John Marvel, Assistant Part 26

I could not, for the life of me, tell whether this was an affirmation or a question. So I merely nodded, which answered in either case. But I was pining to say to him, "Peck, why don't you come out with it and ask me plainly what I know of your conference the other night?" However, I did not. I had learned to play a close game.

"Oh! I saw your n.i.g.g.e.r, Jeams--ah--the other day."

"Did you? Where is he?" I wanted to find him, and asked innocently enough.

"Back at home."

"How is he getting on?"

"Pretty well, I believe. He's a big rascal."

"Yes, but a pleasant one, and an open one."

Peck suddenly rose, "Well, I must be going. I have an engagement which I must keep." At the door he paused. "By the way, Mrs. Peck begged to be remembered to you."

He had a way of blinking, like a terrapin--slowly. He did so now.

He did not mean his tone to be insolent--only to be insolent himself--but it was.

"I'm very much obliged to her. Remember me to her."

That afternoon I strolled out, hoping to get a glimpse of Miss Leigh. I did so, but Peck was riding in a carriage with her and her father. So he won the last trick, after all. But the rubber was not over. I was glad that they did not see me, and I returned to my office filled with rage and determined to unmask Peck the first chance I should have, not because he was a trickster and a liar, but because he was applying his trickiness in the direction of Miss Leigh.

That night the weather changed and it turned off cold. I remember it from a small circ.u.mstance. The wind appeared to me to have shifted when Miss Leigh's carriage drove out of sight with Peck in it. I went home and had bad dreams. What was Peck doing with the Leighs? Could I have been mistaken in thinking he and McSheen had been talking of Mr. Leigh in their conference? For some time there had been trouble on the street-car lines of the city and a number of small strikes had taken place on a system of lines running across the city and to some extent in compet.i.tion with the West Line, which Mr. Leigh had an interest in.

According to the press the West Line, which ran out into a new section, was growing steadily while the other line was falling back. Could it be that McSheen was endeavoring to secure possession of the West Line?

This, too, had been intimated, and Canter, one of the richest men of the town, was said to be behind him. What should I do under the circ.u.mstances? Would Peck tell Miss Leigh any lies about me? All these suggestions pestered me and, with the loss of Dix, kept me awake, so that next morning I was in rather a bad humor.

In my walk through the poorer quarter on my way to my office I used to see a great deal of the children, and it struck me that one of the saddest effects of poverty--the dire poverty of the slum--was the debas.e.m.e.nt of the children. Cruelty appears to be the natural instinct of the young as they begin to gain in strength. But among the well-to-do and the well-brought-up of all cla.s.ses it is kept in abeyance and is trained out. But in the cla.s.s I speak of at a certain age it appears to flower out into absolute brutality. It was the chief drawback to my sojourn in this quarter, for I am very fond of children, and the effect of poverty on the children was the saddest part of my surroundings. To avoid the ruder element, I used to walk of a morning through the little back street where I had discovered that morning the little school for very small children, and I made the acquaintance of a number of the children who attended the school. One little girl in particular interested me. She was the poorest clad of any, but her cheeks were like apples and her chubby wrists were the worst chapped of all; and with her sometimes was a little crippled girl, who walked with a crutch, whom she generally led by the hand in the most motherly way, so small that it was a wonder how she could walk, much more study.

My little girls and I got to that point of intimacy where they would talk to me, and Dix had made friends with them and used to walk beside them as we went along.

The older girl's first name was Janet, but she spoke with a lisp and I could not make out her name with a certainty. Her father had been out of work, she said, but now was a driver, and her teacher was "Mith Th.e.l.len." The little cripple's name was "Sissy"--Sissy Talman. This was all the information I could get out of her. "Mith Th.e.l.len" was evidently her G.o.ddess.

On the cool, crisp morning after the turn in the weather, I started out rather earlier than usual, intending to hunt for Dix and also to look up Jeams. I bought a copy of the _Trumpet_ and was astonished to read an account of trouble among the employees of the West Line, for I had not seen the least sign of it. The piece went on further to intimate that Mr. Leigh had been much embarra.s.sed by his extension of his line out into a thinly populated district and that a strike, which was quite sure to come, might prove very disastrous to him. I somehow felt very angry at the reference to Mr. Leigh and was furious with myself for having written for the _Trumpet_. I walked around through the street where the school was, though without any definite idea whatever, as it was too early for the children. As I pa.s.sed by the school the door was wide open and I stopped and looked in. The fire was not yet made. The stove was open; the door of the cellar, opening outside, was also open, and at the moment a young woman--the teacher or some one else--was backing up the steps out of the cellar lugging a heavy coal-scuttle. One hand, and a very small one, was supporting her against the side of the wall, helping her push herself up. I stepped forward with a vague pity for any woman having to lift such a weight.

"Won't you let me help you?" I asked.

"Thank you, I believe I can manage it." And she pulled the scuttle to the top, where she planted it, and turned with quite an air of triumph.

It was she! my young lady of the sunny house: Miss Leigh! I had not recognized her at all. Her face was all aglow and her eyes were filled with light at a difficulty overcome. I do not know what my face showed; but unless it expressed conflicting emotions, it belied my feelings. I was equally astonished, delighted and embarra.s.sed. I hastened to say something which might put her at her ease and at the same time prove a plea for myself, and open the way to further conversation.

"I was on my way to my law-office, and seeing a lady struggling with so heavy a burden, I had hoped I might have the privilege of a.s.sisting her as I should want any other gentleman to do to my sister in a similar case." I meant if I had had a sister.

She thanked me calmly; in fact, very calmly.

"I do it every morning; but this morning, as it is the first cold weather, I piled it a little too high; that is all." She looked toward the door and made a movement.

I wanted to say I would gladly come and lift it for her every morning; that I could carry all her burdens for her. But I was almost afraid even to ask permission again to carry it that morning. As, however, she had given me a peg, I seized it.

"Well, at least, let me carry it this morning," I said, and without waiting for an answer or even venturing to look at her, I caught up the bucket and swung it into the house, when seeing the sticks all laid in the stove, and wishing to do her further service, without asking her anything more, I poured half the scuttleful into the stove.

"I used to be able to make a fire, when I lived in my old home," I said tentatively; then as I saw a smile coming into her face, I added: "But I'm afraid to try an exhibition of my skill after such boasting," and without waiting further, I backed out, bringing with me only a confused apparition of an angel lifting a coal-scuttle.

I do not remember how I reached my office that day, whether I walked the stone pavements through the prosaic streets or trod on rosy clouds.

There were no prosaic streets for me that day. I wondered if the article I had seen in the paper had any foundation. Could Mr. Leigh have lost his fortune? Was this the reason she taught school? I had observed how simply she was dressed, and I thrilled to think that I might be able to rescue her from this drudgery.

The beggars who crossed my path that morning were fortunate. I gave them all my change, even relieving the necessities of several thirsty imposters who beset my way, declaring with unblushing, sodden faces that they had not had a mouthful for days.

I walked past the little school-house that night and lingered at the closed gate, finding a charm in the spot. The little plain house had suddenly become a shrine. It seemed as if she might be hovering near.

The next morning I pa.s.sed through the same street, and peeped in at the open door. There she was, bending over the open stove in which she had already lighted her fire, little knowing of the flame she had kindled in my heart. How I cursed myself for being too late to meet her. And yet, perhaps, I should have been afraid to speak to her; for as she turned toward the door, I started on with pumping heart in quite a fright lest she should detect me looking in.

I walked by her old home Sunday afternoon. Flowers bloomed at the windows. As I was turning away, Count Pushkin came out of the door and down the steps. As he turned away from the step his habitual simper changed into a scowl; and a furious joy came into my heart. Something had gone wrong with him within there. I wished I had been near enough to have crossed his path to smile in his face; but I was too distant, and he pa.s.sed on with clenched fist and black brow.

After this my regular walk was through the street of the baby-school, and when I was so fortunate as to meet Miss Leigh she bowed and smiled to me, though only as a pa.s.sing acquaintance, whilst I on my part began to plan how I should secure an introduction to her. Her smile was sunshine enough for a day, but I wanted the right to bask in it and I meant to devise a plan. After what I had told Peck, I could not present my letter; I must find some other means. It came in an unexpected way, and through the last person I should have imagined as my sponsor.

XX

MY FIRST CLIENT

But to revert to the morning when I made Miss Leigh's fire for her. I hunted for Dix all day, but without success, and was so busy about it that I did not have time to begin my search for Jeams. That evening, as it was raining hard, I treated myself to the unwonted luxury of a ride home on a street-car. The streets were greasy with a thick, black paste of mud, and the smoke was down on our heads in a dark slop. Like Petrarch, my thoughts were on Laura, and I was repining at the rain mainly because it prevented the possibility of a glimpse of Miss Leigh on the street: a chance I was ever on the watch for.

I boarded an open car just after it started and just before it ran through a short subway. The next moment a man who had run after the car sprang on the step beside me, and, losing his footing, he would probably have fallen and might have been crushed between the car and the edge of the tunnel, which we at that moment were entering, had I not had the good fortune, being on the outer seat, to catch him and hold him up.

Even as it was, his coat was torn and my elbow was badly bruised against the pillar at the entrance. I, however, pulled him over across my knees and held him until we had gone through the subway, when I made room for him on the seat beside me.

"That was a close call, my friend," I said. "Don't try that sort of thing too often."

"It was, indeed--the closest I ever had, and I have had some pretty close ones before. If you had not caught me, I would have been in the morgue to-morrow morning."

This I rather repudiated, but as the sequel showed, the idea appeared to have become fixed in his mind. We had some little talk together and I discovered that, like myself, he had come out West to better his fortune, and as he was dressed very plainly, I a.s.sumed that, like myself, he had fallen on rather hard times, and I expressed sympathy.

"Where have I seen you before?" I asked him.

"On the train once coming from the East."

"Oh! yes." I remembered now. He was the man who knew things.

"You know Mr. McSheen?" he asked irrelevantly.

"Yes--slightly. I have an office in the same building."

I wondered how he knew that I knew him.

"Yes. Well, you want to look out for him. Don't let him fool you. He's deep. What's that running down your sleeve? Why, it's blood! Where did it come from?" He looked much concerned.

"From my arm, I reckon. I hurt it a little back there, but it is nothing."