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!"
The girl gave him a smile of affection as he pushed back his chair. And
leaning over her as he walked toward the door, he gave her a kiss of
mingled pride and affection. But when he had left the room she sat still
for some moments, looking straight ahead of her, her brow slightly
puckered with thought which evidently was not wholly pleasant, and then
with a sweeping motion of her hand she pushed her chair back, and, as
she arose from the table, said: "I wish I knew what is right!" That
moment a new resolution entered her mind, and, ringing the bell for the
servant, she ordered her carriage.
XIV
MISS LEIGH SEEKS WORK
She drove first to Dr. Capon's church and, going around, walked in at
the side door near the east end, where the robing rooms and the rector's
study were. She remembered to have seen on a door somewhere there a sign
on which was painted in gilded letters the fact that the rector's office
hours were from 12 to 1 on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and this
was Thursday. The hour, however, was now nearly three, and she had
called only on a chance of catching him, a chance which a stout and
gloomy looking verger, who appeared from somewhere at her foot-fall,
told her at first was lost; but when he recognized her, he changed his
air, grew quite interested, and said he would see if the doctor was in.
He had been there he knew after lunch, but he might have left. He
entered and closed the door softly behind him, leaving the girl in the
gloom, but a moment later he returned and showed her in. The rector,
with a smile of unfeigned pleasure on his face, was standing just beside
a handsome mahogany writing desk, near a window, awaiting her entry, and
he greeted her with cordiality.
"Oh! my dear young lady, come in. I was just about going off, and I'm
glad I happened to have lingered a little--getting ready to launch a new
year-book." He laid his fingers on a batch of printer's proof lying on
the desk beside a stock bulletin. "I was just thinking what a bore it
is and lo! it turned into a blessing like Balaam's curse. What can I do
for you?" The rector's large blue eyes rested on his comely parishioner
with a spark in them that was not from any spiritual fire.
"Well, I don't know," said the girl doubtfully.
"I see you were at the grand ball, or whatever it was last night, and I
was so delighted to see that it was for a charitable object--and the
particular object which I saw."
"Yes, it is for Mr. Marvel's work out among the poor," said Miss Leigh.
The rector's expression changed slightly.
"Oh! yes, that is our work. You know that is our chapel. I built it. The
ball must have been a great success. It was the first knowledge I had
that you and your dear aunt had returned." His voice had a tone of faint
reproach in it.
"Yes, we returned yesterday. I wish the papers would leave me alone,"
she added.
"Ah! my dear young lady, there are many who would give a great deal to
be chronicled by the public prints as you are. The morning and evening
star is always mentioned while the little asteroids go unnoticed."
"Well, I don't know about that," said the girl, "but I do wish the
papers would let me alone--and my father too."
"Oh! yes, to be sure. I did not know what you were referring to. That
was an outrageous attack. So utterly unfounded, too, absolutely untrue.
Such scurrilous attacks deserve the reprobation of all thinking men."
"The trouble is that the attack was untrue; but the story was not
unfounded."
"What! What do you mean?" The clergyman's face wore a puzzled
expression.
"That our car was hitched on to the train----"
"And why shouldn't it be, my dear young lady? Doesn't the road belong to
your father; at least, to your family--and those whom they represent?"
"I don't know that it does, and that is one reason why I have come to
see you."
"Of course, it does. You will have to go to a lawyer to ascertain the
exact status of the title; but I have always understood it does. Why,
your aunt, Mrs. Argand, owns thousands of shares, doesn't she, and your
father?" A grave suspicion suddenly flitted across his mind relative to
a rumor he had heard of heavy losses by Mr. Leigh and large gains by Mr.
Canter, the president of the road, and his associates who, according to
this rumor, were hostile to Mr. Leigh.
"I don't know, but even if they do, I am not sure that that makes them
owners. Did you read that article?"
"No--well, not all of it--I glanced over a part of it, enough to see
that it was very scurrilous, that's all. The headlines were simply
atrocious. The article itself was not so wickedly----"
"I should like to do some work among the poor," said the girl
irrelevantly.
"Why, certainly--just what we need--the earnest interest and assistance
of just such persons as yourself, of your class; the good, earnest,
representatives of the upper class. If we had all like you there would
be no cry from Macedonia."
"Well, how can I go about it?" demanded the girl rather cutting in on
the rector's voluble reply.
"Why, you can teach in the Sunday-school--we have a class of nice girls,
ladies, you know, a very small one--and I could make my superintendent
arrange for Miss--for the lady who now has them to take another
class--one of the orphan classes."
"No, I don't mean that kind of thing. If I taught at all I should like
to try my hand at the orphan class myself."
"Well, that could be easily arranged--" began the rector; but his
visitor kept on without heeding him.
"Only I should want to give them all different hats and dresses. I can't
bear to see all those poor little things dressed exactly in the same
way--sad, drab or gray frocks, all cut by the same pattern--and the same
hats, year in and year out."
"Why, they have new hats every year," expostulated the rector.
"I mean the same kind of hat. Tall and short; stout and thin; slim or
pudgy; they all wear the same horrible, round hats--I can't bear to look
at them. I vow I'd give them all a different hat for Christmas."
"Oh! my dear, you can't do that--you would spoil them--and it's against
the regulations. You must remember that these children are orphans!"
"Being orphans is bad enough," declared the girl, "but those hats are
worse. Well, I can't teach them, but I might try some other poor
class?"
"Why, let me see. The fact is that we haven't any"--he was speaking
slowly, casting his mind over his field--"very poor people in this
church. There used to be a number; but they don't come any more. They
must have moved out of the neighborhood. I must make my assistant look
them up."
"You have no poor, then?"
"Not in this congregation. The fact is this church is not very well
suited to them. They don't mix with our people. You see our class of
people--of course, we are doing a great work among the poor, our
chapels--we have three, one of them, indeed, is a church and larger than
many independent churches. Another has given me some anxiety, but the
third is doing quite a remarkable work among the working people out in
the east end--that under my assistant, the young man you interested
yourself so much in last year--and which your ball committee was good
enough to consider in selecting the object of its benevolence."
"Yes, I know--Mr. Marvel. I will go out there."
"Oh! my dear, you couldn't go out there!"
"Why not? I want to see him."
"Why, it is away out on the edge of the city--what you might call the
jumping-off place--among manufactories and railroad shops."
"Yes, I know. I have been out there."
"You have--why, it is away out. It is on--I don't recall the name of the
street. It's away out. I know it's near the street-car terminus that
your family own. It's a very pretty chapel indeed. Don't you think so?
It is natural that you should take an interest in it, as your aunt, Mrs.
Argand, helped us to build it. She gave the largest contribution toward
it. I don't know what we should do without charitable women like her."
"Yes, I know. And Mr. Marvel is coming on well?"
A change came over the face of the rector. "Oh, very well--rather an
ungainly fellow and very slow, but doing a very good work for our
parish. I have been wanting to get the Bishop to go there all this year
as there are a number of candidates for me to present; but he has been
so busy and I have been so busy----"
"I will go there," said Miss Leigh, rising.
"I don't think you will like it," urged the rector. "It is a very bad
part of the town--almost dangerous, indeed--filled with working people
and others of that sort, and I don't suppose a carriage ever----"
"I will go in the street cars," said the girl.
"The street cars! Yes, you could go that way, but why not come here and
let me assign you a class?"
"I wish to work among the poor."
"The happy poor!" said the rector, smiling. "Why not come and help me in
my work--who need you so much?" His voice had changed suddenly and he
attempted to possess himself of the gloved hand that rested on his
table, but it was suddenly withdrawn.
"I thought we had settled that finally last year," said Miss Leigh
firmly.
"Ah, yes; but the heart is not so easily regulated."
"Oh! yes, yours is. Why don't you try Aunt Sophia again?"
"Try--again?--who?" The rector was manifestly somewhat embarrassed.
"Why, Aunt Sophia--'the evening star,'" said Miss Leigh, laughing.
"Who says--? Did she say I had--ah--addressed her?"
"No--I got it from you. Come on now----"
"Which way are you going? That is just my way. May I have the pleasure
of driving up with you? I must go and see your aunt and welcome her
back. One moment." He had shown the young lady out of the door. He now
turned back and folding up the stock bulletin placed it carefully in his
pocket.
As the carriage with its smart team turned into one of the broader
streets, two young men were standing in a window of a large building
highly decorated, looking idly out on the street. They had just been
talking of the threatened strike which the newspapers were discussing,
as to which they held similar views.