If, Yes and Perhaps Part 2

CHAPTER IV.

THE CRISIS.

I was at work as a veneerer in a piano-forte factory at Attica, when some tariff or other was pa.s.sed or repealed; there came a great financial explosion, and our boss, among the rest, failed. He owed us all six months' wages, and we were all very poor and very blue. Jonathan Whittemore--a real good fellow, who used to cover the hammers with leather--came to me the day the shop was closed, and told me he was going to take the chance to go to Europe. He was going to the Musical Conservatory at Leipsic, if he could. He would work his pa.s.sage out as a stoker. He would wash himself for three or four days at Bremen, and then get work, if he could, with Voightlander or Von Hammer till he could enter the Conservatory. By way of preparation for this he wanted me to sell him my Adler's German Dictionary.

"I've nothing to give you for it, Felix, but this foolish thing,--it is one of Burrham's tickets,--which I bought in a frolic the night of our sleigh-ride. I'll transfer it to you."

I told Jonathan he might have the dictionary and welcome. He was doing a sensible thing, and he would use it twenty times as much as I should.

As for the ticket, he had better keep it. I did not want it. But I saw he would feel better if I took it,--so he indorsed it to me.

Now the reader must know that this Burrham was a man who had got hold of one corner of the idea of what the Public could do for its children. He had found out that there were a thousand people who would be glad to make the tour of the mountains and the lakes every summer if they could do it for half-price. He found out that the railroad companies were glad enough to put the price down if they could be sure of the thousand people. He mediated between the two, and so "cheap excursions" came into being. They are one of the gifts the Public gives its children. Rising from step to step, Burrham had, just before the great financial crisis, conceived the idea of a great cheap combination, in which everybody was to receive a magazine for a year and a cyclopaedia, both at half-price; and not only so, but the money that was gained in the combination was to be given by lot to two ticket-holders, one a man and one a woman, for their dowry in marriage. I dare say the reader remembers the prospectus.

It savors too much of the modern "Gift Enterprise" to be reprinted in full; but it had this honest element, that everybody got more than he could get for his money in retail. I have my magazine, the old _Boston Miscellany_, to this day, and I just now looked out Leva.s.seur's name in my cyclopaedia; and, as you will see, I have reason to know that all the other subscribers got theirs.

One of the tickets for these books, for which Whittemore had given five good dollars, was what he gave to me for my dictionary. And so we parted. I loitered at Attica, hoping for a place where I could put in my oar. But my hand was out at teaching, and in a time when all the world's veneers of different kinds were ripping off, n.o.body wanted me to put on more of my kind,--so that my cash ran low. I would not go in debt,--that is a thing I never did. More honest, I say, to go to the poorhouse, and make the Public care for its child there, than to borrow what you cannot pay. But I did not come quite to that, as you shall see.

I was counting up my money one night,--and it was easily done,--when I observed that the date on this Burrham order was the 15th of October, and it occurred to me that it was not quite a fortnight before those books were to be delivered. They were to be delivered at Castle Garden, at New York; and the thought struck me that I might go to New York, try my chance there for work, and at least see the city, which I had never seen, and get my cyclopaedia and magazine. It was the least offer the Public ever made to me; but just then the Public was in a collapse, and the least was better than nothing. The plan of so long a journey was Quixotic enough, and I hesitated about it a good deal. Finally I came to this resolve: I would start in the morning to walk to the lock-station at Brockport on the ca.n.a.l. If a boat pa.s.sed that night where they would give me my fare for any work I could do for them, I would go to Albany.

If not, I would walk back to Lockport the next day, and try my fortune there. This gave me, for my first day's enterprise, a foot journey of about twenty-five miles. It was out of the question, with my finances, for me to think of compa.s.sing the train.

Every point of life is a pivot on which turns the whole action of our after-lives; and so, indeed, of the after-lives of the whole world. But we are so purblind that we only see this of certain special enterprises and endeavors, which we therefore call critical. I am sure I see it of that twenty-five miles of fresh autumnal walking. I was in tiptop spirits. I found the air all oxygen, and everything "all right." I did not loiter, and I did not hurry. I swung along with the feeling that every nerve and muscle drew, as in the trades a sailor feels of every rope and sail. And so I was not tired, not thirsty, till the brook appeared where I was to drink; nor hungry till twelve o'clock came, when I was to dine. I called myself as I walked "The Child of Good Fortune,"

because the sun was on my right quarter, as the sun should be when you walk, because the rain of yesterday had laid the dust for me, and the frost of yesterday had painted the hills for me, and the northwest wind cooled the air for me. I came to Wilkie's Cross-Roads just in time to meet the Claremont baker and buy my dinner loaf of him. And when my walk was nearly done, I came out on the low bridge at Sewell's, which is a drawbridge, just before they raised it for a pa.s.sing boat, instead of the moment after. Because I was all right I felt myself and called myself "The Child of Good Fortune." Dear reader, in a world made by a loving Father, we are all of us children of good fortune, if we only have wit enough to find it out, as we stroll along.

The last stroke of good fortune which that day had for me was the solution of my question whether or no I would go to Babylon. I was to go if any good-natured boatman would take me. This is a question, Mr.

Millionnaire, more doubtful to those who have not drawn their dividends than to those who have. As I came down the village street at Brockport, I could see the horses of a boat bound eastward, led along from level to level at the last lock; and, in spite of my determination not to hurry, I put myself on the long, loping trot which the St. Regis Indians taught me, that I might overhaul this boat before she got under way at her new speed. I came out on the upper gate of the last lock just as she pa.s.sed out from the lower gate. The horses were just put on, and a reckless boy gave them their first blow after two hours of rest and corn. As the heavy boat started off under the new motion, I saw, and her skipper saw at the same instant, that a long new tow-rope of his, which had lain coiled on deck, was suddenly flying out to its full length. The outer end of it had been carried upon the lock-side by some chance or blunder, and there some idle loafer had thrown the looped bight of it over a hawser-post. The loafers on the lock saw, as I did, that the rope was running out, and at the call of the skipper one of them condescended to throw the loop overboard, but he did it so carelessly that the lazy rope rolled over into the lock, and the loop caught on one of the valve-irons of the upper gate. The whole was the business of an instant, of course.

But the poor skipper saw, what we did not, that the coil of the rope on deck was foul, and so entangled round his long tiller, that ten seconds would do one of three things,--they would snap his new rope in two, which was a trifle, or they would wrench his tiller-head off the rudder, which would cost him an hour to mend, or they would upset those two horses, at this instant on a trot, and put into the ca.n.a.l the rowdy youngster who had started them. It was this complex certainty which gave fire to the double cries which he addressed aft to us on the lock, and forward to the magnet boy, whose indifferent intelligence at that moment drew him along.

I was stepping upon the gate-head to walk across it. It took but an instant, not nearly all the ten seconds, to swing down by my arms into the lock, keeping myself hanging by my hands, to catch with my right foot the bight of the rope and lift it off the treacherous iron, to kick the whole into the water, and then to scramble up the wet lock-side again. I got a little wet, but that was nothing. I ran down the tow-path, beckoned to the skipper, who sheered his boat up to the sh.o.r.e, and I jumped on board.

At that moment, reader, Fausta was sitting in a yellow chair on the deck of that musty old boat, crocheting from a pattern in _G.o.dey's Lady's Book._ I remember it as I remember my breakfast of this morning.

Not that I fell in love with her, nor did I fall in love with my breakfast; but I knew she was there. And that was the first time I ever saw her. It is many years since, and I have seen her every day from that evening to this evening. But I had then no business with her. My affair was with him whom I have called the skipper, by way of adapting this fresh-water narrative to ears accustomed to Marryat and Tom Cringle. I told him that I had to go to New York; that I had not time to walk, and had not money to pay; that I should like to work my pa.s.sage to Troy, if there were any way in which I could; and to ask him this I had come on board.

"Waal," said the skipper, "'taint much that is to be done, and Zekiel and I calc'late to do most of that; and there's that blamed boy beside--"

This adjective "blamed" is the virtuous oath by which simple people, who are improving their habits, cure themselves of a stronger epithet, as men take to flagroot who are abandoning tobacco.

"He ain't good for nothin', as you see," continued the skipper meditatively, "and you air, anybody can see that," he added. "Ef you've mind to come to Albany, you can have your vittles, poor enough they are too; and ef you are willing to ride sometimes, you can ride. I guess where there's room for three in the bunks there's room for four. 'Taint everybody would have cast off that blamed hawser-rope as neat as you did."

From which last remark I inferred, what I learned as a certainty as we travelled farther, that but for the timely a.s.sistance I had rendered him I should have plead for my pa.s.sage in vain.

This was my introduction to Fausta. That is to say, she heard the whole of the conversation. The formal introduction, which is omitted in no circle of American life to which I have ever been admitted, took place at tea half an hour after, when Mrs. Grills, who always voyaged with her husband, brought in the flapjacks from the kitchen. "Miss Jones," said Grills, as I came into the meal, leaving Zekiel at the tiller,--"Miss Jones, this is a young man who is going to Albany. I don't rightly know how to call your name, sir." I said my name was Carter. Then he said, "Mr. Carter, this is Miss Jones. Mrs. Grills, Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter, Mrs. Grills. She is my wife." And so our _partie carree_ was established for the voyage.

In these days there are few people who know that a journey on a ca.n.a.l is the pleasantest journey in the world. A ca.n.a.l has to go through fine scenery. It cannot exist unless it follow through the valley of a stream. The movement is so easy that, with your eyes shut, you do not know you move. The route is so direct, that when you are once shielded from the sun, you are safe for hours. You draw, you read, you write, or you sew, crochet, or knit. You play on your flute or your guitar, without one hint of inconvenience. At a "low bridge" you duck your head lest you lose your hat,--and that reminder teaches you that you are human. You are glad to know this, and you laugh at the memento. For the rest of the time you journey, if you are "all right" within, in elysium.

I rode one of those horses perhaps two or three hours a day. At locks I made myself generally useful. At night I walked the deck till one o'clock, with my pipe or without it, to keep guard against the lock-thieves. The skipper asked me sometimes, after he found I could "cipher," to disentangle some of the knots in his bills of lading for him. But all this made but a little inroad in those lovely autumn days, and for the eight days that we glided along,--there is one blessed level which is seventy miles long,--I spent most of my time with Fausta. We walked together on the tow-path to get our appet.i.tes for dinner and for supper. At sunrise I always made a cruise inland, and collected the gentians and black alder-berries and colored leaves, with which she dressed Mrs. Grill's table. She took an interest in my wretched sketchbook, and though she did not and does not draw well, she did show me how to spread an even tint, which I never knew before. I was working up my French. She knew about as much and as little as I did, and we read Mad. Reybaud's Clementine together, guessing at the hard words, because we had no dictionary.

Dear old Grill offered to talk French at table, and we tried it for a few days. But it proved he picked up his p.r.o.nunciation at St.

Catherine's, among the boatmen there, and he would say _shwo_ for "horses," where the book said _chevaux_. Our talk, on the other hand, was not Parisian,--but it was not Catherinian,--and we subsided into English again.

So sped along these blessed eight days. I told Fausta thus much of my story, that I was going to seek my fortune in New York. She, of course, knew nothing of me but what she saw, and she told me nothing of her story.

But I was very sorry when we came into the basin at Troy, for I knew then that in all reason I must take the steamboat down. And I was very glad,--I have seldom in my life been so glad,--when I found that she also was going to New York immediately. She accepted, very pleasantly, my offer to carry her trunk to the Isaac Newton for her, and to act as her escort to the city. For me, my trunk,

"in danger tried,"

Swung in my hand,--"nor left my side."

My earthly possessions were few anywhere. I had left at Attica most of what they were. Through the voyage I had been man enough to keep on a working-gear fit for a workman's duty. And old Grills had not yet grace enough to keep his boat still on Sunday. How one remembers little things! I can remember each touch of the toilet, as, in that corner of a dark cuddy where I had shared "Zekiel's" bunk with him, I dressed myself with one of my two white shirts, and with the change of raiment which had been tight squeezed in my portmanteau. The old overcoat was the best part of it, as in a finite world it often is. I sold my felt hat to Zekiel, and appeared with a light travelling-cap. I do not know how Fausta liked my metamorphosis. I only know that, like b.u.t.terflies, for a day or two after they go through theirs, I felt decidedly cold.

As Carter, the ca.n.a.l man, I had carried Fausta's trunk on board. As Mr.

Carter, I gave her my arm, led her to the gangway of the Newton, took her pa.s.sage and mine, and afterwards walked and sat through the splendid moonlight of the first four hours down the river.

Miss Jones determined that evening to breakfast on the boat. Be it observed that I did not then know her by any other name. She was to go to an aunt's house, and she knew that if she left the boat on its early arrival in New York, she would disturb that lady by a premature ringing at her bell. I had no reason for haste, as the reader knows. The distribution of the cyclopaedias was not to take place till the next day, and that absurd trifle was the only distinct excuse I had to myself for being in New York at all. I asked Miss Jones, therefore, if I might not be her escort still to her aunt's house. I had said it would be hard to break off our pleasant journey before I had seen where she lived, and I thought she seemed relieved to know that she should not be wholly a stranger on her arrival. It was clear enough that her aunt would send no one to meet her.

These preliminaries adjusted, we parted to our respective cabins. And when, the next morning, at that unearthly hour demanded by Philadelphia trains and other exigencies, the Newton made her dock, I rejoiced that breakfast was not till seven o'clock, that I had two hours more of the berth, which was luxury compared to Zekiel's bunk,--I turned upon my other side and slept on.

Sorry enough for that morning nap was I for the next thirty-six hours.

For when I went on deck, and sent in the stewardess to tell Miss Jones that I was waiting for her, and then took from her the check for her trunk, I woke to the misery of finding that, in that treacherous two hours, some pirate from the pier had stepped on board, had seized the waiting trunk, left almost alone, while the baggage-master's back was turned, and that, to a certainty, it was lost. I did not return to Fausta with this story till the breakfast-bell had long pa.s.sed and the breakfast was very cold. I did not then tell it to her till I had seen her eat her breakfast with an appet.i.te much better than mine. I had already offered up stairs the largest reward to anybody who would bring it back which my scanty purse would pay. I had spoken to the clerk, who had sent for a policeman. I could do nothing more, and I did not choose to ruin her chop and coffee by ill-timed news. The officer came before breakfast was over, and called me from table.

On the whole, his business-like way encouraged one. He had some clews which I had not thought possible. It was not unlikely that they should pounce on the trunk before it was broken open. I gave him a written description of its marks; and when he civilly asked if "my lady" would give some description of any books or other articles within, I readily promised that I would call with such a description at the police station. Somewhat encouraged, I returned to Miss Jones, and, when I led her from the breakfast-table, told her of her misfortune. I took all shame to myself for my own carelessness, to which I attributed the loss.

But I told her all that the officer had said to me, and that I hoped to bring her the trunk at her aunt's before the day was over.

Fausta took my news, however, with a start which frightened me. All her money, but a shilling or two, was in the trunk. To place money in trunks is a weakness of the female mind which I have nowhere seen accounted for. Worse than this, though,--as appeared after a moment's examination of her travelling _sac_,--her portfolio in the trunk contained the letter of the aunt whom she came to visit, giving her her address in the city. To this address she had no other clew but that her aunt was Mrs. Mary Mason, had married a few years before a merchant named Mason, whom Miss Jones had never seen, and of whose name and business this was all she knew. They lived in a numbered street, but whether it was Fourth Street, or Fifty-fourth, or One Hundred and Twenty-fourth, or whether it was something between, the poor child had no idea. She had put up the letter carefully, but had never thought of the importance of the address. Besides this aunt, she knew no human being in New York.

"Child of the Public," I said to myself, "what do you do now?" I had appealed to my great patron in sending for the officer, and on the whole I felt that my sovereign had been gracious to me, if not yet hopeful.

But now I must rub my lamp again, and ask the genie where the unknown Mason lived. The genie of course suggested the Directory, and I ran for it to the clerk's office. But as we were toiling down the pages of "Masons," and had written off thirteen or fourteen who lived in numbered streets, Fausta started, looked back at the preface and its date, flung down her pencil in the only abandonment of dismay in which I ever saw her, and cried, "First of May! They were abroad until May. They have been abroad since the day they were married!" So that genie had to put his glories into his pocket, and carry his Directory back to the office again.

The natural thing to propose was, that I should find for Miss Jones a respectable boarding-house, and that she should remain there until her trunk was found, or till she could write to friends who had this fatal address, and receive an answer. But here she hesitated. She hardly liked to explain why,--did not explain wholly. But she did not say that she had no friends who knew this address. She had but few relations in the world, and her aunt had communicated with her alone since she came from Europe. As for the boarding-house, "I had rather look for work," she said bravely. "I have never promised to pay money when I did not know how to obtain it; and that"--and here she took out fifty or sixty cents from her purse--"and that is all now. In respectable boarding-houses, when people come without luggage, they are apt to ask for an advance.

Or, at least," she added, with some pride, "I am apt to offer it."

I hastened to ask her to take all my little store; but I had to own that I had not two dollars. I was sure, however, that my overcoat and the dress-suit I wore would avail me something, if I thrust them boldly up some spout. I was sure that I should be at work within a day or two. At all events, I was certain of the cyclopaedia the next day. That should go to old Gowan's,--in Fulton Street it was then,--"the moral centre of the intellectual world," in the hour I got it. And at this moment, for the first time, the thought crossed me, "If mine could only be the name drawn, so that that foolish $5,000 should fall to me." In that case I felt that Fausta might live in "a respectable boarding-house" till she died. Of this, of course, I said nothing, only that she was welcome to my poor dollar and a half, and that I should receive the next day some more money that was due me.

"You forget, Mr. Carter," replied Fausta, as proudly as before,--"you forget that I cannot borrow of you any more than of a boarding-house-keeper. I never borrow. Please G.o.d, I never will. It must be," she added, "that in a Christian city like this there is some respectable and fit arrangement made for travellers who find themselves where I am. What that provision is I do not know; but I will find out what it is before this sun goes down."

I paused a moment before I replied. If I had been fascinated by this lovely girl before, I now bowed in respect before her dignity and resolution; and, with my sympathy, there was a delicious throb of self-respect united, when I heard her lay down so simply, as principles of her life, two principles on which I had always myself tried to live.

The half-expressed habits of my boyhood and youth were now uttered for me as axioms by lips which I knew could speak nothing but right and truth.

I paused a moment. I stumbled a little as I expressed my regret that she would not let me help her,--joined with my certainty that she was in the right in refusing,--and then, in the only stiff speech I ever made to her, I said:--

"I am the 'Child of the Public.' If you ever hear my story, you will say so too. At the least, I can claim this, that I have a right to help you in your quest as to the way in which the public will help you. Thus far I am clearly the officer in his suite to whom he has intrusted you.

Are you ready, then, to go on sh.o.r.e?"

Fausta looked around on that forlorn ladies' saloon, as if it were the last link holding her to her old safe world.

"Looked upon skylight, lamp, and chain, As what she ne'er might see again."