. Seems word come old woman’s sick. You’re one of that Lawton tribe, aren’t you?”
“If I get a cutter, will you drive out there with me?” She asked the question with swift directness. She added in explanation, as he stared vacantly at her: “I ask that because you said you wanted to see him, that’s all. I shall go alone if you won’t come. He’s got to be back here this evening, or God only knows what’ll happen! I mean what I say!”
“Do you know the road?” the ’squire asked, catching something of her own eager spirit.
“Every inch of it! I was bom half a mile from where his mother lives.”
“But you won’t tell me what your business is?”
“I’ll tell you this much,” she whispered, hastily. “There is going to be a mob at the Minster house to-night. A girl who knows one of the men told—”
The old ’squire cut short the revelation by grasping her arm with fierce energy.
“Come on—come on!” he said, hoarsely. “Don’t waste a minute. By God! We’ll gallop the horses both ways.” He muttered to himself with excitement as he dragged her along.
Jessica waited outside the livery stable for what seemed an interminable period, while old “Cal” was getting the horses—walking up and down the path in a state of mental torment which precluded all sense of bodily suffering. When she conjured up before her frightened mind the terrible consequences which delay might entail, every minute became an intolerable hour of torture. There was even the evil chance that the old man had been refused the horses because he had been drinking.
Finally, however, there came the welcome sound of mailed hoofs on the plank roadway inside, and the reverberating jingle of bells; and then the ’squire, with a spacious double-seated sleigh containing plenty of robes, drew up in front of a cutting in the snow.
She took the front seat without hesitation, and gathered the lines into her own hands. “Let me drive,” she said, clucking the horses into a rapid trot. “I should be home in bed. I’m too ill to sit up, unless I’m doing something that keeps me from giving up.”
Reuben Tracy felt the evening in the sitting-room of the old farmhouse to be the most trying ordeal of his adult life.
Ordinarily he rather enjoyed than otherwise the company of his brother Ezra—a large, powerfully built, heavily bearded man, who sat now beside him in a rocking-chair in front of the wood stove, his stockinged feet on the hearth, and a last week’s agricultural paper on his knee. Ezra was a worthy and hard-working citizen, with an original way of looking at things, and considerable powers of expression. As a rule, the lawyer liked to talk with him, and felt that he profited in ideas and suggestions from the talk.
But to-night he found his brother insufferably dull, and the task of keeping down the “fidgets” one of incredible difficulty. His mother—on whose account he had been summoned—was so much better that Ezra’s wife had felt warranted in herself going off to bed, to get some much-needed rest. Ezra had argued for a while, rather perversely, about the tariff duty on wool, and now was nodding in his chair, although the dim-faced old wooden clock showed it to be barely eight o’clock. The kerosene lamp on the table gave forth only a feeble, reddened light through its smoky chimney, but diffused a most powerful odor upon the stuffy air of the over-heated room. A ragged and strong-smelling old farm dog groaned offensively from time to time in his sleep behind the stove. Even the draught which roared through the lower apertures in front of the stove and up the pipe toward the chimney was irritating by the very futility of its vehemence, for the place was too hot already.
Reuben mused in silence upon the chances which had led him so far away from this drowsy, unfruitful life, and smiled as he found himself wondering if it would be in the least possible for him to return to it. No—no one ever did return. The bright boys, the restless boys, the boys of energy, of ambition, of yearning for culture or conquest or the mere sensation of living where it was really life—all went away, leaving none but the Ezras behind. Some succeeded; some failed; but none of them ever came back. And the Ezras who remained on the farms—they seemed to shut and bolt the doors of their minds against all idea of making their own lot less sterile and barren and uninviting.
The mere mental necessity for a great contrast brought up suddenly in Reuben’s thoughts a picture of the drawing-room in the home of the Minsters. It seemed as if the whole vast swing of the mind’s pendulum separated that luxurious abode of cultured wealth from this dingy and barren farmhouse room. And he, who had been born and reared in this latter, now found himself at a loss how to spend so much as a single evening in its environment, so completely had familiarity with the other remoulded and changed his habits, his point of view, his very character. Curious slaves of habit—creatures of their surroundings—men were!
A loud, peremptory knocking at the door aroused Reuben abruptly from his revery, and Ezra, too, opened his eyes with a start, and sitting upright rubbed them confusedly.
“Now I think of it, I heard a sleigh stop,” said Reuben, rising. “It can’t be the doctor this time of night, can it?”
“It ’ud be jest like him,” commented Ezra, captiously. “He’s a great hand to keep dropping in, sort of casual-like, when there’s sickness in the house. It all goes down in his bill.”
The farmer brother had also risen, and now, lamp in hand, walked heavily in his stocking feet to the door, and opened it half way. Some indistinct words passed, and then, shading the flickering flame with his huge hairy hand, Ezra turned his head.
“Somebody to see you, Rube,” he said. On second thought he added to the visitor in a tone of formal politeness: “Won’t you step in, ma’am?”
Jessica Lawton almost pushed her host aside in her impulsive response to his invitation. But when she had crossed the threshold the sudden change into a heated atmosphere seemed to go to her brain like chloroform. She stood silent, staring at Reuben, with parted lips and hands nervously twitching. Even as he, in his complete surprise, recognized his visitor, she trembled violently from head to foot, made a forward step, tottered, and fell inertly into Ezra’s big, protecting arm.
“I guessed she was going to do it,” said the farmer, not dissembling his pride at the alert way in which the strange woman had been caught, and holding up the lamp with his other hand in triumph. “Hannah keeled over in that same identical way when Suky run her finger through the cogs of the wringing-machine, and I ketched her, too!”
Reuben had hurriedly come to his brother’s assistance. The two men placed the fainting girl in the rocking-chair, and the lawyer began with anxious fumbling to loosen the neck of her cloak and draw off her gloves. Her fingers were like ice, and her brow, though it felt now almost equally cold, was covered with perspiration. Reuben rubbed her hands between his broad palms in a crudely informed belief that it was the right thing to do, while Ezra rummaged in the adjoining pantry for the household bottle of brandy.
Jessica came out of her swoon with the first touch of the pungent spirit upon her whitened lips. She looked with weak blankness at the unfamiliar scene about her, until her gaze fell upon the face of the lawyer. Then she smiled faintly and closed her eyes again.
“She is an old friend of mine,” whispered Reuben to his brother, as he pressed the brandy once more upon her. “She’ll come to in a minute. It must be something serious that brought her out here.”
The girl languidly opened her eyes. “‘Cal’ Ged-ney’s asleep in the sleigh,” she murmured. “You’d better bring him in. He’ll tell you.”
It was with an obvious effort that she said this much; and now, while Ezra hastily pulled on his boots, her eyes closed again, and her head sank with utter weariness sideways upon the high back of the old-fashioned chair.
Reuben stood looking at her in pained anxiety—once or twice holding the lamp close to her pale face, in dread of he knew not what—until his brother returned. Ezra had brought the horses up into the yard, and remained outside now to blanket them, while the old ’squire, benumbed and drowsy, found his way into the house. It was evident enough to the young lawyer’s first glance that Gedney had been drinking heavily.
“Well, what does this all mean?” he demanded, with vexed asperity.
“You’ve got to get on your things and race back with us, helly-to-hoot!” said the ’squire. “Quick—there ain’t a minute to lose!” The old man almost gasped in his eagerness.
“In Heaven’s name, what’s up? Have you been to Cadmus?”
“Yes, and got my pocket full of affidavits. We can send all three of them to prison fast enough. But that’ll do to-morrow; for to-night there’s a mob up at the Minster place. Look there!”
The old man had gone to the window and swept the stiff curtain aside. He held it now with a trembling hand, so that Reuben could look out.
The whole southern sky overhanging Thessaly was crimson with the reflection of a fire.
“Great God! it’s the rolling mill,” ejaculated Reuben, breathlessly.
“Quite as likely it’s the Minster house; it’s the same direction, only farther off, and fires are deceptive,” said Gedney, his excitement rising under the stimulus of the spectacle.
Reuben had kicked off his slippers, and was now dragging on his shoes. “Tell me about it,” he said, working furiously at the laces.
’Squire Gedney helped himself generously to the brandy on the table as he unfolded, in somewhat incoherent fashion, his narrative. The Lawton girl had somehow found out that a hostile demonstration against the Minsters was intended for the evening, and had started out to find Tracy. By accident she had met him (Gedney), and they had come off in the sleigh together. She had insisted upon driving, and as his long journey from Cadmus had greatly fatigued him, he had got over into the back seat and gone to sleep under the buffalo robes. He knew nothing more until Ezra had roused him from his slumber in the sled, now at a standstill on the road outside, and he had awakened to discover Jessica gone, the horses wet and shivering in a cloud of steam, and the sky behind them all ablaze.
“Jee-Whitaker! Looks as if the whole town was burning,” said Ezra, coming in as this recital was concluded. “Them horses would a-got their death out there in another ten minutes. Guess I’d better put ’em in the barn, eh?”
“No, no! Just turn them around. I’ve got to drive them back faster than they came,” said Reuben, who had on his overcoat and hat. “Hurry, and get me some thick gloves to drive in. I’ll leave my things here. We won’t wake mother up. I’ll get you to run in to-morrow, if you will, and let me know how she is. Tell her I had to go.”
When Ezra had found the gloves and brought them, the two men for the first time bent an instinctive joint glance at the recumbent figure of the girl in the rocking-chair.
“I’ll get Hannah up,” said the farmer, “and she can have your room. I guess she’s too sick to try to go back with you. If she’s well enough, I’ll bring her in in the morning. I was going to take in some apples, anyway.”
To their surprise Jessica opened her eyes and even lifted her head at these words.
“No,” she said; “I feel better now—much better. I must go back with Mr. Tracy. I really must.” She rose to her feet as she spoke, and, though she was conscious of great dizziness and languor, succeeded by her smile in imposing upon her unskilled companions. Perhaps if Hannah had been “got up” she would have seen through the weak pretence of strength, and insisted on having matters ordered otherwise. But the men offered no dissent. Jessica was persuaded to drink another glass of brandy, and ’Squire Gedney took one without being specially urged; and then Reuben impatiently led the way out to the sleigh, which Ezra had turned around.
“No; I’d rather be in front with you,” the girl said, when Reuben had spread the robes for her to sit in the back seat. “Let the Judge sit there; he wants to sleep. I’m not tired now, and I want to keep awake.”
Thus it was arranged, and Reuben, with a strong hand on the tight reins, started the horses on their homeward rush toward the flaming horizon.