ELLEN LEVIS
_A NOVEL_
BY
ELSIE SINGMASTER
_Author of "Katy Gaumer," "Basil Everman," etc._
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
_The Riverside Press Cambridge_
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY ELSIE SINGMASTER LEWARS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
CONTENTS
I. A FRIEND IN NEED 3
II. ELLEN REFUSES TO HEAR A CALL 15
III. TWO VERSIONS OF THE SAME STORY 22
IV. A SLUMBERING TERROR 32
V. LEVIS SPEAKS HIS MIND 39
VI. STUDYING IN VACATION 48
VII. AN EVENING PILGRIMAGE 54
VIII. MATTHEW MAKES HIS CHOICE 61
IX. A GROWING MIND 73
X. UNEXPECTED GUESTS 83
XI. CHANGE 92
XII. A QUICKENING TERROR 99
XIII. MATTHEW COMES HOME 102
XIV. AMOS VENTURES INTO THE WORLD 108
XV. ELLEN IS OFFERED A WAY OUT 120
XVI. ELLEN SOLVES HER PROBLEM 126
XVII. GOLDSTEIN'S JEWELRY STORE 133
XVIII. A CLOCK RUNS DOWN 141
XIX. FETZER ENGAGES A NEW MAID 150
XX. MASTER AND MISTRESS 156
XXI. A LOST SHEEP 163
XXII. A CRISIS AT HAND 168
XXIII. A STRANGE JOURNEY 178
XXIV. AN UNHAPPY SCHOLAR 184
XXV. A PROJECTED ATONEMENT 187
XXVI. A VISIT TO EPHRATA 196
XXVII. ELLEN'S DREAMS COME TRUE 204
XXVIII. FETZER'S EYE IS OPENED 214
XXIX. GRANDFATHER AND AMOS MAKE DISCOVERIES 217
XXX. FETZER DELIVERS A SERMON 226
XXXI. ELLEN REMEMBERS BROTHER REITH 233
XXXII. GRANDFATHER PLANS A CRIME 237
XXXIII. ELLEN UNDERTAKES TO CONQUER HERSELF 242
XXXIV. A DARK TOWER 246
XXXV. AN UNDELIVERED MESSAGE 257
XXXVI. MATTHEW AND ELLEN 261
XXXVII. A BITTER WAKENING 272
XXXVIII. A QUIET HOUR 280
XXXIX. FETZER CLOSES A DOOR 283
ELLEN LEVIS
CHAPTER I
A FRIEND IN NEED
On a dismal day in March, four years before Ellen Levis was born or
dreamed of, the slight acquaintance of Stephen Lanfair and Edward
Levis was quickened by an unpleasant incident into friendship. Both
attended the University Medical School in Philadelphia and both were
ambitious, but there the resemblance between them ended. Stephen, an
underclassman, the only son of a physician, had been started early and
well in his career, and was the youngest student; Levis, a Senior, had
fended for himself and was almost the oldest. Stephen had an allowance
which was not large, but which sufficed for all necessities and some
luxuries; Levis had only that which he earned by tutoring, and by
acting as substitute instructor, laboratory assistant, and editor of
the _Students' Quarterly_. Their acquaintance began when Stephen,
wishing to win a place on the editorial board of the _Quarterly_, and
conferring with Levis, had been invited by him to become a contributor
to the next issue.
On the morning of that dismal March day Stephen sat, far from
Philadelphia, in the room which had been his father's office in
Chestnut Ridge, a coal-mining town above Wilkes-Barre, waiting until it
was time for the train which should take him back to the Medical School
which he had left to attend his father in his last illness.
He looked drearily and absent-mindedly out into the thick mist which
hid all but the immediate neighborhood, a dirty, unpaved street, a
stretch of sidewalk made of powdery black culm, and the front of a
large dim building, the "company store." He saw not only what the mist
revealed, but what it hid, a continuation of the dreary street, running
between a black hill and a blacker culm bank, and terminating in a
towering breaker, shapeless and hideous in design. There was no color
in the landscape; all was a dense black or a soft, woolly gray. The
company store had once been painted red, but the red had long ago been
overlaid by black.
With him sat the superintendent of the mine, Harry Kinter, a plump,
friendly young man with a pendent under lip and easy manners. He
slouched, cigarette in hand, in what had been Dr. Lanfair's office
chair, looking with dull, kindly eyes at his companion. He was sorry
for the distressed youth and was doing his best to comfort him in a
practical way.
"Now I can get the old fellow from Hazelton to come up for a couple
of years, Stephen. He'll be good for that long, I'm sure, and perhaps
longer. But we must have your word to settle here when you're through
school; otherwise we'll try to get a permanent man. The advantage to
you would be a salary from the beginning, which is what most young
fellows don't get. Wouldn't you like the place for the sake of your
father? Perhaps the company would be willing to pay you something to
help you along if they could have your promise."
Stephen glanced toward the superintendent and then away, unable to
command his voice. He was tall and thin and the looseness of his
clothing and the length of his hair which he refused to have trimmed
by the Chestnut Ridge barber, as well as his expression of fatigue,
made him look forlorn. The offer of a position indicated a willingness
of the mining company to take doubtful risks, since other lives could
hardly be of much importance to one who valued his own so little.
His pale cheeks and swollen eyelids indicated not only the weariness of
nights spent in watching, but a copious shedding of tears and also an
acute present anxiety. Alas! it might be that he would have no other
place to go, that this dreary settlement would be his sole refuge, a
gravelike refuge, but a refuge none the less. If, as he anticipated,
disgrace awaited him at the University, he might be only too happy to
return to this inaccessible spot whither it was not likely that a rumor
of his misdeed would ever penetrate, or where, if it did penetrate, it
would be vaguely understood and condoned. Physicians willing to bury
themselves in Chestnut Ridge were not so easily found that the mining
company could afford to be fastidious.
It was not that Chestnut Ridge offered no opportunities to a physician.
One could not look casually out of the window at this hour without
seeing opportunities, even on a morning when most of the world was
hidden from view. Four out of the ten women who stood gossiping
in strange tongues before the company store--Austrian, Hungarian,
Bohemian, Lithuanian--would need in a short time the attention of a
physician. The children tugging at their skirts were under-nourished.
It was still too early for the men of the night shift to have had their
rest and be on the street, but when they appeared their faces would
show the effect of the long hours spent away from the sunlight and of
the liquor with which they enlivened their periods of idleness. There
was no doubt that Chestnut Ridge needed a physician.
But such work would be done by Stephen only under compulsion. Here his
father had wasted his life; he had been at the call of every foreigner,
had spent day after day at the squalid bedsides of suffering women,
waiting upon uncleanness, and had died at the age of fifty of blood
poison, contracted in an emergency operation performed hastily and
without gloves, to save two lives far less valuable than his own. He
had apparently not regretted his course; he had accepted his fate
quietly and without complaint and had been anxious only that Stephen
should understand exactly about his small inheritance. Afterwards he
lay low in his bed, his hands clasped across his breast, repeating the
poetry he loved, a little, lean, bearded man, with eager eyes and a
heartening smile, wholly unconscious of the loftiness of his own soul.
Presently he became confused and tried to remember a formula which he
frequently recited at the bedsides of dying patients, sometimes in
English for Protestants, but more often in Latin for Catholics who
could not be reached in time by the busy head of a wide parish. It was
a formula which for him explained the world, made sacrifice easy, and a
solution of all life's difficulties certain.
"I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," he
said faintly and could go no further.
He had looked at his son earnestly and Stephen had prompted him, not
without embarrassment. Stephen had been trained in the principles of
the Christian faith and he had believed them, but they were now with
him wholly a matter of rote; religion was not, he believed, a necessity
of his life.
Stephen meant to be not a general practitioner like his father, but
a specialist in the diseases of the eye like Professor Mayne of the
Medical School, and his ambition aimed not only at such skill as
Professor Mayne possessed and such fame as he had won, but also at a
similar accumulation of wealth. He did not expect to attain his end
without hard labor. He was a diligent student, and he was willing to
devote himself night and day to his task.
His hopes of success were not unfounded, and his unusual ability was
appreciated not only by himself, but by his teachers. He had won
the First Year prize, and Professor Mayne had intimated to him that
of all the candidates for the position of interne at the Ophthalmic
Hospital he was most likely to be appointed. Such a position as that at
Chestnut Ridge should be given to a man like his acquaintance, Levis,
who had worked his way through school and who had endured so much
hardship that a regular salary would be desirable, even with all the
accompanying disadvantages. He might even describe the place to Levis
and suggest that he apply for it, or he might mention his name to the
superintendent as a possible employee. He pitied men like Levis with
all his heart.
But he might need the Chestnut Ridge practice for himself--let him not
forget that! He rose and walked up and down the room, still without
answering Kinter, who seemed half asleep.
If only he had not imperiled his future by a piece of madness! Having
signified his willingness to contribute to the _Quarterly_, and
being immensely pleased and flattered by this opportunity to shine,
he was visited by the sterility of mind common to youth which has
a creative task set for it. When he was summoned to his father's
bedside, his article was not yet begun; indeed, he had not yet selected
a subject--and he had expected to make with this contribution an
impression upon the whole of the Medical School and the Faculty as well!
During an unoccupied hour when the fatal termination of his father's
illness was still in doubt, he had found in an old yellowed medical
journal in the drawer of the office desk, an article proposing an
ingenious and at the same time unfounded and actually ludicrous theory
of the origin of cancer. The magazine was published in England--he did
not know how it had come into his father's possession.
The theory seemed to him novel and ingenious, though possibly mistaken;
he did not realize that it was ludicrous. In one of those moments of
madness which are part of youth, he condensed the article, copied
it, and sent it to Levis. The act was like the occasional thefts of
children who take pennies in order to buy candy and who repent bitterly
and are forever after honest. He was ambitious as children are hungry;
the desire for fame was his strongest impulse and he could not let pass
even so small an opportunity to shine.
As he sat by his father's bedside, where stupor had at last succeeded
paroxysm and the end had become the matter of a day, he realized
suddenly what he had done. It may have been that the principles in
which he had been trained reasserted their power over him; it may have
been that his father's face, which looked in its sunken condition like
the face of a tortured saint, recalled him to himself; at any rate, he
saw as by a lightning flash the foolishness of his act.
Having realized his mistake, he tried to remedy it. Calling from his
window to a passing miner, he sent a telegram to Levis, "Do not publish
my article." In a few hours he received word that the magazine had
gone to press. Levis had added a sentence at which he groaned aloud,
"Article all right."
If the college officials detected his plagiarism, it would mean the
end of all his hopes. Professor Mayne would no longer distinguish him
by his commendation and friendly attentions; he would have no chance
of becoming an interne at the Ophthalmic Hospital and thus of pursuing
immediately his longed-for work; he would have to accept the position
at Chestnut Ridge and bid good-bye to his proud hopes.
It might be that he would have to suffer actual punishment. The prize,
which was to add a hundred dollars to his income, might be taken from
him and public mention might be made of his disgrace. It would not be
greatly to be wondered at if the Faculty chose to assume that all his
carefully wrought papers, all his well-prepared examinations, were
accompanied by a similar dishonesty.
In the midst of his distress, he realized that the superintendent had
waited a long time for an answer.
"I'll have to think it over, Harry. It's time for me to start now."
Kinter rose lazily and lifted Stephen's satchel.
"You let me hear from you in the course of the next few weeks; and in
the meantime we'll engage the old man for a year at least. You won't
find it so dreadfully dull here, believe me. It's possible to get down
to Wilkes-Barre on the evening train and back in the caboose of the
freight; gives you a nice long evening. I know some girls and I'll
introduce you to them. They have dances once in a while. You'll get
accustomed to it. I have. I guess diseases are pretty much the same as
mines, alike everywhere."
In the train Stephen sat close to the window, a forbidding shoulder
turned toward a possibly loquacious seat-mate. His very heart was sick,
but he fancied that it was his body, made so by the motion of the car.
Usually he enjoyed the ride, first through the region of breakers and
culm banks which took on a weird picturesqueness on a bright day,
then along the upper reaches of the Susquehanna and the narrow defile
through which the Lehigh passes at Mauch Chunk, and into the farm
lands farther down. He liked also to note the changing speech, the
foreign tongues in his own neighborhood, the broad Pennsylvania German
at Allentown, the less accented speech near Philadelphia. But to-day
nothing engaged his attention but his own misery.
On the news-stand in the station in Philadelphia he saw the _Students'
Quarterly_. He was tempted at first to pass quickly by and thus put
off for a while the final realization of his shame, but he bought a
copy and walked through the station to a bench so placed that he could
turn his back to all the world. When he sat down he found that he was
holding his breath, though suspense was not exactly his condition of
mind, since suspense implied some hope, and he believed that there was
none for Stephen Lanfair.
Then his lips parted and his eyes dilated and a deadly paleness spread
over a countenance already white. The day of miracles was not past; God
did not mean him to be destroyed.
He found the article, "A New Theory," and his name "Stephen Lanfair."
He found under his name a note: "This article is not original, but is
an abstract of a mistaken and amusing but ingenious treatise by John
Dalling, a famous London physician. It was first published in England
in 1837." The note, a reader would have said, was placed there by the
contributor himself.
Saint Elizabeth, finding in the fifteenth century the loaves in her
apron turned to roses in answer to her prayer, may have been surprised.
Stephen Lanfair, finding a similar benison in the nineteenth, was
stupefied.
When the machinery of his brain began to operate, he tried to
fathom the mystery. He had not written the note himself, that was
certain--some good angel in the guise of a critic had saved him, and
the only person through whose hands the manuscript had passed was
Edward Levis.
Having crossed the city he knew not how, he found Levis in his poor
room. He was as thin as Lanfair and looked, with his black beard,
twenty years older. He took off a pair of large spectacles and bade
his guest sit down. Stephen remembered having heard that he had been a
foundling, brought up at Girard College.
He did not answer Levis's greeting, he simply held out the magazine.
"Did you put that note in, Levis?"
Levis flushed. His nature was one of intense reserve and he anticipated
and deplored the unpleasantness of a confession. He believed that
he understood the boyish rashness which was to blame for Lanfair's
mistake, and he had added the note for his sake as well as for the sake
of the magazine.
"I saw you had forgotten it," said he lightly.
"Did you know the real author?"
"Yes. I saw this article alluded to humorously long ago in Thurber's
textbook and I looked it up. The old magazine is on file here."
"It is commonly known, then?"
"Yes, I should say so, as a sort of absurdity. You see, of course, that
it is an absurdity."
To this Stephen made no answer. He would have proved himself a fool,
then, as well as a knave!
"Do you think many persons beside yourself would have recognized it?"
"I think it likely, and of course one would have been enough. It was
all right for you to send it in, though; it has roused a great deal of
interest; it shows we have a sense of humor. I was very sorry to hear
that you lost your father, Lanfair."
Stephen would have liked to lay his head on Levis's shoulder; instead
he laid it on Levis's desk.
"I didn't mean to add a note," said he in a thick voice. "I meant to
pass it off as my own. I have been a dishonest fool."
Levis stirred uneasily.
"We all have to learn lessons."
Stephen was crying like a child.
"Don't, my dear fellow," said Levis.
Stephen lifted his head.
"I promise you that never in my life will I do anything of this kind
again. It's nearly killed me. If my father had known--I don't know what
he would have felt or done or said. He would have been heart-broken.
When I'm tempted to do anything wrong, anything of any kind, I'll think
of you. I promise you faithfully!"
Levis smiled.
"Promise yourself, Lanfair!"
Stephen remembered at the end of the week to write his decision to
Kinter. He would not need, thank God, to go to Chestnut Ridge and
fix his eyes for the rest of his life upon the dirty street and the
dismal breaker and the ignorant, unclean women who were so often and so
direly in need of waiting upon! He thought of his father with an almost
intolerable tenderness of heart. His father had suffered everything,
cold and weariness and loneliness and hunger of mind, separation from
all that was interesting and profitable, and finally martyrdom itself
in a ghastly form. His father was a saint; he would always remember
him and love him, but he would not need to follow exactly in his
footsteps. He would have a career of which his father would have been
unspeakably proud; he would establish principles by which the whole
race of eye specialists would be governed; he would have an immensely
wide influence, and it would all be his father's doing.
He told Levis about the position, feeling a little ashamed, and was
relieved when Levis explained that he had agreed to take a country
practice in Lancaster County.
He was given the next day new reason to expect success. Professor Mayne
summoned him to his desk at the end of his last class and congratulated
him upon his answers in a recent examination. Mayne was as large in
body as he was in estate and his manner expressed his opulence. He had
a full round voice, he used long words deliberately and with perfect
correctness, and spoke with an old-fashioned rhythm, which accented
now important, now unimportant words, as though he obeyed some queer
quantitative law. He seemed to be health of body and mind incarnate,
but an inherited susceptibility to mental disorder had forbidden his
continuing his race. Life, he believed, was on the whole hideous if one
stopped to consider it; but clever men did not contemplate it, they
simply secured for themselves all the pleasures of the eye and the mind
and the body that it was possible to get without transgressing the laws
of health and common sense.
Sitting at his desk, dressed in broadcloth, he looked pleasantly at his
pupil. Stephen's appearance had improved; his hair had been trimmed
after a homely bang-like fashion then prevailing, sleep had refreshed
him, and only the black band on his sleeve distinguished him as one
afflicted. His eyelids were no longer swollen and his eyes had resumed
a natural brilliancy which drew attention away from his somewhat
attenuated features.
"I was interested in your contribution to the _Quarterly_, Lanfair.
Where did you discover that antediluvian absurdity?"
"In an old magazine of my father's." Stephen could not suppress the
tears which burned his eyes. His relief from anxiety softened his
heart and the least expression of sympathy made him almost hysterical.
"He had evidently kept it because it was a curiosity. He was a great
reader. I didn't know that attention had been called to it in Thurber's
textbook until Levis told me."
"We cannot be reminded of a good joke too often. I had forgotten it
entirely. Continue your general reading; it will eventually prove
profitable to you, no matter what department of medicine you select."
Then, remembering that Lanfair's father had just died, Professor Mayne
invited him to dinner. His niece was to go with him to the theater and
they would dine at six o'clock at the New Windham Hotel. His carriage
was outside the building. Lanfair might just as well accompany him now.
Stephen followed down the hall, his heart thumping.
His heart beat still more rapidly when he was seated opposite to Mayne
and next to his niece in the hotel dining-room. The girl, Hilda Fell,
was a little creature in exquisite clothes who looked up from under a
pair of brows which almost met and which gave to her face a willful
and imperious expression. She was very young and light as thistledown
and was already spoiled by wealth and idleness. The men whom she had
known hitherto were familiar with her type, but Stephen was not; he
thought of her as a charming princess, and when her bright eyes met
his, he looked back into them smiling, and not recognizing the intense
and somewhat unwholesome curiosity about life which animated them. He
had frequently heard of her as an orphan with a large estate of which a
great stone house on the river front in Harrisburg near the governor's
mansion was only a small part. She was an object of interest to the
students who knew her by sight and who discussed endlessly her wealth
and her fashionable clothes and admired her free manners. There was a
current rumor that she smoked cigarettes, a habit then almost unknown
among women.
Professor Mayne teased her and she answered saucily. He deplored his
own ill fortune, and still more that of this little creature in whom
the taint of insanity was darker than in himself. He believed that
his sister, Hilda's mother, would have developed, if she had lived, a
serious melancholia ending possibly in suicide for which the family
history furnished abundant precedent. He was convinced of the present
soundness of Hilda's mind, but with him and Hilda the family must end.
He looked at her and young Lanfair earnestly. Lanfair was ambitious;
he would improve and develop, and to him certain matters could be
explained. Before they parted he had invited Stephen to his house.
Stephen went from the hotel table to Levis's room. He asked merely to
sit there with his book before the fire, which was the only means of
heating here where living was cheap. He was like a child who finds
assuagement for hurt in the silent company of an older person.
Levis smiled and went on with his work. It was not often that students
sought him out merely for the pleasure of his company and he was
touched by this youthful devotion.
Nor was it often, at least during his occupancy, that a girl's figure
and a pair of dark eyes were visualized against the background of the
old mantelpiece. Levis himself did not give one hour's thought in a
year to women; he believed that he was growing too old for love-making
and that hardship had made him immune to love. Certainly there was no
profit in thinking of a state of matrimony into which one was too poor
to enter!
Stephen contrasted his fearful anticipations with what had actually
occurred. He had expected to be by this time disgraced and despairing.
Instead he was at peace. He had been more honored than he had dreamed
of being, and now a new and wilder possibility dazzled him.
His thoughts recurred to his father, and he dwelt with gratitude upon
the self-sacrificing care which had always been his. If his father had
been willing to provide less generously for his education, to stint
his pocket-money, or to leave a smaller inheritance, he might have had
a larger library with which to make Chestnut Ridge tolerable and an
occasional journey for diversion or improvement. He might even--Stephen
flushed a little as this notion came into his mind--he might even have
contracted a second marriage, his first having ended tragically with
Stephen's birth.
Stephen avoided thinking of the piety which was after all his father's
distinguishing characteristic, even though he was aware that his father
would rather have bequeathed to him faith than money, and that his
effort to recite the Creed was not a last reassurance to himself as it
had seemed, but a final reminder of the faith without which he believed
his son would perish. Stephen saw him clearly as he lay in his bed and
heard his voice reciting the treasured verses which he had memorized in
dreary journeys over the bleak hills. The lines which he repeated most
often acknowledged with what was to his son a ghastly frankness his
dire plight:
"In the hour of death, after this life's whim,
When the heart beats low, and the eyes grow dim,
And pain has exhausted every limb--
The lover of the Lord shall trust in Him."
He resisted not only this memory, but others, a tiny, dismal
schoolhouse, half filled by a little flock of mourning women and
children bereft of husbands and fathers by a cruel death; he saw
weeping eyes and sad faces in which apathy had followed tears. He hated
all sorrow and trouble and he connected religion with them. Religion
was for the old, the dying, the afflicted, the needy, and he was none
of these.
He looked from time to time gratefully at Levis bending over his books.
Whatever good fortune should be his, Levis should share. Levis had
saved his honor, had saved him from pitfalls for the rest of his life.
He would never, never forget him.
For the most part, however, he thought of himself, of his excellent
marks, of his grasp of the subjects which he studied, of admirable
Professor Mayne, and especially of Professor Mayne's niece. He had, he
was sure, the ordering of his life in his hands; he could make it what
he chose.