John Marvel, Assistant Part 36

WOLFFERT'S MISSION

Wolffert naturally was somewhat surprised to see me come sallying forth from Mrs. Argand's; for he knew what I had not known when I called there, that she was the real owner of "The Argand Estate."

I gave him an account of my interview with the lady.

"I was wondering," he said, laughing, "what you were doing in there after having beaten her in that suit. I thought you had taken your nerve with you. I was afraid you had fallen a victim to her blandishments."

"To whose?"

"Mrs. Argand's. She is the true Circe of the time, and her enchantment is one that only the strong can resist. She reaches men through their bellies."

"Oh!" I was thinking of quite another person, who alone could beguile me, and I was glad that he was not looking at me.

He was, however, too full of another subject to notice me, and as we walked along, I told him of the old lady's views about John Marvel. He suddenly launched out against her with a pa.s.sion which I was scarcely prepared for, as much as I knew he loved John Marvel. Turning, he pointed fiercely back at the great prison-like mansion.

"Do you see that big house?" His long finger shook slightly--an index of his feeling.

"Yes."

"Every stone in it is laid in mortar cemented with the tears of widows and orphans, and the blood of countless victims of greed and oppression."

"Oh! nonsense! I have no brief for that old woman. I think she is an ignorant, arrogant, purse-proud, ill-bred old creature, spoiled by her wealth and the adulation that it has brought her from a society of sycophants and parasites; but I do not believe that at heart she is bad." She had had a good advocate defend her to me and I was quoting her. Wolffert was unappeased.

"That is it. She sets up to be the paragon of Generosity, the patron of Charity, the example of Kindness for all to follow. She never gave a cent in her life--but only a portion--a small portion of the money wrung from the hearts of others. Her fortune was laid in corruption. Her old husband--I knew him!--he robbed every one, even his partners. He defrauded his benefactor, Colonel Tipps, who made him, and robbed his heirs of their inheritance."

"How?" For I was much interested now.

"By buying up their counsel, and inducing him to sell them out and making him his counsel. And now that old woman keeps him as her counsel and adviser, though he is the worst man in this city, guilty of every crime on the statute-books, sacred and profane."

"But she does not know that?"

"Not know it? Why doesn't she know it? Because she shuts her doors to the men who do know it, and her ears to the cries of his victims.

Doesn't every one who cares to look into the crimes in this city know that Coll McSheen is the protector of Vice, and that he could not exist a day if the so-called good people got up and determined to abolish him--that he is the owner of the vilest houses in this city--the vilest because they are not so openly vile as some others? Isn't she trying to sell her niece to an adventurer for a t.i.tle, or a reprobate for his money?"

"Is she?" My blood suddenly began to boil, and I began to get a new insight into Wolffert's hostility.

We had turned toward John Marvel's. He appeared a sort of landmark to which to turn as we were dealing with serious subjects, and Wolffert was on his way there when I encountered him. As we walked along, he disclosed a system of vice so widespread, so horrible and so repulsive that I hesitate to set it down. He declared that it extended over not only all the great cities of the country, but over all the great cities of all countries.

I related the story the poor girl I had met that night on the street had told me, but I frankly a.s.serted that I did not believe that it could be as general as he claimed.

"'Smooth Ally,' was it?" said Wolffert, who knew of her. "She is the smoothest and worst of them all, and she is protected by McSheen, who in turn is protected by clients like The Argand Estate. What became of her?" he demanded.

"Why, I don't know. I turned her over to the Salvationists--and--and I--rather left her to them."

I was beginning to feel somewhat meek under his scornful expression.

"That is always the way," he said. "We look after them for an hour and then drop them back into perdition."

"But I placed her in good hands. That is their business."

"Their business! Why is it not your business, too? How can you shift the responsibility? It is every one's business. Listen!" He had been recently to southern Russia, where, he said, the system of scoundrelism he described had one of its prolific sources, and he gave figures of the numbers of victims--girls of his own race--gathered up throughout the provinces and shipped from Odessa and other ports, to other countries, including America, to startle one.

"Time was when not a Jewess was to be found on the streets; but now!" He threw out his hand with a gesture of rage, and went on. He averred that many steamship officials combined to connive at the traffic, and that the criminals were shielded by powerful friends who were paid for their protection.

"Why, there are in this city to-night," he declared, "literally thousands of women who have, without any fault of theirs, but ignorance, vanity, and credulity, been drawn into and condemned to a life of vice and misery such as the mind staggers to believe."

"At least, if they are, they are in the main willing victims," I argued. "There may be a few instances like the girl I saw, but for the most part they have done it of their own volition."

Wolffert turned on me with fire flaming in his deep eyes. "Of their own volition! What is their volition? In fact, most of them are not voluntary accomplices. But if they were--it is simple ignorance on their part, and is that any reason for their undergoing the tortures of the d.a.m.ned in this world, not to mention what your Church teaches of the next world? Who brought them there--the man who deceived and betrayed them? Who acted on their weakness and drew them in?--their seducers?--the wretches who lure them to their destruction?--Not at all!

Jail-birds and scoundrels as they are, deserving the gallows if any one does, which I do not think any one does--but you do--the ultimate miscreant is not even the Coll McSheens who protect it; but Society which permits it to go on unchecked when, by the least serious and sensible effort, it could prevent it."

"How?" I demanded.

"How! By determining to prevent it and then organizing to do so. By simply being honest. Has it not broken up the inst.i.tution of slavery--highway robbery, organized murder--except by itself and its members? Of course, it could prevent it if it set itself to do it. But it is so steeped in selfishness and hypocrisy that it has no mind to anything that interferes with its pleasures."

We had now reached John Marvel's, where we found John, just back from a visit to a poor girl who was ill, and his account only added fuel to Wolffert's flaming wrath. He was pacing up and down the floor, as small as it was, his face working, his eyes flashing, and suddenly he let a light in on his ultimate motive. He launched out in a tirade against existing social conditions that exceeded anything I had ever heard. He declared that within hearing of the most opulent and extravagant cla.s.s the world had ever known were the cries and groans of the most wretched; that the former shut their ears and their eyes to it, and, contenting themselves with tossing a few pennies to a starving mult.i.tude, went on wallowing like swine in their own voluptuousness. "Look at the most talked of young man in this city to-day, the _bon parti_, the coveted of aspiring mothers. He lives a life to make a beast blush. He is a seducer of women, a denizen of brothels; a gambler in the life-blood of women and children, a fatted swine, yet he is the courted and petted of those who call themselves the best people! Faugh! it makes me sick."

This was to some extent satisfactory to me, for I detested Canter; but I wondered if Wolffert did not have the same reason for disliking him that I had.

"There was never so selfish and hypocritical a society on earth," he exclaimed, "as this which now exists. In times past, under the feudal system, there was apparently some reason for the existence of the so-called upper cla.s.ses--the first castle built made necessary all the others--the chief, at least, protected the subjects from the rapine of others, and he was always ready to imperil his life; but now--this! When they all claim to know, and do know much, they sit quiet in their own smug content like fatted swine, and let rapine, debauchery, and murder go on as it never has gone on in the last three hundred years."

"What are you talking about?" I demanded, impressed by his vehemence, but mystified by his furious indictment. He cooled down for a moment, and wiped his hand across his eyes.

"I am fresh from the scene of as brutal a butchery," he said, "as has taken place within a thousand years. Israel is undergoing to-day the most extensive and complete persecution that has existed since the close of the crusades. No wonder the young women fall victims to the scoundrels who offer them an asylum in a new land and lure them to their destruction with gifts of gold and words of peace. And this is what Society does--the virtue-boasting Society of the twentieth century! They speak of anarchy!--What they mean is a condition which disturbs the repose of the rich and powerful. There is anarchy now--the anarchy that consists of want of equal government for rich and poor alike. Look at John Marvel, here, preaching a gospel of universal love and acting it, too."

"Wolffert," said Marvel, softly, "don't. Leave me out--you know I do not--you are simply blinded by your affection for me----"

But Wolffert swept on. "Yes, he does--if any man ever does--he lives for others--and what does he get? Shunted off by a fat, sleek, self-seeking priest, who speaks smooth things to a people who will have nothing else."

"Wolffert, you must not," protested John; "I cannot allow you."

But Wolffert was in full tide. With a gesture he put John's protest by.

"--To preach and teach the poor how to be patient--how to suffer in silence----"

"Now, Leo," said John, taking him by the shoulders, "I must stop you--you are just tired, excited--overworked. If they suffer patiently they are so much the better off--their lot will be all the happier in the next world."

Wolffert sat down on the bed with a smile. "What are you going to do with such a man?" he said to me, with a despairing shrug. "And you know the curious thing is he believes it."

I went to my own room, feeling still like the prodigal, and that I had somehow gotten back home. But I had a deeper and more novel feeling. A new light had come to me, faintly, but still a light. What had I ever done except for myself? Here were two men equally as poor as I, living the life of self-denial--one actually by choice, the other as willingly and uncomplainingly as though it were by choice, and both not only content, but happy. Why should not I enter the brotherhood? Here was something far higher and n.o.bler than anything I had ever contemplated taking part in. What was it that withheld me? Was it, I questioned myself, that I, with no a.s.sociation whatever in the town except the poor, yet belonged to the cla.s.s that Wolffert crusaded against? Was there something fundamentally wrong with society? I could not enter freely into Wolffert's rhapsody of hate for the oppressors, nor yet into John Marvel's quiet, deep, and unreasoning love of Mankind. Yet I began to see dimly things I had never had a glimmer of before.

The a.s.sociation with my old friends made life a wholly different thing for me, and I made through them many new friends. They were very poor and did not count for much in the world; but they were real people, and their life, simple and insignificant as it was, was real and without sham. I found, indeed, that one got much nearer to the poor than to the better cla.s.s--their life was more natural; small things matter so much more to them. In fact, the smallest thing may be a great thing to a poor man. Also I found a kindness and generosity quite out of proportion to that of the well-to-do. However poor and dest.i.tute a man or a family might be there was always some one poorer and more dest.i.tute, and they gave with a generosity that was liberality, indeed. For they gave of their penury what was their living. Whatever the organized charities may do, and they do much, the poor support the poor and they rely on each other to an extent unknown among their more fortunate fellow-citizens.

As the Egyptian always stops to lift another's load, so here I found men always turning in to lend their aid.

Thus, gradually in the a.s.sociation of my friends who were working among the poor and helping to carry their burdens, I began to find a new field and to reap in it a content to which I had long been a stranger.

Also life began to take on for me a wholly new significance; as a field of work in which a man might escape from the slavery of a selfish convention which cramped the soul, into a larger life where service to mankind was the same with service to G.o.d, a life where forms were of small import and where the Christian and the Jew worked shoulder to shoulder and walked hand in hand. How much of my new feeling was due to Miss Eleanor Leigh, I did not take the trouble to consider.

"Father," said Eleanor, that evening, "I have a poor man whom I want a place for, and I must have it."