There was a month or more during the late winter in which Mr. Elmendorf,
cold-shouldered out of official society at department head-quarters,
became quite the managing director of the Allison mansion. John Allison,
with a party of fellow-magnates, was on a long tour of inspection over
the southernmost of the transcontinental lines, and, finding home life a
trifle uncongenial just now, owing to some discussions with Aunt
Lawrence, finding, too, that the wives and daughters of other magnates
were to accompany them on the trip, sojourning days at a time in many of
the charming resorts among the mountains or along the Pacific seaboard,
Miss Allison eagerly accepted their invitation to be one of the party.
Mrs. Lawrence was to remain in charge at home, and was permitted to send
for and receive under her wing her own graceless duckling, with the
distinct understanding that he was in no wise to be allowed to interfere
with Cary's studies or duties. Allison "had no use," as he expressed it,
for his nephew Lawrence. He had helped pull the cub through many a
scrape, but had tired of it, and having secured him a place in an
Eastern office where he had enough to live on and little to do, desired
to wash his hands of him in future; but mother-love watches over even
the renegades from the home circle, and Mrs. Lawrence persuaded Brother
John that Herbert's health was failing and that he sorely needed change
and rest and coddling. The brother growled out something cynical about
Chicago as a winter resort, but told her to go ahead. The party left in
early February, and about the last thing before going Allison had
another conference with Elmendorf. The latter had received warning that,
unless he gave more time to the instruction of his pupil and less to
that of the populace, the engagement would terminate. Elmendorf argued,
and Allison cut him short. "I have listened to this for over eight
months, and am further from conviction than ever, Mr. Elmendorf," said
he. "So waste no more eloquence on me. Take your choice between serving
me on salary or writing 'screamers' and speeches for nothing. You've
done no great harm outside as yet, but there is a growing tendency to
disorder that such counsels as yours will only serve to stimulate." A
blunt man was Allison, and furnished excellent text for Elmendorf's
article on The Brutality of Capital, which presently appeared, but over
a very different _nom de plume_, in the columns of the socialistic
press. Elmendorf agreed that of course, as his employer took such
extreme views of the case, he must perforce acquiesce in the decision.
He agreed not to appear on the platform or write any more leaders so
long as he should remain in John Allison's employ, and then, when
Allison was well beyond range, interpreted the agreement to suit
himself.
As a means of increasing his influence over the mother, Elmendorf made
himself useful and agreeable to young Lawrence when he came. The lessons
went on with fair regularity, Cary and his tutor occupying their study
each day until luncheon-time, and again, occasionally, later in the
afternoon or evening. But, while he no longer appeared on the stage or
rostrum as one of the leading speakers of the evening, the eloquent
gentleman was pretty sure to be heard from the body of the house or the
midst of the audience at the various meetings held from time to time in
what were referred to as "the disturbed districts." There was a familiar
ring about many of the articles that appeared in the papers, but they
were no longer fulminated over his name or initials. For several weeks
no more dinner-parties were given at the Allisons', and few officers
called there. Then the general commanding went off on a tour of
inspection, taking a brace of aides with him, and these were Forrest's
friends and associates and the men who least liked the tutor. But while
Elmendorf had ceased to spend some time each afternoon in the offices
adjoining the general's sanctum, picking up all stray items of military
news and haranguing such men as would listen, his was by no means an
unfamiliar figure about the great building. True to his policy, he had
made acquaintance among the clerks, messengers, etc., first appearing
among them as an associate and friend of their superior officers,
thereby commanding, as it were, their respectful attention, and then,
after studying their personal characteristics, little by little
establishing confidential relations. Simple-minded, straightforward
fellows, as a rule, were these soldier clerks, men who lived in a groove
and knew little of the wiles of the outer world. A few there were of the
decayed gentleman stamp, and other few of the bibulous. Through their
hands passed much of the correspondence, in their keeping were many of
the secrets, of the official life of the far-spreading department, and
Elmendorf saw his opportunity. It was no difficult matter to assert in
his confidential chats, conducted only when and where their superiors
could get no wind of them, that he had been told by his friend the
adjutant-general or by Captain and Aide-de-Camp So-and-so all about the
matter in question, and all he asked was some little item of
corroborative detail. Now, there were days, as the winter wore away,
when sundry things had happened within the limits of the general's
command which the news-gatherers of the Chicago press, always
sensational, were eager to exploit, not so much, perhaps, as they
actually occurred, but as the management and direction of each paper
desired to make it appear they had. The reporters sounded many a
possible source of information without avail, for the chief of staff had
cautioned his clerks and subordinates. Great were his surprise and
disgust, therefore, to find the columns suddenly blossoming out with
glowing particulars of matters he had supposed discreetly hidden. The
reports were by no means truthful,--they were even more than customarily
colored and exaggerated,--but there was the foundation of fact in more
than one. Next it began to be noted that Elmendorf, hitherto a
contributor only to papers of the socialistic stamp, was frequently to
be seen hobnobbing with the reporters of the prominent journals. Now,
these gentlemen, as a rule, are shrewd judges of human nature and quick
to determine between the gold and the glitter, between the actual
possessor of important news and the mere pretender; but there was
another period of a month or six weeks in which Elmendorf was sought and
followed almost as eagerly as the adjutant-general himself. Never,
perhaps, in his varied life had the graduate of Jena rolled in sweeter
clover than during the months of the late winter and early spring of
'94. An oracle at the table in a luxurious home, with no one to dispute
his sway and no one actually to disapprove, unless it were his much
disgusted but helpless pupil, with access to public offices and public
libraries, with occasional touch with officials who might and did
dislike but could not actually snub him, with occasional driblets of
information to supply foundation and a vivid imagination to do the rest,
he found himself an object of interest to the men of all others whom he
most desired to influence,--the reporters of the daily press. Elmendorf
was never in higher feather. He was even able to neglect for a time the
clamors of his erstwhile hearers, his suffering brethren among the sons
of toil.
And he had been managing matters at home with rare diplomacy, too. Mrs.
Lawrence was mad to find out just exactly what peccadillo had brought
about Mr. Floyd Forrest's sudden relief from duty at Chicago and orders
to proceed to the frontier; but this was a subject on which the tutor
was now decidedly coy. He had given Mrs. Lawrence to understand that
because of some scandal and to prevent further talk the officer had been
summarily sent away. Finding that none of the officers knew what had
brought about the order, he worked among the clerks,--who knew nothing
at all. One of these latter lived not far from the Lambert Library, was
a tippler at times, and had a grievance. Forrest had twice come upon him
when he was boisterously drunk, and, recognizing him, had given him
warning, Forrest was only a "casual" at head-quarters, said the clerk,
and when a fellow was off duty what he did "was none of Forrest's damned
business." Elmendorf found he didn't know what had brought about
Forrest's relief, and so proceeded to ask him if he'd ever heard this
and that,--which the man had not, but was glad to hear now. Later,
Elmendorf made him acquainted, one cold evening, at a comfortable
groggery not too far from the Allison house, with a young fellow who
could and did tell how he had followed a girl whom he suspected and saw
her go to Forrest's lodgings. That he made no mention of certain
concomitant facts, such as his being kicked into the gutter by the
lieutenant and the girl's being a total stranger to that officer at that
time, was due perhaps to native modesty and possibly to Elmendorf's
editorial skill. What Elmendorf wanted to create at head-quarters was
the belief that it was for some such indiscretion that Forrest was
exiled, well reasoning that then the entire establishment would suddenly
bethink itself of all manner of suspicious circumstances that it had
thought nothing of before.
He planned equally well at home. Miss Allison knew only that Forrest was
ordered away on duty for an indefinite time, and speedily went away
herself on the jaunt to the Pacific. Mrs. Lawrence, who longed to say
something to her niece upon the subject, was cautioned by Elmendorf to
say nothing at all until he could place her in possession of all the
facts, which he promised shortly to do. He felt somehow that if Allison
ever consulted Forrest as to the propriety of further employing him, the
days of tutorship and ease were ended; but Forrest was gone, with a stab
in the back, and gone probably not to return. Allison's stay promised to
be prolonged until mid-April, possibly May. Miss Wallen, bending over
her task at the Lambert Library, mutely avoided, and Wells openly
scowled at, Elmendorf whenever he sauntered into the rooms where once he
was welcome. So again he took an interest in Mart and his meanderings.
Mart had steadied a bit, had a job over among the lumber-yards on the
north branch, and had been keeping away from the meetings on the west
side; but it wasn't a fortnight before Mart was staying out late at
night again and coming home without his wits or wages Sunday mornings
and denouncing his employers as scoundrels and some new men as scabs.
The next thing poor Jenny knew, Mart's unpaid bills were coming to her
again, and the brother had lost his situation a third time. There was no
extra work now to add to her earnings, no strong, manly, courteous,
thoughtful fellow to help her into her cloak and out of her troubles.
The days lengthened, and so did the faces at home; so would the bills
have done had she ever yielded to the importunities of her
Mrs.-Nickleby-like mother or Mart's weakling of a wife; but Jenny was
Spartan in self-denial; what she couldn't pay for on the spot she
wouldn't have.
More and more, however, she recognized in Elmendorf the evil genius of
the family, and implored Mart to have no more to do with him, whereat
Mart laughed wildly. "Just you wait a bit, missy," he declaimed. "The
day is coming when capitalists and corporations will bow down to him as
they have to the Goulds and Vanderbilts in the past. I tell you, in less
than two months, if they don't come to our terms, if they refuse to
listen to our dictation not one wheel will turn from one end of this
country to the other. We'll tie up the business of the whole United
States, by God! That's what'll happen to capital."
"And then what will happen to us, Mart,--to you, your wife and
babies,--to your mother and to me? Where will the money come from?"
"Oh, there's money enough--more than enough--millions more than
enough--to feed and clothe and keep us all in luxury--tied up in the
coffers of those bond-holders, and when the men whose hands have made it
get their hands once more on it----"
"Mart, Mart, your head is crazed with whiskey," laughed Jenny, sadly.
"No wonder capital is being withdrawn from us; no wonder the gold is
going back to Europe. People who have it dare not invest in communities
where the employees are allowed to talk as they are here. If I had a
million to invest, do you think I'd venture it where the workmen openly
threatened they'd stop every wheel throughout the land? You are killing
your own prospects, Mart, simply to cripple theirs."
"I don't care. What do you know of such things, anyhow? I don't mean to
stand by and see my brothers starving and swindled day by day down there
at Pullman."
"Who have the greater claims, Mart, those whom you call your brothers
down there at Pullman, or your wife and children here at home? I feel
for those people just as much as you do,--more probably,--but your duty
lies here."
"Oh, that's right. Stand by your swell friends, and toss it into my
teeth that I and mine are sponging on you for a living, and you want
your money. Make a man more desperate than he is by your nagging and
fault-finding. Drive a fellow to striking one minute and then torment
him with accusations the next. I tell you if it comes to riot and
bloodshed here, it's--it's just women like you--that'll--that'll have
brought it all about."
But this was a statement so absurd that Jenny turned away in speechless
indignation. What was the use of logic or argument with one of her
brother's mental make-up? Leaving Mart to go on with his harangue and
confirm the mother and his wife in their view of her utter lack of
appreciation of her brother's noble nature, the girl walked wearily
away to her desk at the library. It was barely eight o'clock, and her
duties began only at nine, but she was an early bird, this New World
Little Dorrit, and loved to be promptly at her work, and the janitor and
scrub-women often listened to her cheery song as she plied the duster
among the shelves and desks of the sanctum. Wells, perhaps, never
noticed how much neater everything looked since Miss Wallen took charge,
but she was a dainty creature, in whose eyes dusty books and littered
desks were abominations. Mrs. Wells, however, was not so blind.
"That girl's worth two of Miss Stockton," was the lady's verdict, and
then, noting with self-comforting criticism the inexpensive material of
Jenny's gown, the absence of all attempt at ornamentation, as well,
alas! as of her predecessor's brilliancy of color and clearness of skin,
she added conclusively, "and she isn't pretty."
And these raw blustering days of late winter and early spring--or
something--had left their mark upon poor Jenny's grave and gentle face.
The circles seemed purpler and deeper under the soft dark eyes. There
was even less of color in the pallid skin. There was something languid,
almost droopy, in her carriage now. She had fought her fight without
repining or complaint all the long months through, and knew, alas! that
she was only losing ground. A year agone she looked forward with joy to
this position, and now she was loaded with even heavier cares and
burdens. She had found some outside work, but everything she made was
rapidly swallowed up by her home cormorants. "It would be just the same,
perhaps, if I had five hundred dollars a month," said Jenny. She was
blue, disheartened, and discouraged,--perhaps a little weak,--as she
walked rapidly on. She thought a sight of the foam-crested waves might
stir her sluggish blood, and so sped eastward a block or two and out
upon the lake front. Passing the Allison homestead south of the Park,
she saw the family carriage just rolling away,--not the open barouche
that had once so nearly run her down, but the heavy, closed carriage.
She knew the coachman and the handsome bays at a glance. A few blocks
farther south she again turned westward to resume her way to the
library, and came suddenly upon two men standing in close conversation.
One was haranguing the other, speaking in nasal, querulous, unmistakable
tones and the speaker's back was towards her. Overcome by a sudden sense
of repulsion, she hesitated, stopped, and was about to turn back and
cross the street, when the listening party glanced up, saw the girl as
she halted and seemed to be watching them, and, all in an instant,
turned and sneaked, or rather lurched, up the street. Miss Wallen knew
that gait in an instant. There was the ruffian who had chased her and
seized her that never-to-be-forgotten night.
And here, turning about now and facing her, was Elmendorf.
For an instant the tutor's _aplomb_ was gone. He stammered as he raised
his hat and bade her good-morning. "I was just giving some advice to a
poor devil who accosted me for alms, Miss Wallen," he said, lamely, "but
I seem to have driven him off. My speeches are not universally well
received, as you probably know." But Jennie was in no mood for
conversation. With but scant recognition, she pushed rapidly on, and
Elmendorf followed.
"There is a matter I much desire to speak about," said he, placing
himself at her side. "I'm aware I have not the good fortune to stand
well in Miss Wallen's opinion," he added, with a half-sneer, "and a man
more vindictive and less devoted to principle would have felt like
resenting the--the slights you have seen fit to put upon me. I shall
observe your prohibition with regard to the--alleged officer and
gentleman of whom I had occasion to speak to you, since his superiors
have taken that responsibility off my hands by summarily sending him
away, and as it is not likely that he will ever cross your path in this
neighborhood again,--a matter in which I find sincere cause for
rejoicing, for of all men I have ever met he seemed to me the least
worthy of such confidence as you placed in him----"
"Is this observing my prohibition, Mr. Elmendorf?" said Jenny, stopping
and facing him.
"Oh, well, possibly not."
"Then you will kindly say at once what your business is. I have told you
I will not listen to anything you say about Mr. Forrest."
"I am detaining you here," he said, evasively. "Let us walk on."
"No, I will not walk on. Mr. Elmendorf, I have learned to look upon you
as anything but a friend to me or mine, and I mean to be perfectly frank
with you here and now. You have slandered my friend, you have tricked
and misled my brother, you have deceived my mother, and I know well you
have sought to injure me with my employer----"
"Oh, only so far as was justifiable in the protection of my own name. As
your recommender and endorser for the position you hold, I had a right,
when you showed yourself heedless of my counsel and defiant of my
injunctions, to say to your immediate superior that he should be
cautious about allowing your intimacy with Mr. Forrest to be prosecuted
within the shelter of his sanctum and practically under his own nose.
I----"
"That's quite enough, Mr. Elmendorf. You have added insult to injury.
Once and for all, let there be an end of this. I decline any and all
communication with you from this time on." And with cheeks that lacked
no color now, and eyes all ablaze with wrath, Miss Wallen turned and
left him. But Elmendorf pursued. He had one arrow left, and meant to
send it home.
"At least I may accompany you to the corner, only twenty yards away, and
there, as you suggest, our paths shall separate. You decline to believe
my estimate of Mr. Forrest, and hold him up as something knightly and
chivalric, forsooth. My deluded friend, all the time he was making you
the object of those charming little attentions he was pressing his suit
under my own eyes at home, and, in spite of all her father, her aunt, or
her friends could do, I regret to say that Miss Florence Allison became
so infatuated as to follow that young man to his exile, and should he
ever return here it will doubtless be as her husband. Good-morning, Miss
Wallen."
She had turned from him in renewed anger and disgust as they reached the
corner, had hastened along with flaming eyes and cheeks and loudly
throbbing heart. She was furious at him for daring to speak of such
things, daring to couple Forrest's name with hers, with--anybody's. She
was ready to cry out against the man for such malignity--mendacity; and
then her cooler judgment and common sense began to reassert themselves.
Why shouldn't it be true? Why shouldn't he seek the hand of one so--so
lovely and wealthy as Miss Allison? What more natural than that Miss
Allison should learn to love him? Why shouldn't she--she, Jenny
Wallen--rejoice with her whole heart that her friend and protector could
look forward to such happiness? He had never been anything but kind,
thoughtful, courteous, to her. Other men had taken advantage of her
defenceless post to accost her with low gallantries, with _bourgeois_
flattery, with ridiculous attempts at flirtation or love-making, and she
had laughed or stormed them off; but Forrest had shown her from the
first the high-bred courtesy he would have accorded the proudest lady in
the land, had never presumed upon a look, a word, a touch, that was not
marked by respect and deference. He was a gentleman, she said; any girl
might be proud of such a lover; and if it was true that he and Florence
Allison were engaged, she would congratulate him and her with all her
heart and rejoice with them and for them, and pray that their lives
might be happy,--happy as her own was desolate,--and then the day became
dark and dull and hopeless despite a brilliant sun, for just as the
Lambert towers loomed in sight, the Allison carriage came spinning up
the avenue, a radiant, happy, lovely face beaming upon her from the
window, then turning to look up into the dark, soldierly features of the
man at her side. Florence Allison was home, then, from her wanderings,
bringing her beloved with her.
[Illustration]