John Marvel, Assistant Part 30

"He's not for sale--I won't sell him."

"Well, I'll make it a hundred." A hundred dollars! The money seemed a fortune to me; but I could not sell Dix.

"No. I tell you the dog is not for sale. I won't sell him."

"What is your price, anyhow?" demanded McSheen. "I tell you I want the dog. I promised my daughter to get the dog back."

"Mr. McSheen, I have told you the dog is not for sale--I will not sell him at any price."

He suddenly flared up.

"Oh! You won't! Well, I'll tell you that I'll have that dog and you'll sell him too."

"I will not."

"We'll see. You think you're a pretty big man, but I'll show you who's bigger in this town--you or Coll McSheen. I helped you once and you haven't sense enough to appreciate it. You look out for me, young man."

He turned slowly with his scowling eye on me.

"I will."

"You'd better. When I lay my hand on you, you'll think an earthquake's. .h.i.t you."

"Well, get out of my office now," I said.

"Oh! I'm going now, but wait."

He walked out, and I was left with the knowledge that I had one powerful enemy.

I was soon to know Mr. Collis McSheen better, as he was also to know me better.

A few days after this I was walking along and about to enter my office when a man accosted me at the entrance and asked if I could tell him of a good lawyer.

I told him I was one myself, though I had the grace to add that there were many more, and I named several of the leading firms in the city.

"Well, I guess you'll do. I was looking for you. You are the one she sent me to," he said doubtfully, when I had told him my name. He was a weather-beaten little Scotchman, very poor and hard up; but there was something in his air that dignified him. He had a definite aim, and a definite wrong to be righted. The story he told me was a pitiful one. He had been in this country several years and had a place in a locomotive-shop somewhere East, and so long as he had had work, had saved money. But they "had been ordered out," he said, and after waiting around finding that the strike had failed, he had come on here and had gotten a place in a boiler-shop, but they "had been ordered out" again, "just as I got my wife and children on and was getting sort of fixed up," he added. Then he had resigned from the union and had got another place, but a man he had had trouble with back East was "one of the big men up here now," and he had had him turned out because he did not "belong to the union." He was willing to join the union now, but "Wringman had had him turned down." Then he had gotten a place as a driver. But he had been ill and had lost his place, and since then he had not been able to get work, "though the preacher had tried to help him." He did not seem to complain of this loss of his place.

"The wagon had to run," he said, but he and his wife, too, had been ill, and the baby had died and the expenses of the burial had been "something." He appeared to take it as a sort of ultimate decree not to be complained of--only stated. He mentioned it simply by way of explanation, and spoke as if it were a mere matter of Fate. And, indeed, to the poor, sickness often has the finality of Fate. During their illness they had sold nearly all their furniture to live on and pay rent. Now he was in arrears; his wife was in bed, his children sick, and his landlord had levied on his furniture that remained for the rent. At the last gasp he had come to see a lawyer.

"I know I owe the rent," he said, "but the beds won't pay it and the loan company's got all the rest."

I advised him that the property levied on was not subject to levy; but suggested his going to his landlord and laying the case before him.

"If he has any bowels of compa.s.sion whatever--" I began, but he interrupted me.

"That's what the preacher said." But his landlord was "the Argand Estate," he added in a hopeless tone. He only knew the agent. He had been to him and so had the preacher; but he said he could do nothing--the rent must be paid--"the Argand Estate had to be kept up, or it couldn't do all the good it did"--so he was going to turn them out next day.

He had been to one or two lawyers, he said; but they wouldn't take the case against the Argand Estate, and then the lady had sent him to me.

"What lady?"

"The lady who teaches the little school--Miss Leigh--she teaches my Janet."

McNeil's name had at first made no impression on me, but the mention of Miss Leigh, "the Argand Estate," and of Wringman brought up an a.s.sociation. "McNeil--McNeil?" I said. "Did you have five children; and did your wife bring them on here some months ago--when the train was late, one day?"

"Yes, sorr; that's the way it was."

"Well, I will keep you in longer than to-morrow," I said. And I did. But Justice is too expensive a luxury for the poor. "Law is law," but it was made by landlords. I won his case for him and got his furniture released; I scored the Argand agent, an icy-faced gentleman, named Gillis, "of high character," as the Argand counsel, Mr. McSheen, indignantly declared, and incidentally "the Argand Estate," in terms which made me more reputation than I knew of at the time.

The case was a reasonably simple one, for my client was ent.i.tled to a poor debtor's exemption of a few household articles of primary need, and he had not half of what he could have claimed under his exemption. It appeared, however, that in the lease, which was in the regular form used by the Argand Estate, all exemptions were waived, and also that it was the regular practice of the estate to enforce the waiver, and it was alleged at the trial that this practice had always been sustained. It was the fact that this was the customary lease and that a principle was involved which brought Mr. McSheen into the case, as he stated, for a client who was the largest landlord in the city. And it was the fact that Miss Leigh had recommended me and that McSheen was in the case that made me put forth all my powers on it.

On the stand the Argand agent, Gillis, who, it appeared, had begun as an office-boy in the office of Mr. Argand and had then become his private secretary, from which he had risen to wealth and position, a fact I had learned from Kalender, was foolish enough to say that the case was gotten up by an unknown young lawyer out of spite against the Argand Estate and that it was simply an instance of "the eternal attacks on wealth"; that, in fact, there were "only two sides, the man with the dress-coat and the man without."

"You began poor. When did you change your coat?" I asked.

The laugh was raised on him and he got angry. After that I had the case.

I was unknown, but Gillis was better known than I thought, and the hardship on my client was too plain. I led him on into a tangle of admissions, tied him up and cross-examined him till the perspiration ran off his icy forehead. I got the jury and won the case. But, notwithstanding my success, my client was ruined. He was put out of the house, of course, and though I had saved for him his beds, every article he possessed soon went for food. The laws established for the very protection of the poor destroy their credit and injure them. He could not give security for rent, and but for a fellow-workman named Simms taking him into his house, and the kindness of the man he had spoken of as "the preacher," his children would have had to go to the workhouse or a worse place.

McNeil's case was the beginning of my practice, and in a little while I found myself counsel for many of the drivers in our section of the city.

Among those whom this case brought me in touch with was a young lawyer, who, a little later, became the attorney for the government. My interest in him was quickened by the discovery that he was related to Mr. Leigh, a fact he mentioned somewhat irrelevantly. He was present during the trial and on its conclusion came up and congratulated me on my success against what he termed "the most powerful combination for evil in the city. They bid fair," he said, "to control not only the city, but the State, and are the more dangerous because they are entrenched behind the support of ignorant honesty. But you must look out for McSheen." As he stood near Coll McSheen, I caught the latter's eye fixed on us with that curious malevolent expression which cast a sort of mask over his face.

I had not hunted up John Marvel after learning of his presence in the city, partly because I thought he would not be congenial and partly because, having left several affectionate letters from him unanswered during my prosperity, I was ashamed to seek him now in my tribulation.

But Fate decided for me. We think of our absent friend and lo! a letter from him is handed to us before we have forgotten the circ.u.mstance. We fancy that a man in the street is an acquaintance; he comes nearer and we discover our mistake, only to meet the person we thought of, on the next corner. We cross seas and run into our next-door neighbor in a crowded thoroughfare. In fact, the instances of coincidence are so numerous and so strange that one can hardly repel the inference that there is some sort of law governing them.

I indulged in this reflection when, a morning or two later, as I was recalling my carelessness in not looking up John Marvel and Wolffert, there was a tap on the door and a spare, well-built, dark-bearded man, neatly but plainly dressed, walked in. His hat shaded his face, and partly concealed his eyes; but as he smiled and spoke, I recognized him.

"Wolffert! I was just thinking of you."

He looked much older than I expected, and than, I thought, I myself looked; his face was lined and his hair had a few strands of silver at the temples; his eyes were deeper than ever, and he appeared rather worn. But he had developed surprisingly since we had parted at College.

His manner was full of energy. In fact, as he talked he almost blazed at times. And I was conscious of a strange kind of power in him that attracted and carried me along with him, even to the dulling of my judgment. He had been away, he said, and had only just returned, and had heard of my success in "defeating the Argand Estate Combination"; and he had come to congratulate me. It was the first victory any one had ever been able to win against them.

"But I did not defeat any combination," I said. "I only defeated Collis McSheen in his effort to take my client's bed and turn him and his children out in the street without a blanket."

"There is the Combination, all the same," he a.s.serted. "They have the Law and the Gospel both in the combine. They make and administer the one and then preach the other to bind on men's shoulders burdens, grievous to be borne, that they themselves do not touch with so much as a finger."

"But I don't understand," I persisted; for I saw that he labored under much suppressed feeling, and I wondered what had embittered him. "Collis McSheen I know, for I have had some experience of him; and Gillis, the agent, was a cool proposition; but the Argand Estate? Why, McSheen strung out a list of charities that the Argand Estate supported that staggered me. I only could not understand why they support a man like McSheen."

"The Argand Estate support charities! Yes, a score of them--all listed--and every dollar is blood, wrung from the hearts and souls of others--and there are many Argands."

"How do you mean?" For he was showing a sudden pa.s.sion which I did not understand. He swept on without heeding my question.

"Why, their houses are the worst in the city; their tenements the poorest for the rent charged; their manufactories the greatest sweatshops; their corporate enterprises all at the cost of the working-cla.s.s, and, to crown it all, they sustain and support the worst villains in this city, who live on the bodies and souls of the ignorant and the wretched."

"Whom do you mean? I don't understand."

"Why, do you suppose the Coll McSheens and Gillises and their kind could subsist unless the Argands and Capons of the Time supported them? They have grown so bold now that they threaten even their social superiors--they must rule alone! They destroy all who do not surrender at discretion."