astonishing how my quickened senses enabled me to find her in the most
crowded thoroughfare, or in strange and out-of-the-way places. It was
almost as if there were some secret power which drew us together. And
when I was blessed to meet her the day was always one of sunshine for
me, however heavy lowered the dim clouds.
The next afternoon our meeting was so unexpected that I could not but
set it down to the ruling of a higher power. I had gone out to see how
my McNeil clients were coming on, having doubtless some latent hope that
I might find her there; but she had not been there for several days.
They had heard of her, however, for she had got the husband and father a
place and that made sunshine in the wretched little hovel, as bare as it
was. I was touched by their gratitude, and after taking note of the
wretched poverty of the family, and promising that I would try to get
the mother some sort of work, I strolled on. I had not gone far when I
suddenly came on her face to face. The smile that came into her eyes
must have brought my soul into my face.
Love is the true miracle-worker. It can change the most prosaic region
into a scene of romance. At sight of Eleanor Leigh's slim figure the
dull street suddenly became an enchanted land.
"Well, we appear fated to meet," she said with a smile and intonation
that my heart feasted on for days. She little knew how assiduously I had
played Fate during these past weeks, haunting the streets near her home
or those places which she blessed with her presence. This meeting,
however, was purely accidental, unless it be true, as I sometimes almost
incline to think, that some occult power which we cannot understand
rules all our actions and guides our footsteps toward those we love
supremely. John Marvel always called it Providence.
"Well, may I not see you home?" I asked, and without waiting for her
consent, I took it for granted and turned back with her, though she
protested against taking me out of my way. I had indeed some difficulty
in not saying then and there, "My way is where you are."
She had been to see one of her scholars who was sick, "the little
cripple, whom you know," she said. I suddenly began to think cripples
the most interesting of mortals. She gave me, as we strolled along, an
account of her first acquaintance with her and her mother; and of how
John Marvel had found out their condition and helped them. Then she had
tried to help them a little, and had gotten the mother to let her have
the little girl at her school.
"Now they are doing a little better," she said, "but you never saw such
wretchedness. The woman had given up everything in the world to try to
save her husband, and such a wretched hole as they lived in you
couldn't imagine. They did not have a single article of furniture in
their room when I--when Mr. Marvel first found them. It had all gone to
the Loan Company--they were starving."
John Marvel had a nose like a pointer for all who were desolate and
oppressed. How he discovered them, except, as Eleanor Leigh said, by
some sort of a sixth sense like that of the homing pigeon, surpasses my
comprehension. It is enough that he found and furrowed them out. Thus,
he had learned that a little girl, a child of a noted criminal, had been
ill-treated by the children at a public school and that her mother and
herself were almost starving, and had hastened at once to find her. Like
a hunted animal she had gone and hidden herself in what was scarcely
better than a den. Here John Marvel found her, in a wretched cellar, the
mother ill on a pallet of straw, and both starving, without food or
fire. The door was barred, as was her heart, and it was long before any
answer came to the oft-repeated knock. But at last his patience was
rewarded. The door opened a bare inch, and a fierce black eye in a
haggard white face peered at him through the chink.
"What do you want?"
"To help you."
The door opened slowly and John Marvel entered an abode which he said to
me afterward he was glad for the first time in his life to be so
near-sighted as not to be able to see. A pallet of rags lay in a corner,
and on a box crouched, rather than sat, a little girl with a broken
crutch by her side, her eyes fastened on the newcomer with a gaze of
half bewilderment. It was some time before John Marvel could get
anything out of the woman, but he held a key which at last unlocks every
heart,--a divine and penetrating sympathy. And presently the woman told
him her story. Her husband was a fugitive from justice. She did not say
so, but only that he had had to leave the city because the police were
after him. His friends had turned against him and against her. She did
not know where her husband was, but believed he had left the country,
unless, indeed, he were dead. She was waiting to hear from him, and
meantime everything which she had had gone, and now, though she did not
say so, they were starving. To relieve them was as instinctive with John
Marvel as to breathe. The next step was to help them permanently. It was
hard to do, because the woman was at bay and was as suspicious as a
she-wolf, and the child was as secretive as a young cub. John turned to
one, however, who he believed, and with good reason, knew how to do
things which were lost to his dull comprehension.
The following day into that den walked Eleanor Leigh, and it was to
visit this woman and her child that she was going the morning I met her
coming down the steps, when she dropped her violets on the sidewalk. It
was a hard task which John Marvel had set her, for as some women may
yield to women rather than to men, so there are some who are harder to
reach by the former than by the latter, and the lot of Red Talman's wife
had separated her from her sex and turned her into a state where she
felt that all women were against her. But Eleanor Leigh was equal to the
task; having gained admission through the open sesame of John Marvel's
name she first applied herself to win the child. Seating herself on the
box she began to play with the little girl and to show her the toys she
had brought,--toys which the child had never seen before. It was not
long before the little thing was in her lap and then the woman had been
won. When Eleanor Leigh came away everything had been arranged, and the
following night Red Talman's wife and child moved to another quarter of
the town, to a clean little room not far from the small school on the
way to which I first met the little waif.
"But you don't go into such places by yourself?" I said to her when she
had told me their story. "Why, it might cost you your life."
"Oh, no! No one is going to trouble me. I am not afraid."
"Well, it is not safe," I protested. "I wish you wouldn't do it." It was
the first time I had ever ventured to assume such an attitude toward
her. "I don't care how brave you are, it is not safe."
"Oh! I am not brave at all. In fact, I am an awful coward. I am afraid
of mice and all such ferocious beasts--and as to a spider--why, little
Miss Muffet was a heroine to me."
"I know," I nodded, watching the play of expression in her eyes with
secret delight.
"But I am not afraid of people. They are about the only things I am not
afraid of. They appear to me so pitiful in their efforts. Why should
one fear them? Besides, I don't think about myself when I am doing
anything--only about what I am doing."
"What is the name of your little protégée's father--the criminal?" I
asked.
"Talman--they call him 'Red Talman.' He's quite noted, I believe."
"'Red Talman!' Why, he is one of the most noted criminals in the
country. I remember reading of his escape some time ago. He was in for a
long term. It was said no prison could hold him."
"Yes, he has escaped," she said demurely.
I once more began to protest against her going about such places by
herself as she had described, but she only laughed at me for my
earnestness. She had also been to see the Miss Tippses, she said, and
she gave an amusing and, at the same time, a pathetic account of Miss
Pansy's brave attempt to cover up their poverty.
"It is hard to do anything for them. One can help the Talmans; but it is
almost impossible to help the decayed gentlefolk. One has to be so
careful not to appear to know her pathetic little deceits, and I find
myself bowing and accepting all her little devices and transparent
deceptions of how comfortable they are, when I know that maybe she may
be faint with hunger at that very time."
I wondered if she knew their story. But she suddenly said:
"Tell me about their case. I do trust you can win it."
I was only too ready to tell her anything. So, as we walked along I told
her all I knew or nearly all.
"Oh! you must win it! To think that such robbery can be committed! There
must be some redress! Who were the wretches who robbed them? They ought
to be shown up if they were in their graves! I hate to know things and
not know the person who committed them." As she turned to me with
flashing eyes, I felt a great desire to tell her but how could I do so?
"Tell me. Do you know them?"
"Yes--some of them."
"Well, tell me their names."
"Why do you wish to know?" I hesitated.
"Because I do. Isn't that sufficient?"
I wanted to say yes, but still I hesitated.
"Was it anybody--I know?"
"Why----"
"I must know." Her eyes were on my face and I yielded.
"Mr. Argand was one of the Directors--in fact, was the president of the
road--but I have no direct proof--yet."
"Do you mean my aunt's husband?"
I nodded.
She turned her face away.
"I ought not to have told you," I added.
"Oh! yes, you ought. I would have wanted to know if it had been my
father. I have the dearest father in the world. You do not know how good
and kind he is, and how generous to every one. He has almost ruined
himself working for others."
I said I had no doubt he was all she said; but my heart sank as I
recalled my part in the paper I had written about him. I knew I must
tell her some time, but I hesitated to do it now. I began to talk about
myself, a subject I am rather fond of, but on this occasion I had
possibly more excuse than usual.
"My mother also died when I was a child," she said, sighing, as I
related the loss of mine and said that I was just beginning to realize
what it was. It appeared to draw us nearer together. I was conscious of
her sympathy, and under its influence I went on and told her the
wretched story of my life, my folly and my failure, and my final resolve
to begin anew and be something worth while. I did not spare myself and I
made no concealments. I felt her sympathy and it was as sweet to me as
ever was grace to a famished soul. I had been so long alone that it
seemed to unlock Heaven.
"I believe you will succeed," she said, turning and looking me in the
face.
A sudden fire sprang into my brain and throbbed in my heart. "If you
will say that to me and mean it, I will."
"I do believe it. Of course, I mean it." She stopped and looked me again
full in the face, and her eyes seemed to me to hold the depths of
Heaven: deep, calm, confiding, and untroubled as a child's. They stirred
me deeply. Why should I not declare myself! She was, since her father's
embarrassment, of which I had read, no longer beyond my reach. Did I
not hold the future in fee? Why might not I win her?
For some time we drifted along, talking about nothing of moment,
skirting the shore of the charmed unknown, deep within which lay the
mystery of that which we both possibly meant, however indefinitely, to
explore. Then we struck a little further in; and began to exchange
experiences--first our early impressions of John Marvel and Wolffert. It
was then that she told me of her coming to know John Marvel in the
country that night during the epidemic. She did not tell of her part in
the relief of the sick; but it was unnecessary. John Marvel had already
told me that. It was John himself, with his wonderful unselfishness and
gift of self-abnegation, of whom she spoke, and Wolffert with his ideal
ever kept in sight.
"What turned you to philanthropy?" I asked with a shade of irony in my
voice more marked than I had intended. If she was conscious of it she
took no notice of it beyond saying,
"If you mean the poor, pitiful little bit of work I do trying to help
Mr. Marvel and Mr. Wolffert among the poor--John Marvel did, and Mr.
Wolffert made the duty clear. They are the complement of each other, Jew
and Gentile, and if all men were like them there would be no divisions."
I expressed my wonder that she should have kept on, and not merely
contented herself with giving money or helping for that one occasion.
Sudden converts generally relapse.
"Oh! it was not any conversion. It gave life a new interest for me. I
was bored to death by the life I had been leading since I came out. It
was one continuous round of lunches, dinners, parties, dances, soirées,
till I felt as if I were a wooden steed in a merry-go-round, wound up
and wearing out. You see I had, in a way, always been 'out.' I used to
go about with my father, and sit at the table and hear him and his
friends--men friends--for I did not come to the table when ladies were
there, till I was fifteen--talk about all sorts of things, and though I
often did not understand them, I used to ask him and he would explain
them, and then I read up and worked to try to amuse him, so that when I
really came out, I found the set in which I was thrown rather young. It
was as if I had fallen through an opened door into a nursery. I was very
priggish, I have no doubt, but I was bored. Jim Canter and Milly McSheen
were amusing enough for a while, but really they were rather young. I
was fond of driving and dancing, but I did not want to talk about it all
the time, and then as I got older----"
"How old?" I demanded, amused at her idea of age.
"Why, eighteen. How old do you think I should have been?"
"Oh! I don't know; you spoke as if you were as old as Anna in the
temple. Pray go on."
"Well, that's all. I just could not stand it. Aunt Sophie was bent on my
marrying--somebody whom I could not bear--and oh! it was an awful bore.
I looked around and saw the society women I was supposed to copy, and
I'd rather have been dead than like that--eating, clothes, and
bridge--that made up the round, with men as the final end and reward. I
think I had hardly taken it in, till my eyes were opened once by a man's
answer to a question as to who had been in the boxes at a great concert
which he had attended and enjoyed: 'Oh! I don't know--the usual
sort--women who go to be seen with other women's husbands. The musical
people were in the gallery listening.' Next time I went my eyes had been
opened and I listened and enjoyed the music. So, when I discovered there
were real men in the world doing things, and really something that women
could do, too, I found that life had a new interest, that is all."
"You know," she said, after a pause in which she was reflecting and I
was watching the play of expression in her face and dwelling in
delicious reverie on the contour of her soft cheek, "You know, if I ever
amount to anything in this world, it will be due to that man." This
might have meant either.
I thought I knew of a better artificer than even John Marvel or Leo
Wolffert, to whom was due all the light that was shed from her life, but
I did not wish to question anything she said of old John. I was
beginning to feel at peace with all the world.
We were dawdling along now and I remember we stopped for a moment in
front of a place somewhat more striking looking and better lighted than
those about it, something between a pawnbroker's shop and a loan-office.
The sign over the door was of a Guaranty Loan Company, and added the
word "Home" to Guaranty. It caught my eye and hers at the same moment.
The name was that of the robber-company in which my poor client, McNeil,
in his futile effort to pay his rent, had secured a small loan by a
chattel-mortgage on his pitiful little furniture at something like three
hundred per cent. The entire block belonged, as I had learned at the
time, to the Argand Estate, and I had made it one of the points in my
arraignment of that eleemosynary institution that the estate harbored
such vampires as the two men who conducted this scoundrelly business in
the very teeth of the law. On the windows were painted legends
suggesting that within all money needed by any one might be gotten, one
might have supposed, for nothing. I said, "With such a sign as that we
might imagine that the poor need never want for money."
She suddenly flamed: "I know them. They are the greatest robbers on
earth. They grind the face of the Poor until one wonders that the earth
does not open and swallow them up quick. They are the thieves who ought
to be in jail instead of such criminals as even that poor wretch,
Talman, as great a criminal as he is. Why, they robbed his poor wife of
every stick of furniture she had on earth, under guise of a loan, and
turned her out in the snow with her crippled child. She was afraid to
apply to any one for redress, and they knew it. And if it had not been
for John Marvel, they would have starved or have frozen to death."
"For John Marvel and you," I interjected.
"No--only him. What I did was nothing--less than nothing. He found them,
with that wonderful sixth sense of his. It is his heart. And he gets no
credit for anything--even from you. Oh! sometimes I cannot bear it. I
would like to go to him once and just tell him what I truly think of
him."
"Why don't you, then?"
"Because--I cannot. But if I were you, I would. He would not--want me to
do it! But some day I am going to Dr. Capon and tell him--tell him the
truth."
She turned, facing me, and stood with clenched hands, uplifted face, and
flashing eyes--breasting the wind which, at the moment, blew her skirts
behind her, and as she poured forth her challenge, she appeared to me
almost like some animate statue of victory.
"Do you know--I think Mr. Marvel and Mr. Wolffert are almost the most
Christian men I ever saw; and their life is the strongest argument in
favor of Christianity, I ever knew."
"Why, Wolffert is a Jew--he is not a Christian at all."
"He is--I only wish I were half as good a one," she said. "I do not care
what he calls himself, he is. Why, think of him beside Doctor--beside
some of those who set up to be burning and shining lights!"
"Well, I will agree to that." In fact, I agreed with everything she had
said, though I confess to a pang of jealousy at such unstinted praise,
as just as I thought it. And I began in my selfishness to wish I were
more like either of her two models. As we stood in the waning light--for
we were almost standing, we moved so slowly--my resolution took form.
It was not a propitious place for what I suddenly resolved to do. It was
certainly not a romantic spot. For it was in the centre, the very heart,
of a mean shopping district, a region of small shops and poor houses,
and the autumn wind had risen with an edge on it and laden with dust,
which made the thinly clad poor quicken their steps as they passed along
and try to shrink closer within their threadbare raiment. The lights
which were beginning to appear only added to the appearance of squalor
about us. But like the soft Gallius I cared for none of these things. I
saw only the girl beside me, whose awakened soul seemed to me even more
beautiful than her beautiful frame. And so far as I was concerned, we
might have been in Paradise or in a desert.
I recall the scene as if it were yesterday, the very softness in her
face, the delicacy of her contour; the movement of her soft hair on her
blue-veined white temple and her round neck as a gentle breath of air
stirred it; the dreamy depths of her eyes as the smile faded in them and
she relapsed into a reverie. An impulse seized me and I cast prudence,
wisdom, reason, all to the winds and gave the rein to my heart.
"Come here." I took her arm and drew her a few steps beyond to where
there was a vacant house. "Sit down here a moment." I spread my
handkerchief on the dusty steps, and she sat down, smiling after her
little outbreak.
Leaning over her, I took hold of her hand and lifted it to my breast,
clasping it very tight.
"Look at me--" She had already looked in vague wonder, her eyes wide
open, beginning the question which her lips were parting to frame.
"Don't say that to me--that about your belief in me--unless you mean it
all--all. I love you and I mean to succeed for you--with you. I mean to
marry you--some day."
The look in her eyes changed, but for a second they did not leave my
face. My eyes were holding them.
"Oh!--What?" she gasped, while her hand went up to her throat.
Then she firmly, but as I afterward recalled, slowly withdrew her hand
from my grasp, which made no attempt to detain it.
"Are you crazy?" she gasped. And I truly believe she thought I was.
"Yes--no--I don't know. If I am, my insanity begins and ends only in
you. I know only one thing--that I love you and that some day--some day,
I am going to marry you, though the whole world and yourself oppose me."
She stood up.
"But, oh! why did you say that?"
"Because it is true."
"We were such good friends."
"We never were--I never was--for a moment."
"You were."
"Never."
"We were just beginning to understand each other, to be such good
friends, and now you have ended it all."
"That cannot be ended which never had a beginning. I don't want your
friendship; I want your love and I will have it."
"No, I cannot. Oh! why did you? I must be going."
"Why? Sit down."
"No, I cannot. Good-by."
"Good-by."
She hesitated, and then without looking, held out her hand. "Good-by."
I took her hand and this time kissed it, as I remember, almost fiercely.
She tried to stop me, but I held it firmly.
"You must not do that; you have no right." She was standing very
straight now.
"I took the right."
"Promise me you will never say that again."
"What?"
"What you said at first."
"I don't know what you mean. I have been saying the same thing all the
time--ever since I knew you--ever since I was born--that I love you."
"You must never say that again--promise me before I go."
"I promise you," I said slowly, "that I will say it as long as I live."
She appeared to let herself drift for a half second, then she gave a
little catch at herself.
"No, really, you must not--I cannot allow you. I have no right to let
you. I must go, and if you are a friend of mine, you will never----"
"Listen to me," I interrupted firmly. "I have not asked you for
anything; I have not asked your permission; I am not a friend of yours
and I shall never be that. I don't want to be your friend. I love you,
and I am going to win your love. Now you can go. Come on."
We walked on and I saw her safely home. We talked about everything and I
told her much of myself. But she was plainly thinking not about what I
was saying then, but what I had said on the dusty steps. When we reached
her home, I saved her embarrassment. I held out my hand and said,
"Good-by, I love you."
No woman can quite let a man go, at least, no woman with a woman's
coquetry can. After I had turned away, what must Eleanor Leigh do but
say demurely, "I hope you will win your case." I turned back, of course.
"I will," I said, "in both courts." Then I strode away. I went home
feeling somewhat as a man might who, after shipwreck, had reached an
unknown shore. I was in a new land and knew not where I stood or how; or
whether the issue would be life or death. I only knew that I had passed
a crisis in my life and whatever came I must meet it. I was strangely
happy, yet I had had no word of encouragement.
To have declared one's love has this in it, that henceforth the one you
love can never be wholly indifferent to you. I went home feeling that I
had acquired a new relation to Eleanor Leigh and that somehow I had a
right to her whether she consented or not. My love for her, as ardent as
it had been before, had suddenly deepened. It had, in a way, also become
purer. I went over and over and dwelt on every word she had ever uttered
to me, every gentle look I had ever seen her give, every tender
expression that had illumined her face or softened her eyes, and I found
myself thinking of her character as I had never done before. I planned
how I should meet her next and tried to fancy how she would look and
what she would say. I wondered vaguely what she would think of me when
she reached her room and thought over what I had said. But I soon left
this realm of vague conjecture for the clearly defined elysium of my own
love. Had I known what I learned only a long time afterward--how she
acted and what she thought of on reaching home, I might have been
somewhat consoled though still mystified.
XXVI
COLL McSHEEN'S METHODS