Chapter I: Pitch My Tent (1)

When, a little later, my small charges were brought back to their mother (to whom I had explained their absence), it was by the young lady herself, and I never saw a more grateful picture than that young girl, in her fresh travelling costume, convoying those children down the car aisle. Her greeting of the tired mother was a refreshment, and a minute after she had gone the mother offered me a part of a substantial supply of sandwiches which she had brought her, so that I found myself not quite so much in sympathy as before with the criticism of the road that was now being freely bandied about the car, and which appeared to have made all the passengers as one.

Not long after this we dropped the private car at a station and proceeded on without it. We had, however, not gone far when we stopped and were run into a siding and again waited, and after a time, a train whizzed by us--a special train with but two private cars on it. It was going at a clipping rate, but it did not run so fast that we did not recognize the private car we had dropped some way back, and it soon became known throughout our train that we had been side-tracked to let a special with private cars have the right-of-way. I confess that my gorge rose at this, and when the man in front of me declared that we were the most patient people on earth to give public franchises, pay for travelling on trains run by virtue of them, and then stand being shoved aside and inconvenienced out of all reason to allow a lot of bloated dead-heads to go ahead of us in their special trains, I chimed in with him heartily.

"Well, the road belongs to them, don't it?" inquired a thin man with a wheezing voice. "That was Canter's private train, and he took on the Argand car at that station back there."

"'They own the road!' How do they own it? How did they get it?" demanded the first speaker warmly.

"Why, you know how they got it. They got it in the panic--that is, they got the controlling interest."

"Yes, and then ran the stock down till they had got control and then reorganized and cut out those that wouldn't sell--or couldn't--the widows and orphans and infants--that's the way they got it."

"Well, the court upheld it?"

"Yes, under the law they had had made themselves to suit themselves. You know how 'twas! You were there when 'twas done and saw how they flung their money around--or rather the Argand money--for I don't believe Canter and his set own the stock at all. I'll bet a thousand dollars that every share is up as collateral in old Argand's bank."

"Oh! Well, it's all the same thing. They stand in together. They run the bank--the bank lends money; they buy the stock and put it up for the loan, and then run the road."

"And us," chipped in the other; for they had now gotten into a high good-humor with each other--"they get our franchises and our money, and then side-track us without breakfast while they go sailing by--in cars that they call theirs, but which we pay for. I do think we are the biggest fools!"

"That's Socialistic!" said his friend again. "You've been reading that fellow's articles in the Sunday papers. What's his name?"

"No, I've been thinking. I don't care what it is, it's the truth, and I'm tired of it."

"They say he's a Jew," interrupted the former.

"I don't care what he is, it's the truth," asserted the other doggedly.

"Well, I rather think it is," agreed his friend; "but then, I'm hungry, and there isn't even any water on the car."

"And they guzzle champagne!" sneered the other, "which we pay for," he added.

"You're a stockholder?"

"Yes, in a small way; but I might as well own stock in a paving-company to Hell. My father helped to build this road and used to take great pride in it. They used to give the stockholders then a free ride once a year to the annual meeting, and it made them all feel as if they owned the road."

"But now they give free passes not to the stockholders, but to the legislators and the judges."

"It pays better," said his friend, and they both laughed. It appeared, indeed, rather a good joke to them--or, at least, there was nothing which they could do about it, so they might as well take it good-humoredly.

By this time I had learned that my neighbor with the five children was the wife of a man named McNeil, who was a journeyman machinist, but had been thrown out of work by a strike in another city, and, after waiting around for months, had gone North to find employment, and having at last gotten it, had now sent for them to come on. She had not seen him for months, and she was looking forward to it now with a happiness that was quite touching. Even the discomforts of the night could not dull her joy in the anticipation of meeting her husband--and she constantly enheartened her droopy little brood with the prospect of soon seeing their "dear Daddy."

Finally after midday we arrived.

I shall never forget the sight and smells of that station, if I live to be a thousand years old. It seemed to me a sort of temporary resting-place for lost souls--and I was one of them. Had Dante known it, he must have pictured it, with its reek and grime. The procession of tired, bedraggled travellers that streamed in through the black gateways to meet worn watchers with wan smiles on their tired faces, or to look anxiously and in vain for friends who had not come, or else who had come and gone. And outside the roar of the grimy current that swept through the black street.

I had no one to look for; so, after helping my neighbor and her frowsy little brood off, I sauntered along with Dix at my heel, feeling about as lonely as a man can feel on this populated earth. After gazing about and refusing sternly to meet the eye of any of the numerous cabmen who wildly waved their whips toward me, shouting: "Kebsuh--kebsuh--keb--keb--keb?" with wearying iteration, I had about made up my mind to take the least noisy of them, when I became conscious that my fellow-traveller, Mrs. McNeil with her little clan, was passing out of the station unescorted and was looking about in a sort of lost way. On my speaking to her, her face brightened for a moment, but clouded again instantly, as she said, "Oh! sir, he's gone! He came to meet me this morning; but the train was late and he couldn't wait or he'd lose his job, so he had to go, and the kind man at the gate told me he left the message for me. But however shall I get there with all the children, for I haven't a cent left!"

The tears welled up in her eyes as she came to her sad little confession. And I said, "Oh! Well, I think we can manage it somehow. You have his address?"

"Oh! yes, sir, I have it here," and she pulled out an empty little pocket-book from the breast of her worn frock, and while she gave the baby to the eldest girl to hold, tremblingly opened the purse. In it was only a crumpled letter and, besides this, a key--these were all. She opened the letter tenderly and handed it to me. I read the address and fastened it in my memory.

"Now," I said, "we'll straighten this out directly." I turned and called a hackman. "I want a carriage."

There was a rush, but I was firm and insisted on a hack. However, as none was to be had, I was fain to content myself with a one-horse cab of much greater age than dimension.

Bundling them in and directing the driver to go around and get the trunk from the baggage-room, I mounted beside him and took Dix between my feet and one of the children in my arms, and thus made my entry into the city of my future home. My loneliness had somehow disappeared.

My protégée's destination turned out to be a long way off, quite in one of the suburbs of the city, where working people had their little homes--a region I was to become better acquainted with later. As we began to pass bakeries and cook-shops, the children began once more to clamor to their mother for something to eat, on which the poor thing tried to quiet them with promises of what they should have when they reached home. But I could perceive that her heart was low within her, and I stopped at a cook-shop and bought a liberal allowance of bread and jam and cookies, on which the young things fell to like famished wolves, while their mother overwhelmed me with blessings.

We had not gone far, and were still in the centre of the city, when a handsome open carriage drove by us, and as it passed, there sat in it the young lady I had seen on the train, with a pleasant looking elderly man, whom I conjectured to be her father, and who appeared in a very good-humor with her or himself. As I was gazing at them, her eyes fell full into mine, and after a half-moment's mystification, she recognized me as I lifted my hat, and her face lit up with a pleasant smile of recognition. I found my feelings divided between pleasure at her sweet return of my bow and chagrin that she should find me in such a predicament; for I knew what a ridiculous figure I must cut with the dog between my feet and a frowsy child, thickly smeared with jam, in my arms. In fact, I could see that the girl was talking and laughing spiritedly with her father, evidently about us. I confess to a feeling of shame at the figure I must cut, and I wondered if she would not think I had lied to her in saying that I had never met them before. I did not know that the smile had been for Dix.

When we reached, after a good hour's drive, the little street for which we were bound, I found my forecast fairly correct. The dingy little house, on which was the rusted number given Mrs. McNeil in her husband's letter, was shut up and bore no evidence of having been opened, except a small flower-pot with a sprig of green in it in a dusty, shutterless window. It was the sort of house that is a stove in summer and an ice-box in the winter. And there was a whole street of them. After we had knocked several times and I had tried to peep over the fence at the end of the street, the door of an adjoining tenement opened, and a slatternly, middle-aged woman peeped out.

"Are you Mrs. McNeil?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Well, here's your key. Your man told me to tell you 't if you came while he was at work, you'd find something to eat in the back room 't he'd cooked this mornin' before he went to work. The train was late, he said, and he couldn't wait; but he'd be home to-night, and he'd bring some coal when he came. What a fine lot o' children you have. They ought to keep you in cinders and wood. I wish I had some as big as that; but mine are all little. My two eldest died of scarlet fever two years ago. Drainage, they said."

She had come out and unlocked the door and was now turning away.

"I think your man had someone to take the up-stairs front room; but he didn't come--you'll have to get someone to do it and you double up. The Argand Estate charges such rent, we all have to do that. Well, if I can help you, I'm right here."

I was struck by her kindness to the forlorn stranger, and the latter's touching recognition of it, expressed more in looks and in tone than in words.

Having helped them into the house, which was substantially empty, only one room having even a pretence of furniture in it, and that merely a bed, a mattress and a broken stove, I gave the poor woman a little of my slender stock of money and left her murmuring her thanks and assurances that I had already done too much for them. In fact, I had done nothing.

* * * * *

As my finances were very low, I determined to find a boarding-house instead of wasting them at a hotel. I accordingly stopped at a sizable house which I recognized as a boarding-house on a street in a neighborhood which might, from the old houses with their handsome doors and windows, have once been fashionable, though fashion had long since taken its flight to a newer and gaudier part of the town, and the mansions were now giving place to shops and small grocers' markets. A wide door with a fan-shaped transom gave it dignity. A large wistaria vine coiled up to the top of a somewhat dilapidated porch with classical pillars lent it distinction. The landlady, Mrs. Kale, a pleasant looking, kindly woman, offered me a small back-room on reasonable terms, it being, as she said, the dull season; and, having arranged for Dix in a dingy little livery stable near by, I took it "temporarily," till I could look around.

I found the company somewhat nondescript--ranging all the way from old ladies with false fronts and cracked voices to uppish young travelling men and their rather sad-looking wives.

Among the boarders, the two who interested me most were two elderly ladies, sisters, whose acquaintance I made the day after my arrival. They did not take their meals at the common table, but, as I understood, in their own apartment in the third story. They were a quaint and pathetic pair, very meagre, very shabby, and manifestly very poor. There was an air of mystery about them, and Mrs. Kale treated them with a respect which she paid to no others of her variegated household. They occasionally honored the sitting-room with their presence on Sunday evenings, by Mrs. Kale's especial invitation, and I was much diverted with them. They were known as the Miss Tippses; but Mrs. Kale always spoke of them as "Miss Pansy" and "Miss Pinky." It seems that she had known them in her youth, "back East."

My acquaintance with the two old ladies at this time was entirely accidental. The morning after my arrival, as I started out to look around for an office, and also to take Dix for a walk, as well as to take a look at the city, I fell in with two quaint-looking old women who slipped out of the door just ahead of me, one of them slightly lame, and each with a large bundle in her arms. They were dressed in rusty black, and each wore a veil, which quite concealed her features. But as they limped along, engaged in an animated conversation, their voices were so refined as to arrest my attention, and I was guilty of the impropriety of listening to them, partly out of sheer idleness, and partly because I wanted to know something of my boarding-house and of my fellow boarders. They were talking about a ball of the night before, an account of which they had read in the papers, or rather, as I learned, in a copy of a paper which they had borrowed, and they were as much interested in it as if they had been there themselves. "Oh, wouldn't you have liked to see it?" said one. "It must have been beautiful. I should have liked to see Miss ----" (I could not catch the name). "She must have been exquisite in chiffon and lace. She is so lovely anyhow. I did not know she had returned."

"I wonder Mr. ---- did not tell us." Again I failed to hear the name.

"For a very good reason, I suppose. He did not know."

"He is dead in love with her."

"Oh, you are so romantic!" said the other, whom I took from her figure and her feebleness to be the elder of the two.

"No; but any one can tell that at a glance."

"What a pity he could not marry her. Then we should be sure to see her as a bride."

The other laughed. "What an idea! We have nothing fit to go even to the church in."

"Why, we could go in the gallery. Oh, this bundle is so heavy! I don't believe I can ever get there to-day."

"Oh, yes, you can. Now come on. Don't give up. Here, rest it on the fence a moment."

As the lame one attempted to lift the bundle to rest it on the fence, it slipped to the ground, and she gave a little exclamation of fear.

"Oh, dear! suppose it should get soiled!"

I stepped forward and lifted it for her, and to my surprise found it very heavy. Then, as they thanked me, it occurred to me to offer to carry the bundle for them to the street car for which I supposed them bound. There was a little demur, and I added, "I am at Mrs. Kale's also. I have just come." This appeared to relieve one of them at least, but the other said, "Oh, but we are not going to the street car. We don't ride in street cars."

"Yes; it is so unhealthy," said the younger one. "People catch all sorts of diseases on the car."

Thinking them rather airy, I was about to hand the bundle back, but as I was going their way I offered to carry the bundles for both of them as far as I was going. This proved to be quite twenty blocks, for I could not in decency return the bundles. So we went on together, I feeling at heart rather ashamed to be lugging two large bundles through the streets for two very shabby-looking old women whose names I did not know. We soon, however, began to talk, and I drew out from them a good deal about Mrs. Kale and her kindness. Also, that they had seen much better days, to which one of them particularly was very fond of referring. It seemed that they had lived East--they carefully guarded the exact place--and had once had interests in a railroad which their father had built and largely owned. They were manifestly anxious to make this clearly understood. After his death they had lived on their dividends, until, on a sudden, the dividends had stopped. They found that the railroad with which their road connected had passed into new hands--had been "bought up" by a great syndicate, their lawyer had informed them, and refused any longer to make traffic arrangements with the road. This had destroyed the value of their property, but they had refused to sell their holdings at the low price offered--"As we probably ought to have done," sighed one of them.

"Not at all! I am glad we didn't," asserted the other.

"Well, sister, we got nothing--we lost everything, didn't we?"

"I don't know. I am only glad that we held out. That man knows that he robbed us."

"Well, that doesn't help us."

"Yes, it does. It helps me to know that he knows it."

"Who was it?" I asked.

"Oh, there was a syndicate. I only know the names of two of them--a man named Argand, and a man named Canter. And our lawyer was named McSheen."

Argand was a name which I recalled in connection with Mr. Poole's interest in the Railways in the case I have mentioned.

"Well, you held on to your stock. You have it now, then?" I foresaw a possible law-case against Argand, and wondered if he was the owner of the Argand Estate, which I had already heard of twice since my arrival.

"No," said one of them, "they bought up the stock of all the other people, and then they did something which cut us out entirely. What was it they did, sister?"

"Reorganized."

"And then we came on here to see about it, and spent everything else that we had in trying to get it back, but we lost our case. And since then----"

"Well, sister, we are keeping the gentleman. Thank you very much," said the younger of the two quickly, to which her sister added her thanks as well. I insisted at first on going further with them, but seeing that they were evidently anxious to be rid of me, I gave them their bundles and passed on.

Among the boarders one of those I found most interesting was a young man named Kalender, by whom I sat at the first meal after my arrival, and with whom I struck up an acquaintance. He was a reporter for a morning paper of very advanced methods, and he was pre-eminently a person fitted for his position: a cocky youth with a long, keen nose and a bullet head covered with rather wiry, black hair, heavy black brows over keen black eyes, and an ugly mouth with rather small yellowish teeth. He had as absolute confidence in himself as any youth I ever met, and he either had, or made a good pretence of having, an intimate knowledge of not only all the public affairs of the city, but of the private affairs of every one in the city. Before we had finished smoking our cigarettes he had given me what he termed "the lay out" of the entire community, and by his account it was "the rottenest ---- town in the universe"--a view I subsequently had reason to rectify--and he proposed to get out of it as soon as he could and go to New York, which, to his mind, was the only town worth living in in the country (he having, as I learned later, lived there just three weeks).

His paper, he said frankly, paid only for sensational articles, and was just then "jumping on a lot of the high-flyers, because that paid," but "they" gave him a latitude to write up whatever he pleased, because they knew he could dress up anything--from a murder to a missionary meeting. "Oh! it don't matter what you write about," said he airily, "so you know how to do it"--a bit of criticism suggestive of a better-known critic.

I was much impressed by his extraordinary and extensive experience. In the course of our conversation I mentioned casually the episode of the delayed train and the private car.

"The Argands' car, you say?"

I told him that that was what some one had said.

"That would make a good story," he declared. "I think I'll write that up--I'd have all the babies dying and the mothers fainting and an accident just barely averted by a little girl waving a red shawl, see--while the Argand car dashed by with a party eating and drinking and throwing champagne-bottles out of the window. But I've got to go and see the Mayor to ascertain why he appointed the new city comptroller, and then I've got to drop by the theatre and give the new play a roast--so I'll hardly have time to roast those Argands and Leighs, though I'd like to do it to teach them not to refuse me round-trip passes next time I ask for them. I tell you what you do," he added, modestly, "you write it up--you say you have written for the press?"

"Oh! yes, very often--and for the magazines. I have had stories published in----"

"Well, that's all right." (Kalender was not a good listener.) "I'll look it over and touch it up--put the fire in it and polish it off. You write it up, say--about a column. I can cut it down all right--and I'll call by here for it about eleven, after the theatre."

It was a cool request--coolly made; but I was fool enough to accede to it. I felt much aggrieved over the treatment of us by the railway company, and was not sorry to air my grievance at the same time that I secured a possible opening. I accordingly spent all the afternoon writing my account of the inconvenience and distress occasioned the travelling public by the inconsiderateness of the railway management, discussing, by the way, the fundamental principle of ownership in quasi-public corporations, and showing that all rights which they claimed were derived from the people. I mentioned no names and veiled my allusions; but I paid a tribute to the kind heart of the Angel of Mercy who succored the children. I spent some hours at my composition and took much pride in it when completed. Then, as I had not been out at all to see the town, I addressed the envelope in which I had placed my story to Mr. Kalender, and leaving it for him, walked out into the wilderness.

On my return the paper was gone.

Next morning I picked up one paper after another, but did not at first find my contribution. An account of a grand ball the night before, at which an extraordinary display of wealth must have been made, was given the prominent place in most of them. But as I did not know the persons whose costumes were described with such Byzantine richness of vocabulary, I passed it by. The only thing referring to a railway journey was a column article, in a sensational sheet called _The Trumpet_, headed, BRUTALITY OF MILLIONAIRE BANKER. RAILWAY PRESIDENT STARVES POOR PASSENGERS. There under these glaring headlines, I at last discovered my article, so distorted and mutilated as to be scarcely recognizable. The main facts of the delay and its cause were there as I wrote them. My discussion of derivative rights was retained. But the motive was boldly declared to be brutal hatred of the poor. And to make it worse, the names of both Mr. Leigh and Mrs. Argand were given as having been present in person, gloating over the misery they had caused, while a young lady, whose name was not given, had thrown scraps out of the window for starving children and dogs to scramble for.

To say that I was angry expresses but a small part of the truth. The allusion to the young lady had made my blood boil. What would she think if she should know I had had a hand in that paper? I waited at red heat for my young man, and had he appeared before I cooled down, he would have paid for the liberty he took with me. When he did appear, however, he was so innocent of having offended me that I could scarcely bear to attack him.

"Well, did you see our story?" he asked gayly.

"Yes--your story--I saw----"

"Well, I had to do a little to it to make it go," he said condescendingly, "but you did very well--you'll learn."

"Thank you. I don't want to learn that," I said hotly, "I never saw anything so butchered. There was not the slightest foundation for all that rot--it was made up out of whole cloth." I was boiling about Miss Leigh.

"Pooh-pooh! My dear boy, you'll never make an editor. I never fake an interview," he said virtuously. "Lots of fellows do; but I don't. But if a man will give me two lines, I can give him two columns--and good ones, too. Why, we had two extras--what with that and the grand ball last night. The newsboys are crying it all over town."

"I don't care if they are. I don't want to be an editor if one has to tell such atrocious lies as that. But I don't believe editors have to do that, and I know reputable editors don't. Why, you have named a man who was a hundred miles away."

He simply laughed.

"Well, I'm quite willing to get the credit of that paper. That's business. We're trying to break down the Leigh interests, and the Argands are mixed up with 'em. Coll McSheen was in the office last night. He's counsel for the Argands, but--you don't know Coll McSheen?"

"I do not," I said shortly.

"He's deep. You know you write better than you talk," he added patronizingly. "I tell you what I'll do--if you'll write me every day on some live topic----"

"I'll never write you a line again on any topic, alive or dead, unless you die yourself, when I'll write that you are the biggest liar I ever saw except my Jeams."

I had expected he would resent my words, but he did not. He only laughed, and said, "That's a good line. Write on that."

I learned later that he had had a slight raise of salary on the paper he palmed off as his. I could only console myself with the hope that Miss Leigh would not see the article.

But Miss Leigh did see the appreciation of her father in the writing of which I had had a hand, and it cost me many a dark hour of sad repining.

X

A NEW GIRL

This is how the young lady heard of it. Miss Leigh had been at home but an hour or two and had only had time to change her travelling costume for a suit of light blue with a blue hat to match, which was very becoming to her, and order the carriage to drive down and get her father, when a visitor was announced: Miss Milly McSheen, an old schoolmate--and next moment a rather large, flamboyante girl of about Miss Leigh's own age or possibly a year or two older, bounced into the room as if she had been shot in out of one of those mediæval engines which flung men into walled towns.

She began to talk volubly even before she was actually in the room; she talked all through her energetic if hasty embrace of her friend, and all the time she was loosening the somewhat complicated fastening of a dotted veil which, while it obscured, added a certain charm to a round, florid, commonplace, but good-humored face in which smiled two round, shallow blue eyes.

"Well, my dear," she began while yet outside the door, "I thought you never were coming back! Never! And I believe if I hadn't finally made up my mind to get you back you would have stayed forever in that nasty, stuck-up city of Brotherly Love."

Miss Leigh a little airily observed that that title applied to Philadelphia, and she had only passed through Philadelphia on a train one night.

"Oh! well, it was some kind of love, I'll be bound, and some one's else brother, too, that kept you away so long."

"No, it was not--not even some one else's brother," replied Miss Leigh.

"Oh! for Heaven's sake, don't tell me that's wrong. Why, I've been practising that all summer. It sounds so grammatical--so New Yorkish."

"I can't help it. It may be New Yorkish, but it isn't grammatical," said Miss Leigh. "But I never expected to get back earlier. My Aunt had to look into some of her affairs in the East and had to settle some matters with a lawyer down South, a friend of my father's--an old gentleman who used to be one of her husband's partners and is her trustee or something, and I had to wait till they got matters settled."

"Well, I'm glad you are here in time. I was so afraid you wouldn't be, that I got Pa to telegraph and have your car put on the president's special train that was coming through and had the right-of-way. I told him that I didn't see that because your father had resigned from the directory was any reason why you shouldn't be brought on the train."

"Were we indebted to you for that attention?" Eleanor Leigh's voice had a tone of half incredulity.

"Yep--I am the power behind the throne just at present. Pa and old Mr. Canter have buried the hatchet and are as thick as thieves since their new deal, and Jim Canter told me his car was coming through on a special. Oh! you ought to hear him the way he says, _My car_, and throws his chest out! So I said I wanted him to find out where you were on the road--on what train, I mean--and pick you up, and he said he would."

"Oh! I see," said Miss Leigh, looking somewhat annoyed.

"He did, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"Well, you know Jim Canter is a very promising young man, much more so than he is a fulfiller. What are you so serious about? You look as----"

"Nothing--only I don't wish to be beholden to--I was just wondering what right we have to stop trains full of people who have paid for their tickets and----"

"What!" exclaimed the other girl in astonishment, "what right? Why, our fathers are directors, aren't they--at least, my father is--and own a block of the stock that controls----?"

"Yes; but all these people--who pay--and who had no breakfast?"

"Oh! don't you worry about them--they'll get along somehow--and if they pay they'll look out for themselves without your doing it. My way is to make all I can out of them and enjoy it while I can--that's what Pa says."

"Yes," said Miss Leigh acquiescingly, "but I'm not sure that it's right."

"You've been reading that man's articles," declared Miss McSheen. "I know--I have, too--everybody has--all the girls. I am a socialist--aren't they terribly striking! He's so good-looking. Pa says he's a Jew and an anarchist, and ought to be in jail."

"Are you speaking of Mr. Wolffert?"

"Yes, of course. Now you need not make out you don't know him; because they say----"

"Yes, I know him very well," said Miss Leigh, so stiffly that her guest paused and changed her tone.

"Well, anyhow, my dear, you are just in time. We are going to have the biggest thing we've ever had in this town. I've almost died laughing over it already."

"What is it?"

"Wait. I'm going to tell you all about it. You know it was all my idea. Harriet Minturn claims the whole credit for it now that I've made it go--says she first suggested it, and I assure you, my dear, she never opened her head about it till I had all the girls wild about it, and had arranged for the costumes and had gotten the Count to promise----"

"What is it?" interrupted her hostess again, laughing.

"Wait, my dear, I'm going to tell you all about it. The Count's a socialist, too. He says he is--but you mustn't tell that; he told me in the strictest confidence. Well, the Count's to go as courtier of the court of--what's the name of that old king or emperor, or whatever he was, that conquered that country--you know what I mean----"

"No, indeed, I do not--and I haven't the least idea what you are talking about."

"Oh! pshaw! I know perfectly well, and you do, too. The Count bet me I'd forget it and I bet him a gold cigar-holder I wouldn't--what _is_ his name? Won't the Count look handsome with lace ruffles and gold braid all over his chest and coat-tails, and a cocked hat. He's been showing me the way they dance in his country. I almost died laughing over it--only it makes me so dizzy, they never reverse--just whirl and whirl and whirl. You know he's a real count? Yes, my father's taken the trouble to hunt that up. He said he wasn't 'going to let a d----d dago come around me without anybody knowing who or what he is.' Ain't that like Pa?"

"I--I--don't think I ever met your father," said Eleanor stiffly.

"Oh! that's a fact. Well, 'tis--'tis just exactly like him. As soon as the Count began to come around our house--a good deal--I mean, really, quite a good deal--you understand?" said the girl, tossing her blonde head, "what must Pa do but go to work and hunt him up. He thinks Jim Canter is a winner, but I tell him Jimmy's bespoke." She looked at her hostess archly.

"What did he find out?" inquired Miss Leigh coldly, "and how did he do it?"

"Why, he just ran him down," explained the girl easily, "just as he does anybody he wants to know about--put a man on him, you know."

"Oh! I see." Miss Leigh froze up a little; but the other girl did not notice it.

"Only this one was somebody on the other side, of course, and he found out that he's all right. He's a real count. He's the third son of Count Pushkin, who was--let me see--a counsellor of his emperor, the Emperor of Sweden."

"I didn't know they had an emperor in Sweden. He's a new one."

"Haven't they? Oh! well, maybe it was the King of Sweden, or the Emperor of Russia--I don't know--they are all alike to me. I never could keep them apart, even at Miss de Pense's. I only know he's a real count, and I won a hundred dollars from Pa on a bet that he was. And he hated to pay it! He bet that he was a cook or a barber. And I bet he wasn't. And, oh! you know it's an awfully good joke on him--for he was a waiter in New York for a while."

"A what?"

"A waiter--oh, just for a little while after he came over--before his remittances arrived. But I made Pa pay up, because he said cook or barber. I put it in this hat, see, ain't it a wonder?" She turned herself around before a mirror and admired her hat which was, indeed as Miss Leigh was forced to admit, "a wonder."

"You know it's just like the hat Gabrielle Lightfoot wears in the 'Star of the Harem' when she comes in in the balloon. I got her to let me copy it--exactly."

"You did? How did you manage that?"

"Why, you see, Jimmy Canter knows her, and he asked Harriet and me to supper to meet her, and I declare she nearly made me die laughing--you know she's a real sweet girl--Jimmy says she----"

"Who chaperoned you?" asked Miss Leigh, as she began to put on her gloves.

"Chaperon? My dear, that's where the fun came in--we didn't have any chaperon. I pretended that Harriet and the Count were married and called her Countess, and she was so flattered at being given the title that she was pleased to death--though you know, she's really dead in love with Jimmy Canter, and he hardly looks at her. If he's in love with any one--except Mr. James Canter, Jr.--it's with some one else I know." She nodded her head knowingly.

"I'm afraid I have to go now," said Miss Leigh, "my father expects me to come for him," she glanced at a jewelled watch. She had stiffened up slightly.

"Well, of course, you'll come?"

"To what?"

"To our ball--that's what it is, you know, though it's for a charity, and we make others pay for it. Why shouldn't they? I haven't decided yet what charity. Harriet wants it to be for a home for cats. You'd know she'd want that now, wouldn't you? She'll be in there herself some day. But I'm not going to let it go for anything she wants. She's claiming now that she got it up, and I'm just going to show her who did. I'm thinking of giving it to that young preacher you met in the country two years ago and got so interested in 't you got Dr. Capon to bring him here as his assistant."

"You couldn't give it to a better cause," said Miss Leigh. "I wonder how he is coming on?"

"I guess you know all right. But Pa says," pursued Miss McSheen without heeding further the interruption, "we are ruining the poor, and the reason they won't work is that we are always giving them money. You know they're striking on our lines--some of them? I haven't decided yet what to give it to. Oh! you ought to see the Doctor. He's the gayest of the gay. He came to see me the other day. It almost made me die laughing. You know he's dead in love with your Aunt. I used to think it was you; but Pa says I'm always thinking everybody is in love with you--even the Count--but he says--However----"

"I'll tell you what!" said Miss Leigh suddenly, "I'll come to the ball if you'll give the proceeds to Mr. Marvel for his poor people."

"Done! See there! what did I tell you! I thought you weren't so pious for nothing all on a sudden----"

"Milly, you're a goose," said Miss Leigh, picking up her sunshade.

"I'm a wise one, though--what was it our teacher used to tell us about the geese giving the alarm somewhere? But I don't care. I'm the treasurer and pay the bills. Pa says the man that holds the bag gets the swag. Bring your father. We'll get something grand out of him. He always gives to everything. I'll call him up and tell him to be sure and come. You know they've landed the deal. Pa says every one of them has made a pile. Your father might have made it, too, if he'd come in, but I think he was fighting them or something, I don't quite understand it--anyhow it's all done now, and I'm going to hold Pa up for the pearl necklace he promised to give me. There's a perfect beauty at Setter & Stoneberg's, only seventeen thousand, and I believe they'll take ten if it's planked down in cold cash. Pa says the way to get a man is to put down the cold cash before him and let him fasten his eye on it. If he's a Jew he says he'll never let it go. I tell him by the same token he must be a Jew himself; because he holds on to all the money he ever lays his eye on."

"Can I take you down-town anywhere?" inquired Miss Leigh, in a rather neutral voice.

"No, my dear, just let me fix my hat. I have to go the other way. In fact, I told the Count that I was going up to the park for a little spin, and he asked if he couldn't come along. I didn't want him, of course--men are so in the way in the morning, don't you think so? Is that quite right?" She gave her head a toss to test the steadiness of her hat.

"Quite," said Miss Leigh.

"Well, good-by. I'll count on you then. Oh! I tell you--among the entertainments, the Count is going to perform some wonderful sleight-of-hand tricks with cards. My dear, he's a magician! He can do anything with cards. Heavens! it's after one. The Count--good-by--good-by."

And as Miss Leigh entered her victoria the young lady rushed off, up the street, straining her eyes in the direction of the park.

That night "the ball," as Miss McSheen called it, came off and was a huge success, as was duly chronicled in all the morning papers next day with an elaboration of description of millinery in exact proportion to the degree of prominence of the wearer in the particular circle in which the editor or his reporter moved or aspired to move. Mrs. Argand stood first in "Wine-colored velvet, priceless lace," of the sort that reporters of the female sex deem dearest, and "diamonds and rubies" that would have staggered Sinbad, the sailor. Miss McSheen ran her a close second, in "rose-colored satin, and sapphires," spoken of as "priceless heirlooms." Miss Leigh shone lower down in "chiffon, lace, and pearls of great price." So they went columns-full, all priceless, all beautiful, all superlative, till superlatives were exhausted, and the imagination of the reporters ran riot in an excess of tawdry color and English.

Among the men especially lauded were, first, a certain Mr. James Canter, son and partner of "the famous Mr. Canter, the capitalist and financier," who gave promise of rivalling his father in his "notorious ability," and, secondly, a Count Pushkin, the "distinguished scion of a noble house of international reputation who was honoring the city with his distinguished presence, and was generally credited with having led captive the heart of one of the city's fairest and wealthiest daughters." So ran the record. And having nothing to do, I read that morning the account and dwelt on the only name I recognized, the young lady of the white chiffon and pearls, and wondered who the men were whose names stood next to hers.

XI

ELEANOR LEIGH

Miss Leigh also read the papers that morning and with much amusement till in one of them--the most sensational of all the morning journals--she came on an article which first made her heart stop beating and then set it to racing with sheer anger. To think that such a slander could be uttered! She would have liked to make mince-meat of that editor. He was always attacking her father.

A little later she began to think of the rest of the article! What was the truth? Did they have the right to stop the train and hold it back? This sort of thing was what a writer whom she knew denied in a series of papers which a friend of hers, a young clergyman who worked among the poor, had sent her and which the press generally was denouncing.

She had for some time been reading these papers that had been appearing in the press periodically. They were written by a person who was generally spoken of as "a Jew," but who wrote with a pen which had the point of a rapier, and whose sentences ate into the steely plate of artificial convention like an acid. One of the things he had said had stuck in her memory. "As the remains of animalculæ of past ages furnish, when compressed in almost infinite numbers, the lime-food on which the bone and muscle of the present race of cattle in limestone regions are built up, so the present big-boned race of the wealthy class live on the multitudinous class of the poor."

The summer before she had met the writer of these articles and he had made an impression on her which had not been effaced. She had not analyzed her feelings to ascertain how far this impression was due to his classical face, his deep, luminous eyes, and his impassioned manner, yet certain it is that all of these had struck her.

Perhaps, I should give just here a little more of Miss Eleanor Leigh's history as I came to know of it later on. How I came to know of it may or may not be divulged later. But, at least, I learned it. She was the daughter of a gentleman who, until she came and began to tyrannize over him, gave up all of his time and talents to building up enterprises of magnitude and amassing a fortune. He had showed abilities and ambition at college "back East," where he came from, and when he first struck for the West and started out in life, it was in a region and amid surroundings which were just becoming of more than local importance as they a little later grew under the guidance of men of action like himself, to be of more than sectional importance. The new West as it was then had called to him imperiously and he had responded. Flinging himself into the current which was just beginning to take on force, he soon became one of the pilots of the development which, changing a vast region where roamed Indians and buffalo into a land of cities and railways, shortly made its mark on the Nation and, indeed, on the world, and he was before long swept quite away by it, leaving behind all the intellectual ambitions and dreams he had ever cherished and giving himself up soul and body to the pleasure he got out of his success as an organizer and administrator of large enterprises. Wealth at first was important to him, then it became, if not unimportant, at least of secondary importance to the power he possessed. Then it became of importance again--indeed of supreme importance; for the power he wielded was now dependent on wealth and great wealth. His associates were all men of large interests, and only one with similar interests could lead them. New conditions had come about of late and new methods which he could neither employ nor contend against successfully.

As he looked back on it later it appeared a feverish dream through which he had passed. Its rewards were undeniable: luxury, reputation and power beyond anything he had ever conceived of. Yet what had he not sacrificed for them! Everything that he had once held up before his mind as a noble ambition: study, reading, association with the great and noble of all time; art and love of art; appreciation of all except wealth that men have striven for through the ages; friendship--domestic joy--everything except riches and the power they bring. For as he thought over his past in his growing loneliness he found himself compelled to admit that he had sacrificed all the rest. He had married a woman he loved and admired. He had given her wealth and luxury instead of himself, and she had pined and died before he awakened to the tragic fact. He had grieved for her, but he could not conceal from himself the brutal fact that she had ceased years before to be to him as necessary as his business. She had left him one child. Two others had died in infancy, and he had mourned for them and sympathized with her; but he never knew for years, and until too late, how stricken she had been over their loss. The child she had left him had in some way taken hold on him and had held it even against himself. She had so much of himself in her that he himself could see the resemblance; his natural kindness, his good impulses, his wilfulness, his resolution and ambition to lead and to succeed in all he undertook.

Even from the earliest days when she was left to him, Mr. Leigh was made aware by Eleanor that he had something out of the ordinary to deal with. The arrangement by which, on the death of her mother, she was taken by her half-aunt, Mrs. Argand, to be cared for, "because the poor child needed a mother to look after her," fell through promptly when the little thing who had rebelled at the plan appeared, dusty and dishevelled but triumphant, in her father's home that first evening, as he was preparing, after leaving his office, to go and see her. It was doubtless an auspicious moment for the little rebel; for her father was at the instant steeped in grief and loneliness and self-reproach. He had worked like fury all day to try to forget his loss; but his return home to his empty house had torn open his wounds afresh, and the echoing of his solitary foot-fall on the stair and in the vacant rooms had almost driven him to despair. Every spot--every turn was a red-hot brand on the fresh wound. No man had loved his wife more; but he awoke now when too late to the torturing fact that he had left her much alone. He had worked for her, leaving the enjoyment to the future; and she had died before the future came, in that desolate present which was to be linked forever to the irretrievable past. It was at this moment that he heard a familiar step outside his door. His heart almost stopped to listen. It could not be Eleanor--she was safe at her Aunt's, blocks away, awaiting the fulfilment of his promise to come to see her--and it was now dark. Could it be a delusion? His over-wrought brain might have fancied it. Next second the door burst open, and in rushed Eleanor with a cry--"Oh! Papa!"

"Why, Nelly! How did you come!"

"Slipped out and ran away! You did not come and I could not stay."