XXII.

That night Lemuel told Mrs. Harmon that she must not expect him to

do anything thenceforward but look after the accounts and the general

management; she must get a head-waiter, and a boy to run the elevator.

She consented to this, as she would have consented to almost anything

else that he proposed.

He had become necessary to the management of the St. Albans in every

department; and if the lady boarders felt that they could not now get on

without him, Mrs. Harmon was even more dependent.

With her still nominally at the head of affairs, and controlling the

expenses as a whole, no radical reform could be effected. But there were

details of the outlay in which Lemuel was of use, and he had brought

greater comfort into the house for less money. He rejected her old

and simple device of postponing the payment of debt as an economical

measure, and substituted cash dealings with new purveyors. He gradually

but inevitably took charge of the storeroom, and stopped the waste

there; early in his administration he had observed the gross and foolish

prodigality with which the portions were sent from the carving-room, and

after replacing Mrs. Harmon's nephew there, he established a standard

portion that gave all the needed variety, and still kept the quantity

within bounds. It came to his taking charge of this department entirely,

and as steward he carved the meats, and saw that nothing was in a way to

become cold before he opened the dining-room doors as head-waiter.

His activities promoted the leisure which Mrs. Harmon had always

enjoyed, and which her increasing bulk fitted her to adorn. Her nephew

willingly relinquished the dignity of steward. He said that his furnaces

were as much as he wanted to take care of; especially as in former

years, when it had begun to come spring, he had experienced a stress of

mind in keeping the heat just right, when the ladies were all calling

down the tubes for more of it or less of it, which he should now be very

glad not to have complicated with other cares. He said that now he could

look forward to the month of May with some pleasure.

The guests, sensibly or insensibly, according to their several

temperaments, shared the increased ease that came from Lemuel's

management. The service was better in every way; their beds were

promptly made, their rooms were periodically swept; every night when

they came up from dinner they found their pitchers of ice-water at their

doors. This change was not accomplished without much of that rebellion

and renunciation which was known at the St. Albans as kicking.

Chambermaids and table-girls kicked, but they were replaced by Lemuel,

who went himself to the intelligence office, and pledged the new ones to

his rule beforehand. There was even some kicking among the guests, who

objected to the new portions, and to having a second bill sent them if

the first remained unpaid for a week; but the general sense of the hotel

was in Lemuel's favour.

He had no great pleasure in the reform he had effected. His heart was

not in it, except as waste and disorder and carelessness were painful

to him. He suffered to promote a better state of things, as many a

woman whose love is for books or pictures or society suffers for the

perfection of her housekeeping, and sacrifices her taste to achieve it.

He would have liked better to read, to go to lectures, to hear sermons;

with the knowledge of Mr. Evans's life as an editor and the incentive

of a writer near him, he would have liked to try again if he could not

write something, though the shame of his failure in Mr. Sewell's eyes

had burned so deep. Above all, since he had begun to see how city people

regarded the kind of work he had been doing, he would have liked to get

out of the hotel business altogether, if he could have been sure of any

other.

As the spring advanced his cares grew lighter. Most of the regular

boarders went away to country hotels and became regular boarders there.

Their places were only partially filled by transients from the South

and West, who came and went, and left Lemuel large spaces of leisure, in

which he read, or deputed Mrs. Harmon's nephew to the care of the office

and pursued his studies of Boston, sometimes with Mr. Evans,--whose

newspaper kept him in town, and who liked to prowl about with him,

and to frequent the odd summer entertainments,--but mostly alone. They

became friends after a fashion, and were in each other's confidence as

regarded their opinions and ideas, rather than their history; now and

then Evans dropped a word about the boy he had lost, or his wife's

health, but Lemuel kept his past locked fast in his breast.

The art-students had gone early in the summer, and Berry had left Boston

for Wyoming at the end of the spring term of the law-school. He had not

been able to make up his mind to pop before Miss Swan departed, but he

thought he should fetch it by another winter; and he had got leave to

write to her, on condition, he said, that he should conduct the whole

correspondence himself.

Miss Carver had left Lemuel dreaming of her as an ideal, yet true, with

a slow, rustic constancy, to Statira. For all that had been said and

done, he had not swerved explicitly from her. There was no talk of

marriage between them, and could not be; but they were lovers still,

and when Miss Carver was gone, and the finer charm of her society

was unfelt, he went back to much of the old pleasure he had felt in

Statira's love. The resentment of her narrow-mindedness, the shame for

her ignorance passed; the sense of her devotion remained.

'Manda Grier wanted her to go home with her for part of the summer, but

she would not have consented if Lemuel had not insisted. She wrote him

back ill-spelt, scrawly little letters, in one of which she told him

that her cough was all gone, and she was as well as ever. She took a

little more cold when she returned to town in the first harsh September

weather, and her cough returned, but she said she did not call it

anything now.

The hotel began to fill up again for the winter. Berry preceded the

art-students by some nervous weeks, in which he speculated upon what he

should do if they did not come at all. Then they came, and the winter

passed, with repetitions of the last winter's events, and a store of

common memories that enriched the present, and insensibly deepened the

intimacy in which Lemuel found himself. He could not tell whither the

present was carrying him; he only knew that he had drifted so far from

the squalor of his past, that it seemed like the shadow of a shameful

dream.

He did not go to see Statira so often as he used; and she was patient

with his absences, and defended him against 'Manda Grier, who did not

scruple to tell her that she believed the fellow was fooling with her,

and who could not always keep down a mounting dislike of Lemuel in

his presence. One night towards spring, when he returned early from

Statira's, he found Berry in the office at the St. Albans. “That you,

old man?” he asked. “Well, I'm glad you've come. Just going to leave

a little Billy Ducks for you here, but now I needn't. The young ladies

sent me down to ask if you had a copy of Whittier's poems; they want to

find something in it. I told 'em Longfellow would do just as well, but

I couldn't seem to convince 'em. They say he didn't write the particular

poem they want.”

“Yes, I've got Whittier's poems here,” said Lemuel, unlocking his desk.

“It belongs to Mr. Evans; I guess he won't care if I lend it.”

“Well, now, I tell you what,” said Berry; “don't you let a borrowed book

like that go out of your hands. Heigh? You just bring it up yourself.

See?” He winked the eye next Lemuel with exaggerated insinuation.

“They'll respect you all the more for being so scrupulous, and I guess

they won't be very much disappointed on general principles if you come

along. There's lots of human nature in girls--the best of 'em. I'll

tell 'em I left you lookin' for it. I don't mind a lie or two in a good

cause. But you hurry along up, now.”

He was gone before Lemuel could stop him; he could not do anything but

follow.

It appeared that it was Miss Swan who wished to see the poem; she could

not remember the name of it, but she was sure she should know it if she

saw it in the index. She mingled these statements with her greetings to

Lemuel, and Miss Carver seemed as glad to see him. She had a little more

colour than usual, and they were all smiling, so that he knew Berry had

been getting off some of his jokes. But he did not care.

Miss Swan found the poem as she had predicted, and, “Now all keep

still,” she said, “and I'll read it.” But she suddenly added, “Or no;

you read it, Mr. Barker, won't you?”

“If Barker ain't just in voice to-night, I'll read it,” suggested Berry.

But she would not let him make this diversion. She ignored his offer,

and insisted upon Lemuel's reading. “Jessie says you read beautifully.

That passage in _Romola_,” she reminded him; but Lemuel said it was only

a few lines, and tried to excuse himself. At heart he was proud of his

reading, and he ended by taking the book.

When he had finished the two girls sighed.

“Isn't it beautiful, Jessie?” said Miss Swan.

“Beautiful!” answered her friend.

Berry yawned.

“Well, I don't see much difference between that and a poem of

Longfellow's. Why wouldn't Longfellow have done just as well? Honestly,

now! Why isn't one poem just as good as another, for all practical

purposes?”

“It is, for some people,” said Miss Swan.

Berry figured an extreme anguish by writhing in his chair. Miss Swan

laughed in spite of herself, and they began to talk in their usual

banter, which Miss Carver never took part in, and which Lemuel was quite

incapable of sharing. If it had come to savage sarcasm or a logical

encounter, he could have held his own, but he had a natural weight and

slowness that disabled him from keeping up with Berry's light talk;

he envied it, because it seemed to make everybody like him, and Lemuel

would willingly have been liked.

Miss Carver began to talk to him about the book, and then about Mr.

Evans. She asked him if he went much to his rooms, and Lemuel said no,

not at all, since the first time Mr. Evans had asked him up. He said,

after a pause, that he did not know whether he wanted him to come.

“I should think he would,” said Miss Carver. “It must be very gloomy

for him, with his wife such an invalid. He seems naturally such a gay

person.”

“Yes, that's what I think,” said Lemuel.

“I wonder,” said the girl, “if it seems to you harder for a naturally

cheerful person to bear things, than for one who has always been rather

melancholy?”

“Yes, it does!” he answered with the pleasure and surprise young

people have in discovering any community of feeling; they have thought

themselves so utterly unlike each other. “I wonder why it should?”

“I don't know; perhaps it isn't so. But I always pity the cheerful

person the most.”

They recognised an amusing unreason in this, and laughed. Miss Swan

across the room had caught the name.

“Are you talking of Mrs. Evans?”

Berry got his banjo down from the wall, where Miss Swan allowed him to

keep it as bric-a-brac, and began to tune it.

“I don't believe it agrees with this banjoseph being an object of

virtue,” he said. “What shall it be, ladies? Something light and gay,

adapted to disperse gloomy reflections?” He played a fandango. “How do

you like that? It has a tinge of melancholy in it, and yet it's lively

too, as a friend of mine used to say about the Dead March.”

“Was his name Berry?” asked Miss Swan.

“Not Alonzo W., Jr.,” returned Berry tranquilly, and he and Miss Swan

began to joke together.

“I know a friend of Mr. Evans's,” said Lemuel to Miss Carver. “Mr.

Sewell. Have you ever heard him preach?”

“Oh yes, indeed. We go nearly every Sunday morning.”

“I nearly always go in the evening now,” said Lemuel. “Don't you like

him?”

“Yes,” said the girl. “There's something about him--I don't know

what--that doesn't leave you feeling how bad you are, but makes you want

to be better. He helps you so; and he's so clear. And he shows that he's

had all the mean and silly thoughts that you have. I don't know--it's as

if he were talking for each person alone.”

“Yes, that is exactly the way I feel!” Lemuel was proud of the

coincidence. He said, to commend himself further to Miss Carver, “I have

just been round to see him.”

“I should think you would value his acquaintance beyond anything,” said

the girl. “Is he just as earnest and simple as he is in the pulpit?”

“He's just the same, every way.” Lemuel went a little further; “I knew

him before I came to Boston. He boarded one summer where we lived.”

As he spoke he thought of the grey, old, unpainted house, and of his

brother-in-law with his stocking-feet on the stove-hearth, and his

mother's bloomers; he thought of his arrest, and his night in the

police-station, his trial, and the Wayfarer's Lodge; and he wondered

that he could think of such things and still look such a girl in the

face. But he was not without that strange joy in their being unknown to

her which reserved and latent natures feel in mere reticence, and which

we all experience in some degree when we talk with people and think of

our undiscovered lives.

They went on a long time, matching their opinions and feelings about

many things, as young people do, and fancying that much of what they

said was new with them. When he came away after ten o'clock, he thought

of one of the things that Sewell had said about the society of refined

and noble women: it was not so much what they said or did that helped;

it was something in them that made men say and do their best, and help

themselves to be refined and noble men, to make the most of themselves

in their presence. He believed that this was what Miss Carver had done,

and he thought how different it was with him when he came away from an

evening with Statira. Again he experienced that compassion for her, in

the midst of his pride and exultation; he asked himself what he could do

to help her; he did not see how she could be changed.

Berry followed him downstairs, and wanted to talk the evening over.

“I don't see how I'm going to stand it much longer, Barker,” he said.

“I shall have to pop pretty soon or die, one of the two; and I'm afraid

either one 'll kill me. Wasn't she lovely to-night? Honey in the comb,

sugar in the gourd, _I_ say! I wonder what it is about popping, anyway,

that makes it so hard, Barker? It's simply a matter of business, if you

come to boil it down. You offer a fellow so many cattle, and let him

take 'em or leave 'em. But if the fellow happens to have on a long,

slim, olive-green dress of some colour, and holds her head like a whole

floral tribute on a stem, and _you_ happen to be the cattle you're

offering, you can't feel so independent about it, somehow. Well, what's

the use? She's a daisy, if ever there was one. Ever notice what a

peculiar blue her eyes are?”

“Blue?” said Lemuel. “They're brown.”

“Look here, old man,” said Berry compassionately, “do you think I've

come down here to fool away my time talking about Miss Carver? We'll

take some Saturday afternoon for that, when we haven't got anything else

to do; but it's Miss Swan that has the floor at present. What were

you two talking about over there, so long? I can't get along with Miss

Carver worth a cent.”

“I hardly know what we did talk about,” said Lemuel dreamily.

“Well, I've got the same complaint, I couldn't tell you ten words that

Madeline said--in thine absence let me call thee Madeline, sweet!--but I

knew it was making an immortal spirit of me, right straight along, every

time. The worst thing about an evening like this is, it don't seem to

last any time at all. Why, when those girls began to put up their hands

to hide their yawns, I felt like I was just starting in for a short

call. I wish I could have had a good phonograph around. I'd put it on my

sleepless pillow, and unwind its precious record all through the watches

of the night.” He imitated the thin phantasmal squeak of the instrument

in repeating a number of Miss Swan's characteristic phrases. “Yes, sir,

a pocket phonograph is the thing I'm after.”

“I don't see how you can talk the way you do,” said Lemuel, shuddering

inwardly at Berry's audacious freedom, and yet finding a certain comfort

in it.

“That's just the way I felt myself at first. But you'll get over it

as you go along. The nicest thing about their style of angel is that

they're perfectly human, after all. You don't believe it now, of course,

but you will.”

It only heightened Lemuel's conception of Miss Carver's character to

have Berry talk so lightly and daringly of her, in her relation to

him. He lay long awake after he went to bed, and in the turmoil of his

thoughts one thing was clear: so pure and high a being must never know

anything of his shameful past, which seemed to dishonour her through his

mere vicinity. He must go far from her, and she must not know why;

but long afterwards Mr. Sewell would tell her, and then she would

understand. He owed her this all the more because he could see now that

she was not one of the silly persons, as Mr. Sewell called them, who

would think meanly of him for having in his ignorance and inexperience,

done a servant's work. His mind had changed about that, and he wondered

that he could ever have suspected her of such a thing.

About noon the next day the street door was opened hesitatingly, as if

by some one not used to the place; and when Lemuel looked up from the

menus he was writing, he saw the figure of one of those tramps who from

time to time presented themselves and pretended to want work. He scanned

the vagabond sharply, as he stood moulding a soft hat on his hands, and

trying to superinduce an air of piteous appeal upon the natural gaiety

of his swarthy face. “Well! what's wanted?”

A dawning conjecture that had flickered up in the tramp's eyes flashed

into full recognition.

“Why, mate!”

Lemuel's heart stood still. “What--what do you want here?”

“Why, don't you know me, mate?”

All his calamity confronted Lemuel.

“No,” he said, but nothing in him supported the lie he had uttered.

“Wayfarer's Lodge?” suggested the other cheerfully. “Don't you

remember?”

“No----”

“I guess you do,” said the mate easily. “Anyway, I remember you.”

Lemuel's feeble defence gave way. “Come in here,” he said, and he shut

the door upon the intruder and himself, and submitted to his fate. “What

is it?” he asked huskily.

“Why, mate! what's the matter? Nobody's goin' to hurt you,” said the

other encouragingly. “What's your lay here?”

“Lay?”

“Yes. Got a job here?”

“I'm the clerk,” said Lemuel, with the ghost of his former pride of

office.

“Clerk?” said the tramp with good-humoured incredulity. “Where's your

diamond pin? Where's your rings?” He seemed willing to prolong the

playful inquiry. “Where's your patent leather boots?”

“It's not a common hotel. It's a sort of a family hotel, and I'm the

clerk. What do you want?”

The young fellow lounged back easily in his chair. “Why, I did drop

in to beat the house out of a quarter if I could, or may be ten cents.

Thank you, sir. God bless you, sir.” He interrupted himself to burlesque

a professional gratitude. “That style of thing, you know. But I don't

know about it now. Look here, mate! what's the reason you couldn't get

me a job here too? I been off on a six months' cruise since I saw you,

and I'd like a job on shore first rate. Couldn't you kind of ring me in

for something? I ain't afraid of work, although I never did pretend to

love it. But I should like to reform now, and get into something steady.

Heigh?”

“There isn't anything to do--there's no place for you,” Lemuel began.

“Oh, pshaw, now, mate, you think!” pleaded the other. “I'll take any

sort of a job; I don't care what it is. I ain't got any o' that false

modesty about me. Been round too much. And I don't want to go back to

the Wayfarer's Lodge. It's a good place, and I know my welcome's warm

and waitin' for me, between two hot plates; but the thing of it is, it's

demoralisin'. That's what the chaplain said just afore I left the--ship,

'n' I promised him I'd give work a try, anyway. Now you just think up

something! I ain't in any hurry.” In proof he threw his soft hat on the

desk, and took up one of the _menus_. “This your bill of fare? Well,

it ain't bad! Vurmiselly soup, boiled holibut, roast beef, roast turkey

with cranberry sauce, roast pork with apple sauce, chicken corquettes,

ditto patties, three kinds of pie; bread puddin', both kinds of sauce;

ice cream, nuts, and coffee. Why, mate!”

Lemuel sat dumb and motionless. He could see no way out of the net that

had entangled him. He began feebly to repeat. “There isn't anything,”

when some one tried the door.

“Mr. Barker!” called Mrs. Harmon. “You in there?”

He made it worse by waiting a moment before he rose and opened the

door. “I didn't know I'd locked it.” The lie came unbidden; he groaned

inwardly to think how he was telling nothing but lies. Mrs. Harmon did

not come in. She glanced with a little question at the young fellow, who

had gathered his hat from the table, and risen with gay politeness.

It was a crisis of the old sort; the elevator boy had kicked, and Mrs.

Harmon said, “I just stopped to say that I was going out and I could

stop at the intelligence office myself to get an elevator boy--”

The mate took the word with a joyous laugh at the coincidence. “It's

just what me and Mr. Barker was talking about! I'm from up his way, and

I've just come down to Boston to see if I couldn't look up a job; and

he was tellin' me, in here, about your wantin' a telegraph--I mean a

elevator-boy, but he didn't think it would suit me. But I should like

to give it a try, anyway. It's pretty dull up our way, and I got to do

something. Mr. Barker 'll tell you who I am.”

He winked at Lemuel with the eye not exposed to Mrs. Harmon, and gave

her a broad, frank, prepossessing smile.

“Well, of course,” said Mrs. Harmon smoothly, “any friend of Mr.

Barker's----”

“We just been talkin' over old times in here,” interrupted the mate. “I

guess it was me shoved that bolt in. I didn't want to have anybody see

me talkin' with him till I'd got some clothes that would be a little

more of a credit to him.”

“Well, that's right,” said Mrs. Harmon appreciatively. “I always like

to have everybody around my house looking neat and respectable. I keep

a first-class house, and I don't have any but first-class help, and I

expect them to dress accordingly, from the highest to the lowest.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said the mate, “that's the way I felt about it myself, me

and Mr. Barker both; and he was just tellin' me that if I was a mind to

give the elevator a try, he'd lend me a suit of his clothes.”

“Very well, then,” said Mrs. Harmon; “if Mr. Barker and you are a mind

to fix it up between you----”

“Oh, we are!” said the mate. “There won't be any trouble about that.”

“I don't suppose I need to stop at the intelligence office. I presume

Mr. Barker will show you how to work the elevator. He helped us out with

it himself at first.”

“Yes, that's what he said,” the other chimed in. “But I guess I'd better

go and change my clothes first. Well, mate,” he added to Lemuel, “I'm

ready when you're ready.”

Lemuel rose trembling from the chair where he had been chained, as it

seemed to him, while the mate and Mrs. Harmon arranged their affair with

his tacit connivance. He had not spoken a word; he feared so much to

open his lips lest another lie should come out of them, that his sense

of that danger was hardly less than his terror at the captivity in which

he found himself.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Harmon, “I'll look after the office till you get back.

Mr. Barker 'll show you where you can sleep.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” said the mate, with gratitude that won upon her.

“And I'm glad,” she added, “that it's a friend of Mr. Barker's that's

going to have the place. We think everything of Mr. Barker here.”

“Well, you can't think more of him than what we do up home,” rejoined

the other with generous enthusiasm.

In Lemuel's room he was not less appreciative. “Why, mate, it does me

good to see how you've got along. I got to write a letter home at once,

and tell the folks what friends you've got in Boston. I don't believe

they half understand it.” He smiled joyously upon Lemuel, who stood

stock still, with such despair in his face that probably the wretch

pitied him.

“Look here, mate, don't you be afraid now! I'm on the reform lay with

all my might, and I mean business. I ain't a-goin' to do you any harm,

you bet your life. These your things?” he asked, taking Lemuel's winter

suit from the hooks where they hung, and beginning to pull off his coat.

He talked on while he changed his dress. “I was led away, and I got my

come-uppings, or the other fellow's comeuppings, for _I_ wa'n't to blame

any, and I always said so, and I guess the judge would say so too, if it

was to do over again.”

A frightful thought stung Lemuel to life. “The judge? Was it a

passenger-ship?”

The other stopped buttoning Lemuel's trousers round him to slap himself

on the thigh. “Why, mate! don't you know enough to know what a _sea

voyage_ is? Why, I've been down to the _Island_ for the last six months!

Hain't you never heard it called a sea voyage? Why, we _always_ come off

from a cruise when we git back! You don't mean to say you never _been_

one?”

“Oh, my goodness!” groaned Lemuel. “Have--have you been in prison?”

“Why, of course.”

“Oh, what am I going to do?” whispered the miserable creature to

himself.

The other heard him. “Why, you hain't got to do anything! I'm on the

reform, and you might leave everything layin' around loose, and I

shouldn't touch it. Fact! You ask the ship's chaplain.”

He laughed in the midst of his assertions of good resolutions, but

sobered to the full extent, probably, of his face and nature, and tying

Lemuel's cravat on at the glass, he said solemnly, “Mate, it's all

right. I'm on the reform.”