Chapter I: Pitch My Tent (2)

When the emotion of the first greeting was over, Mr. Leigh, under the strong sense of what he deemed his duty to the child, and also to the dear dead--which had led him at first to make the sacrifice of yielding to his sister-in-law's urgency, began to explain to the little girl the impropriety of her action, and the importance of her returning to her Aunt, when she had been so kind. But he found it a difficult task. Mr. Leigh believed in discipline. He had been brought up in a rigid school, and he knew it made for character; but it was uphill work with the little girl's arms clasped about his neck and her hot, tear-streaked little face pressed close to his as she pleaded and met his arguments with a promptness and an aptness which astonished him. Moreover, she had a strong advocate in his own heart, and from the first moment when she had burst in on his heart-breaking loneliness he had felt that he could not let her go again if she were unhappy.

"She would not go back," she asserted defiantly. "She hated her Aunt, anyhow--she was a hateful old woman who scolded her servants; and sent her up-stairs to her supper."

When to this her father promptly replied that she must go back, and he would take her, she as promptly changed her note.

"Very well, she would go back; he need not come with her; but she would die."

"Oh, no, you will not die. You will soon grow very fond of her."

"Then I shall grow very worldly, like her," said Miss Precocity.

"What makes you think that?"

"Because she is a worldly old woman--and you said so yourself."

"I said so! When?" demanded her father, with a guilty feeling of vague recollection.

"To Mamma once--when Mamma said something against her husband, you said that, and Mamma said you ought not to say that about her sister--and you said she was only her half-sister, anyhow, and not a bit like her--and now you want to send me back to her as if I were only your half-child."

The father smiled sadly enough as he drew the anxious little face close to his own.

"Oh! no--You are all mine, and my all. I only want to do what is right."

"Mamma wants me to stay with you--so it must be right."

The present tense used by the child struck the father to the heart.

"What makes you think that?" he asked with a sigh. The little girl was quick to catch at the new hope.

"She told me so the day before she died, when I was in the room with her; she said you would be lonely, and I must be a comfort to you."

Mr. Leigh gave a gasp that was almost a groan, and the child flung her arms about his neck.

"And I sha'n't leave you, my all-Papa, unless you drive me; I promised Mamma I would stay and take care of you, and I will. And you won't make me--will you? For I am your all-daughter--You won't, will you?"

"No, d----d if I do!" said the father, catching her to his heart, and trying to smother the oath as it burst from his lips.

As soon as she had quieted down, he went to her Aunt's to make the necessary explanation. He found it not the easiest task, for the good lady had her own ideas and had formed her plans, and the change was a blow to her _amour propre_. It was, in fact, the beginning of the breach between Mr. Leigh and his sister-in-law which led eventually to the antagonism between them.

"You are going to spoil that child to death!" exclaimed the affronted lady. This Mr. Leigh denied, though in his heart he thought it possible. It was not a pleasant interview, for Mrs. Argand was deeply offended. But Mr. Leigh felt that it was well worth the cost when, on his return home, he was greeted by a cry of joy from the top of the stair where the little girl sat in her dressing gown awaiting him. And when with a cry of joy she came rushing down, Cinderella-like, dropping her slipper in her excitement, and flung herself into his arms, he knew that life had begun for him anew.

Mr. Leigh was quite aware of the truth of Mrs. Argand's prophecy; but he enjoyed the spoiling of his daughter, which she had foretold, and he enjoyed equally the small tyrannies which the child exercised over him, and also the development of her mind as the budding years passed.

"Papa," she said one day, when she had asked him to take her somewhere, and he had pleaded, "business," "why do you go to the office so much?"

"I have to work to make money for my daughter," said her father, stating the first reason that suggested itself.

"Are you not rich enough now?"

"Well, I don't know that I am, with a young lady growing up on my hands," said her father smiling.

"Am I very expensive?" she asked with a sudden little expression of gravity coming over her face.

"No, that you are not, my dear--and if you were, there is no pleasure on earth to me like giving it to you. That is one of my chief reasons for working so steadily, though there are others."

"I have plenty of money," said Eleanor.

"Then you are happier than most people, who don't know when they have plenty."

"Yes--you see, all I have to do when I want anything is to go into a store and ask for it, and tell them I am your daughter, and they let me have it at once."

"Oh ho!" said her father, laughing, "so that is the way you buy things, is it? No wonder you have plenty. Well, you'd better come to me and ask for what you want."

"I think the other is the easier way, and as you say you like to give it to me, I don't see that it makes any difference."

Mr. Leigh decided that he had better explain the difference.

"I hate rich people," said Eleanor suddenly. "They are so vulgar."

"For example?" enquired her father looking with some amusement at the girl whose face had suddenly taken on an expression of severe priggishness.

"Oh! Aunt Sophia and Milly McSheen. They are always talking about their money."

Mr. Leigh's eyes were twinkling.

"You must not talk that way about your Aunt Sophia--she is very fond of you."

"She is always nagging at me--correcting me."

"She wants you to grow up to be a fine woman."

"Like her?" said Miss Eleanor pertly.

Mr. Leigh felt that it was wise to check this line of criticism, and he now spoke seriously.

"You must not be so critical of your Aunt. She is really very fond of you--and she was your mother's half-sister. You must respect her and love her."

"I love her, but I don't like her. She and Milly McSheen are just alike--always boasting of what they have, and do, and running down what others have, and do."

"Oh, well, it takes a great many people to make a world," said Mr. Leigh indulgently. Eleanor felt a want of sympathy and made another bid for it.

"Milly McSheen says that her father is going to be the richest man in this town."

"Ah! who is talking about money now?" said Mr. Leigh, laughing.

"I am not--I am merely saying what she said."

"You must not tell the silly things your friends say."

"No--only to you--I thought you said I must tell you everything. But, of course, if you don't wish me to--I won't."

Mr. Leigh laughed and took her on his knee. He was not quite sure whether she was serious or was only laughing at him, but, as he began to explain, she burst into a peal of merriment over her victory.

In appearance she was like her mother, only he thought her fairer--as fair as he had thought her mother in the days of his first devotion; and her deeper eyes and firmer features were an added beauty; the well-rounded chin was his own. Her eyes, deep with unfathomable depths, and mouth, firm even with its delicate beauty, had come from some ancestor or ancestress who, in some generation past, had faced life in its most exacting form with undaunted resolution and, haply, had faced death with equal calm for some belief that now would scarcely have given an hour's questioning. So, when she grew each year, developing new powers and charm and constancy, he began to find a new interest in life, and to make her more his companion and confidante than he had ever made her mother. He left his business oftener to see her than he had left it to see her mother; he took her oftener with him on his trips, and took more trips, that he might have her company. She sat at the head of his table, and filled her place with an ability that was at once his astonishment and his pride.

At one time, as she changed from a mere child to a young girl, he had thought of marrying again, rather with a view to giving her a guide and counsellor than for any other purpose. Her storminess, however, at the mere suggestion, and much more, her real grief, had led him to defer the plan from time to time, until now she was a young lady, and he could see for himself that she needed neither chaperon nor counsellor. He sometimes smiled to think what the consequences would have been had he taken to wife the soft, kindly, rather commonplace lady whom he had once thought of as his daughter's guardian. A domestic fowl in the clutches of a young eagle would have had an easier time.

One phase alone in her development had puzzled and baffled him. She had gone off one spring to a country neighborhood in another State, where she had some old relatives on her mother's side. Mr. Leigh had been called to Europe on business, and she had remained there until well into the summer. When she returned she was not the same. Some change had taken place in her. She had gone away a rollicking, gay, pleasure-loving, and rather selfish young girl--he was obliged to admit that she was both wilful and self-indulgent. Even his affection for her could not blind his eyes to this, and at times it had given him much concern, for at times there was a clash in which, if he came off victor, he felt it was at a perilous price--that, possibly, of a strain on her obedience. She returned a full-grown woman, thoughtful and self-sacrificing and with an aim--he was glad it was not a mission--and as her aim was to be useful, and she began with him, he accepted it with contentment. She talked freely of her visit; spoke warmly, and indeed, enthusiastically, of those she had met there. Among these were a young country preacher and a friend of his, a young Jew. But, though she spoke of both with respect, the praise she accorded them was so equal that he dismissed from his mind the possibility that she could have been seriously taken with either of them. Possibly, the Jew was the one she was most enthusiastic over, but she spoke of him too openly to cause her father disquietude. Besides, he was a Jew.

The preacher she plainly respected most highly, yet her account of his appearance was too humorous to admit a serious feeling for him, even though she had gotten him called to be one of Dr. Capon's assistants.

What had happened was that the girl, who had only "lain in the lilies and fed on the roses of life," had suddenly been dropped in an out-of-the-way corner in a country neighborhood in an old State, where there were neither lilies nor roses of the metaphorical kind, though a sufficiency of the real and natural kind, with which nature in compensatory mood atones to those who have of the metaphorical sort but thistles and brambles and flinty soil.

When she first landed there, after the very first excitement of being thrown into a wholly new situation, among strangers whom, though her relatives, she had always regarded much as she had regarded geographical places in distant lands, was over, she found herself, as it were, at a loss for occupation. Everything was so quiet and calm. She felt lost and somewhat bored. But after a little time she found occupation in small things, as on looking closely she discovered beauties in Nature which her first glance had failed to catch. The people appeared so novel, so simple, so wholly different from all whom she had known; the excitements and amusements and interests of her life in the city, or at summer watering-places, or in travelling, were not only unknown to them--as unknown as if they were in another planet, but were matters of absolute indifference. Their interest was in their neighbors, in the small happenings about them; and occurrences an hundred miles away were as distant to them as though they had taken place in another era. Among the few notabilities in this rural community was a young clergyman whom she always heard spoken of with respect--as much respect, indeed, as if he had been a bishop. What "Mr. Marvel thought" and what he said was referred to, or was quoted as something to be considered--so much so that she had insensibly formed a picture in her own mind of a quite remarkable looking and impressive person. When, at last, she met John Marvel, what was her amusement to discover, in place of her young Antinous, a stout, strapping young fellow, with rather bristly hair, very near-sighted and awkward, and exceedingly shy, a person as far from a man of the world as a stout, country-bred cart-horse would be from a sleek trick-pony. His timidity in her presence caused her endless amusement, and for lack of some better diversion and partly to scandalize her staid kinswomen, she set herself to tease him in every way that her fertile brain could devise.

Visiting the young clergyman at the time was a friend who came much nearer being in appearance what Eleanor had imagined John Marvel to be: a dark, slender young man with a classical face, but that its lines were stronger and more deeply graven, and unforgettable eyes. He had just come to visit Mr. Marvel and to get a needed rest, John Marvel said. He had been a worker among the poor, and his views were so different from any that Eleanor Leigh had ever heard as to appear almost shocking. He was an educated man, yet he had lived and worked as an artisan. He was a gentleman, yet he denounced vehemently the conditions which produced the upper class. But an even greater surprise awaited her when he announced that he was a Jew.

When John Marvel brought his friend to see Miss Eleanor Leigh, the first impression that she received was one of pleasure. He was so striking and unusual looking--with deep, burning eyes under dark brows. Then she was not sure that she liked him, she even thought she was sensible of a sort of repulsion. She had a feeling as if he were weighing her in his mind and, not approving of her, treated her at times with indifference, at times with a certain disdain. She was conscious of an antagonism as Wolffert showed scorn of conditions and things which she had been brought up to believe almost as much a necessary part of life as air and light. She promptly began to argue with him, but when she found that he usually had the best of the argument, she became more careful how she opened herself to his attack. He aroused in her the feeling of opposition. His scorn of the money-making spirit of the day led her to defend what she secretly held in contempt. And once when he had been inveighing against commercialism that set up Gods of Brass to worship, and declared that it was the old story of Nebuchadnezzar over again--and was the fore-runner to brotherhood with the beasts of the field, she wheeled on him, declaring that it was "only people who had no power to make money who held such views."

"Do you think that I could not make money if I wished to do so?" said Wolffert quietly, with an amused light in his eyes as they rested on her with an expression which was certainly not hostile; for her eagerness had brought warm blood to her cheeks and her eyes were sparkling with the glow of contention.

"Yes, if you were able you would be as rich as a Jew."

A yet more amused look came into Wolffert's eyes.

"Are all Jews rich?" he asked.

"Yes--all who are capable--you know they are."

"No, for I am a Jew and I am not rich," said Wolffert.

"What! You!--You a--Oh, I beg your pardon! I--" she blushed deeply.

"Pray don't apologize--don't imagine that I am offended. Would you be offended if I charged you with coming from a race of poets and philosophers and scientists--of a race that had given the world its literature and its religion?"

She burst out laughing.

"No; but I was such a fool--pray forgive me." She held out her hand and Wolffert took it and pressed it firmly--and this was the beginning of their friendship.

Wolffert walked home slowly that evening, that is, across the fields to the little farmhouse where John Marvel lived. He had food for thought.

When Eleanor Leigh saw John Marvel a few days later she told him of her conversation and the speech she had made to his friend. "You know," said John, "that he is rich or could be, if he chose to go home. His father is very rich."

"He is a new Jew to me," said Eleanor Leigh; "he is quite different from the typical Jew."

"I wonder if there is a typical Jew," questioned John to himself, and this set Eleanor wondering too.

But Eleanor Leigh found other causes for wonder in Wolffert besides the salient fact of his race which she had mentioned to her cousins, and they forced upon her the consciousness that she would have to readjust her ideas of many things as she had been compelled to do in regard to the appearance and aims of this singular people. Her idea of the Israelites had always been curiously connoted with hooked noses, foreign speech of a far from refined type, and a persistent pursuit of shekels by ways generally devious and largely devoted to shops containing articles more or less discarded by other people. Here she found a cultivated gentleman with features, if not wholly classical, at least more regular and refined than those of most young men of her acquaintance; speech so cultivated as to be quite distinguished, and an air and manner so easy and gracious as to suggest to her complete knowledge of the great world. No matter what subject was discussed between them, he knew about it more than any one else, and always threw light on it which gave it a new interest for her. He had a knowledge of the Literature and Art, not only of the ancients, but of most modern nations, and he talked to her of things of which she had never so much as heard. He had not only travelled extensively in Europe, but had travelled in a way to give him an intimate knowledge not merely of the countries, but of the people and customs of the countries which no one she had ever met possessed. He had crossed in the steerage of ocean-liners more than once and had stoked across both to England and the Mediterranean.

"But what made you do it?" she asked. "Did not you find it terrible?"

"Yes--pretty bad." Wolffert was at the moment showing her how tea was made in certain provinces along the Caspian Sea which he had visited not long before. "About as bad as it could be."

"Then what made you do it?"

"Well, I saved money by it, too."

What the other reason was she did not press him to give. She only thought, "That is the Jew of it." But after she had seen more of him she discovered that the other reason was that he might learn by personal experience what the condition was in the emigrant ships and the holes where the stokers lived deep down amid the coal-bunkers and the roaring furnaces, and further, that he might know the people themselves. Incidentally, he had learned there and elsewhere Italian and Russian, with the strange Hebraic faculty of absorbing whatever he came in touch with, but he thought no more of knowing that than of knowing Yiddish.

It was this study of conditions that finally gave her the key to his design in life, for it developed as their acquaintance grew that this clear-headed, cultivated, thoughtful man held strange views as to the ordinary things of life, the things which she had always accepted as fundamental and unchangeable as the solid earth or the vaguely comprehended but wholly accepted revolution of the spheres. In fact, he held that the conditions of modern life, the relations of people in mass, which she had somehow always considered as almost perfect and, indeed, divinely established, were absolutely outworn and fundamentally unrighteous and unjust. She at first did not take him seriously. She could not. To find a pleasant and, indeed, rather eloquent-spoken young man denounce as wicked and vile usurpation the establishment of competitive enterprises, and the accumulation of capital by captains of industry, appeared to her almost impious. Yet, there he sat with burning eyes and thrilling voice denouncing the very things she had always considered most commendable. "Why, that is Socialism, isn't it?" she asked, feeling that if she could convict him of this somewhat vaguely comprehended term she would prove her old foundations unshaken.

Wolffert smiled. He was very good-looking when he smiled. "No, not exactly--if it is, it is only an elementary and individual kind of Socialism; but it is Socialism so far as it is based on a profound desire to reconstruct society and to place it on a natural and equitable social foundation where every one shall have a chance to work and to reap the fruit of such work."

"What is Socialism?" she demanded suddenly.

"It is not what you mean by the term," he laughed. "It is not taking the property of those who have worked for it and giving to those who neither have worked nor will work--that is what you have in mind."

"Precisely," she nodded.

"It is--at least, the Socialism I mean--the application of the same method of general order by the people at large to labor and the product of labor: property--that is now employed in Government. The reconstruction of the present methods so that all should participate both in the labor, and in the product." He went on to picture glowingly the consequences of this Utopian scheme when all men should work and all should reap. But though he made it appear easy enough to him, Eleanor Leigh's practical little head saw the difficulties and the flaws much more readily than the perfect result which he appeared to find so certain.

"You cannot reconstruct human nature," she protested, "and when you shall have gotten your system thoroughly under way, those who have gotten in positions of power will use their advantage for their own benefit, and then you will still have to begin all over again." But Wolffert was certain of the result and pointed out the work of his friend John Marvel as a proof of his theory.

While, at first, the broad-shouldered young clergyman fled from her presence with a precipitation which was laughable, it was not long before he appeared to have steeled himself sufficiently against her shafts of good-natured persiflage to be able to tolerate her presence, and before a great while had passed, her friends began to tease her on the fact that wherever she went Mr. Marvel was pretty sure to appear. One of her old cousins, half-rallyingly and half-warningly, cautioned her against going too far with the young man, saying, "Mr. Marvel, my dear, is too good a man for you to amuse yourself with, and then fling away. What is simply the diversion of an hour for you, may become a matter of real gravity with him. He is already deeply interested in you and unless you are interested in him----"

"Why, I am interested in him," declared the girl, laughing. "Why, he tells me of all the old sick women and cats in the parish and I have an engagement to go around with him and see some old women to-morrow. You ought to see some that we went to visit the other day!"

"I know, my dear, but you must not make fun of his work. He is happy in it and is accomplishing a great deal of good, and if you should get him dissatisfied----"

"Oh, no, indeed; I gave him some money last week for a poor family to get some clothes so that they could come to church. They were named Banyan. They live near the mines. The whole family were to be christened next Sunday, and what do you suppose they did? As soon as they got the clothes they went last Sunday to a big baptizing and were all immersed! I was teasing him about that when you heard me laughing at him."

"The wretches!" exclaimed her cousin. "To think of their deceiving him so!"

"I know," said the girl. "But I think he minded the deception much more than the other. Though I charged him with being disappointed at not getting them into his fold, really, I don't think he minded it a bit. At least, he said he would much rather they had gone where they would be happy."

"Now, Mr. Marvel's friend, Mr. Wolffert, is a different matter. He appears quite able to take care of himself."

"Quite," said Miss Leigh dryly.

"But, my dear," said her cousin, lowering her voice, "they say he is a Jew."

"He is," said Eleanor.

"You know it?"

"Yes, he told me so himself."

"Told you himself! Why, I thought--! How did he come to tell you?"

"Why, I don't know. We were talking and I said something foolish about the Jews--about some one being 'as rich and stingy as a Jew,' and he smiled and said, 'Are all Jews rich--and stingy?' And I said, 'If they have a chance,' and he said, 'Not always. I am a Jew and I am not rich.' Well, I thought he was fooling, just teasing me--so I went on, and do you know he is not only a Jew, but Mr. Marvel says he is rich, only he does not claim his money because he is a Socialist. Mr. Marvel says he could go home to-morrow and his father would take him and lavish money on him; but he works--works all the time among the poor."

"Well, I must say I always liked him," said her cousin.

"But he isn't such good fun to tease as Mr. Marvel--he is too intense. Mr. Marvel does get so red and unhappy-looking when he is teased."

"Well, you have no right to tease him. He is a clergyman and should be treated with respect. You wouldn't dare to tease your rector in town--the great Dr.--What is his name?"

"Oh! wouldn't I? Dr. Bartholomew Capon. Why, he is one of the greatest beaux in town. He's always running around to see some girl--ogling them with his big blue eyes."

"Eleanor!" exclaimed her cousin reprovingly.

"Why, he'd marry any one of the Canter girls who would have him, or Aunt Sophia, or----"

"Eleanor, don't be profane."

The old lady looked so shocked that the girl ran over and kissed her, with a laugh.

"Why, I've told him so."

"Told him? You haven't!"

"Yes, I have. I told him so when he tried to marry me. Then he tried Aunt Sophia."

"What! Eleanor, you are incorrigible. You really are. But do tell me about it. Did he really court you? Why, he's old enough to be your----"

"Grandfather," interrupted the girl. "That's what I told him, substantially."

"Served him right, too. But he must be a fine preacher from what my old friend, Pansy Tipps, once wrote me. Did you ever meet Pansy Tipps? She and her sister live in your city. They went there years ago to press a claim they had to a large fortune left them by their father, Colonel Tipps, who used to be a very rich man, but left his affairs somewhat complicated, I gather from what Pansy writes me, or did write, for she does not write very often now. I wish you'd go and see them when you go back."

"I will," said Eleanor. "Where do they live?"

"At a Mrs. Kale's--she keeps a boarding-house--I don't know the exact location, and mislaid Pansy's letter a year or more ago, but you will have no difficulty in finding it. It must be in the fashionable quarter and I should think any one could tell you where she lives."

"I will find her," said Eleanor, laughing.

XII

JOHN MARVEL

When, a little later, a scourge of diphtheria broke out in a little mining camp not far from the home of Miss Leigh's relatives and she learned that John Marvel spent all his time nursing the sick and relieving their necessities as far as possible, she awakened to a realization of the truth of what her cousin had said, that under his awkward exterior lay a mine of true gold.

Day by day reports came of the spread of the deadly pestilence, making inroads in every family, baffling the skill and outstripping the utmost efforts of the local physician; day by day, the rumor came that wherever illness appeared there was John Marvel.

One afternoon Miss Leigh, who had ridden over in the direction of the mining village to try and get some information about the young clergyman, who, a rumor said, had been stricken himself the day before, came on him suddenly in a by-path among the hills. At sight of her he stopped and held up his hand in warning, and at the warning she reined in her horse.

"Don't come nearer," he called to her.

"What is the matter?" she asked. "How are you?" For even at that distance--perhaps, some fifty paces--she could see that he looked wretchedly worn and wan.

"Oh, I'm doing very well," he replied. "How are you? You must not come this way! Turn back!"

She began to rein her horse around and then, on a sudden, as his arm fell to his side, and, stepping a little out of the path, he leant against a tree, the whole situation struck her. Wheeling her horse back, she rode straight up to him though he stiffened up and waved her back.

"You are ill," she said.

"Oh, no. I am not ill, I am only a bit tired; that is all. You must not come this way--go back!"

"But why?" she persisted, sitting now close above him.

"Because--because--there is sickness here. A family there is down." He nodded back toward the curve around which he had just come. "The Banyan family are all ill, and I am just going for help."

"I will go--I, at least, can do that. What help? What do you want?"

She had tightened the rein on her horse and turned his head back.

"Everything. The mother and three children are all down; the father died a few days ago. Send the doctor and anything that you can find--food--clothing--medicine--some one to nurse them--if you can find her. It is the only chance."

"I will." She hesitated a moment and looked down at him, as if about to speak, but he waved her off. "Go, you must not stay longer."

He had moved around so that the wind, instead of blowing from him toward her, blew from the other side of her.

A moment later Eleanor Leigh was galloping for life down the steep bridle-path. It was a breakneck gait, and the path was rough enough to be perilous, but she did not heed it. It was the first time in all her life that she had been conscious that she could be of real use. She felt that she was galloping in a new world. From house to house she rode, but though all were sympathetic, there was no one to go. Those who might have gone, were elsewhere--or were dead. The doctor was away from home attending at other bedsides and, by the account given, had been working night and day until he could scarcely stand. Riding to the nearest telegraph station, the girl sent a despatch to a doctor whom she knew in the city where she lived, begging him to come or to send some one on the first train and saying that he would be met and that she would meet all his expenses. Then she sat down and wrote a note to her cousin. And two hours later, just as the dusk was falling, she rode up to the door of a country cabin back among the hills. As she softly pushed open the door, with her arm full of bundles, a form rose from the side of a bed and stood before her in the dusk of the room.

"My God! you must not come in here. Why have you come here?"

"To help you," said the girl.

"But you must not come in. Go out. You must," said John Marvel.

"No, I have come to stay. I could not live if I did not stay now." She pushed her way in. "Here are some things I have brought. I have telegraphed for a doctor."

It was long before she could satisfy John Marvel, but she staid, and all that night she worked with him over the sick and the dying. All that night they two strove to hold Death at bay, across those wretched beds. Once, indeed, he had struck past their guard and snatched a life; but they had driven him back and saved the others. Ere morning came one of the children had passed away; but the mother and the other children survived; and Eleanor Leigh knew that John Marvel, now on his knees, now leaning over the bed administering stimulants, had saved them.

As Eleanor Leigh stepped out into the morning light, she looked on a new earth, as fair as if it had just been created, and it was a new Eleanor Leigh who gazed upon it. The tinsel of frivolity had shrivelled and perished in the fire of that night. Sham had laid bare its shallow face and fled away. Life had taken on reality. She had seen a man, and thenceforth only a man could command her.

The physician came duly, sent up by the one she had telegraphed to; rode over to the Banyan house, and later to the village, where he pronounced the disease diphtheria and the cause probably defective drainage and consequent impregnation of the water supply; wrote a prescription; commended the country doctor, returned home, and duly charged nearly half as much as the country doctor got in a year, which Miss Leigh duly paid with thoughts of John Marvel. This was what made the change in the girl which her father had noted.

No novelist can give all of a hero's or a heroine's life. He must take some especial phase and develop his characters along that line, otherwise he would soon overload his boat and swamp his reader's patience. He is happy who having selected his path of action does not wear out the reader in asking him to follow even this one line. Thus, it is possible to give only a part of Miss Eleanor Leigh's relation to life, and naturally the part selected is that which had also its relation to John Marvel.

If it be supposed by any one that Miss Eleanor Leigh devoted her entire time and thought to working among the poor he is greatly mistaken. John Marvel and Leo Wolffert did this: but Miss Leigh was far from living the consecrated life. She only made it a part of her life, that is all, and possibly this was the best for her to do. The glimpse which she got at the death-bed in the Banyan cottage that night when she went to help John Marvel fight death, tore the veil from her eyes and gave her a revelation of a life of which she had never dreamed till then, though it lay all about her in its tragic nakedness--but while it gave her pause and inspired her with a sincere wish to help the poor--or, possibly, to help John Marvel and Leo Wolffert, it did not change her nature or make her a missionary. An impulse, whatever its ultimate action, does not revolutionize. She still retained the love of pleasure natural to all young creatures. The young tree shoots up by nature into the sun. She still took part in the gay life about her, and, if possible, found a greater zest in it for the consciousness that she had widened her horizon and discovered more interests outside of the glittering little brazen circle in which her orbit had been hitherto confined. She had immediately on returning home interested herself to secure for John Marvel an invitation from Dr. Capon, her rector, to become one of his assistants and take charge of an outlying chapel which he had built in the poorest district of the town, moved thereto by a commendable feeling that the poor should have the gospel preached to them and that his church should not allow all the honors to go to other churches, particularly that of Rome. Dr. Capon prided himself and was highly esteemed by his fellows--that is, the upper officials, clergy, and laity alike--on his ability to obtain from his people the funds needed to extend what was known as "the work of the Parish," by which was signified mainly the construction of buildings, additions thereto, embellishments thereof, and stated services therein, and, incidentally, work among the poor for whom the buildings were supposed to have been planned. The buildings having all been erected and paid for and due report and laudation thereof having been made, it was found rather more difficult to fill them than had been previously anticipated. And it was set down somewhat to the perversity of the poor that they refused the general invitation extended them to come and be labelled and patronized with words and smiles quite as unctuous as benignant.

Dr. Capon had not the reputation of getting on quite comfortably with his assistants. The exactions of his type of success had made him a business man. As his power of organization increased, spirituality dwindled. He dealt more with the rich and less with the poor. He had the reputation of being somewhat exacting in his demands on them, and of having a somewhat overweening sense of his own importance and authority. Bright young men either declined altogether his suggestions of the whiteness of the harvest in the purlieus of the city, or, having been led into accepting positions under him, soon left him for some country parish or less imposing curacy--an exotic word which the Doctor himself had had something to do with importing from over seas. It thus happened that his chapel recently built for the poor with funds elicited from Dr. Capon's wealthy parishioners was vacant when Miss Eleanor Leigh consulted the Reverend Doctor as to a good church for a peculiarly good young clergyman, and the Doctor being at that time in his second mourning and likewise in that state of receptivity incident to clerical widowers of a year and a half's standing, yielded readily to his fair parishioner's solicitations, and the position was tendered to John Marvel and after some hesitation was accepted--his chief motive being that his old friend Wolffert was there doing a work in which he had greatly interested him. If the fact that Miss Eleanor Leigh also lived in that city influenced him, it would simply prove that John Marvel, like the rest of Humanity was only mortal. The tender was made without the usual preliminary examination of the young man by the Doctor, so impressed had he been by the young girl's enthusiastic accounts of John Marvel's work and influence among the poor. Thus it was, that when John Marvel finally presented himself, the Doctor was more than surprised at his appearance--he was, indeed, almost shocked.

The Doctor was not only fond of his own appearance--which was certainly that of a gentleman and a very well-fed and clerical looking one as well--but he took especial pride in having his assistants also good-looking and clerical. He loved to march in processional and recessional at the end of a stately procession with two or three fine-looking young priests marching before him. It had a solemnizing effect--it made the church appear something important. It linked him with the historic and Apostolic Church of the ages. With the swelling organ pouring forth its strains to soar and die among the groined arches above him, he sometimes felt as he glanced along the surpliced line before him as if he were borne away, and had any one cried to him from the side he might almost have been able to heal with his blessing. But this short, broad, bow-legged, near-sighted man in his shabby, ill-fitting clothes! Why, it would never do to have him about him! He would mar the whole harmony of the scene. If it had not been too late and if the young man had not had such a potent influence behind him, the Doctor might have suggested some difficulties in the way of carrying through the arrangements he had proposed; but though Mrs. Argand and her brother-in-law were understood to have had some differences over certain business matters, she was very fond of her niece and she was the wealthiest woman who came to his church. The Doctor reflected, therefore, that he need not have the awkward young man about him much: and when a little later it appeared that this gawky young man was filling his chapel and neighborhood-house, poor-club and night-schools and was sending in reports which showed that real work was being done, the Doctor was well satisfied to let him remain--so well, indeed, that he never invited him to his house socially, but only held official relations with him. The report that among John Marvel's chief assistants in the work of organizing his poor-clubs and night-school was a Jew Socialist disturbed the Doctor slightly, but he reflected that when one showed such notable results it was in a way necessary to employ many curious agencies, and, after all, the association with Jews in secular affairs was a matter of taste.

XIII

MR. LEIGH.

Now, to recur to the period of my arrival in the West--the day after Miss Leigh's return home her father paid her the unusual honor of leaving his office to take lunch with her.

Her mind was full of the subject of the paper she had read in the press that morning, giving a lurid picture of the inconvenience and distress entailed on the passengers and scoring the management of the company for permitting what was claimed to be "so gross a breach of the rights of the public."

Ordinarily, she would have passed it over with indifference--a shrug of her white shoulders and a stamp of her little foot would have been all the tribute she would have paid to it. But of late she had begun to think.

It had never before been brought so clearly to the notice of the girl how her own pleasures--not the natural but the created pleasures--of which she was quite as fond as other healthy girls of her age and class, were almost exclusively at the expense of the class she had been accustomed to regard with a general sort of vague sympathy as "the Poor."

The attack on her father and herself enraged her; but, as she cooled down, a feeling deeper than mere anger at an injustice took possession of her mind.

To find that she herself had, in a way, been the occasion of the distress to women and children, startled her and left in her mind a feeling of uneasiness to which she had hitherto been a stranger.

"Father," she began, "did you see that dreadful article in the _Trumpet_ this morning?"

Mr. Leigh, without looking up, adopted the natural line of special pleading, although he knew perfectly well instantly the article to which she referred.

"What article?" he asked.

"That story about our having delayed the passenger train with women and children on it and then having side-tracked them without breakfast, in order to give our car the right-of-way."

"Oh! yes. I believe I saw that. I see so many ridiculous things in the newspapers, I pay no attention to them."

"But, father, that was a terrible arraignment," said the girl.

"Of whom?" asked Mr. Leigh, with a little twinkle in his eye.

"Why, of you; of Aunt Sophia, of----"

"Of me!"

"Yes, and of me--of everybody connected with the road."

"Not of you, my dear," said Mr. Leigh, with the light of affection warming up his rather cold face. "Surely no one, even the anarchistic writers of the anarchistic press, could imagine anything to say against you."

"Yes, of me, too, though not by name, perhaps; but I was there and I was in a way the cause of the trouble, because the car was sent after me and Aunt Sophia, and I feel terribly guilty about it."

"Guilty of what, my dear?" smiled her father. "Of simply using your own property in a way satisfactory to you?"

"That is just it, father; that is the point which the writer raises. Is it our own property?"

"It certainly is, my love. Property that I have paid for--my associates and I--and which I control, or did control, in conjunction with the other owners, and propose to control to suit myself and them so long as we have the controlling interest, every socialistic writer, speaker and striker to the contrary notwithstanding."

"Well," said the girl, "that sounds all right. It looks as if you ought to be able to do what you like with your own; but, do you know, father, I am not sure that it is our own. That is just the point--he says----"

"Oh! nonsense!" said her father lightly. "Don't let this Jew go and fill your clear little head with such foolishness as that. Enjoy life while you can. Make your mind easy, and get all the use you can out of what I have amassed for you. I only hope you may have as much pleasure in using it as I have had in providing it."

The banker gazed over at his daughter half-quizzically, half-seriously, took out a cigar, and began to clip the end leisurely. The girl laughed. She knew that he had something on his mind.

"Well, what is it?" she asked smiling.

He gave a laugh. "Don't go and imagine that because that Jew can write he is any the less a--don't go and confound him and his work. It is the easiest thing in the world to pick flaws--to find the defects in any system. The difficult thing is constructive work."

She nodded.

"Did that foreigner go down there while you were there?"

"The Count?"

"The No-Count."

"No, of course not. Where did you get such an idea?"

He lighted his cigar with a look of relief, put it in his mouth, and sat back in his chair.

"Don't let your Aunt Sophia go and make a fool of you. She is a very good business woman, but you know she is not exactly--Solomon, and she is stark mad about titles. When you marry, marry a man."

"Mr. Canter, for example?" laughed the girl. "He is Aunt Sophia's second choice. She is always talking about his money."

"She is always talking about somebody's money, generally her own. But before I'd let that fellow have you I'd kill him with my own hand. He's the worst young man I know. Why, if I could tell you half--yes, one-tenth, of the things I have heard about him--But I can't tell you--only don't go and let anybody pull the wool over your eyes."

"No fear of that," said the girl.

"No, I don't know that there is. I think you've got a pretty clear little head on your shoulders. But when any one gets--gets--why, gets her feelings enlisted you can't just count on her, you know. And with your Aunt Sophy ding-donging at you and flinging her sleek Count and her gilded fools at you, it takes a good head to resist her."

The girl reassured him with a smile of appreciation.

"I don't know where she got that from," continued her father. "It must have been that outside strain, the Prenders. Your mother did not have a trace of it in her. I never saw two half-sisters so different. She'd have married anybody on earth she cared for--and when she married me I had nothing in the world except what my father chose to give me and no very great expectations. She had a rich fellow from the South tagging after her--a big plantation and lots of slaves and all that, and your Aunt Sophy was all for her marrying him--a good chap, too--a gentleman and all that; but she turned him down and took me. And I made my own way. What I have I made afterward--by hard work till I got a good start, and then it came easy enough. The trouble since has been to keep others from stealing it from me--and that's more trouble than to make it, I can tell you--what between strikers, gamblers, councilmen, and other knaves, I have a hard time to hold on to what I have."

"I know you have to work very hard," said the girl, her eyes on him full of affection. "Why, this is the first time I've had you up to lunch with me in months. I felt as much honored as if it had been the King of England."

"That's it--I have to stay down there to keep the robbers from running off with my pile. That young fellow thought he'd get a little swipe at it, but I taught him a thing or two. He's a plunger. His only idea is to make good by doubling up--all right if the market's rising and you can double. But it's a dangerous game, especially if one tries to recoup at the faro table."

"Does he play faro?" asked the girl.

"He plays everything, mainly Merry H--l. I beg your pardon--I didn't mean to say that before you, but he does. And if his father didn't come to his rescue and plank up every time he goes broke, he'd have been in the bankrupt court--or jail--and that's where he'll wind up yet if he don't look out."

"I don't believe you like him," laughed the girl.

"Oh! yes, I do. I like him well enough--he is amusing rather, he is gay, careless, impudent--he's the main conduit through which I extract money from old Prender's coffers. He never spends anything unless you pay him two gold dollars down for one paper one on the spot. But I want him to keep away from you, that's all; I suppose I've got to lose you some time, but I'll be hanged if I want to give you up to a blackguard--a gambler--a rou--a lib--a d----d blackguard like that."

"Well, you will never have that to do," said the girl; "I promise you that."

"How is the strike coming on?" asked his daughter. "When I went away it was just threatening, and I read in the papers that the negotiations failed and the men were ordered out; but I haven't seen much about it in the papers since, though I have looked."

"Oh! Yes--it's going on, over on the other lines across town, in a desultory sort of way," said her father wearily--"the fools! They won't listen to any reason."

"Poor people!" sighed the girl. "Why did they go out?"

"Poor fools!" said Mr. Leigh warmly; "they walked out for nothing more than they always have had."

"I saw that they had some cause; what was it?"

"Oh! they've always some cause. If they didn't have one they'd make it. Now they are talking of extending it over our lines."

"Our lines! Why?"

"Heaven knows. We've done everything they demanded--in reason. They talk about a sympathetic strike. I hear that a fellow has come on to bring it about. Poor fools!"