Chapter I: Pitch My Tent (7)

I became so interested that, being unobserved myself, I stayed some time observing them. I also had a vague hope that possibly Miss Leigh might appear. It was owing to my long visit that I was finally honored with my hostess's attention. As she had taken no notice of me on my first entrance beyond a formal bow and an indifferent hand-shake, I had moved on and a moment later had gotten into conversation with a young girl--large, plump, and apparently, like myself, ready to talk to any one who came near, as she promptly opened a conversation with me, a step which, I may say, I was more than ready to take advantage of. I recognized her as the girl who had been talking to Count Pushkin the evening of the concert, and whom I had seen him leave for Miss Leigh. We were soon in the midst of a conversation in which I did the questioning and she did most of the talking and she threw considerable light on a number of the visitors, whom she divided into various classes characterized in a vernacular of her own. Some were "frumps," some were "stiffs," and some were "old soaks"--the latter appellation, as I gathered, not implying any special addiction to spirituous liquors on the part of those so characterized, but only indicating the young woman's gauge of their merits. Still, she was amusing enough for a time, and appeared to be always ready to "die laughing" over everything. Like myself, she seemed rather inclined to keep her eye on the door, where I was watching for the possible appearance of the one who had brought me there. I was recalled from a slight straying of my mind from some story she was telling, by her saying:

"You're a lawyer, aren't you?"

Feeling rather flattered at the suggestion, and thinking that I must have struck her as intellectual-looking, I admitted the fact and asked her why she thought so.

"Oh! because they're the only people who have nothing to do and attend teas--young lawyers. I have seen you walking on the street when I was driving by."

"Well, you know you looked busier than I; but you weren't really," I said. I was a little taken aback by her asking if I knew Count Pushkin.

"Oh, yes," I said. "I know him."

This manifestly made an impression.

"What do you think of him?"

"What do I think of him? When I know you a little better, I will tell you," I said. "Doesn't he attend teas?"

"Oh! yes, but then he is--he is something--a nobleman, you know."

"Do I?"

"Yes. Didn't you hear how last spring he stopped a runaway and was knocked down and dragged ever so far? Why, his face was all bruises."

I could not help laughing at the recollection of Pushkin.

"I saw that."

"Oh! did you? Do tell me about it. It was fine, wasn't it? Don't you think he's lovely?"

"Get him to tell you about it." I was relieved at that moment at a chance to escape her. I saw my hostess talking to a middle-aged, overdressed, but handsome woman whose face somehow haunted me with a reminiscence which I could not quite place, and as I happened to look in a mirror I saw they were talking of me, so I bowed to my young lady and moved on. The visitor asked who I was, and I could see the hostess reply that she had not the slightest idea. She put up her lorgnon and scrutinized me attentively and then shook her head again. I walked over to where they sat.

"We were just saying, Mr.--ah--ah--Laze, that one who undertakes to do a little for one's fellow-beings finds very little encouragement." She spoke almost plaintively, looking first at me and then at her friend, who had been taking an inventory of the west side of the room and had not the slightest idea of what she was talking.

"I am overrun with beggars," she proceeded.

Remembering her great reputation for charity, I thought this natural and suggested as much. She was pleased with my sympathy, and continued:

"Why, they invade me even in the privacy of my home. Not long ago, a person called and, though I had given instructions to my butler to deny me to persons, unless he knew their business and I know them, this man, who was a preacher and should have known better, pushed himself in and actually got into my drawing-room when I was receiving some of my friends. As he saw me, of course I could not excuse myself, and do you know, he had the insolence, not only to dictate to me how I should spend my money, but actually how I should manage my affairs!"

"Oh! dear, think of that!" sighed the other lady. "And you, of all people!"

I admitted that this was extraordinary, and, manifestly encouraged, Mrs. Argand swept on.

"Why, he actually wanted me to forego my rents and let a person stay in one of my houses who would not pay his rent!"

"Incredible!"

"The man had had the insolence to hold on and actually force me to bring suit."

"Impossible!"

I began to wish I were back in my office. At this moment, however, succor came from an unexpected source.

"You know we have bought a house very near you?" interjected the blonde girl who had joined our group and suddenly broke in on our hostess's monologue.

"Ah! I should think you would feel rather lonely up here--and would miss all your old friends?" said Mrs. Argand sweetly, turning her eyes toward the door. The girl lifted her head and turned to the other lady.

"Not at all. You know lots of people call at big houses, Mrs. Gillis, just because they are big," said she, with a spark in her pale-blue eye, and I felt she was able to take care of herself.

But Mrs. Argand did not appear to hear. She was looking over the heads of the rest of us with her eye on the door, when suddenly, as her servant in an unintelligible voice announced some one, her face lit up.

"Ah! My dear Count! How do you do? It was so good of you to come."

I turned to look just as Pushkin brushed by me and, with a little rush between the ladies seated near me, bent over and seizing her hand, kissed it zealously, while he uttered his compliments. It manifestly made a deep impression on the company. I was sure he had seen me. The effect on the company was remarkable. The blonde girl moved around a little and stood in front of another lady who pressed slightly forward.

"Count Pushkin!" muttered one lady to Mrs. Gillis, in an audible undertone.

"Oh! I know him well." She was evidently trying to catch the count's eye to prove her intimate acquaintance; but Pushkin was too much engrossed with or by our hostess to see her--or else was too busy evading my eye.

"Well, it's all up with me," I thought. "If I leave him here, my character's gone forever."

"Such a beautiful custom," murmured Mrs. Gillis's friend. "I always like it."

"Now, do sit down and have a cup of tea," said our hostess. "I will make you a fresh cup." She glanced at a chair across the room and then at me, and I almost thought she was going to ask me to bring the chair for the count! But she thought better of it.

"Go and bring that chair and sit right here by me and let me know how you are."

"Here, take this seat," said Mrs. Gillis, who was rising, but whose eyes were fast on Pushkin's face.

"Oh! must you be going?" asked Mrs. Argand. "Well, good-by--so glad you could come."

"Yes, I must go. How do you do, Count Pushkin?"

"Oh! ah! How do you do?" said the count, turning with a start and a short bow.

"I met you at the ball not long ago. Miss McSheen introduced me to you. Don't you remember?" She glanced at the young lady who stood waiting.

"Ah! Yes--certainly! To be sure--Miss McSheen--ah! yes, I remember."

Doubtless, he did; for at this juncture the young lady I had been talking to, stepped forward and claimed the attention of the count, who, I thought, looked a trifle bored.

Feeling as if I were a mouse in a trap, I was about to try to escape when my intention was changed as suddenly as by a miracle, and, indeed, Eleanor Leigh's appearance at this moment seemed almost, if not quite, miraculous.

She had been walking rapidly in the wind and her hair was a little blown about--not too much--for I hate frowsy hair--just enough to give precisely the right touch of "sweet neglect" and naturalness to a pretty and attractive girl. Her cheeks were glowing, her eyes sparkling, her face lighted with some resolution which made it at once audacious and earnest, and as she came tripping into the room she suddenly transformed it by giving it something of reality which it had hitherto lacked. She appeared like spring coming after winter. She hurried up to her aunt (who, I must say, looked pleased to see her and gave Pushkin an arch glance which I did not fail to detect), and then, after a dutiful and hasty kiss, she pulled up a chair and dashed into the middle of the subject which filled her mind. She was so eager about it that she did not pay the least attention to Pushkin, who, with his heels close together, and his back almost turned on the other girl, who was rattling on at his ear, was bowing and grinning like a Japanese toy; and she did not even see me, where I stood a little retired.

"My dear, here is Count Pushkin trying to speak to you," said her aunt. "Come here, Miss McSheen, and tell me what you have been doing." She smiled at the blonde girl and indicated a vacated chair.

But Miss McSheen saw the trap--she had no idea of relinquishing her prize, and Miss Leigh did not choose to try for a capture.

"Howdydo, Count Pushkin," she said over her shoulder, giving the smiling and bowing Pushkin only half a nod and less than half a glance. "Oh! aunt," she proceeded, "I have such a favor to ask you. Oh, it's a most worthy object, I assure you--really worthy."

"How much is it?" inquired the older lady casually.

"I don't know yet. But wait--you must let me tell you about it, and you will see how good it is."

"My dear, I haven't a cent to give to anything," said her aunt. "I am quite strapped."

"I know, it's the family disease," said the girl lightly, and hurried on. "I am trying to do some work among the poor."

"The poor!" exclaimed her aunt. "My dear, I am so tired of hearing about the poor, I don't know what to do. I am one of the poor myself. My agent was here this morning and tells me that any number of my tenants are behind on their rents and several of my best tenants have given notice that on the expiration of their present terms, they want a reduction of their rents."

"I know," said the girl. "They are out of work. They are all ordered out, or soon will be, papa says, poor things! I have been to-day to see a poor family----"

"Out of work! Of course they are out of work! They _won't_ work, that's why they are out--and now they are talking of a general strike! As if they hadn't had strikes enough. I shall cut down my charities; that's what I shall do."

"Oh! aunt, don't do that!" exclaimed the girl. "They are so poor. If you could see a poor family I saw this morning. Why, they have nothing--nothing! They are literally starving."

"Well, they have themselves to thank, if they are." She was now addressing the count, and two or three ladies seated near her on the edge of their chairs.

"Very true!" sighed one of the latter.

"I know," said the count. "I haf read it in th' papers to-day t'at t'ey vill what you call strike. T'ey should be--vhat you call, put down."

"Of course they should. It almost makes one despair of mankind," chimed in Mrs. Gillis, who, though standing, could not tear herself away. As she stood buttoning at a glove, I suddenly recalled her standing at the foot of a flight of steps looking with cold eyes at a child's funeral.

"Yes, their ingratitude! It does, indeed," said Mrs. Argand. "My agent--ah! your husband--says I shall have to make repairs that will take up every bit of the rents of any number of my houses--and two of my largest warehouses. I have to repair them, of course. And then if this strike really comes, why, he says it will cost our city lines alone--oh! I don't know how much money. But I hate to talk about money. It is so sordid!" She sat back in her chair.

"Yes, indeed," assented the bejewelled lady she addressed. "I don't even like to think about it. I would like just to be able to draw my cheque for whatever I want and never hear the word _money_--like you, Mrs. Argand. But one can't do it," she sighed. "Why, my mail----"

"Why don't you do as I do?" demanded Mrs. Argand, who had no idea of having the conversation taken away from her in her own house. "My secretary opens all those letters and destroys them. I consider it a great impertinence for any one whom I don't know to write to me, and, of course, I don't acknowledge those letters. My agent----"

"My dear, we must go," said the lady nearest her to her companion. As the two ladies swept out they stopped near me to look at a picture, and one of them said to the other:

"Did you ever hear a more arrogant display in all your life? Her secretary! Her interest--her duties! As if we didn't all have them!"

"Yes, indeed. And her agent! That's my husband!"

"But I do think she was right about that man's pushing in----"

"Oh! yes, about that--she was, but she need not be parading her money before us. My husband made it for old Argand."

"My husband says the Argand Estate is vilely run, that they have the worst tenements in the city and charge the highest rents."

"Do you know that my husband is her--agent?"

"Is he? Why, to be sure; but of course, she is responsible."

"Yes, she's the cause of it."

"And they pay more for their franchises than any one else. Why, my husband says that Coll McSheen, who is the lawyer of the Argand Estate, is the greatest briber in this city. I suppose he'll be buying a count next. I don't see how your husband stands him. He's so refined--such a----"

"Well, they have to have business dealings together, you know."

"Yes. They say he just owns the council, and now he's to be mayor."

"I know."

"Did you see that article in the paper about him and his methods, charging that he was untrue to every one in town, even the Canters and Argands who employed him?"

"Oh, didn't I? I tell my husband he'd better be sure which side to take. One reason I came to-day was to see how she took it."

"So did I," said her friend. "They say the first paper was written by a Jew. It was a scathing indictment. It charged him with making a breach between Mr. Leigh and Mrs. Argand, and now with trying to ruin Mr. Leigh."

"And it was written by a Jew? Was it, indeed? I should like to meet him, shouldn't you? But, of course, we couldn't invite him to our homes. Do you know anybody who might invite him to lunch and ask us to meet him? It would be so interesting to hear him talk."

So they passed out, and I went up to make my adieux to our hostess, secretly intending to remain longer if I could get a chance to talk to her niece, who was now presenting her petition to her, while the count, with his eye on her while he pretended to listen to Miss McSheen, stood by waiting like a cat at a mousehole.

As I approached, Miss Leigh glanced up, and I flattered myself for weeks that it was not only surprise, but pleasure, that lighted up her face.

"Why, how do you do?" she said, and I extended my hand, feeling as shy as I ever did in my life, but as though paradise were somewhere close at hand.

"Where did you two know each other?" demanded her aunt, suspiciously, and I saw Pushkin's face darken, even while the blonde girl rattled on at his ear.

"Why, this is the gentleman who had the poor children on the train that day last spring. They are the same children I have been telling you about."

"Yes, but I did not know you had ever really met."

"That was not the only time I have had the good fortune to meet Miss Leigh," I said. I wanted to add that I hoped to have yet better fortune hereafter; but I did not.

Perhaps, it was to save me embarrassment that Miss Leigh said: "Mr. Glave and I teach in the same Sunday-school."

"Yes, about the she-bears," I hazarded, thinking of one at the moment.

Miss Leigh laughed. "I have been trying to help your little friends since; I am glad the she-bears did not devour them; I think they are in much more danger from the wolf at the door; in fact, it was about them that I came to see my aunt to-day."

I cursed my folly for not having carried out my intention of going to look after them, and registered a vow to go often thereafter.

"I was so glad you won their case for them," she said in an undertone, moving over toward me, as several new visitors entered. A warm thrill ran all through my veins. "But how did you manage to get here?" she asked with twinkling eyes. "Does she know, or has she forgiven you?"

"She doesn't know--at least, I haven't told her."

"Well, I should like to be by--that is, in a balcony--when she finds out who you are."

"Do you think I was very--bold to come?"

"Bold! Well, wait till she discovers who you are, Richard C[oe]ur de Leon."

"Not I--you see that door? Well, you just watch me. I came for a particular reason that made me think it best to come--and a very good one," I added, and glanced at her and found her still smiling.

"What was it?" She looked me full in the face.

"I will tell you some time----"

"No, now."

"No, next Sunday afternoon, if you will let me walk home with you after you have explained the she-bears."

She nodded "All right," and I rose up into the blue sky. I almost thought I had wings.

"My aunt is really a kind woman--I can do almost anything with her."

"Do you think that proves it?" I said. I wanted to say that I was that sort of a kind person myself, but I did not dare.

"My father says she has a foible--she thinks she is a wonderful business woman, because she can run up a column of figures correctly, and that she makes a great to-do over small things, and lets the big ones go. She would not take his advice; so he gave up trying to advise her and she relies on two men who flatter and deceive her."

"Yes."

"I don't see how she can keep those two men, McSheen and Gillis, as her counsel and agent. But I suppose she found them there and does not like to change. My father says----"

Just then Mrs. Argand, after a long scrutiny of us through her lorgnon, said rather sharply:

"Eleanor!"

Miss Leigh turned hastily and plunged into a sentence.

"Aunt, you do not know how much good the little chapel you helped out in the East Side does. Mr. Mar--the preacher there gets places for poor people that are out of employment, and----"

"I suppose he does, but save me from these preachers! Why, one of them came here the other day and would not be refused. He actually forced himself into my house. He had a poor family or something, he said, and he wanted me to undertake to support them. And when I came to find out, they were some of my own tenants who had positively refused to pay any rent, and had held on for months to one of my houses without paying me a penny." She had evidently forgotten that she had just said this a moment before. "I happened to remember," she added, "because my agent told me the man's name, O'Neil."

"McNeil!" exclaimed Miss Leigh. "Why, that is the name of my poor family!" She cut her eye over toward me with a quizzical sparkle in it.

"What! Well, you need not come to me about that man. My counsel said he was one of the worst characters he knew; a regular anarchist--one of these Irish--you know! And when I afterward tried to collect my rents, he got some upstart creature of a lawyer to try and defeat me, and actually did defraud me of my debt."

This was a centre shot for me, and I wondered what she would think if she ever found out who the upstart was. The perspiration began to start on my forehead. It was clear that I must get away. She was, however, in such a full sweep that I could not get in a word to say good-by.

"But I soon gave Mr. Marble, or whatever his name was, a very different idea of the way he should behave when he came to see a lady. I let him know that I preferred to manage my affairs and select my own objects of charity, without being dictated to by any one, and that I did not propose to help anarchists. And I soon gave Mr. McNeil to understand whom he had to deal with. I ordered him turned out at once--instantly." She was now addressing me.

She was so well satisfied with her position that I must have looked astonished, and I had not at first a word to say. This she took for acquiescence.

"That was, perhaps, the greatest piece of insolence I ever knew!" she continued. "Don't you think so?"

"Well, no, I do not," I said bluntly.

For a moment or so her face was a perfect blank, then it was filled with amazement. Her whole person changed. Her head went up--her eyes flashed, her color deepened.

"Oh!" she said. "Perhaps, we look at the matter from different standpoints?" rearing back more stiffly than ever.

"Unquestionably, madam. I happen to know John Marvel, the gentleman who called on you, very well, and I know him to be one of the best men in the world. I know that he supported that poor family out of his own small income, and when they were turned out of their house, fed them until he could get the father some work to do. He was not an anarchist, but a hard-working Scotchman, who had been ill and had lost his place."

"Oh!" she said--this time with renewed superciliousness, raising her lorgnon to observe some newcomers.

"Perhaps, you happen also to know McNeil's counsel--perhaps, you are the man yourself?" she added insolently.

I bowed low. "I am."

The truth swept over her like a flood. Before she recovered, I bowed my adieux, of which, so far as I could see, she took no notice. She turned to Pushkin, as Miss Leigh, from behind a high-backed chair, held out her hand to me. "Well, poor McNeil's done for now," she said in an undertone. But as the latter smiled in my eyes, I did not care what her aunt said.

"Ah! my dear Count, here is the tea at last," I heard our hostess say, and then she added solicitously, "I have not seen you for so long. Why have you denied yourself to your friends? You have quite gotten over your accident of the spring? I read about it in the papers at the time. Such a noble thing to have stopped those horses. You must tell me about it. How did it happen?"

I could not help turning to give Pushkin one look, and he hesitated and stammered. I came out filled with a new sense of what was meant by the curses against the Pharisees. As I was walking along I ran into Wolffert.

"Ah! You are the very man," he exclaimed. "It is Providence! I was just thinking of you, and you ran into my arms. It is Fate."

It did seem so. Mrs. Argand and her "dear count" had sickened me. Here, at least, was sincerity. But I wondered if he knew that Miss Leigh was within there.

XXIV

WOLFFERT'S MISSION

Wolffert naturally was somewhat surprised to see me come sallying forth from Mrs. Argand's; for he knew what I had not known when I called there, that she was the real owner of "The Argand Estate."

I gave him an account of my interview with the lady.

"I was wondering," he said, laughing, "what you were doing in there after having beaten her in that suit. I thought you had taken your nerve with you. I was afraid you had fallen a victim to her blandishments."

"To whose?"

"Mrs. Argand's. She is the true Circe of the time, and her enchantment is one that only the strong can resist. She reaches men through their bellies."

"Oh!" I was thinking of quite another person, who alone could beguile me, and I was glad that he was not looking at me.

He was, however, too full of another subject to notice me, and as we walked along, I told him of the old lady's views about John Marvel. He suddenly launched out against her with a passion which I was scarcely prepared for, as much as I knew he loved John Marvel. Turning, he pointed fiercely back at the great prison-like mansion.

"Do you see that big house?" His long finger shook slightly--an index of his feeling.

"Yes."

"Every stone in it is laid in mortar cemented with the tears of widows and orphans, and the blood of countless victims of greed and oppression."

"Oh! nonsense! I have no brief for that old woman. I think she is an ignorant, arrogant, purse-proud, ill-bred old creature, spoiled by her wealth and the adulation that it has brought her from a society of sycophants and parasites; but I do not believe that at heart she is bad." She had had a good advocate defend her to me and I was quoting her. Wolffert was unappeased.

"That is it. She sets up to be the paragon of Generosity, the patron of Charity, the example of Kindness for all to follow. She never gave a cent in her life--but only a portion--a small portion of the money wrung from the hearts of others. Her fortune was laid in corruption. Her old husband--I knew him!--he robbed every one, even his partners. He defrauded his benefactor, Colonel Tipps, who made him, and robbed his heirs of their inheritance."

"How?" For I was much interested now.

"By buying up their counsel, and inducing him to sell them out and making him his counsel. And now that old woman keeps him as her counsel and adviser, though he is the worst man in this city, guilty of every crime on the statute-books, sacred and profane."

"But she does not know that?"

"Not know it? Why doesn't she know it? Because she shuts her doors to the men who do know it, and her ears to the cries of his victims. Doesn't every one who cares to look into the crimes in this city know that Coll McSheen is the protector of Vice, and that he could not exist a day if the so-called good people got up and determined to abolish him--that he is the owner of the vilest houses in this city--the vilest because they are not so openly vile as some others? Isn't she trying to sell her niece to an adventurer for a title, or a reprobate for his money?"

"Is she?" My blood suddenly began to boil, and I began to get a new insight into Wolffert's hostility.

We had turned toward John Marvel's. He appeared a sort of landmark to which to turn as we were dealing with serious subjects, and Wolffert was on his way there when I encountered him. As we walked along, he disclosed a system of vice so widespread, so horrible and so repulsive that I hesitate to set it down. He declared that it extended over not only all the great cities of the country, but over all the great cities of all countries.

I related the story the poor girl I had met that night on the street had told me, but I frankly asserted that I did not believe that it could be as general as he claimed.

"'Smooth Ally,' was it?" said Wolffert, who knew of her. "She is the smoothest and worst of them all, and she is protected by McSheen, who in turn is protected by clients like The Argand Estate. What became of her?" he demanded.

"Why, I don't know. I turned her over to the Salvationists--and--and I--rather left her to them."

I was beginning to feel somewhat meek under his scornful expression.

"That is always the way," he said. "We look after them for an hour and then drop them back into perdition."

"But I placed her in good hands. That is their business."

"Their business! Why is it not your business, too? How can you shift the responsibility? It is every one's business. Listen!" He had been recently to southern Russia, where, he said, the system of scoundrelism he described had one of its prolific sources, and he gave figures of the numbers of victims--girls of his own race--gathered up throughout the provinces and shipped from Odessa and other ports, to other countries, including America, to startle one.

"Time was when not a Jewess was to be found on the streets; but now!" He threw out his hand with a gesture of rage, and went on. He averred that many steamship officials combined to connive at the traffic, and that the criminals were shielded by powerful friends who were paid for their protection.

"Why, there are in this city to-night," he declared, "literally thousands of women who have, without any fault of theirs, but ignorance, vanity, and credulity, been drawn into and condemned to a life of vice and misery such as the mind staggers to believe."

"At least, if they are, they are in the main willing victims," I argued. "There may be a few instances like the girl I saw, but for the most part they have done it of their own volition."

Wolffert turned on me with fire flaming in his deep eyes. "Of their own volition! What is their volition? In fact, most of them are not voluntary accomplices. But if they were--it is simple ignorance on their part, and is that any reason for their undergoing the tortures of the damned in this world, not to mention what your Church teaches of the next world? Who brought them there--the man who deceived and betrayed them? Who acted on their weakness and drew them in?--their seducers?--the wretches who lure them to their destruction?--Not at all! Jail-birds and scoundrels as they are, deserving the gallows if any one does, which I do not think any one does--but you do--the ultimate miscreant is not even the Coll McSheens who protect it; but Society which permits it to go on unchecked when, by the least serious and sensible effort, it could prevent it."

"How?" I demanded.

"How! By determining to prevent it and then organizing to do so. By simply being honest. Has it not broken up the institution of slavery--highway robbery, organized murder--except by itself and its members? Of course, it could prevent it if it set itself to do it. But it is so steeped in selfishness and hypocrisy that it has no mind to anything that interferes with its pleasures."

We had now reached John Marvel's, where we found John, just back from a visit to a poor girl who was ill, and his account only added fuel to Wolffert's flaming wrath. He was pacing up and down the floor, as small as it was, his face working, his eyes flashing, and suddenly he let a light in on his ultimate motive. He launched out in a tirade against existing social conditions that exceeded anything I had ever heard. He declared that within hearing of the most opulent and extravagant class the world had ever known were the cries and groans of the most wretched; that the former shut their ears and their eyes to it, and, contenting themselves with tossing a few pennies to a starving multitude, went on wallowing like swine in their own voluptuousness. "Look at the most talked of young man in this city to-day, the _bon parti_, the coveted of aspiring mothers. He lives a life to make a beast blush. He is a seducer of women, a denizen of brothels; a gambler in the life-blood of women and children, a fatted swine, yet he is the courted and petted of those who call themselves the best people! Faugh! it makes me sick."

This was to some extent satisfactory to me, for I detested Canter; but I wondered if Wolffert did not have the same reason for disliking him that I had.

"There was never so selfish and hypocritical a society on earth," he exclaimed, "as this which now exists. In times past, under the feudal system, there was apparently some reason for the existence of the so-called upper classes--the first castle built made necessary all the others--the chief, at least, protected the subjects from the rapine of others, and he was always ready to imperil his life; but now--this! When they all claim to know, and do know much, they sit quiet in their own smug content like fatted swine, and let rapine, debauchery, and murder go on as it never has gone on in the last three hundred years."

"What are you talking about?" I demanded, impressed by his vehemence, but mystified by his furious indictment. He cooled down for a moment, and wiped his hand across his eyes.

"I am fresh from the scene of as brutal a butchery," he said, "as has taken place within a thousand years. Israel is undergoing to-day the most extensive and complete persecution that has existed since the close of the crusades. No wonder the young women fall victims to the scoundrels who offer them an asylum in a new land and lure them to their destruction with gifts of gold and words of peace. And this is what Society does--the virtue-boasting Society of the twentieth century! They speak of anarchy!--What they mean is a condition which disturbs the repose of the rich and powerful. There is anarchy now--the anarchy that consists of want of equal government for rich and poor alike. Look at John Marvel, here, preaching a gospel of universal love and acting it, too."

"Wolffert," said Marvel, softly, "don't. Leave me out--you know I do not--you are simply blinded by your affection for me----"

But Wolffert swept on. "Yes, he does--if any man ever does--he lives for others--and what does he get? Shunted off by a fat, sleek, self-seeking priest, who speaks smooth things to a people who will have nothing else."

"Wolffert, you must not," protested John; "I cannot allow you."

But Wolffert was in full tide. With a gesture he put John's protest by. "--To preach and teach the poor how to be patient--how to suffer in silence----"

"Now, Leo," said John, taking him by the shoulders, "I must stop you--you are just tired, excited--overworked. If they suffer patiently they are so much the better off--their lot will be all the happier in the next world."

Wolffert sat down on the bed with a smile. "What are you going to do with such a man?" he said to me, with a despairing shrug. "And you know the curious thing is he believes it."

I went to my own room, feeling still like the prodigal, and that I had somehow gotten back home. But I had a deeper and more novel feeling. A new light had come to me, faintly, but still a light. What had I ever done except for myself? Here were two men equally as poor as I, living the life of self-denial--one actually by choice, the other as willingly and uncomplainingly as though it were by choice, and both not only content, but happy. Why should not I enter the brotherhood? Here was something far higher and nobler than anything I had ever contemplated taking part in. What was it that withheld me? Was it, I questioned myself, that I, with no association whatever in the town except the poor, yet belonged to the class that Wolffert crusaded against? Was there something fundamentally wrong with society? I could not enter freely into Wolffert's rhapsody of hate for the oppressors, nor yet into John Marvel's quiet, deep, and unreasoning love of Mankind. Yet I began to see dimly things I had never had a glimmer of before.

The association with my old friends made life a wholly different thing for me, and I made through them many new friends. They were very poor and did not count for much in the world; but they were real people, and their life, simple and insignificant as it was, was real and without sham. I found, indeed, that one got much nearer to the poor than to the better class--their life was more natural; small things matter so much more to them. In fact, the smallest thing may be a great thing to a poor man. Also I found a kindness and generosity quite out of proportion to that of the well-to-do. However poor and destitute a man or a family might be there was always some one poorer and more destitute, and they gave with a generosity that was liberality, indeed. For they gave of their penury what was their living. Whatever the organized charities may do, and they do much, the poor support the poor and they rely on each other to an extent unknown among their more fortunate fellow-citizens. As the Egyptian always stops to lift another's load, so here I found men always turning in to lend their aid.

Thus, gradually in the association of my friends who were working among the poor and helping to carry their burdens, I began to find a new field and to reap in it a content to which I had long been a stranger. Also life began to take on for me a wholly new significance; as a field of work in which a man might escape from the slavery of a selfish convention which cramped the soul, into a larger life where service to mankind was the same with service to God, a life where forms were of small import and where the Christian and the Jew worked shoulder to shoulder and walked hand in hand. How much of my new feeling was due to Miss Eleanor Leigh, I did not take the trouble to consider.

"Father," said Eleanor, that evening, "I have a poor man whom I want a place for, and I must have it."

Mr. Leigh smiled. "You generally do have. Is this one poorer than those others you have saddled on me?"

"Now don't be a tease. Levity is not becoming in a man of your dignity. This man is very poor, indeed, and he has a houseful of children--and his wife----"

"I know," said Mr. Leigh, throwing up his hand with a gesture of appeal. "I surrender. They all have. What can this one do? Butts says every foreman in the shops is complaining that we are filling up with a lot of men who don't want to do anything and couldn't do it if they did."

"Oh! This man is a fine workman. He is an expert machinist--has worked for years in boiler shops--has driven----"

"Why is he out of a job if he is such a universal paragon? Does he drink? Remember, we can't take in men who drink--a bucket of beer cost us twelve thousand dollars last year, not to mention the loss of two lives."

"He is as sober as a judge," declared his daughter, solemnly.

"What is it then?--Loafer?"

"He lost his place where he lived before by a strike."

"A striker, is he! Well, please excuse me. I have a plenty of that sort now without going outside to drag them in."

"No--no--no--" exclaimed Eleanor. "My! How you do talk! You won't give me a chance to say a word!"

"I like that," laughed her father. "Here I have been listening patiently to a catalogue of the virtues of a man I never heard of and simply asking questions, and as soon as I put in a pertinent one, away you go."

"Well, listen. You have heard of him. I'll tell you who he is. You remember my telling you of the poor family that was on the train last year when I came back in Aunt Sophia's car and we delayed the train?"

"I remember something about it. I never was sure as to the facts in the case. I only know that that paper contained a most infamous and lying attack on me----"

"I know it--it was simply infamous--but this poor man had nothing to do with it. That was his family, and they came on to join him because he had gotten a place. But the Union turned him out because he didn't belong to it, and then he wanted to join the Union, but the walking-delegate or something would not let him, and now he has been out of work so long that they are simply starving."

"You want some money, I suppose?" Mr. Leigh put his hand in his pocket.

"No. I have helped him, but he isn't a beggar--he wants work. He's the real thing, Dad, and I feel rather responsible, because Aunt Sophia turned them out of the house they had rented and--though that young lawyer I told you of won his case for him and saved his furniture--the little bit he had--he has lost it all through the loan-sharks who eat up the poor. I tried to get Aunt Sophia to make her man, Gillis, let up on him, but she wouldn't interfere."

"That's strange, for she is not an unkind woman--she is only hard set in certain ways which she calls her principles."

"Yes, it was rather unfortunate. You see, Mr. Glave was there and Aunt Sophia!--you should have seen her."

She proceeded to give an account of Mrs. Argand's discovery of my identity, and to take us both off.

"They didn't pay the rent, I suppose?"

"Yes. But it was not his fault--just their misfortune. His wife's illness and being out of work and all--it just piled up on top of him. A man named Ring--something--a walking-delegate whom he used to know back in the East, got down on him, and followed him up, and when he was about to get in the Union, he turned him down. And, Dad, you've just got to give him a place."

"Wringman, possibly," said Mr. Leigh. "There's a man of that name in the city who seems to be something of a leader. He's a henchman of Coll McSheen and does his dirty work for him. He has been trying to make trouble for us for some time. Send your man around to Butts to-morrow, and I'll see what we can do for him."

Eleanor ran and flung her arms around her father's neck. "Oh! Dad! If you only knew what a load you have lifted from my shoulders. I believe Heaven will bless you for this."

"I know Butts will," said Mr. Leigh, kissing her. "How's our friend, the Marvel, coming on?"

"Dad, he's a saint!"

"So I have heard before," said Mr. Leigh. "And that other one--how is he?"

"Which one?"

"Is there any other but the Jew? I have not heard of another reforming saint."

"No, he is a sinner," said Eleanor, laughing; and she went on to give an account of my episode with Pushkin, which she had learned from John Marvel, who, I may say, had done me more than justice in his relation of the matter.

"So the count thought a team had run over him, did he?"

"Yes, that's what Mr. Marvel said."

She related a brief conversation which had taken place between her and Pushkin and Mrs. Argand, after I left, in which Pushkin had undertaken to express his opinion of me, and she had given him to understand that she knew the true facts in the matter of our collision. All of which I learned much later.

"Well, I must say," said Mr. Leigh, "your new friend appears to have 'his nerve with him,' as you say."

"Dad, I never use slang," said Miss Eleanor, severely. "I am glad you have promised to give poor McNeil a place, for, if you had not, I should have had to take him into the house."

Mr. Leigh laughed.

"I am glad, too, if that is the case. The last one you took in was a reformed drunkard, you said, and you know what happened to him and also to my wine."

"Yes, but this one is all right."

"Of course he is."

There was joy next day in one poor little household, for McNeil, who had been dragging along through the streets for days with a weight, the heaviest the poor have to bear, bowing him down--want of work--came into his little bare room where his wife and children huddled over an almost empty stove, with a new step and a fresh note in his voice. He had gotten a place and it meant life to him and to those he loved.

XXV

FATE LEADS

One evening I called at Mrs. Kale's to see my two old ladies of the bundles and also Mrs. Kale, for whom I had conceived a high regard on account of her kindness to the former as well as to myself, and in the course of my visit Miss Pansy gave me, for not the first time, an account of the way in which they had been reduced from what they thought affluence to what she very truly called "straitened circumstances." I confess that I was rather bored by her relation, which was given with much circumlocution until she mentioned casually that Miss Leigh had tried to interest her father in their case, but he had said it was too late to do anything. The mention of her name instantly made me alert. If she was interested, I was interested also. I began to ask questions, and soon had their whole story as well as she could give it.

"Why, it may or may not be too late," I said. "It is certainly very long ago, and the chances of being able to do anything now are very remote; but if there was a fraud, and it could be proved, it would not be too late--or, at least, might not be."

"Oh! Do you think that you could recover anything for us? Mr. McSheen said nothing could be gotten out of it, and we paid him--a great deal," she sighed, "--everything we had in the world, almost."

"I do not say that, but if there was a fraud, and it could be proved, it might not be too late."

The name of McSheen had given me a suspicion that all might not be straight. Nothing could be if he was connected with it. I recalled what Wolffert had told me of McSheen's selling out. Moreover, her story had unconsciously been a moving one. They had evidently been hardly used and, I believed, defrauded. So, when she pressed me, and promised if she were ever able to do so she "would reward me generously," as if, poor soul, she could ever reward any one save with her prayers, I undertook to look into the matter for them, and I began next day.

I will not go into the steps I took to reach my ends, nor the difficulties I encountered, which grew as I progressed in my investigation until they appeared almost insurmountable; but finally I struck a lead which at last led me to a conviction that if I could but secure the evidence I could establish such a case of fraud for my two old clients as would give promise of a fair chance to recover for them, at least, a part of their patrimony. The difficulty, or one of them--for they were innumerable--was that to establish their case it was necessary to prove that several men who had stood high in the public esteem, had been guilty of such disregard of the rights of those to whom they stood in the relation of trustees that it would be held a fraud. I was satisfied that had McSheen taken proper steps to secure his clients' rights, he might have succeeded and further, that he had been bought off, but the difficulty was to prove it.

However, I determined to make the effort to get the proof and my zeal was suddenly quickened.

I had now begun to watch for my young lady wherever I went, and it was astonishing how my quickened senses enabled me to find her in the most crowded thoroughfare, or in strange and out-of-the-way places. It was almost as if there were some secret power which drew us together. And when I was blessed to meet her the day was always one of sunshine for me, however heavy lowered the dim clouds.

The next afternoon our meeting was so unexpected that I could not but set it down to the ruling of a higher power. I had gone out to see how my McNeil clients were coming on, having doubtless some latent hope that I might find her there; but she had not been there for several days. They had heard of her, however, for she had got the husband and father a place and that made sunshine in the wretched little hovel, as bare as it was. I was touched by their gratitude, and after taking note of the wretched poverty of the family, and promising that I would try to get the mother some sort of work, I strolled on. I had not gone far when I suddenly came on her face to face. The smile that came into her eyes must have brought my soul into my face.

Love is the true miracle-worker. It can change the most prosaic region into a scene of romance. At sight of Eleanor Leigh's slim figure the dull street suddenly became an enchanted land.

"Well, we appear fated to meet," she said with a smile and intonation that my heart feasted on for days. She little knew how assiduously I had played Fate during these past weeks, haunting the streets near her home or those places which she blessed with her presence. This meeting, however, was purely accidental, unless it be true, as I sometimes almost incline to think, that some occult power which we cannot understand rules all our actions and guides our footsteps toward those we love supremely. John Marvel always called it Providence.

"Well, may I not see you home?" I asked, and without waiting for her consent, I took it for granted and turned back with her, though she protested against taking me out of my way. I had indeed some difficulty in not saying then and there, "My way is where you are."

She had been to see one of her scholars who was sick, "the little cripple, whom you know," she said. I suddenly began to think cripples the most interesting of mortals. She gave me, as we strolled along, an account of her first acquaintance with her and her mother; and of how John Marvel had found out their condition and helped them. Then she had tried to help them a little, and had gotten the mother to let her have the little girl at her school.

"Now they are doing a little better," she said, "but you never saw such wretchedness. The woman had given up everything in the world to try to save her husband, and such a wretched hole as they lived in you couldn't imagine. They did not have a single article of furniture in their room when I--when Mr. Marvel first found them. It had all gone to the Loan Company--they were starving."