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.