John Marvel, Assistant Part 39

"I do believe it. Of course, I mean it." She stopped and looked me again full in the face, and her eyes seemed to me to hold the depths of Heaven: deep, calm, confiding, and untroubled as a child's. They stirred me deeply. Why should I not declare myself! She was, since her father's embarra.s.sment, of which I had read, no longer beyond my reach. Did I not hold the future in fee? Why might not I win her?

For some time we drifted along, talking about nothing of moment, skirting the sh.o.r.e of the charmed unknown, deep within which lay the mystery of that which we both possibly meant, however indefinitely, to explore. Then we struck a little further in; and began to exchange experiences--first our early impressions of John Marvel and Wolffert. It was then that she told me of her coming to know John Marvel in the country that night during the epidemic. She did not tell of her part in the relief of the sick; but it was unnecessary. John Marvel had already told me that. It was John himself, with his wonderful unselfishness and gift of self-abnegation, of whom she spoke, and Wolffert with his ideal ever kept in sight.

"What turned you to philanthropy?" I asked with a shade of irony in my voice more marked than I had intended. If she was conscious of it she took no notice of it beyond saying,

"If you mean the poor, pitiful little bit of work I do trying to help Mr. Marvel and Mr. Wolffert among the poor--John Marvel did, and Mr.

Wolffert made the duty clear. They are the complement of each other, Jew and Gentile, and if all men were like them there would be no divisions."

I expressed my wonder that she should have kept on, and not merely contented herself with giving money or helping for that one occasion.

Sudden converts generally relapse.

"Oh! it was not any conversion. It gave life a new interest for me. I was bored to death by the life I had been leading since I came out. It was one continuous round of lunches, dinners, parties, dances, soirees, till I felt as if I were a wooden steed in a merry-go-round, wound up and wearing out. You see I had, in a way, always been 'out.' I used to go about with my father, and sit at the table and hear him and his friends--men friends--for I did not come to the table when ladies were there, till I was fifteen--talk about all sorts of things, and though I often did not understand them, I used to ask him and he would explain them, and then I read up and worked to try to amuse him, so that when I really came out, I found the set in which I was thrown rather young. It was as if I had fallen through an opened door into a nursery. I was very priggish, I have no doubt, but I was bored. Jim Canter and Milly McSheen were amusing enough for a while, but really they were rather young. I was fond of driving and dancing, but I did not want to talk about it all the time, and then as I got older----"

"How old?" I demanded, amused at her idea of age.

"Why, eighteen. How old do you think I should have been?"

"Oh! I don't know; you spoke as if you were as old as Anna in the temple. Pray go on."

"Well, that's all. I just could not stand it. Aunt Sophie was bent on my marrying--somebody whom I could not bear--and oh! it was an awful bore.

I looked around and saw the society women I was supposed to copy, and I'd rather have been dead than like that--eating, clothes, and bridge--that made up the round, with men as the final end and reward. I think I had hardly taken it in, till my eyes were opened once by a man's answer to a question as to who had been in the boxes at a great concert which he had attended and enjoyed: 'Oh! I don't know--the usual sort--women who go to be seen with other women's husbands. The musical people were in the gallery listening.' Next time I went my eyes had been opened and I listened and enjoyed the music. So, when I discovered there were real men in the world doing things, and really something that women could do, too, I found that life had a new interest, that is all."

"You know," she said, after a pause in which she was reflecting and I was watching the play of expression in her face and dwelling in delicious reverie on the contour of her soft cheek, "You know, if I ever amount to anything in this world, it will be due to that man." This might have meant either.

I thought I knew of a better artificer than even John Marvel or Leo Wolffert, to whom was due all the light that was shed from her life, but I did not wish to question anything she said of old John. I was beginning to feel at peace with all the world.

We were dawdling along now and I remember we stopped for a moment in front of a place somewhat more striking looking and better lighted than those about it, something between a p.a.w.nbroker's shop and a loan-office.

The sign over the door was of a Guaranty Loan Company, and added the word "Home" to Guaranty. It caught my eye and hers at the same moment.

The name was that of the robber-company in which my poor client, McNeil, in his futile effort to pay his rent, had secured a small loan by a chattel-mortgage on his pitiful little furniture at something like three hundred per cent. The entire block belonged, as I had learned at the time, to the Argand Estate, and I had made it one of the points in my arraignment of that eleemosynary inst.i.tution that the estate harbored such vampires as the two men who conducted this scoundrelly business in the very teeth of the law. On the windows were painted legends suggesting that within all money needed by any one might be gotten, one might have supposed, for nothing. I said, "With such a sign as that we might imagine that the poor need never want for money."

She suddenly flamed: "I know them. They are the greatest robbers on earth. They grind the face of the Poor until one wonders that the earth does not open and swallow them up quick. They are the thieves who ought to be in jail instead of such criminals as even that poor wretch, Talman, as great a criminal as he is. Why, they robbed his poor wife of every stick of furniture she had on earth, under guise of a loan, and turned her out in the snow with her crippled child. She was afraid to apply to any one for redress, and they knew it. And if it had not been for John Marvel, they would have starved or have frozen to death."

"For John Marvel and you," I interjected.

"No--only him. What I did was nothing--less than nothing. He found them, with that wonderful sixth sense of his. It is his heart. And he gets no credit for anything--even from you. Oh! sometimes I cannot bear it. I would like to go to him once and just tell him what I truly think of him."

"Why don't you, then?"

"Because--I cannot. But if I were you, I would. He would not--want me to do it! But some day I am going to Dr. Capon and tell him--tell him the truth."

She turned, facing me, and stood with clenched hands, uplifted face, and flashing eyes--breasting the wind which, at the moment, blew her skirts behind her, and as she poured forth her challenge, she appeared to me almost like some animate statue of victory.

"Do you know--I think Mr. Marvel and Mr. Wolffert are almost the most Christian men I ever saw; and their life is the strongest argument in favor of Christianity, I ever knew."

"Why, Wolffert is a Jew--he is not a Christian at all."

"He is--I only wish I were half as good a one," she said. "I do not care what he calls himself, he is. Why, think of him beside Doctor--beside some of those who set up to be burning and shining lights!"

"Well, I will agree to that." In fact, I agreed with everything she had said, though I confess to a pang of jealousy at such unstinted praise, as just as I thought it. And I began in my selfishness to wish I were more like either of her two models. As we stood in the waning light--for we were almost standing, we moved so slowly--my resolution took form.

It was not a propitious place for what I suddenly resolved to do. It was certainly not a romantic spot. For it was in the centre, the very heart, of a mean shopping district, a region of small shops and poor houses, and the autumn wind had risen with an edge on it and laden with dust, which made the thinly clad poor quicken their steps as they pa.s.sed along and try to shrink closer within their threadbare raiment. The lights which were beginning to appear only added to the appearance of squalor about us. But like the soft Gallius I cared for none of these things. I saw only the girl beside me, whose awakened soul seemed to me even more beautiful than her beautiful frame. And so far as I was concerned, we might have been in Paradise or in a desert.

I recall the scene as if it were yesterday, the very softness in her face, the delicacy of her contour; the movement of her soft hair on her blue-veined white temple and her round neck as a gentle breath of air stirred it; the dreamy depths of her eyes as the smile faded in them and she relapsed into a reverie. An impulse seized me and I cast prudence, wisdom, reason, all to the winds and gave the rein to my heart.

"Come here." I took her arm and drew her a few steps beyond to where there was a vacant house. "Sit down here a moment." I spread my handkerchief on the dusty steps, and she sat down, smiling after her little outbreak.

Leaning over her, I took hold of her hand and lifted it to my breast, clasping it very tight.

"Look at me--" She had already looked in vague wonder, her eyes wide open, beginning the question which her lips were parting to frame.

"Don't say that to me--that about your belief in me--unless you mean it all--all. I love you and I mean to succeed for you--with you. I mean to marry you--some day."

The look in her eyes changed, but for a second they did not leave my face. My eyes were holding them.

"Oh!--What?" she gasped, while her hand went up to her throat.

Then she firmly, but as I afterward recalled, slowly withdrew her hand from my grasp, which made no attempt to detain it.

"Are you crazy?" she gasped. And I truly believe she thought I was.

"Yes--no--I don't know. If I am, my insanity begins and ends only in you. I know only one thing--that I love you and that some day--some day, I am going to marry you, though the whole world and yourself oppose me."

She stood up.

"But, oh! why did you say that?"

"Because it is true."

"We were such good friends."

"We never were--I never was--for a moment."

"You were."

"Never."

"We were just beginning to understand each other, to be such good friends, and now you have ended it all."

"That cannot be ended which never had a beginning. I don't want your friendship; I want your love and I will have it."

"No, I cannot. Oh! why did you? I must be going."

"Why? Sit down."

"No, I cannot. Good-by."

"Good-by."

She hesitated, and then without looking, held out her hand. "Good-by."