ELI JEREY AT THE DIEMAN HOME.
Dressed as on the great occasion when he visited Miss Jarney, Eli Jerey
called at the home of Peter Dieman but a short ten minutes after Jacob
Cobb had left in such a bad temper. Peter was in his jolliest frame of
mind, and was still having jerks of felicitation over his fine stroke in
besting Jacob Cobb, as he looked at it, when Eli floated into his
presence like a fluted lamppost with its light extinguished. Eli sat
down with his high hat on the top of his untutored head, as his only hat
rack, when Peter took up the thread of the subject about where he and
Jacob broke it in their slight misunderstanding.
"When I told him to skip out, Eli, he flew the handle to beat all," said
Peter. "He threatened, if he ever returned, to cook a dish for me that I
would not relish."
"Did he, though?" said Eli, raising his eyes to the level of Peter's.
"Now what kind of a dish could he cook for you, do you suppose?"
"I suppose he refers to the street paving proposition," responded Peter.
"Which one? Where the wooden blocks were used?"
"I suppose so."
"Well, Mr. Dieman, we might as well be honest now and say the truth
sometimes; but that was a very bad piece of jobbery for all connected
with it--even for the wood blocks, as you will see when a year has
passed."
"How?"
"In it, the city got its worst job, the contractors worser jobbed, the
grafters got jobbed good and plenty, and the wood blocks will be so
jobbed that you will not be able to find any in another turn of the sun
around the seasons."
"But how will he connect me with it?"
"He can't, Peter; he can't. I can swear that none of the money came to
you by the way of our office. It all went through Cobb's hands, and I
have the receipts."
"Bully, boy! Bully for you! When I die, I will leave you the old shop
and all it holds. You have a slick head, Eli, for such things. Who'd
thought Jacob would have given his receipt?"
"I forced it out of him. Told him: no receipt, no money."
"I knew you'd fix it all right when I left it all to you. Why, boy, you
don't blame me for having confidence in you?--But Jim Dalls?"
"Oh, he's to keep you out, as agreed, and is to go free on making his
confession, and sticking to it at the trial. I tell you, he'll fix a lot
of them high-ups and others who've been in the game so long they can't
believe but what they're honest and upright citizens."
"Bully! Then all danger for me is over?" asked Peter, chuckling in such
a whimsical manner that Eli felt moved himself to get up and hammer him
on the back for fear he was choking on his good humor.
"Over," returned Eli, decisively.
"Good! Say Eli, I was only running a bluff on Cobb at first, when I said
they couldn't get me--I hear Monroe's dead?"
"Deader'n a fried oyster since he jumped into the Hudson."
"Poor Monroe, I always thought he would hang himself, if given enough
rope."
"I am told Mr. Jarney has cleaned out the gang that helped Monroe in his
dirty work--that's what becomes of not being faithful to your job, like
I've always been, Mr. Dieman," moralized Eli. "Say, did I tell you about
seeing May's sister at the Jarneys?"
"No; do tell me about it?"
"Well, I saw her, that's all; and spoke to her, that's all--and my!
she's poorty; but I'll stick to May."
"If I let you," said Peter, squinting his eyes, with a funny little
twinkle mixed in their movements.
"Why, I came this very night to ask you, Mr. Dieman," said Eli, as an
opener to his subject.
"Really, Eli? Impossible!"
"What's impossible?" asked Eli, disheartened at the word "impossible."
"That you came for that purpose," said Peter with a smile.
"I did, sir; indeed, I did, Mr. Dieman," responded Eli, with much
feeling.
"Well?" said Peter, with a bearish look.
"May I have her?" blurted out Eli, as he snapped a piece of imaginary
lint from his angled knee with the index finger of his right hand.
"Is she willin', Eli?" asked Peter, changing his tone.
"She is," he responded, firmly.
"You've made fine progress, my boy; but you'll have to ask her
moth--Kate--" turning his head as he shouted her name for his voice to
carry to where that lady sat in the parlor, in the distance, surrounded
by her squirming herd of youngsters--"come here!"
Kate came, looking like a queen--in her "rags"--still bearing some of
her old sorrows in her lean face, now reduced to a pleasanter tone by
the artful hand of plenty.
"This young man wants May; can you spare her?" said Peter, not giving
Eli a show at performing that part of his simple playing in courtship.
"I'll speak for him, Kate. He's a mighty good boy, and May might do a
thousand times worse."
Eli sat like a docile lamb before the altar of matrimonial sacrifice,
humbly waiting his fate. Kate looked at him. He looked at Kate. Peter
looked at both. All silent. Intense was Eli's emotions--so tense that he
was like a pine board in the hot sun ready to warp with the intensity of
the heat that perforated the skin on his brow, sending forth scalding
globes of perspiration.
"I re--I gu--how did you tell me to say it?" she said, turning to Peter
for intelligence on the right word.
"May," answered Peter, rubbing.
"I may--no, that's not it," she said, appealing to him.
"You may!" suggested Peter again.
"You may, Mr. Jerey," she said, finally hitting upon the proper phrase
that would express her answer.
She had no more than uttered the word, than Eli leaped to his feet,
dropped his cane, and caught Mrs. Dieman in his sweeping arms, and
hugged her powerfully. It could not be told whether he exercised a son's
indubitable right to kiss her, for the very momentous reason that his
plug hat fell off at the critical moment when he appeared to be
performing that gracious act. But, in any event, his future
mother-in-law grunted from the grateful embracing that she underwent in
the clasp of Eli. Finding his prized and fashionable hat had toppled off
with imminent danger of being crushed by ruthless feet, he hastily
released her, picked up his hat, put it on his head again, with such
grandiloquent precipitation that he made things in the room look as if
they were going up in a whirlwind.
After catching his breath, he glanced inquiringly toward the parlor.
There he saw May sitting in a very deep and richly decorated chair
perusing a novel, which she, since her coming out, had been taught was a
beautiful source of pastime for young ladies of noble families. But Eli
saw not the novel; neither did he see the pencil and tablet on May's
lap, with which she had been instructed to provide herself to jot down
the things that impressed her most when reading; nor did he see with
what beautiful material she was dressed. All that he saw was the plump
little face of May, a face that had no equal, to him; and all that she
saw was the tall Eli racing toward her, like a galloping giraffe, with
love-lit eyes, with grinning teeth, with plug hat on his head. Then--
"May! May! May!"
The world turned upside-down, and he plunged headlong with May in his
arms, into the laughing stars that flecked his heaven of delight.
In the sudden onrush, May dropped her novel, dropped her pencil, dropped
her note book; and Eli dropped his hat, which the youngest child
momentarily toddled to, and took his seat within it as contentedly as if
it had been placed there for his especial enjoyment. Eli minded nothing,
not even the cloud of children that rose around him like fairies in
astonishment at a bogie man come among them.
But the whirlwind that Eli started soon abated, and its wreck and ruin
was more noticeable upon May than any one else; for, in his awkwardness,
he had loosened her hair, till it fell down around her waist, and mussed
her pink messaline till it needed ironing afresh, and caused a burning
place on the one cheek which he pressed so closely to the rough twill of
his coat collar, that she seemed to be aflame with indignation. She was
not indignant, however. Her little pout was only a sign of shame-faced
happiness brought about by the astonishing behavior of Eli in the
presence of her family; which she declared was shameful familiarity.
"Why, May," said Eli, in support of his actions, "your mother says yes,
and your daddy says yes, and I say yes; now, what do you say--I don't
care who knows!"
"I don't care what they say, you had no business to do it," she
answered, looking black at him, as she was brushing out some of the
wrinkle marks in her dress.
"Is it yes, or no, May? Tell me quick, before I go hang myself!" he
cried in his anguish.
"I haven't said no, Eli," replied May, as she attempted to put up her
hair, and blushing from ear to ear.
"Is it yes, May?" said Eli, with eyes brightening. "I want to know."
May glanced up pensively, with a hairpin between her lips cutting a
smile in two.
"Yes," she answered, as the pin fell to the floor, and her hair
straggled down again.
"I am happy, May," he replied; "now will you excuse me for my
impetuosity?"
May was gathering up her hair again when Eli said this. She turned to
him with a smothered laugh, and remarked: "You are all right, Eli; I am
happy."
Whereat, both being perfectly agreed as to their feelings and opinions,
Eli looked about for his hat, preparatory to taking his departure.
"Well, Lord bless us! Look here, May!" he exclaimed, standing over the
youngster, sitting in his hat.
Then, bursting into a loud guffaw, he stooped down, grasped the hat by
the side rims, and lifted it up, baby and all, and ventured forth to the
throne room. As he lifted the burden up before him, the baby laid hold
of his string necktie with one hand and his collar with the other, as a
support to his precarious position. In which position Eli, hat, and baby
proceeded, Eli singing a foolish ditty, till they arrived at Peter's
seat, by the side of whom sat Mrs. Dieman.
Eli stood before them a moment that they might see the load and the
oddity of the situation of baby. They laughed; Eli laughed; baby
laughed. He swung the hat this way and that, up and down, and bounced
him a little. Eli blowed a tune of coo-coo at him, then whistled, and
sang snatches of songs, of all of which baby seemed highly appreciative,
judging from his looks. Then--the bottom fell out of the hat, and
through it, feet foremost, shot the baby like a stone, and fell in a
squalling bundle on the floor at Eli's feet.
At the outcry that followed, all the other children came rushing in and
circled around the party; and laughed and clapped their hands in great
glee at the mishap to the baby and the hat. Eli picked up the crying
child, and stroked his hair, and cooed to him. The child placed his
little arms around Eli's neck, and sobbed till his grief was gone. And
this was the little child that touched his father's hard face with his
little hands, saying da-da; but perhaps he will never remember that day.
Procuring a new hat from Peter, one that fit him illy, Eli tore himself
away from this man's dominions, encircled by Billy Barton's family, to
return some other day for a beautifully appointed wedding with his
beautiful May.
The world may laugh and sneer at such as Eli Jerey; but, after all, in
such as he may be found the man who will make marriage a heaven to a
poor man's daughter, raised as she was in poverty, and lifted by chance
to a higher plane of living.