amazement. Her whole person changed. Her head went up--her eyes flashed,
her color deepened.
"Oh!" she said. "Perhaps, we look at the matter from different
standpoints?" rearing back more stiffly than ever.
"Unquestionably, madam. I happen to know John Marvel, the gentleman who
called on you, very well, and I know him to be one of the best men in
the world. I know that he supported that poor family out of his own
small income, and when they were turned out of their house, fed them
until he could get the father some work to do. He was not an
anarchist, but a hard-working Scotchman, who had been ill and had lost
his place."
"Oh!" she said--this time with renewed superciliousness, raising her
lorgnon to observe some newcomers.
"Perhaps, you happen also to know McNeil's counsel--perhaps, you are the
man yourself?" she added insolently.
[Illustration: "Perhaps you are the man yourself?" she added
insolently.]
I bowed low. "I am."
The truth swept over her like a flood. Before she recovered, I bowed my
adieux, of which, so far as I could see, she took no notice. She turned
to Pushkin, as Miss Leigh, from behind a high-backed chair, held out her
hand to me. "Well, poor McNeil's done for now," she said in an
undertone. But as the latter smiled in my eyes, I did not care what her
aunt said.
"Ah! my dear Count, here is the tea at last," I heard our hostess say,
and then she added solicitously, "I have not seen you for so long. Why
have you denied yourself to your friends? You have quite gotten over
your accident of the spring? I read about it in the papers at the time.
Such a noble thing to have stopped those horses. You must tell me about
it. How did it happen?"
I could not help turning to give Pushkin one look, and he hesitated and
stammered. I came out filled with a new sense of what was meant by the
curses against the Pharisees. As I was walking along I ran into
Wolffert.
"Ah! You are the very man," he exclaimed. "It is Providence! I was just
thinking of you, and you ran into my arms. It is Fate."
It did seem so. Mrs. Argand and her "dear count" had sickened me. Here,
at least, was sincerity. But I wondered if he knew that Miss Leigh was
within there.
XXIV
WOLFFERT'S MISSION
Wolffert naturally was somewhat surprised to see me come sallying forth
from Mrs. Argand's; for he knew what I had not known when I called
there, that she was the real owner of "The Argand Estate."
I gave him an account of my interview with the lady.
"I was wondering," he said, laughing, "what you were doing in there
after having beaten her in that suit. I thought you had taken your nerve
with you. I was afraid you had fallen a victim to her blandishments."
"To whose?"
"Mrs. Argand's. She is the true Circe of the time, and her enchantment
is one that only the strong can resist. She reaches men through their
bellies."
"Oh!" I was thinking of quite another person, who alone could beguile
me, and I was glad that he was not looking at me.
He was, however, too full of another subject to notice me, and as we
walked along, I told him of the old lady's views about John Marvel. He
suddenly launched out against her with a passion which I was scarcely
prepared for, as much as I knew he loved John Marvel. Turning, he
pointed fiercely back at the great prison-like mansion.
"Do you see that big house?" His long finger shook slightly--an index of
his feeling.
"Yes."
"Every stone in it is laid in mortar cemented with the tears of widows
and orphans, and the blood of countless victims of greed and
oppression."
"Oh! nonsense! I have no brief for that old woman. I think she is an
ignorant, arrogant, purse-proud, ill-bred old creature, spoiled by her
wealth and the adulation that it has brought her from a society of
sycophants and parasites; but I do not believe that at heart she is
bad." She had had a good advocate defend her to me and I was quoting
her. Wolffert was unappeased.
"That is it. She sets up to be the paragon of Generosity, the patron of
Charity, the example of Kindness for all to follow. She never gave a
cent in her life--but only a portion--a small portion of the money wrung
from the hearts of others. Her fortune was laid in corruption. Her old
husband--I knew him!--he robbed every one, even his partners. He
defrauded his benefactor, Colonel Tipps, who made him, and robbed his
heirs of their inheritance."
"How?" For I was much interested now.
"By buying up their counsel, and inducing him to sell them out and
making him his counsel. And now that old woman keeps him as her counsel
and adviser, though he is the worst man in this city, guilty of every
crime on the statute-books, sacred and profane."
"But she does not know that?"
"Not know it? Why doesn't she know it? Because she shuts her doors to
the men who do know it, and her ears to the cries of his victims.
Doesn't every one who cares to look into the crimes in this city know
that Coll McSheen is the protector of Vice, and that he could not exist
a day if the so-called good people got up and determined to abolish
him--that he is the owner of the vilest houses in this city--the vilest
because they are not so openly vile as some others? Isn't she trying to
sell her niece to an adventurer for a title, or a reprobate for his
money?"
"Is she?" My blood suddenly began to boil, and I began to get a new
insight into Wolffert's hostility.
We had turned toward John Marvel's. He appeared a sort of landmark to
which to turn as we were dealing with serious subjects, and Wolffert was
on his way there when I encountered him. As we walked along, he
disclosed a system of vice so widespread, so horrible and so repulsive
that I hesitate to set it down. He declared that it extended over not
only all the great cities of the country, but over all the great cities
of all countries.
I related the story the poor girl I had met that night on the street had
told me, but I frankly asserted that I did not believe that it could be
as general as he claimed.
"'Smooth Ally,' was it?" said Wolffert, who knew of her. "She is the
smoothest and worst of them all, and she is protected by McSheen, who in
turn is protected by clients like The Argand Estate. What became of
her?" he demanded.
"Why, I don't know. I turned her over to the Salvationists--and--and
I--rather left her to them."
I was beginning to feel somewhat meek under his scornful expression.
"That is always the way," he said. "We look after them for an hour and
then drop them back into perdition."
"But I placed her in good hands. That is their business."
"Their business! Why is it not your business, too? How can you shift the
responsibility? It is every one's business. Listen!" He had been
recently to southern Russia, where, he said, the system of scoundrelism
he described had one of its prolific sources, and he gave figures of the
numbers of victims--girls of his own race--gathered up throughout the
provinces and shipped from Odessa and other ports, to other countries,
including America, to startle one.
"Time was when not a Jewess was to be found on the streets; but now!" He
threw out his hand with a gesture of rage, and went on. He averred that
many steamship officials combined to connive at the traffic, and that
the criminals were shielded by powerful friends who were paid for their
protection.
"Why, there are in this city to-night," he declared, "literally
thousands of women who have, without any fault of theirs, but ignorance,
vanity, and credulity, been drawn into and condemned to a life of vice
and misery such as the mind staggers to believe."
"At least, if they are, they are in the main willing victims," I
argued. "There may be a few instances like the girl I saw, but for the
most part they have done it of their own volition."
Wolffert turned on me with fire flaming in his deep eyes. "Of their own
volition! What is their volition? In fact, most of them are not
voluntary accomplices. But if they were--it is simple ignorance on their
part, and is that any reason for their undergoing the tortures of the
damned in this world, not to mention what your Church teaches of the
next world? Who brought them there--the man who deceived and betrayed
them? Who acted on their weakness and drew them in?--their
seducers?--the wretches who lure them to their destruction?--Not at all!
Jail-birds and scoundrels as they are, deserving the gallows if any one
does, which I do not think any one does--but you do--the ultimate
miscreant is not even the Coll McSheens who protect it; but Society
which permits it to go on unchecked when, by the least serious and
sensible effort, it could prevent it."
"How?" I demanded.
"How! By determining to prevent it and then organizing to do so. By
simply being honest. Has it not broken up the institution of
slavery--highway robbery, organized murder--except by itself and its
members? Of course, it could prevent it if it set itself to do it. But
it is so steeped in selfishness and hypocrisy that it has no mind to
anything that interferes with its pleasures."
We had now reached John Marvel's, where we found John, just back from a
visit to a poor girl who was ill, and his account only added fuel to
Wolffert's flaming wrath. He was pacing up and down the floor, as small
as it was, his face working, his eyes flashing, and suddenly he let a
light in on his ultimate motive. He launched out in a tirade against
existing social conditions that exceeded anything I had ever heard. He
declared that within hearing of the most opulent and extravagant class
the world had ever known were the cries and groans of the most wretched;
that the former shut their ears and their eyes to it, and, contenting
themselves with tossing a few pennies to a starving multitude, went on
wallowing like swine in their own voluptuousness. "Look at the most
talked of young man in this city to-day, the _bon parti_, the coveted of
aspiring mothers. He lives a life to make a beast blush. He is a seducer
of women, a denizen of brothels; a gambler in the life-blood of women
and children, a fatted swine, yet he is the courted and petted of those
who call themselves the best people! Faugh! it makes me sick."
This was to some extent satisfactory to me, for I detested Canter; but I
wondered if Wolffert did not have the same reason for disliking him that
I had.
"There was never so selfish and hypocritical a society on earth," he
exclaimed, "as this which now exists. In times past, under the feudal
system, there was apparently some reason for the existence of the
so-called upper classes--the first castle built made necessary all the
others--the chief, at least, protected the subjects from the rapine of
others, and he was always ready to imperil his life; but now--this! When
they all claim to know, and do know much, they sit quiet in their own
smug content like fatted swine, and let rapine, debauchery, and murder
go on as it never has gone on in the last three hundred years."
"What are you talking about?" I demanded, impressed by his vehemence,
but mystified by his furious indictment. He cooled down for a moment,
and wiped his hand across his eyes.
"I am fresh from the scene of as brutal a butchery," he said, "as has
taken place within a thousand years. Israel is undergoing to-day the
most extensive and complete persecution that has existed since the close
of the crusades. No wonder the young women fall victims to the
scoundrels who offer them an asylum in a new land and lure them to their
destruction with gifts of gold and words of peace. And this is what
Society does--the virtue-boasting Society of the twentieth century! They
speak of anarchy!--What they mean is a condition which disturbs the
repose of the rich and powerful. There is anarchy now--the anarchy that
consists of want of equal government for rich and poor alike. Look at
John Marvel, here, preaching a gospel of universal love and acting it,
too."
"Wolffert," said Marvel, softly, "don't. Leave me out--you know I do
not--you are simply blinded by your affection for me----"
But Wolffert swept on. "Yes, he does--if any man ever does--he lives for
others--and what does he get? Shunted off by a fat, sleek, self-seeking
priest, who speaks smooth things to a people who will have nothing
else."
"Wolffert, you must not," protested John; "I cannot allow you."
But Wolffert was in full tide. With a gesture he put John's protest by.
"--To preach and teach the poor how to be patient--how to suffer in
silence----"
"Now, Leo," said John, taking him by the shoulders, "I must stop
you--you are just tired, excited--overworked. If they suffer patiently
they are so much the better off--their lot will be all the happier in
the next world."
Wolffert sat down on the bed with a smile. "What are you going to do
with such a man?" he said to me, with a despairing shrug. "And you know
the curious thing is he believes it."
I went to my own room, feeling still like the prodigal, and that I had
somehow gotten back home. But I had a deeper and more novel feeling. A
new light had come to me, faintly, but still a light. What had I ever
done except for myself? Here were two men equally as poor as I, living
the life of self-denial--one actually by choice, the other as willingly
and uncomplainingly as though it were by choice, and both not only
content, but happy. Why should not I enter the brotherhood? Here was
something far higher and nobler than anything I had ever contemplated
taking part in. What was it that withheld me? Was it, I questioned
myself, that I, with no association whatever in the town except the
poor, yet belonged to the class that Wolffert crusaded against? Was
there something fundamentally wrong with society? I could not enter
freely into Wolffert's rhapsody of hate for the oppressors, nor yet into
John Marvel's quiet, deep, and unreasoning love of Mankind. Yet I began
to see dimly things I had never had a glimmer of before.
The association with my old friends made life a wholly different thing
for me, and I made through them many new friends. They were very poor
and did not count for much in the world; but they were real people, and
their life, simple and insignificant as it was, was real and without
sham. I found, indeed, that one got much nearer to the poor than to the
better class--their life was more natural; small things matter so much
more to them. In fact, the smallest thing may be a great thing to a poor
man. Also I found a kindness and generosity quite out of proportion to
that of the well-to-do. However poor and destitute a man or a family
might be there was always some one poorer and more destitute, and they
gave with a generosity that was liberality, indeed. For they gave of
their penury what was their living. Whatever the organized charities may
do, and they do much, the poor support the poor and they rely on each
other to an extent unknown among their more fortunate fellow-citizens.
As the Egyptian always stops to lift another's load, so here I found men
always turning in to lend their aid.
Thus, gradually in the association of my friends who were working among
the poor and helping to carry their burdens, I began to find a new
field and to reap in it a content to which I had long been a stranger.
Also life began to take on for me a wholly new significance; as a field
of work in which a man might escape from the slavery of a selfish
convention which cramped the soul, into a larger life where service to
mankind was the same with service to God, a life where forms were of
small import and where the Christian and the Jew worked shoulder to
shoulder and walked hand in hand. How much of my new feeling was due to
Miss Eleanor Leigh, I did not take the trouble to consider.
"Father," said Eleanor, that evening, "I have a poor man whom I want a
place for, and I must have it."
Mr. Leigh smiled. "You generally do have. Is this one poorer than those
others you have saddled on me?"
"Now don't be a tease. Levity is not becoming in a man of your dignity.
This man is very poor, indeed, and he has a houseful of children--and
his wife----"
"I know," said Mr. Leigh, throwing up his hand with a gesture of appeal.
"I surrender. They all have. What can this one do? Butts says every
foreman in the shops is complaining that we are filling up with a lot of
men who don't want to do anything and couldn't do it if they did."
"Oh! This man is a fine workman. He is an expert machinist--has worked
for years in boiler shops--has driven----"
"Why is he out of a job if he is such a universal paragon? Does he
drink? Remember, we can't take in men who drink--a bucket of beer cost
us twelve thousand dollars last year, not to mention the loss of two
lives."
"He is as sober as a judge," declared his daughter, solemnly.
"What is it then?--Loafer?"
"He lost his place where he lived before by a strike."
"A striker, is he! Well, please excuse me. I have a plenty of that sort
now without going outside to drag them in."
"No--no--no--" exclaimed Eleanor. "My! How you do talk! You won't give
me a chance to say a word!"
"I like that," laughed her father. "Here I have been listening patiently
to a catalogue of the virtues of a man I never heard of and simply
asking questions, and as soon as I put in a pertinent one, away you go."
"Well, listen. You have heard of him. I'll tell you who he is. You
remember my telling you of the poor family that was on the train last
year when I came back in Aunt Sophia's car and we delayed the train?"
"I remember something about it. I never was sure as to the facts in the
case. I only know that that paper contained a most infamous and lying
attack on me----"
"I know it--it was simply infamous--but this poor man had nothing to do
with it. That was his family, and they came on to join him because he
had gotten a place. But the Union turned him out because he didn't
belong to it, and then he wanted to join the Union, but the
walking-delegate or something would not let him, and now he has been
out of work so long that they are simply starving."
"You want some money, I suppose?" Mr. Leigh put his hand in his pocket.
"No. I have helped him, but he isn't a beggar--he wants work. He's the
real thing, Dad, and I feel rather responsible, because Aunt Sophia
turned them out of the house they had rented and--though that young
lawyer I told you of won his case for him and saved his furniture--the
little bit he had--he has lost it all through the loan-sharks who eat up
the poor. I tried to get Aunt Sophia to make her man, Gillis, let up on
him, but she wouldn't interfere."
"That's strange, for she is not an unkind woman--she is only hard set in
certain ways which she calls her principles."
"Yes, it was rather unfortunate. You see, Mr. Glave was there and Aunt
Sophia!--you should have seen her."
She proceeded to give an account of Mrs. Argand's discovery of my
identity, and to take us both off.
"They didn't pay the rent, I suppose?"
"Yes. But it was not his fault--just their misfortune. His wife's
illness and being out of work and all--it just piled up on top of him. A
man named Ring--something--a walking-delegate whom he used to know back
in the East, got down on him, and followed him up, and when he was about
to get in the Union, he turned him down. And, Dad, you've just got to
give him a place."
"Wringman, possibly," said Mr. Leigh. "There's a man of that name in
the city who seems to be something of a leader. He's a henchman of Coll
McSheen and does his dirty work for him. He has been trying to make
trouble for us for some time. Send your man around to Butts to-morrow,
and I'll see what we can do for him."
Eleanor ran and flung her arms around her father's neck. "Oh! Dad! If
you only knew what a load you have lifted from my shoulders. I believe
Heaven will bless you for this."
"I know Butts will," said Mr. Leigh, kissing her. "How's our friend, the
Marvel, coming on?"
"Dad, he's a saint!"
"So I have heard before," said Mr. Leigh. "And that other one--how is
he?"
"Which one?"
"Is there any other but the Jew? I have not heard of another reforming
saint."
"No, he is a sinner," said Eleanor, laughing; and she went on to give an
account of my episode with Pushkin, which she had learned from John
Marvel, who, I may say, had done me more than justice in his relation of
the matter.
"So the count thought a team had run over him, did he?"
"Yes, that's what Mr. Marvel said."
She related a brief conversation which had taken place between her and
Pushkin and Mrs. Argand, after I left, in which Pushkin had undertaken
to express his opinion of me, and she had given him to understand that
she knew the true facts in the matter of our collision. All of which I
learned much later.
"Well, I must say," said Mr. Leigh, "your new friend appears to have
'his nerve with him,' as you say."
"Dad, I never use slang," said Miss Eleanor, severely. "I am glad you
have promised to give poor McNeil a place, for, if you had not, I should
have had to take him into the house."
Mr. Leigh laughed.
"I am glad, too, if that is the case. The last one you took in was a
reformed drunkard, you said, and you know what happened to him and also
to my wine."
"Yes, but this one is all right."
"Of course he is."
There was joy next day in one poor little household, for McNeil, who had
been dragging along through the streets for days with a weight, the
heaviest the poor have to bear, bowing him down--want of work--came into
his little bare room where his wife and children huddled over an almost
empty stove, with a new step and a fresh note in his voice. He had
gotten a place and it meant life to him and to those he loved.
XXV
FATE LEADS
One evening I called at Mrs. Kale's to see my two old ladies of the
bundles and also Mrs. Kale, for whom I had conceived a high regard on
account of her kindness to the former as well as to myself, and in the
course of my visit Miss Pansy gave me, for not the first time, an
account of the way in which they had been reduced from what they thought
affluence to what she very truly called "straitened circumstances." I
confess that I was rather bored by her relation, which was given with
much circumlocution until she mentioned casually that Miss Leigh had
tried to interest her father in their case, but he had said it was too
late to do anything. The mention of her name instantly made me alert. If
she was interested, I was interested also. I began to ask questions, and
soon had their whole story as well as she could give it.
"Why, it may or may not be too late," I said. "It is certainly very long
ago, and the chances of being able to do anything now are very remote;
but if there was a fraud, and it could be proved, it would not be too
late--or, at least, might not be."
"Oh! Do you think that you could recover anything for us? Mr. McSheen
said nothing could be gotten out of it, and we paid him--a great deal,"
she sighed, "--everything we had in the world, almost."
"I do not say that, but if there was a fraud, and it could be proved, it
might not be too late."
The name of McSheen had given me a suspicion that all might not be
straight. Nothing could be if he was connected with it. I recalled what
Wolffert had told me of McSheen's selling out. Moreover, her story had
unconsciously been a moving one. They had evidently been hardly used
and, I believed, defrauded. So, when she pressed me, and promised if she
were ever able to do so she "would reward me generously," as if, poor
soul, she could ever reward any one save with her prayers, I undertook
to look into the matter for them, and I began next day.
I will not go into the steps I took to reach my ends, nor the
difficulties I encountered, which grew as I progressed in my
investigation until they appeared almost insurmountable; but finally I
struck a lead which at last led me to a conviction that if I could but
secure the evidence I could establish such a case of fraud for my two
old clients as would give promise of a fair chance to recover for them,
at least, a part of their patrimony. The difficulty, or one of them--for
they were innumerable--was that to establish their case it was necessary
to prove that several men who had stood high in the public esteem, had
been guilty of such disregard of the rights of those to whom they stood
in the relation of trustees that it would be held a fraud. I was
satisfied that had McSheen taken proper steps to secure his clients'
rights, he might have succeeded and further, that he had been bought
off, but the difficulty was to prove it.
However, I determined to make the effort to get the proof and my zeal
was suddenly quickened.