the two, a large, pampered young fellow; "they need cold steel--they
ought to be made to work."
"How would that suit us?" laughed the other.
"We don't have to."
"Hello! What's old Bart after?" observed the first one.
"Shekels," said the other, and yawned.
"After her--he's taking notice."
"Oh! no; he's wedded to the tape--goes into the Grand five times a day
and reads the tape."
"Bet you, he courts her."
"How'll you prove it?"
"Ask her."
"Bet you you daren't ask her."
"How much?"
"What you like."
"I don't want to win your money."
"Don't you? Then hand me back that little fifteen hundred you picked up
from me last week."
"That was square, but this is a certainty."
"I'd chance it--bet you a thousand, Jim, you daren't ask her to her face
if old Bart isn't courting her and hasn't asked her to marry him."
"Oh! that's different. You want to make me put up and then make my bet
for me. I tell you what I'll bet--that she's the only girl I know I
wouldn't ask that."
"That may be. Now, I tell you what I'll bet--that you want a drink--ring
the bell."
"That's a certainty, too," laughed his friend, and they turned and sank
wearily in deep chairs till a drink should give them energy to start a
fresh discussion.
Having put down the Rev. Bartholomew at the door of her aunt's imposing
mansion, Eleanor Leigh, after a moment of indecision, directed her
coachman to drive to a certain street in the section known as
"down-town," and there she stopped at a pleasant looking old house, and
jumping out of the carriage, ran up the worn stone steps and rang the
bell. It was a street that had once been fashionable, as the ample,
well-built houses and the good doors and windows testified. But that
fickle jade, Fashion, had long since taken her flight to other and more
pretentious sections and shops, loan-offices, and small grocers' markets
had long engulfed the mansions of the last generation. Had any gauge of
the decadence of the quarter been needed it might have been found in the
scornful air of Miss Leigh's stout coachman as he sat on his box. He
looked unutterably disgusted, and his chin was almost as high as the
chins of his tightly reined-up horses.
Miss Leigh asked of the rather slatternly girl who came to the door, if
the Miss Tippses were in, and if so, would they see her. When the maid
went to see if they were at home, Miss Leigh was shown into a large and
very dark room with chairs of many patterns, all old, placed about in
it, a horsehair sofa on one side, a marble-topped table in the centre;
an upright piano on the other side, and on a small table a large piece
of white coral under a glass cover. Where the fireplace had once been, a
large register now stood grating off the heat that might try in vain to
escape through it.
Presently the maid returned. "Miss Pansy" was in, and would the lady
please walk up. It was in the third story, back, at the top of the
stairs. Miss Leigh ran up and tapped on the door, waited and tapped
again. Then, as there was no answer, she opened the door cautiously and
peeped in. It was a small hall-room, bare of furniture except two
chairs, a sewing-machine, a table on which was an ironing-board at which
at the moment stood a little old lady with a forehead so high as to be
almost bald. She was clad in a rusty black skirt, a loose morning sacque
of blue cotton, and she wore loose bedroom-slippers. Her sleeves were
rolled up, and her arms were thin and skinny. She held a flat-iron in
her hand, with which she had evidently been ironing a white
under-garment which lay on the board, and another one was on a little
gas-stove which stood near a stationary wash-stand. As Miss Leigh opened
the door, the old lady gave a little exclamation of dismay and her hand
went involuntarily to her throat.
"Oh! I beg your pardon!" said the girl, starting to retire and close the
door; "I thought the servant told me----"
By this time the other had recovered herself.
"Oh! come in, won't you?" she said, with a smile and in a voice
singularly soft and refined. "My sister will be ready to receive you in
a moment. I was only a little startled. The fact is," she said laughing,
"I thought the door was bolted; but sometimes the bolt does not go quite
in. My sister--Won't you take a chair? Let me remove those things." She
took up the pile of under-garments that was on one chair and placed it
on top of a pile of dishes and other things on the other.
"Oh! I am so sorry," protested the girl, who observed that she was
concealing the dishes; "I was sure the girl told me it was the door at
the head of the stairs."
"She is the stupidest creature--that girl. I must really get my sister
to speak to Mrs. Kale about her. I would, except that I am afraid the
poor thing might lose her place. There is another door just off the
little passage that she probably meant."
"Yes--probably. It was I that was stupid."
"Oh! no, not at all. You must excuse the disorder you find. The fact is,
this is our work-room, and we were just--I was just doing a little
ironing to get these things finished. When your card was brought
up--well, we both were--and as my sister is so much quicker, she ran to
get ready and I thought I would just finish this when I was at it, and
you would excuse me."
"Oh! I am so sorry. I wouldn't for anything have interrupted you,"
repeated the girl, observing how all the time she was trying
unobtrusively to arrange her poor attire, rolling down her sleeves and
smoothing her darned skirt, all the while with a furtive glance of her
eye toward the door.
"Oh! my dear, I wouldn't have had you turned away for anything in the
world. My sister would be _désolée_. We have a better room than this,
where we usually receive our visitors. You will see what a nice room it
is. We can't very well afford to have two rooms; but this is too small
for us to live in comfortably and we have to keep it because it has a
stationary wash-stand with hot water, which enables us to do our
laundering."
"Yes, I see," murmured Miss Leigh softly.
"You see, we earn our living by making underclothes for--for a firm----"
"I see, and what nice work you do." She was handling a garment softly.
"Yes, my sister does beautiful work; and I used to do pretty well, too;
but I am troubled a little with my eyes lately. The light isn't very
good at night--and the gas is so expensive. I don't see quite as well as
I used to do."
"How much can you do?" asked her visitor, who had been making a mental
calculation.
"Why, I--It is hard to tell. I do the coarser work and my sister does
the finishing; then she usually launders and I iron when I am able. I
suffer with rheumatism so that I can't help her very much."
"I hope you make them pay you well for it," blurted out the girl.
"Why, we used to get a very good price. We got till recently seven cents
apiece, but now it has been cut down--that was for everything,
laundering and ironing, too. We are glad to get that."
"How on earth do you manage to live on it?"
"Oh! we live very well--very well, indeed," said the little lady
cheerfully. "Mrs. Kale is very good to us. She lets us have the rooms
cheaper than she would any one else. You see she used to know us when we
lived back in the East. Her father was a clerk in our father's office,
and her mother went to school with us. Then when we lost everything and
were turned out, we found we had to make our own living and we came here
to see about our case, and she found we were here--and that's the way we
came to be here. But don't you let my sister know I told you about the
sewing," she said, dropping her voice, as a brisk step was heard outside
the door. "Ah! here she is now!" as at the moment the door opened and a
brisk little old lady, almost the counterpart of her sister, except that
she might have been ten years her junior, that is, sixty instead of
seventy years of age, tripped into the room.
"Oh! my dear Miss Leigh, how good of you to come all the way out here to
call on us! Sister, what in the world are you doing? Why will you do
this? I can't keep her from amusing herself! (This with a shake of the
head and a comical appeal for sympathy from her visitor.) Won't you walk
into our sitting-room? Now, sister, do go and make yourself presentable.
You know she will slave over all sorts of queer things. She really loves
sewing and ironing. I'm quite ashamed to have you come into this
pig-sty. Walk in, won't you?" And she led the way into a larger room
adjoining the work-room, leaving Miss Leigh in doubt which was the more
pathetic, the little old lady still delving over the ironing-board,
making no pretence to conceal their poverty, or the other in her poor
"best," trying to conceal the straits in which they were fallen.
Eleanor had observed that the older sister's gaze had constantly rested
on the rose she wore, and as they were going out, the latter called her
sister's attention to it. She said, she thought it possibly the most
beautiful rose she had ever seen.
"Won't you have it?" said Eleanor, and unpinned it.
"Oh! no, indeed, I wouldn't deprive you of it for anything. It is just
where it ought to be."
Eleanor persisted, and finally overcame both her reluctance and her
sister's objection.
She was struck with the caressing way in which she took and held it,
pressing it against her withered cheek.
"Sister, don't you remember the Giant-of-Battles we used to have in our
garden at Rosebank? This reminds me of it so--its fragrance is just the
same."
"Yes. We used to have a great many roses," explained the younger sister,
as she led the way into the next room as if she were asking Eleanor into
a palace, though this room was almost as bare of furniture as the other,
the chief difference being an upright case which was manifestly a
folding-bed, and a table on which were a score of books, and a few old
daguerreotypes.
"Your friend, Mr. Marvel, was here the other day. What a nice young man
he is."
"Yes," said Eleanor. "I am going out to see him. Where has he moved to?"
Miss Pansy said she did not know the street; but her sister had the
address. She would go and see. When she came back, she went over and
opened the old Bible lying on the table. "Here is where we keep the
addresses of those we especially value," she said, smiling. "Oh! here it
is. When he was here the other day, he brought us a treat; a whole
half-dozen oranges; won't you let me prepare you one? They are so
delicious."
Eleanor, who had been holding a bank-note clutched in her hand, thanked
her with a smile, but said she must go. She walked across the room, and
took up the Bible casually, and when she laid it down it gaped a little
in a new place.
"Oh, you know we have had quite an adventure," said Miss Pansy.
"An adventure? Tell me about it."
"Why, you must know there is a young man here I am sure must be some one
in disguise. He is so--well, not exactly handsome, but really
distinguished looking, and he knows all about railroads and things like
that."
"You'd better look out for him," said Miss Leigh.
"Oh, do you think so? My sister and I were thinking of consulting him
about our affairs--our railroad case, you know."
"Oh! Well, what do you know about him?"
"Nothing yet. You see, he has just come; but he joined us on the street
this morning when we were going out--just shopping--and offered to take
our bundles--just two little bundles we had in our hands, and was so
polite. My dear, he has quite the grand air!"
"Oh, I see. Well, that does not necessarily make him a safe adviser. Why
not let me ask my father about your matter? He is a railroad man, and
could tell you in a minute all about it."
"Oh, could you? That would be so kind in you."
"But you must tell me the name of the road in which you had the stock."
"Oh, my dear. I don't know that I can do that. I only know that it was
the Transcontinental and something and something else. I know that much,
because it was only about sixty miles long, and we used to say that the
name was longer than the road. My father used to say that it would some
day be a link in a transcontinental chain--that's where it got its name,
you know."
"Well, look out for your prince in disguise," said the girl, smiling as
she rose to take her leave.
That evening at dinner, after Eleanor had given her father an account of
her day, with which she always beguiled him, including a description of
her visit to the two old ladies, she suddenly asked, "Father, what
railroad was it that used to be known as the Transcontinental Something
and Something?'"
"The what?"
"The 'Transcontinental Something and Something Else?' It was about sixty
miles long, and was bought up by some bigger road and reorganized."
"I suppose you mean the 'Transcontinental, North-western and Great Iron
Range Road.' That about meets the condition you mention. What do you
know about it?"
"Was it reorganized?"
"Yes; about twenty years ago, and again about ten years ago. I never
quite understood the last reorganization. Mr. Argand had it done--and
bought up most of the stock."
"Was any one squeezed out?"
"Sure--always are in such cases. That is the object of a
reorganization--partly. Why are you so interested in it?" Mr. Leigh's
countenance wore an amused look.
"I have two friends--old ladies--who lost everything they had in it."
"I guess it wasn't much. What is their name?"
"It was all they had. They are named Tipps."
Mr. Leigh's expression changed from amusement to seriousness.
"Tipps--Tipps?" he repeated reminiscently. "Bassett Tipps? I wonder if
they were connected with Bassett Tipps?"
"They were his daughters--that was their father's name. I remember now,
Miss Pansy told me once."
"You don't say so! Why, I used to know Colonel Tipps when he was the big
man of this region. He commanded this department before I came out here
to live, and the old settlers thought he was as great a man as General
Washington. He gave old Argand his start. He built that road,--was, in
fact, a man of remarkable foresight, and if he had not been
killed--Argand was his agent and general factotum--They didn't come
into the reorganization, I guess?"
"That's it--they did not--and now they want to get their interest back."
"Well, tell them to save their money," said Mr. Leigh. "It's gone--they
can't get it back."
"They want you to get it back for them."
"Me!" exclaimed Mr. Leigh. "They want me to get it back! Oh, ho-ho!
They'd better go after your Aunt Sophia and Canter."
"Yes; I told them you would."
"You did?" Mr. Leigh's eyes once more lit up with amusement.
"Yes: you see they were robbed of every cent they had in the world, and
they have not a cent left."
"Oh! no, they were not robbed. Everything was properly done and
absolutely regular, as I remember. It must have been. I think there was
some sort of claim presented afterward by the Tipps Estate which was
turned down. Let me see; McSheen had the claim, and he gave it up--that
was when? Let me see. He became counsel for your Uncle Argand in--what
year was it?--you were a baby--it must have been eighteen years ago."
"That was nineteen years ago, sir. I am now twenty," said his daughter,
sitting up with a very grand air.
The father's eyes lit up with pride and affection as he gazed at the
trim, straight figure and the glowing face.
"You were just a little baby--so big." He measured a space of about two
span with his hands. "That was your size then, for I know I thought your
Uncle Argand might have made me counsel instead of McSheen. But he
didn't. And that was McSheen's start."
"He sold out," said the girl with decision.
"Oh, no--I don't think he would do that. He is a lawyer."
"Yes, he would. He's a horrid, old, disreputable rascal. I've always
thought it, and now I know it. And I want you to get my old ladies'
interest back for them."
"I can't do that. No one can. It's too long ago. If they ever had a
claim it's all barred, long ago."
"It oughtn't to be--if it was stolen," persisted his daughter, "and it
was."
XV
THE LADY OF THE VIOLETS
Having decided that Mrs. Kale's did not present the best advantages, I
determined to move to more suitable quarters. I chose a boarding-house,
partly by accident and partly because it was in a semi-fashionable
quarter which I liked, and I paid Mrs. Starling, the landlady, a
decisive person, two weeks' board in advance, so as to have that long a
lease at any rate, and a point from which to take my bearings. I had
learned of the place through Kalender, who was deeply enamored of Miss
Starling, a Byzantine-hued young lady, and who regarded the house
somewhat as Adam is assumed to have regarded Eden after his banishment.
Mrs. Starling was, in this case, the angel of the flaming sword. She had
higher ambitions for Miss Starling.
I had less than forty dollars left, and fifteen of that was borrowed
next day by a fellow-boarder named Pushkin, who occupied the big front
room adjoining my little back hall-room, and who had "forgotten to draw
any money out of bank," he said, but would "return it the next day at
dinner time," a matter he also forgot. I was particularly struck with
him not because he had a title and was much kotowed to by our landlady
and her boarders--especially the ladies, as because I recalled his name
in juxtaposition with Miss Leigh's in the flamboyant account of the ball
the night after I arrived.
I was now ensconced in a little pigeon-hole of an office in a big
building near the court-house, where, with a table, two chairs, and a
dozen books, I had opened what I called my "law office," without a
client or an acquaintance; but with abundant hopes.
I found the old principle on which I had been reared set at naught, and
that life in its entirety was a vast struggle based on selfishness.
I was happy enough at first, and it was well I was. It was a long time
before I was happy again. Having in mind Miss Leigh, I wrote and secured
a few letters of introduction; but they were from people who did not
care anything for me to people who did not care anything about
them--semi-fashionable folk, mainly known in social circles, and I had
no money to throw away on society. One, indeed, a friend of mine had
gotten for me from Mr. Poole to a man of high standing both in business
and social circles, the president of a manufacturing company, with
which, as I learned later, Mr. Poole had formerly some connection. This
gentleman's name was Leigh, and I wondered if he were the same person
who had been posted by Kalender at the head of my story of the delayed
train. I thought of presenting the letter. It, however, was so guarded
that I thought it would not do me the least good, and, besides, I did
not wish to owe anything to Lilian Poole's father, for I felt sure his
influence had always been against me, and I was still too sore to be
willing to accept a favor at his hands.
It was well I did not present it, for Mr. Poole with well-considered and
characteristic prudence, had written a private letter restricting the
former letter to mere social purposes, and had intimated that I had been
a failure in my profession and was inclined to speculate. This character
he had obtained, as I subsequently learned, from Peck.
The new conditions with which I was confronted had a singular effect on
me. I was accustomed to a life where every one knew me and I knew, if
not every one, at least something good or bad about every one.
Here I might have committed anything short of murder or suicide without
comment, and might have committed both without any one outside of the
reporters and the police and Dix caring a straw about it.
I felt peculiarly lonely because I was inclined to be social and
preferred to associate with the first man I met on the street to being
alone. In fact, I have always accounted it one of my chief blessings
that I could find pleasure and entertainment for a half-hour in the
company of any man in the world except a fool or a man of fashion, as
the old writers used to speak of them, or as we call them now, members
of the smart set.
The first things that struck me as I stepped out into the thronged
streets of the city were the throngs that hurried, hurried, hurried
along, like a torrent pouring through a defile, never stopping nor
pausing--only flowing on, intent on but one thing--getting along. Their
faces, undistinguished and indistinguishable in the crowd, were not
eager, but anxious. There was no rest, and no room for rest, more than
in the rapids of Niagara. It was the bourgeoisie at flood, strong,
turgid, and in mass, ponderant; but inextinguishably common. As I stood
among them, yet not of them, I could not but remark how like they were
in mass and how not merely all distinction but all individuality
perished in the mixing. I recalled a speech that my father had once
made. "I prefer countrymen," he said, "to city men. The latter are as
like as their coats. The ready-made-clothing house is a great civilizer,
but also a great leveler. Like the common school of which you boast, it
may uplift the mass, but it levels--it destroys all distinction."
This came home to me now.
I had a proof of its truth, and, I may add, of the effect of urban
influences not long after I launched on the restless sea of city life. I
was passing one day along a street filled with houses, some much finer
than others, when my way was blocked by a child's funeral in front of a
small but neat house beside one much more pretentious. The white hearse
stood at the door and the little white coffin with a few flowers on it
was just about to be borne out as I came up. A child's funeral has
always appealed to me peculiarly. It seems so sad to have died on the
threshold before even opening the door. It appeared to me suddenly to
have brought me near to my kind. And I stopped in front of the adjoining
house to wait till the sorrowing little cortege had entered the
carriage which followed behind the hearse. A number of other persons had
done the same thing. At this moment, the door of the larger house next
door opened, and a woman, youngish and well-dressed, appeared and stood
on her steps waiting for her carriage which stood at some little
distance.
As I was standing near her, I turned and asked her in an undertone:
"Can you tell me whose funeral this is?"
"No, I cannot," she said, so sharply that I took a good look at her as
she stood trying to button a tight glove.
"Oh! I thought, perhaps, you knew as they are your next-door neighbors."
"Well, I do not. It's no concern of mine," she said shortly. She
beckoned to her carriage across the way. The coachman who had been
looking at the funeral caught sight of her and with a start wheeled his
horses around to draw up. The number of persons, however, who had
stopped like myself prevented his coming up to her door, which appeared
to annoy the lady.
"Can't you move these people on?" she demanded angrily of a stout
officer who stood like the rest of us, looking on.
"It's a funeral," he said briefly.
"Well, I know it is. I don't expect you to interfere with that. It's
these idlers and curiosity mongers who block the way that I want moved
to clear a way for my carriage. And if you can't do it, I'll ask Mr.
McSheen to put a man on this beat who can. As it happens I am going
there now." Insolence could go no farther.
"Let that carriage come up here, will you?" said the officer without
changing his expression. "Drive up, lad," he beckoned to the coachman
who came as near as he could.
"To Mrs. McSheen's," said the lady in a voice evidently intended for the
officer to hear, "and next time, don't stand across the street staring
at what you have no business with, but keep your eyes open so that you
won't keep me waiting half an hour beckoning to you." She entered the
carriage and drove off, making a new attack on her glove to close it
over a pudgy wrist. I glanced at the coachman as she closed the door and
I saw an angry gleam flash in his eye. And when I turned to the officer
he was following the carriage with a look of hate. I suddenly felt drawn
to them both, and the old fight between the People and the Bourgeoisie
suddenly took shape before me, and I found where my sympathies lay. At
this moment the officer turned and I caught his eye and held it. It was
hard and angry at first, but as he gave me a keen second glance, he saw
something in my face and his eye softened.
"Who is Mr. McSheen?" I asked.
"The next mayor," he said briefly.
"Oh!" I took out my card under an impulse and scribbled my office
address on it and handed it to him. "If you have any trouble about this
let me know."