What Can She Do? Part 29

Oh, that other men were like you!"

"Bress you, Miss Edie, I isn't a man, I'se only a n.i.g.g.e.r."

"You are my true and trusted friend," said Edith, "and you shall be one of the family as long as you wish to stay with us."

"Now bress you, Miss Edie, you'se an angel for sayin' dat. Don't be afeard, I'se good for sumpen yet, if I be old. I once work for fear in de South; den I work for money, and now I'se gwine to work for lub, and it 'pears I can feel my ole jints limber up at de tought. It 'pears like dat lub is de only ting dat can make one young agin. Neber you fear, Miss Edie, we'll pull trough, and I'se see you a grand lady yet. A true lady you'se allers be, even if you went out to scrub."

"Perhaps I'll have to, Hannibal. I know how to do that about as well as anything else that people are willing to pay for."

CHAPTER XVII

THE CHANGES OF TWO SHORT MONTHS

At the dinner-table it was reluctantly admitted to be necessary that Edith should go to the city in the morning and dispose of some of their jewelry. She went by the early train, and the familiar aspects of Fourth Avenue as she rode down town were as painful as the features of an old friend turned away from us in estrangement. She kept her face closely veiled, hoping to meet no acquaintances, but some whom she knew unwittingly brushed against her. Her mother's last words were:

"Go to some store where we are not known to sell the jewelry."

Edith's usually good judgment seemed to fail her in this case, as generally happens when we listen to the suggestions of false pride.

She went to a jeweller downtown who was an utter stranger. The man's face to whom she handed her valuables for inspection did not suggest pure gold that had pa.s.sed through the refiner's fire, though he professed to deal in that article. An unknown lady, closely veiled, offering such rich articles for sale, looked suspicious; but, whether it was right or wrong, there was a chance for him to make an extraordinary profit. Giving a curious glance at Edith, who began to have misgivings from the manner and appearance of the man, he swept the little cases up and took them to the back part of the store, on pretence of wishing to consult his partner. He soon returned and said rather harshly:

"I don't quite understand this matter, and we are not in the habit of doing this kind of business. It may be all right that you should offer this jewelry, and it may not. If we take it, we must run the risk. We will give you"--offering scarcely half its value.

"I a.s.sure you it is all right," said Edith indignantly, at the same time with a sickening sensation of fear. "It all belongs to us, but we are compelled to part with it from sudden need."

"That is about the way they all talk," said the man coolly. "We will give you no more than I said."

"Then give me back my jewelry," said Edith, scarcely able to stand, through fear and shame.

"I don't know about that. Perhaps I ought to call in an officer any way and have the thing investigated. But I give you your choice, either to take this money, or go with a policeman before a justice and have the thing explained," and he laid the money before her.

She shuddered at the thought. Edith Allen in a police court, explaining why she was selling her jewelry, the gifts of her dead father, followed by a rabble in the street, her name in the papers, and she the town-talk and scandal of her old set on the avenue! How Gus Elliot and Van Dam would exult! All pa.s.sed through her mind in one dreadful whirl. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the money and rushed out with one thought of escape, and for some time after had a shuddering apprehension of being pursued and arrested.

"Oh, if I had only gone to Tiffany's, where I am known!" she groaned.

"It's all mother's work. Her advice is always fatal, and I will never follow it again. It seems as if everything and everybody were against me," and she plunged into the sheltering throng of Broadway, glad to be a mere unrecognized drop in its mighty tide.

But even as Edith pa.s.sed out of the jeweller's store her eye rested for a moment on the face of a man whom she thought she had seen before, though she could not tell where, and the face haunted her, causing much uneasiness.

"Could he have seen and known me?" she queried most anxiously.

He had done both. He was no other than Tom Crowl, a clerk in the village at one of the lesser dry-goods stores, where the Allens had a small account. He was one of the mean loafers who were present at the bar-room scene, and had cheered, and then kicked Gus Elliot, and "laid for him" in the evening with the "boys." He was one of the upper graduates of Pushton street-corners, and having spent an idle, vicious boyhood, truant half the time from school, had now arrived at the dignity of clerk in a store, that thrived feebly on the scattering trade that filtered through and past Mr. Hard's larger establishment.

He was one of the worst phases of the male gossip, and had the scent of a buzzard for the carrion of scandal. The Allens were now the uppermost theme of the village, for there seemed some mystery about them. Moreover, the rural dabblers in vice had a natural jealousy of the more accomplished rakes from the city, which took on something of the air of virtuous indignation against them. Of course the talk about Gus and Van Dam included the Allens; and if poor Edith could have heard the surmises about them in the select coterie of clerks that gathered after closing hours around Crowl, as the central fountain of gossip, she would have felt more bitterly than ever that the spirit of chivalry had utterly forsaken mankind.

When therefore young Crowl saw Edith get on the same train as himself, he determined to watch her, and startle, if possible, his small squad of admirers with a new proof of his right to lead as chief scandal-monger. The scene in the jewelry store thus became a brilliant stroke of fortune to him, though so severe a blow to Edith. (The number of people who are like wolves, that turn upon and devour one of their kind when wounded, is not small.) Crowl exultingly saw himself doubly the hero of the evening in the little room of the loft over the store, where poor Edith would be discussed that evening over a black bottle and sundry clay pipes.

As Edith returned up town toward the depot, the impulse to go and see her old home was very strong. She thought her veil sufficient protection to allow her to venture. Slowly and with heavy step she pa.s.sed up the well-known street on the opposite side, and then crossed and pa.s.sed down toward that door from which she had so often tripped in light-hearted gayety, or rolled away in a liveried carriage, the envied and courted daughter of a millionaire. And to-day she was selling her jewelry for bread--to-day she had narrowly, as she thought, escaped the police court--to-day she had no other prospect of support save her unskilled hands, and little more than two short months ago, that house was ablaze with light, resounding with mirth and music, and she and her sisters were known as among the wealthiest belles of the city. It was like a horrid dream. It seemed as if she might see old Hannibal opening the door, and Zell come tripping out, or Laura at the window of her room with a book, or the portly form of her father returning from business, indeed even herself, radiant with pride and pleasure, starting for an afternoon walk as of old. All seemed to look the same. Why was it not? Why could she not enter and be at home! Again she pa.s.sed. A name on the door caught her eye. With a shudder of disgust and pain, she read--

"Uriah Fox."

"So the villain lives in the home of which he robbed us," she said bitterly. "The world seems made for such. Old Hannibal was right. G.o.d lumps the world, but the devil seems to look after his friends and prosper them."

She now hastened to the depot. The city had lost its attractions to her, in view of what she had seen and suffered that day, and though inclined to feel hard and resentful at her fate, she was sincerely thankful that she had a quiet home in the country from which at least the false-hearted and cruel could be kept away.

She saw during the day several faces that she knew, but none recognized her, and she realized how soon we are forgotten by our wide circle of friends, and how the world goes on just the same after we have vacated the large s.p.a.ce we suppose we occupy.

She reached home in the twilight, weary and despondent. Her mother asked eagerly:

"Did you meet any one you knew?" as if this were the all-important question.

"Don't speak to me," said Edith impatiently. "I'm half dead with fatigue and trouble. Hannibal, please give me a cup of tea, and then I will go to bed."

"But, Edith," persisted Mrs. Allen querulously, "did you see any of our old set? I hope you didn't take the jewelry where you were known."

Edith's overtaxed nerves gave way, and she said sharply--

"No, I did not go where I was known, as I ought, and therefore have been robbed, and might have been in jail myself to-night. I will never follow your advice again. It has brought nothing but trouble and disaster. I have had enough of your silly pride and its results. What practical harm would it have done me, if I had met all the persons I know in the city? By going where I was not known I lost half my jewelry, and was insulted and threatened with great danger in the bargain. If I had gone to Tiffany's, or Ball and Black's, where I am known, I should have been treated politely and obtained the full value of what I offered. I can't even forgive myself for being such a fool.

But I have done with your ridiculous false pride forever."

These were harsh words for a daughter to speak to her mother, under any provocation, and even Zell said:

"Edith, you ought to be ashamed of yourself to speak to mother so."

"I think so, too," said Laura. "I'm sure she meant everything for the best, and she took the course which is taken by the majority in like circ.u.mstances."

"All the worse for the majority then, if they fare anything as we have done. The division of labor in this family seems to be that I am to do all the work, and bear the brunt of everything, and the rest sit by and criticise, or make more trouble. You have all got to do something now or go hungry," and Edith swallowed her tea, and went frowningly away to her room. She was no saint, to begin with, and her overtaxed mind and body revenged themselves in nervous irritation. But her young and healthful nature soon found in sound sleep the needed restorative.

Mrs. Allen shed a few helpless tears, and Laura wearily watched the faint flicker on the hearth, for the night was chilly. Zell went into the dining-room and read for the twentieth time a letter received that day.

Unknown to Edith, the worst disaster yet had occurred in her absence.

Zell had been to the village for the mail. She would not admit, even to herself, that she hoped for a letter from one who had acted so poor a part as her false lover, and yet, controlled so much more by her feelings and impulses than by either reason or principle, it was with a thrill of joy that she recognized the familiar handwriting. The next moment she dropped her veil to conceal her burning blush of shame. She hastened home with a wild tumult at heart.

"I will read it, and see what he says for himself," she said, "and then will write a withering answer."

But as Van Dam's ardent words and plausible excuses burned themselves into her memory, her weak foolish heart relented, and she half believed he was wronged by Edith after all. The withering answer became a queer jumble of tender reproaches and pathetic appeals, and ended by saying that if he would marry her in her own home it all might be as secret as he desired, and she would wait his convenience for acknowledgment.

She also did another wrong and imprudent thing; for she told him to direct his reply to another office about a mile from Pushton, for she dreaded Edith's anger should her correspondence be discovered.

The wily, unscrupulous man gave one of his satantic leers as he read the letter.

"The game will soon be mine," he chuckled, and he wrote promptly in return:

"In your request and reproaches, I see the influence of another mind.

Left to yourself you would not doubt me. And yet such is my love for you, I would comply with your request were it not for what pa.s.sed that fatal evening. My feelings and honor as a man forbid my ever meeting your sister again till she has apologized. She never liked me, and always wronged me with doubts. Elliot acted like a fool and a villain, and I have nothing more to do with him. But your sister, in her anger and excitement, cla.s.sed me with him. When you have been my loved and trusted wife for some length of time, I hope your family will do me justice. When you are here with me you will soon see why our marriage must be private for the present. You have known me since you were a child. I will be true to my word and will do exactly as I agreed. I will meet you any evening you wish on the down boat. Awaiting your reply with an anxiety which only the deepest love can inspire, I remain,

"Your slave, GUILLIAM VAN DAM."