Title: The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker
Author: Howells, William Dean
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker" ***


THE MINISTER’S CHARGE

OR, THE APPRENTICESHIP OF LEMUEL BARKER


By William Dean Howells


Author Of “The Rise Of Silas Lapham,” “A Modern Instance,” “Indian
Summer,” Etc.



THE MINISTER’S CHARGE;

OR, THE APPRENTICESHIP OF LEMUEL BARKER.



I.


On their way back to the farm-house where they were boarding, Sewell’s
wife reproached him for what she called his recklessness. “You had no
right,” she said, “to give the poor boy false hopes. You ought to have
discouraged him--that would have been the most merciful way--if you knew
the poetry was bad. Now, he will go on building all sorts of castles
in the air on your praise, and sooner or later they will come tumbling
about his ears--just to gratify your passion for saying pleasant things
to people.”

“I wish you had a passion for saying pleasant things to me, my dear,”
 suggested her husband evasively.

“Oh, a nice time I should have!”

“I don’t know about _your_ nice time, but I feel pretty certain of my
own. How do you know--Oh, _do_ get up, you implacable cripple!” he broke
off to the lame mare he was driving, and pulled at the reins.

“Don’t saw her mouth!” cried Mrs. Sewell.

“Well, let her get up, then, and I won’t. I don’t like to saw her
mouth; but I have to do something when you come down on me with your
interminable consequences. I dare say the boy will never think of my
praise again. And besides, as I was saying when this animal interrupted
me with her ill-timed attempts at grazing, how do you know that I knew
the poetry was bad?”

“How? By the sound of your voice. I could tell you were dishonest in the
dark, David.”

“Perhaps the boy knew that I was dishonest too,” suggested Sewell.

“Oh no, he didn’t. I could see that he pinned his faith to every
syllable.”

“He used a quantity of pins, then; for I was particularly profuse of
syllables. I find that it requires no end of them to make the worse
appear the better reason to a poet who reads his own verses to you. But
come, now, Lucy, let me off a syllable or two. I--I have a conscience,
you know well enough, and if I thought--But pshaw! I’ve merely cheered a
lonely hour for the boy, and he’ll go back to hoeing potatoes to-morrow,
and that will be the end of it.”

“I _hope_ that will be the end of it,” said Mrs. Sewell, with the
darkling reserve of ladies intimate with the designs of Providence.

“Well,” argued her husband, who was trying to keep the matter from being
serious, “perhaps he may turn out a poet yet. You never can tell where
the lightning is going to strike. He has some idea of rhyme, and some
perception of reason, and--yes, some of the lines _were_ musical. His
general attitude reminded me of Piers Plowman. Didn’t he recall Piers
Plowman to you?”

“I’m glad you can console yourself in that way, David,” said his wife
relentlessly.

The mare stopped again, and Sewell looked over his shoulder at the
house, now black in the twilight, on the crest of the low hill across
the hollow behind them. “I declare,” he said, “the loneliness of that
place almost broke my heart. There!” he added, as the faint sickle
gleamed in the sky above the roof, “I’ve got the new moon right over my
left shoulder for my pains. That’s what comes of having a sympathetic
nature.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The boy was looking at the new moon, across the broken gate which
stopped the largest gap in the tumbled stone wall. He still gripped in
his hand the manuscript which he had been reading to the minister.

“There, Lem,” called his mother’s voice from the house, “I guess you’ve
seen the last of ‘em for one while. I’m ‘fraid you’ll take cold out
there ‘n the dew. Come in, child.”

The boy obeyed. “I was looking at the new moon, mother. I saw it over my
right shoulder. Did you hear--hear him,” he asked, in a broken and husky
voice,--“hear how he praised my poetry, mother?”

       *       *       *       *       *

“Oh, _do_ make her get up, David!” cried Mrs. Sewell. “These mosquitoes
are eating me alive!”

“I will saw her mouth all to the finest sort of kindling-wood, if she
doesn’t get up this very instant,” said Sewell, jerking the reins
so wildly that the mare leaped into a galvanic canter, and continued
without further urging for twenty paces. “Of course, Lucy,” he resumed,
profiting by the opportunity for conversation which the mare’s temporary
activity afforded, “I should feel myself greatly to blame if I thought I
had gone beyond mere kindness in my treatment of the poor fellow. But at
first I couldn’t realise that the stuff was so bad. Their saying that
he read all the books he could get, and was writing every spare moment,
gave me the idea that he _must_ be some sort of literary genius in
the germ, and I listened on and on, expecting every moment that he was
coming to some passage with a little lift or life in it; and when he got
to the end, and hadn’t come to it, I couldn’t quite pull myself together
to say so. I had gone there so full of the wish to recognise and
encourage, that I couldn’t turn about for the other thing. Well! I
shall know another time how to value a rural neighbourhood report of the
existence of a local poet. Usually there is some hardheaded cynic in the
community with native perception enough to enlighten the rest as to the
true value of the phenomenon; but there seems to have been none here. I
ought to have come sooner to see him, and then I could have had a chance
to go again and talk soberly and kindly with him, and show him gently
how much he had mistaken himself. Oh, _get_ up!” By this time the mare
had lapsed again into her habitual absent-mindedness, and was limping
along the dark road with a tendency to come to a full stop, from step to
step. The remorse in the minister’s soul was so keen that he could not
use her with the cruelty necessary to rouse her flagging energies; as he
held the reins he flapped his elbows up toward his face, as if they were
wings, and contrived to beat away a few of the mosquitoes with them;
Mrs. Sewell, in silent exasperation, fought them from her with the bough
which she had torn from an overhanging birch-tree.

In the morning they returned to Boston, and Sewell’s parish duties began
again; he was rather faithfuller and busier in these than he might have
been if he had not laid so much stress upon duties of all sorts, and
so little upon beliefs. He declared that he envied the ministers of the
good old times who had only to teach their people that they would be
lost if they did not do right; it was much simpler than to make them
understand that they were often to be good for reasons not immediately
connected with their present or future comfort, and that they could not
confidently expect to be lost for any given transgression, or even to be
lost at all. He found it necessary to do his work largely in a personal
way, by meeting and talking with people, and this took up a great deal
of his time, especially after the summer vacation, when he had to get
into relations with them anew, and to help them recover themselves
from the moral lassitude into which people fall during that season of
physical recuperation.

He was occupied with these matters one morning late in October when
a letter came addressed in a handwriting of copybook carefulness, but
showing in every painstaking stroke the writer’s want of training,
which, when he read it, filled Sewell with dismay. It was a letter from
Lemuel Barker, whom Sewell remembered, with a pang of self-upbraiding,
as the poor fellow he had visited with his wife the evening before they
left Willoughby Pastures; and it enclosed passages of a long poem which
Barker said he had written since he got the fall work done. The passages
were not submitted for Sewell’s criticism, but were offered as examples
of the character of the whole poem, for which the author wished to find
a publisher. They were not without ideas of a didactic and satirical
sort, but they seemed so wanting in literary art beyond a mechanical
facility of versification, that Sewell wondered how the writer should
have mastered the notion of anything so literary as publication, till
he came to that part of the letter in which Barker spoke of their having
had so much sickness in the family that he thought he would try to
do something to help along. The avowal of this meritorious ambition
inflicted another wound upon Sewell’s guilty consciousness; but what
made his blood run cold was Barker’s proposal to come down to Boston, if
Sewell advised, and find a publisher with Sewell’s assistance.

This would never do, and the minister went to his desk with the
intention of despatching a note of prompt and total discouragement.
But in crossing the room from the chair into which he had sunk, with a
cheerful curiosity, to read the letter, he could not help some natural
rebellion against the punishment visited upon him. He could not deny
that he deserved punishment, but he thought that this, to say the least,
was very ill-timed. He had often warned other sinners who came to him
in like resentment that it was this very quality of inopportuneness that
was perhaps the most sanative and divine property of retribution; the
eternal justice fell upon us, he said, at the very moment when we were
least able to bear it, or thought ourselves so; but now in his own case
the clear-sighted prophet cried out and revolted in his heart. It was
Saturday morning, when every minute was precious to him for his sermon,
and it would take him fully an hour to write that letter; it must be
done with the greatest sympathy; he had seen that this poor foolish boy
was very sensitive, and yet it must be done with such thoroughness as to
cut off all hope of anything like literary achievement for him.

At the moment Sewell reached his desk, with a spirit disciplined to the
sacrifice required of it, he heard his wife’s step outside his study
door, and he had just time to pull open a drawer, throw the letter into
it, and shut it again before she entered. He did not mean finally to
conceal it from her, but he was willing to give himself breath before he
faced her with the fact that he had received such a letter. Nothing in
its way was more terrible to this good man than the righteousness of
that good woman. In their case, as in that of most other couples who
cherish an ideal of dutiful living, she was the custodian of their
potential virtue, and he was the instrument, often faltering and
imperfect, of its application to circumstances; and without wishing to
spare himself too much, he was sometimes aware that she did not spare
him enough. She worked his moral forces as mercilessly as a woman uses
the physical strength of a man when it is placed at her direction.

“What is the matter, David?” she asked, with a keen glance at the face
he turned upon her over his shoulder.

“Nothing that I wish to talk of at present, my dear,” answered Sewell,
with a boldness that he knew would not avail him if she persisted in
knowing.

“Well, there would be no time if you did,” said his wife. “I’m
dreadfully sorry for you, David, but it’s really a case you can’t
refuse. Their own minister is taken sick, and it’s appointed for this
afternoon at two o’clock, and the poor thing has set her heart upon
having you, and you must go. In fact, I promised you would. I’ll see
that you’re not disturbed this morning, so that you’ll have the whole
forenoon to yourself. But I thought I’d better tell you at once. It’s
only a child--a little boy. You won’t have to say much.”

“Oh, of course I must go,” answered Sewell, with impatient resignation;
and when his wife left the room, which she did after praising him and
pitying him in a way that was always very sweet to him, he saw that he
must begin his sermon at once, if he meant to get through with it in
time, and must put off all hope of replying to Lemuel Barker till Monday
at least. But he chose quite a different theme from that on which he had
intended to preach. By an immediate inspiration he wrote a sermon on the
text, “The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel,” in which he taught
how great harm could be done by the habit of saying what are called kind
things. He showed that this habit arose not from goodness of heart,
or from the desire to make others happy, but from the wish to spare
one’s-self the troublesome duty of formulating the truth so that it
would perform its heavenly office without wounding those whom it was
intended to heal. He warned his hearers that the kind things spoken
from this motive were so many sins committed against the soul of the
flatterer and the soul of him they were intended to flatter; they were
deceits, lies; and he besought all within the sound of his voice to
try to practise with one another an affectionate sincerity, which was
compatible not only with the brotherliness of Christianity, but
the politeness of the world. He enforced his points with many apt
illustrations, and he treated the whole subject with so much fulness and
fervour, that he fell into the error of the literary temperament, and
almost felt that he had atoned for his wrongdoing by the force with
which he had portrayed it.

Mrs. Sewell, who did not always go to her husband’s sermons, was at
church that day, and joined him when some ladies who had lingered to
thank him for the excellent lesson he had given them at last left him to
her.

“Really, David,” she said, “I wondered your congregation could keep
their countenances while you were going on. Did you think of that poor
boy up at Willoughby Pastures when you were writing that sermon?”

“Yes, my dear,” replied Sewell gravely; “he was in my mind the whole
time.”

“Well, you were rather hard upon yourself; and I think I was rather too
hard upon you, that time, though I was so vexed with you. But nothing
has come of it, and I suppose there are cases where people are so lost
to common sense that you can’t do anything for them by telling them the
truth.”

“But you’d better tell it, all the same,” said Sewell, still in a glow
of righteous warmth from his atonement; and now a sudden temptation to
play with fire seized him. “You wouldn’t have excused me if any trouble
had come of it.”

“No, I certainly shouldn’t,” said his wife. “But I don’t regret it
altogether if it’s made you see what danger you run from that tendency
of yours. What in the world made you think of it?”

“Oh, it came into my mind.” said Sewell.

He did not find time to write to Barker the next day, and on recurring
to his letter he saw that there was no danger of his taking another step
without his advice, and he began to postpone it; when he had time he was
not in the mood; he waited for the time and the mood to come together,
and he also waited for the most favourable moment to tell his wife that
he had got that letter from Barker and to ask her advice about answering
it. If it had been really a serious matter, he would have told her at
once; but being the thing it was, he did not know just how to approach
it, after his first concealment. He knew that, to begin with, he would
have to account for his mistake in attempting to keep it from her, and
would have to bear some just upbraiding for this unmanly course, and
would then be miserably led to the distasteful contemplation of the
folly by which he had brought this trouble upon himself. Sewell smiled
to think how much easier it was to make one’s peace with one’s God
than with one’s wife; and before he had brought himself to the point of
answering Barker’s letter, there came a busy season in which he forgot
him altogether.



II.


One day in the midst of this Sewell was called from his study to see
some one who was waiting for him in the reception-room, but who sent in
no name by the housemaid.

“I don’t know as you remember me,” the visitor said, rising awkwardly,
as Sewell came forward with a smile of inquiry. “My name’s Barker.”

“Barker?” said the minister, with a cold thrill of instant recognition,
but playing with a factitious uncertainty till he could catch his breath
in the presence of the calamity. “Oh yes! How do you do?” he said; and
then planting himself adventurously upon the commandment to love one’s
neighbour as one’s-self, he added: “I’m very glad to see you!”

In token of his content, he gave Barker his hand and asked him to be
seated.

The young man complied, and while Sewell waited for him to present
himself in some shape that he could grapple with morally, he made an
involuntary study of his personal appearance. That morning, before
starting from home by the milk-train that left Willoughby Pastures at
4.5, Barker had given his Sunday boots a coat of blacking, which he had
eked out with stove-polish, and he had put on his best pantaloons, which
he had outgrown, and which, having been made very tight a season after
tight pantaloons had gone out of fashion in Boston, caught on the tops
of his boots and stuck there in spite of his efforts to kick them loose
as he stood up, and his secret attempts to smooth them down when he had
reseated himself. He wore a single-breasted coat of cheap broadcloth,
fastened across his chest with a carnelian clasp-button of his father’s,
such as country youth wore thirty years ago, and a belated summer scarf
of gingham, tied in a breadth of knot long since abandoned by polite
society.

Sewell had never thought his wife’s reception-room very splendidly
appointed, but Barker must have been oppressed by it, for he sat in
absolute silence after resuming his chair, and made no sign of intending
to open the matter upon which he came. In the kindness of his heart
Sewell could not refrain from helping him on.

“When did you come to Boston?” he asked with a cheeriness which he was
far from feeling.

“This morning,” said Barker briefly, but without the tremor in his voice
which Sewell expected.

“You’ve never been here before, I suppose,” suggested Sewell, with the
vague intention of generalising or particularising the conversation, as
the case might be.

Barker abruptly rejected the overture, whatever it was. “I don’t know as
you got a letter from me a spell back,” he said.

“Yes, I did,” confessed Sewell. “I did receive that letter,” he
repeated, “and I ought to have answered it long ago. But the fact is--”
 He corrected himself when it came to his saying this, and said, “I
mean that I put it by, intending to answer it when I could do so in the
proper way, until, I’m very sorry to say, I forgot it altogether. Yes,
I forgot it, and I certainly ask your pardon for my neglect. But I can’t
say that as it’s turned out I altogether regret it. I can talk with you
a great deal better than I could write to you in regard to your”--Sewell
hesitated between the words poems and verses, and finally said--“work.
I have blamed myself a great deal,” he continued, wincing under the hurt
which he felt that he must be inflicting on the young man as well as
himself, “for not being more frank with you when I saw you at home in
September. I hope your mother is well?”

“She’s middling,” said Barker, “but my married sister that came to
live with us since you was there has had a good deal of sickness in her
family. Her husband’s laid up with the rheumatism most of the time.”

“Oh!” murmured Sewell sympathetically. “Well! I ought to have told you
at that time that I could not see much hope of your doing acceptable
work in a literary way; and if I had supposed that you ever expected
to exercise your faculty of versifying to any serious purpose,--for
anything but your own pleasure and entertainment,--I should certainly
have done so. And I tell you now that the specimens of the long poem you
have sent me give me even less reason to encourage you than the things
you read me at home.”

Sewell expected the audible crash of Barker’s air-castles to break the
silence which the young man suffered to follow upon these words; but
nothing of the kind happened, and for all that he could see, Barker
remained wholly unaffected by what he had said. It nettled Sewell a
little to see him apparently so besotted in his own conceit, and he
added: “But I think I had better not ask you to rely altogether upon my
opinion in the matter, and I will go with you to a publisher, and you
can get a professional judgment. Excuse me a moment.”

He left the room and went slowly upstairs to his wife. It appeared
to him a very short journey to the third story, where he knew she was
decking the guest-chamber for the visit of a friend whom they expected
that evening. He imagined himself saying to her when his trial was well
over that he did not see why she complained of those stairs; that he
thought they were nothing at all. But this sense of the absurdity of the
situation which played upon the surface of his distress flickered and
fled at sight of his wife bustling cheerfully about, and he was tempted
to go down and get Barker out of the house, and out of Boston if
possible, without letting her know anything of his presence.

“Well?” said Mrs. Sewell, meeting his face of perplexity with a
penetrating glance. “What is it, David?”

“Nothing. That is--everything! Lemuel Barker is here!”

“Lemuel Barker? Who is Lemuel Barker?” She stood with the pillow-sham
in her hand which she was just about to fasten on the pillow, and Sewell
involuntarily took note of the fashion in which it was ironed.

“Why, surely you remember! That simpleton at Willoughby Pastures.” If
his wife had dropped the pillow-sham, and sunk into a chair beside
the bed, fixing him with eyes of speechless reproach; if she had done
anything dramatic, or said anything tragic, no matter how unjust or
exaggerated, Sewell could have borne it; but she only went on tying the
sham on the pillow, without a word. “The fact is, he wrote to me some
weeks ago, and sent me some specimens of a long poem.”

“Just before you preached that sermon on the tender mercies of the
wicked?”

“Yes,” faltered Sewell. “I had been waiting to show you the letter.”

“You waited a good while, David.”

“I know--I know,” said Sewell miserably. “I was waiting--waiting--” He
stopped, and then added with a burst, “I was waiting till I could put it
to you in some favourable light.”

“I’m glad you’re honest about it at last, my dear!”

“Yes. And while I was waiting I forgot Barker’s letter altogether. I put
it away somewhere--I can’t recollect just where, at the moment. But that
makes no difference; he’s here with the whole poem in his pocket, now.”
 Sewell gained a little courage from his wife’s forbearance; she knew
that she could trust him in all great matters, and perhaps she thought
that for this little sin she would not add to his punishment. “And
what I propose to do is to make a complete thing of it, this time. Of
course,” he went on convicting himself, “I see that I shall inflict
twice the pain that I should have done if I had spoken frankly to him
at first; and of course there will be the added disappointment, and the
expense of his coming to Boston. But,” he added brightly, “we can save
him any expense while he’s here, and perhaps I can contrive to get him
to go home this afternoon.”

“He wouldn’t let you pay for his dinner out of the house anywhere,” said
Mrs. Sewell. “You must ask him to dinner here.”

“Well,” said Sewell, with resignation; and suspecting that his wife was
too much piqued or hurt by his former concealment to ask what he now
meant to do about Barker, he added: “I’m going to take him round to a
publisher and let him convince himself that there’s no hope for him in a
literary way.”

“David!” cried his wife; and now she left off adjusting the shams, and
erecting herself looked at him across the bed, “You don’t intend to do
anything so cruel.”

“Cruel?”

“Yes! Why should you go and waste any publisher’s time by getting him
to look at such rubbish? Why should you expose the poor fellow to the
mortification of a perfectly needless refusal? Do you want to shirk the
responsibility--to put it on some one else?”

“No; you know I don’t.”

“Well, then, tell him yourself that it won’t do.”

“I have told him.”

“What does he say?”

“He doesn’t say anything. I can’t make out whether he believes me or
not.”

“Very well, then; you’ve done your duty, at any rate.” Mrs. Sewell
could not forbear saying also, “If you’d done it at first, David, there
wouldn’t have been any of this trouble.”

“That’s true,” owned her husband, so very humbly that her heart smote
her.

“Well, go down and tell him he must stay to dinner, and then try to
get rid of him the best way you can. Your time is really too precious,
David, to be wasted in this way. You _must_ get rid of him, somehow.”

Sewell went back to his guest in the reception-room, who seemed to have
remained as immovably in his chair as if he had been a sitting statue of
himself. He did not move when Sewell entered.

“On second thoughts,” said the minister, “I believe I will not ask you
to go to a publisher with me, as I had intended; it would expose you to
unnecessary mortification, and it would be, from my point of view, an
unjustifiable intrusion upon very busy people. I must ask you to take
my word for it that no publisher would bring out your poem, and it never
would pay you a cent if he did.” The boy remained silent as before, and
Sewell had no means of knowing whether it was from silent conviction or
from mulish obstinacy. “Mrs. Sewell will be down presently. She wished
me to ask you to stay to dinner. We have an early dinner, and there will
be time enough after that for you to look about the city.”

“I shouldn’t like to put you out,” said Barker.

“Oh, not at all,” returned Sewell, grateful for this sign of animation,
and not exigent of a more formal acceptance of his invitation. “You
know,” he said, “that literature is a trade, like every other vocation,
and that you must serve an apprenticeship if you expect to excel. But
first of all you must have some natural aptitude for the business you
undertake. You understand?” asked Sewell; for he had begun to doubt
whether Barker understood anything. He seemed so much more stupid than
he had at home; his faculties were apparently sealed up, and he had lost
all the personal picturesqueness which he had when he came in out of the
barn, at his mother’s call, to receive Sewell.

“Yes,” said the boy.

“I don’t mean,” continued Sewell, “that I wouldn’t have you continue
to make verses whenever you have the leisure for it. I think, on
the contrary, that it will give a grace to your life which it might
otherwise lack. We are all in daily danger of being barbarised by the
sordid details of life; the constantly recurring little duties which
must be done, but which we must not allow to become the whole of life.”
 Sewell was so much pleased with this thought, when it had taken form in
words, that he made a mental note of it for future use. “We must put a
border of pinks around the potato-patch, as Emerson would say, or else
the potato-patch is no better than a field of thistles.” Perhaps because
the logic of this figure rang a little false, Sewell hastened to add:
“But there are many ways in which we can prevent the encroachment of
those little duties without being tempted to neglect them, which would
be still worse. I have thought a good deal about the condition of our
young men in the country, and I have sympathised with them in what seems
their want of opportunity, their lack of room for expansion. I have
often wished that I could do something for them--help them in their
doubts and misgivings, and perhaps find some way out of the trouble for
them. I regret this tendency to the cities of the young men from the
country. I am sure that if we could give them some sort of social
and intellectual life at home, they would not be so restless and
dissatisfied.”

Sewell felt as if he had been preaching to a dead wall; but now the
wall opened, and a voice came out of it, saying: “You mean something to
occupy their minds?”

“Exactly so!” cried Sewell. “Something to occupy their minds. Now,” he
continued, with a hope of getting into some sort of human relations with
his guest which he had not felt before, “why shouldn’t a young man on
a farm take up some scientific study, like geology, for instance, which
makes every inch of earth vocal, every rock historic, and the waste
places social?” Barker looked so blankly at him that he asked again,
“You understand?”

“Yes,” said Barker; but having answered Sewell’s personal question, he
seemed to feel himself in no wise concerned with the general inquiry
which Sewell had made, and he let it lie where Sewell had let it drop.
But the minister was so well pleased with the fact that Barker had
understood anything of what he had said, that he was content to let the
notion he had thrown out take its chance of future effect, and rising,
said briskly: “Come upstairs with me into my study, and I will show you
a picture of Agassiz. It’s a very good photograph.”

He led the way out of the reception-room, and tripped lightly in his
slippered feet up the steps against which Barker knocked the toes of his
clumsy boots. He was not large, nor naturally loutish, but the
heaviness of the country was in every touch and movement. He dropped the
photograph twice in his endeavour to hold it between his stiff thumb and
finger.

Sewell picked it up each time for him, and restored it to his faltering
hold. When he had securely lodged it there, he asked sweetly: “Did you
ever hear what Agassiz said when a scheme was once proposed to him by
which he could make a great deal of money?”

“I don’t know as I did,” replied Barker.

“‘But, gentlemen, _I’ve no time to make money_.’” Barker received the
anecdote in absolute silence, standing helplessly with the photograph in
his hand; and Sewell with a hasty sigh forbore to make the application
to the ordinary American ambition to be rich that he had intended.
“That’s a photograph of the singer Nilsson,” he said, cataloguing the
other objects on the chimney-piece. “She was a peasant, you know,
a country girl in Norway. That’s Grévy, the President of the French
Republic; his father was a peasant. Lincoln, of course. Sforza, throwing
his hoe into the oak,” he said, explaining the picture that had caught
Barker’s eye on the wall above the mantel. “He was working in the field,
when a band of adventurers came by, and he tossed his hoe at the tree.
If it fell to the ground, he would keep on hoeing; if it caught in the
branches and hung there, he would follow the adventurers. It caught, and
he went with the soldiers and became Duke of Milan. I like to keep the
pictures of these great Originals about me,” said Sewell, “because in
our time, when we refer so constantly to law, we are apt to forget
that God is creative as well as operative.” He used these phrases
involuntarily; they slipped from his tongue because he was in the habit
of saying this about these pictures, and he made no effort to adapt them
to Barker’s comprehension, because he could not see that the idea would
be of any use to him. He went on pointing out the different objects in
the quiet room, and he took down several books from the shelves that
covered the whole wall, and showed them to Barker, who, however, made no
effort to look at them for himself, and did not say anything about them.
He did what Sewell bade him do in admiring this thing or that; but if
he had been an Indian he could not have regarded them with a greater
reticence. Sewell made him sit down from time to time, but in a sitting
posture Barker’s silence became so deathlike that Sewell hastened to get
him on his legs again, and to walk him about from one point to another,
as if to keep life in him. At the end of one of these otherwise aimless
excursions Mrs. Sewell appeared, and infused a gleam of hope into her
husband’s breast. Apparently she brought none to Barker; or perhaps he
did not conceive it polite to show any sort of liveliness before a lady.
He did what he could with the hand she gave him to shake, and answered
the brief questions she put to him about his family to precisely the
same effect as he had already reported its condition to Sewell.

“Dinner’s ready now,” said Mrs. Sewell, for all comment. She left
the expansiveness of sympathy and gratulation to her husband on most
occasions, and on this she felt that she had less than the usual
obligation to make polite conversation. Her two children came downstairs
after her, and as she unfolded her napkin across her lap after grace she
said, “This is my son, Alfred, Mr. Barker; and this is Edith.” Barker
took the acquaintance offered in silence, the young Sewells smiled
with the wise kindliness of children taught to be good to all manner
of strange guests, and the girl cumbered the helpless country boy with
offers of different dishes.

Mr. Sewell as he cut at the roast beef lengthwise, being denied by his
wife a pantomimic prayer to be allowed to cut it crosswise, tried to
make talk with Barker about the weather at Willoughby Pastures. It had
been a very dry summer, and he asked if the fall rains had filled up the
springs. He said he really forgot whether it was an apple year. He also
said that he supposed they had dug all their turnips by this time. He
had meant to say potatoes when he began, but he remembered that he had
seen the farmers digging their potatoes before he came back to town, and
so he substituted turnips; afterwards it seemed to him that dig was not
just the word to use in regard to the harvesting of turnips. He
wished he had said, “got your turnips in,” but it appeared to make no
difference to Barker, who answered, “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” and “Yes,
sir,” and let each subject drop with that.



III.


The silence grew so deep that the young Sewells talked together in
murmurs, and the clicking of the knives on the plates became painful.
Sewell kept himself from looking at Barker, whom he nevertheless knew
to be changing his knife and fork from one hand to the other, as doubt
after doubt took him as to their conventional use, and to be getting
very little good of his dinner in the process of settling these
questions. The door-bell rang, and the sound of a whispered conference
between the visitor and the servant at the threshold penetrated to the
dining-room. Some one softly entered, and then Mrs. Sewell called out,
“Yes, yes! Come in! Come in, Miss Vane!” She jumped from her chair and
ran out into the hall, where she was heard to kiss her visitor; she
reappeared, still holding her by the hand, and then Miss Vane shook
hands with Sewell, saying in a tone of cordial liking, “_How_ d’ye do?”
 and to each of the young people as she shook hands in turn with them,
“How d’ye _do_, dear?” She was no longer so pretty as she must have once
been; but an air of distinction and a delicate charm of manner remained
to her from her fascinating youth.

Young Sewell pushed her a chair to the table, and she dropped softly
into it, after acknowledging Barker’s presentation by Mrs. Sewell with a
kindly glance that probably divined him.

“You must dine with us,” said Mrs. Sewell. “You can call it lunch.”

“No, I can’t, Mrs. Sewell,” said Miss Vane. “I could once, and should
have said with great pleasure, when I went away, that I had been
lunching at the Sewells; but I can’t now. I’ve reformed. What have you
got for dinner?”

“Roast beef,” said Sewell.

“Nothing I dislike more,” replied Miss Vane. “What else?” She put on her
glasses, and peered critically about the table.

“Stewed tomatoes, baked sweet potatoes, macaroni.”

“How unimaginative! What are you going to have afterwards?”

“Cottage pudding.”

“The very climax of the commonplace. Well!” Miss Vane began to pull off
her gloves, and threw her veil back over her shoulder. “I will dine with
you, but when I say dine, and people ask me to explain, I shall have to
say, ‘Why, the Sewells still dine at one o’clock, you know,’ and
laugh over your old-fashioned habits with them. I should like to do
differently, and to respect the sacredness of broken bread and that
sort of thing; but I’m trying to practise with every one an affectionate
sincerity, which is perfectly compatible not only with the brotherliness
of Christianity, but the politeness of the world.” Miss Vane looked
demurely at Mrs. Sewell. “I can’t make any exceptions.”

The ladies both broke into a mocking laugh, in which Sewell joined with
sheepish reluctance; after all, one does not like to be derided, even by
one’s dearest friends.

“As soon as I hear my other little sins denounced from the pulpit, I’m
going to stop using profane language and carrying away people’s spoons
in my pocket.”

The ladies seemed to think this also a very good joke, and his children
laughed in sympathy, but Sewell hung his head; Barker sat bolt upright
behind his plate, and stared at Miss Vane. “I never have been all but
named in church before,” she concluded, “and I’ve heard others say the
same.”

“Why didn’t you come to complain sooner?” asked Sewell.

“Well, I have been away ever since that occasion. I went down the
next day to Newport, and I’ve been there ever since, admiring the
ribbon-planting.”

“On the lawns or on the ladies?” asked Sewell.

“Both. And sowing broadcast the seeds of plain speaking. I don’t know
what Newport will be in another year if they all take root.”

“I dare say it will be different,” said Sewell. “I’m not sure it will
be worse.” He plucked up a little spirit, and added: “Now you see of how
little importance you really are in the community; you have been gone
these three weeks, and your own pastor didn’t know you were out of
town.”

“Yes, you did, David,” interposed his wife. “I told you Miss Vane was
away two weeks ago.”

“Did you? Well I forgot it immediately; the fact was of no consequence,
one way or the other. How do you like that as a bit of affectionate
sincerity?”

“I like it immensely,” said Miss Vane. “It’s delicious. I only wish I
could believe you were honest.” She leaned back and laughed into
her handkerchief, while Sewell regarded her with a face in which his
mortification at being laughed at was giving way to a natural pleasure
at seeing Miss Vane enjoy herself. “What do you think,” she asked,
“since you’re in this mood of exasperated veracity--or pretend to be--of
the flower charity?”

“Do you mean by the barrel, or the single sack? The Graham, or the best
Haxall, or the health-food cold-blast?” asked Sewell.

Miss Vane lost her power of answering in another peal of laughter,
sobering off, and breaking down again before she could say, “I mean cut
flowers for patients and prisoners.”

“Oh, that kind! I don’t think a single pansy would have an appreciable
effect upon a burglar; perhaps a bunch of forget-me-nots might, or a
few lilies of the valley carelessly arranged. As to the influence of a
graceful little _boutonnière_, in cases of rheumatism or cholera morbus,
it might be efficacious but I can’t really say.”

“How perfectly cynical!” cried Miss Vane. “Don’t you know how much good
the flower mission has accomplished among the deserving poor? Hundreds
of bouquets are distributed every day. They prevent crime.”

“That shows how susceptible the deserving poor are. I don’t find that
a bowl of the most expensive and delicate roses in the centre of a
dinner-table tempers the asperity of the conversation when it turns upon
the absent. But perhaps it oughtn’t to do so.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Miss Vane; “but if you had an impulsive
niece to supply with food for the imagination, you would be very glad of
anything that seemed to combine practical piety and picturesque effect.”

“Oh, if you mean that,” began Sewell more soberly, and his wife leaned
forward with an interest in the question which she had not felt while
the mere joking went on.

“Yes. When Sibyl came in this morning with an imperative demand to be
allowed to go off and do good with flowers in the homes of virtuous
poverty, as well as the hospitals and prisons, I certainly felt as if
there had been an interposition, if you will allow me to say so.”

Miss Vane still had her joking air, but a note of anxiety had crept into
her voice.

“I don’t think it will do the sick and poor any harm,” said Sewell, “and
it may do Sibyl some good.” He smiled a little in adding: “It may afford
her varied energies a little scope.”

Miss Vane shook her head, and some lines of age came into her face which
had not shown themselves there before. “And you would advise letting her
go into it?” she asked.

“By all means,” replied Sewell. “But if she’s going to engage actively
in the missionary work, I think you’d better go with her on her errands
of mercy.”

“Oh, of course, she’s going to do good in person. What she wants is
the sensation of doing good--of seeing and hearing the results of her
beneficence. She’d care very little about it if she didn’t.”

“Oh, I don’t know that you can say that,” replied Sewell in deprecation
of this extreme view. “I don’t believe,” he continued, “that she would
object to doing good for its own sake.”

“Of course she wouldn’t, David! Who in the world supposed she would?”
 demanded his wife, bringing him up roundly at this sign of wandering,
and Miss Vane laughed wildly.

“And is this what your doctrine of sincerity comes to? This fulsomeness!
You’re very little better than one of the wicked, it seems to me! Well,
I _hoped_ that you would approve of my letting Sibyl take this thing up,
but such _unbounded_ encouragement!”

“Oh, I don’t wish to flatter,” said Sewell, in the spirit of her
raillery. “It will be very well for her to go round with flowers; but
don’t let her,” he continued seriously--“don’t let her imagine it’s more
than an innocent amusement. It would be a sort of hideous mockery of the
good we ought to do one another if there were supposed to be anything
more than a kindly thoughtfulness expressed in such a thing.”

“Oh, if Sibyl doesn’t feel that it’s real, for the time being she won’t
care anything about it. She likes to lose herself in the illusion, she
says.”

“Well!” said Sewell with a slight shrug, “then we must let her get what
good she can out of it as an exercise of the sensibilities.”

“O my dear!” exclaimed his wife, “You _don’t_ mean anything so
abominable as that! I’ve heard you say that the worst thing about
fiction and the theatre was that they brought emotions into play that
ought to be sacred to real occasions.”

“Did I say that? Well, I must have been right. I--”

Barker made a scuffling sound with his boots under the table, and rose
to his feet. “I guess,” he said, “I shall have to be going.”

They had all forgotten him, and Sewell felt as if he had neglected this
helpless guest. “Why, no, you mustn’t go! I was in hopes we might do
something to make the day pleasant to you. I intended proposing--”

“Yes,” his wife interrupted, believing that he meant to give up one
of his precious afternoons to Barker, and hastening to prevent the
sacrifice, “my son will show you the Public Garden and the Common, and
go about the town with you.” She rose too, and young Sewell, accustomed
to suffer, silently acquiesced. “If your train isn’t to start very
soon--”

“I guess I better be going,” said Barker, and Mrs. Sewell now gave her
husband a look conveying her belief that Barker would be happier if they
let him go. At the same time she frowned upon the monstrous thought of
asking him to stay the night with them, which she detected in Sewell’s
face.

She allowed him to say nothing but, “I’m sorry; but if you really
must--”

“I guess I better,” persisted Barker. He got himself somehow to the
door, where he paused a moment, and contrived to pant, “Well, good day,”
 and without effort at more cordial leave-taking, passed out.

Sewell followed him, and helped him find his hat, and made him shake
hands. He went with him to the door, and, beginning to suffer afresh at
the wrong he had done Barker, he detained him at the threshold. “If you
still wish to see a publisher, Mr. Barker, I will gladly go with you.”

“Oh, not at all, not at all. I guess I don’t want to see any publisher
this afternoon. Well, good afternoon!” He turned away from Sewell’s
remorseful pursuit, and clumsily hurrying down the steps, he walked
up the street and round the next corner. Sewell stood watching him in
rueful perplexity, shading his eyes from the mild October sun with his
hand; and some moments after Barker had disappeared, he remained looking
after him.

When he rejoined the ladies in the dining-room they fell into a
conscious silence.

“Have you been telling, Lucy?” he asked.

“Yes, I’ve been telling, David. It was the only way. Did you offer to go
with him to a publisher again?”

“Yes, I did. It was the only way,” said Sewell.

Miss Vane and his wife both broke into a cry of laughter. The former got
her breath first. “So _that_ was the origin of the famous sermon that
turned all our heads grey with good resolutions.” Sewell assented with a
sickly grin. “What in the world _made_ you encourage him?”

“My goodness of heart, which I didn’t take the precaution of mixing with
goodness of head before I used it.”

Everything was food for Miss Vane’s laugh, even this confession. “But
what is the natural history of the boy? How came he to write poetry?
What do you suppose he means by it?”

“That isn’t so easy to say. As to his natural history, he lives with his
mother in a tumbledown, unpainted wooden house in the deepest fastness
of Willoughby Pastures. Lucy and I used to drive by it and wonder what
kind of people inhabited that solitude. There were milk-cans scattered
round the door-yard, and the Monday we were there a poverty-stricken
wash flapped across it. The thought of the place preyed upon me till one
day I asked about it at the post-office, and the postmistress told me
that the boy was quite a literary character, and read everything he
could lay his hands on, and ‘sat up nights’ writing poetry. It seemed to
me a very clear case of genius, and the postmistress’s facts rankled in
my mind till I couldn’t stand it any longer. Then I went to see him. I
suppose Lucy has told you the rest?”

“Yes, Mrs. Sewell has told me the rest. But still I don’t see how he
came to write poetry. I believe it doesn’t pay, even in extreme cases of
genius.”

“Ah, but that’s just what this poor fellow didn’t know. He must have
read somewhere, in some deleterious newspaper, about the sale of some
large edition of a poem, and have had his own wild hopes about it. I
don’t say his work didn’t show sense; it even showed some rude strength,
of a didactic, satirical sort, but it certainly didn’t show poetry. He
might have taken up painting by a little different chance. And when it
was once known about the neighbourhood that he wrote poetry, his vanity
was flattered--”

“Yes, I see. But wasn’t there any kind soul to tell him that he was
throwing his time away?”

“It appears not.”

“And even the kind soul from Boston, who visited him,” suggested Mrs.
Sewell. “Go on, David.”

“Visited him in spite of his wife’s omniscience,--even the kind soul
from Boston paltered with this plain duty. Even he, to spare himself
the pain of hurting the boy’s feelings, tried to find some of the lines
better than others, and left him with the impression that he had praised
them.”

“Well, that was pretty bad,” said Miss Vane. “You had to tell him
to-day, I suppose, that there was no hope for him?”

“Yes, I had to tell him at last, after letting him waste his time and
money in writing more stuff and coming to Boston with it. I’ve put him
to needless shame, and I’ve inflicted suffering upon him that I can’t
lighten in the least by sharing.”

“No, that’s the most discouraging thing about pitying people. It does
them no manner of good,” said Miss Vane, “and just hurts you. Don’t
you think that in an advanced civilisation we shall cease to feel
compassion? Why don’t you preach against common pity, as you did against
common politeness?”

“Well, it isn’t quite such a crying sin yet. But really, really,”
 exclaimed Sewell, “the world seems so put together that I believe we
ought to think twice before doing a good action.”

“David!” said his wife warningly.

“Oh, let him go on!” cried Miss Vane, with a laugh. “I’m proof against
his monstrous doctrines. Go on, Mr. Sewell.”

“What I mean is this.” Sewell pushed himself back in his chair, and then
stopped.

“Is what?” prompted both the ladies.

“Why, suppose the boy really had some literary faculty, should I have
had any right to encourage it? He was very well where he was. He fed the
cows and milked them, and carried the milk to the crossroads, where the
dealer collected it and took it to the train. That was his life, with
the incidental facts of cutting the hay and fodder, and bedding the
cattle; and his experience never went beyond it. I doubt if his fancy
ever did, except in some wild, mistaken excursion. Why shouldn’t he have
been left to this condition? He ate, he slept, he fulfilled his use.
Which of us does more?”

“How would you like to have been in his place?” asked his wife.

“I couldn’t _put_ myself in his place; and therefore I oughtn’t to have
done anything to take him out of it,” answered Sewell.

“It seems to me that’s very un-American,” said Miss Vane. “I thought
we had prospered up to the present point by taking people out of their
places.”

“Yes, we have,” replied the minister, “and sometimes, it seems to me,
the result is hideous. I don’t mind people taking themselves out of
their places; but if the particles of this mighty cosmos have been
adjusted by the divine wisdom, what are we to say of the temerity that
disturbs the least of them?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Miss Vane, rising. “I’m almost afraid to
stir, in view of the possible consequences. But I can’t sit here all
day, and if Mrs. Sewell will excuse me, I’ll go at once. Yes, ‘I guess
I better be going,’ as your particle Barker says. Let us hope he’ll get
safely back to his infinitesimal little crevice in the cosmos. He’s a
very pretty particle, don’t you think? That thick, coarse, wavy black
hair growing in a natural bang over his forehead would make his fortune
if he were a certain kind of young lady.”

They followed her to the door, chatting, and Sewell looked quickly out
when he opened it for her.

As she shook his hand she broke into another laugh. “Really, you looked
as if you were afraid of finding him on the steps!”

“If I could only have got near the poor boy,” said Sewell to his wife,
as they returned withindoors. “If I could only have reached him where
he lives, as our slang says! But do what I would, I couldn’t find any
common ground where we could stand together. We were as unlike as if we
were of two different species. I saw that everything I said bewildered
him more and more; he couldn’t understand me! Our education is
unchristian, our civilisation is pagan. They both ought to bring us in
closer relations with our fellow-creatures, and they both only put us
more widely apart! Every one of us dwells in an impenetrable solitude!
We understand each other a little if our circumstances are similar, but
if they are different all our words leave us dumb and unintelligible.”



IV.


Barker walked away from the minister’s door without knowing where he
was going, and with a heart full of hot pain. He burned with a confused
sense of shame and disappointment and anger. It had turned out just as
his mother had said: Mr. Sewell would be mighty different in Boston from
what he was that day at Willoughby Pastures. There he made Barker think
everything of his poetry, and now he pretended to tell him that it was
not worth anything; and he kept hinting round that Barker had better go
back home and stay there. Did he think he would have left home if there
had been anything for him to do there? Had not he as much as told him
that he was obliged to find something to make a living by, and help the
rest? What was he afraid of? Was he afraid that Barker wanted to come
and live off _him_? He could show him that there was no great danger. If
he had known how, he would have refused even to stay to dinner.

What made him keep the pictures of these people who had got along, if he
thought no one else ought to try? Barker guessed to himself that if that
Mr. Agassiz had had to get a living off the farm at Willoughby Pastures,
he would have _found_ time to make money. What did Mr. Sewell mean by
speaking of that Nilsson lady by her surname, without any Miss or Mrs.?
Was that the way people talked in Boston?

Mr. Sewell had talked to him as if he were a baby, and did not know
anything; and Barker was mad at himself for having stayed half a minute
after the minister had owned up that he had got the letter he wrote
him. He wished he had said, “Well, that’s all I want of _you_, sir,” and
walked right out; but he had not known how to do it. Did they think it
was very polite to go on talking with that woman who laughed so much,
and forget all about him? Pretty poor sort of manners to eat with her
bonnet on, and tell them she hated their victuals.

Barker tried to rage against them in these thoughts, but at the bottom
of all was a simple grief that he should have lost the friend whom he
thought he had in the minister; the friend he had talked of and dreamed
of ever since he had seen and heard him speak those cordial words; the
friend he had trusted through all, and had come down to Boston counting
upon so much. The tears came into his eyes as he stumbled and scuffled
along the brick pavements with his uncouth country walk.

He was walking up a straight, long street, with houses just alike on
both sides and bits of grass before them, that sometimes were gay with
late autumn flowers. A horse-car track ran up the middle, and the cars
seemed to be tinkling by all the time, and people getting on and off.
They were mostly ladies and children, and they were very well dressed.
Sometimes they stared at Barker, as they crossed his way in entering or
issuing from the houses, but generally no one appeared to notice him.
In some of the windows there were flowers in painted pots, and in others
little marble images on stands.

There were more images in the garden that Barker came to presently: an
image of Washington on horseback, and some orator speaking, with his
hand up, and on top of a monument a kind of Turk holding up a man that
looked sick. The man was almost naked, but he was not so bad as the
image of a woman in a granite basin; it seemed to Barker that it ought
not to be allowed there. A great many people of all kinds were passing
through the garden, and after some hesitation he went in too, and walked
over the bridge that crossed the pond in the middle of the garden, where
there were rowboats and boats with images of swans on them. Barker
made a sarcastic reflection that Boston seemed to be a great place for
images, and passed rather hurriedly through the garden on the other side
of the bridge. There were beds of all kinds of flowers scattered about,
and they were hardly touched by the cold yet. If he had been in better
heart, he would have liked to look round a little; but he felt strange,
being there all alone, and he felt very low-spirited.

He wondered if this were the Public Garden that Mrs. Sewell had spoken
of, and if that kind of grove across the street were the Common. He
felt much more at home in it, as he wandered up and down the walks, and
finally sat down on one of the iron benches beside the path. At first
he obscurely doubted whether he had any right to do so, unless he had a
lady with him; most of the seats were occupied by couples who seemed to
be courting, but he ventured finally to take one; nobody disturbed him,
and so he remained.

It was a beautiful October afternoon; the wind, warm and dry, caught the
yellow leaves from the trees overhead in little whiffs, and blew them
about the grass, which the fall rains had made as green as May; and a
pensive golden light streamed through the long loose boughs, and struck
across the slopes of the Common. Slight buggies flashed by on the street
near which he sat, and glistening carriages, with drivers dressed out in
uniform like soldiers, rumbled down its slope.

While he sat looking, now at the street and now at the people sauntering
and hurrying to and fro in the Common, he tried to decide a question
that had mixed itself up with the formless resentment he had felt ever
since Mr. Sewell played him false. It had got out in the neighbourhood
that he was going to Boston before he left home; his mother must have
told it; and people would think he was to be gone a long time. He had
warned his mother that he did not know when he should be back, before he
started in the morning; and he knew that she would repeat his words to
everybody who stopped to ask about him during the day, with what she had
said to him in reply: “You better come home to-night, Lem; and I’ll have
ye a good hot supper waitin’ for ye.”

The question was whether he should go back on the five o’clock train,
which would reach Willoughby Centre after dark, and house himself from
public ignominy for one night at least, or whether self-respect did not
demand that he should stay in Boston for twenty-four hours at any rate,
and see if something would not happen. He had now no distinct hope
of anything; but his pride and shame were holding him fast, while
the home-sickness tugged at his heart, and made him almost forget the
poverty that had spurred him to the adventure of coming to Boston. He
could see the cows coming home through the swampy meadow as plain as if
they were coming across the Common; his mother was calling them; she and
his sister were going to milk in his absence, and he could see her now,
how she looked going out to call the cows, in her bare, grey head,
gaunt of neck and cheek, in the ugly Bloomer dress in which she was
not grotesque to his eyes, though it usually affected strangers with
stupefaction or alarm. But it all seemed far away, as far as if it were
in another planet that he had dropped out of; he was divided from it by
his failure and disgrace. He thought he must stay and try for something,
he did not know what; but he could not make up his mind to throw away
his money for nothing; at the hotel, down by the depot, where he had
left his bag, they were going to make him pay fifty cents for just a
room alone.

“Any them beats ‘round here been trying to come their games on _you_?”

At first Barker could not believe himself accosted, though the young man
who spoke stood directly in front of him, and seemed to be speaking to
him. He looked up, and the young man added, “Heigh?”

“Beats? I don’t know what you mean,” said Barker.

“Confidence sharps, young feller. They’re ‘round everywheres, and don’t
you forget it. Move up a little!”

Barker was sitting in the middle of the bench, and at this he pushed
away from the young man, who had dropped himself sociably beside him. He
wore a pair of black pantaloons, very tight in the legs, and widening at
the foot so as almost to cover his boots. His coat was deeply braided,
and his waistcoat was cut low, so that his plastron-scarf hung out from
the shirt-bosom, which it would have done well to cover.

“I tell you, Boston’s full of ‘em,” he said excitedly. “One of ‘em come
up to me just now, and says he, ‘Seems to me I’ve seen you before, but
I can’t place you.’ ‘Oh yes,’ says I, ‘I’ll tell you where it was. I
happened to be in the police court one morning when they was sendin’
you up for three months.’ I tell you he got round the corner! Might ‘a’
played checkers on his coat tail. Why, what do you suppose would
been the next thing if I hadn’t have let him know I saw through him?”
 demanded the young man of Barker, who listened to this adventure
with imperfect intelligence. “He’d ‘a’ said, ‘Hain’t I seen you down
Kennebunk way som’eres?’ And when I said, ‘No, I’m from Leominster!’
or where-ever I was from if I was green, he’d say, ‘Oh yes, so it _was_
Leominster. How’s the folks?’ and he’d try to get me to think that _he_
was from Leominster too; and then he’d want me to go off and see the
sights with him; and pretty soon he’d meet a feller that ‘ud dun him for
that money he owed him; and he’d say he hadn’t got anything with him but
a cheque for forty dollars; and the other feller’d say he’d got to have
his money, and he’d kind of insinuate it was all a put-up job about the
cheque for forty dollars, anyway; and that ‘ud make the first feller
mad, and he’d take out the check, and ask him what he thought o’ that;
and the other feller’d say, well, it was a good cheque, but it wan’t
money, and he wanted money; and then the first feller’d say, ‘Well, come
along to the bank and get your money,’ and the other’d say the bank was
shut. ‘Well, then,’ the first feller’d say, ‘well, sir, I ain’t a-goin’
to ask any favour of _you_. How much _is_ your bill?’ and the other
feller’d say ten dollars, or fifteen, or may be twenty-five, if they
thought I had that much, and the first feller’d say, ‘Well, here’s a
gentleman from up my way, and I guess he’ll advance me that much on my
cheque if I make it worth his while. He knows me.’ And the first thing
you know--he’s been treatin’ you, and so polite, showin’ you round, and
ast you to go to the theayter--you advance the money, and you keep on
with the first feller, and pretty soon he asks you to hold up a minute,
he wants to go back and get a cigar; and he goes round the corner, and
you hold up, and _hold_ up, and in about a half an hour, or may be less
time, you begin to smell a rat, and you go for a policeman, and the next
morning you find your name in the papers, ‘One more unfortunate!’ You
look out for ‘em, young feller! Wish I _had_ let that one go on till
he done something so I could handed him over to the cops. It’s a shame
they’re allowed to go ‘round, when the cops knows ‘em. Hello! There
_comes_ my mate, _now_.” The young man spoke as if they had been talking
of his mate and expecting him, and another young man, his counterpart
in dress, but of a sullen and heavy demeanour very unlike his own brisk
excitement, approached, flapping a bank-note in his hand. “I just been
tellin’ this young feller about that beat, you know.”

“Oh, he’s all right,” said the mate. “Just seen him down on Tremont
Street, between two cops. Must ha’ caught him in the act.”

“You don’t say so! Well, that’s good, anyway. Why! didn’t you’ get
it changed?” demanded the young man with painful surprise as his mate
handed him the bank-note.

“No, I didn’t. I been to more’n twenty places, and there ain’t no small
bills nowhere. The last place, I offered ‘em twenty-five cents if they’d
change it.”

“Why didn’t you offer ‘em fifty? I’d ‘a’ give fifty, and glad to do it.
Why, I’ve _got_ to have this bill changed.”

“Well, I’m sorry for you,” said the mate, with ironical sympathy,
“because I don’t see how you’re goin’ to git it done. Won’t you move up
a little bit, young feller?” He sat down on the other side of Barker.
“I’m about tired out.” He took his head between his hands in sign of
extreme fatigue, and drooped forward, with his eyes fixed on the ground.

Lemuel’s heart beat. Fifty cents would pay for his lodging, and he could
stay till the next day and prolong the chance of something turning up
without too sinful a waste of money.

“How much is the bill?” he asked.

“Ten dollars,” said the young man despondently.

“And will you give me fifty cents if I change it?”

“Well, I said I’d give fifty cents,” replied the young man gloomily,
“and I will.”

“It’s a bargain,” said Lemuel promptly, and he took from his pocket the
two five-dollar notes that formed his store, and gave them, to the young
man.

He looked at them critically. “How do I know they’re good?” he asked.
“You’re a stranger to me, young feller, and how do I know you ain’t
tryin’ to beat me?” He looked sternly at Lemuel, but here the mate
interposed.

“How does _he_ know that you ain’t tryin’ to beat _him_?” he asked
contemptuously. “I never saw such a feller as you are! Here you make me
run half over town to change that bill, and now when a gentleman offers
to break it for you, you have to go and accuse him of tryin’ to put off
counterfeit money on you. If I was him I’d see you furder.”

“Oh, well, I don’t want any words about it. Here, take your money,” said
the young man. “As long as I said I’d do it, I’ll do it. Here’s your
half a dollar.” He put it, with the bank-note, into Lemuel’s hand, and
rose briskly. “You stay here, Jimmy, till I come back. I won’t be gone a
minute.”

He walked down the mall, and went out of the gate on Tremont Street.
Then the mate came to himself. “Why, I’ve _let_ him go off with both
them bills now, and he owes me one of ‘em.” With that he rose from
Lemuel’s side and hurried after his vanishing comrade; before he was out
of sight he had broken into a run.

Lemuel sat looking after them, his satisfaction in the affair alloyed by
dislike of the haste with which it had been transacted. His rustic mind
worked slowly; it was not wholly content even with a result in its own
favour, where the process had been so rapid; he was scarcely able to
fix the point at which the talk ceased to be a warning against beats and
became his opportunity for speculation. He did not feel quite right at
having taken the fellow’s half-dollar; and yet a bargain was a bargain.
Nevertheless, if the fellow wanted to rue it, Lemuel would give him
fifteen minutes to come back and get his money; and he sat for that
space of time where the others had left him. He was not going to be
mean; and he might have waited a little longer if it had not been for
the behaviour of two girls who came up and sat down on the same bench
with him. They could not have been above fifteen or sixteen years
old, and Lemuel thought they were very pretty, but they talked so, and
laughed so loud, and scuffled with each other for the paper of chocolate
which one of them took out of her pocket, that Lemuel, after first being
abashed by the fact that they were city girls, became disgusted with
them. He was a stickler for propriety of behaviour among girls; his
mother had taught him to despise anything like carrying-on among them,
and at twenty he was as severely virginal in his morality as if he had
been twelve.

People looked back at these tomboys when they had got by; and some
shabby young fellows exchanged saucy speeches with them. When Lemuel got
up and walked away in reproving dignity, one of the hoydens bounced into
his place, and they both sent a cry of derision after him. But Lemuel
would not give them the satisfaction of letting them know that he heard
them, and at the same time he was not going to let them suppose that
they had driven him away. He went very slowly down to the street where a
great many horse-cars were passing to and fro, and waited for one marked
“Fitchburg, Lowell, and Eastern Depots.” He was not going to take
it; but he meant to follow it on its way to those stations, in
the neighbourhood of which was the hotel where he had left his
travelling-bag. He had told them that he might take a room there, or he
might not; now since he had this half-dollar extra he thought that he
would stay for the night; it probably would not be any cheaper at the
other hotels.

He ran against a good many people in trying to keep the car in sight,
but by leaving the sidewalk from time to time where it was most crowded,
he managed not to fall very much behind; the worst was that the track
went crooking and turning about so much in different streets, that he
began to lose faith in its direction, and to be afraid, in spite of the
sign on its side, that the car was not going to the depots after all.
But it came in sight of them at last, and then Lemuel, blown with the
chase but secure of his ground, stopped and rested himself against the
side of a wall to get his breath. The pursuit had been very exhausting,
and at times it had been mortifying; for here and there people who saw
him running after the car had supposed he wished to board it, and in
their good-nature had hailed and stopped it. After this had happened
twice or thrice, Lemuel perceived that he was an object of contempt to
the passengers in the car; but he did not know what to do about it; he
was not going to pay six cents to ride when he could just as well walk,
and on the other hand he dared not lose sight of the car, for he had no
other means of finding his way back to his hotel.

But he was all right now, as he leaned against the house-wall, panting,
and mopping his forehead with his handkerchief; he saw his hotel a
little way down the street, and he did not feel anxious about it.

“Gave you the slip after all,” said a passer, who had apparently been
interested in Lemuel’s adventure.

“Oh, I didn’t want to catch it,” said Lemuel.

“Ah, merely fond of exercise,” said the stranger. “Well, it’s a very
good thing, if you don’t overdo it.” He walked by, and then after a
glance at Lemuel over his shoulder, he returned to him. “May I ask why
you wanted to chase the car, if you didn’t want to catch it?”

Lemuel hesitated; he did not like to confide in a total stranger; this
gentleman looked kind and friendly, but he was all the more likely on
that account to be a beat; the expression was probably such as a beat
would put on in approaching his intended prey. “Oh, nothing,” said
Lemuel evasively.

“I beg your pardon,” said the stranger, and he walked away with what
Lemuel could only conjecture was the air of a baffled beat.

He waited till he was safely out of sight, and then followed on down the
street towards his hotel. When he reached it he walked boldly up to
the clerk’s desk, and said that he guessed he would take a room for
the night, and gave him the check for his bag that he had received in
leaving it there.

The clerk wrote the number of a room against Lemuel’s name in the
register, and then glanced at the bag. It was a large bag of oilcloth, a
kind of bag which is by nature lank and hollow, and must be made almost
insupportably heavy before it shows any signs of repletion. The shirt
and pair of everyday pantaloons which Lemuel had dropped that morning
into its voracious maw made no apparent effect there, as the clerk held
it up and twirled it on the crook of his thumb.

“I guess I shall have to get the money for that room in advance,” he
said, regarding the bag very critically. However he might have been
wounded by the doubt of his honesty or his solvency implied in this
speech, Lemuel said nothing, but took out his ten-dollar note and handed
it to the clerk. The latter said apologetically, “It’s one of our rules,
where there isn’t baggage,” and then glancing at the note he flung it
quickly across the counter to Lemuel. “That won’t do!”

“Won’t do?” repeated Lemuel, taking up the bill.

“Counterfeit,” said the clerk.



V.


Lemuel stretched the note between his hands, and pored so long upon
it that the clerk began to tap impatiently with his finger-tips on the
register. “It won’t go?” faltered the boy, looking up at the clerk’s
sharp face.

“It won’t go here,” replied the clerk. “Got anything else?”

Lemuel’s head whirled; the air seemed to darken around him, as he pored
again upon the note, and turned it over and over. Two tears scalded
their way down his cheeks, and his lips twitched, when the clerk added,
“Some beats been workin’ you?” but he made no answer. His heart was
hot with shame and rage, and heavy with despair. He put the note in his
pocket, and took his bag and walked out of the hotel. He had not money
enough to get home with now, and besides he could not bear to go back in
the disgrace of such calamity. It would be all over the neighbourhood,
as soon as his mother could tell it; she might wish to keep it to
herself for his sake, but she could not help telling it to the first
person and every person she saw; she would have to go over to the
neighbours to tell it. In a dreary, homesick longing he saw her crossing
the familiar meadows that lay between the houses, bareheaded, in her
apron, her face set and rigid with wonder at what had happened to her
Lem. He could not bear the thought. He would rather die; he would
rather go to sea. This idea flashed into his mind as he lifted his eyes
aimlessly and caught sight of the tall masts of the coal-ships lying at
the railroad wharves, and he walked quickly in the direction of them,
so as not to give himself time to think about it, so as to do it
now, quick, right off. But he found his way impeded by all sorts of
obstacles; a gate closed across the street to let some trains draw in
and out of a station; then a lot of string teams and slow, heavy-laden
trucks got before him, with a turmoil of express wagons, herdics, and
hacks, in which he was near being run over, and was yelled at, sworn at,
and laughed at as he stood bewildered, with his lank bag in his hand. He
turned and walked back past the hotel again. He felt it an escape, after
all, not to have gone to sea; and now a hopeful thought struck him. He
would go back to the Common and watch for those fellows who fooled him,
and set the police on them, and get his money from them; they might
come prowling round again to fool somebody else. He looked out for a car
marked like the one he had followed down from the Common, and began to
follow it on its return. He got ahead of the car whenever it stopped, so
as to be spared the shame of being seen to chase it; and he managed
to keep it in sight till he reached the Common. There he walked about
looking for those scamps, and getting pushed and hustled by the people
who now thronged the paths. At last he was tired out, and on the Beacon
Street mall, where he had first seen those fellows, he found the very
seat where they had all sat together, and sank into it. The seats were
mostly vacant now; a few persons sat there reading their evening papers.
As the light began to wane, they folded up their papers and walked away,
and their places were filled by young men, who at once put their arms
round the young women with them, and seemed to be courting. They did not
say much, if anything; they just sat there. It made Lemuel ashamed to
look at them; he thought they ought to have more sense. He looked away,
but he could not look away from them all, there were so many of them. He
was all the time very hungry, but he thought he ought not to break into
his half-dollar as long as he could help it, or till there was no chance
left of catching those fellows. The night came on, the gas-lamps were
lighted, and some lights higher up, like moonlight off on the other
paths, projected long glares into the night and made the gas look sickly
and yellow. Sitting still there while it grew later, he did not feel
quite so hungry, but he felt more tired than ever. There were not so
many people around now, and he did not see why he should not lie down on
that seat and rest himself a little. He made feints of reclining on his
arm at first, to see if he were noticed; then he stretched himself out,
with his bag under his head, and his hands in his pockets clutching the
money which he meant to make those fellows take back. He got a gas-lamp
in range, to keep him awake, and lay squinting his eyes to meet the path
of rays running down from it to him. Then he shivered, and rose up with
a sudden start. The dull, rich dawn was hanging under the trees around
him, while the electric lamps, like paler moons now, still burned among
their tops. The sparrows bickered on the grass and the gravel of the
path around him.

He could not tell where he was at first; but presently he remembered,
and looked for his bag. It was gone; and the money was gone out of both
his pockets. He dropped back upon the seat, and leaning his head against
the back, he began to cry for utter despair. He had hardly ever cried
since he was a baby; and he would not have done it now, but there was no
one there to see him.

When he had his cry out he felt a little better, and he got up and went
to the pond in the hollow, and washed his hands and face, and wiped
them on the handkerchief his mother had ironed for him to use at the
minister’s; it was still in the folds she had given it. As he shook it
out, rising up, he saw that people were asleep on all the benches round
the pond; he looked hopelessly at them to see if any of them were those
fellows, but he could not find them. He seemed to be the only person
awake on the Common, and wandered out of it and down through the empty
streets, filled at times with the moony light of the waning electrics,
and at times merely with the grey dawn. A man came along putting out
the gas, and some milk-carts rattled over the pavement. By and by a
market-wagon, with the leaves and roots of cabbages sticking out from
the edges of the canvas that covered it, came by, and Lemuel followed
it; he did not know what else to do, and it went so slow that he could
keep up, though the famine that gnawed within him was so sharp sometimes
that he felt as if he must fall down. He was going to drop into a
doorway and rest, but when he came to it he found on an upper step a
man folded forward like a limp bundle, snoring in a fetid, sodden sleep,
and, shocked into new strength, he hurried on. At last the wagon came to
a place that he saw was a market. There were no buyers yet, but men
were flitting round under the long arcades of the market-houses, with
lanterns under their arms, among boxes and barrels of melons, apples,
potatoes, onions, beans, carrots, and other vegetables, which the
country carts as they arrived continually unloaded. The smell of peaches
and cantaloupes filled the air, and made Lemuel giddy as he stood and
looked at the abundance. The men were not saying much; now and then one
of them priced something, the owner pretended to figure on it, and then
they fell into a playful scuffle, but all silently. A black cat lay
luxuriously asleep on the canvas top of a barrel of melons, and the man
who priced the melons asked if the owner would throw the cat in. There
was a butcher’s cart laden with carcasses of sheep, and one of the men
asked the butcher if he called that stuff mutton. “No; imitation,” said
the butcher. They all seemed to be very good-natured. Lemuel thought he
would ask for an apple; but he could not.

The neighbouring restaurants began to send forth the smell of breakfast,
and he dragged up and down till he could bear it no longer, and then
went into one of them, meaning to ask for some job by which he could pay
for a meal. But his shame again would not let him. He looked at the
fat, white-aproned boy drawing coffee hot from a huge urn, and serving a
countryman with a beefsteak. It was close and sultry in there; the open
sugar-bowl was black with flies, and a scent of decaying meat came from
the next cellar. “Like some nice fresh dough-nuts?” said the boy to
Lemuel. He did not answer; he looked around as if he had come in search
of some one. Then he went out, and straying away from the market, he
found himself after a while in a street that opened upon the Common.

He was glad to sit down, and he said to himself that now he would stay
there, and keep a good lookout for the chaps that had robbed him. But
again he fell asleep, and he did not wake now till the sun was high, and
the paths of the Common were filled with hurrying people. He sat where
he had slept, for he did not know what else to do or where to go.
Sometimes he thought he would go to Mr. Sewell, and ask him for money
enough to get home; but he could not do it; he could more easily starve.

After an hour or two he went to get a drink at a fountain he saw a
little way off, and when he came back some people had got his seat. He
started to look for another, and on his way he found a cent in the path,
and he bought an apple with it--a small one that the dealer especially
picked out for cheapness. It seemed pretty queer to Lemuel that a person
should want anything for one apple. The apple when he ate it made
him sick. His head began to ache, and it ached all day. Late in the
afternoon he caught sight of one of those fellows at a distance; but
there was no policeman near. Lemuel called out, “Stop there, you!” but
the fellow began to run when he recognised Lemuel, and the boy was too
weak and faint to run after him.

The day wore away and the evening came again, and he had been
twenty-four hours houseless and without food. He must do something; he
could not stand it any longer; there was no sense in it. He had read in
the newspapers how they gave soup at the police-stations in Boston
in the winter; perhaps they gave something in summer. He mustered up
courage to ask a gentleman who passed where the nearest station was,
and then started in search of it. If the city gave it, then there was no
disgrace in it, and Lemuel had as much right to anything that was going
as other people; that was the way he silenced his pride.

But he missed the place; he must have gone down the wrong street from
Tremont to Washington; the gentleman had said the street that ran along
the Common was Tremont, and the next was Washington. The cross-street
that Lemuel got into was filled with people, going and coming, and
lounging about. There were girls going along two or three together with
books under their arms, and other girls talking with young fellows who
hung about the doors of brightly lighted shops, and flirting with them.
One of the girls, whom he had seen the day before in the Common, turned
upon Lemuel as he passed, and said, “There goes my young man _now_! Good
evening, Johnny!” It made Lemuel’s cheek burn; he would have liked to
box her ears for her. The fellows all set up a laugh.

Towards the end of the street the crowd thickened, and there the mixture
of gas and the white moony lights that glared higher up, and winked and
hissed, shone upon the faces of a throng that had gathered about the
doors and windows of a store a little way down the other street. Lemuel
joined them, and for pure listlessness waited round to see what they
were looking at. By and by he was worked inward by the shifting and
changing of the crowd, and found himself looking in at the door of
a room, splendidly fitted up with mirrors and marble everywhere, and
coloured glass and carved mahogany. There was a long counter with three
men behind it, and over their heads was a large painting of a woman,
worse than that image in the garden. The men were serving out liquor to
the people that stood around drinking and smoking, and battening on this
picture. Lemuel could not help looking, either. “What place is this?” he
asked of the boy next him.

“Why, don’t you know?” said the boy. “It’s Jimmy Baker’s. Just opened.”

“Oh,” said Lemuel. He was not going to let the boy see that he did not
know who Jimmy Baker was. Just then something caught his eye that had a
more powerful charm for him than that painting. It was a large bowl at
the end of the counter, which had broken crackers in it, and near it
were two plates, one with cheese, and one with bits of dried fish and
smoked meat. The sight made the water come into his mouth; he watched
like a hungry dog, with a sympathetic working of the jaws, the men who
took a bit of fish, or meat, or cheese, and a cracker, or all four of
them, before or after they drank. Presently one of the crowd near him
walked in and took some fish and cracker without drinking at all; he
merely winked at one of the bartenders, who winked at him in return.

A tremendous tide of daring rose in Lemuel’s breast. He was just going
to go in and risk the same thing himself, when a voice in the crowd
behind him said, “Hain’t you had ‘most enough, young feller? Some the
rest of us would like a chance to see now.”

Lemuel knew the voice, and turning quickly, he knew the impudent face
it belonged to. He did not mind the laugh raised at his expense, but
launched himself across the intervening spectators, and tried to seize
the scamp who had got his money from him. The scamp had recognised
Lemuel too, and he fell back beyond his grasp, and then lunged through
the crowd, and tore round the corner and up the street. Lemuel followed
as fast as he could. In spite of the weakness he had felt before, wrath
and the sense of wrong lent him speed, and he was gaining in the chase
when he heard a girl’s voice, “There goes one of them now!” and then a
man seemed to be calling after him, “Stop, there!” He turned round, and
a policeman, looking gigantic in his belted blue flannel blouse and his
straw helmet, bore down upon the country boy with his club drawn, and
seized him by the collar.

“You come along,” he said.

“I haven’t done anything,” said Lemuel, submitting, as he must, and in
his surprise and terror losing the strength his wrath had given him. He
could scarcely drag his feet over the pavement, and the policeman had
almost to carry him at arm’s length.

A crowd had gathered about them, and was following Lemuel and
his captor, but they fell back when they reached the steps of the
police-station, and Lemuel was pulled up alone, and pushed in at the
door. He was pushed through another door, and found himself in a kind
of office. A stout man in his shirt-sleeves was sitting behind a desk
within a railing, and a large book lay open on the desk. This man, whose
blue waistcoat with brass buttons marked him for some sort of officer,
looked impersonally at Lemuel and then at the officer, while he chewed
a quill toothpick, rolling it in his lips. “What have you got there?” he
asked.

“Assaulting a girl down here, and grabbing her satchel,” said the
officer who had arrested Lemuel, releasing his collar and going to the
door, whence he called, “You come in here, lady,” and a young girl, her
face red with weeping and her hair disordered, came back with him. She
held a crumpled straw hat with the brim torn loose, and in spite of her
disordered looks she was very pretty, with blue eyes flung very wide
open, and rough brown hair, wavy and cut short, almost like a boy’s.
This Lemuel saw in the frightened glance they exchanged.

“This the fellow that assaulted you?” asked the man at the desk, nodding
his head toward Lemuel, who tried to speak; but it was like a nightmare;
he could not make any sound.

“There were three of them,” said the girl with hysterical volubility.
“One of them pulled my hat down over my eyes and tore it, and one of
them held me by the elbows behind, and they grabbed my satchel away that
had a book in it that I had just got out of the library. I hadn’t got it
more than----”

“What name?” asked the man at the desk.

_“A Young Man’s Darling,”_ said the girl, after a bashful hesitation.
Lemuel had read that book just before he left home; he had not thought
it was much of a book.

“The captain wants to know your name,” said the officer in charge of
Lemuel.

“Oh,” said the girl, with mortification. “Statira Dudley.”

“What age?” asked the captain.

“Nineteen last June,” replied the girl with eager promptness, that must
have come from shame from the blunder she had made. Lemuel was twenty,
the 4th of July.

“Weight?” pursued the captain.

“Well, I hain’t been weighed very _lately_,” answered the girl, with
increasing interest. “I don’t know as I been weighed since I left home.”

The captain looked at her judicially.

“That so? Well, you look pretty solid. Guess I’ll put you down at a
hundred and twenty.”

“Well, I guess it’s full as _much_ as that,” said the girl, with a
flattered laugh.

“Dunno how high you are?” suggested the captain, glancing at her again.

“Well, yes, I _do_. I am just five feet two inches and a half.”

“You don’t look it,” said the captain critically.

“Well, I _am_,” insisted the girl, with a returning gaiety.

The captain apparently checked himself and put on a professional
severity.

“What business--occupation?”

“Sales-lady,” said the girl.

“Residence?”

“No. 2334 Pleasant Avenue.”

The captain leaned back in his arm-chair, and turned his toothpick
between his lips, as he stared hard at the girl.

“Well, now,” he said, after a moment, “you know you’ve got to come into
court and testify to-morrow morning.”

“Yes,” said the girl, rather falteringly, with a sidelong glance at
Lemuel.

“You’ve got to promise to do it, or else it will be my duty to have you
locked up overnight.”

“Have me locked up?” gasped the girl, her wide blue eyes filling with
astonishment.

“Detain you as a witness,” the captain explained. “Of course, we
shouldn’t put you in a cell; we should give you a good room, and if you
ain’t sure you’ll appear in the morning----”

The girl was not of the sort whose tongues are paralysed by terror. “Oh,
I’ll be _sure_ to appear, captain! Indeed I will, captain! You needn’t
lock me up, captain! Lock me _up!_” she broke off indignantly. “It would
be a _pretty_ idea if I was first to be robbed of my satchel and then
put in prison for it overnight! A great kind of law _that_ would be!
Why, I never heard of such a thing! I think it’s a perfect shame! I want
to know if that’s the way you do with poor things that you don’t know
about?”

“That’s about the size of it,” said the captain, permitting himself a
smile, in which the officer joined.

“Well, it’s a shame!” cried the girl, now carried far beyond her
personal interest in the matter.

The captain laughed outright. “It _is_ pretty rough. But what you going
to do?”

“Do? Why, I’d----” But here she stopped for want of science, and added
from emotion, “I’d do _any_thing before I’d do that.”

“Well,” said the captain, “then I understand you’ll come round to the
police court and give your testimony in the morning?”

“Yes,” said the girl, with a vague, compassionate glance at Lemuel, who
had stood there dumb throughout the colloquy.

“If you don’t, I shall have to send for you,” said the captain.

“Oh, I’ll _come_,” replied the girl, in a sort of disgust, and her eyes
still dwelt upon Lemuel.

“That’s all,” returned the captain, and the girl, accepting her
dismissal, went out.

Now that it was too late, Lemuel could break from his nightmare. “Oh,
don’t let her go! I ain’t the one! I was running after a fellow that
passed off a counterfeit ten-dollar bill on me in the Common yesterday.
I never touched her satchel. I never saw her before----”

“What’s that?” demanded the captain sharply.

“You’ve got the wrong one!” cried Lemuel. “I never did anything to the
girl.”

“Why, you fool!” retorted the captain angrily; “why didn’t you say that
when she was here, instead of standing there like a dumb animal? Heigh?”

Lemuel’s sudden flow of speech was stopped at its source again. His lips
were locked; he could not answer a word.

The captain went on angrily. “If you’d spoke up in time, may be I might
‘a’ let you go. I don’t want to do a man any harm if I can’t do him some
good. Next time, if you’ve got a tongue in your head, use it. I can’t do
anything for you now. I got to commit you.”

He paused between his sentences, as if to let Lemuel speak, but the boy
said nothing. The captain pulled his book impatiently toward him, and
took up his pen.

“What’s your name?”

“Lemuel Barker.”

“I thought may be there was a mistake all the while,” said the captain
to the officer, while he wrote down Lemuel’s name. “But if a man hain’t
got sense enough to speak for himself, I can’t put the words in his
mouth. Age?” he demanded savagely of Lemuel.

“Twenty.”

“Weight?”

“A hundred and thirty.”

“I could see with half an eye that the girl wan’t very sanguine about
it. But what’s the use? I couldn’t tell her she was mistaken. Height?”

“Five feet six.”

“Occupation?”

“I help mother carry on the farm.”

“Just as I expected!” cried the captain. “Slow as a yoke of oxen.
Residence?”

“Willoughby Pastures.”

The captain could not contain himself. “Well, Willoughby Pastures,--or
whatever your name is,--you’ll get yourself into the papers _this_
time, _sure_. And I must say it serves you right. If you can’t speak for
yourself, who’s going to speak for you, do you suppose? Might send round
to the girl’s house----No, she wouldn’t be there, ten to one. You’ve got
to go through now. Next time don’t be such an infernal fool.”

The captain blotted his book and shut it.

“We’ll have to lock him up here to-night,” he said to the policeman.
“Last batch has gone round. Better go through him.” But Lemuel had
been gone through before, and the officer’s search of his pockets only
revealed their emptiness. The captain struck a bell on his desk. “If it
ain’t all right, you can make it right with the judge in the morning,”
 he added to Lemuel.

Lemuel looked up at the policeman who had arrested him. He was an
elderly man, with a kindly face, squarely fringed with a chin-beard. The
boy tried to speak, but he could only repeat, “I never saw her before. I
never touched her.”

The policeman looked at him and then at the captain.

“Too late now,” said the latter. “Got to go through the mill this time.
But if it ain’t right, you can make it right.”

Another officer had answered the bell, and the captain indicated with a
comprehensive roll of his head that he was to take Lemuel away and lock
him up.

“Oh, my!” moaned the boy. As they passed the door of a small room
opening on an inner corridor, a smell of coffee gushed out of it; the
officer stopped, and Lemuel caught sight of two gentlemen in the room
with a policeman, who was saying----

“Get a cup of coffee here when we want it. Try one?” he suggested
hospitably.

“No, thank you,” said one of the gentlemen, with the bland
respectfulness of people being shown about an institution. “How many of
you are attached to this station?”

“Eighty-one,” said the officer. “Largest station in town. Gang goes on
at one in the morning, and another at eight, and another at six P.M.” He
looked inquiringly at the officer in charge of Lemuel.

“Any matches?” asked this officer.

“Everything but money,” said the other, taking some matches out of his
waistcoat pocket.

Lemuel’s officer went ahead, lighting the gas along the corridor, and
the boy followed, while the other officer brought up the rear with the
visitor whom he was lecturing. They passed some neat rooms, each with
two beds in it, and he answered some question: “Tramps? Not much! Give
_them_ a _board_ when they’re drunk; send ‘em round to the Wayfarers’
Lodge when they’re sober. These officers’ rooms.”

Lemuel followed his officer downstairs into a basement, where on either
side of a white-walled, brilliantly lighted, specklessly clean
corridor, there were numbers of cells, very clean, and smelling of fresh
whitewash. Each had a broad low shelf in it, and a bench opposite, a
little wider than a man’s body. Lemuel suddenly felt himself pushed
into one of them, and then a railed door of iron was locked upon him.
He stood motionless in the breadth of light and lines of shade which the
gas-light cast upon him through the door, and knew the gentlemen were
looking at him as their guide talked.

“Well, fill up pretty well, Sunday nights. Most the arrests for
drunkenness. But all the arrests before seven o’clock sent to the City
Prison. Only keep them that come in afterwards.”

One of the gentlemen looked into the cell opposite Lemuel’s. “There
seems to be only one bunk. Do you ever put more into a cell?”

“Well, hardly ever, if they’re men. Lot o’ women brought in ‘most always
ask to be locked up together for company.”

“I don’t see where they sleep,” said the visitor. “Do they lie on the
floor?”

The officer laughed. “Sleep? _They_ don’t want to sleep. What they want
to do is to set up all night, and talk it over.”

Both of the visitors laughed.

“Some of the cells,” resumed the officer, “have two bunks, but we hardly
ever put more than one in a cell.”

The visitors noticed that a section of the rail was removed in each door
near the floor.

“That’s to put a dipper of water through, or anything,” explained the
officer. “There!” he continued, showing them Lemuel’s door; “see how
the rails are bent there? You wouldn’t think a man could squeeze through
there, but we found a fellow half out o’ that one night--backwards.
Captain came down with a rattan and made it hot for him.”

The visitors laughed, and Lemuel, in his cell, shuddered.

“I never saw anything so astonishingly clean,” said one of the
gentlemen. “And do you keep the gas burning here all night?”

“Yes; calculate to give ‘em plenty of light,” said the officer, with
comfortable satisfaction in the visitor’s complimentary tone.

“And the sanitary arrangements seem to be perfect, doctor,” said the
other visitor.

“Oh, perfect.”

“Yes,” said the officer, “we do the best we can for ‘em.”

The visitors made a murmur of approbation. Their steps moved away;
Lemuel heard the guide saying, “Dunno what that fellow’s in for. Find
out in the captain’s room.”

“He didn’t look like a very abandoned ruffian,” said one of the
visitors, with both pity and amusement in his voice.



VI.


Lemuel stood and leaned his head against the wall of his cell. The tears
that had come to his relief in the morning when he found that he was
robbed would not come now. He was trembling with famine and weakness,
but he could not lie down; it would be like accepting his fate, and
every fibre of his body joined his soul in rebellion against that. The
hunger gnawed him incessantly, mixed with an awful sickness.

After a long time a policeman passed his door with another prisoner, a
drunken woman, whom he locked into a cell at the end of the corridor.
When he came back, Lemuel could endure it no longer. “Say!” he called
huskily through his door. “Won’t you give me a cup of that coffee
upstairs? I haven’t had anything but an apple to eat for nearly two
days. I don’t want you to _give_ me the coffee. You can take my clasp
button----”

The officer went by a few steps, then he came back, and peered in
through the door at Lemuel’s face. “Oh! that’s you?” he said: he was the
officer who had arrested Lemuel.

“Yes. Please get me the coffee. I’m afraid I shall have a fit of
sickness if I go much longer.”

“Well,” said the officer, “I guess I can get you something.” He went
away, and came back, after Lemuel had given up the hope of his return,
with a saucerless cup of coffee, and a slice of buttered bread laid on
the top of it. He passed it in through the opening at the bottom of the
door.

“Oh, my!” gasped the starving boy. He thought he should drop the cup,
his hand shook so when he took it. He gulped the coffee, and swallowed
the bread in a frenzy.

“Here--here’s the button,” he said, as he passed the empty cup out to
the officer.

“I don’t want your button,” answered the policeman. He hesitated a
moment. “I shall be round at the court in the morning, and I guess if it
ain’t right we can make it so.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Lemuel, humbly grateful.

“You lay down now,” said the officer. “We shan’t put anybody in on you
to-night.”

“I guess I better,” said Lemuel. He crept in upon the lower shelf, and
stretched himself out in his clothes, with his arm under his head for a
pillow. The drunken woman at the end of the corridor was clamouring to
get out. She wished to get out just half a minute, she said, and settle
with that hussy; then she would come back willingly. Sometimes she
sang, sometimes she swore; but with the coffee still sensibly hot in his
stomach, and the comfort of it in every vein, her uproar turned into an
agreeable fantastic medley for Lemuel, and he thought it was the folks
singing in church at Willoughby Pastures, and they were all asking him
who the new girl in the choir was, and he was saying Statira Dudley; and
then it all slipped off into a smooth, yellow nothingness, and he heard
some one calling him to get up.

When he woke in the morning he started up so suddenly that he struck
his head against the shelf above him, and lay staring stupidly at the
iron-work of his door.

He heard the order to turn out repeated at other cells along the
corridor, and he crept out of his shelf, and then sat down upon it,
waiting for his door to be unlocked. He was very hungry again, and he
trembled with faintness. He wondered how he should get his breakfast,
and he dreaded the trial in court less than the thought of going
through another day with nothing to eat. He heard the stir of the other
prisoners in the cells along the corridors, the low groans and sighs
with which people pull themselves together after a bad night; and he
heard the voice of the drunken woman, now sober, poured out in voluble
remorse, and in voluble promise of amendment for the future, to every
one who passed, if they would let her off easy. She said aisy, of
course, and it was in her native accent that she bewailed the fate of
the little ones whom her arrest had left motherless at home. No one
seemed to answer her, but presently she broke into a cry of joy and
blessing, and from her cell at the other end of the corridor came the
clink of crockery. Steps approached with several pauses, and at last
they paused at Lemuel’s door, and a man outside stooped and pushed in,
through the opening at the bottom, a big bowl of baked beans, a quarter
of a loaf of bread, and a tin cup full of coffee. “Coffee’s extra,” he
said jocosely. “Comes from the officers. You’re in luck, young feller.”

“I ha’n’t got anything to pay for it with,” faltered Lemuel.

“Guess they’ll trust you,” said the man. “Any-rate, I got orders to
leave it.” He passed on, and Lemuel gathered up his breakfast, and
arranged it on the shelf where he had slept; then he knelt down before
it, and ate.

An hour later an officer came and unbolted his door from the outside.
“Hurry up,” he said; “Maria’s waiting.”

“Maria?” repeated Lemuel innocently.

“Yes,” returned the officer. “Other name’s Black. She don’t like to
wait. Come out of here.”

Lemuel found himself in the corridor with four or five other prisoners,
whom some officers took in charge and conducted upstairs to the door of
the station. He saw no woman, but a sort of omnibus without windows was
drawn up at the curbstone.

“I thought,” he said to an officer, “that there was a lady waiting
to see me. Maria Black,” he added, seeing that the officer did not
understand.

The policeman roared, and could not help putting his head in at the
office door to tell the joke.

“Well, you must introduce him,” called a voice from within.

“Guess you ha’n’t got the name exactly straight, young man,” said the
policeman to Lemuel, as he guarded him down the steps. “It’s Black
Maria you’re looking for. There she is,” he continued, pointing to
the omnibus, “and don’t you forget it. She’s particular to have folks
recognise her. She’s blacker ‘n she’s painted.”

The omnibus was, in fact, a sort of aesthetic drab, relieved with
salmon, as Lemuel had time to notice before he was hustled into it with
the other prisoners, and locked in.

There were already several there, and as Lemuel’s eyes accustomed
themselves to the light that came in through the little panes at the
sides of the roof, he could see that they were women; and by and by he
saw that two of them were the saucy girls who had driven him from his
seat in the Common that day, and laughed so at him. They knew him too,
and one of them set up a shrill laugh. “Hello, Johnny! That you? You
don’t say so? What you up for _this_ time? Going down to the Island?
Well, give us a call there! Do be sociable! Ward 11’s the address.” The
other one laughed, and then swore at the first for trying to push her
off the seat.

Lemuel broke out involuntarily in all the severity that was native to
him. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

This convulsed the bold things with laughter. When they could get their
breath, one of them said, “Pshaw! I know what he’s up for: preaching on
the Common. Say, young feller! don’t you want to hold a prayer-meetin’
here?”

They burst into another shriek of laughter, so wild and shrill that the
driver rapped on the roof, and called down, “Dry up in there!”

“Oh, you mind your horses, and we’ll look after the passengers. Go and
set on his knee, Jen, and cheer him up a little.”

Lemuel sat in a quiver of abhorrence. The girl appealed to remained
giggling beside her companion.

“I--I pity ye!” said Lemuel.

The Irishwoman had not stopped bewailing herself, and imploring right
and left an easy doom. She now addressed herself wholly to Lemuel, whose
personal dignity seemed to clothe him with authority in her eyes. She
told him about her children, left alone with no one to look after them;
the two little girls, the boy only three years old. When the van stopped
at a station to take in more passengers, she tried to get out--to tell
the gentlemen at the office about it, she said.

After several of these halts they stopped at the basement of a large
stone building, that had a wide flight of steps in front, and columns,
like the church at Willoughby Pastures, only the church steps were wood,
and the columns painted pine. Here more officers took charge of them,
and put them in a room where there were already twenty-five or thirty
other prisoners, the harvest of the night before; and presently another
van-load was brought in.

There were many women among them, but here there was no laughing or
joking as there had been in the van. Scarcely any one spoke, except the
Irishwoman, who crept up to an officer at the door from time to time,
and begged him to tell the judge to let her have it easy this time.
Lemuel could not help seeing that she and most of the others were
familiar with the place. Those two saucy jades who had mocked him were
silent, and had lost their bold looks.

After waiting what seemed a long time, the door was opened, and they
were driven up a flight of stairs into a railed enclosure at the corner
of a large room, where they remained huddled together, while a man at
a long desk rattled over something that ended with “God bless the
commonwealth of Massachusetts.” On a platform behind the speaker sat
a grey-haired man in spectacles, and Lemuel knew that he was in the
court-room, and that this must be the judge. He could not see much of
the room over the top of the railing, but there was a buzz of voices and
a stir of feet beyond, that made him think the place was full. But full
or empty, it was the same to him; his shame could not be greater or
less. He waited apathetically while the clerk read off the charges
against the vastly greater number of his fellow-prisoners arrested for
drunkenness. When these were disposed of, he read from the back of a
paper, which he took from a fresh pile, “Bridget Gallagher, complained
of for habitual drunkenness. Guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty, your honour,” answered the Irishwoman who had come from
Lemuel’s station. “But make it aisy for me this time, judge, and ye’ll
never catch me in it again. I’ve three helpless childer at home, your
honour, starvin’ and cryin’ for their mother. Holy Mary, make it aisy,
judge!”

A laugh went round the room, which a stern voice checked with “Silence,
there!” but which renewed itself when the old woman took the stand at
the end of the clerk’s long desk, while a policeman mounted a similar
platform outside the rail, and gave his testimony against her. It was
very conclusive, and it was not affected by the denials with which the
poor woman gave herself away more and more. She had nothing to say
when invited to do so except to beg for mercy; the judge made a few
inquiries, apparently casual, of the policeman; then after a moment’s
silence, in which he sat rubbing his chin, he leaned forward and said
quietly to the clerk,

“Give her three months.”

The woman gave a wild Irish cry, “O my poor childer!” and amidst the
amusement of the spectators, which the constables could not check at
once, was led wailing below.

Before Lemuel could get his breath those bold girls, one after the
other, were put upon the stand. The charge against them was not made
the subject of public investigation; the judge and some other elderly
gentleman talked it over together; and the girls, who had each wept in
pleading guilty, were put on probation, as Lemuel understood it, and,
weeping still and bridling a little, were left in charge of this elderly
gentleman, and Lemuel saw them no more.

One case followed another, and Lemuel listened with the fascination of
terror; the sentences seemed terribly severe, and out of all proportion
to the offences. Suddenly his own name was called. His name had been
called in public places before: at the school exhibitions, where he had
taken prizes in elocution and composition; in church, once, when the
minister had mentioned him for peculiar efficiency and zeal among other
Sabbath-school teachers. It was sacred to him for his father’s sake,
who fell in the war, and who was recorded in it on the ugly, pathetic
monument on the village green; and hitherto he had made it respected and
even honoured, and had tried all the harder to keep it so because his
family was poor, and his mother had such queer ways and dressed so. He
dragged himself to the stand which he knew he must mount, and stole from
under his eyelashes a glance at the court-room, which took it all in.
There were some people, whom he did not know for reporters, busy with
their pencils next the railings; and there was a semicircular table in
the middle of the room at which a large number of policemen sat, and
they had their straw helmets piled upon it, with the hats of the lawyers
who sat among them. Beyond, the seats which covered the floor were
filled with the sodden loafers whom the law offers every morning the
best dramatic amusement in the city. Presently, among the stupid eyes
fixed upon him, Lemuel was aware of the eyes of that fellow who had
passed the counterfeit money on him; and when this scamp got up and
coolly sauntered out of the room, Lemuel was held in such a spell that
he did not hear the charge read against him, or the clerk’s repeated
demand, “Guilty or not guilty?”

He was recalled to himself by the voice of the judge. “Young man, do
you understand? Are you guilty of assaulting this lady and taking her
satchel, or not?”

“Not guilty,” said Lemuel huskily; and he looked, not at the judge, but
at the pretty girl, who confronted him from a stand at the other end of
the clerk’s desk, blushing to find herself there up to her wide-flung
blue eyes. Lemuel blushed too, and dropped his eyes; and it seemed to
him in a crazy kind of way that it was impolite to have pleaded not
guilty against her accusation. He stood waiting for the testimony which
the judge had to prompt her to offer.

“State the facts in regard to the assault,” he said gravely.

“I don’t know as I can do it, very well,” began the girl.

“We shall be satisfied if you do your best,” said the judge, with
the glimmer of a smile, which spread to a laugh among the spectators,
unrebuked by the constables, since the judge had invited it.

In this atmosphere of sympathy the girl found her tongue, and with a
confiding twist, of her pretty head began again: “Well, now, I’ll tell
you just how it was. I’d just got my book out of the Public Library, and
I was going down Neponset Street on my way home, hurrying along, because
I see it was beginning to be pretty late, and the first thing I know
somebody pulled my hat down over my eyes, and tore the brim half off, so
I don’t suppose I can ever wear it again, it’s such a lookin’ thing; any
rate it ain’t the one I’ve got on, though it’s some like it; and then
the next thing, somebody grabbed away the satchel I’d got on my arm; and
as soon as I could get my eyes clear again, I see two fellows chasin’ up
the street, and I told the officer somebody’d got my book; and I knew it
was one of those fellows runnin’ away, and I said, ‘There they go now,’
and the officer caught the hind one, and I guess the other one got away;
and the officer told me to follow along to the station-house, and when
we got there they took my name, and where I roomed, and my age----”

“Do you recognise this young man as one of the persons who robbed you?”
 interrupted the judge, nodding his head toward Lemuel, who now lifted
his head and looked his accuser fearlessly in her pretty eyes.

“Why, no!” she promptly replied. “The first thing I knew, he’d pulled my
hat over my eyes.”

“But you recognise him as one of those you saw running away?”

“Oh yes, he’s one of _them_,” said the girl.

“What made you think he had robbed you?”

“Why, because my satchel was gone!” returned the girl, with logic that
apparently amused the gentlemen of the bar.

“But why did you think _he_ had taken it?”

“Because I see him running away.”

“You couldn’t swear that he was the one who took your satchel?”

“Why, of course not! I didn’t _see_ him till I saw him running. And I
don’t know as he was the one, now,” added the girl, in a sudden burst of
generosity.

“And if it was to do over again, I should say as much to the officers at
the station. But I got confused when they commenced askin’ me who I
was, and how much I weighed, and what my height was; and _he_ didn’t say
anything; and I got to thinkin’ may be it _was_; and when they told me
that if I didn’t promise to appear at court in the morning they’d have
to lock me up, I was only too glad to get away alive.”

By this time all the blackguard audience were sharing, unchecked, the
amusement of the bar. The judge put up his hand to hide a laugh. Then he
said to Lemuel, “Do you wish to question the plaintiff?”

The two young things looked at each other, and both blushed. “No,” said
Lemuel.

The girl looked at the judge for permission, and at a nod from him left
the stand and sat down.

The officer who had arrested Lemuel took the stand on the other side
of the rail from him, and corroborated the girl’s story; but he had not
seen the assault or robbery, and could not swear to either. Then Lemuel
was invited to speak, and told his story with the sort of nervous
courage that came to him in extremity. He told it from the beginning,
and his adventure with the two beats in the Common made the audience
laugh again. Even then, Lemuel could not see the fun of it; he stopped,
and the stout ushers in blue flannel sacks commanded silence. Then
Lemuel related how he had twice seen one of the beats since that time,
but he was ashamed to say how he had let him escape out of that very
room half an hour before. He told how he had found the beat in the crowd
before the saloon, and how he was chasing him up the street when he
heard the young lady hollo out, “There they go now!” and then the
officer arrested him.

The judge sat a moment in thought; then said quietly, “The charge is
dismissed;” and before Lemuel well knew what it meant, a gate was opened
at the stand, and he was invited to pass out. He was free. The officer
who had arrested him shook his hand in congratulation and excuse, and
the lawyers and the other policemen gave him a friendly glance. The
loafers and beats of the audience did not seem to notice him. They were
already intent upon a case of coloured assault and battery which had
been called, and which opened with the promise of uncommon richness,
both of the parties being women.

Lemuel saw that girl who had accused him passing down the aisle on the
other side of the room. She was with another girl, who looked older.
Lemuel walked fast, to get out of their way; he did not know why, but he
did not want to speak to the girl. They walked fast too, and when he got
down the stairs on to the ground floor of the courthouse they overtook
him.

“Say?” said the older girl, “I want to speak to _you_. I think it’s a
down shame, the way that you’ve been treated; and Statira, she feels
jus’ ‘s I do about it; and I tell her she’s got to say so. It’s the
least she can do, I tell her, after what she got you _in_ for. My name’s
‘Manda Grier; I room ‘th S’tira; ‘n’ I come ‘th her this mornin’ t’ help
keep her up; b’t I _didn’t_ know ‘t was goin’ to be s’ch a _perfect_
flat-out!”

As the young woman rattled on she grew more and more glib; she was what
they call whopper-jawed, and spoke a language almost purely consonantal,
cutting and clipping her words with a rapid play of her whopper-jaw till
there was nothing but the bare bones left of them. Statira was crying,
and Lemuel could not bear to see her cry. He tried to say something to
comfort her, but all he could think of was, “I hope you’ll get your book
back,” and ‘Manda Grier answered for her----

“Oh, I guess ‘t ain’t the book ‘t she cares for. S’ far forth ‘s the
book goes, I guess she can afford to buy another book, well enough. B’t
I tell her she’s done ‘n awful thing, and a thing ‘t she’ll carry to her
grave ‘th her, ‘n’t she’ll remember to her dyin’ day. That’s what _I_
tell her.”

“She ha’n’t got any call to feel bad about it,” said Lemuel clumsily.
“It was just a mistake.” Then, not knowing what more to say, he said,
being come to the outer door by this time, “Well, I wish you good
morning.”

“Well, good morning,” said ‘Manda Grier, and she thrust her elbow
sharply into Statira Dudley’s side, so that she also said faintly--

“Well, good morning!” She was fluent enough on the witness-stand and in
the police station, but now she could not find a word to say.

The three stood together on the threshold of the court-house, not
knowing how to get away from one another.

‘Manda Grier put out her hand to Lemuel. He took it, and, “Well, good
morning,” he said again.

“Well, good morning,” repeated ‘Manda Grier.

Then Statira put out her hand, and she and Lemuel shook hands, and said
together, “Well, good morning,” and on these terms of high civility they
parted. He went one way and they another. He did not look back, but the
two girls, marching off with locked arms and flying tongues, when they
came to the corner, turned to look back. They both turned inward, and so
bumped their heads together.

“Why, you--coot!” cried ‘Manda Grier, and they broke out laughing.

Lemuel heard their laugh, and he knew they were laughing at him; but he
did not care. He wandered on, he did not know whither, and presently he
came to the only place he could remember.



VII.


The place was the Common, where his trouble had begun. He looked back to
the beginning, and could see that it was his own fault. To be sure, you
might say that if a fellow came along and offered to pay you fifty cents
for changing a ten-dollar bill, you had a right to take it; but there
was a voice in Lemuel’s heart which warned him that greed to another’s
hurt was sin, and that if you took too much for a thing from a
necessitous person, you oppressed and robbed him. You could make it
appear otherwise, but you could not really change the nature of the act.
He owned this with a sigh, and he owned himself justly punished. He was
still on those terms of personal understanding with the eternal spirit
of right which most of us lose later in life, when we have so often
seemed to see the effect fail to follow the cause, both in the case of
our own misdeeds and the misdeeds of others.

He sat down on a bench, and he sat there all day, except when he went to
drink from the tin cup dangling by the chain from the nearest fountain.
His good breakfast kept him from being hungry for a while, but he was
as aimless and as hopeless as ever, and as destitute. He would have gone
home now if he had had the money; he was afraid they would be getting
anxious about him there, though he had not made any particular promises
about the time of returning. He had dropped a postal card into a box as
soon as he reached Boston, to tell of his safe arrival, and they would
not expect him to write again.

There were only two ways for him to get home: to turn tramp and walk
back, or to go to that Mr. Sewell and borrow the money to pay his
passage. To walk home would add intolerably to the public shame he must
suffer, and the thought of going to Mr. Sewell was, even in the secret
which it would remain between him and the minister, a pang so cruel
to his pride that he recoiled from it instantly. He said to himself
he would stand it one day more; something might happen, and if nothing
happened, he should think of it again. In the meantime he thought of
other things: of that girl, among the rest, and how she looked at the
different times. As nearly as he could make out, she seemed to be a very
fashionable girl; at any rate, she was dressed fashionably, and she was
nice-looking. He did not know whether she had behaved very sensibly, but
he presumed she was some excited.

Toward dark, when Lemuel was reconciling himself to another night’s
sleep in the open air, a policeman sauntered along the mall, and as he
drew nearer the boy recognised his friendly captor. He dropped his head,
but it was too late. The officer knew him, and stopped before him.

“Well,” he said, “hard at it, I see.”

Lemuel made no answer, but he was aware of a friendly look in the
officer’s face, mixed with fatherly severity.

“I was in hopes you had started back to Willoughby Pastures before this.
You don’t want to get into the habit of settin’ round on the Common,
much. First thing you know you can’t quit it. Where you goin’ to put up
to-night?”

“I don’t know,” murmured Lemuel.

“Got no friends in town you can go to?”

“No.”

“Well, now, look here! Do you think you could find your way back to the
station?”

“I guess so,” said Lemuel, looking up at the officer questioningly.

“Well, when you get tired of this, you come round, and we’ll provide a
bed for you. And you get back home to-morrow, quick as you can.”

“Thank you,” said Lemuel. He was helpless against the advice and its
unjust implication, but he could not say anything.

“Get out o’ Boston, anyway, wherever you go or don’t go,” continued the
officer. “It’s a bad place.”

He walked on, and left Lemuel to himself again. He thought bitterly that
no one knew better than himself how luridly wicked Boston was, and that
there was probably not a soul in it more helplessly anxious to get out
of it. He thought it hard to be talked to as if it were his fault; as if
he wished to become a vagrant and a beggar. He sat there an hour or two
longer, and then he took the officer’s advice so far as concerned his
going to the station for a bed, swallowing his pride as he must. He
must do that, or he must go to Mr. Sewell. It was easier to accept
humiliation at the hands of strangers. He found his way there with
some difficulty, and slinking in at the front door, he waited at the
threshold of the captain’s room while he and two or three officers
disposed of a respectably dressed man, whom a policeman was holding up
by the collar of his coat. They were searching his pockets and taking
away his money, his keys, and his pencil and penknife, which the captain
sealed up in a large envelope, and put into his desk.

“There! take him and lock him up. He’s pretty well loaded,” said the
captain.

Then he looked up and saw Lemuel. “Hello! Can’t keep away, eh?” he
demanded jocosely. “Well, we’ve heard about you. I told you the judge
would make it all right. What’s wanted? Bed? Well, here!” The captain
filled up a blank which he took from a pigeon-hole, and gave it to
Lemuel. “I guess that’ll fix you out for the night. And tomorrow you put
back to Willoughby Pastures tight as you can get there. You’re on the
wrong track now. First thing you know you’ll be a professional tramp,
and then you won’t be worth the powder to blow you. I use plain talk
with you because you’re a beginner. I wouldn’t waste my breath on that
fellow behind you.”

Lemuel looked round, and almost touched with his a face that shone fiery
red through the rusty growth of a week’s beard, and recoiled from a
figure that was fouler as to shirt and coat and trousers than anything
the boy had seen; though the tramps used to swarm through Willoughby
Pastures before the Selectmen began to lock them up in the town
poorhouse and set them to breaking stone. There was no ferocity in the
loathsome face; it was a vagrant swine that looked from it, no worse in
its present mood than greedy and sleepy.

“Bed?” demanded the captain, writing another blank. “Never been here
before, I suppose?” he continued with good-natured irony. “I don’t seem
to remember you.”

The captain laughed, and the tramp returned a husky “Thank you, sir,”
 and took himself off into the street.

Then the captain came to Lemuel’s help. “You follow him,” he said, “and
you’ll come to a bed by and by.”

He went out, and, since he could do no better, did as he was bid. He
had hardly ever seen a drunken man at Willoughby Pastures, where the
prohibition law was strictly enforced; there was no such person as a
thief in the whole community, and the tramps were gone long ago.
Yet here was he, famed at home for the rectitude of his life and the
loftiness of his aims, consorting with drunkards and thieves and tramps,
and warned against what he was doing by a policeman, as if he was
doing it of his own will. It was very strange business. If it was all
a punishment for taking that fellow’s half-dollar, it was pretty heavy
punishment. He was not going to say that it was unjust, but he would
say it was hard. His spirit was now so bruised and broken that he hardly
knew what to think.

He followed the tramp as far off as he could and still keep him in
sight, and he sometimes thought he had lost him, in the streets that
climbed and crooked beyond the Common towards the quarter whither they
were going; but he reappeared, slouching and shambling rapidly on, in
the glare of some electric lights that stamped the ground with shadows
thick and black as if cut in velvet or burnt into the surface. Here
and there some girl brushed against the boy, and gave him a joking
or jeering word; her face flashed into light for a moment, and then
vanished in the darkness she passed into. It was that hot October, and
the night was close and still; on the steps of some of the houses groups
of fat, weary women were sitting, and children were playing on the
sidewalks, using the lamp-posts for goal or tag. The tramp ahead of
Lemuel issued upon a brilliantly lighted little square, with a great
many horse-cars coming and going in it; a church with stores on the
ground floor, and fronting it on one side a row of handsome old
stone houses with iron fences, and on another a great hotel, with a
high-pillared portico, where men sat talking and smoking.

People were waiting on the sidewalk to take the cars; a druggist’s
window threw its mellow lights into the street; from open cellarways
came the sound of banjos and violins. At one of these cellar doors his
guide lingered so long that Lemuel thought he should have to find the
way beyond for himself. But the tramp suddenly commanded himself from
the music, the light, and the smell of strong drink, which Lemuel caught
a whiff of as he followed, and turning a corner led the way to the side
of a lofty building in a dark street, where they met other like shapes
tending toward it from different directions.



VIII.


Lemuel entered a lighted doorway from a bricked courtyard, and found
himself with twenty or thirty houseless comrades in a large, square
room, with benching against the wall for them to sit on. They were all
silent and quelled-looking, except a young fellow whom Lemuel sat down
beside, and who, ascertaining that he was a new-comer, seemed disposed
to do the honours of the place. He was not daunted by the reserve native
to Lemuel, or by that distrust of strangers which experience had so soon
taught him. He addressed him promptly as mate, and told him that the
high, narrow, three-sided tabling in the middle of the room was where
they would get their breakfast, if they lived.

“And I guess I shall live,” he said. “I notice I ‘most always live till
breakfast-time, whatever else I do, or I don’t do; but sometimes it
don’t seem as if I _could_ saw my way through that quarter of a cord
of wood.” At a glance of inquiry which Lemuel could not forbear, he
continued: “What I mean by a quarter of a cord of wood is that they let
you exercise that much free in the morning, before they give you your
breakfast: it’s the doctor’s orders. This used to be a school-house, but
it’s in better business now. They got a kitchen under here, that beats
the Parker House; you’ll smell it pretty soon. No whacking on the
knuckles here any more. All serene, I tell you. You’ll see. I don’t know
how I should got along without this institution, and I tell the manager
so, every time I see him. That’s him, hollering ‘Next,’ out of that room
there. It’s a name he gives all of us; he knows it’s a name we’ll answer
to. Don’t you forget it when it comes your turn.”

He was younger than Lemuel, apparently, but his swarthy, large-mouthed,
droll eyed face affirmed the experience of a sage. He wore a blue
flannel shirt, with loose trousers belted round his waist, and he
crushed a soft felt hat between his hands; his hair was clipped close
to his skull, and as he rubbed it now and then it gave out a pleasant
rasping sound.

The tramps disappeared in the order of their vicinity to the manager’s
door, and it came in time to this boy and Lemuel.

“You come along with me,” he said, “and do as I do.” When they entered
the presence of the manager, who sat at a desk, Lemuel’s guide nodded to
him, and handed over his order for a bed.

“Ever been here before?” asked the manager, as if going through the form
for a joke.

“Never.” He took a numbered card which the manager gave him, and stood
aside to wait for Lemuel, who made the same answer to the same question,
and received his numbered card.

“Now,” said the young fellow, as they passed out of another door, “we
ain’t either of us ‘Next,’ any more. I’m Thirty-nine, and you’re
Forty, and don’t you forget it. All right, boss,” he called back to
the manager; “I’ll take care of him! This way,” he said to Lemuel. “The
reason why I said I’d never been here before,” he explained on the way
down, “was because you got to say something, when he asks you. Most of
‘em says last fall or last year, but I say never, because it’s just
as true, and he seems to like it better. We’re going down to the
dressing-room now, and then we’re going to take a bath. Do you know
why?”

“No,” said Lemuel.

“Because we can’t help it. It’s the doctor’s orders. He thinks it’s the
best thing you can do, just before you go to bed.”

The basement was brightly lighted with gas everywhere, and a savoury
odour of onion-flavoured broth diffused itself through the whole place.

“Smell it? You might think that was supper, but it ain’t. It’s
breakfast. You got a bath and a night’s rest as well as the quarter of a
cord of wood between you and that stew. Hungry?”

“Not very,” said Lemuel faintly.

“Because if you say you are they’ll give you all the bread and water you
can hold, now. But I ruther wait.”

“I guess I don’t want anything to-night,” said Lemuel, shrinking from
the act of beggary.

“Well, I guess you won’t lose anything in the long run,” said the other.
“You’ll make it up at breakfast.”

They turned into a room where eight or ten tramps were undressing; some
of them were old men, quite sodden and stupefied with a life of vagrancy
and privation; others were of a dull or cunning middle-age, two or three
were as young as Lemuel and his partner, and looked as if they might be
poor fellows who had found themselves in a strange city without money
or work. But it was against them that they had known where to come for a
night’s shelter, Lemuel felt.

There were large iron hooks hanging from the walls and ceiling, and his
friend found the numbers on two of them corresponding to those given
Lemuel and himself, and brass checks which they hung around their necks.

“You got to hang your things on that hook, all but your shoes and
stockings, and you got to hang on to _them_, yourself. Forty’s your
number, and forty’s your hook, and they give you the clothes off’n it in
the morning.”

He led the way through the corridor into a large room where a row
of bath-tubs flanked the wall, half of them filled with bathers, who
chatted in tones of subdued cheerfulness under the pleasant excitement
of unlimited hot and cold water. As each new-comer appeared, a black
boy, perched on a windowsill, jumped down and dashed his head from a
large bottle which he carried.

“Free shampoo,” explained Lemuel’s mate. “Doctor’s orders. Only you have
to do the rubbing yourself. I don’t suppose _you_ need it, but some the
pardners here couldn’t sleep without it,” he continued, as Lemuel
shrank a little from the bottle, and then submitted. “It’s a regular
night-cap.”

The tramps recognised the humour of the explanation by a laugh, intended
to be respectful to the establishment in its control, which spread along
their line, and the black boy grinned.

“There ain’t anything mean about the Wayfarer’s Hotel,” said the mate,
and they all laughed again, a little louder.

Each man, having dried himself from his bath, was given a coarse linen
night-gown; sometimes it was not quite whole, but it was always clean;
and then he gathered up his shoes and stockings and went out.

“Hold on a minute,” said the mate to Lemuel, when they left the
bath-room. “You ought to see the kitchen,” and in his night-gown,
with his shoes in his hand, he led Lemuel to the open door which that
delicious smell of broth came from. A vast copper-topped boiler was
bubbling within, and trying to get its lid off. The odour made Lemuel
sick with hunger.

“Refrigerator in the next room,” the mate lectured on. “Best beef-chucks
in the market; fish for Fridays--we don’t make any man go against his
religion, in _this_ house; pots of butter as big as a cheese,--none of
your oleomargarine,--the real thing, every time; potatoes and onions
and carrots laying around on the floor; barrels of hard-tack; and bread,
like sponge,--bounce you up if you was to jump on it,--baked by the
women at the Chardon Street Home--oh, I tell you we do things in style
here.”

A man who sat reading a newspaper in the corner looked up sharply.
“Hello, there! what’s wanted?”

“Just dropped in to wish you good night, Jimmy,” said Lemuel’s mate.

“You clear out!” said the man good-humouredly, as if to an old
acquaintance, who must not be allowed to presume upon his familiarity.

“All right, Jimmy,” said the boy. He set his left hand horizontally on
its wrist at his left shoulder and cut the air with it in playful menace
as the man dropped his eyes again to his paper. “They’re all just so,
in this house,” he explained to Lemuel. “No nonsense, but good-natured.
_They’re_ all right. They know me.”

He mounted two flights of stairs in front of Lemuel to a corridor, where
an attendant stood examining the numbers on the brass checks hung
around tramps’ necks as they came up with their shoes in their hands. He
instructed them that the numbers corresponded to the cots they were
to occupy, as well as the hooks where their clothes hung. Some of them
seemed hardly able to master the facts. They looked wistfully, like
cowed animals, into his face as he made the case clear.

Two vast rooms, exquisitely clean, like the whole house, opened on the
right and left of the corridor, and presented long phalanxes of cots,
each furnished with two coarse blankets, a quilt, and a thin pillow.

“Used to be school-rooms,” said Lemuel’s mate, in a low tone.

“Cots thirty-nine and forty,” said the attendant, looking at their
checks. “Right over there, in the corner.”

“Come along,” said the mate, leading the way, with the satisfaction of
an _habitué_. “Best berth in the room, and about the last they reach in
the morning. You see, they got to take us as we come, when they call us,
and the last feller in at night’s the first feller out in the morning,
because his bed’s the nearest the door.”

He did not pull down the blankets of his cot at once, but stretched
himself out in the quilt that covered them. “Cool off a little, first,”
 he explained. “Well, this is what I call comfort, mate, heigh?”

Lemuel did not answer. He was watching the attendant with a group of
tramps who could not find their cots.

“Can’t read, I suppose,” said the mate, a little disdainfully. “Well,
look at that old chap, will you!” A poor fellow was fumbling with his
blankets, as if he did not know quite how to manage them. The attendant
had to come to his help, and tuck him in. “Well, there!” exclaimed the
mate, lifting himself on his elbow to admire the scene. “I don’t suppose
he’s ever been in a decent bed before. Hayloft’s _his_ style, or a
board-pile.” He sank down again, and went on: “Well, you do see all
kinds of folks here, that’s a fact. Sorry there ain’t more in to-night,
so ‘s to give you a specimen. You ought to be here in the winter. Well,
it ain’t so lonesome now, in summer, as it used to be. Sometimes I used
to have nearly the whole place to myself, summer nights, before they got
to passin’ these laws against tramps in the country, and lockin’ ‘em
up when they ketched ‘em. That drives ‘em into the city summers, now;
because they’re always sure of a night’s rest and a day’s board here if
they ask for it. But winter’s the time. You’ll see all these cots full,
then. They let on the steam-heat, and it’s comfortable; and it’s always
airy and healthy.” The vast room was, in fact, perfectly ventilated,
and the poor who housed themselves that night, and many well-to-do
sojourners in hotels, had reason to envy the vagrants their free
lodging.

The mate now got under his quilt, and turned his face toward Lemuel,
with one hand under his cheek. “They don’t let _every_body into this
room, ‘s I was tellin’ ye. This room is for the big-bugs, you know.
Sometimes a drunk will get in, though, in spite of everything. Why, I’ve
seen a drunk at the station-house, when I’ve been gettin’ my order for a
bed, stiffen up so ‘t the captain himself thought he was sober; and then
I’ve followed him round here, wobblin’ and corkscrewin’ all over the
sidewalk; and then I’ve seen him stiffen up in the office again, and go
through his bath like a little man, and get into bed as drunk as a fish;
and may be wake up in the night with the man with the poker after him,
and make things hum. Well, sir, one night there was a drunk in here that
thought the man with the poker was after him, and he just up and jumped
out of this window behind you--three stories from the ground.”

Lemuel could not help lifting himself in bed to look at it. “Did it kill
him?” he asked. “Kill him? _No_! You can’t kill a _drunk_. One night
there was a drunk got loose, here, and he run downstairs into the
wood-yard, and he got hold of an axe down there, and it took five men to
get that axe away from that drunk. He was goin’ for the snakes.”

“The snakes,” repeated Lemuel. “Are there snakes in the wood-yard?”

The other gave a laugh so loud that the attendant called out, “Less
noise over there!”

“I’ll tell you about the snakes in the morning,” said the mate; and he
turned his face away from Lemuel.

The stories of the drunks had made Lemuel a little anxious; but he
thought that attendant would keep a sharp lookout, so that there would
not really be much danger. He was very drowsy from his bath, in spite of
the hunger that tormented him, but he tried to keep awake and think what
he should do after breakfast.



IX.


“Come, turn out!” said a voice in his ear, and he started up, to see the
great dormitory where he had fallen asleep empty of all but himself and
his friend.

“Make out a night’s rest?” asked the latter. “Didn’t I tell you we’d
be the last up? Come along!” He preceded Lemuel, still drowsy, down the
stairs into the room where they had undressed, and where the tramps were
taking each his clothes from their hook, and hustling them on.

“What time is it, Johnny?” asked Lemuel’s mate of the attendant. “I left
my watch under my pillow.”

“Five o’clock,” said the man, helping the poor old fellow who had not
known how to get into bed to put on his clothes.

“Well, that’s a pretty good start,” said the other. He finished his
toilet by belting himself around the waist, and “Come along, mate,” he
said to Lemuel. “I’ll show you the way to the tool-room.”

He led him through the corridor into a chamber of the basement where
there were bright rows of wood-saws, and ranks of saw-horses, with
heaps of the latter in different stages of construction. “House
self-supporting, as far as it can. We don’t want to be beholden to
anybody if we can help it. We make our own horses here; but we can’t
make our saws, or we would. Ever had much practice with the woodsaw?”

“No,” said Lemuel, with a throb of home-sickness, that brought back the
hacked log behind the house, and the axe resting against it; “we always
chopped our stove-wood.”

“Yes, that’s the way in the country. Well, now,” said the other, “I’ll
show you how to choose a saw. Don’t you be took in by no new saw because
it’s bright, and looks pretty. You want to take a saw that’s been filed,
and filed away till it ain’t more ‘n an inch and a half deep; and then
you want to tune it up, just so,--like a banjo--not too tight, and not
too slack,--and then it’ll slip through a stick o’ wood like--lyin’.” He
selected a saw, and put it in order for Lemuel. “There!” He picked out
another. “Here’s _my_ old stand-by!” He took up a saw-horse, at random,
to indicate that one need not be critical in that, and led through the
open door into the wood-yard, where a score or two of saws were already
shrilling and wheezing through the wood.

It was a wide and lofty shed, with piles of cord-wood and slabs at
either end, and walled on the farther side with kindling, sawed, split,
and piled up with admirable neatness. The place gave out the sweet smell
of the woods from the bark of the logs and from the fresh section of
their grain. A double rank of saw-horses occupied the middle space, and
beside each horse lay a quarter of a cord of wood, at which the men were
toiling in sullen silence for the most part, only exchanging a grunt or
snarl of dissatisfaction with one another.

“Morning, mates,” said Lemuel’s friend cheerfully, as he entered the
shed, and put his horse down beside one of the piles. “Thought we’d look
in and see how you was gettin’ along. Just stepped round from the Parker
House while our breakfast was a-cookin’. Hope you all rested well?”

The men paused, with their saws at different slopes in the wood, and
looked round. The night before, in the nakedness in which Lemuel had
first seen them, the worst of them had the inalienable comeliness of
nature, and their faces, softened by their relation to their bodies,
were not so bad; they were not so bad, looking from their white
nightgowns; but now, clad in their filthy rags, and caricatured out of
all native dignity by their motley and misshapen attire, they were a
hideous gang, and all the more hideous for the grin that overspread
their stubbly muzzles at the boy’s persiflage.

“Don’t let me interrupt you, fellows,” he said, flinging a log upon his
horse, and dashing his saw gaily into it. “Don’t mind _me!_ I know you
hate to lose a minute of this fun; I understand just how you feel about
it, and I don’t want you to stand upon ceremony with _me._ Treat me just
like one of yourselves, gents. This beechwood is the regular Nova
Scotia thing, ain’t it? Tough and knotty! I can’t bear any of your cheap
wood-lot stuff from around here. What I want is Nova Scotia wood, every
time. Then I feel that I’m gettin’ the worth of my money.” His log
dropped apart on each side of his horse, and he put on another. “Well,
mates,” he rattled on, “this is lovely, ain’t it? I wouldn’t give up
my little quarter of a cord of green Nova Scotia before breakfast for
anything; I’ve got into the way of it, and I can’t live without it.”

The tramps chuckled at these ironies, and the attendant who looked into
the yard now and then did not interfere with them.

The mate went through his stint as rapidly as he talked, and he had
nearly finished before Lemuel had half done. He did not offer to help
him, but he delayed the remnant of his work, and waited for him to catch
up, talking all the while with gay volubility, joking this one and
that, and keeping the whole company as cheerful as it was in their dull,
sodden nature to be. He had a floating eye that harmonised with his
queer, mobile face, and played round on the different figures, but
mostly upon Lemuel’s dogged, rustic industry as if it really amused him.

“What’s your lay, after breakfast?” he asked, as they came to the last
log together.

“Lay?” repeated Lemuel.

“What you goin’ to do?”

“I don’t know; I can’t tell yet.”

“You know,” said the other, “you can come back here, and get your
dinner, if you want to saw wood for it from ten till twelve, and you get
your supper if you’ll saw from five to six.”

“Are you going to do that?” asked Lemuel cautiously.

“No, sir,” said the other; “I can’t spare the time. I’m goin’ to fill
up for all day, at breakfast, and then I’m goin’ up to lay round on the
Common till it’s time to go to the Police Court; and when that’s over
I’m goin’ back to the Common ag’in, and lay round the rest of the day. I
hain’t got any leisure for no such nonsense as wood-sawin’. I don’t mind
the work, but I hate to waste the time. It’s the way with most o’ the
pardners, unless it’s the green hands. That so, pards?”

Some of them had already gone in to breakfast; the smell of the stew
came out to the wood-yard through the open door. Lemuel and his friend
finished their last stick at the same time, and went in together,
and found places side by side at the table in the waiting-room. The
attendant within its oblong was serving the men with heavy quart bowls
of the steaming broth. He brought half a loaf of light, elastic bread
with each, and there were platters of hard-tack set along the board,
which every one helped himself from freely, and broke into his broth.

“Morning, Jimmy,” said the mate, as the man brought him and Lemuel their
portions. “I hate to have the dining-room chairs off a paintin’ when
there’s so much style about everything else, and I’ve got a visitor with
me. But I tell him he’ll have to take us as he finds us, and stand it
this mornin’.” He wasted no more words on his joke, but plunging his
large tin spoon into his bowl, kept his breath to cool his broth,
blowing upon it with easy grace, and swallowing it at a tremendous rate,
though Lemuel, after following his example, still found it so hot
that it brought the tears into his eyes. It was delicious, and he
was ravenous from his twenty-four hours’ fast, but his companion was
scraping the bottom of his bowl before Lemuel had got half-way down, and
he finished his second as Lemuel finished his first.

“Just oncet more for both of us, Jimmy,” he said, pushing his bowl
across the board; and when the man brought them back he said, “Now, I’m
goin’ to take it easy and enjoy myself. I can’t never seem to get the
good of it, till about the third or fourth bowl. Too much of a hurry.”

“Do they give you four bowls?” gasped Lemuel in astonishment.

“They give you four barrels, if you can hold it,” replied the other
proudly; “and some the mates _can_, pretty near. They got an awful tank,
as a general rule, the pards has. There ain’t anything mean about this
house. They don’t scamp the broth, and they don’t shab the measure. I
do wish you could see that refrigerator, oncet. Never been much at sea,
have you, mate?”

Lemuel said he had never been at sea at all.

The other leaned forward with his elbows on each side of his bowl, and
lazily broke his hard-tack into it. “Well, I have. I was shipped when
I was about eleven years old by a shark that got me drunk. I wanted to
ship, but I wanted to ship on an American vessel for New Orleans. First
thing I knowed I turned up on a Swedish brig bound for Venice. Ever been
to It’ly?”

“No,” said Lemuel.

“Well, I hain’t but oncet. Oncet is enough for _me_. I run away, while
I was in Venice, and went ashore--if you can call it ashore; it’s
all water, and you got to go round in boats: gondolas they call ‘em
there--and went to see the American counsul, and told him I was an
American boy, and tried to get him to get me off. But he couldn’t do
anything. If you ship under the Swedish flag you’re a Swede, and the
whole United States couldn’t get you off. If I’d ‘a’ shipped under the
American flag I’d ‘a’ been an American, I don’t care if I was born in
Hottentot. That’s what the counsul said. I never want to see that town
ag’in. I used to hear songs about Venice--‘Beautiful Venice, Bride of
the Sea;’ but I think it’s a kind of a hole of a place. Well, what
I started to say was that when I turn up in Boston, now,--and I most
generally do,--I don’t go to no sailor boardin’-house; I break for the
Wayfarer’s Lodge, every time. It’s a temperance house, and they give you
the worth o’ your money.”

“Come! Hurry up!” said the attendant. He wiped the table impatiently
with his towel, and stood waiting for Lemuel and the other to finish.
All the rest had gone.

“Don’t you be too fresh, pard,” said the mate, with the effect of
standing upon his rights. “Guess if you was on your third bowl, you
wouldn’t hurry.”

The attendant smiled. “Don’t you want to lend us a hand with the
dishes?” he asked.

“Who’s sick?” asked the other in his turn.

“Johnny’s got a day off.”

The boy shook his head. “No; I couldn’t. If it was a case of sickness,
of course I’d do it. But I couldn’t spare the time; I couldn’t really.
Why, I ought to be up on the Common now.”

Lemuel had listened with a face of interest.

“Don’t you want to make half a dollar, young feller?” asked the
attendant.

“Yes, I do,” said Lemuel eagerly.

“Know how to wash dishes?”

“Yes,” answered the boy, not ashamed of his knowledge, as the boy of
another civilisation might have been. Nothing more distinctly marks
the rustic New England civilisation than the taming of its men to the
performance of certain domestic offices elsewhere held dishonourably
womanish. The boy learns not only to milk and to keep the milk cans
clean, but to churn, to wash dishes, and to cook.

“Come around here, then,” said the attendant, and Lemuel promptly
obeyed.

“Well, now,” said his mate, “that’s right. I’d do it myself, if I had
the time.” He pulled his soft wool hat out of his hip pocket. “Well,
good morning, pards. I don’t know as I shall see you again much before
night.” Lemuel was lifting a large tray, heavy with empty broth-bowls.
“What _time_ did you say it was, Jimmy?”

“Seven o’clock.”

“Well, I just got time to get there,” said the other, putting on his
hat, and pushing out of the door.

At the moment Lemuel was lifting his tray of empty broth-bowls, Mr.
Sewell was waking for the early quarter-to-eight breakfast, which he
thought it right to make--not perhaps as an example to his parishioners,
most of whom had the leisure to lie later, but as a sacrifice, not too
definite, to the lingering ideal of suffering. He could not work before
breakfast--his delicate digestion forbade that--or he would have risen
still earlier, and he employed the twenty minutes he had between his
bath and his breakfast in skimming the morning paper.

Just at present Mr. Sewell was taking two morning papers: the
_Advertiser_ which he had always taken, and a cheap little one-cent
paper, which had just been started, and which he had subscribed for
experimentally, with the vague impression that he ought to encourage the
young men who had established it. He did not like it very well. It was
made up somewhat upon the Western ideal, and dealt with local matters
in a manner that was at once a little more lively and a little more
intimate than he had been used to. But before he had quite made up his
mind to stop it, his wife had come to like it on that very account. She
said it was interesting. On this point she used her conscience a little
less actively than usual, and he had to make her observe that to be
interesting was not the whole duty of journalism. It had become a matter
of personal pride with them respectively to attack and defend _The
Sunrise_, as I shall call the little sheet, though that was not the
name; and Mr. Sewell had lately made some gain through the character
of the police reports, which _The Sunrise_ had been developing into a
feature. It was not that offensive matters were introduced; the worst
cases were in fact rather blinked, but Sewell insisted that the tone of
flippant gaiety with which many facts, so serious, so tragic for their
perpetrators and victims, were treated was odious. He objected to the
court being called a Mill, and prisoners Grists, and the procedure
Grinding; he objected to the familiar name of Uncle for the worthy
gentleman to whose care certain offenders were confided on probation. He
now read that department of _The Sunrise_ the first thing every
morning, in the hope of finding something with which to put Mrs. Sewell
hopelessly in the wrong, but this morning a heading in the foreign news
of the _Advertiser_ caught his eye, and he laid _The Sunrise_ aside to
read at the breakfast-table. His wife came down in a cotton dress, as
a tribute to the continued warmth of the weather, and said that she had
not called the children, because it was Saturday, and they might as well
have their sleep out. He liked to see her in that dress; it had a
leafy rustling that was pleasant to his ear, and as she looked into the
library he gaily put out his hand, which she took, and suffered
herself to be drawn toward him. Then she gave him a kiss, somewhat less
business-like and preoccupied than usual.

“Well, you’ve got Lemuel Barker off your mind at last,” she divined, in
recognition of her husband’s cheerfulness.

“Yes, he’s off,” admitted Sewell.

“I hope he’ll stay in Willoughby Pastures after this. Of course it
puts an end to our going there next summer.” “Oh, I don’t know,” Sewell
feebly demurred.

“_I_ do,” said his wife, but not despising his insincerity enough to
insist that he did also. The mellow note of an apostle’s bell--the
gift of an aesthetic parishioner--came from below, and she said, “Well,
there’s breakfast, David,” and went before him down the stairs.

He brought his papers with him. It would have been her idea of
heightened cosiness, at this breakfast, which they had once a week
alone together, not to have the newspapers, but she saw that he felt
differently, and after a number of years of married life a woman learns
to let her husband have his own way in some unimportant matters. It was
so much his nature to have some sort of reading always in hand, that
he was certainly more himself, and perhaps more companionable with his
papers than without them.

She merely said, “Let me take the _Sunrise_,” when she had poured out
his coffee, and he had helped her to cantaloupe and steak, and spread
his _Advertiser_ beside his plate. He had the _Sunrise_ in his lap.

“No, you may have the _Advertiser_” he said, handing it over the table
to her. “I was down first, and I got both the papers. I’m not really
obliged to make any division, but I’ve seen the _Advertiser_, and I’m
willing to behave unselfishly. If you’re very impatient for the police
report in the _Sunrise_ I’ll read it aloud for you. I think that will be
a very good test of its quality, don’t you?”

He opened the little sheet, and smiled teasingly at his wife, who said,
“Yes, read it aloud; I’m not at all ashamed of it.”

She put the _Advertiser_ in her lap, and leaned defiantly forward,
while she stirred her coffee, and Sewell unfolded the little sheet, and
glanced up and down its columns. “Go on! If you can’t find it, I can.”

“Never mind! Here it is,” said Sewell, and he began to read--

“‘The mill opened yesterday morning with a smaller number of grists than
usual, but they made up in quality what they lacked in quantity.’

“Our friend’s metaphor seems to have weakened under him a little,”
 commented Sewell, and then he pursued--

“‘A reasonable supply of drunks were despatched--’

“Come, now, Lucy! You’ll admit that this is horrible?” he broke off.

“No,” said his wife, “I will admit nothing of the kind. It’s flippant,
I’ll allow. Go on!”

“I can’t,” said Sewell; but he obeyed.

“‘A reasonable supply of drunks were despatched, and an habitual drunk,
in the person of a burly dame from Tipperary, who pleaded not guilty and
then urged the “poor childer” in extenuation, was sent down the harbour
for three months; Uncle Cook had been put in charge of a couple of young
frailties whose hind name was woman--’

“How do you like that, my dear?” asked Sewell exultantly.

Mrs. Sewell looked grave, and then burst into a shocked laugh. “You must
stop that paper, David! I can’t have it about for the children to get
hold of. But it _is_ funny, isn’t it? That will do--”

“No, I think you’d better have it all, now. There can’t be anything
worse. It’s funny, yes, with that truly infernal drollery which the
newspaper wits seem to have the art of.” He read on--“--‘when a case was
called that brought the breath of clover blossoms and hay-seed into the
sultry court-room, and warmed the cockles of the habitués’ toughened
pericardiums with a touch of real poetry. This was a case of assault,
with intent to rob, in which a lithe young blonde, answering to the
good old Puritanic name of Statira Dudley, was the complainant, and the
defendant an innocent-looking, bucolic youth, yclept--’”

Sewell stopped and put his hand to his forehead.

“What is it, David?” demanded his wife. “Why don’t you go on? Is it too
scandalous?”

“No, no,” murmured the minister.

“Well?”

“I can’t go on. But you must read it, Lucy,” he said, in quite a passion
of humility. “And you must try to be merciful. That poor boy--that--”

He handed the paper to his wife, and made no attempt to escape from
judgment, but sat submissive while she read the report of Lemuel’s
trial. The story was told throughout in the poetico-jocular spirit of
the opening sentences; the reporter had felt the simple charm of the
affair, only to be ashamed of it and the more offensive about it.

When she had finished Mrs. Sewell did not say anything. She merely
looked at her husband, who looked really sick.

At last he said, making an effort to rise from his chair, “I must go and
see him, I suppose.”

“Yes, if you can find him,” responded his wife, with a sigh.

“Find him?” echoed Sewell.

“Yes. Goodness knows what more trouble the wretched creature’s got into
by this time. You saw that he was acquitted, didn’t you?” she demanded,
in answer to her husband’s stare.

“No, I didn’t. I supposed he was convicted, of course.”

“Well, you see it isn’t so bad as it might be,” she said, using a pity
which she did not perhaps altogether feel. “Eat your breakfast now,
David, and then go and try to look him up.”

“Oh, I don’t want any breakfast,” pleaded the minister.

He offered to rise again, but she motioned him down in his chair.
“David, you shall! I’m not going to have you going about all day with a
headache. Eat! And then when you’ve finished your breakfast, go and find
out which station that officer Baker belongs to, and he can tell you
something about the boy, if any one can.”

Sewell made what shift he could to grasp these practical ideas, and
he obediently ate of whatever his wife bade him. She would not let him
hurry his breakfast in the least, and when he had at last finished, she
said, “Now you can go, David. And when you’ve found the boy, don’t you
let him out of your sight again till you’ve put him aboard the train for
Willoughby Pastures, and seen the train start out of the depot with him.
Never mind your sermon. I will be setting down the heads of a sermon,
while you’re gone, that will do _you_ good, if you write it out, whether
it helps any one else or not.”

Sewell was not so sure of that. He had no doubt that his wife would
set down the heads of a powerful sermon, but he questioned whether any
discourse, however potent, would have force to benefit such an abandoned
criminal as he felt himself, in walking down his brown-stone steps,
and up the long brick sidewalk of Bolingbroke Street toward the Public
Garden. The beds of geraniums and the clumps of scarlet-blossomed salvia
in the little grass-plots before the houses, which commonly flattered
his eye with their colour, had a suggestion of penal fires in them now,
that needed no lingering superstition in his nerves to realise something
very like perdition for his troubled soul. It was not wickedness he had
been guilty of, but he had allowed a good man to be made the agency
of suffering, and he was sorely to blame, for he had sinned against
himself. This was what his conscience said, and though his reason
protested against his state of mind as a phase of the religious insanity
which we have all inherited in some measure from Puritan times, it
could not help him. He went along involuntarily framing a vow that if
Providence would mercifully permit him to repair the wrong he had done,
he would not stop at any sacrifice to get that unhappy boy back to his
home, but would gladly take any open shame or obloquy upon himself in
order to accomplish this.

He met a policeman on the bridge of the Public Garden, and made bold to
ask him at once if he knew an officer named Baker, and which station he
could be found at. The policeman was over-rich in the acquaintance
of two officers of the name of Baker, and he put his hand on Sewell’s
shoulder, in the paternal manner of policemen when they will be
friendly, and advised him to go first to the Neponset Street station,
to which one of these Bakers was attached, and inquire there first.
“Anyway, that’s what I should do in your place.”

Sewell was fulsomely grateful, as we all are in the like case, and at
the station he used an urbanity with the captain which was perhaps not
thrown away upon him, but which was certainly disproportioned to the
trouble he was asking him to take in saying whether he knew where he
could find officer Baker.

“Yes, I do,” said the captain. “You can find him in bed, upstairs,
but I’d rather you wouldn’t wake a man off duty, if you don’t have to,
especially if you don’t know he’s the one. What’s wanted?”

Sewell stopped to say that the captain was quite right, and then he
explained why he wished to see officer Baker.

The captain listened with nods of his head at the names and facts given.
“Guess you won’t have to get Baker up for that. I can tell you what
there is to tell. I don’t know where your young man is now, but I gave
him an order for a bed at the Wayfarer’s Lodge last night, and I guess
he slept there. You a friend of his?”

“Yes,” said Sewell, much questioning inwardly whether he could be truly
described as such. “I wish to befriend him,” he added savingly. “I knew
him at home, and I am sure of his innocence.”

“Oh, I guess he’s _innocent_ enough,” said the captain. “Well, now,
I tell you what you do, if you want to befriend him; you get him home
quick as you can.”

“Yes,” said Sewell, helpless to resent the officer’s authoritative and
patronising tone. “That’s what I wish to do. Do you suppose he’s at the
Wayfarer’s Lodge now?” asked Sewell.

“Can’t say,” said the captain, tilting himself back in his chair, and
putting his quill toothpick between his lips like a cigarette. “The only
way is to go and see.”

“Thank you very much,” said the minister, accepting his dismissal
meekly, as a man vowed to ignominy should, but feeling keenly that he
was dismissed, and dismissed in disgrace.

At the Lodge he was received less curtly. The manager was there with
a long morning’s leisure before him, and disposed to friendliness that
Sewell found absurdly soothing. He turned over the orders for beds
delivered by the vagrants the night before, and “Yes,” he said, coming
to Lemuel’s name, “he slept here; but nobody knows where he is by this
time. Wait a bit, sir!” he added to Sewell’s fallen countenance. “There
was one of the young fellows stayed to help us through with the dishes,
this morning. I’ll have him up; or may be you’d like to go down and take
a look at our kitchen? You’ll find him there if it’s the one. Here’s our
card, We can supply you with all sorts of firewood at less cost than the
dealers, and you’ll be helping the poor fellows to earn an honest bed
and breakfast. This way, sir!”

Sewell promised to buy his wood there, put the card respectfully
into his pocket, and followed the manager downstairs, and through the
basement to the kitchen. He arrived just as Lemuel was about to lift a
trayful of clean soup-bowls, to carry it upstairs. After a glance at the
minister, he stood still with dropped eyes.

Sewell did not know in what form to greet the boy on whom he had
unwillingly brought so much evil, and he found the greater difficulty in
deciding as he saw Lemuel’s face hardening against him.

“Barker!” he said at last. “I’m very glad to find you--I have been very
anxious to find you.”

Lemuel made no sign of sympathy, but stood still in his long check
apron, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbow, and the minister
was obliged to humble himself still further to this figure of lowly
obstinacy.

“I should like to speak with you. Can I speak with you a few moments?”

The manager politely stepped into the storeroom, and affected to employ
himself there, leaving Lemuel and the minister alone together.



X.


Sewell lost no time. “I want you to go home, Barker. I feel that I am
wholly to blame, and greatly to blame, for your coming to Boston with
the expectation that brought you; and that I am indirectly responsible
for all the trouble that has befallen you since you came. I want to be
the means of your getting home, in any way you can let me.”

This was a very different way of talking from the smooth superiority of
address which the minister had used with him the other day at his own
house. Lemuel was not insensible to the atonement offered him, and it
was not from sulky stubbornness that he continued silent, and left the
minister to explore the causes of his reticence unaided.

“I will go home _with_ you, if you like,” pursued the minister, though
his mind misgave him that this was an extreme which Mrs. Sewell would
not have justified him in. “I will go with you, and explain all
the circumstances to your friends, in case there should be any
misunderstanding--though in that event I should have to ask you to be my
guest till Monday.” Here the unhappy man laid hold of the sheep, which
could not bring him greater condemnation than the lamb.

“I guess they won’t know anything about it,” said Lemuel, with whatever
intention.

It seemed hardened indifference to the minister, and he felt it his
disagreeable duty to say, “I am afraid they will. I read of it in the
newspaper this morning, and I’m afraid that an exaggerated report of
your misfortunes will reach Willoughby Pastures, and alarm your family.”

A faint pallor came over the boy’s face, and he stood again in his
impenetrable, rustic silence. The voice that finally spoke from, it
said, “I guess I don’t want to go home, then.”

“You _must_ go home!” said the minister, with more of imploring than
imperiousness in his command. “What will they make of your prolonged
absence?”

“I sent a postal to mother this morning. They lent me one.”

“But what will you do here, without work and without means? I wish you
to go home with me--I feel responsible for you--and remain with me till
you can hear from your mother. I’m sorry you came to Boston--it’s no
place for you, as you must know by this time, and I am sure your mother
will agree with me in desiring your return.”

“I guess I don’t want to go home,” said Lemuel.

“Are you afraid that an uncharitable construction will be placed upon
what has happened to you by your neighbours?” Lemuel did not answer. “I
assure you that all that can be arranged. I will write to your pastor,
and explain it fully. But in any event,” continued Sewell, “it is your
duty to yourself and your friends to go home and live it down. It would
be your duty to do so, even if you had been guilty of wrong, instead of
the victim of misfortune.”

“I don’t know,” said Lemuel, “as I want to go home and be the
laughing-stock.”

Against this point Sewell felt himself helpless. He could not pretend
that the boy would not be ridiculous in the eyes of his friends, and all
the more ridiculous because so wholly innocent. He could only say, “That
is a thing you must bear,” and then it occurred to him to ask, “Do you
feel that it is right to let your family meet the ridicule alone?”

“I guess nobody will speak to mother about it, more than once,” said
Lemuel, with a just pride in his mother’s powers of retort. A woman who,
unaided and alone, had worn the Bloomer costume for twenty years in
the heart of a commentative community like Willoughby Pastures, was not
likely to be without a cutting tongue for her defence.

“But your sister,” urged Sewell; “your brother-in-law,” he feebly added.

“I guess they will have to stand it,” replied Lemuel.

The minister heaved a sigh of hopeless perplexity. “What do you propose
to do, then? You can’t remain here without means. Do you expect to
sell your poetry?” he asked, goaded to the question by a conscience
peculiarly sore on that point.

It made Lemuel blush. “No, I don’t expect to sell it, now. They took it
out of my pocket on the Common.”

“I am glad of that,” said the minister as simply, “and I feel bound to
warn you solemnly, that there is absolutely _no_ hope for you in that
direction.”

Lemuel said nothing.

The minister stood baffled again. After a bad moment he asked, “Have you
anything particular in view?”

“I don’t know as I have.”

“How long can you remain here?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

Sewell turned and followed the manager into the refrigerator room, where
he had remained patiently whistling throughout this interview.

When he came back, Lemuel had carried one trayful of bowls upstairs,
and returned for another load, which he was piling carefully up for safe
transportation.

“The manager tells me,” said Sewell, “that practically you can stay here
as long as you like, if you work, but he doesn’t think it desirable you
should remain, nor do I. But I wish to find you here again, when I come
back. I have something in view for you.”

This seemed to be a question, and Lemuel said, “All right,” and went
on piling up his bowls. He added, “I shouldn’t want you to take a great
deal of trouble.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble,” groaned the minister. “Then I may depend upon
seeing you here any time during the day?”

“I don’t know as I’m going away,” Lemuel admitted.

“Well, then, good-bye, for the present,” said Sewell, and after speaking
again to the manager, and gratefully ordering some kindling which he
did not presently need, he went out, and took his way homeward. But he
stopped half a block short of his own door, and rang at Miss Vane’s.
To his perturbed and eager spirit, it seemed nothing short of a divine
mercy that she should be at home. If he had not been a man bent on
repairing his wrong at any cost to others, he would hardly have taken
the step he now contemplated without first advising with his wife, who,
he felt sure, would have advised against it. His face did not brighten
at all when Miss Vane came briskly in, with the “_How_ d’ye do?” which
he commonly found so cheering. She pulled up the blind and saw his
knotted brow.

“What is the matter? You look as if you had got Lemuel Barker back on
your hands.”

“I have,” said the minister briefly.

Miss Vane gave a wild laugh of delight. “You _don’t_ mean it!” she
sputtered, sitting down before him, and peering into his face. “What
_do_ you mean?”

Sewell was obliged to possess Miss Vane’s entire ignorance of all the
facts in detail. From point to point he paused; he began really to be
afraid she would do herself an injury with her laughing.

She put her hand on his arm and bowed her head forward, with her face
buried in her handkerchief. “What--what--do you suppose-pose--they did
with the po-po-_po_em they stole from him?”

“Well, one thing I’m sure they _didn’t_ do,” said Sewell bitterly. “They
didn’t _read_ it.”

Miss Vane hid her face in her handkerchief, and then plucked it away,
and shrieked again. She stopped, with the sudden calm that succeeds such
a paroxysm, and, “Does Mrs. Sewell know all about this?” she panted.

“She knows everything, except my finding him in the dish-washing
department of the Wayfarer’s Lodge,” said Sewell gloomily, “and my
coming to you.”

“Why do you come to me?” asked Miss Vane, her face twitching and her
eyes brimming.

“Because,” answered Sewell, “I’d rather not go to her till I have done
something.”

Miss Vane gave way again, and Sewell sat regarding her ruefully.

“What do you expect me to do?” She looked at him over her handkerchief,
which she kept pressed against her mouth.

“I haven’t the least idea what I expected you to do. I expected you to
tell me. You have an inventive mind.”

Miss Vane shook her head. Her eyes grew serious, and after a moment she
said, “I’m afraid I’m not equal to Lemuel Barker. Besides,” she added,
with a tinge of trouble, “I have _my_ problem, already.”

“Yes,” said the minister sympathetically. “How has the flower charity
turned out?”

“She went yesterday with one of the ladies, and carried flowers to the
city hospital. But she wasn’t at all satisfied with the result. She said
the patients were mostly disgusting old men that hadn’t been shaved. I
think that now she wants to try her flowers on criminals. She says she
wishes to visit the prisons.”

Sewell brightened forlornly. “Why not let her reform Barker?”

This sent Miss Vane off again. “Poor boy!” she sighed, when she had come
to herself. “No, there’s nothing that I can do for him, except to order
some firewood from his benefactors.”

“I did that,” said Sewell. “But I don’t see how it’s to help Barker
exactly.”

“I would gladly join in a public subscription to send him home. But you
say he won’t _go_ home?”

“He won’t go home,” sighed the minister. “He’s determined to stay. I
suspect he would accept employment, if it were offered him in the right
spirit.”

Miss Vane shook her head. “There’s nothing I can think of except
shovelling snow. And as yet it’s rather warm October weather.”

“There’s certainly no snow to shovel,” admitted Sewell. He rose
disconsolately. “Well, there’s nothing for it, I suppose, but to put
him down at the Christian Union, and explain his checkered career to
everybody who proposes to employ him.”

Miss Vane could not keep the laughter out of her eyes; she nervously
tapped her lips with her handkerchief, to keep it from them. Suddenly
she halted Sewell, in his dejected progress toward the door. “I might
give him my furnace?”

“Furnace?” echoed Sewell.

“Yes. Jackson has ‘struck’ for twelve dollars a month, and at present
there is a ‘lock-out,’--I believe that’s what it’s called. And I had
determined not to yield as long as the fine weather lasted. I knew I
should give in at the first frost. I will take Barker now, if you think
he can manage the furnace.”

“I’ve no doubt he can. Has Jackson really struck?” Miss Vane nodded. “He
hasn’t said anything to me about it.”

“He probably intends to make special terms to the clergy. But he told me
he was putting up the rates on all his ‘famblies’ this winter.”

“If he puts them up on me, I will take Barker too,” said the minister
boldly. “If he will come,” he added, with less courage. “Well, I will
go round to the Lodge, and see what he thinks of it. Of course, he
can’t live upon ten dollars a month, and I must look him up something
besides.”

“That’s the only thing I can think of at present,” said Miss Vane.

“Oh, you’re indefinitely good to think of so much,” said Sewell. “You
must excuse me if my reception of your kindness has been qualified by
the reticence with which Barker received mine, this morning.”

“Oh, do tell me about it!” cried Miss Vane.

“Sometime I will. But I can assure you it was such as to make me shrink
from another interview. I don’t know but Barker may fling your proffered
furnace in my teeth. But I’m sure we both mean well. And I thank you,
all the same. Good-bye.”

“Poor Mr. Sewell!” said Miss Vane, following him to the door. “May I run
down and tell Mrs. Sewell?”

“Not yet,” said the minister sadly. He was too insecure of Barker’s
reception to be able to enjoy the joke.

When he got back to the Wayfarer’s Lodge, whither he made himself walk
in penance, he found Lemuel with a book in his hand, reading, while the
cook stirred about the kitchen, and the broth, which he had well under
way for the mid-day meal, lifted the lid of its boiler from time to time
and sent out a joyous whiff of steam. The place had really a cosiness
of its own, and Sewell began to fear that his victim had been so far
corrupted by its comfort as to be unwilling to leave the Refuge. He had
often seen the subtly disastrous effect of bounty, and it was one of the
things he trembled for in considering the question of public aid to the
poor. Before he addressed Barker, he saw him entered upon the dire life
of idleness and dependence, partial or entire, which he had known so
many Americans even willing to lead since the first great hard times
began; and he spoke to him with the asperity of anticipative censure.

“Barker!” he said, and Lemuel lifted his head from the book he was
reading. “I have found something for you to do. I still prefer you
should go home, and I advise you to do so. But,” he added, at the look
that came into Lemuel’s face, “if you are determined to stay, this is
the best I can do for you. It isn’t a full support, but it’s something,
and you must look about for yourself, and not rest till you’ve found
full work, and something better fitted for you. Do you think you can
take care of a furnace?”

“Hot air?” asked Lemuel.

“Yes.”

“I guess so. I took care of the church furnace, last winter.”

“I didn’t know you had one,” said the minister, brightening in the ray
of hope. “Would you be willing to take care of a domestic furnace--a
furnace in a private house?”

Lemuel pondered the proposal in silence. Whatever objections there were
to it in its difference from the aims of his ambition in coming to the
city of Boston, he kept to himself; and his ignorance of city prejudices
and sophistications probably suggested nothing against the honest work
to his pride. “I guess I should,” he said at last. “Well, then, come
with me.”

Sewell judged it best not to tell him whose furnace he was to take care
of; he had an impression that Miss Vane was included in the resentment
which Lemuel seemed to cherish toward him. But when he had him at
her door, “It’s the lady whom you saw at my house the other day,” he
explained. It was then too late for Lemuel to rebel if he had wished,
and they went in.

If there was any such unkindness in Lemuel’s breast toward her, it
yielded promptly to her tact. She treated him at once, not like a
servant, but like a young person, and yet she used a sort of respect for
his independence which was soothing to his rustic pride. She put it
on the money basis at once; she told him that she should give him ten
dollars a month for taking care of the furnace, keeping the sidewalk
clear of snow, shovelling the paths in the backyard for the women to
get at their clothes-lines, carrying up and down coal and ashes for the
grates, and doing errands. She said that this was what she had always
paid, and asked him if he understood and were satisfied.

Lemuel answered with one yes to both her questions, and then Miss Vane
said that of course till the weather changed they should want no fire in
the furnace, but that it might change, any day, and they should begin
at once and count October as a full month. She thought he had better go
down and look at the furnace and see if it was in order; she had had the
pipes cleaned, but perhaps it needed blacking; the cook would show him
how it worked. She went with him to the head of the basement stairs, and
calling down, “Jane, here is Lemuel, come to look after the furnace,”
 left him and Jane to complete the acquaintance upon coming in sight of
each other, and went back to the minister. He had risen to go, and she
gave him her hand, while a smile rippled into laughter on her lips.

“Do you think,” she asked, struggling with her mirth to keep unheard of
those below, “that it is quite the work for a literary man?”

“If he is a man,” said Sewell courageously, “the work won’t keep him
from being literary.”

Miss Vane laughed at his sudden recovery of spirit, as she had laughed
at his dejection; but he did not care. He hurried home, with a sermon
kindling in his mind so obviously, that his wife did not detain him
beyond a few vital questions, and let him escape from having foisted his
burden upon Miss Vane with the simple comment, “Well, we shall see how
that will work.”

As once before, Sewell tacitly took a hint from his own experience, and
enlarging to more serious facts from it, preached effort in the erring.
He denounced mere remorse. Better not feel that at all, he taught;
and he declared that what is ordinarily distinguished from remorse
as repentance, was equally a mere corrosion of the spirit unless some
attempt at reparation went with it. He maintained that though some
mischiefs--perhaps most mischiefs--were irreparable so far as restoring
the original status was concerned, yet every mischief was reparable in
the good-will and the good deed of its perpetrator. Do what you could
to retrieve yourself from error, and then, not leave the rest to
Providence, but keep doing. The good, however small, must grow if tended
and nurtured like a useful plant, as the evil would certainly grow,
like a wild and poisonous weed, if left to itself. Sin, he said, was a
terrible mystery; one scarcely knew how to deal with it or to attempt
to determine its nature; but perhaps--he threw out the thought while
warning those who heard him of its danger in some aspects--sin was not
wholly an evil. We were so apt in this world of struggle and ambition
to become centred solely in ourselves, that possibly the wrong done to
another,--the wrong that turned our thoughts from ourselves, and kept
them bent in agony and despair upon the suffering we had caused another,
and knew not how to mitigate--possibly this wrong, nay, certainly this
wrong, was good in disguise. But, returning to his original point, we
were to beware how we rested in this despair. In the very extremity
of our anguish, our fear, our shame, we were to gird ourselves up to
reparation. Strive to do good, he preached; strive most of all to do
good to those you have done harm to. His text was “Cease to do evil.”

He finished his sermon during the afternoon, and in the evening his wife
said they would run up to Miss Vane’s. Sewell shrank from this a little,
with the obscure dread that Lemuel might have turned his back upon good
fortune, and abandoned the place offered him, in which case Sewell would
have to give a wholly different turn to his sermon; but he consented, as
indeed he must. He was as curious as his wife to know how the experiment
had resulted.

Miss Vane did not wait to let them ask. “My dear,” she said, kissing
Mrs. Sewell and giving her hand to the minister in one, “he is a pearl!
And I’ve kept him from mixing his native lustre with Rising Sun Stove
Polish by becoming his creditor in the price of a pair of overalls. I
had no idea they were so cheap, and you can see that they will fade,
with a few washings, to a perfect Millet blue. They were quite his own
idea, when he found the furnace needed blacking, and he wanted to
use the fifty cents he earned this morning toward the purchase, but
I insisted upon advancing the entire dollar myself. Neatness,
self-respect, awe-inspiring deference!--he is each and every one of them
in person.”

Sewell could not forbear a glance of triumph at his wife.

“You leave us very little to ask,” said that injured woman.

“But I’ve left myself a great deal to tell, my dear,” retorted Miss
Vane, “and I propose to keep the floor; though I don’t really know where
to begin.”

“I thought you had got past the necessity of beginning,” said Sewell.
“We know that the new pearl sweeps clean,”--Miss Vane applauded his
mixed metaphor--“and now you might go on from that point.”

“Well, you may think I’m rash,” said Miss Vane, “but I’ve thoroughly
made up my mind to keep him.”

“Dear, _dear_ Miss Vane!” cried the minister. “Mrs. Sewell thinks you’re
rash, but I don’t. What do you mean by keeping him?”

“Keeping him as a fixture--a permanency--a continuosity.”

“Oh! A continuosity? I know what that is in the ordinary acceptation of
the term, but I’m not sure that I follow your meaning exactly.”

“Why, it’s simply this,” said Miss Vane. “I have long secretly wanted
the protection of what Jane calls a man-body in the House, and when I
saw how Lemuel had blacked the furnace, I knew I should feel as safe
with him as with a whole body of troops.”

“Well,” sighed the minister, “you have not been rash, perhaps, but
you’ll allow that you’ve been rapid.”

“No,” said Miss Vane, “I won’t allow that. I have simply been
intuitive--nothing more. His functions are not decided yet, but it is
decided that he is to stay; he’s to sleep in the little room over the L,
and in my tranquillised consciousness he’s been there years already.”

“And has Sibyl undertaken Barker’s reformation?” asked Sewell.

“Don’t interrupt! Don’t anticipate! I admit nothing till I come to it.
But after I had arranged with Lemuel I began to think of Sibyl.”

“That was like some ladies I have known of,” said Sewell. “You
women commit yourselves to a scheme, in order to show your skill in
reconciling circumstances to the irretrievable. Well?”

“_Don’t_ interrupt, David!” cried his wife.

“Oh, let him go on,” said Miss Vane. “It’s all very well, taking
people into your house on the spur of the moment, and in obedience to
a generous impulse, but when you reflect that the object of your good
intentions slept in the Wayfarer’s Lodge the night before, and in the
police-station the night before that, and enjoys a newspaper celebrity
in connection with a case of assault and battery with intent to
rob,--why, then you _do_ reflect!”

“Yes,” said Sewell, “that is just the point where I should begin.”

“I thought,” continued Miss Vane, “I had better tell Sibyl all about it,
so if by any chance the neighbours’ kitchens should have heard of the
case--they read the police reports very carefully in the kitchens----”

“They do in some drawing-rooms,” interrupted Sewell.

“It’s well for you they do, David,” said his wife. “Your _protégé_ would
have been in your Refuge still, if they didn’t.”

“I see!” cried the minister. “I shall have to take the _Sunrise_ another
week.”

Miss Vane looked from one to the other in sympathetic ignorance, but
they did not explain, and she went on.

“And if they should hear Lemuel’s name, and put two and two together,
and the talk should get to Sibyl--well, I thought it all over, until the
whole thing became perfectly lurid, and I wished Lemuel Barker was back
in the depths of Willoughby Pastures----”

“I understand,” said Sewell. “Go on!”

Miss Vane did so, after stopping to laugh. “It seemed to me I couldn’t
wait for Sibyl to get home--she spent the night in Brookline, and didn’t
come till five o’clock--to tell her. I began before she had got her
hat or gloves off, and she sat down with them on, and listened like a
three-years’ child to the Ancient Mariner, but she lost no time when
she understood the facts. She went out immediately and stripped the
nasturtium bed. If you could have seen it when you came in, there’s
hardly a blossom left. She took the decorations of Lemuel’s room into
her own hands at once; and if there is any saving power in nasturtiums,
he will be a changed person. She says that now the great object is
to keep him from feeling that he has been an outcast, and needs to be
reclaimed; she says nothing could be worse for him. I don’t know how she
knows.”

“Barker might feel that he was disgraced,” said the minister, “but I
don’t believe that a whole system of ethics would make him suspect that
he needed to be reclaimed.”

“He makes me suspect that _I_ need to be reclaimed,” said Miss Vane,
“when he looks at me with those beautiful honest eyes of his.”

Mrs. Sewell asked, “Has he seen the decorations yet?”

“Not at all. They are to steal upon him when he comes in to-night. The
gas is to be turned very low, and he is to notice everything gradually,
so as not to get the impression that things have been done with a design
upon him.” She laughed in reporting these ideas, which were plainly
those of the young girl. “Sh!” she whispered at the end.

A tall girl, with a slim vase in her hand, drifted in upon their group
like an apparition. She had heavy black eyebrows with beautiful blue
eyes under them, full of an intensity unrelieved by humour.

“Aunty!” she said severely, “have you been telling?”

“Only Mr. and Mrs. Sewell, Sibyl,” said Miss Vane. “_Their_ knowing
won’t hurt. He’ll never know it.”

“If he hears you laughing, he’ll know it’s about him. He’s in the
kitchen, now. He’s come in the back way. Do be quiet.” She had given her
hand without other greeting in her preoccupation to each of the Sewells
in turn, and now she passed out of the room.



XI.


“What makes Lemuel such a gift,” said Miss Vane, in a talk which she had
with Sewell a month later, “is that he is so supplementary.”

“Do you mean just in the supplementary sense of the term?”

“Well, not in the fifth-wheel sense. I mean that he supplements us, all
and singular--if you will excuse the legal exactness.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Sewell; “I should like even more exactness.”

“Yes; but before I particularise I must express my general satisfaction
in him as a man-body. I had no idea that man bodies in a house were so
perfectly admirable.”

“I’ve sometimes feared that we were not fully appreciated,” said Sewell.
“Well?”

“The house is another thing with a man-body in it. I’ve often gone
without little things I wanted, simply because I hated to make Sarah
bring them, and because I hated still worse to go after them, knowing
we were both weakly and tired. Now I deny myself nothing. I make Lemuel
fetch and carry without remorse, from morning till night. I never knew
it before, but the man-body seems never to be tired, or ill, or sleepy.”

“Yes,” said Sewell, “that is often the idea of the woman-body. I’m not
sure that it’s correct.”

“Oh, _don’t_ attack it!” implored Miss Vane. “You don’t _know_ what a
blessing it is. Then, the man-body never complains, and I can’t see that
he expects anything more in an order than the clear understanding of it.
He doesn’t expect it to be accounted for in any way; the fact that
you say you want a thing is enough. It is very strange. Then the moral
support of the presence of a man-body is enormous. I now know that I
have never slept soundly since I have kept house alone--that I have
never passed a night without hearing burglars or smelling fire.”

“And now?”

“And now I shouldn’t mind a legion of burglars in the house; I shouldn’t
mind being burned in my bed every night. I feel that Lemuel is in
charge, and that nothing can happen.”

“Is he really so satisfactory?” asked Sewell, exhaling a deep relief.

“He is, indeed,” said Miss Vane. “I couldn’t, exaggerate it.”

“Well, well! Don’t try. We are finite, after all, you know. Do you think
it can last?”

“I have thought of that,” answered Miss Vane. “I don’t see why it
shouldn’t last. I have tried to believe that I did a foolish thing in
coming to your rescue, but I can’t see that I did. I don’t see why
it shouldn’t last as long as Lemuel chooses. And he seems perfectly
contented with his lot. He doesn’t seem to regard it as domestic
service, but as domestication, and he patronises our inefficiency while
he spares it. His common-sense is extraordinary--it’s exemplary; it
almost makes one wish to have common-sense one’s-self.” They had now got
pretty far from the original proposition, and Sewell returned to it with
the question, “Well, and how does he supplement you singularly?”

“Oh! oh, yes!” said Miss Vane. “I could hardly tell you without going
into too deep a study of character.”

“I’m rather fond of that,” suggested the minister.

“Yes, and I’ve no doubt we should all work very nicely into a sermon as
illustrations; but I can’t more than indicate the different cases. In
the first place, Jane’s forgetfulness seems to be growing upon her, and
since Lemuel came she’s abandoned herself to ecstasies of oblivion.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. She’s quite given over remembering _any_thing, because she knows
that he will remember _every_thing.”

“I see. And you?”

“Well, you have sometimes thought I was a little rash.”

“A little? Did I think it was a little?”

“Well, a good deal. But it was all nothing to what I’ve been since
Lemuel came. I used to keep some slight check upon myself for Sibyl’s
sake; but I don’t now. I know that Lemuel is there to temper, to delay,
to modify the effect of every impulse, and so I am all impulse now. And
I’ve quite ceased to rule my temper. I know that Lemuel has self-control
enough for all the tempers in the house, and so I feel perfectly calm in
my wildest transports of fury.”

“I understand,” said Sewell. “And does Sibyl permit herself a similar
excess in her fancies and ambitions?”

“Quite,” said Miss Vane. “I don’t know that she consciously relies
upon Lemuel to supplement her, any more than Jane does; but she must be
unconsciously aware that no extravagance of hers can be dangerous while
Lemuel is in the house.”

“Unconsciously aware is good. She hasn’t got tired of reforming him
yet?”

“I don’t know. I sometimes think she wishes he had gone a little farther
in crime. Then his reformation would be more obvious.”

“Yes; I can appreciate that. Does she still look after his art and
literature?”

“That phase has changed a little. She thinks now that he ought to be
stimulated, if anything--that he ought to read George Eliot. She’s put
_Middlemarch_ and _Romola_ on his shelf. She says that he looks like
Tito Malemma.”

Sewell rose. “Well, I don’t see but what your supplement is a very
demoralising element. I shall never dare to tell Mrs. Sewell what you’ve
said.”

“Oh, she knows it,” cried Miss Vane. “We’ve agreed that you will
counteract any temptation that Lemuel may feel to abuse his advantages
by the ferociously self-denying sermons you preach at him every Sunday.”

“Do I preach at him? Do you notice it?” asked Sewell nervously.

“Notice it?” laughed Miss Vane. “I should think your whole congregation
would notice it. You seem to look at nobody else.”

“I know it! Since he began to come, I can’t keep my eyes off him. I do
deliver my sermons at him. I believe I write them at him! He has an eye
of terrible and exacting truth. I feel myself on trial before him. He
holds me up to a standard of sincerity that is killing me. Mrs. Sewell
was bad enough; I was reasonably bad myself; but this! Couldn’t you keep
him away? Do you think it’s exactly decorous to let your man-servant
occupy a seat in your family pew? How do you suppose it looks to the
Supreme Being?”

Miss Vane was convulsed. “I had precisely those misgivings! But Lemuel
hadn’t. He asked me what the number of our pew was, and I hadn’t the
heart--or else I hadn’t the face--to tell him he mustn’t sit in it. How
could I? Do you think it’s so very scandalous?”

“I don’t know,” said Sewell. “It may lead to great abuses. If we tacitly
confess ourselves equal in the sight of God, how much better are we than
the Roman Catholics?”

Miss Vane could not suffer these ironies to go on.

“He approves of your preaching. He has talked your sermons over with me.
You oughtn’t to complain.”

“Oh, I don’t! Do you think he’s really softening a little toward me?”

“Not personally, that I know,” said Miss Vane. “But he seems to regard
you as a channel of the truth.”

“I ought to be glad of so much,” said Sewell. “I confess that I hadn’t
supposed he was at all of our way of thinking. They preached a very
appreciable orthodoxy at Willoughby Pastures.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Miss Vane. “I only know that he approves
your theology, or your ethics.”

“Ethics, I hope. I’m sure _they’re_ right.” After a thoughtful moment
the minister asked, “Have you observed that they have softened him
socially at all--broken up that terrible rigidity of attitude, that
dismaying retentiveness of speech?”

“I know what you mean!” cried Miss Vane delightedly. “I believe Lemuel
_is_ a little more supple, a little _less_ like a granite boulder in one
of his meadows. But I can’t say that he’s glib yet. He isn’t apparently
going to say more than he thinks.”

“I hope he thinks more than he says,” sighed the minister. “My
interviews with Lemuel have left me not only exhausted but bruised,
as if I had been hurling myself against a dead wall. Yes, I manage him
better from the pulpit, and I certainly oughtn’t to complain. I don’t
expect him to make any response, and I perceive that I am not _quite_ so
sore as after meeting him in private life.”

       *       *       *       *       *

That evening Lemuel was helping to throng the platform of an overcrowded
horse-car. It was Saturday night, and he was going to the provision man
up toward the South End, whom Miss Vane was dealing with for the time
being, in an economical recoil from her expensive Back Bay provision
man, to order a forgotten essential of the Sunday’s supplies. He had
already been at the grocer’s, and was carrying home three or four
packages to save the cart from going a third time that day to
Bolingbroke Street, and he stepped down into the road when two girls
came squeezing their way out of the car.

“Well, I’m glad,” said one of them in a voice Lemuel knew at once, “‘t
there’s one man’s got the politeness to make a _little_ grain o’ room
for you. Thank you, sir!” she added, with more scorn for the others than
gratitude for Lemuel. “_You’re_ a gentleman, _any_way.”

The hardened offenders on the platform laughed, but Lemuel said simply,
“You’re quite welcome.”

“Why, land’s sakes!” shouted the girl. “Well, if ‘tain’t you! S’tira!”
 she exclaimed to her companion in utter admiration. Then she added to
Lemuel, “Why, I didn’t s’pose but what you’d a’ be’n back home long ago.
Well, I _am_ glad. Be’n in Boston ever since? Well, I want to know!”

The conductor had halted his car for the girls to get off, but, as he
remarked with a vicious jerk at his bell-strap, he could not keep his
car standing there while a woman was asking about the folks, and the
horses started up and left Lemuel behind. “Well, there!” said ‘Manda
Grier. “‘F I hain’t made you lose your car! I never see folks like some
them conductors.”

“Oh, I guess I can walk the rest of the way,” said Lemuel, his face
bright with a pleasure visible in the light of the lamp that brought
out Statira Dudley’s smiles and the forward thrust of ‘Manda Grier’s
whopper-jaw as they turned toward the pavement together.

“Well, I guess ‘f I’ve spoke about you once, I have a hundred times,
in the last six weeks. I always told S’tira you’d be’n sure to turn up
b’fore this ‘f you’d be’n in Boston all the time; ‘n’ ‘t I guessed you’d
got a disgust for the place, ‘n’ ‘t you wouldn’t want to see it again
for _one_ while.”

Statira did not say anything. She walked on the other side of ‘Manda
Grier, who thrust her in the side from time to time with a lift of her
elbow, in demand of sympathy and corroboration; but though she only
spoke to answer yes or no, Lemuel could see that she was always smiling
or else biting her lip to keep herself from it. He thought she
looked about as pretty as anybody could, and that she was again very
fashionably dressed. She had on a short dolman, and a pretty hat that
shaded her forehead but fitted close round, and she wore long gloves
that came up on her sleeves. She had a book from the library; she walked
with a little bridling movement that he found very ladylike. ‘Manda
Grier tilted along between them, and her tongue ran and ran, so that
Lemuel, when they came to Miss Vane’s provision man’s, could hardly get
in a word to say that he guessed he must stop there.

Statira drifted on a few paces, but ‘Manda Grier halted abruptly with
him. “Well, ‘f you’re ever up our way we sh’d be much pleased to have
you call, Mr. Barker,” she said formally.

“I should be much pleased to do so,” said Lemuel with equal state.

“‘Tain’t but just a little ways round here on the Avenue,” she added.

Lemuel answered, “I guess I know where it is.” He did not mean it for
anything of a joke, but both the girls laughed, and though she had been
so silent before, Statira laughed the most.

He could not help laughing either when ‘Manda Grier said, “I guess if
you was likely to forget the number you could go round to the station
and inquire. They got your address too.”

“‘Manda Grier, you be still!” said Statira.

“S’tira said that’s the way she knew you was from Willoughby Pastures.
Her folks is from up that way, themselves. She says the minute she heard
the name she knew it couldn’t ‘a’ be’n you, whoever it was done it.”

“‘Manda Grier!” cried Statira again.

“I tell her she don’t believe ‘t any harm can come out the town o’
Willoughby, anywheres.”

“‘Manda!” cried Statira.

Lemuel was pleased, but he could not say a word. He could not look at
Statira.

“Well, good evening,” said Amanda Grier.

“Well, good evening,” said Lemuel.

“Well, good evening,” said Statira.

“Well, good evening,” said Lemuel again.

The next moment they were gone round the corner, and he was left
standing before the provision man’s, with his packages in his hand. It
did not come to him till he had transacted his business within, and was
on his way home, that he had been very impolite not to ask if he might
not see them home. He did not know but he ought to go back and try to
find them, and apologise for his rudeness, and yet he did not see how he
could do that, either; he had no excuse for it; he was afraid it would
seem queer, and make them laugh. Besides, he had those things for Miss
Vane, and the cook wanted some of them at once.

He could hardly get to sleep that night for thinking of his blunder, and
at times he cowered under the bedclothes for shame. He decided that the
only way for him to do was to keep out of their way after this, and if
he ever met them anywhere, to pretend not to see them.

The next morning he went to hear Mr. Sewell preach, as usual, but he
found himself wandering far from the sermon, and asking or answering
this or that in a talk with those girls that kept going on in his mind.
The minister himself seemed to wander, and at times, when Lemuel forced
a return to him, he thought he was boggling strangely. For the first
time Mr. Sewell’s sermon, in his opinion, did not come to much.

While his place in Miss Vane’s household was indefinitely ascertained,
he had the whole of Sunday, and he always wrote home in the afternoon,
or brought up the arrears of the journal he had begun keeping; but the
Sunday afternoon that followed, he was too excited to stay in and write.
He thought he would go and take a walk, and get away from the things
that pestered him. He did not watch where he was going, and after a
while he turned a corner, and suddenly found himself in a long street,
planted with shade-trees, and looking old-fashioned and fallen from a
former dignity. He perceived that it could never have been fashionable,
like Bolingbroke Street or Beacon; the houses were narrow, and their
doors opened from little, cavernous arches let into the brick fronts,
and they stood flush upon the pavement. The sidewalks were full of
people, mostly girls walking up and down; at the corners young fellows
lounged, and there were groups before the cigar stores and the fruit
stalls, which were open. It was not very cold yet, and the children who
swarmed upon the low door-steps were bareheaded and often summer-clad.
The street was not nearly so well kept as the streets on the Back Bay
that Lemuel was more used to, but he could see that it was not a rowdy
street either. He looked up at a lamp on the first corner he came to,
and read Pleasant Avenue on it; then he said that the witch was in it.
He dramatised a scene of meeting those girls, and was very glib in it,
and they were rather shy, and Miss Dudley kept behind Amanda Grier, who
nudged her with her elbow when Lemuel said he had come round to see if
anybody had robbed them of their books on the way home after he left
them last night.

But all the time, as he hurried along to the next corner, he looked
fearfully to the right and left. Presently he began to steal guilty
glances at the numbers of the houses. He said to himself that he would
see what kind of a looking house they did live in, any way. It was
only No. 900 odd when he began, and he could turn off if he wished long
before he reached 1334. As he drew nearer he said he would just give a
look at it, and then rush by. But 1334 was a house so much larger and
nicer than he had expected that he stopped to collect his slow rustic
thoughts, and decide whether she really lived there or whether she had
just given that number for a blind. He did not know why he should think
that, though; she was dressed well enough to come out of any house.

While he lingered before the house an old man with a cane in his hand
and his mouth hanging open stopped and peered through his spectacles,
whose glare he fixed upon Lemuel, till he began to feel himself a
suspicious character. The old man did not say anything, but stood
faltering upon his stick and now and then gathering up his lower lip as
if he were going to speak, but not speaking. Lemuel cleared his throat.
“Hmmn! Is this a boarding-house?”

“I don’t know,” crowed the old man, in a high senile note. “You want
table board or rooms?”

“I don’t want board at all,” began Lemuel again.

“What?” crowed the old man; and he put up his hand to his ear.

People were beginning to put their heads out of the neighbouring
windows, and to walk slowly as they went by, so as to hear what he and
the old man were saying. He could not run away now, and he went boldly
up to the door of the large house and rang.

A girl came, and he asked her, with a flushed face, if Miss Amanda Grier
boarded there; somehow he could not bear to ask for Miss Dudley.

“Well,” the girl said, “she _rooms_ here,” as if that might be a
different thing to Lemuel altogether.

“Oh!” he said. “Is she in?”

“Well, you can walk in,” said the girl, “and I’ll see.” She came back to
ask, “Who shall I say called?”

“Mr. Barker,” said Lemuel, and then glowed with shame because he had
called himself Mister. The girl did not come back, but she hardly seemed
gone before ‘Manda Grier came into the room. He did not know whether
she would speak to him, but she was as pleasant as could be, and said he
must come right up to her and S’tira’s room. It was pretty high up, but
he did not notice the stairs, ‘Manda Grier kept talking so; and when he
got to it, and ‘Manda Grier dashed the door open, and told him to walk
right in, he would not have known but he was in somebody’s sitting-room.
A curtained alcove hid the bed, and the room was heated by a cheerful
little kerosene stove; there were bright folding carpet-chairs, and the
lid of the washstand had a cloth on it that came down to the floor, and
there were plants in the window. There was a mirror on the wall, framed
in black walnut with gilt moulding inside, and a family-group photograph
in the same kind of frame, and two chromes, and a clock on a bracket.

Statira seemed surprised to see him; the room was pretty warm, and her
face was flushed. He said it was quite mild out, and she said, “Was it?”
 Then she ran and flung up the window, and said, “Why, so it was,” and
that she had been in the house all day, and had not noticed the weather.

She excused herself and the room for being in such a state; she said
she was ashamed to be caught in such a looking dress, but they were not
expecting company, and she did suppose ‘Manda Grier would have given her
time to put the room to rights a little. He could not understand why
she said all this, for the whole room was clean, and Statira herself
was beautifully dressed in the same dress that she had worn the night
before, or one just like it; and after she had put up the window, ‘Manda
Grier said, “S’tira Dudley, do you want to kill yourself?” and ran and
pulled aside the curtain in the corner, and took down the dolman
from among other clothes that hung there, and threw it on Statira’s
shoulders, who looked as pretty as a pink in it. But she pretended to be
too hot, and wanted to shrug it off, and ‘Manda Grier called out,
“Mr. Barker! _will_ you make her keep it on?” and Lemuel sat dumb and
motionless, but filled through with a sweet pleasure.

He tried several times to ask them if they had been robbed on the way
home last night, as he had done in the scene he had dramatised; but he
could not get out a word except that it had been pretty warm all day.

Statira said, “I think it’s been a very warm fall,” and ‘Manda Grier
said, “I think the summer’s goin’ to spend the winter with us,” and they
all three laughed.

“What speeches you do make, ‘Manda Grier,” said Statira.

“Well, anything better than Quaker meetin’, _I_ say,” retorted ‘Manda
Grier; and then they were all three silent, and Lemuel thought of his
clothes, and how fashionably both of the girls were dressed.

“I guess,” said Statira, “it’ll be a pretty sickly winter, if it keeps
along this way. They say a green Christmas makes a fat graveyard.”

“I guess you’ll see the snow fly long before Christmas,” said ‘Manda
Grier, “or Thanksgiving either.”

“I guess so too,” said Lemuel, though he did not like to seem to take
sides against Statira.

She laughed as if it were a good joke, and said, “‘Tain’t but about a
fortnight now till Thanksgiving anyway.”

“If it comes a good fall of snow before Thanksgivin’, won’t you come
round and give us a sleigh-ride, Mr. Barker?” asked ‘Manda Grier.

They all laughed at her audacity, and Lemuel said, Yes, he would; and
she said, “We’ll give you a piece of real Willoughby Centre Mince-pie,
if you will.”

They all laughed again.

“‘Manda Grier!” said Statira, in protest.

“Her folks sent her half a dozen last Thanksgivin’,” persisted ‘Manda
Grier.

“‘_Manda!_” pleaded Statira.

‘Manda Grier sprang up and got Lemuel a folding-chair. “You ain’t a bit
comfortable in that stiff old thing, Mr. Barker.”

Lemuel declared that he was perfectly comfortable, but she would not be
contented till he had changed, and then she said, “Why don’t you look
after your company, S’tira Dudley? I should think you’d be ashamed.”

Lemuel’s face burned with happy shame, and Statira, who was as red as
he was, stole a look at him, that seemed to say that there was no use
trying to stop ‘Manda Grier. But when she went on, “I don’t know but
it’s the fashion to Willoughby Centre,” they both gave way again, and
laughed more than ever, and Statira said, “_Well_, ‘Manda Grier, what do
you s’pose Mr. Barker ‘ll think?”

She tried to be sober, but the wild girl set her and Lemuel off laughing
when she retorted, “Guess he’ll think what he did when he was brought up
in court for highway robbery.”

‘Manda Grier sat upright in her chair, and acted as if she had merely
spoken about the weather. He knew that she was talking that way just
to break the ice, and though he would have given anything to be able to
second her, he could not.

“How you do carry on, ‘Manda Grier,” said Statira, as helpless as he
was.

“Guess I got a pretty good load to carry!” said ‘Manda Grier.

They all now began to find their tongues a little, and Statira told
how one season when her mother took boarders she had gone over to
the Pastures with a party of summer-folks on a straw-ride and picked
blueberries. She said she never saw the berries as thick as they were
there.

Lemuel said he guessed he knew where the place was; but the fire had got
into it last year, and there had not been a berry there this summer.

Statira said, “What a shame!” She said there were some Barkers over East
Willoughby way; and she confessed that when he said his name was Barker,
and he was from Willoughby Pastures, that night in the station, she
thought she should have gone through the floor.

Then they talked a little about how they had both felt, but not very
much, and they each took all the blame, and would not allow that the
other was the least to blame. Statira said she had behaved like a
perfect coot all the way through, and Lemuel said that he guessed he had
been the coot, if there was any.

“I guess there was a pair of you,” said ‘Manda Grier; and at this
association of them in ‘Manda Grier’s condemnation, he could see that
Statira was blushing, though she hid her face in her hands, for her ears
were all red.

He now rose and said he guessed he would have to be going; but when
‘Manda Grier interposed and asked, “Why, what’s your hurry?” he said he
guessed he had not had any, and Statira laughed at the wit of this till
it seemed to him she would perish.

“Well, then, you set right straight down again,” said ‘Manda Grier, with
mock severity, as if he were an obstinate little boy; and he obeyed,
though he wished that Statira had asked him to stay too.

“Why, the land sakes!” exclaimed ‘Manda Grier, “have you been lettin’
him keep his hat all this while, S’tira Dudley? You take it right away
from him!” And Statira rose, all smiling and blushing, and said--

“Will you let me take your hat, Mr. Barker?” as if he had just come in,
and made him feel as if she had pressed him to stay. She took it and
went and laid it on a stand across the room, and Lemuel thought he had
never seen a much more graceful person. She wore a full Breton skirt,
which was gathered thickly at the hips, and swung loose and free as she
stepped. When she came back and sat down, letting the back of one
pretty hand fall into the palm of the other in her lap, it seemed to him
impossible that such an elegant young lady should be tolerating a person
dressed as he was.

“There!” began ‘Manda Grier. “_I_ guess Mr. Barker won’t object a great
deal to our going on, if it _is_ Sunday. ‘S kind of a Sunday game,
anyways. You ‘posed to games on Sunday?”

“I don’t know as I am,” said Lemuel.

“Now, ‘Manda Grier, don’t you!” pleaded Statira.

“Shall, too,” persisted ‘Manda. “I guess if there’s any harm in the key,
there ain’t any harm in the Bible, and so it comes out even. D’you ever
try your fate with a key and a Bible?” she asked Lemuel.

“I don’t know as I did,” he answered.

“Well, it’s _real_ fun, ‘n’ its curious how it comes out, often_times._
Well, _I_ don’t s’pose there’s anything _in_ it, but it _is_ curious.”

“I guess we hadn’t better,” said Statira. “I don’t believe Mr. Barker
‘ll care for it.”

Lemuel said he would like to see how it was done, anyway.

‘Manda Grier took the key out of the door, and looked at it. “That key
‘ll cut the leaves all to pieces.”

“Can’t you find some other?” suggested Statira.

“I don’t know but may be I could,” said ‘Manda Grier. “You just wait a
half a second.”

Before Lemuel knew what she was doing, she flew out of the door, and he
could hear her flying down the stairs.

“Well, I _must_ say!” said Statira, and then neither she nor Lemuel said
anything for a little while. At last she asked, “That window trouble you
any?”

Lemuel said, “Not at all,” and he added, “Perhaps it’s too cold for
you?”

“Oh no,” said the girl, “I can’t seem to get anything too cold for me.
I’m the greatest person for cold weather! I’m _real_ glad it’s comin’
winter. We had the greatest _time_, last winter,” continued Statira,
“with those English sparrows. Used to feed ‘em crumbs, there on the
window-sill, and it seemed as if they got to know we girls, and they’d
hop right inside, if you’d let ‘em. Used to make me feel kind of creepy
to have ‘em. They say it’s a sign of death to have a bird come into your
room, and I was always for drivin’ ‘em out, but ‘Manda, she said she
guessed the Lord didn’t take the trouble to send birds round to every
one, and if the rule didn’t work one way it didn’t work the other. You
believe in signs?”

“I don’t know as I do, much. Mother likes to see the new moon over her
right shoulder, pretty well,” said Lemuel.

“Well, I declare,” said Statira, “that’s just the way with _my_ aunt.
Now you’re up here,” she said, springing suddenly to her feet, “I want
you should see what a nice view we got from our window.”

Lemuel had it on his tongue to say that he hoped it was not going to be
his last chance; he believed he would have said it if ‘Manda Grier had
been there; but now he only joined Statira at the window, and looked
out. They had to stoop over, and get pretty close together, to see the
things she wished to show him, and she kept shrugging her sack on, and
once she touched him with her shoulder. He said yes to everything she
asked him about the view, but he saw very little of it. He saw that
her hair had a shade of gold in its brown, and that it curled in tight
little rings where it was cut on her neck, and that her skin was very
white under it. When she touched him, that time, it made him feel very
strange; and when she glanced at him out of her blue eyes, he did not
know what he was doing. He did not laugh as he did when ‘Manda Grier was
there.

Statira said, “Oh, excuse me!” when she touched him, and he answered,
“Perfectly excusable,” but he said hardly anything else. He liked to
hear her talk, and he watched the play of her lips as she spoke. Once
her breath came across his cheek, when she turned quickly to see if he
was looking where she was pointing.

They sat down and talked, and all at once Statira exclaimed, “_Well!_ I
should think ‘Manda Grier was _makin’_ that key!”

Now, whatever happened, Lemuel was bound to say, “I don’t think she’s
been gone very long.”

“Well, you’re pretty patient, I _must_ say,” said Statira, and he did
not know whether she was making fun of him or not. He tried to think of
something to say, but could not. “I hope she’ll fetch a lamp, too, when
she comes,” Statira went on, and now he saw that it was beginning to be
a little darker. Perhaps that about the lamp was a hint for him to go;
but he did not see exactly how he could go till ‘Manda Grier came back;
he felt that it would not be polite.

“Well, there!” said Statira, as if she divined his feeling. I shall give
‘Manda Grier a _good_ talking-to. I’m awfully afraid we’re keeping you,
Mr. Barker.”

“Not at all,” said Lemuel; “I’m afraid I’m keeping _you_.”

“Oh, not at all,” said Statira. She became rather quieter, till ‘Manda
Grier came back.

‘Manda Grier burst into the room, with a key in one hand and a lamp in
the other. “Well, I knew you two’d be holdin’ Quaker’s meetin’.”

“We hain’t at all! How d’you know we have? Have we, Mr. Barker?”
 returned Statira, in simultaneous admission and denial.

“Well, if you want to know, I listened outside the door,” said ‘Manda
Grier, “and you wa’n’t sayin’ a word, either of you. I guess I got a key
now that’ll do,” she added, setting down her lamp, “and I borrowed an
old Bible ‘t I guess ‘tain’t go’n’ to hurt a great deal.”

“I don’t know as I want to play it much,” said Statira.

“Well, I guess you got to, now,” said ‘Manda Grier, “after all my
trouble. Hain’t she, Mr. Barker?”

It flattered Lemuel through and through to be appealed to, but he could
not say anything.

“Well,” said Statira, “if I got to, I got to. But you got to hold the
Bible.”

“You got to put the key in!” cried ‘Manda Grier. She sat holding the
Bible open toward Statira.

She offered to put the key in, and then she stopped. “Well! I’m great!
Who are we going to find it for first?”

“Oh, company first,” said ‘Manda Grier.

“You company, Mr. Barker?” asked Statira, looking at Lemuel over her
shoulder.

“I hope not,” said Lemuel gallantly, at last.

“Well, I declare!” said Statira.

“Quite one the family,” said ‘Manda Grier, and that made Statira say,
“‘Manda!” and Lemuel blush to his hair. “Well, anyway,” continued ‘Manda
Grier, “you’re company enough to have your fate found first. Put in the
key, S’tira.”

“No, I sha’n’t do it.”

“Well, _I_ shall, then!” She took the key from Statira, and shut the
book upon it at the Song of Solomon, and bound it tightly in with a
ribbon. Lemuel watched breathlessly; he was not sure that he knew what
kind of fate she meant, but he thought he knew, and it made his heart
beat quick. ‘Manda Grier had passed the ribbon through the ring of the
key, which was left outside of the leaves, and now she took hold of the
key with her two forefingers. “You got to be careful not to touch the
Bible with your fingers,” she explained, “or the charm won’t work. Now
I’ll say over two verses, ‘t where the key’s put in, and Mr. Barker, you
got to repeat the alphabet at the same time; and when it comes to the
first letter of the right name, the Bible will drop out of my fingers,
all I can do. Now then! _Set me as a seal on thine heart_--”

“A, B, C, D.” began Lemuel. “Pshaw, now, ‘Manda Grier, you stop!”
 pleaded Statira.

“You be still! Go on, Mr. Barker!--_As a seal upon thine arm; for love
is as strong as death_--don’t say the letters so fast--_jealousy as
cruel as the grave_--don’t look at S’tira; look at me!--_the coals
thereof are coals of fire_--you’re sayin’ it too slow now--_which hath a
most vehement flame._ I declare, S’tira Dudley, if you joggle me!--_Many
waters cannot quench love; neither can the floods drown it_--you
must put just so much time between every letter; if you stop on every
particular one, it ain’t fair--_if a man would give all the substance of
his house for love_--you stop laughin’, you two!--_it would be utterly
consumed_. Well, there! Now we got to go it all over again, and my arm’s
most broke _now_.”

“I don’t believe Mr. Barker wants to do it again,” said Statira, looking
demurely at him; but Lemuel protested that he did, and the game began
again. This time the Bible began to shake at the letter D, and Statira
cried out, “Now, ‘Manda Grier, you’re making it,” and ‘Manda Grier
laughed so that she could scarcely hold the book. Lemuel laughed too;
but he kept on repeating the letters. At S the book fell to the floor,
and Statira caught it up, and softly beat ‘Manda Grier on the back with
it. “Oh you mean thing!” she cried out. “You did it on purpose.”

‘Manda Grier was almost choked with laughing.

“Do you know anybody of the name of Sarah, Mr. Barker?” she gasped, and
then they all laughed together till Statira said, “Well, I shall surely
die! Now, ‘Manda Grier, it’s your turn. And you see if I don’t pay you
up.”

“I guess I ain’t afraid any,” retorted ‘Manda Grier. “The book ‘ll do
what it pleases, in spite of you.”

They began again, Statira holding the book this time, and Lemuel
repeating as before, and he went quite through the alphabet without
anything happening. “Well, I declare!” said Statira, looking grave.
“Let’s try it over again.”

“You may try, and you may try, and you may try,” said ‘Manda Grier. “It
won’t do you any good. I hain’t got any fate in that line.”

“Well, that’s what we’re goin’ to find out,” said Statira; but again the
verses and alphabet were repeated without effect.

“Now you satisfied?” asked ‘Manda Grier.

“No, not yet. Begin again, Mr. Barker!”

He did so, and at the second letter the book dropped. Statira jumped up,
and ‘Manda Grier began to chase her round the room, to box her ears
for her, she said. Lemuel sat looking on. He did not feel at all severe
toward them, as he usually did toward girls that cut up; he did not feel
that this was cutting up, in fact.

“Stop, stop!” implored Statira, “and I’ll let you try it over again.”

“No, it’s your turn now!”

“No, I ain’t going to have any,” said Statira, folding her arms.

“You got to,” said ‘Manda Grier. “The rest of us has, and now you’ve got
to. Hain’t she got to, Mr. Barker?”

“Yes,” said Lemuel delightedly; “you’ve got to, Miss Dudley.”

“Miss Dudley!” repeated ‘Manda Grier. “How that _does_ sound.”

“I don’t know as it sounds any worse than Mr. Barker,” said Lemuel.

“Well,” said ‘Manda Grier judicially, “I she’d think it was ‘bout time
they was both of ‘em dropped, ‘T any rate, I don’t want you should call
me Miss Grier--Lemuel.”

“Oh!” cried Statira. “Well, you _are_ getting along, ‘Manda Grier!”

“Well, don’t you let yourself be outdone then, S’tira.”

“I guess Mr. Barker’s good enough for me a while yet,” said Statira, and
she hastened to add, “The name, I mean,” and at this they all laughed
till Statira said, “I shall _certainly_ die!” She suddenly recovered
herself--those girls seemed to do everything like lightning, Lemuel
observed--and said, “No, I ain’t goin’ to have mine told at all. I don’t
like it. Seems kind of wicked. I ruther talk. I never _could_ make it
just right to act so with the Bible.”

Lemuel was pleased at that. Statira seemed prettier than ever in this
mood of reverence.

“Well, don’t talk too much when I’m gone,” said ‘Manda Grier, and before
anybody could stop her, she ran out of the room. But she put her head in
again to say, “I’ll be back as soon’s I can take this key home.”

Lemuel did not know what to do. The thought of being alone with Statira
again was full of rapture and terror. He was glad when she seized the
door and tried to keep ‘Manda Grier.

“I--I--guess I better be going,” he said.

“You sha’n’t go till I get back, anyway,” said ‘Manda Grier hospitably.
“You keep him, S’tira!”

She gave Statira a little push, and ran down the stairs.

Statira tottered against Lemuel, with that round, soft shoulder which
had touched him before. He put out his arms to save her from falling,
and they seemed to close round her of themselves. She threw up her face,
and in a moment he had kissed her. He released her and fell back from
her aghast.

She looked at him.

“I--I didn’t mean to,” he panted. His heart was thundering in his ears.

She put up her hands to her face, and began to cry.

“Oh, my goodness!” he gasped. He wavered a moment, then he ran out of
the room.

On the stairs he met ‘Manda Grier coming up. “Now, Mr. Barker, you’re
real mean to go!” she pouted.

“I guess I better be going,” Lemuel called back, in a voice so husky
that he hardly knew it for his own.



XII.


Lemuel let himself into Miss Vane’s house with his key to the back gate,
and sat down, still throbbing, in his room over the L, and tried to get
the nature of his deed, or misdeed, before his mind. He had grown up to
manhood in an austere reverence for himself as regarded the other sex,
and in a secret fear, as exacting for them as it was worshipful of
women. His mother had held all show of love-sickness between young
people in scorn; she said they were silly things, when she saw them
soft upon one another; and Lemuel had imbibed from her a sense of
unlawfulness, of shame, in the love-making he had seen around him all
his life. These things are very open in the country. Even in large
villages they have kissing-games at the children’s parties, in the
church vestries and refectories; and as a little boy Lemuel had taken
part in such games. But as he grew older, his reverence and his fear
would not let him touch a girl. Once a big girl, much older than he,
came up behind him in the play-ground and kissed him; he rubbed the
kiss off with his hand, and scoured the place with sand and gravel. One
winter all the big boys and girls at school began courting whenever the
teacher was out of sight a moment; at the noon-spell some of them sat
with their arms round one another. Lemuel wandered off by himself in the
snows of the deep woods; the sight of such things, the thought of them
put him to shame for those fools, as he tacitly called them; and now
what had he done himself? He could not tell. At times he was even proud
and glad of it; and then he did not know what would become of him. But
mostly it seemed to him that he had been guilty of an enormity that
nothing could ever excuse. He must have been crazy to do such a thing to
a young lady like that; her tear-stained face looked her wonder at him
still.

By this time she had told ‘Manda Grier all about it; and he dared not
think what their thoughts of him must be. It seemed to him that he ought
to put such a monster as he was out of the world. But all the time there
was a sweetness, a joy in his heart, that made him half frantic with
fear of himself.

“Lemuel!”

He started up at the sound of Sibyl Vane’s voice calling to him from the
dining-room which opened into the L.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered tremulously, going to his door. Miss Vane had
been obliged to instruct him to say ma’am to her niece, whom he had at
first spoken of by her Christian name.

“Was that you came in a little while ago?”

“Yes, ma’am, I came in.”

“Oh! And have you had your supper?”

“I--I guess I don’t want any supper.”

“Don’t want any supper? You will be ill. Why don’t you?”

“I don’t know as I feel just like eating anything.”

“Well, it won’t do. Will you see, please, if Jane is in the kitchen?”

Lemuel came forward, full of his unfitness for the sight of men, but
gathering a little courage when he found the dining-room so dark. He
descended to the basement and opened the door of the kitchen, looked in,
and shut it again. “Yes, ma’am, she’s there.”

“Oh!” Sibyl seemed to hesitate. Then she said: “Light the gas down
there, hadn’t you better?”

“I don’t know but I had,” Lemuel assented.

But before he could obey, “And Lemuel!” she called down again, “come and
light it up here too, please.”

“I will as soon as I’ve lit it here,” said Lemuel.

An imperious order came back. “You will light it here _now,_ please.”

“All right,” assented Lemuel. When he appeared in the upper entry and
flashed the gas up, he saw Sibyl standing at the reception-room door,
with her finger closed into a book which she had been reading.

“You’re not to say that you will do one thing when you’re told to do
another.”

Lemuel whitened a little round the lips. “I’m not to do two things at
once, either, I suppose.”

Sibyl ignored this reply. “Please go and get your supper, and when
you’ve had it come up here again. I’ve some things for you to do.”

“I’ll do them now,” said Lemuel fiercely. “I don’t want any supper, and
I sha’n’t eat any.”

“Why, Lemuel, what is the matter with you?” asked the girl, in the
sudden effect of motherly solicitude. “You look very strange, you seem
so excited.”

“I’m not hungry, that’s all,” said the boy doggedly. “What is it you
want done?”

“Won’t you please go up to the third floor,” said Sibyl, in a phase of
timorous dependence, “and see if everything is right there? I thought I
heard a noise. See if the windows are fast, won’t you?”

Lemuel turned and she followed with her finger in her book, and her book
pressed to her heart, talking. “It seemed to me that I heard steps and
voices. It’s very mysterious. I suppose any one could plant a ladder
on the roof of the L part, and get into the windows if they were not
fastened.”

“Have to be a pretty long ladder,” grumbled Lemuel.

“Yes,” Sibyl assented, “it would. And it didn’t sound exactly like
burglars.”

She followed him half-way up the second flight of stairs, and stood
there while he explored the third story throughout.

“There ain’t anything there,” he reported without looking at her, and
was about to pass her on the stairs in going down.

“Oh, thank you very much, Lemuel,” she said, with fervent gratitude
in her voice. She fetched a tremulous sigh. “I suppose it was nothing.
Yes,” she added hoarsely, “it must have been nothing. Oh, let _me_ go
down first!” she cried, putting out her hand to stop him from passing
her. She resumed when they reached the ground floor again. “Aunty has
gone out, and Jane was in the kitchen, and it began to grow dark while
I sat reading in the drawing-room, and all at once I heard the strangest
_noise_.” Her voice dropped deeply on the last word. “Yes, it was very
strange indeed! Thank you, Lemuel,” she concluded.

“Quite welcome,” said Lemuel dryly, pushing on towards the basement
stairs.

“Oh! And Lemuel! will you let Jane give you your supper in the
dining-room, so that you could be here if I heard anything else?”

“I don’t want any supper,” said Lemuel.

The girl scrutinised him with an expression of misgiving. Then, with
a little sigh, as of one who will not explore a painful mystery, she
asked: “Would you mind sitting in the dining-room, then, till aunty gets
back?”

“I’d just as lives sit there,” said Lemuel, walking into the dark
dining-room and sitting down.

“Oh, thank you very much. Aunty will be back very soon, I suppose. She’s
just gone to the Sewells’ to tea.”

She followed him to the threshold. “You must--I must--light the gas in
here for you.”

“Guess I can light the gas,” said Lemuel, getting up to intercept her in
this service. She had run into the reception-room for a match, and she
would not suffer him to prevent her.

“No, no! I insist! And Lemuel,” she said, turning upon him, “I must ask
you to excuse my speaking harshly to you. I was--agitated.”

“Perfectly excusable,” said Lemuel.

“I am afraid,” said the girl, fixing him with her eyes, “that you are
not well.”

“Oh yes, I’m well. I’m--pretty tired; that’s all.”

“Have you been walking far?”

“Yes--not very.”

“The walking ought to do you good,” said Sibyl, with serious
thoughtfulness. “I think,” she continued, “you had better have some
bryonia. Don’t you think you had?”

“No, no! I don’t want anything,” protested Lemuel.

She looked at him with a feeling of baffled anxiety painted on her face;
and as she turned away, she beamed with a fresh inspiration. “I will get
you a book.” She flew into the reception-room and back again, but she
only had the book that she had herself been reading.

“Perhaps you would like to read this? I’ve finished it. I was just
looking back through it.”

“Thank you; I guess I don’t want to read any, just now.”

She leaned against the side of the dining-table, beyond which Lemuel
sat, and searched his fallen countenance with a glance contrived to
be at once piercing and reproachful. “I see,” she said, “you have not
forgiven me.”

“Forgiven you?” repeated Lemuel blankly.

“Yes--for giving way to my agitation in speaking to you.”

“I don’t know,” said Lemuel, with a sigh of deep inward trouble, “as I
noticed anything.”

“I told you to light the gas in the basement,” suggested Sibyl, “and
then I told you to light it up here, and then--I scolded you.”

“Oh yes,” admitted Lemuel: “that.” He dropped his head again.

Sibyl sank upon the edge of a chair. “Lemuel! you have something on your
mind?”

The boy looked up with a startled face.

“Yes! I can see that you have,” pursued Sibyl. “What have you been
doing?” she demanded sternly.

Lemuel was so full of the truth that it came first to his lips in
all cases. He could scarcely force it aside now with the evasion that
availed him nothing. “I don’t know as I’ve been doing anything in
particular.”

“I see that you don’t wish to tell me!” cried the girl. “But you might
have trusted me. I would have defended you, no matter what you had
done--the worse the better.”

Lemuel hung his head without answering.

After a while she continued: “If I had been that girl who had you
arrested, and I had been the cause of so much suffering to an innocent
person, I should never have forgiven myself. I should have devoted
my life to expiation. I should have spent my life in going about the
prisons, and finding out persons who were unjustly accused. I should
have done it as a penance. Yes! even if he had been guilty!”

Lemuel remained insensible to this extreme of self-sacrifice, and she
went on: “This book--it is a story--is all one picture of such a nature.
There is a girl who’s been brought up as the ward of a young man. He
educates her, and she expects to be his wife, and he turns out to be
perfectly false and unworthy in every way; but she marries him all the
same, although she likes some one else, because she feels that she ought
to punish herself for thinking of another, and because she hopes that
she will die soon, and when her guardian finds out what she’s done for
him, it will reform him. It’s perfectly sublime. It’s--ennobling! If
every one could read this book, they would be very different.”

“I don’t see much sense in it,” said Lemuel, goaded to this comment.

“You would if you read it. When she dies--she is killed by a fall from
her horse in hunting, and has just time to join the hands of her husband
and the man she liked first, and tell them everything--it is wrought up
so that you hold your breath. I suppose it was reading that that made
me think there were burglars getting in. But perhaps you’re right not
to read it now, if you’re excited already. I’ll get you something
cheerful.” She whirled out of the room and back in a series of those
swift, nervous movements peculiar to her. “There! that will amuse you,
I know.” She put the book down on the table before Lemuel, who silently
submitted to have it left there. “It will distract your thoughts,
if anything will. And I shall ask you to let me sit just here in the
reception-room, so that I can call you if I feel alarmed.”

“All right,” said Lemuel, lapsing absently to his own troubled thoughts.

“Thank you very much,” said Sibyl. She went away, and came back
directly. “Don’t you think,” she asked, “that it’s very strange you
should never have seen or heard anything of her?”

“Heard of who?” he asked, dragging himself painfully up from the depths
of his thoughts.

“That heartless girl who had you arrested.”

“She _wasn’t_ heartless!” retorted Lemuel indignantly.

“You think so because you are generous, and can’t imagine such
heartlessness. Perhaps,” added Sibyl, with the air of being illumined
by a happy thought, “she is dead. That would account for everything. She
may have died of remorse. It probably preyed upon her till she couldn’t
bear it any longer, and then she killed herself.”

Lemuel began to grow red at the first apprehension of her meaning. As
she went on, he changed colour more and more.

“She is alive!” cried Sibyl. “She’s alive, and you have seen her!
You needn’t deny it! You’ve seen her to-day!” Lemuel rose in clumsy
indignation. “I don’t know as anybody’s got any right to say what I’ve
done, or haven’t done.”

“O Lemuel!” cried Sibyl. “Do you think anyone in this house would
intrude in your affairs? But if you need a friend--a sister----”

“I don’t need any sister. I want you should let me alone.”

At these words, so little appreciative of her condescension, her
romantic beneficence, her unselfish interest, Sibyl suddenly rebounded
to her former level, which she was sensible was far above that of this
unworthy object of her kindness. She rose from her chair, and pursued--

“If you need a friend--a sister--I’m sure that you can safely confide
in--the cook.” She looked at him a moment, and broke into a malicious
laugh very unlike that of a social reformer, which rang shriller at the
bovine fury which mounted to Lemuel’s eyes. The rattle of a night-latch
made itself heard in the outer door. Sibyl’s voice began to break, as it
rose: “I never expected to be treated in my own aunt’s house with
such perfect ingratitude and impudence--yes, impudence!--by one of her
servants!”

She swept out of the room, and her aunt, who entered it, after calling
to her in vain, stood with Lemuel, and heard her mount the stairs,
sobbing, to her own room, and lock herself in.

“What is the matter, Lemuel?” asked Miss Vane, breathing quickly. She
looked at him with the air of a judge who would not condemn him unheard,
but would certainly do so after hearing him. Whether it was Lemuel’s
perception of this that kept him silent, or his confusion of spirit from
all the late rapidly successive events, or a wish not to inculpate the
girl who had insulted him, he remained silent.

“Answer me!” said Miss Vane sharply.

Lemuel cleared his throat. “I don’t know as I’ve got anything to say,”
 he answered finally.

“But I insist upon your saying something,” said Miss Vane. “What is this
_impudence?_”

“There hasn’t been any impudence,” replied Lemuel, hanging his head.

“Very well, then, you can tell me what Sibyl means,” persisted Miss
Vane.

Lemuel seemed to reflect upon it. “No, I can’t tell you,” he said at
last, slowly and gently.

“You refuse to make any explanation whatever?”

“Yes.”

Miss Vane rose from the chair which she had mechanically sunk into while
waiting for him to speak, and ceased to be the kindly, generous soul
she was, in asserting herself as a gentlewoman who had a contumacious
servant to treat with. “You will wait here a moment, please.”

“All right,” said Lemuel. She had asked him not to receive instructions
from her with that particular answer, but he could not always remember.

She went upstairs, and returned with some banknotes that rustled in her
trembling hand. “It is two months since you came, and I’ve paid you one
month,” she said, and she set her lips, and tried to govern her head,
which nevertheless shook with the vehemence she was struggling to
repress. She laid two ten-dollar notes upon the table, and then added
a five, a little apart. “This second month was to be twenty instead of
ten. I shall not want you any longer, and should be glad to have you go
now--at once--to-night! But I had intended to offer you a little present
at Christmas, and I will give it you now.”

Lemuel took up the two ten-dollar notes without saying anything, and
then after a moment laid one of them down. “It’s only half a month,” he
said. “I don’t want to be paid for any more than I’ve done.”

“Lemuel!” cried Miss Vane. “I insist upon your taking it. I employed you
by the month.”

“It don’t make any difference about that; I’ve only been here a month
and a half.”

He folded the notes, and turned to go out of the room. Miss Vane caught
the five-dollar note from the table and intercepted him with it. “Well,
then, you shall take it as a present.”

“I don’t want any present,” said Lemuel, patiently waiting her pleasure
to release him, but keeping his hands in his pockets.

“You would have taken it at Christmas,” said Miss Vane. “You shall take
it now.”

“I shouldn’t take a present any time,” returned Lemuel steadily.

“You are a foolish boy!” cried Miss Vane. “You need it, and I tell you
to take it.”

He made no reply whatever.

“You are behaving very stubbornly--ungratefully,” said Miss Vane.

Lemuel lifted his head; his lip quivered a little. “I don’t think you’ve
got any right to say I’m ungrateful.”

“I don’t mean ungrateful,” said Miss Vane. “I mean unkind--very
silly, indeed. And I wish you to take this money. You are behaving
resentfully--wickedly. I am much older than you, and I tell you that you
are not behaving rightly. Why don’t you do what I wish?”

“I don’t want any money I haven’t earned.”

“I don’t mean the money. Why don’t you tell me the meaning of what I
heard? My niece said you had been impudent to her. Perhaps she didn’t
understand.”

She looked wistfully into the boy’s face.

After a long time he said, “I don’t know as I’ve got anything to say
about it.”

“Very well, then, you may go,” said Miss Vane, with all her _hauteur_.

“Well, good evening,” said Lemuel passively, but the eyes that he
looked at her with were moist, and conveyed a pathetic reproach. To her
unmeasured astonishment, he offered her his hand; her amaze was even
greater--_more_ infinite, as she afterwards told Sewell--when she found
herself shaking it.

He went out of the room, and she heard him walking about his room in the
L, putting together his few belongings. Then she heard him go down and
open the furnace door, and she knew he was giving a final conscientious
look at the fire. He closed it, and she heard him close the basement
door behind him, and knew that he was gone.

She explored the L, and then she descended to the basement and
mechanically looked it over. Everything that could be counted hers by
the most fastidious sense of property had been left behind him in the
utmost neatness. On their accustomed nail, just inside the furnace-room,
hung the blue overalls. They looked like a suicidal Lemuel hanging
there.

Miss Vane went upstairs slowly, with a heavy heart. Under the hall light
stood Sibyl, picturesque in the deep shadow it flung upon her face.

“Aunt Hope,” she began in a tragic voice.

“Don’t _speak_ to me, you wicked girl!” cried her aunt, venting her
self-reproach upon this victim. “It is _your_ doing.”

Sibyl turned with the meekness of an ostentatious scape-goat, unjustly
bearing the sins of her tribe, and went upstairs into the wilderness of
her own thoughts again.



XIII.


The sense of outrage with which Lemuel was boiling when Miss Vane came
in upon Sibyl and himself had wholly passed away, and he now saw his
dismissal, unjust as between that girl and him, unimpeachably righteous
as between him and the moral frame of things. If he had been punished
for being ready to take advantage of that fellow’s necessity, and
charge him fifty cents for changing ten dollars, he must now be no
less obviously suffering for having abused that young lady’s trust and
defencelessness; only he was not suffering one-tenth as much. When he
recurred to that wrong, in fact, and tried to feel sorry for it and
ashamed, his heart thrilled in a curious way; he found himself smiling
and exulting, and Miss Vane and her niece went out of his mind, and he
could not think of anything but of being with that girl, of hearing her
talk and laugh, of touching her. He sighed; he did not know what his
mother would say if she knew; he did not know where he was going; it
seemed a hundred years since the beginning of the afternoon.

A horse-car came by, and Lemuel stopped it. He set his bag down on
the platform, and stood there near the conductor, without trying to
go inside, for the bag was pretty large, and he did not believe the
conductor would let him take it in.

The conductor said politely after a while, “See, ‘d I get your fare?”

“No,” said Lemuel. He paid, and the conductor went inside and collected
the other fares.

When he came back he took advantage of Lemuel’s continued presence to
have a little chat. He was a short, plump, stubby-moustached man, and he
looked strong and well, but he said, with an introductory sigh, “Well,
sir, I get sore all over at this business. There ain’t a bone in me that
hain’t got an ache in it. Sometimes I can’t tell but what it’s the ache
got a bone in it, ache seems the biggest.”

“Why, what makes it?” asked Lemuel absently.

“Oh, it’s this standin’; it’s the hours, and changin’ the hours so much.
You hain’t got a chance to get used to one set o’ hours before they get
‘em all shifted round again. Last week I was on from eight to eight;
this week it’s from twelve to twelve. Lord knows what it’s going to be
next week. And this is one o’ the best lines in town, too.”

“I presume they pay you pretty well,” said Lemuel, with awakening
interest.

“Well, they pay a dollar ‘n’ half a day,” said the conductor.

“Why, it’s more than forty dollars a month,” said Lemuel.

“Well, it is,” said the conductor scornfully, “if you work every day in
the week. But I can’t stand it more than six days out o’ seven; and
if you miss a day, or if you miss a trip, they dock you. No, sir. It’s
about the meanest business _I_ ever struck. If I wa’n’t a married man,
‘n’ if I didn’t like to be regular about my meals and get ‘em at home
‘th my wife, I wouldn’t stand it a minute. But that’s where it is. It’s
regular.”

A lady from within signalled the conductor. He stopped the car, and the
lady, who had risen with her escort, remained chatting with a friend
before she got out. The conductor snapped his bell for starting, with a
look of patient sarcasm. “See that?” he asked Lemuel. “Some these women
act as if the cars was their private carriage; and _you_ got to act so
_too_, or the lady complains of you, and the company bounces you in a
minute. Stock’s owned along the line, and they think they own _you_ too.
You can’t get ‘em to set more than ten on a side; they’ll leave the car
first. I’d like to catch ‘em on some the South End or Cambridge cars.
I’d show ‘em how to pack live stock once, anyway. Yes, sir, these ladies
that ride on this line think they can keep the car standin’ while they
talk about the opera. But you’d ought to see how they all look if a
_poor_ woman tries their little game. Oh, I tell you, rich people are
hard.”

Lemuel reflected upon the generalisation. He regarded Miss Vane as a
rich person; but though she had blamed him unjustly, and had used him
impatiently, even cruelly, in this last affair, he remembered other
things, and he said--

“Well, I don’t know as I should say all of them were hard.”

“Well, may be not,” admitted the conductor. “But I don’t envy ‘em. The
way I look at it, and the way I tell my wife, I wouldn’t want their
money ‘f I had to have the rest of it. Ain’t any of ‘em happy. I saw
that when I lived out. No, sir; what me and my wife want to do is to
find us a nice little place in the country.”

At the words a vision of Willoughby Pastures rose upon Lemuel, and a
lump of home-sickness came into his throat. He saw the old wood-coloured
house, crouching black within its walls under the cold November stars.
If his mother had not gone to bed yet, she was sitting beside the
cooking-stove in the kitchen, and perhaps his sister was brewing
something on it, potion or lotion, for her husband’s rheumatism. Miss
Vane had talked to him about his mother; she had said he might have her
down to visit him, if everything went on right; but of course he knew
that Miss Vane did not understand that his mother wore bloomers, and he
made up his mind that her invitation was never to be accepted. At the
same time he had determined to ask Miss Vane to let him go up and see
his mother some Sunday.

“‘S fur’s we go,” said the conductor. “‘F you’re goin’ on, you want to
take another car here.”

“I guess I’ll go back with you a little ways,” said Lemuel. “I want to
ask you--”

“Guess we’ll have to take a back seat, then,” said the conductor,
leading the way through the car to the other platform; “or a standee,”
 he added, snapping the bell. “What is it you want to ask?”

“Oh, nothing. How do you fellows learn to be conductors? How long does
it take you?”

Till other passengers should come the conductor lounged against the
guard of the platform in a conversational posture.

“Well, generally it takes you four or five days. You got to learn all
the cross streets, and the principal places on all the lines.”

“Yes?”

“It didn’t take me more’n two. Boston boy.”

“Yes,” said Lemuel, with a fine discouragement. “I presume the
conductors are mostly from Boston.”

“They’re from everywhere. And some of ‘em are pretty streaked, I can
tell you; and then the rest of us has got to suffer; throws suspicion on
all of us. One fellow gets to stealin’ fares, and then everybody’s got
to wear a bell-punch. I never hear mine go without thinkin’ it says,
‘Stop thief!’ Makes me sick, I can tell you.”

After a while Lemuel asked, “How do you get such a position?”

The conductor seemed to be thinking about some thing else. “It’s a
pretty queer kind of a world, anyway, the way everybody’s mixed up with
everybody else. What’s the reason, if a man wants to steal, he can’t
steal and suffer for it himself, without throwin’ the shame and the
blame on a lot more people that never thought o’ stealin’? I don’t
notice much when a fellow sets out to do right that folks think
everybody else is on the square. No, sir, they don’t seem to consider
that kind of complaint so catching. Now, you take another thing: A woman
goes round with the scarlet fever in her clothes, and a whole carful of
people take it home to their children; but let a nice young girl get in,
fresh as an apple, and a perfect daisy for wholesomeness every way, and
she don’t give it to a single soul on board. No, sir; it’s a world I
can’t see through, nor begin to.”

“I never thought of it that way,” said Lemuel, darkened by this black
pessimism of the conductor. He had not, practically, found the world
so unjust as the conductor implied, but he could not controvert his
argument. He only said, “May be the right thing makes us feel good in
some way we don’t know of.”

“Well, I don’t want to feel good in some way I don’t know of, myself,”
 said the conductor very scornfully.

“No, that’s so,” Lemuel admitted. He remained silent, with a vague
wonder flitting through his mind whether Mr. Sewell could make anything
better of the case, and then settled back to his thoughts of Statira,
pierced and confused as they were now with his pain from that trouble
with Miss Vane.

“What was that you asked me just now?” said the conductor.

“That I asked you?” Lemuel echoed. “Oh yes! I asked you how you got your
place on the cars.”

“Well, sir, you have to have recommendations--they won’t touch you
without ‘em; and then you have to have about seventy-five dollars
capital to start with. You got to get your coat, and your cap, and your
badge, and you got to have about twenty dollars of your own to make
change with, first off; company don’t start you with a cent.”

Lemuel made no reply. After a while he asked, “Do you know any good
hotel, around here, where I could go for the night?”

“Well, there’s the Brunswick, and there’s the Van-dome,” said the
conductor. “They’re both pretty fair houses.” Lemuel looked round at
the mention of the aristocratic hostelries to see if the conductor was
joking. He owned to something of the kind by adding, “There’s a little
hotel, if you want something quieter, that ain’t a great ways from
here.” He gave the name of the hotel, and told Lemuel how to find it.

“Thank you,” said Lemuel. “I guess I’ll get off here, then. Well, good
evening.”

“Guess I’ll have to get another nickel from you,” said the conductor,
snapping his bell. “New trip,” he explained.

“Oh,” said Lemuel, paying. It seemed to him a short ride for five cents.

He got off, and as the conductor started up the car, he called forward
through it to the driver, “Wanted to try for conductor, I guess. But
I guess the seventy-five dollars capital settled that little point for
him.”

Lemuel heard the voice but not the words. He felt his bag heavy in his
hand as he walked away in the direction the conductor had given him, and
he did not set it down when he stood hesitating in front of the hotel;
it looked like too expensive a place for him, with its stained-glass
door, and its bulk hoisted high into the air. He walked by the hotel,
and then he came back to it, and mustered courage to go in. His bag,
if not superb, looked a great deal more like baggage than the lank
sack which he had come to Boston with; he had bought it only a few days
before, in hopes of going home before long; he set it down with
some confidence on the tesselated floor of cheap marble, and when a
shirt-sleeved, drowsy-eyed, young man came out of a little room or booth
near the door, where there was a desk, and a row of bells, and a board
with keys, hanging from the wall above it, Lemuel said quite boldly
that he would like a room. The man said, well, they did not much expect
transients; it was more of a family-hotel, like; but he guessed they had
a vacancy, and they could put him up. He brushed his shirt sleeves down
with his hands, and looked apologetically at some ashes on his trousers,
and said, well, it was not much use trying to put on style, anyway, when
you were taking care of a furnace and had to run the elevator yourself,
and look after the whole concern. He said his aunt mostly looked after
letting the rooms, but she was at church, and he guessed he should
have to see about it himself. He bade Lemuel just get right into the
elevator, and he put his bag into a cage that hung in one corner of the
hallway, and pulled at the wire rope, and they mounted together. On
the way up he had time to explain that the clerk, who usually ran the
elevator when they had no elevator-boy, had kicked, and they were
just between hay and grass, as you might say. He showed Lemuel into a
grandiose parlour or drawing-room, enormously draped and upholstered,
and furnished in a composite application of yellow jute and red plush
to the ashen easy-chairs and sofa. A folding-bed in the figure of a
chiffonier attempted to occupy the whole side of the wall and failed.

“I’m afraid it’s more than I can pay,” said Lemuel. “I guess I better
see some other room.” But the man said the room belonged to a boarder
that had just gone, and he guessed they would not charge him very much
for it; he guessed Lemuel had better stay. He pulled the bed down,
and showed him how it worked, and he lighted two bulbous gas-burners,
contrived to burn the gas at such a low pressure that they were like
two unsnuffed candles for brilliancy. He backed round over the spacious
floor and looked about him with an unfamiliar, marauding air, which had
a certain boldness, but failed to impart courage to Lemuel, who trembled
for fear of the unknown expense. But he was ashamed to go away, and when
the man left him he went to bed, after some suspicious investigation of
the machine he was to sleep in. He found its comfort unmistakable. He
was tired out with what had been happening, and the events of the day
recurred in a turmoil that helped rather than hindered slumber; none
evolved itself distinctly enough from the mass to pursue him; what he
was mainly aware of was the daring question whether he could not get the
place of that clerk who had kicked.

In the morning he saw the landlady, who was called Mrs. Harmon, and who
took the pay for his lodging, and said he might leave his bag a while
there in the office. She was a large, smooth, tranquil person,
who seemed ready for any sort of consent; she entered into an easy
conversation with Lemuel, and was so sympathetic in regard to the
difficulties of getting along in the city, that he had proposed himself
as clerk and been accepted almost before he believed the thing had
happened. He was getting a little used to the rapidity of urban
transactions, but his mind had still a rustic difficulty in keeping up
with his experiences.

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Harmon, “it ain’t very usual to take anybody
without a reference; I never do it; but so long as you haven’t been a
great while in the city--You ever had a place in Boston before?”

“Well, not exactly what you may call a place,” said Lemuel, with a
conscience against describing in that way his position at Miss Vane’s.
“It was only part work.” He added, “I wasn’t there but a little while.”

“Know anybody in the city?”

“Yes,” said Lemuel reluctantly; “I know Rev. David L. Sewell, some.”

“Oh, all right,” said Mrs. Harmon, with eager satisfaction. “I have
to be pretty particular who I have in the house. The boarders are all
high-class, and I have to have all the departments accordingly. I’ll
see Mr. Sewell about you as soon as I get time, and I guess you can take
right hold now, if you want to.”

Mrs. Harmon showed him in half a minute how to manage the elevator, and
then left him with general instructions to tell everybody who came upon
any errand he did not understand, that she would be back in a very short
time. He found pen and paper in the office, and she said he might write
the letter that he asked leave to send his mother; when he mentioned his
mother, she said, yes, indeed, with a burst of maternal sympathy which
was imagined in her case, for she had already told Lemuel that if
she had ever had any children she would not have gone into the hotel
business, which she believed unfriendly to their right nurture; she said
she never liked to take ladies with children.

He enclosed some money to his mother which he had intended to send, but
which, before the occurrence of the good fortune that now seemed opening
upon him, he thought he must withhold. He made as little as he could of
his parting with Miss Vane, whom he had celebrated in earlier letters
to his mother; he did not wish to afflict her on his own account, or
incense her against Miss Vane, who, he felt, could not help her part
in it; but his heart burned anew against Miss Sibyl while he wrote. He
dwelt upon his good luck in getting this new position at once, and he
let his mother see that he considered it a rise in life. He said he was
going to try to get Mrs. Harmon to let him go home for Thanksgiving,
though he presumed he might have to come back the same night.

His letter was short, but he was several times interrupted by the lady
boarders, many of whom stopped to ask Mrs. Harmon something on their
way to their rooms from breakfast. They did not really want anything,
in most cases; but they were strict with Lemuel in wanting to know just
when they could see Mrs. Harmon; and they delayed somewhat to satisfy a
natural curiosity in regard to him. They made talk with him as he took
them up in the elevator, and did what they could to find out about him.
Most of them had their door-keys in their hands, and dangled them by the
triangular pieces of brass which the keys were chained to; they affected
some sort of _negligée_ breakfast costume, and Lemuel thought them very
fashionable. They nearly all snuffled and whined as they spoke; some had
a soft, lazy nasal; others broke abruptly from silence to silence, in
voices of nervous sharpness, like the cry or the bleat of an animal;
one young girl, who was quite pretty, had a high, hoarse voice, like a
gander.

Lemuel did not mind all this; he talked through his nose too; and he
accepted Mrs. Harmon’s smooth characterisation of her guests, as she
called them, which she delivered in a slow, unimpassioned voice. “I
never have any but the highest class people in my house--the very
nicest; and I never have any jangling going on. In the first place I
never allow anybody to have anything to complain of, and then if they do
complain, I’m right up and down with them; I tell them their rooms are
wanted, and they understand what I mean. And I never allow any trouble
among the servants; I tell them, if they are not suited, that I don’t
want them to stay; and if they get to quarrelling among themselves, I
send them all away, and get a new lot; I pay the highest wages, and I
can always do it. If you want to keep up with the times at all, you have
got to set a good table, and I mean to set just as good a table as any
in Boston; I don’t intend to let any one complain of my house on that
score. Well, it’s as broad as it’s long: if you set a good table, you
can ask a good price; and if you don’t, you can’t, that’s all. Pay as
you go, is my motto.”

Mrs. Harmon sat talking in the little den beside the door which she
called the office, when she returned from that absence which she had
asked him to say would not be more than fifteen minutes at the outside.
It had been something more than two hours, and it had ended almost
clandestinely; but knowledge of her return had somehow spread through
the house, and several ladies came in while she was talking, to ask when
their window-shades were to be put up, or to say that they knew their
gas-fixtures must be out of order; or that there were mice in their
closets, for they had heard them gnawing; or that they were sure their
set-bowls smelt, and that the traps were not working. Mrs. Harmon was
prompt in every exigency. She showed the greatest surprise that those
shades had not gone up yet; she said she was going to send round for the
gasfitter to look at the fixtures all over the house; and that she would
get some potash to pour down the bowls, for she knew the drainage was
perfect--it was just the pipes down _to_ the traps that smelt; she
advised a cat for the mice, and said she would get one. She used the
greatest sympathy with the ladies, recognising a real sufferer in each,
and not attempting to deny anything. From the dining-room came at times
the sound of voices, which blended in a discord loud above the clatter
of crockery, but Mrs. Harmon seemed not to hear them. An excited
foreigner of some sort finally rushed from this quarter, and thrust his
head into the booth where Lemuel and Mrs. Harmon sat, long enough to
explode some formula of renunciation upon her, which left her serenity
unruffled. She received with the same patience the sarcasm of a boarder
who appeared at the office-door with a bag in his hand, and said he
would send an express-man for his trunk. He threw down the money for his
receipted bill; and when she said she was sorry he was going, he replied
that he could not stand the table any longer, and that he believed that
French cook of hers had died on the way over; he was tired of the Nova
Scotia temporary, who had become permanent. A gentleman waited for the
parting guest to be gone, and then said to the tranquil Mrs. Harmon: “So
Mellen has kicked, has he?”

“Yes, Mr. Evans,” said Mrs. Harmon; “Mr. Mellen has kicked.”

“And don’t you want to abuse him a little? You can to me, you know,”
 suggested the gentleman.

He had a full beard, parted at the chin; it was almost white, and
looked older than the rest of his face; his eyes were at once sad and
whimsical. Lemuel tried to think where he had seen him before.

“Thank you; I don’t know as it would do any good, Mr. Evans. But if he
could have waited one week longer, I should have had that cook.”

“Yes, that is what I firmly believe. Do you feel too much broken up to
accept a ticket to the Wednesday matinée at the Museum?”

“No, I don’t,” said Mrs. Harmon. “But I shouldn’t want to deprive Mrs.
Evans of it.”

“Oh, she wouldn’t go,” said Mr. Evans, with a slight sigh. “You had
better take it. Jefferson’s going to do _Bob Acres_.”

“Is that so?” asked Mrs. Harmon placidly, taking the ticket. “Well, I’m
ever so much obliged to you, Mr. Evans. Mr. Evans, Mr. Barker--our new
clerk,” she said, introducing them.

Lemuel rose with rustic awkwardness, and shook hands with Mr. Evans, who
looked at him with a friendly smile, but said nothing.

“Now Mr. Barker is here, I guess I can get the time.” Mr. Evans said,
well, he was glad she could, and went out of the street door. “He’s just
one of the nicest gentlemen I’ve got,” continued Mrs. Harmon, following
him with her eye as far as she conveniently could without turning her
head, “him and his wife both. Ever heard of the _Saturday Afternoon_?”

“I don’t know as I have,” said Lemuel.

“Well, he’s one of the editors. It’s a kind of a Sunday paper, I guess,
for all it don’t come out that day. I presume he could go every night
in the week to every theatre in town, if he wanted to. I don’t know how
many tickets he’s give me. Some of the ladies seem to think he’s always
makin’ fun of them; but I can’t ever feel that way. He used to board
with a great friend of mine, him and his wife. They’ve been with me now
ever since Mrs. Hewitt died; she was the one they boarded with before.
They say he used to be dreadful easygoing, ‘n’ ‘t his wife was all ‘t
saved him. But I guess he’s different now. Well, I must go out and see
after the lunch. You watch the office, and say just what I told you
before.”



XIV.


Sewell chanced to open his door to go out just as Miss Vane put her hand
on the bell-pull, the morning after she had dismissed Lemuel. The cheer
of his Monday face died out at the unsmiling severity of hers; but he
contrived to ask her in, and said he would call Mrs. Sewell, if she
would sit down in the reception-room a moment.

“I don’t know,” she said, with a certain look of inquiry, not unmixed
with compassion. “It’s about Lemuel.”

The minister fetched a deep sigh. “Yes, I know it. But she will have to
know it sooner or later.” He went to the stairway and called her name,
and then returned to Miss Vane in the reception-room.

“Has Lemuel been here?” she asked.

“No.”

“You said you knew it was about him--”

“It was my bad conscience, I suppose, and your face that told me.”

Miss Vane waited for Mrs. Sewell’s presence before she unpacked her
heart. Then she left nothing in it. She ended by saying, “I have
examined and cross-examined Sibyl, but it’s like cross-questioning a
chameleon; she changed colour with every new light she was put into.”
 Here Miss Vane had got sorrowfully back to something more of her wonted
humour, and laughed.

“Poor Sibyl!” said Mrs. Sewell.

“Poor?” retorted Miss Vane. “Not at all! I could get nothing out of
either of them; but I feel perfectly sure that Lemuel was not to blame.”

“It’s very possible,” suggested Mrs. Sewell, “that he did say something
in his awkward way that she misconstrued into impertinence.”

Miss Vane did not seem to believe this. “If Lemuel had given me the
slightest satisfaction,” she began in self-exculpation. “But no,” she
broke off. “It had to be!” She rose. “I thought I had better come and
tell you at once, Mr. Sewell. I suppose you will want to look him up,
and do something more for him. I wish if you find him you would make him
take this note.” She gave the minister a ten-dollar bill. “I tried to do
so, but he would not have it. I don’t know what I shall do without him!
He is the best and most faithful creature in the world. Even in
this little time I had got to relying implicitly upon his sense, his
judgment, his goodness, his--Well! good morning!”

She ran out of the door, and left Sewell confronted with his wife.

He did not know whether she had left him to hope or to despair, and he
waited for his wife to interpret his emotion, but Mrs. Sewell tacitly
refused to do this. After a dreary interval he plucked a random
cheerfulness out of space, and said: “Well, if Miss Vane feels in that
way about it, I don’t see why the whole affair can’t be arranged and
Barker reinstated.”

“David,” returned his wife, not vehemently at all, “when you come out
with those mannish ideas I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, my dear,” said the minister, “I should be glad to come out with
some womanish ideas if I had them. I dare say they would be better. But
I do my poor best, under the circumstances. What is the trouble with my
ideas, except that the sex is wrong?”

“You think, you men,” replied Mrs. Sewell, “that a thing like that can
be mended up and smoothed over, and made just the same as ever. You
think that because Miss Vane is sorry she sent Barker away and wants him
back, she can take him back.”

“I don’t see why she can’t. I’ve sometimes supposed that the very
highest purpose of Christianity was mutual forgiveness--forbearance with
one another’s errors.”

“That’s all very well,” said Mrs. Sewell. “But you know that whenever I
have taken a cook back, after she had shown temper, it’s been an entire
failure; and this is a far worse case, because there is disappointed
good-will mixed up with it. I don’t suppose Barker is at all to blame.
Whatever has happened, you may be perfectly sure that it has been partly
a bit of stage-play in Sibyl and partly a mischievous desire to use her
power over him. I foresaw that she would soon be tired of reforming him.
But whatever it is, it’s something that you can’t repair. Suppose Barker
went back to them; could they ignore what’s happened?”

“Of course not,” Sewell admitted.

“Well, and should he ask her pardon, or she his?”

“The Socratic method is irresistible,” said the minister sadly. “You
have proved that nothing can be done for Barker with the Vanes. And now
the question is, what _can_ be done for him?”

“That’s something I must leave to you, David,” said his wife
dispiritedly. She arose, and as she passed out of the room she added,
“You will have to find him, in the _first_ place, and you had better go
round to the police stations and the tramps’ lodging-houses and begin
looking.”

Sewell sighed heavily under the sarcastic advice, but acted upon it, and
set forth upon the useless quest, because he did not know in the least
what else to do.

All that week Barker lay, a lurking discomfort, in his soul, though as
the days passed the burden grew undeniably lighter; Sewell had a great
many things besides Barker to think of. But when Sunday came, and he
rose in his pulpit, he could not help casting a glance of guilty fear
toward Miss Vane’s pew and drawing a long breath of guilty relief not to
see Lemuel in it. We are so made, that in the reaction the minister was
able to throw himself into the matter of his discourse with uncommon
fervour. It was really very good matter, and he felt the literary joy
in it which flatters the author even of a happily worded supplication
to the Deity. He let his eyes, freed from their bondage to Lemuel’s
attentive face, roam at large in liberal ease over his whole
congregation; and when, toward the close of his sermon, one visage
began to grow out upon him from the two or three hundred others, and to
concentrate in itself the facial expression of all the rest, and become
the only countenance there, it was a perceptible moment before he
identified it as that of his inalienable charge. Then he began to preach
at it as usual, but defiantly, and with yet a haste to be through and
to get speech with it that he felt was ludicrous, and must appear
unaccountable to his hearers. It seemed to him that he could not bring
his sermon to a close; he ended it in a cloudy burst of rhetoric which
he feared would please the nervous, elderly ladies--who sometimes blamed
him for a want of emotionality--and knew must grieve the judicious.
While the choir was singing the closing hymn, he contrived to beckon the
sexton to the pulpit, and described and located Lemuel to him as well
as he could without actually pointing him out; he said that he wished
to see that young man after church, and asked the sexton to bring him
to his room. The sexton did so to the best of his ability, but the
young man whom he brought was not Lemuel, and had to be got rid of with
apologies.

On three or four successive Sundays Lemuel’s face dawned upon the
minister from the congregation, and tasked his powers of impersonal
appeal and mental concentration to the utmost. It never appeared twice
in the same place, and when at last Sewell had tutored the sexton
carefully in Lemuel’s dress, he was driven to despair one morning when
he saw the boy sliding along between the seats in the gallery, and
sitting down with an air of satisfaction in an entirely new suit of
clothes.

After this defeat the sexton said with humorous sympathy, “Well, there
ain’t anything for it now, Mr. Sewell, but a detective, or else an
advertisement in the Personals.”

Sewell laughed with him at his joke, and took what comfort he could from
the evidence of prosperity which Lemuel’s new clothes offered. He argued
that if Barker could afford to buy them he could not be in immediate
need, and for some final encounter with him he trusted in Providence,
and was not too much cast down when his wife made him recognise that he
was trusting in Luck. It was an ordeal to look forward to finding Lemuel
sooner or later among his hearers every Sunday; but having prepared his
nerves for the shock, as men adjust their sensibilities to the recurrent
pain of a disease, he came to bear it with fortitude, especially as he
continually reminded himself that he had his fixed purpose to get at
Lemuel at last and befriend him in any and every possible way. He tried
hard to keep from getting a grudge against him.

At the hotel, Lemuel remained in much of his original belief in the
fashion and social grandeur of the ladies who formed the majority of
Mrs. Harmon’s guests. Our womankind are prone to a sort of helpless
intimacy with those who serve them; the ladies had an instinctive
perception of Lemuel’s trustiness, and readily gave him their confidence
and much of their history. He came to know them without being at all
able to classify them with reference to society at large, as of that
large tribe among us who have revolted from domestic care, and have
skilfully unseated the black rider who remains mounted behind the
husband of the average lady-boarder. Some of them had never kept house,
being young and newly married, though of this sort there were those who
had tried it in flats, and had reverted to their natural condition
of boarding. They advised Lemuel not to take a flat, whatever he did,
unless he wanted to perish at once. Other lady boarders had broken up
housekeeping during the first years of the war, and had been boarding
round ever since, going from hotels in the city to hotels in the
country, and back again with the change of the seasons; these mostly had
husbands who had horses, and they talked with equal tenderness of the
husbands and the horses, so that you could not always tell which Jim
or Bob was; usually they had no children, but occasionally they had a
married daughter, or a son who lived West. There were several single
ladies: one who seemed to have nothing in this world to do but to come
down to her meals, and another a physician who had not been able, in
embracing the medical profession, to deny herself the girlish pleasure
of her pet name, and was lettered in the list of guests in the entry as
Dr. Cissie Bluff. In the attic, which had a north-light favourable to
their work, were two girls, who were studying art at the Museum; one of
them looked delicate at first sight, and afterwards seemed merely very
gentle, with a clear-eyed pallor which was not unhealth. A student in
the Law School sat at the table with these girls, and seemed sometimes
to go with them to concerts and lectures. From his talk, which was
almost the only talk that made itself heard in the dining-room, it
appeared that he was from Wyoming Territory; he treated the young ladies
as representative of Boston and its prejudices, though apparently they
were not Bostonians. There were several serious and retiring couples,
of whom one or other was an invalid, and several who were poor, and
preferred the plated gentility of Mrs. Harmon’s hotel--it was called the
St. Albans; Mrs. Harmon liked the name--to the genuine poverty of such
housekeeping as they could have set up. About each of these women a home
might have clung, with all its loves and cares; they were naturally like
other women; but here they were ignoble particles, without attraction
for one another, or apparently joy for themselves, impermanent, idle,
listless; they had got rid of the trouble of housekeeping, and of its
dignity and usefulness. There were a few children in the house, not at
all noisy; the boys played on the sidewalk, and the little girls stayed
in their rooms with their mothers, and rarely took the air oftener than
they.

They came down rather later to breakfast, and they seemed not to go to
school; some of them had piano lessons in their rooms. Their mothers did
not go out much; sometimes they went to church or the theatre, and they
went shopping. But they had apparently no more social than domestic
life. Now and then they had a friend to lunch or dinner; if a lady
was absent, it was known to Mrs. Harmon, and through her to the other
ladies, that she was spending the day with a friend of hers at an hotel
in Newton, or Lexington, or Woburn. In a city full of receptions, of
dinner-giving, and party-going, Mrs. Harmon’s guests led the lives of
cloistered nuns, so far as such pleasures were concerned; occasionally
a transient had rooms for a week or two, and was continually going, and
receiving visits. She became the object of a certain unenvious curiosity
with the other ladies, who had not much sociability among themselves;
they waited a good while before paying visits at one another’s rooms,
and then were very punctilious not to go again until their calls had
been returned. They were all doctoring themselves; they did not talk
gossip or scandal much; they talked of their diseases and physicians,
and their married daughters and of Mrs. Harmon, whom they censured for
being too easygoing. Certain of them devoured novels, which they carried
about clasped to their breasts with their fingers in them at the
place where they were reading; they did not often speak of them, and
apparently took them as people take opium.

The men were the husbands or fathers of the women, and were wholly
without the domestic weight or consequence that belongs to men living in
their own houses. There were certain old bachelors, among whom were
two or three decayed branches of good Boston families, spendthrifts,
or invalided bankrupts. Mr. Evans was practically among the single
gentlemen, for his wife never appeared in the parlour or dining-room,
and was seen only when she went in or out, heavily veiled, for a walk.
Lemuel heard very soon that she had suffered a shock from the death of
her son on the cars; the other ladies made much of her inability to get
over it, and said nothing would induce them to have a son of theirs go
in and out on the cars.

Among these people, such as they were, and far as they might be from
a final civilisation, Lemuel began to feel an ambition to move more
lightly and quickly than he had yet known how to do, to speak promptly,
and to appear well. Our schooling does not train us to graceful or even
correct speech; even our colleges often leave that uncouth. Many of Mrs.
Harmon’s boarders spoke bad grammar through their noses; but the ladies
dressed stylishly, and the men were good arithmeticians. Lemuel obeyed
a native impulse rather than a good example in cultivating a better
address; but the incentive to thrift and fashion was all about him.
He had not been ignorant that his clothes were queer in cut and out of
date, and during his stay at Miss Vane’s he had taken much council with
himself as to whether he ought not to get a new suit with his first
money instead of sending it home. Now he had solved the question, after
sending the money home, by the discovery of a place on a degenerate
street, in a neighbourhood of Chinese laundries, with the polite name
of Misfit Parlours, where they professed to sell the failures of the
leading tailors of Boston, New York, and Chicago. After long study of
the window of the Parlours, Lemuel ventured within one day, and was
told, when he said he could not afford the suit he fancied, that he
might pay for it on the instalment plan, which the proprietor explained
to him. In the mirror he was almost startled at the stylishness of his
own image. The proprietor of the Parlours complimented him. “You see,
you’ve got a good figure for a suit of clothes--what I call a ready made
figure. _You_ can go into a clothing store anywheres and fit you.”

He took the first instalment of the price, with Lemuel’s name and
address, and said he would send the clothes round; but in the evening he
brought them himself, and no doubt verified Lemuel’s statement by this
device. It was a Saturday night, and the next morning Lemuel rose early
to put them on. He meant to go to church in them, and in the afternoon
he did not know just what he should do. He had hoped that some chance
might bring them together again, and then he could see from the way Miss
Dudley and ‘Manda Grier behaved, just what they thought. He had
many minds about the matter himself, and had gone from an extreme of
self-abhorrence to one of self-vindication, and between these he had
halted at every gradation of blame and exculpation. But perhaps what
chiefly kept him away was the uncertainty of his future; till he could
give some shape to that he had no courage to face the past. Sometimes he
wished never to see either of those girls again; but at other times he
had a longing to go and explain, to justify himself, or to give himself
up to justice.

The new clothes gave him more heart than he had yet had, but the most he
could bring himself to do was to walk towards Pleasant Avenue the next
Sunday afternoon, which Mrs. Harmon especially gave him,--and to think
about walking up and down before the house. It ended in his walking
up and down the block, first on one side of the street and then on the
other. He knew the girls’ window; Miss Dudley had shown him it was the
middle window of the top story when they were looking out of it, and
he glanced up at it. Then he hurried away, but he could not leave the
street without stopping at the corner, to cast a last look back at the
house. There was an apothecary’s at that corner, and while he stood
wistfully staring and going round the corner a little way, and coming
back to look at the things in the apothecary’s window, he saw ‘Manda
Grier come swiftly towards him. He wanted to run away now, but he could
not; he felt nailed to the spot, and he felt the colour go out of his
face. She pretended not to see him at first; but with a second glance
she abandoned the pretence, and at his saying faintly, “Good afternoon,”
 she said, with freezing surprise, “Oh! Good afternoon, Mr. Barker!” and
passed into the apothecary’s.

He could not go now, since he had spoken, and leave all so inconclusive
again; and yet ‘Manda Grier had been so repellent, so cutting, in her
tone and manner, that he did not know how to face her another time.
When she came out he faltered, “I hope there isn’t anybody sick at your
house, Miss Grier.”

“Oh, nobody that you’ll care about, Mr. Barker,” she answered airily,
and began to tilt rapidly away, with her chin thrust out before her.

He made a few paces after her, and then stopped; she seemed to stop too,
and he caught up with her.

“I hope,” he gasped, “there ain’t anything the matter with Miss Dudley?”

“Oh, nothing ‘t _you’ll_ care about,” said ‘Manda Grier, and she added
with terrible irony, “You’ve b’en round to inquire so much that you
hain’t allowed time for any _great_ change.”

“Has she been sick long?” faltered Lemuel. “I didn’t dare to come!” he
cried out. “I’ve been wanting to come, but I didn’t suppose you would
speak to me--any of you.” Now his tongue was unlocked, he ran on: “I
don’t know as it’s any excuse--there _ain’t_ any excuse for such a
thing! I know she must perfectly despise me, and that I’m not fit for
her to look at; but I’d give anything if I could take it all back and be
just where I was before. You tell her, won’t you, how I feel?”

‘Manda Grier, who had listened with a killingly averted face, turned
sharply upon him: “You mean about stayin’ away so long? I don’t know as
she cared a great deal, but it’s a pretty queer way of showin’ you cared
for her.”

“I didn’t mean that!” retorted Lemuel; and he added by an immense
effort, “I meant--the way I behaved when I was there; I meant--”

“Oh!” said ‘Manda Grier, turning her face away again; she turned it so
far away that the back of her head was all that Lemuel could see. “I
guess you better speak to Statira about that.”

By this time they had reached the door of the boarding-house, and
‘Manda Grier let herself in with her latch-key. “Won’t you walk in, Mr.
Barker?” she said in formal tones of invitation.

“Is she well enough to see--company?” murmured Lemuel. “I shouldn’t want
to disturb her.”

“I don’t believe but what she can see you,” said ‘Manda Grier, for the
first time relentingly.

“All right,” said Lemuel, gulping the lump in his throat, and he
followed ‘Manda Grier up the flights of stairs to the door of the girls’
room, which she flung open without knocking.

“S’tira,” she said, “here’s Mr. Barker,” and Lemuel, from the dark
landing, where he lurked a moment, could see Statira sitting in the
rocking-chair in a pretty blue dressing-gown; after a first flush she
looked pale, and now and then put up her hand to hide a hoarse little
cough.



XV.


“Walk right in, Mr. Barker,” cried ‘Manda Grier, and Lemuel entered,
more awkward and sheepish in his new suit from the Misfit Parlours than
he had been before in his Willoughby Pastures best clothes. Statira
merely said, “Why, Mr. Barker!” and stood at her chair where she rose.
“You’re quite a stranger. Won’t you sit down?”

Lemuel sat down, and ‘Manda Grier said politely, “Won’t you let me take
your hat, Mr. Barker?” and they both treated him with so much ceremony
and deference that it seemed impossible he could ever have done such a
monstrous thing as kiss a young lady like Miss Dudley; and he felt that
he never could approach the subject even to accept a just doom at her
hands.

They all talked about the weather for a minute, and then ‘Manda Grier
said, “Well, I guess I shall have to go down and set this boneset to
steep;” and as he rose, and stood to let her pass, she caught his arm,
and gave it a clutch. He did not know whether she did it on purpose, or
why she did it, but somehow it said to him that she was his friend, and
he did not feel so much afraid.

When she was gone, however, he returned to the weather for conversation;
but when Statira said it was lucky for her that the winter held off so,
he made out to inquire about her sickness, and she told him that she
had caught a heavy cold; at first it seemed just to be a head-cold, but
afterwards it seemed to settle on the lungs, and it seemed as if she
never _could_ throw it off; they had had the doctor twice; but now she
was better, and the cough was nearly _all_ gone.

“I guess I took the cold that day, from havin’ the window open,” she
concluded; and she passed her hand across her lap, and looked down
demurely, and then up at the ceiling, and her head twitched a little and
trembled.

Lemuel knew that his hour had come, if ever it were to come, and he said
hoarsely: “I guess if I made you take cold that day, it wasn’t all I
did. I guess I did worse than that.”

She did not look at him and pretend ignorance, as ‘Manda Grier would
have done; but lifting her moist eyes and then dropping them, she said,
“Why, Mr. Barker, what can you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” he retorted, with courage astonishing to him.
“It was because I liked you so much.” He could not say loved; it seemed
too bold. “There’s nothing else can excuse it, and I don’t know as
_that_ can.”

She put up her hands to her eyes, and began to cry, and he rose and went
to her, and said, “Oh, don’t cry, don’t cry!” and somehow he took hold
of her hands, and then her arms went round his neck, and she was crying
on his breast.

“You’ll think I’m rather of a silly person, crying so much about
nothing,” she said, when she lifted her head from his shoulder to wipe
her eyes. “But I can’t seem to help it,” and she broke down again. “I
presume it’s because I’ve been sick, and I’m kind of weak yet. I know
you wouldn’t have done that, that day, if you hadn’t have cared for me;
and I wasn’t mad a bit; not half as mad as I ought to have been; but
when you stayed away so long, and never seemed to come near any more, I
didn’t know what _to_ think. But now I can understand just how you felt,
and I don’t blame you one bit; I should have done just so myself if I’d
been a man, I suppose. And now it’s all come right, I don’t mind being
sick or anything; only when Thanksgiving came, we felt sure you’d call,
and we’d got the pies nicely warmed. Oh dear!” She gave way again, and
then pressed her cheek tight against his to revive herself. “‘Manda said
she knew it was just because you was kind of ashamed, and I was too sick
to eat any of the pies, anyway; and so it all turned out for the best;
and I don’t want you to believe that I’m one to cry over spilt milk,
especially when it’s all gathered up again!”

Her happy tongue ran on, revealing, divining everything, and he sat down
with her in his arms, hardly speaking a word, till her heart was quite
poured out. ‘Manda Grier left them a long time together, and before
she came back he had told Statira all about himself since their last
meeting. She was very angry at the way that girl had behaved at Miss
Vane’s, but she was glad he had found such a good place now, without
being beholden to any one for it, and she showed that she felt a due
pride in his being an hotel clerk. He described the hotel, and told what
he had to do there, and about Mrs. Harmon and the fashionableness of all
the guests. But he said he did not think any of the ladies went ahead
of her in dress, if they came up to her; and Statira pressed her lips
gratefully against his cheek, and then lifting her head held herself
a little away to see him again, and said, “_You’re_ splendidly dressed
_too_; I noticed it the first thing when you came in. You look just as
if you had always lived in Boston.”

“Is that so?” asked Lemuel; and he felt his heart suffused with tender
pride and joy. He told her of the Misfit Parlours and the instalment
plan, and she said, well, it was just splendid; and she asked him if he
knew she wasn’t in the store any more; and “No,” she added delightedly,
upon his confession of ignorance, “I’m going to work in the box-factory,
after this, where ‘Manda Grier works. It’s better pay, and you have more
control of your hours, and you can set down while you work, if you’ve
a mind to. I think it’s going to be splendid. What should you say if
‘Manda Grier and me took some rooms and went to housekeepin’?”

“I don’t know,” said Lemuel; but in his soul he felt jealous of her
keeping house with ‘Manda Grier.

“Well, I don’t know as we shall do it,” said Statira, as if feeling his
tacit reluctance.

‘Manda Grier came in just then, and cast a glance of friendly satire at
them. “Well, I declare!” she said, for all recognition of the situation.

Lemuel made an offer to rise, but Statira would not let him. “I guess
‘Manda Grier won’t mind it much.”

“I guess I can stand it if you can,” said ‘Manda Grier; and this seemed
such a witty speech that they all laughed, till, as Statira said, she
thought she should die. They laughed the more when ‘Manda Grier added
dryly, “I presume you won’t want your boneset now.” She set the vessel
she had brought it up in on the stove, and covered it with a saucer. “I
do’ know as _I_ should if I was in your place. It’s kind o’ curious I
should bring _both_ remedies home with me at once.” At this they all
laughed a third time, till ‘Manda Grier said, “‘Sh! ‘sh! Do you want to
raise the roof?”

She began to bustle about, and to set out a little table, and cover it
with a napkin, and as she worked she talked on. “I guess if you don’t
want any boneset tea, a little of the other kind won’t hurt any of us,
and I kinder want a cup myself.” She set it to steep on the stove, and
it went through Lemuel’s mind that she might have steeped the boneset
there too, if she had thought of it; but he did not say anything, though
it seemed a pretty good joke on ‘Manda Grier. She ran on in that way of
hers so that you never could tell whether she really meant a thing or
not. “I guess if I have to manage many more cases like yours, S’tira
Dudley, I shall want to lay in a whole chest of it. What do you think,
Mr. Barker?”

“_Mr. Barker!_” repeated Statira.

“Well, I’m afraid to say Lemuel any more, for fear he’ll fly off the
handle, and never come again. What do you think, Mr. Barker, of havin’
to set at that window every Sunday for the last three weeks, and keep
watch of both sidewalks till you get such a crick in your neck, and your
eyes so set in your head, you couldn’t move either of ‘em?”

“Now, ‘Manda Grier!” said Statira from Lemuel’s shoulder.

“Well, I don’t say I had to do it, and I don’t say who the young man was
that I was put to look out for----”

_“‘Manda!”_

“But I _do_ say it’s pretty hard to wait on a sick person one side the
room, and keep watch for a young man the other side, both at once.”

“‘Manda Grier, you’re _too_ bad!” pouted Statira. “Don’t you believe a
word she says, Mr. Barker.”

_“Mr. Barker!”_ repeated ‘Manda Grier.

“Well, I don’t care!” said Statira, “I know who I mean.”

“_I_ don’t,” said ‘Manda Grier. “And I didn’t know who you meant this
afternoon when you was standin’ watch ‘t the window, and says you,
‘There! there he is!’ and I had to run so quick with the dipper of water
I had in my hand to water the plants that I poured it all over the front
of my dress.”

“_Do_ you believe her?” asked Statira.

“And I didn’t know who you meant,” proceeded ‘Manda Grier, busy with
the cups and saucers, “when you kept hurryin’ me up to change it; ‘Oh,
quick, quick! How long you are! I know he’ll get away; I _know_ he
will!’ and I had to just _sling_ on a shawl and rush out after this
boneset.”

“There! Now that _shows_ she’s makin’ it all up!” cried Statira. “She
put on a sack, and I helped her on with it myself. So there!”

“Well, if it _was_ a sack! And after all, the young man was gone when I
got down int’ the street,” concluded ‘Manda Grier solemnly.

Lemuel had thought she was talking about him; but now a pang of jealousy
went through him, and showed at the eyes he fixed on her.

“I don’t know what I sh’d ‘a’ done,” she resumed demurely, “if I hadn’t
have found Mr. Barker at the apothecary’s and got _him_ to come home ‘th
me; but of course, ‘twan’t the same as if it was the young man!”

Lemuel’s arm fell from Statira’s waist in his torment.

“Why, Lemuel!” she said in tender reproach.

“Why, you coot!” cried ‘Manda Grier in utter amazement at his
single-mindedness; and burst into a scream of laughter. She took the
teapot from the stove, and set it on the table. “There, young man--if
you _are_ the young man--you better pull up to the table, and have
something to start your ideas. S’tira! Let him come!” and Lemuel,
blushing for shame at his stupidity, did as he was bid.

“I’ve got the greatest mind in the world to set next to S’tira myself,”
 said ‘Manda Grier, “for fear she should miss that young man!” and now
they both laughed together at Lemuel; but the girls let him sit between
them, and Statira let him keep one of her hands under the table, as much
as she could. “I never saw such a jealous piece! Why, I shall begin
to be afraid for myself. What should you think of S’tira’s going to
housekeeping with me?”

“I don’t believe he likes the idea one bit,” Statira answered for him.

“Oh yes, I do!” Lemuel protested.

“‘D you tell him?” ‘Manda Grier demanded of her. She nodded with saucy
defiance. “Well, you _have_ got along! And about the box-factory?”
 Statira nodded again, with a look of joyous intelligence at Lemuel.
“Well, what _hain’t_ you told, I wonder!” ‘Manda Grier added seriously
to Lemuel, “I think it’ll be about the best thing in the world for
S’tira. I see for the last six months she’s been killin’ herself in that
store. She can’t ever get a chance to set down a minute; and she’s on
her feet from mornin’ till night; and I think it’s more ‘n half that
that’s made her sick; I don’t _say_ what the other four-fifths was!

“Now, ‘Manda Grier, stop!”

“Well, that’s over with now, and now we want to keep you out that store.
I been lookin’ out for this place for S’tira a good while. She can go
onto the small boxes, if she wants to, and she can set down all the
time; and she’ll have a whole hour for her dinner; and she can work by
the piece, and do as much or as little as she’s a mind to; but if she’s
a mind to work she can make her five and six dollars a week, easy. Mr.
Stevens’s _real_ nice and kind, and he looks out for the girls that
ain’t exactly strong--not but what S’tira’s as strong as anybody, when
she’s well--and he don’t put ‘em on the green paper work, because it’s
got arsenic in it, and it makes your head ache, and you’re liable to
blood poisonin’. One the girls fainted and had spasms, and as soon as he
found it out he took her right off; and he’s just like clockwork to pay.
I think it’ll do everything for S’tira to be along ‘th me there, where I
can look after her.”

Lemuel said he thought so too; he did not really think at all, he was
so flattered at being advised with about Statira, as if she were in his
keeping and it was for him to say what was best for her; and when she
seemed uncertain about his real opinion, and said she was not going to
do anything he did not approve of, he could scarcely speak for rapture,
but he protested that he did approve of the scheme entirely.

“But you shouldn’t want we girls to set up housekeeping in rooms?” she
suggested; and he said that he should, and that he thought it would be
more independent and home-like.

“We’re half doin’ it now,” said ‘Manda Grier, “and I know some
rooms--two of ‘em--where we could get along first rate, and not cost us
much more ‘n half what it does here.”

After she cleared up the tea-things she made another errand downstairs,
and Lemuel and Statira went back to their rocking-chair. It still amazed
him that she seemed not even to make it a favour to him; she seemed to
think it was favour to her. What was stranger yet was that he could not
feel that there was anything wrong or foolish about it; he thought of
his mother’s severity about young folks’ sickishness, as she called it,
and he could not understand it. He knew that he had never had such right
and noble thoughts about girls before; perhaps Statira was better than
other girls; she must be; she was just like a child; and he must be very
good himself to be anyways fit for her; if she cared so much for him,
it must be a sign that he was not so bad as he had sometimes thought.
A great many things went through his mind, the silent comment and
suggestion of their talk, and all the time while he was saying something
or listening to her, he was aware of the overwhelming wonder of her
being so frank with him, and not too proud or ashamed to have him know
how anxious she had been, ever since they first met, for fear he did not
care for her. She had always appeared so stylish and reserved, and now
she was not proud at all. He tried to tell her how it had been with him
the last three weeks; all that he could say was that he had been afraid
to come. She laughed, and said, the idea of his being afraid of _her_!
She said that she was glad of everything she had gone through. At times
she lifted herself from his shoulder and coughed; but that was when she
had been laughing or crying a little. They told each other about their
families; Statira said she had not really any folks of her own; she was
just brought up by her aunt; and Lemuel had to tell her that his mother
wore bloomers. Statira said she guessed she should not care much for
the bloomers; and in everything she tried to make out that he was much
better than she was, and just exactly right. She already spoke of his
sister by her first name, and she entered into his whole life, as if she
had always known him. He said she must come with him to hear Mr. Sewell
preach, sometime; but she declared that she did not think much of a
minister who could behave the way he had done to Lemuel. He defended
Sewell, and maintained that if it had not been for him he might not have
come to Boston, and so might never have seen her; but she held out that
she could not bear Mr. Sewell, and that she knew he was double-faced,
and everything. Lemuel said well, he did not know that he should ever
have anything more to do with him; but he liked to hear him preach, and
he guessed he tried to do what was about right. Statira made him promise
that if ever he met Mr. Sewell again, he would not make up to him, any
way; and she would not tolerate the thought of Miss Vane.

“What you two quar’lin’ about?” demanded ‘Manda Grier, coming suddenly
into the room; and that turned their retrospective griefs into joy
again.

“I’m scoldin’ him because he don’t think enough of himself,” cried
Statira.

“Well, he seems to take it pretty meekly,” said ‘Manda Grier. “I guess
you didn’t scold very hard. Now, young man,” she added to Lemuel, “I
guess you better be goin’. It’s five o’clock, and if you should be out
after dark, and the bears should get you, I don’t know what S’tira would
do.”

“‘Tain’t five yet!” pleaded Statira. “That old watch of yours is always
tryin’ to beat the town clock.”

“Well, it’s the clock that’s ahead this time,” said ‘Manda Grier. “My
watch says quarter of. Come, now, S’tira, you let him go, or he sha’n’t
come back any more.”

They had a parting that Lemuel’s mother would have called sickish
without question; but it all seemed heavenly sweet and right. Statira
said now he had got to kiss ‘Manda Grier too; and when he insisted, her
chin knocked against his, and saved her lips, and she gave him a good
box on the ear.

“There, I guess that ‘ll do for one while,” she said, arranging her
tumbled hair; “but there’s more kisses where that came from, for both of
you if you want ‘em. Coots!”

Once, when Lemuel was little, he had a fever, and he was always seeming
to glide down the school-house stairs without touching the steps with
his feet. He remembered this dream now, when he reached the street; he
felt as if he had floated down on the air; and presently he was back in
his little den at the hotel, he did not know how. He ran the elevator up
and down for the ladies who called him from the different floors, and he
took note of the Sunday difference in their toilet as they passed in to
tea; but in the same dreamy way.

After the boarders had supped, he went in as usual with Mrs. Harmon’s
nephew, less cindery than on week-days, from the cellar, and Mrs.
Harmon, silken smooth for her evening worship at the shrine of a popular
preacher from New York. The Sunday evening before, she had heard an
agnostic lecture in the Boston Theatre, and she said she wished to
compare notes. Her tranquillity was unruffled by the fact that the
head-waitress had left, just before tea; she presumed they could get
along just as well without her as with her: the boarders had spoiled
her, anyway. She looked round at Lemuel’s face, which beamed with his
happiness, and said she guessed she should have to get him to open the
dining-room doors, and seat the transients the next few days, till she
could get another head-waitress. It did not seem to be so much a request
as a resolution; but Lemuel willingly assented. Mrs. Harmon’s nephew
said that so long as they did not want him to do it he did not care who
did it; and if a few of them had his furnace to look after they would
not be so anxious to kick.



XVI


Lemuel had to be up early in the morning to get the bills of fare, which
Mrs. Harmon called the Meanyous, written in time for the seven o’clock
breakfasters; and after opening the dining-room doors with fit ceremony,
he had to run backward and forward to answer the rings at the elevator,
and to pull out the chairs for the ladies at the table, and slip them
back under them as they sat down. The ladies at the St. Albans expected
to get their money’s worth; but their exactions in most things were of
use to Lemuel. He grew constantly nimbler of hand and foot under them,
and he grew quicker-witted; he ceased to hulk in mind and body. He did
not employ this new mental agility in devising excuses and delays; he
left that to Mrs. Harmon, whose conscience was easy in it; but from
seven o’clock in the morning till eleven at night, when the ladies
came in from the theatre, he was so promptly, so comfortingly at their
service, that they all said they did not see how they had ever got along
without him.

His activities took the form of interruptions rather than constant
occupation, and he found a good deal of broken-up time on his hands,
which he passed in reading, and in reveries of Statira. At the hours
when the elevator was mostly in use he kept a book in it with him, and
at other times he had it in the office, as Mrs. Harmon called his little
booth. He remained there reading every night after the house quieted
down after dinner, until it was time to lock up for the night; and
several times Mr. Evans stopped and looked in at him where he sat in
the bad combustion of the gas that was taking the country tan out of his
cheeks. One night when he came in late, and Lemuel put his book down to
take him up in the elevator, he said, “Don’t disturb yourself; I’m going
to walk up,” but he lingered at the door looking in with the queer smile
that always roused the ladies’ fears of tacit ridicule. “I suppose you
don’t find it necessary,” he said finally, “to chase a horse-car now,
when you want to find your way to a given point?”

Lemuel reddened and dropped his head; he had already recognised in Mr.
Evans the gentleman from whose kindly curiosity he had turned, that
first day, in the suspicion that he might be a beat. “No,” he said, “I
guess I can go pretty near everywhere in Boston now.”

“Well,” said Mr. Evans, “it was an ingenious system. How do you like
Boston?”

“I like it first-rate, but I’ve not seen many other places,” answered
Lemuel cautiously.

“Well, if you live here long enough you won’t care to see any other
places; you’ll know they’re not worth seeing.” Lemuel looked up as if he
did not understand exactly, and Mr. Evans stepped in and lifted the book
he had been reading. It was one he had bought at second hand while he
was with Miss Vane: a tough little epitome of the philosophies in all
times, the crabbed English version of a dry German original. Mr. Evans
turned its leaves over. “Do you find it a very exciting story?” he
asked.

“Why, it isn’t a story,” said Lemuel, in simple surprise.

“No?” asked Mr. Evans. “I thought it must be. Most of the young
gentlemen who run the elevators I travel in read stories. Do you like
this kind of reading?”

Lemuel reflected, and then he said he thought you ought to find out
about such things if you got a chance.

“Yes,” said the editor musingly, “I suppose one oughtn’t to throw any
sort of chance away. But you’re sure you don’t prefer the novels? You’ll
excuse my asking you?”

“Oh, perfectly excusable,” said Lemuel. He added that he liked a good
novel too, when he could get hold of it.

“You must come to my room some day, and see if you can’t get hold of one
there. Or if you prefer metaphysics, I’ve got shelves full that you’re
welcome to. I suppose,” he added, “you hadn’t been in Boston a great
while when I met you that day?”

“No,” said Lemuel, dropping his head again, “I had just come.”

As if he saw that something painful lurked under the remembrance of the
time for Lemuel the editor desisted.

The next morning he stopped on his way to breakfast with some books
which he handed to Lemuel. “Don’t feel at all obliged to read them,”
 he said, “because I lend them to you. They won’t be of the least use to
you, if you do so.”

“I guess that anything you like will be worth reading,” said Lemuel,
flattered by the trouble so chief a boarder as Mr. Evans had taken with
him.

“Not if they supplied a want you didn’t feel. You seem to be fond of
books, and after a while you’ll be wanting to lend them yourself. I’ll
give you a little hint that I’m too old to profit by: remember that you
can lend a person more books in a day than he can read in a week.”

His laugh kept Lemuel shy of him still, in spite of a willingness that
the editor showed for their better acquaintance. He seemed to wish to
know about Lemuel, particularly since he had recognised the pursuer of
the horse-car in him, and this made Lemuel close up the more. He would
have liked to talk with him about the books Evans had lent him. But when
the editor stopped at the office door, where Lemuel sat reading one of
them, and asked him what he thought of it, the boy felt that somehow
it was not exactly his opinion that Mr. Evans was getting at; and this
sense of being inspected and arranged in another’s mind, though he could
not formulate the operation in his own, somehow wounded and repelled
him. It was not that the editor ever said anything that was not kind and
friendly; he was always doing kind and friendly things, and he appeared
to take a real interest in Lemuel. At the end of the first week after
Lemuel had added the head waitership to his other duties, Evans stopped
in going out of the dining-room and put a dollar in his hand.

“What is it for?” asked Lemuel.

“For? Really, I don’t know. It must be tribute-money,” said the editor
in surprise, but with a rising curiosity. “I never know what it’s for.”

Lemuel turned red, and handed it back. “I don’t know as I want any money
I haven’t earned.”

That night, after dinner, when Evans was passing the office door on his
way out of the hotel, Lemuel stopped him and said with embarrassment,
“Mr. Evans, I don’t want you should think I didn’t appreciate your
kindness this morning.”

“Ah, I’m not sure it was kindness,” said Evans with immediate interest.
“Why didn’t you take the money?”

“Well, I told you why,” said Lemuel, overcoming the obscure reluctance
he felt at Evans’s manner as best he could. “I’ve been thinking it over,
and I guess I was right; but I didn’t know whether I had expressed it
the best way.”

“The way couldn’t be improved. But why did you think you hadn’t earned
my dollar?”

“I don’t do anything but open the doors, and show people to their
places; I don’t call that anything.”

“But if you were a waiter and served at table?”

“I wouldn’t _be_ one,” said Lemuel, with a touch of indignation; “and I
shouldn’t take presents, anyway.”

Evans leaned against the door-jamb.

“Have you heard of the college students who wait at the mountain hotels
in vacation? They all take fees. Do you think yourself better than they
are?”

“Yes, I do!” cried Lemuel.

“Well, I don’t know but you are,” said the editor thoughtfully. “But
I think I should distinguish. Perhaps there’s no shame in waiting at
table, but there is in taking fees.”

“Yes; that’s what I meant,” said Lemuel, a little sorry for his heat. “I
shouldn’t be ashamed to do any kind of work, and to take my pay for it;
but I shouldn’t want to have folks giving me money over and above, as if
I was a beggar.”

The editor stood looking him absently in the face. After a moment he
asked, “What part of New England did you come from, Mr. Barker?”

“I came from the middle part of the State--from Willoughby Pastures.”

“Do those ideas--those principles--of yours prevail there?”

“I don’t know whether they do or not,” said Lemuel.

“If you were sure they did, I should like to engage board there for next
summer,” said the editor, going out.

It was Monday night, a leisure time with him, and he was going out to
see a friend, a minister, with whom Monday night was also leisure time.

After he was gone, some of the other boarders began to drop in from the
lectures and concerts which they frequented in the evening. The ladies
had all some favour to ask of Lemuel, some real or fancied need of
his help; in return for his promise or performance, they each gave him
advice. What they expressed collectively was that they should think that
he would put his eyes out reading by that gas, and that he had better
look out, or he would ruin his health anyway, reading so much. They
asked him how much time he got for sleep; and they said that from twelve
till six was not enough, and that he was just killing himself. They had
all offered to lend him books; the least literary among them had a sort
of house pride in his fondness for books; their sympathy with this taste
of his amused their husbands, who tolerated it, but in their hearts
regarded it as a womanish weakness, indicating a want of fibre in
Lemuel. Mrs. Harmon as a business woman, and therefore occupying a
middle ground between the sexes, did not exactly know herself what to
make of her clerk’s studiousness; all that she could say was that he
kept up with his work. She assumed that before Lemuel’s coming she had
been the sole motive power of the house; but it was really a sort of
democracy, and was managed by the majority of its inmates. An element
of demagoguery tampered with the Irish vote in the person of Jerry,
nominally porter, but actually factotum, who had hitherto, pending the
strikes of the different functionaries, filled the offices now united in
Lemuel. He had never been clerk, because his literature went no further
than the ability to write his name, and to read a passage of the
constitution in qualifying for the suffrage. He did not like the new
order of things, but he was without a party, and helpless to do more
than neglect the gong-bell when he had reason to think Lemuel had
sounded it.

About eleven o’clock the law-student came in with the two girl
art-students, fresh from the outside air, and gay from the opera they
had been hearing. The young man told Lemuel he ought to go to see it.
After the girls had opened their door, one of them came running back to
the elevator, and called down to Lemuel that there was no ice-water, and
would he please send some up.

Lemuel brought it up himself, and when he knocked at the door, the same
girl opened it and made a pretty outcry over the trouble she had given
him. “I supposed, of course, Jerry would bring it,” she said contritely;
and as if for some atonement, she added, “Won’t you come in, Mr. Barker,
and see my picture?”

Lemuel stood in the gush of the gas-light hesitating, and the
law-student called out to him, jollily, “Come in, Mr. Barker, and
help me play art-critic.” He was standing before the picture, with his
overcoat on and his hat in his hand. “First appearance on any stage,” he
added; and as Lemuel entered, “If I were you,” he said, “I’d fire that
porter out of the hotel. He’s outlived his usefulness.”

“It’s a shame, your having to bring the water,” said Miss Swan; she was
the girl who had spoken before.

The other one came forward and said, “Won’t you sit down?”

She spoke to Lemuel; the law-student answered, “Thank you; I don’t care
if I do.”

Lemuel did not know whether to stay, nor what to say of Miss Swan’s
picture, and he thanked the young lady and remained standing.

“O Jessie, _Jessie_, Jessie!” cried Miss Swan.

The other went to her, tranquilly, as if used to such vehement appeals.

“Just _see_ how my poor cow looks since I painted out that grass! She
hasn’t got a leg to stand on!”

The law-student did nothing but make jokes about the picture. “I think
she looks pretty well for a cow that you must have had to study from a
milk-can--nearest you could come to a cow in Boston.”

Miss Carver, the other young lady, ignored his joking, and after some
criticisms on the picture, left him and Miss Swan to talk it over. She
talked to Lemuel, and asked him if he had read a book he glanced at on
the table, and seemed willing to make him feel at ease. But she did not.
He thought she was very proud, and he believed she wanted him to go,
but he did not know how to go. Her eyes were so still and pure; but they
dwelt very coldly upon him. Her voice was like that look put into sound;
it was rather high-pitched but very sweet and pure, and cold. He hardly
knew what he said; he felt hot, and he waited for some chance to get
away.

At last he heard Miss Swan saying, “_Must_ you go, Mr. Berry? So
_soon_!” and saw her giving the student her hand, with a bow of
burlesque desolation.

Lemuel prepared to go too. All his rusticity came back upon him, and he
said, “Well, I wish you good evening.”

It seemed to him that Miss Carver’s still eyes looked a sort of starry
scorn after him. He found that he had brought away the book they had
been talking about, and he was a long time in question whether he
had better take it back at once, or give it to her when she came to
breakfast.

He went to bed in the same trouble of mind. Every night he had fallen
asleep with Statira in his thoughts, but now it was Miss Carver that he
thought of, and more and more uncomfortably. He asked himself what she
would say if she saw his mother in the bloomers. She was herself not
dressed so fashionably as Statira, but very nicely.



XVII.


At Sewell’s house the maid told Evans to walk up into the study, without
seating him first in the reception-room, as if that were needless with
so intimate a friend of the family. He found Sewell at his desk, and he
began at once, without the forms of greeting:

“If you don’t like that other subject, I’ve got a new one for you, and
you could write a sermon on it that would make talk.”

“You look at it from the newspaper point of view,” returned Sewell, in
the same humour. “I’m not an ‘enterprise,’ and I don’t want to make talk
in your sense. I don’t know that I want to make talk at all; I should
prefer to make thought, to make feeling.”

“Well,” said the editor, “this would do all three.”

“Would you come to hear me, if I wrote the sermon?”

“Ah, that’s asking a good deal.”

“Why don’t you develop your idea in an article? You’re always bragging
that you preach to a larger congregation than I.”

“I propose to let you preach to my congregation too, if you’ll write
this sermon. I’ve talked to you before about reporting your sermons in
_Saturday Afternoon_. They would be a feature; and if we could open with
this one, and have a good ‘incisive’ editorial on it, disputing some of
your positions, and treating certain others with a little satire, at
the same time maintaining a very respectful attitude towards you on the
whole, and calling attention to the fact that there was a strong and
increasing interest in your ‘utterances,’ which we were the first to
recognise,--it would be a card. We might agree beforehand on the points
the editorial was to touch, and so make one hand wash another. See?”

“I see that journalism has eaten into your soul. What is your subject?”

“Well, in general terms, and in a single word, _Complicity_. Don’t you
think that would be rather taking? ‘Mr. Sewell, in his striking sermon
on Complicity,’ and so forth. It would be a great hit, and it would
stand a chance of sticking, like Emerson’s ‘Compensation.’”

“Delightful! The most amusing part is that you’ve really a grain
of business in your bushel of chaff.” Sewell wheeled about in his
swivel-chair, and sat facing his guest, deeply sunken in the low easy
seat he always took. “When did this famous idea occur to you?” he
pursued, swinging his glasses by their cord.

“About three weeks ago, at the theatre. There was one of those pieces on
that make you despair of the stage, and ashamed of writing a play even
to be rejected by it--a farrago of indecently amusing innuendoes and
laughably vile situations, such as, if they were put into a book, would
prevent its being sent through the mail. The theatre apparently can
still be as filthy in suggestion as it was at the Restoration, and not
shock its audiences. There were all sorts of people there that night:
young girls who had come with young men for an evening’s polite
amusement; families; middle-aged husbands and wives; respectable-looking
single women; and average bachelors. I don’t think the ordinary
theatrical audience is of a high grade intellectually; it’s third
or fourth rate; but morally it seems quite as good as other public
assemblages. All the people were nicely dressed, and they sat there
before that nasty mess--it was an English comedy where all the jokes
turn upon the belief of the characters that their wives and husbands
are the parents of illegitimate offspring--and listened with as smooth
self-satisfaction as if they were not responsible for it. But all
at once it occurred to me that they _were_ responsible, every one of
them--as responsible as the players, as the author himself.”

“Did you come out of the theatre at that point?” asked Sewell.

“Oh, I was responsible too; but I seemed to be the only one ashamed of
my share in the business.”

“If you were the only one conscious of it, your merit wasn’t very
great,” suggested the minister.

“Well, I should like the others to be conscious of it too. That’s why
I want you to preach my sermon. I want you to tell your people and my
people that the one who buys sin or shame, or corruption of any sort, is
as guilty as the one who sells it.”

“It isn’t a new theory,” said Sewell, still refusing to give up his
ironical tone. “It was discovered some time ago that this was so before
God.”

“Well, I’ve just discovered that it ought to be so before man,” said
Evans.

“Still you’re not the first,” said Sewell.

“Yes,” said the editor, “I think I am, from my peculiar standpoint. The
other day a friend of mine--an upright, just, worthy man, no one more
so--was telling me of a shocking instance of our national corruption.
He had just got home from Europe, and he had brought a lot of dutiable
things, that a customs inspector passed for a trifling sum. That was all
very well, but the inspector afterwards came round with a confidential
claim for a hundred dollars, and the figures to show that the legal
duties would have been eight or ten times as much. My friend was glad to
pay the hundred dollars; but he defied me to name any country in Europe
where such a piece of official rascality was possible. He said it made
him ashamed of America!” Evans leaned his head back against his chair
and laughed.

“Yes,” said Sewell with a sigh, and no longer feigning lightness.
“That’s awful.”

“Well, now,” said Evans, “don’t you think it your duty to help people
realise that they can’t regard such transactions _de haut en bas_, if
they happen to have taken part in them? I have heard of the shameful
condition of things down in Maine, where I’m told the French Canadians
who’ve come in regularly expect to sell their votes to the highest
bidder at every election. Since my new system of ethics occurred to me,
I’ve fancied that there must have always been a shameful state of things
there, if Americans could grow up in the willingness to buy votes. I
want to have people recognise that there is no superiority for them in
such an affair; that there’s nothing but inferiority; that the man who
has the money and the wit to corrupt is a far baser rascal than the man
who has the ignorance and the poverty to be corrupted. I would make this
principle seek out every weak spot, every sore spot in the whole social
constitution. I’m sick to death of the frauds that we practise upon
ourselves in order to be able to injure others. Just consider the
infernal ease of mind in which men remain concerning men’s share in the
social evil----”

“Ah, my dear friend, you can’t expect me to consider _that_ in my
pulpit!” cried the minister.

“No; I couldn’t consider it in my paper. I suppose we must leave that
where it is, unless we can affect it by analogy, and show that there is
infamy for both parties to any sin committed in common. You must
select your instances in other directions, but you can find plenty
of them--enough and to spare. It would give the series a tremendous
send-off,” said Evans, relapsing into his habitual tone, “if you would
tackle this subject in your first sermon for publication. There would be
money in it. The thing would make a success in the paper, and you could
get somebody to reprint it in pamphlet form. Come, what do you say?”

“I should say that you had just been doing something you were ashamed
of,” answered Sewell. “People don’t have these tremendous moral
awakenings for nothing.”

“And you don’t think my present state of mind is a gradual outgrowth
of my first consciousness of the common responsibility of actors and
audience in the representation of a shameless comedy?”

“No, I shouldn’t think it was,” said the minister securely.

“Well you’re right.” Evans twisted himself about in his chair, and hung
his legs over one of the arms.

“The real reason why I wish you to preach this sermon is because I have
just been offering a fee to the head-waiter at our hotel.”

“And you feel degraded with him by his acceptance? For it _is_ a
degradation.”

“No, that’s the strangest thing about it. I have a monopoly of the
degradation, for he didn’t take my dollar.”

“Ah, then a sermon won’t help _you!_ Why wouldn’t he take it?”

“He said he didn’t know as he wanted any money he hadn’t earned,” said
Evans, with a touch of mimicry.

The minister started up from his lounging attitude. “Is his
name--Barker?” he asked, with unerring prescience.

“Yes,” said Evans with a little surprise. “Do you know him?”

“Yes,” returned the minister, falling back in his chair helplessly, not
luxuriously. “So well that I knew it was he almost as soon as you came
into the room to-night.”

“What harm have you been doing him?” demanded the editor, in parody of
the minister’s acuteness in guessing the guilty operation of his own
mind.

“The greatest. I’m the cause of his being in Boston.”

“This is very interesting,” said Evans. “We are companions in
crime--pals. It’s a great honour. But what strikes me as being so
interesting is that we appear to feel remorse for our misdeeds; and I
was almost persuaded the other day by an observer of our species, that
remorse had gone out, or rather had never existed, except in the fancy
of innocent people; that real criminals like ourselves were afraid of
being found out, but weren’t in the least sorry. Perhaps, if we are
sorry, it proves that we needn’t be. Let’s judge each other. I’ve told
you what my sin against Barker is, and I know yours in general terms.
It’s a fearful thing to be the cause of a human soul’s presence in
Boston; but what did you do to bring it about? Who is Barker? Where did
he come from? What was his previous condition of servitude? He puzzles
me a good deal.”

“Oh, I’ll tell you,” said Sewell; and he gave his personal chapter in
Lemuel’s history.

Evans interrupted him at one point. “And what became of the poem he
brought down with him?”

“It was stolen out of his pocket, one night when he slept in the
common.”

“Ah, then he can’t offer it to me! And he seems very far from writing
any more. I can still keep his acquaintance. Go on.”

Sewell told, in amusing detail, of the Wayfarer’s Lodge, where he
had found Barker after supposing he had gone home. Evans seemed more
interested in the place than in the minister’s meeting with Lemuel
there, which Sewell fancied he had painted rather well, describing
Lemuel’s severity and his own anxiety.

“There!” said the editor. “There you have it--a practical illustration!
Our civilisation has had to come to it!”

“Come to what?”

“Complicity.”

Sewell made an impatient gesture.

“Don’t sacrifice the consideration of a great principle,” cried Evans,
“to the petty effect of a good story on an appreciative listener. I
realise your predicament. But don’t you see that in establishing and
regulating a place like that the city of Boston has instinctively
sanctioned my idea? You may say that it is aiding and abetting
the tramp-nuisance by giving vagrants food and shelter, but other
philosophers will contend that it is--blindly perhaps--fulfilling the
destiny of the future State, which will at once employ and support all
its citizens; that it is prophetically recognising my new principle of
Complicity?”

“Your new principle!” cried Sewell. “You have merely given a new name to
one of the oldest principles in the moral world.”

“And that is a good deal to do, I can tell you,” said Evans. “All
the principles are pretty old now. But don’t give way to an ignoble
resentment of my interruption. Go on about Barker.”

After some feints that there was nothing more important to tell, Sewell
went on to the end; and when he had come to it, Evans shook his head.
“It looks pretty black for you, but it’s a beautifully perfect case of
Complicity. What do you propose to do, now you’ve rediscovered him?”

“Oh, I don’t know! I hope no more mischief. If I could only get him back
on his farm!”

“Yes, I suppose that would be the best thing. But I dare say he wouldn’t
go back!”

“That’s been my experience with him.”

They talked this aspect of the case over more fully, and Evans said:
“Well, I wouldn’t go back to such a place myself after I’d once had a
glimpse of Boston, but I suppose it’s right to wish that Barker would. I
hope his mother will come to visit him while he’s in the hotel. I would
give a good deal to see her. Fancy her coming down in her bloomers, and
the poor fellow being ashamed of her? It would be a very good subject
for a play. Does she wear a hat or a bonnet? What sort of head-gear goes
with that ‘sleek odalisque’ style of dress? A turban, I suppose.”

“Mrs. Barker,” said the minister, unable to deny himself the fleeting
comfort of the editor’s humorous view of the situation, “is as far from
a ‘sleek odalisque’ as any lady I’ve ever seen, in spite of her oriental
costume. If I remember, her _yashmak_ was not gathered at the ankles,
but hung loose like occidental trousers; and the day we met she wore
simply her own hair. There was not much of it on top, and she had it
cut short in the neck. She was rather a terrible figure. Her having ever
been married would have been inconceivable, except for her son.”

“I should like to have seen her,” said Evans, laughing back in his
chair.

“She was worth seeing as a survival of the superficial fermentation of
the period of our social history when it was believed that women could
be like men if they chose, and ought to be if they ever meant to show
their natural superiority. But she was not picturesque.”

“The son’s very handsome. I can see that the lady boarders think him
so.”

“Do you find him at all remarkable otherwise? What dismayed me more
than his poetry even was that when he gave that up he seemed to have no
particular direction.”

“Oh, he reads a good deal, and pretty serious books; and he goes to hear
all the sermons and lectures in town.”

“I thought he came to mine only,” sighed the minister, with, a
retrospective suffering. “Well, what can be done for him now? I feel my
complicity with Barker as poignantly as you could wish.”

“Ah, you see how the principle applies everywhere!” cried the editor
joyously. He added: “But I really think that for the present you can’t
do better than let Barker alone. He’s getting on very well at Mrs.
Harmon’s, and although the conditions at the St. Albans are more
transitory than most sublunary things, Barker appears to be a fixture.
Our little system has begun to revolve round him unconsciously; he keeps
us going.”

“Well,” said Sewell, consenting to be a little comforted. He was about
to go more particularly into the facts; but Mrs. Sewell came in just
then, and he obviously left the subject.

Evans did not sit down again after rising to greet her; and presently he
said good night.

She turned to her husband: “What were you talking about when I came in?”

“When you came in?”

“Yes. You both had that look--I can always tell it--of having suddenly
stopped.”

“Oh!” said Sewell, pretending to arrange the things on his desk. “Evans
had been suggesting the subject for a sermon.” He paused a moment, and
then he continued hardily, “And he’d been telling me about--Barker. He’s
turned up again.”

“Of course!” said Mrs. Sewell. “What’s happened to him now?”

“Nothing, apparently, but some repeated strokes of prosperity. He has
become clerk, elevator-boy, and head-waiter at the St. Albans.”

“And what are you going to do about him?”

“Evans advises me to do nothing.”

“Well, that’s sensible, at any rate,” said Mrs. Sewell. “I really think
you’ve done quite enough, David, and now he can be left to manage for
himself, especially as he seems to be doing well.”

“Oh, he’s doing as well as I could hope, and better. But I’m not
sure that I shouldn’t have personally preferred a continued course of
calamity for him. I shall never be quite at peace about him till I get
him back on his farm at Willoughby Pastures.”

“Well, that you will never do; and you may as well rest easy about it.”

“I don’t know as to never doing it,” said Sewell. “All prosperity,
especially the prosperity connected with Mrs. Harmon’s hotel, is
transitory; and I may succeed yet.”

“Does everything go on there in the old way, does Mr. Evans say?” Mrs.
Sewell did not refer to any former knowledge of the St. Albans, but to a
remote acquaintance with the character and methods of Mrs. Harmon, with
whom the Sewells had once boarded. She was then freshly widowed by the
loss of her first husband, and had launched her earliest boarding-house
on that sea of disaster, where she had buoyantly outridden every storm
and had floated triumphantly on the top of every ingulfing wave. They
recalled the difficult navigation of that primitive craft, in which each
of the boarders had taken a hand at the helm, and their reminiscences
of her financial embarrassments were mixed with those of the unfailing
serenity that seemed not to know defeat, and with fond memories of her
goodness of heart, and her ideal devotion in any case of sickness or
trouble.

“I should think the prosperity of Mrs. Harmon would convince the most
negative of agnostics that there was an overruling Providence, if
nothing else did,” said Sewell. “It’s so defiant of all law, so
delightfully independent of causation.”

“Well, let Barker alone with her, then,” said his wife, rising to leave
him to the hours of late reading which she had never been able to break
up.



XVIII.


After agreeing with his wife that he had better leave Barker alone,
Sewell did not feel easy in doing so. He had that ten-dollar note which
Miss Vane had given him, and though he did not believe, since Evans had
reported Barker’s refusal of his fee, that the boy would take it, he was
still constrained to do something with it. Before giving it back to
her, he decided at least to see Barker and learn about his prospects and
expectations. He might find some way of making himself useful to him.

In a state of independence he found Lemuel much more accessible than
formerly, and their interview was more nearly amicable. Sewell said
that he had been delighted to hear of Lemuel’s whereabouts from his old
friend Evans, and to know that they were housed together. He said that
he used to know Mrs. Harmon long ago, and that she was a good-hearted,
well-meaning woman, though without much forecast. He even assented to
Lemuel’s hasty generalisation of her as a perfect lady, though they both
felt a certain inaccuracy in this, and Sewell repeated that she was
a woman of excellent heart and turned to a more intimate inquest of
Lemuel’s life.

He tried to find out how he employed his leisure time, saying that he
always sympathised with young men away from home, and suggesting the
reading-room and the frequent lectures at the Young Men’s Christian
Union for his odd moments. He learned that Lemuel had not many of these
during the week, and that on Sundays he spent all the time he could get
in hearing the different noted ministers. For the rest, he learned that
Lemuel was very much interested in the city, and appeared to be rapidly
absorbing both its present civilisation and its past history. He was
unsmilingly amused at the comments of mixed shrewdness and crudity which
Lemuel was betrayed into at times beyond certain limits of diffidence
that he had apparently set himself; at his blunders and misconceptions,
at the truth divined by the very innocence of his youth and
inexperience. He found out that Lemuel had not been at home since he
came to Boston; he had expected to go at Thanksgiving, but it came so
soon after he had got his place that he hated to ask; the folks were all
well, and he would send the kind remembrances which the minister asked
him to give his mother. Sewell tried to find out, in saying that Mrs.
Sewell and himself would always be glad to see him, whether Lemuel had
any social life outside of the St. Albans, but here he was sensible that
a door was shut against him; and finally he had not the courage to do
more about that money from Miss Vane than to say that from time to time
he had sums intrusted him, and that if Lemuel had any pressing need
of money he must borrow of him. He fancied he had managed that rather
delicately, for Lemuel thanked him without severity, and said he should
get along now, he guessed, but he was much obliged. Neither of them
mentioned Miss Vane, and upon the whole the minister was not sure that
he had got much nearer the boy, after all.

Certainly he formed no adequate idea of the avidity and thoroughness
with which Lemuel was learning his Boston. It was wholly a Public Boston
which unfolded itself during the winter to his eager curiosity, and
he knew nothing of the social intricacies of which it seems solely to
consist for so many of us. To him Boston society was represented by
the coteries of homeless sojourners in the St. Albans; Boston life was
transacted by the ministers, the lecturers, the public meetings,
the concerts, the horse-cars, the policemen, the shop-windows, the
newspapers, the theatres, the ships at the docks, the historical
landmarks, the charity apparatus.

The effect was a ferment in his mind in which there was nothing clear.
It seemed to him that he had to change his opinions every day. He was
whirled round and round; he never saw the same object twice the same. He
did not know whether he learned or unlearned most. With the pride that
comes to youth from the mere novelty of its experiences was mixed a
shame for his former ignorance, an exasperation at his inability to
grasp their whole meaning.

His activities in acquainting himself with Boston interested Evans, who
tried to learn just what his impression was; but this was the last thing
that Lemuel could have distinctly imparted.

“Well, upon the whole,” he asked, one day, “what do you think? From
what you’ve seen of it, which is the better place, Boston or Willoughby
Pastures? If you were friendless and homeless, would you rather be cast
away in the city or in the country?”

Lemuel did not hesitate about this. “In the city! They haven’t got any
idea in the country what’s done to help folks along in the city!”

“Is that so?” asked Evans. “It’s against tradition,” he suggested.

“Yes, I know that,” Lemuel assented. “And in the country they think the
city is a place where nobody cares for you, and everybody is against
you, and wants to impose upon you. Well, when I first came to Boston,”
 he continued with a consciousness of things that Evans did not betray
his own knowledge of, “I thought so too, and I had a pretty hard time
for a while. It don’t seem as if people _did_ care for you, except
to make something out of you; but if any one happens to find out that
you’re in trouble, there’s ten times as much done for you in the city as
there is in the country.”

“Perhaps that’s because there are ten times as many to do it,” said
Evans, in the hope of provoking this impartial spirit further.

“No, it isn’t that altogether. It’s because they’ve seen ten times as
much trouble, and know how to take hold of it better. I think our folks
in the country have been flattered up too much. If some of them
could come down here and see how things are carried on, they would be
surprised. They wouldn’t believe it if you told them.”

“I didn’t know we were so exemplary,” said Evans.

“Oh, city folks have their faults too,” said Lemuel, smiling in
recognition of the irony.

“No! What?”

Lemuel seemed uncertain whether to say it. “Well, they’re too
aristocratic.”

Evans enjoyed this frank simplicity. He professed not to understand, and
begged Lemuel to explain.

“Well, at home, in the country, they mightn’t want to do so much for
you, or be so polite about it, but they wouldn’t feel themselves so much
above you. They’re more on an equality. If I needed help, I’d rather be
in town; but if I could help myself, I’d just as soon be in the country.
Only,” he added, “there are more chances here.”

“Yes, there _are_ more chances. And do you think it’s better not to be
quite so kind, and to be more on an equality?”

“Why, don’t you?” demanded Lemuel.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Evans, with a whimsical affection of
seriousness. “Shouldn’t you like an aristocracy if you could be one of
the aristocrats? Don’t you think you’re opposed to aristocracy because
you don’t want to be under? I have spoken to be a duke when we get an
order of nobility, and I find that it’s a great relief. I don’t feel
obliged to go in for equality nearly as much as I used.”

Lemuel shyly dropped the subject, not feeling himself able to cope
with his elder in these railleries. He always felt his heaviness and
clumsiness in talking with the editor, who fascinated him. He did not
know but he had said too much about city people being aristocratic. It
was not quite what he meant; he had really been thinking of Miss Carver,
and how proud she was, when he said it.

Lately he had seemed to see a difference between himself and other
people, and he had begun to look for it everywhere, though when he spoke
to Evans he was not aware how strongly the poison was working in him. It
was as if the girl had made that difference; she made it again, whatever
it was, between herself and the black man who once brought her a note
and a bunch of flowers from one of her young lady pupils. She was very
polite to him, trying to put him at ease, just as she had been with
Lemuel that night. If he came into the dining-room to seat a transient
when Miss Carver was there, he knew that she was mentally making a
difference between him and the boarders. The ladies all had the custom
of bidding him good morning when they came in to breakfast, and they all
smiled upon him except Miss Carver; she seemed every morning as if more
surprised to see him standing there at the door and showing people to
their places: she looked puzzled, and sometimes she blushed, as if she
were ashamed for him.

He had discovered, in fine, that there were sorts of honest work in the
world which one must not do if he would keep his self-respect through
the consideration of others. Once all work had been work, but now he
had found that there was work which was service, and that service was
dishonour. He had learned that the people who did this work were as
a class apart, and were spoken of as servants, with slight that was
unconscious or conscious, but never absent.

Some of the ladies at the St. Albans had tried to argue with Lemuel
about his not taking the fees he refused, and he knew that they talked
him over. One day, when he was showing a room to a transient, he heard
one of them say to another in the next apartment, “Well, I did hate
to offer it to him, just as if he was a common servant;” and the other
said, “Well, I don’t see what he can expect if he puts himself in the
place of a servant.” And then they debated together whether his quality
of clerk was sufficient to redeem him from the reproach of servitude;
they did not call his running the elevator anything, because a clerk
might do that in a casual way without loss of dignity; they alleged
other cases of the kind.

His inner life became a turmoil of suspicions, that attached themselves
to every word spoken to him by those who must think themselves above
him. He could see now how far behind in everything Willoughby Pastures
was, and how the summer folks could not help despising the people that
took them to board, and waited on them like servants in cities. He
esteemed the boarders at the St. Albans in the degree that he thought
them enlightened enough to contemn him for his station; and he had his
own ideas of how such a person as Mr. Evans really felt toward him. He
felt toward him and was interested in his reading as a person might feel
toward and be interested in the attainments of some anomalous animal, a
learned pig, or something of that kind.

He could look back, now, on his life at Miss Vane’s, and see that he was
treated as a servant there,--a petted servant, but still a servant,--and
that was what made that girl behave so to him; he always thought of
Sibyl as that girl.

He would have thrown up his place at once, though he knew of nothing
else he could do; he would have risked starving rather than keep it;
but he felt that it was of no use; that the stain of servitude was
indelible; that if he were lifted to the highest station, it would not
redeem him in Miss Carver’s eyes. All this time he had scarcely more
than spoken with her, to return her good mornings at the dining-room
door, or to exchange greetings with her on the stairs, or to receive
some charge from her in going out, or to answer some question of hers
in coming in, as to whether any of the pupils who had lessons of her
had been there in her absence. He made these interviews as brief as
possible; he was as stiff and cold as she.

The law-student, whose full name was Alonzo W. Berry, had one joking
manner for all manner of men and women, and Lemuel’s suspicion could
not find any offensive distinction in it toward himself; but he disabled
Berry’s own gentility for that reason, and easily learning much of the
law-student’s wild past in the West from so eager an autobiographer, he
could not comfort himself with his friendship. While the student poured
out his autobiography without stint upon Lemuel, his shyness only
deepened upon the boy. There were things in his life for which he was in
equal fear of discovery: his arrest and trial in the police court,
his mother’s queerness, and his servile condition at Miss Vane’s. The
thought that Mr. Sewell knew about them all made him sometimes hate the
minister, till he reflected that he had evidently told no one of them.
But he was always trembling lest they should somehow become known at the
St. Albans; and when Berry was going on about himself, his exploits, his
escapes, his loves,--chiefly his loves,--Lemuel’s soul was sealed within
him; a vision of his disgraces filled him with horror.

But in the delight of talking about himself, Berry was apparently
unaware that Lemuel had not reciprocated his confidences. He celebrated
his familiarity with Miss Swan and her friend, though no doubt he had
the greater share of the acquaintance,--that was apt to be the case with
him,--and from time to time he urged Lemuel to come up and call on them
with him.

“I guess they don’t want _me_ to call,” said Lemuel with feeble
bitterness at last, one evening after an elaborate argument from Berry
to prove that Lemuel had the time, and that he just knew they would be
glad to see him.

“Why?” demanded Berry, and he tried to get Lemuel’s reason; but when
Lemuel had stated that belief, he could not have given the reason for it
on his death-bed. Berry gave the conundrum up for the time, but he did
not give Lemuel up; he had an increasing need of him as he advanced in
a passion for Miss Swan, which, as he frankly prophesied, was bound to
bring him to the popping-point sooner or later; he debated with himself
in Lemuel’s presence all the best form’s of popping, and he said that it
was simply worth a ranch to be able to sing to him,

  “She’s a darling,
   She’s a daisy,
   She’s a dumpling,
   She’s a lamb,”

and to feel that he knew who _she_ was. He usually sang this refrain to
Lemuel when he came in late at night after a little supper with some of
the fellows that had left traces of its cheer on his bated breath.
Once he came downstairs alone in the elevator, in his shirt-sleeves and
stocking-feet, for the purpose of singing it after Lemuel had thought
him in bed.

Every Sunday afternoon during the winter Lemuel went to see Statira,
and sometimes in the evening he took her to church. But she could not
understand why he always wanted to go to a different church; she did not
see why he should not pick out one church and stick to it: the ministers
seemed to be all alike, and she guessed one was pretty near as good as
another. ‘Manda Grier said she guessed they were all Lemuel to her; and
Statira said well, she guessed that was pretty much so. She no longer
pretended that he was not the whole world to her, either with him or
with ‘Manda Grier; she was so happy from morning till night, day in and
day out, that ‘Manda Grier said if she were in her place she should be
afraid something would happen.

Statira worked in the box-factory now; she liked it a great deal better
than the store, and declared that she was ever so much stronger. The
cough lingered still, but none of them noticed it much; she called it
a cold, and said she kept catching more. ‘Manda Grier told her that she
could throw it off soon enough if she would buy a few clothes for
warmth and not so many for looks; but they did not talk this over before
Lemuel. Before he came Statira took a soothing mixture that she got of
the apothecary, and then they were all as bright and gay as could be,
and she looked so pretty that he said he could not get used to it. The
housekeeping experiment was a great success; she and ‘Manda Grier had
two rooms now, and they lived better than ever they had, for less money.
Of course, Statira said, it was not up to the St. Albans, which Lemuel
had told them of at first a little braggingly. In fact she liked to have
him brag of it, and of the splendours of his position and surroundings.
She was very curious, but not envious of anything, and it became a joke
with her and ‘Manda Grier, who pretended to despise the whole affair.

At first it flattered Lemuel to have her admire his rise in life so
simply and ardently; but after a while it became embarrassing, in
proportion as it no longer seemed so superb to him. She was always
wanting him to talk of it; after a few Sundays, with the long hours
they had passed in telling each other all they could think of about
themselves, they had not much else to talk of. Now that she had him to
employ her fancy, Statira no longer fed it on the novels she used to
devour. He brought her books, but she did not read them; she said that
she had been so busy with her sewing she had no time to read; and every
week she showed him some pretty new thing she had been making, and tried
it on for him to see how she looked in it. Often she seemed to care more
to rest with her head on his shoulder, and not talk at all; and for a
while this was enough for him too, though sometimes he was disappointed
that she did not even let him read to her out of the books she
neglected. She would not talk over the sermons they heard together; but
once when Mr. Evans offered him tickets for the theatre, and Lemuel
had got the night off and taken Statira, it seemed as if she would be
willing to sit up till morning and talk the play over.

Nothing else ever interested her so much, except what one of the girls
in the box-factory had told her about going down to the beach, summers,
and waiting on table. This girl had been at Old Orchard, where they
had splendid times, with one veranda all to themselves and the
gentlemen-help; and in the afternoon the girls got together on the
beach--or the grass right in front of the hotel--and sewed. They got
nearly as much as they did in the box-factory; and then the boarders all
gave you something extra; some of them gave as much as a dollar a week
apiece. The head-waiter was a college student, and a perfect gentleman;
he was always dressed up in a dress-suit and a white silk neck-tie.
Statira said that next summer she wanted they should go off somewhere,
she and ‘Manda Grier, and wait on table together; and she knew Lemuel
could easily get the head-waiter’s place, after the St. Albans. She
should not want he should be clerk, because then they could not have
such good times, for they would be more separated.

Lemuel heard her restively through, and then broke out fiercely and told
her that he had seen enough of waiting on table at the St. Albans for
him never to want her to do it; and that the boarders who gave money
to the waiters despised them for taking it. He said that he did not
consider just helping Mrs. Harmon out the same as being head-waiter,
and that he would not be a regular waiter for any money: he would rather
starve.

Statira did not understand; she asked him meekly if he were mad at her,
he seemed so; and he had to do what he could to cheer her up.

‘Manda Grier took Statira’s part pretty sharply. She said it was one
thing to live out in a private family--that _was_ a disgrace, if you
could keep the breath of life in you any other way--and it was quite
another to wait in an hotel; and she did not want to have any one hint
round that she would let Statira demean herself. Lemuel was offended by
her manner, and her assumption of owning Statira. She defended him, but
he could not tell her how he had changed; the influences were perhaps
too obscure for him to have traced them all himself; after the first
time he had hardly mentioned the art-student girls to her. There were a
great many things that Statira could not understand. She had been much
longer in the city than Lemuel, but she did not seem to appreciate the
difference between that and the country. She dressed very stylishly; no
one went beyond her in that; but in many things he could see that she
remained countrified. Once on a very mild April evening, when they were
passing through the Public Garden, she wished him to sit on a vacant
seat they came to. All the others were occupied by young couples who sat
with their arms around each other.

“No, no!” shuddered Lemuel, “I don’t want people should take you for one
of these servant-girls.”

“Why, Lem, how proud you’re getting!” she cried with easy acquiescence.
“You’re awfully stuck up! Well, then, you’ve got to take a horse-car; I
can’t walk any further.”



XIX.


Lemuel had found out about the art-students from Berry. He said they
were no relation to each other, and had not even been acquainted before
they met at the art-school; he had first met them at the St. Albans.
Miss Swan was from the western part of the State, and Miss Carver from
down Plymouth way. The latter took pupils, and sometimes gave lessons at
their houses; she was, to Berry’s thinking, not half the genius and not
half the duck that Miss Swan was, though she was a duck in her way too.
Miss Swan, as nearly as he could explain, was studying art for the fun
of it, or the excitement, for she was well enough off; her father was a
lawyer out there, and Berry believed that a rising son-in-law in his own
profession would be just the thing for the old man’s declining years. He
said he should not be very particular about settling down to practice
at once; if his wife wanted to go to Europe a while, and kind of tender
foot it round for a year or two in the art-centres over there, he would
let the old man run the business a little longer; sometimes it did an
old man good. There was no hurry; Berry’s own father was not excited
about his going to work right away; he had the money to run Berry and a
wife too, if it came to that; Miss Swan understood that. He had not told
her so in just so many words, but he had let her know that Alonzo W.
Berry, senior, was not borrowing money at two per cent. a month any
more. He said he did not care to make much of a blow about that part of
it till he was ready to act, and he was not going to act till he had a
dead-sure thing of it; he was having a very good time as it went along,
and he guessed Miss Swan was too; no use to hurry a girl, when she was
on the right track.

Berry invented these axioms apparently to put himself in heart; in the
abstract he was already courageous enough. He said that these Eastern
girls were not used to having any sort of attention; that there was
only about a tenth or fifteenth of a fellow to every girl, and that
it tickled one of them to death to have a whole man around. He was not
meanly exultant at their destitution. He said he just wished one of
these pretty Boston girls--nice, well dressed, cultured, and brought up
to be snubbed and neglected by the tenths and fifteenths of men they had
at home--could be let loose in the West, and have a regular round-up of
fellows. Or, no, he would like to have about five thousand fellows from
out there, that never expected a woman to look at them, unloaded in
Boston, and see them open their eyes. “Wouldn’t one of ‘em get home
alive, if kindness could kill ‘em. I never saw such a place! I can’t get
used to it! It makes me tired. _Any_ sort of fellow could get married in
Boston!”

Berry made no attempt to reconcile his uncertainty as to his own chances
with this general theory, but he urged it to prove that Miss Swan and
Miss Carver would like to have Lemuel call; he said they had both said
they wished they could paint him. He had himself sustained various
characters in costume for them, and one night he pretended that they
had sent him down for Lemuel to help out with a certain group. But they
received him with a sort of blankness which convinced him that Berry had
exceeded his authority; there was a helplessness at first, and then an
indignant determination to save him from a false position even at their
own cost, which Lemuel felt rather than saw. Miss Carver was foremost
in his rescue; she devoted herself to this, and left Miss Swan to punish
Berry, who conveyed from time to time his sense that he was “getting
it,” by a wink to Lemuel.

An observer with more social light might have been more puzzled to
account for Berry’s toleration by these girls, who apparently associated
with him on equal terms. Since he was not a servant, he _was_ their
equal in Lemuel’s eyes; perhaps his acceptance might otherwise be
explained by the fact that he was very amusing, chivalrously harmless,
and extremely kind-hearted and useful to them. One must not leave out of
the reckoning his open devotion for Miss Swan, which in itself would do
much to approve him to her, and commend him to Miss Carver, if she were
a generous girl, and very fond of her friend. It is certain that they
did tolerate Berry, who made them laugh even that night in spite of
themselves, till Miss Swan said, “Well, what’s the use?” and stopped
trying to discipline him. After that they had a very sociable evening,
though Lemuel kept his distance, and would not let them include him,
knowing what the two girls really thought of him. He would not take part
in Berry’s buffooneries, but talked soberly and rather austerely with
Miss Carver; and to show that he did not feel himself an inferior,
whatever she might think, he was very sarcastic about some of the
city ways and customs they spoke of. There were a good many books
about--novels mostly, but not the kind Statira used to read, and poems;
Miss Carver said she liked to take them up when she was nervous from her
work; and if the weather was bad, and she could not get out for a walk,
a book seemed to do her almost as much good. Nearly all the pictures
about in the room seemed to be Miss Swan’s; in fact, when Lemuel asked
about them, and tried to praise them in such a way as not to show his
ignorance, Miss Carver said she did very little in colour; her lessons
were all in black and white. He would not let her see that he did not
know what this was, but he was ashamed, and he determined to find
out; he determined to get a drawing-book, and learn something about it
himself. To his thinking, the room was pretty harum-scarum. There
were shawls hung upon the walls, and rugs, and pieces of cloth, which
sometimes had half-finished paintings fastened to them; there were
paintings standing round the room on the floor, sometimes right side
out, and sometimes faced to the walls; there were two or three fleeces
and fox-pelts scattered about instead of a carpet; and there were two
easels, and stands with paints all twisted up in lead tubes on them. He
compared the room with Statira’s, and did not think much of it at first.

Afterwards it did not seem so bad: he began to feel its picturesqueness,
for he went there again, and let the girls sketch him. When Miss Swan
asked him that night if he would let them he wished to refuse; but she
seemed so modest about it, and made it such a great favour on his part,
that he consented; she said she merely wished to make a little sketch in
colour, and Miss Carver a little study of his head in black and white;
and he imagined it a trifling affair that could be despatched in a
single night. They decided to treat his head as a Young Roman head; and
at the end of a long sitting, beguiled with talk and with thoughtful
voluntaries from Berry on his banjo, he found that Miss Carver had
rubbed her study nearly all out with a piece of bread, and Miss Swan
said she should want to try a perfectly new sketch with the shoulders
draped; the coat had confused her; she would not let any one see what
she had done, though Berry tried to make her let him.

Lemuel looked a little blank when she asked him for another sitting; but
Berry said, “Oh, you’ll have to come, Barker. Penalty of greatness,
you know. Have you in Williams & Everett’s window; notices in all the
papers. ‘The exquisite studies, by Miss Swan and Miss Carver, of the
head of the gentlemanly and accommodating clerk of the St. Albans, as
a Roman Youth.’ Chromoed as a Christmas card by Prang, and photograph
copies everywhere. You’re all right, Barker.”

One night Miss Swan said, in rapture with some momentary success, “Oh,
I’m perfectly in love with this head!”

Berry looked up from his banjo, which he ceased to strum. “Hello, hello,
hel-_lo_!”

Then the two broke into a laugh, in which Lemuel helplessly joined.

“What--what is it?” asked Miss Carver, looking up absently from her
work.

“Nothing; just a little outburst of passion from our young friend here,”
 said Berry, nodding his head toward Miss Swan.

“What does it mean, Mad?” asked Miss Carver in the same dreamy way,
continuing her work.

“Yes, Madeline,” said Berry, “explain yourself.”

“Mr. Berry!” cried Miss Swan warningly.

“That’s me; Alonzo W., Jr. Go on!”

“You forget yourself,” said the girl, with imperfect severity.

“Well, you forgot me first,” said Berry, with affected injury. “Ain’t it
hard enough to sit here night after night, strumming on the old banjo,
while another fellow is going down to posterity as a Roman Youth with a
red shawl round his neck, without having to hear people say they’re in
love with that head of his?”

Miss Carver now stopped her work, and looked from her friend, with her
head bowed in laughter on the back of her hand, to that of Berry bent
in burlesque reproach upon her, and then at Lemuel, who was trying to
control himself.

“But I can tell you what, Miss Swan; you spoke too late, as the man
said when he swallowed the chicken in the fresh egg. Mr. Barker has a
previous engagement. That so, Barker?”

Lemuel turned fire-red, and looked round at Miss Carver, who met his
glance with her clear gaze. She turned presently to make some comment on
Miss Swan’s sketch, and then, after working a little while longer, she
said she was tired, and was going to make some tea.

The girls both pressed Lemuel to stay for a cup, but he would not; and
Berry followed him downstairs to explain and apologise.

“It’s all right,” said Lemuel. “What difference would it make to them
whether I was engaged or not?”

“Well, I suppose as a general rule a girl would rather a fellow wasn’t,”
 philosophised Berry. He whistled ruefully, and Lemuel drawing a book
toward him in continued silence, he rose from the seat he had taken on
the desk in the little office, and said, “Well, I guess it’ll all come
out right. Come to think of it, _I_ don’t know anything about your
affairs, and I can tell ‘em so.”

“Oh, it don’t matter.”

He had pulled the book toward him as if he were going to read, but
he could not read; his head was in a whirl. After a first frenzy of
resentment against Berry, he was now angry at himself for having been
so embarrassed. He thought of a retort that would have passed it all off
lightly; then he reflected again that it was of no consequence to these
young ladies whether he was engaged or not, and at any rate it was
nobody’s business but his own. Of course he was engaged to Statira, but
he had hardly thought of it in that way. ‘Manda Grier had joked about
the time when she supposed she should have to keep old maid’s hall
alone; when she first did this Lemuel thought it delightful, but
afterwards he did not like it so much; it began to annoy him that
‘Manda Grier should mix herself up so much with Statira and himself.
He believed that Statira would be different, would be more like other
ladies (he generalised it in this way, but he meant Miss Swan and Miss
Carver), if she had not ‘Manda Grier there all the time to keep her
back. He convinced himself that if it were not for ‘Manda Grier, he
should have had no trouble in telling Statira that the art-students were
sketching him; and that he had not done so yet because he hated to have
‘Manda ask her so much about them, and call them that Swan girl and that
Carver girl, as she would be sure to do, and clip away the whole evening
with her questions and her guesses. It was now nearly a fortnight
since the sketching began, and he had let one Sunday night pass without
mentioning it. He could not let another pass, and he knew ‘Manda Grier
would say they were a good while about it, and would show her ignorance,
and put Statira up to asking all sorts of things. He could not bear
to think of it, and he let the next Sunday night pass without saying
anything to Statira. The sittings continued; but before the third Sunday
came Miss Swan said she did not see how she could do anything more
to her sketch, and Miss Carver had already completed her study. They
criticised each other’s work with freedom and good humour, and agreed
that the next thing was to paint it out and rub it out.

“No,” said Berry; “what you want is a fresh eye on it. I’ve worried over
it as much as you have,--suffered more, I believe,--and Barker can’t
tell whether he looks like a Roman Youth or not. Why don’t you have up
old Evans?”

Miss Swan took no apparent notice of this suggestion; and Miss Carver,
who left Berry’s snubbing entirely to her, said nothing. After a
minute’s study of the pictures, Miss Swan suggested, “If Mr. Barker had
any friends he would like to show them to?”

“Oh no, thank you,” returned Lemuel hastily, “there isn’t anybody,” and
again he found himself turning very red.

“Well, I don’t know how we can thank you enough for your patience, Mr.
Barker,” said the girl.

“Oh, don’t mention it. I’ve--I’ve enjoyed it,” said Lemuel.

“Game--every time,” said Berry; and their evening broke up with a laugh.

The next morning Lemuel stopped Miss Swan at the door of the breakfast
room, and said, “I’ve been thinking over what you said last night, and
I _should_ like to bring some one--a lady friend of mine--to see the
pictures.”

“Why, certainly, Mr. Barker. Any time. Some evening?” she suggested.

“Should you mind it if I came to-morrow night?” he asked; and he thought
it right to remind her, “it’s Sunday night.”

“Oh, not at all! To-morrow night, by all means! We shall both be
at home, and very glad to see you.” She hurried after Miss Carver,
loitering on her way to their table, and Lemuel saw them put their heads
together, as if they were whispering. He knew they were whispering
about him, but they did not laugh; probably they kept themselves from
laughing. In coming out from breakfast, Miss Swan said, “I hope your
friend isn’t _very_ critical, Mr. Barker?” and he answered confusedly,
“Oh, not at all, thank you.” But he said to himself that he did not care
whether she was trying to make fun of him or not, he knew what he had
made up his mind to do.

Statira did not seem to care much about going to see the pictures,
when he proposed it to her the next evening. She asked why he had been
keeping it such a great secret, and he could not pretend, as he had once
thought he could, that he was keeping it as a surprise for her. “Should
_you_ like to see ‘em, ‘Manda?” she asked, with languid indifference.

“I d’ know as I care much about Lem’s picture, s’long’s we’ve got _him_
around,” ‘Manda Grier whipped out, “but I _should_ like t’ see those
celebrated girls ‘t we’ve heard s’ much about.”

“Well,” said Statira carelessly, and they went into the next room to
put on their wraps. Lemuel, vexed to have ‘Manda Grier made one of the
party, and helpless to prevent her going, walked up and down, wondering
what he should say when he arrived with this unexpected guest.

But Miss Swan received both of the girls very politely, and chatted
with ‘Manda Grier, whose conversation, in defiance of any sense of
superiority that the Swan girl or the Carver girl might feel, was
a succession of laconic snaps, sometimes witty, but mostly rude and
contradictory.

Miss Carver made tea, and served it in some pretty cups which Lemuel
hoped Statira might admire, but she took it without noticing, and in
talking with Miss Carver she drawled, and said “N-y-e-e-e-s,” and “I
don’t know as I d-o-o-o,” and “Well, I should think as mu-u-ch,” with
a prolongation of all the final syllables in her sentences which he had
not observed in her before, and which she must have borrowed for the
occasion for the gentility of the effect. She tried to refer everything
to him, and she and ‘Manda Grier talked together as much as they could,
and when the others spoke of him as Mr. Barker, they called him Lem.
They did not look at anything, or do anything to betray that they found
the studio, on which Lemuel had once expatiated to them, different from
other rooms.

At last Miss Swan abruptly brought out the studies of Lemuel’s head, and
put them in a good light; ‘Manda Grier and Statira got into the wrong
place to see them.

‘Manda blurted out, “Well, he looks ‘s if he’d had a fit of sickness in
_that_ one;” and perhaps, in fact, Miss Carver had refined too much upon
a delicate ideal of Lemuel’s looks.

“So he d-o-o-es!” drawled Statira. “And how funny he looks with that red
thing o-o-o-n!”

Miss Swan explained that she had thrown that in for the colour, and that
they had been fancying him in the character of a young Roman.

“You think he’s got a Roman n-o-o-se?” asked Statira through her own.

“I think Lem’s got a kind of a pug, m’self,” said ‘Manda Grier.

“Well, ‘Manda Grier!” said Statira.

Lemuel could not look at Miss Carver, whom he knew to be gazing at the
two girls from the little distance to which she had withdrawn; Miss Swan
was biting her lip.

“So that’s the celebrated St. Albans, is it?” said ‘Manda Grier, when
they got in the street. “Don’t know ‘s I really ever expected to see
the inside ‘f it. You notice the kind of oilcloth they had on that upper
entry, S’tira?”

They did not mention Lemuel’s pictures, or the artists; and he scarcely
spoke on the way home.

When they parted, Statira broke out crying, and would not let him kiss
her.



XX.


“I’m afraid your little friend at the St. Albans isn’t altogether happy
of late,” said Evans toward the end of what he called one of his powwows
with Sewell. Their talk had taken a vaster range than usual, and they
both felt the need, that people know in dealing with abstractions, of
finally getting the ground beneath their feet again.

“Ah?” asked Sewell, with a twinge that allayed his satisfaction in this.
“What’s the matter with him?”

“Oh, the knowledge of good and evil, I suspect.”

“I hope there’s nothing wrong,” said Sewell anxiously.

“Oh no. I used the phrase because it came easily. Just what I mean is
that I’m afraid his view of our social inequalities is widening and
deepening, and that he experiences the dissatisfaction of people who
don’t command that prospect from the summit. I told you of his censure
of our aristocratic constitution?”

“Yes,” said Sewell, with a smile.

“Well, I’m afraid he feels it more and more. If I can judge from
the occasional distance and _hauteur_ with which he treats me, he is
humiliated by it. Nothing makes a man so proud as humiliation, you
know.”

“That’s true!”

“There are a couple of pretty girls at the St. Albans, art-students,
who have been painting Barker. So I learn from a reformed cow-boy of
the plains who is with us as a law-student and is about with one of
the young ladies a good deal. They’re rather nice girls; quite nice, in
fact; and there’s no harm in the cow-boy, and a good deal of fun. But if
Barker had conceived of being painted as a social inferior, and had been
made to feel that he was merely a model; and if he had become at all
aware that one of the girls was rather pretty--they both are--”

“I see!”

“I don’t say it’s so. But he seems low-spirited. Why don’t you come
round and cheer him up--get into his confidence--”

“Get into the centre of the earth!” cried Sewell. “I never saw such an
inapproachable creature!”

Evans laughed. “He _is_ rather remote. The genuine American youth is
apt to be so, especially if he thinks you mean him a kindness. But
there ought to be some way of convincing him that he need not feel any
ignominy in his employment. After so many centuries of Christianity and
generations of Democracy, it ought to be very simple to convince him
that there is nothing disgraceful in showing people to their places at
table.”

“It isn’t,” said the minister soberly.

“No, it isn’t,” said Evans. “I wonder,” he added thoughtfully, “why we
despise certain occupations? We don’t despise a man who hammers stone
or saws boards; why should we despise a barber? Is the care of the
human head intrinsically less honourable than the shaping of such rude
material? Why do we still condemn the tailor who clothes us, and honour
the painter who portrays us in the same clothes? Why do we despise
waiters? I tried to make Barker believe that I respected all kinds of
honest work. But I lied; I despised him for having waited on table.
Why have all manner of domestics fallen under our scorn, and come to be
stigmatised in a lump as servants?”

“Ah, I don’t know,” said the minister. “There _is_ something in personal
attendance upon us that dishonours; but the reasons of it are very
obscure; _I_ couldn’t give them. Perhaps it’s because it’s work that in
a simpler state of things each of us would do for himself, and in this
state is too proud to do.”

“That doesn’t cover the whole ground,” said Evans.

“And you think that poor boy is troubled--is really suffering from a
sense of inferiority to the other young people?”

“Oh, I don’t say certainly. Perhaps not. But if he were, what should
you say was the best thing for him to do? Remain a servant; cast his
lot with these outcasts; or try to separate and distinguish himself from
them, as we all do? Come; we live in the world,--which isn’t so bad,
though it’s pretty stupid. He couldn’t change it. Now, what ought he to
do?”

Sewell mused a while without answering anything. Then he said with a
smile, “It’s very much simpler to fit people for the other world than
for this, don’t you think?”

“Yes, it is. It was a cold day for the clergy when it was imagined that
they ought to do both.”

“Well,” said Sewell, rising to follow his friend to the door, “I will
come to see Barker, and try to talk with him. He’s a very complicated
problem. I supposed that I had merely his material prosperity to provide
for, after getting him down here, but if I have to reconcile him to the
constitution of society!----”

“Yes,” said Evans. “I wish you’d let me know the result of your labours.
I think I could make a very incisive article on the subject. The topic
is always an attractive one. There is nobody who doesn’t feel that
somebody else is taking on airs with him, and ought to have his comb
cut. Or, if you should happen to prove to Barker that his ignominy is in
accordance with the Development Theory, and is a necessary Survival,
or something of that sort, don’t you see what a card it would be for us
with the better classes?”

They went downstairs together, and at the street door Evans stopped
again. “Or, I’ll tell you what. Make it a simple study of Barker’s
mind--a sort of psychological interview, and then with what I’ve been
able to get from him we can present the impression that Boston makes
upon a young, fresh, shrewd mind. That would be something rather new,
wouldn’t it? Come! the _Afternoon_ would make it worth your while. And
then you could work it into a sermon afterwards.”

“You shameless reprobate!” said Sewell, laying his hand affectionately
on his friend’s arm.

There was nothing in Lemuel’s case that seemed to him urgent, and he did
not go to see him at once. In the meantime, Fast Day came, and Lemuel
got away at last to pay his first visit home.

“Seems to me ye ain’t lookin’ over and above well, Lem,” was the first
thing his mother said to him, even before she noticed how well he was
dressed.

His new spring overcoat, another prize from the Misfit Parlours, and his
new pointed-toe shoes, and Derby hat, with the suit of clothes he had
kept so carefully all through the winter, were not the complete disguise
he had fancied they might be at Willoughby Pastures. The depot-master
had known him as soon as he got out of the cars, and ignored his
splendour in recognising him. He said, “Hello, Lem,” and had not time to
reconcile himself to the boy’s changed appearance before Lemuel hurried
away with the bag he had bought so long before for the visit. He met
several people on his way home from the depot: two of them were women,
and one of these said she knew as soon as she looked at him who it was,
and the other said she should have known it was Lem Barker as far as she
could see him. She asked him if he was home for good now.

His mother pushed back his thick hair with her hard old hand as she
spoke to him, and then she pressed his head down upon her neck, which
was mostly collar-bone. But Lemuel could hear her heart beat, and the
tears came into his eyes.

“Oh, I’m all right, mother,” he said huskily, though he tried to say it
cheerfully. He let her hold his head there the longer because mixed with
his tenderness for her was a horror of her bloomers, which he was not at
once able to overcome. When he gained courage to look, he saw that she
had them on, but now he had the strength to bear it.

“Ye had any breakfast?” she asked, and when he said that he had got a
cup of coffee at Fitchburg, she said, well, she must get him something,
and she drew him a cup of Japan tea, and made him some milk toast and
picked-fish, talking all the time, and telling him how his sister and
her husband had gone to the village to have one of her teeth drawn. They
had got along through the winter pretty well; but she guessed that they
would have had more to complain of if it had not been for him. This was
her way of acknowledging the help Lemuel had given them every week,
and it was casually sandwiched between an account of an Indian Spirit
treatment which Reuben had tried for his rheumatism, and a question
whether Lemuel had seen anything of that Mind Cure down to Boston.

But when he looked about the room, and saw here and there the simple
comforts and necessaries which his money had bought the sick man and
the two helpless women, his heart swelled with joy and pride; and he
realised the pleasure we all feel in being a good genius. At times it
had come pretty hard to send the greater part of his week’s wages home,
but now he was glad he had done it. The poor, coarse food which his
mother had served him as a treat; the low, cracked ceilings; the waving
floor, covered with rag carpet; the sagging doors, and the old-fashioned
trim of the small-paned windows, were all very different from the
luxurious abundance, the tesselated pavement, and the tapestry Brussels,
the lofty studding, and the black walnut mouldings of the St. Albans;
and Lemuel felt the difference with a curious mixture of pride and
remorse in his own escape from the meanness of his home. He felt the
self-reproach to which the man who rises without raising with him
all those dear to him is destined in some measure all his life. His
interests and associations are separated from theirs, but if he is not
an ignoble spirit, the ties of affection remain unweakened; he cares for
them with a kind of indignant tenderness, and calls himself to account
before them in the midst of pleasures which they cannot share, or even
imagine.

Lemuel’s mother did not ask him much about his life in Boston; she had
not the materials for curiosity about it; but he told her everything
that he thought she could understand. She recurred to his hopes when he
left home and their disappointment in Sewell, and she asked if
Lemuel ever saw him nowadays. She could not reconcile herself to
his reconciliation with Sewell, whom she still held to have behaved
treacherously. Then she went back to Lemuel’s looks, and asked him if
he kept pretty well; and when he answered that he did, she smoothed with
her hand the knot between her eyes, and did not question him further.

He had the whole forenoon with his mother, and he helped her to get the
dinner, as he used to do, pulling the stove-wood out of the snow-drift
that still embedded part of the wood-pile, though the snow was all gone
around Boston. It was thawing under the dull, soft April sky, and he saw
the first bluebird perched on the clothes-line when he went out for the
wood; his mother said there had been lots of them. He walked about the
place, and into the barn, taking in the forlornness and shabbiness; and
then he went up into the room over the shed, where he used to study and
write. His heart ached with self-pity.

He realised as he had not done at a distance how dependent this wretched
home was upon him; and after meaning the whole morning to tell his
mother about Statira, he decided that he was keeping it from her, not
merely because he was ashamed to tell her that he was engaged, but
because it seemed such a crazy thing, for a person in his circumstances,
if it was really an engagement. He had not seen Statira since that night
when he brought her to look at the pictures the art-students had made of
him. He felt that he had not parted with her kindly, and he went to see
her the night before he started home, though it was not Sunday, but he
had found her door locked, and this made him angry with her, he could
not have said just why. If he told his mother about Statira now, what
should he tell her? He compromised by telling her about the two girls
that had painted his likeness.

His mother seemed not to care a great deal about the pictures. She said,
“I don’t want you should let any girl make a fool of you, Lem.”

“Oh no,” he answered, and went and looked out of the window.

“I don’t say but what they’re nice girls enough, but in your place you
no need to throw yourself away.”

Lemuel thought of the awe of Miss Carver in which he lived, and the
difference between them; and he could have laughed at his mother’s
ignorant pride. What would she say if she knew that he was engaged to a
girl that worked in a box-factory? But probably she would not think that
studying art and teaching it was any better. She evidently believed that
his position in the St. Albans was superior to that of Miss Carver.

His sister and her husband came home before they had finished dinner.
His sister had her face all tied up to keep from taking cold after
having her tooth drawn, and Lemuel had to go out and help his rheumatic
brother-in-law put up the horse. When they came in, his brother-in-law
did not wash his hands before going to the table, and Lemuel could not
keep his eyes off his black and broken fingernails; his mother’s and
sister’s nails were black too. It must have been so when he lived at
home.

His sister could not eat; she took some tea, and went to bed. His
brother-in-law pulled off his boots after dinner, and put up his
stocking-feet on the stove-hearth to warm them.

There was no longer any chance to talk with his mother indoors, and he
asked her if she would not like to come out; it was very mild. She put
on her bonnet, and they strolled down the road. All the time Lemuel had
to keep from looking at her bloomers. When they met any one driving, he
had to keep himself from trying to look as if he were not with her, but
was just out walking alone.

The day wore heavily away. His brother-in-law’s rheumatism came on
toward evening, and his sister’s face had swollen, so that it would not
do for her to go out. Lemuel put on some old clothes he found in his
room, and milked the cows himself.

“Like old times, Lem,” said his mother, when he came in.

“Yes,” he assented quietly.

He and his mother had tea together, but pretty soon afterwards she
seemed to get sleepy; and Lemuel said he had been up early and he
guessed he would go to bed. His mother said she guessed she would go
too.

After he had blown out his light, she came in to see if he were
comfortable. “I presume it seems a pretty poor place to you, Lem,” she
said, holding her lamp up and looking round.

“I guess if it’s good enough for you it is for me,” he answered
evasively.

“No, it ain’t,” she said. “I always b’en used to it, and I can see from
your talk that you’ve got used to something different already. Well,
it’s right, Lem. You’re a good boy, and I want you should get the good
of Boston, all you can. We don’t any of us begrutch it to ye; and what
I came up to say now was, don’t you scrimp yourself down there to send
home to us. We got a roof over our heads, and we can keep soul and body
together somehow; we always have, and we don’t need a great deal. But I
want you should keep yourself nicely dressed down to Boston, so ‘t you
can go with the best; I don’t want you should feel anyways meechin’ on
account of your clothes. You got a good figure, Lem; you take after your
father. Sometimes I wish you was a little bigger; but _he_ wa’n’t; and
he had a big spirit. He wa’n’t afraid of anything; and they said if he’d
come out o’ that battle where he was killed, he’d ‘a’ b’en a captain. He
was a good man.”

She had hardly ever spoken so much of his father before; he knew now
by the sound of her voice in the dim room that the tears must be in her
eyes; but she governed herself and went on.

“What I wanted to say was, don’t you keep sendin’ so much o’ your money
home, child. It’s yours, and I want you should have it; most of it goes
for patent medicines, anyway, when it gets here; we can’t keep Reuben
from buying ‘em, and he’s always changin’ doctors. And I want you should
hold yourself high, Lem. You’re as good as anybody. And don’t you go
with any girls, especially, that ain’t of the best. You’re gettin’ to
that time o’ life when you’ll begin to think about ‘em; but don’t you go
and fall in love with the first little poppet you see, because she’s got
pretty eyes and curly hair.”

It seemed to Lemuel as if she must know about Statira, but of course she
did not. He lay still, and she went on.

“Don’t you go and get engaged, or any such foolishness in a hurry, Lem.
Them art-student girls you was tellin’ about, I presume they’re all
right enough; but you wait a while. Young men think it’s a kind of
miracle if a girl likes ‘em, and they’re ready to go crazy over it; but
it’s the most natural thing she can do. You just wait a while. When
you get along a little further, you can pick and choose for yourself. I
don’t know as I should want you should marry for money; but don’t you go
and take up with the first thing comes along, because you’re afraid to
look higher. What’s become o’ that nasty thing that talked so to you at
that Miss Vane’s?”

Lemuel said that he had never seen Sibyl or Miss Vane since; but he did
not make any direct response to the anxieties his mother had hinted
at. Her pride in him, so ignorant of all the reality of his life in
the city, crushed him more than the sight and renewed sense of the mean
conditions from which he had sprung. What if he should tell her that
Miss Carver, whom she did not want him to marry in a hurry, regarded him
as a servant, and treated him as she would treat a black man? What if
she knew that he was as good as engaged to marry a girl that could no
more meet Miss Carver on the same level than she could fly? He could
only tell his mother not to feel troubled about him; that he was not
going to get married in any great hurry; and pretend to be sleepy and
turn his head away.

She pulled the covering up round his neck and tucked it in with her
strong, rough old hand, whose very tenderness hurt.

He had expected to stay the greater part of the next day, but he took an
earlier train. His sister was still laid up; she thought she must have
taken cold in her jaw; her husband, rumpled, unshaven, with a shawl over
his shoulders, cowered about the cook-stove for the heat. He began to
hate this poverty and suffering, to long for escape from it to the life
which at that distance seemed so rich and easy and pleasant; he trembled
lest something might have happened in his absence to have thrown him out
of his place.

All the way to Boston he was under the misery of the home that he was
leaving; his mother’s pride added to the burden of it. But when the
train drew in sight of the city, and he saw the steeples and chimneys,
and the thin masts of the ships printed together against the horizon,
his heart rose. He felt equal to it, to anything in it.

He arrived in the middle of the afternoon, and he saw no one at the
hotel except the Harmons till toward dinner-time. Then the ladies coming
in from shopping had a word of welcome for him; some of them stopped and
shook hands at the office, and when they began to come down to dinner
they spoke to him, and there again some of them offered their hands;
they said it seemed an age since he had gone.

The art-students came down with Berry, who shook hands so cordially with
him that perhaps they could not help it. Miss Carver seemed to hesitate,
but she gave him her hand too, and she asked, as the others had done,
whether he had found his family well.

He did not know what to think. Sometimes he felt as if people were
trying to make a fool of him almost. He remained blushing and smiling
to himself after the last of them had gone in to dinner. He did not
know what Miss Carver meant, but her eyes seemed to have lost that cold
distance, and to have come nearer to him.

Late at night Berry came to him where he sat at his desk. “Well, Barker,
I’m glad you’re back again, old man. Feels as if you’d been gone a month
of Sundays. Didn’t know whether we should have you with us this _first_
evening.”

Lemuel grew hot with consciousness, and did not make it better for
himself by saying, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, I don’t suppose I should in your _place_,” returned Berry. “It’s
human nature. It’s all right. What did the ladies think of the ‘Roman
Youth’ the other night? The distinguished artists weren’t sure exactly,
and I thought I could make capital with one of ‘em if I could find
out. Yes, that’s my little game, Barker; that’s what I dropped in for;
Bismarck style of diplomacy. I’ll tell you why they want to know, if you
won’t give me away: Miss Swan wanted to give her ‘bit of colour’--that’s
what she calls it--to one of the young ladies; but she’s afraid she
didn’t like it.”

“I guess they liked it well enough,” said Lemuel, thinking with shame
that Statira had not had the grace to say a word of either of the
pictures; he attributed this to ‘Manda Grier’s influence.

“Well that’s good, so far as it goes,” said Berry. “But now, to come
down to particulars, what did they _say_? That’s what Miss Swan will ask
_me_.”

“I don’t remember just what they said,” faltered Lemuel.

“Well, they must have said something,” insisted Berry jocosely. “Give
a fellow some little clue, and I can piece it out for myself. What did
_she_ say? I don’t ask which she _was_? but I have my suspicions. All
I want to know is what she _said_. Anything like beautiful middle
distance, or splendid chiaroscuro, or fine perspective, or exquisite
modelling? Come now! Try to think, Barker.” He gave Lemuel time, but to
no purpose. “Well,” he resumed, with affected dejection, “I’ll have to
try to imagine it; I guess I can; I haven’t worked my imagination much
since I took up the law. But look here, Barker,” he continued more
briskly, “now you open up a little. Here I’ve been giving you my
confidence ever since I saw you--forcing it on you; and you know just
how far I’m gone on Miss Swan, to a hundredth part of an inch; but I
don’t know enough of your affections to swear that you’ve got any. Now,
which one is it? Don’t be mean about it. I won’t give you away. Honest
Injun!”

Lemuel was goaded to desperation. His face burned, and the perspiration
began to break out on his forehead. He did not know how to escape from
this pursuit.

“Which is it, Barker?” repeated his tormentor. “I know it’s human nature
to deny it; though I never could understand why; if I was engaged, the
Sunday papers should have it about as quick!”

“I’m _not_ engaged!” cried Lemuel.

“You ain’t?” yelled Berry.

“No!”

“Give me your hand! Neither am I!”

He shook Lemuel’s helpless hand with mock heroic fervour. “We are
brothers from this time forth, Barker! You can’t imagine how closely
this tie binds you to me, Barker. Barker, we are one; with no particular
prospect, as far as I am concerned, of ever being more.”

He offered to dramatise a burst of tears on Lemuel’s shoulder; but
Lemuel escaped from him.

“Stop! Quit your fooling! What if somebody should come in?”

“They won’t,” said Berry, desisting, and stretching himself at ease
in the only chair besides Lemuel’s with which the office was equipped.
“It’s too late for ‘em. Now o’er the one-half world nature seems
dead-ah, and wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep-ah. We are safe
here from all intrusion, and I can lay bare my inmost thoughts to you,
Barker, if I happen to have any. Barker, I’m awfully glad you’re not
engaged to either of those girls,--or both. And it’s not altogether
because I enjoy the boon companionship of another unengaged man, but
it’s partly because I don’t think--shall I say it?”

“Say what?” asked Lemuel, not without some prescience.

“Well, you can forgive the brotherly frankness, if you don’t like it. I
don’t think they’re quite up to you.”

Lemuel gave a sort of start, which Berry interpreted in his own way.

“Now, hold on! I know just how you feel. Been there myself. I have seen
the time too when I thought any sort of girl was too good for Alonzo W.,
Jr. But I don’t now. I think A. W., Jr., is good enough for the best.
I may be mistaken; I was the other time. But we all begin that way; and
the great object is not to keep on that way. See? Now, I suppose you’re
in love--puppy love--with that little thing. Probably the first girl you
got acquainted with after you came to Boston, or may be a sweet survival
of the Willoughby Pastures period. All right. Perfectly natural, in
either case. But don’t you let it go any further, my dear boy; old man,
don’t you let it go any further. Pause! Reflect! Consider! Love wisely,
but not too well! Take the unsolicited advice of a sufferer.”

Pride, joy, shame, remorse, mixed in Lemuel’s heart, which eased itself
in an involuntary laugh at Berry’s nonsense.

“Now, what I want you to do--dear boy, or old man, as the case may
be--is to regard yourself in a new light. Regard yourself, for the sake
of the experiment, as too good for any girl in Boston. No? Can’t fetch
it? Try again!”

Lemuel could only laugh foolishly.

“Well, now, that’s singular,” pursued Berry. “I supposed you could have
done it without the least trouble. Well, let’s try something a little
less difficult. Look me in the eye, and regard yourself as too good, for
example, for Miss Carver. Ha!”

An angry flush spread over Lemuel’s embarrassed face. “I wish you’d
behave yourself,” he stammered.

“In any other cause I would,” said Berry solemnly. “But I must be cruel
to be kind. Seriously, old man, if you can’t think yourself too good
for Miss Carver, I wish you’d think yourself good enough. Now, I’m not
saying anything against the Willoughby episode, mind. That has its place
in the wise economy of nature, just like anything else. But there ain’t
any outcome in it for you. You’ve got a future before you, Barker, and
you don’t want to go and load up with a love affair that you’ll keep
trying to unload as long as you live. No, sir! Look at me! I know I’m
not an example in some things, but in this little business of correctly
placed affections I could give points to Solomon. Why am I in love with
M. Swan? Because I can’t help it for one thing, and because for another
thing she can do more to develop the hidden worth and unsuspected powers
of A. W., Jr., than any other woman in the world. She may never feel
that it’s her mission, but she can’t shake my conviction that way; and
I shall stay undeveloped to prove that I was right. Well, now, what you
want, my friend, is development, and you can’t get it where you’ve been
going. She hain’t got it on hand. And what you want to do is not to
take something else in its place--tender heart, steadfast affections,
loyalty; they’ve got ‘em at every shop in town; they’re a drug in the
market. You’ve got to say ‘No development, heigh? Well, I’ll just look
round a while, and if I can’t find it at some of the other stores I’ll
come back and take some of that steadfast affection. You say it won’t
come off? Or run in washing?’ See?”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Lemuel, trying to summon
an indignant feeling, and laughing with a strange pleasure at heart.
“You’ve got no right to talk to me that way. I want you should leave me
alone!”

“Well, since you’re so pressing, I will go,” said Berry easily. “But
if I find you at our next interview sitting under the shade of the
mustard-tree whose little seed I have just dropped, I shall feel that
I have not laboured in vain. ‘She’s a darling, she’s a daisy, she’s a
dumpling, she’s a lamb!’ I refer to Miss Swan, of course; but on other
lips the terms are equally applicable to Miss Carver; and don’t you
forget it!”

He swung out of the office with a mazurka step. His silk hat, gaily
tilted on the side of his head, struck against the door-jamb, and fell
rolling across the entry floor. Lemuel laughed wildly. At twenty these
things are droll.



XXI.


A week passed, and Lemuel had not tried to see Statira again. He said
to himself that even when he had tried to do what was right, and to show
those young ladies how much he thought of her by bringing her to see
their pictures, she had acted very ungratefully, and had as good as
tried to quarrel with him. Then, when he went to see her before his
visit home, she was out; she had never been out before when he called.

Now, he had told Berry that they were not engaged. At first, this
shocked him as if it were a lie. Then he said to himself that he had
a right to make that answer because Berry had no right to ask the
questions that led to it. Then he asked himself if he really were
engaged to Statira. He had told her that he liked her better than any
one else in the world, and she had said as much to him. But he pretended
that he did not know whether it could be called an engagement.

There was no one who could solve the question for him, and it kept
asking itself that whole week, and especially when he was with Miss
Carver, as happened two or three times through Berry’s connivance. Once
he had spent the greater part of an evening in the studio, where he
talked nearly all the time with Miss Carver, and he found out that she
was the daughter of an old ship’s captain at Corbitant; her mother was
dead, and her aunt had kept house for her father. It was an old square
house that her grandfather built, in the days when Corbitant had direct
trade with France. She described it minutely, and told how a French
gentleman had died there in exile at the time of the French revolution
and who was said to haunt the house; but Miss Carver had never seen any
ghosts in it. They all began to talk of ghosts and weird experiences;
even Berry had had some strange things happen to him in the West. Then
the talk broke in two again, and Lemuel sat apart with Miss Carver, who
told at length the plot of a story she had been reading; it was a story
called _Romola_; and she said she would lend it to Lemuel; she said she
did not see how any one could bear to be the least selfish or untrue
after reading it. That made Lemuel feel cold; but he could not break
away from her charm. She sat where the shaded lamp threw its soft light
on one side of her face; it looked almost like the face of a spirit, and
her eyes were full of a heavenly gentleness.

Lemuel asked himself how he could ever have thought them proud eyes. He
asked himself at the same time and perpetually, whether he was really
engaged to Statira or not. He thought how different this evening was
from those he spent with her. She could not talk about anything but
him and her dress; and ‘Manda Grier could not do anything but say saucy
things which she thought were smart. Miss Swan was really witty; it was
as good as the theatre to hear her and Berry going on together. Berry
was pretty bright; there was no denying it. He sang to his banjo that
night; one of the songs was Spanish; he had learned it in New Mexico.

Lemuel began to understand better how such nice young ladies could go
with Berry. At first, after Berry talked so to him that night in the
office against Statira, he determined that he would keep away from him.
But Berry was so sociable and good-natured that he could not. The first
thing he knew, Lemuel was laughing at something Berry said, and then he
could not help himself.

Berry was coming now, every chance he had, to talk about the
art-students. He seemed to take it for granted that Lemuel was as much
interested in Miss Carver as he was himself in Miss Swan; and Lemuel did
begin to speak of her in a shy way. Berry asked him if he had noticed
that she looked like that Spanish picture of the Virgin that Miss Swan
had pinned up next to the door; and Lemuel admitted that there was some
resemblance.

“Notice those eyes of hers, so deep, and sorry for everybody in general?
If it was anybody in particular, _that_ fellow would be in luck. Oh,
she’s a dumpling, there’s no mistake about it! ‘Nymph, in thy orisons be
all my sins remembered!’ That’s Miss Carver’s style. She looks as if she
just _wanted_ to forgive somebody something. I’m afraid you ain’t wicked
enough, Barker. Look here! What’s the reason we can’t make up a little
party for the Easter service at the Catholic cathedral Sunday night? The
girls would like to go, I know.”

“No, no, I can’t! I mustn’t!” said Lemuel, and he remained steadfast in
his refusal. It would be the second Sunday night that he had not seen
Statira, and he felt that he must not let it pass so. Berry went off
to the cathedral with the art-students; and he kept out of the way till
they were gone.

He said to himself that he would go a little later than usual to see
Statira, to let her know that he was not so very anxious; but when he
found her alone, and she cried on his neck, and owned that she had not
behaved as she should that night when she went to see the pictures, and
that she had been afraid he hated her, and was not coming any more, he
had stayed away so long, his heart was melted, and he did everything to
soothe and comfort her, and they were more loving together than they had
been since the first time. ‘Manda Grier came in, and said through her
nose, like an old country-woman, “‘The falling out of faithful friends,
renewing is of love!’” and Statira exclaimed in the old way, “‘_Manda_!”
 that he had once thought so cunning, and rested there in his arms with
her cheek tight pressed against his.

She did not talk; except when she was greatly excited about something,
she rarely had anything to say. She had certain little tricks, poutings,
bridlings, starts, outcries, which had seemed the most bewitching things
in the world to Lemuel. She tried all these now, unaffectedly enough, in
listening to his account of his visit home, and so far as she could she
vividly sympathised with him.

He came away heavy and unhappy. Somehow, these things no longer sufficed
for him. He compared this evening with the last he had spent with the
art-students, which had left his brain in a glow, and kept him awake
for hours with luminous thoughts. But he had got over that unkindness
to Statira, and he was glad of that. He pitied her now, and he said to
himself that if he could get her away from ‘Manda Grier, and under the
influence of such girls as Miss Swan and Miss Carver, it would be much
better for her. He did not relent toward ‘Manda Grier; he disliked
her more than ever, and in the friendship which he dramatised between
Statira and Miss Carver, he saw her cast adrift without remorse.

Sewell had told him that he was always at leisure Monday night, and the
next evening Lemuel went to pay his first visit to the minister since
his first day in Boston. It was early, and Evans, who usually came that
evening, had not arrived yet, but Sewell had him in his thought when he
hurried forward to meet his visitor.

“Oh, is it you, Mr. Barker?” he asked in a note of surprise. “I am glad
to see you. I had been intending to come and look you up again. Will
you sit down? Mr. Evans was here the other night, and we were talking of
you. I hope you are all well?”

“Very well, thank you,” said Lemuel, taking the hand the minister
offered, and then taking the chair he indicated. Sewell did not know
exactly whether to like the greater ease which Lemuel showed in his
presence; but there was nothing presumptuous in it, and he could not
help seeing the increased refinement of the young man’s beauty. The knot
between his eyes gave him interest, while it inflicted a vague pang upon
the minister. “I have been at home since I saw you.” Lemuel looked down
at his neat shoes to see if they were in fit state for the minister’s
study-carpet, and Sewell’s eye sympathetically following, wandered to
the various details of Lemuel’s simple and becoming dress,--the light
spring suit which he had indulged himself in at the Misfit Parlours
since his mother had bidden him keep his money for himself and not send
so much of it home.

“Ah, have you?” cried the minister. “I hope you found your people all
well? How is the place looking? I suppose the season isn’t quite so
advanced as it is with us.”

“There’s some snow in the woods yet,” said Lemuel, laying the stick
he carried across the hat-brim on his knees. “Mother was well; but my
sister and her husband have had a good deal of sickness.”

“Oh, I’m sorry for that,” said Sewell, with the general sympathy which
Evans accused him of keeping on tap professionally. “Well, how did
you like the looks of Willoughby Pastures compared with Boston? Rather
quieter, I suppose.”

“Yes, it was quieter,” answered Lemuel.

“But the first touch of spring must be very lovely there! I find myself
very impatient with these sweet, early days in town. I envy you your
escape to such a place.”

Lemuel opposed a cold silence to the lurking didacticism of these
sentences, and Sewell hastened to add, “And I wish I could have had
your experience in contrasting the country and the town, after your long
sojourn here, on your first return home. Such a chance can come but once
in a lifetime, and to very few.”

“There are some pleasant things about the country,” Lemuel began.

“Oh, I am sure of it!” cried Sewell, with cheerful aimlessness.

“The stillness was a kind of rest, after the noise here; I think any one
might be glad to get back to such a place----”

“I was sure you would,” interrupted Sewell.

“If he was discouraged or broken down any way,” Lemuel calmly added.

“Oh!” said Sewell. “You mean that you found more sympathy among your old
friends and neighbours than you do here?”

“No,” said Lemuel bluntly. “That’s what city people think. But it’s all
a mistake. There isn’t half the sympathy in the country that there is
in the city. Folks pry into each other’s business more, but they don’t
really care so much. What I mean is that you could live cheaper, and
the fight isn’t so hard. You might have to use your hands more, but
you wouldn’t have to use your head hardly at all. There isn’t so much
opposition--competition.”

“Oh,” said Sewell a second time. “But this competition--this
struggle--in which one or the other must go to the wall, isn’t that
painful?”

“I don’t know as it is,” answered Lemuel, “as long as you’re young and
strong. And it don’t always follow that one must go to the wall. I’ve
seen some things where both got on better.”

Sewell succumbed to this worldly wisdom. He was frequently at the
disadvantage men of cloistered lives must be, in having his theories
in advance of his facts. He now left this point, and covertly touched
another that had come up in his last talk with Evans about Barker.
“But you find in the country, don’t you, a greater equality of social
condition? People are more on a level, and have fewer artificial
distinctions.”

“Yes, there’s that,” admitted Lemuel. “I’ve worried a good deal about
that, for I’ve had to take a servant’s place in a good many things, and
I’ve thought folks looked down on me for it, even when they didn’t seem
to intend to do it. But I guess it isn’t so bad as I thought when I
first began to notice it. Do you suppose it is?” His voice was suddenly
tense with personal interest in the question which had ceased to be
abstract.

“Oh, certainly not,” said the minister, with an ease which he did not
feel.

“I presume I had what you may call a servant’s place at Miss Vane’s,”
 pursued Lemuel unflinchingly, “and I’ve been what you may call head
waiter at the St. Albans, since I’ve been there. If a person heard
afterwards, when I had made out something, if I ever did, that I had
been a servant, would they--they--despise me for it?”

“Not unless they were very silly people,” said Sewell cordially, “I can
assure you.”

“But if they had ever seen me doing a servant’s work, wouldn’t they
always remember it, no matter what I was afterwards?” Sewell hesitated,
and Lemuel hurried to add, “I ask because I’ve made up my mind not to be
anything but clerk after this.”

Sewell pitied the simple shame, the simple pride. “That isn’t the
question for you to ask, my dear boy,” he answered gently, and with
an affection which he had never felt for his charge before. “There’s
another question, more important, and one which you must ask yourself:
‘_Should I care if they did?_’ After all, the matter’s in your own
hands. Your soul’s always your own till you do something wrong.”

“Yes, I understand that.” Lemuel sat silently thoughtful, fingering his
hat-band. It seemed to Sewell that he wished to ask something else, and
was mustering his courage; but if this was so, it exhaled in a sigh, and
he remained silent.

“I should be sorry,” pursued the minister, “to have you dwell upon such
things. There are certain ignoble facts in life which we can best combat
by ignoring them. A slight of almost any sort ceases to be when you
cease to consider it.” This did not strike Sewell as wholly true when he
had said it, and he was formulating some modification of it in his mind,
when Lemuel said--

“I presume a person can help himself some by being ashamed of caring for
such things, and that’s what I’ve tried to do.”

“Yes, that’s what I meant----”

“I guess I’ve exaggerated the whole thing some. But if a thing is so,
thinking it ain’t won’t unmake it.”

“No,” admitted Sewell reluctantly. “But I should be sorry, all the same,
if you let it annoy--grieve you. What has pleased me in what I’ve been
able to observe in you, has been your willingness to take hold of any
kind of honest work. I liked finding you with your coat off washing
dishes, that morning, at the Wayfarer’s Lodge, and I liked your going at
once to Miss Vane’s in a--as you did----”

“Of course,” Lemuel interrupted, “I could do it before I knew how it was
looked at here.”

“And couldn’t you do it now?”

“Not if there was anything else.”

“Ah, that’s the great curse of it; that’s what I deplore,” Sewell broke
out, “in our young people coming from the country to the city. They must
all have some genteel occupation! I don’t blame them; but I would gladly
have saved you this experience--this knowledge--if I could. I felt that
I had done you a kind of wrong in being the means, however indirectly
and innocently, of your coming to Boston, and I would willingly have
done anything to have you go back to the country. But you seemed to
distrust me--to find something hostile in me--and I did not know how to
influence you.”

“Yes, I understand that,” said Lemuel. “I couldn’t help it, at first.
But I’ve got to see it all in a different light since then. I know that
you meant the best by me. I know now that what I wrote wasn’t worth
anything, and just how you must have looked at it. I didn’t know some
things then that I do now; and since I have got to know a little more I
have understood better what you meant by all you said.”

“I am very glad,” said Sewell, with sincere humility, “that you have
kept no hard feeling against me.”

“Oh, not at all. It’s all right now. I couldn’t explain very well that I
hadn’t come to the city just to be in the city, but because I had to
do something to help along at home. You didn’t seem to understand that
there wa’n’t anything there for me to take hold of.”

“No, I’m afraid I didn’t, or wouldn’t quite understand that; I was
talking and acting, I’m afraid, from a preconceived notion.” Lemuel made
no reply, not having learned yet to utter the pleasant generalities with
which city people left a subject; and after a while Sewell added, “I am
glad to have seen your face so often at church. You have been a great
deal in my mind, and I have wished to do something to make your life
happy, and useful to you in the best way, here, but I haven’t quite
known how.” At this point Sewell realised that it was nearly eight
months since Lemuel had come to Boston, and he said contritely, “I have
not made the proper effort, I’m afraid; but I did not know exactly how
to approach you. You were rather a difficult subject,” he continued,
with a smile in which Lemuel consented to join, “but now that we’ve come
to a clearer understanding--” He broke off and asked, “Have you many
acquaintances in Boston?”

Lemuel hesitated, and cleared his throat, “Not many.”

Something in his manner prompted the minister to say, “That is such a
very important thing for young men in a strange place. I wish you
would come oftener to see us, hereafter. Young men, in the want of
companionship, often form disadvantageous acquaintances, which they
can’t shake off afterwards, when they might wish to do so. I don’t mean
evil acquaintance; I certainly couldn’t mean that in your case; but
frivolous ones, from which nothing high or noble can come--nothing of
improvement or development.”

Lemuel started at the word and blushed. It was Berry’s word. Sewell put
his own construction on the start and the blush.

“Especially,” he went on, “I should wish any young man whom I was
interested in to know refined and noble woman.” He felt that this
was perhaps in Lemuel’s case too much like prescribing port wine and
carriage exercise to an indigent patient, and he added, “If you cannot
know such women, it is better to know none at all. It is not what women
say or do, so much as the art they have of inspiring a man to make the
best of himself. The accidental acquaintances that young people are so
apt to form are in most cases very detrimental. There is no harm in them
of themselves, perhaps, but all irregularity in the life of the young is
to be deplored.”

“Do you mean,” asked Lemuel, with that concreteness which had alarmed
Sewell before, “that they ought to be regularly introduced?”

“I mean that a young girl who allowed a young man to make her
acquaintance outside of the--the--social sanctions--would be apt to be a
silly or romantic person, at the best. Of course, there are exceptions.
But I should be very sorry if any young man I knew--no; why shouldn’t I
say _you_, at once?--should involve himself in any such way. One thing
leads to another, especially with the young; and the very fact of
irregularity, of romance, of strangeness in an acquaintance, throws a
false glamour over the relation, and appeals to the sentiments in an
unwarranted degree.”

“Yes, that is so,” said Lemuel.

The admission stimulated Sewell in the belief that he had a clue in
his hand which it was his duty to follow up. “The whole affair loses
proportion and balance. The fancy becomes excited, and some of the most
important interests--the very most important interests of life--are
committed to impulse.” Lemuel remained silent, and it seemed the silence
of conviction. “A young man is better for knowing women older than
himself, more cultivated, devoted to higher things. Of course, young
people must see each other, must fall in love and get married; but
there need be no haste about such things. If there is haste--if there is
rashness, thoughtlessness--there is sure to be unhappiness. Men are apt
to outgrow their wives intellectually, if their wives’ minds are set on
home and children, as they should be, and allowance for this ought to be
made, if possible. I would rather that in the beginning the wife should
be the mental superior. I hope it will be several years yet before you
think seriously of such things, but when the time comes, I hope you will
have seen some young girl--there are such for every one of us--whom it
is civilisation and enlightenment, refinement, and elevation, simply
to know. On the other hand, a silly girl’s influence is degrading and
ruinous. She either drags those attached to her down to her own level;
or she remains a weight and a clog upon the life of a man who loves
her.”

“Yes,” said Lemuel, with a sigh which Sewell interpreted as that of
relief from danger recognised in time.

He pursued eagerly. “I could not warn any one too earnestly against such
an entanglement.”

Lemuel rose and looked about with a troubled glance. Sewell continued:
“Any such marriage--a marriage upon any such conditions--is sure to be
calamitous; and if the conditions are recognised beforehand, it is sure
to be iniquitous. So far from urging the fulfilment of even a promise,
in such a case, I would have every such engagement broken, in the
interest of humanity--of morality----”

Mrs. Sewell came into the room, and gave a little start of surprise,
apparently not mixed with pleasure, at seeing Lemuel. She had never been
able to share her husband’s interest in him, while insisting upon his
responsibility; she disliked him not logically, but naturally, for the
wrong and folly which he had been the means of her husband’s involving
himself in; Miss Vane’s kindliness toward Lemuel, which still survived,
and which expressed itself in questions about him whenever she met the
minister, was something that Mrs. Sewell could not understand. She now
said, “Oh! Mr. Barker!” and coldly gave him her hand. “Have you been
well? Must you go?”

“Yes, thank you. I have got to be getting back. Well, good evening.” He
bowed to the Sewells.

“You must come again to see me,” said the minister, and looked at his
wife.

“Yes, it has been a very long time since you were here,” Mrs. Sewell
added.

“I haven’t had a great deal of time to myself,” said Lemuel, and he
contrived to get himself out of the room.

Sewell followed him down to the door, in the endeavour to say something
more on the subject his wife had interrupted, but he only contrived
to utter some feeble repetitions. He came back in vexation, which he
visited upon Lemuel. “Silly fellow!” he exclaimed.

“What has he been doing now?” asked Mrs. Sewell, with reproachful
discouragement.

“Oh, _I_ don’t know! I suspect that he’s been involving himself in some
ridiculous love affair!” Mrs. Sewell looked a silent inculpation. “It’s
largely conjecture on my part, of course,--he’s about as confiding as an
oyster!--but I fancy I have said some things in a conditional way that
will give him pause. I suspect from his manner that he has entangled
himself with some other young simpleton, and that he’s ashamed of it,
or tired of it, already. If that’s the case, I have hit the nail on the
head. I told him that a foolish, rash engagement was better broken than
kept. The foolish marriages that people rush into are the greatest bane
of life!”

“And would you really have advised him, David,” asked his wife, “to
break off an engagement if he had made one?”

“Of course I should! I----”

“Then I am glad I came in in time to prevent your doing anything so
wicked.”

“Wicked?” Sewell turned from his desk, where he was about to sit down,
in astonishment.

“Yes! Do you think that nobody else is to be considered in such a thing?
What about the poor, silly girl if he breaks off with her? Oh, you men
are all alike! Even the best! You think it is a dreadful thing for a
young man to be burdened with a foolish love affair at the beginning
of his career; but you never think of the girl whose whole career is
spoiled, perhaps, if the affair is broken off! Hasn’t she any right to
be considered?”

“I should think,” said Sewell, distinctly daunted, “that they were
equally fortunate, if it were broken off.”

“O my dear, you know you don’t think anything of the kind! If he has
more mind than she has, and is capable of doing something in the world,
he goes on and forgets her; but she remembers him. Perhaps it’s her one
chance in life to get married--to have a home. You know very well that
in a case of that kind--a rash engagement, as you call it--both are to
blame; and shall one do all the suffering? Very probably his fancy was
taken first, and he followed her up, and flattered her into liking him;
and now shall he leave her because he’s tired of her?”

“Yes,” said Sewell, recovering from the first confusion which his wife’s
unexpected difference of opinion had thrown him into, “I should think
that was the very best reason in the world why he should leave her.
Would his marrying make matters worse or better if he were tired of her?
As for wickedness, I should feel myself guilty if I did not do my utmost
to prevent marriages between people when one or other wished to break
their engagement, and had not the moral courage to do so. There is no
more pernicious delusion than that one’s word ought to be kept in such
an affair, after the heart has gone out of it, simply because it’s been
given.”

“David!”

But Sewell was not to be restrained. “I am right about this, Lucy,
and you know it. Half the miserable marriages in the world could be
prevented, if there were only some frank and fearless adviser at hand to
say to the foolish things that if they no longer fully and freely love
each other they can commit no treason so deadly as being true to their
word. I wish,” he now added, “that I could be the means of breaking
off every marriage that the slightest element of doubt enters into
beforehand. I should leave much less work for the divorce courts.
The trouble comes from that crazy and mischievous principle of false
self-sacrifice that I’m always crying out against. If a man has ceased
to love the woman he has promised to marry--or _vice versa_--the best
possible thing they can do, the only righteous thing, is not to marry.”

Mrs. Sewell could not deny this. She directed an oblique attack from
another quarter, as women do, while affecting not to have changed her
ground at all. “Very well, then, David, I wish you would have nothing to
do with that crazy and mischievous principle yourself. I wish you would
let this ridiculous Barker of yours alone from this time forth. He has
found a good place, where he is of use, and where he is doing very well.
Now I think your responsibility is fairly ended. I hope you won’t meddle
with his love affairs, if he has any; for if you do, you will probably
have your hands full. He is very good looking, and all sorts of silly
little geese will be falling in love with him.”

“Well, so far his love troubles are purely conjectural,” said Sewell
with a laugh. “I’m bound to say that Barker himself didn’t say a word to
justify the conjecture that he was either in love or wished to be out of
it. However, I’ve given him some wholesome advice which he’ll be all the
better for taking, merely as a prophylactic, if nothing else.”

“I am tired of him,” sighed Mrs. Sewell. “Is he going to keep
perpetually turning up, in this way? I hope you were not very pressing
with him in your invitations to him to call again?”

Sewell smiled. “You were not, my dear.”

“You let him take too much of your time. I was so provoked, when I heard
you going on with him, that I came down to put an end to it.”

“Well, you succeeded,” said Sewell easily. “Don’t you think he’s greatly
improved in the short time he’s been in the city?”

“He’s very well dressed. I hope he isn’t extravagant.”

“He’s not only well dressed, but he’s beginning to be well spoken. I
believe he’s beginning to observe that there is such a thing as not
talking through the nose. He still says, ‘I don’t know as,’ but most
of the men they turn out of Harvard say that; I’ve heard some of the
professors say it.”

Mrs. Sewell was not apparently interested in this.



XXII.


That night Lemuel told Mrs. Harmon that she must not expect him to
do anything thenceforward but look after the accounts and the general
management; she must get a head-waiter, and a boy to run the elevator.
She consented to this, as she would have consented to almost anything
else that he proposed.

He had become necessary to the management of the St. Albans in every
department; and if the lady boarders felt that they could not now get on
without him, Mrs. Harmon was even more dependent.

With her still nominally at the head of affairs, and controlling the
expenses as a whole, no radical reform could be effected. But there were
details of the outlay in which Lemuel was of use, and he had brought
greater comfort into the house for less money. He rejected her old
and simple device of postponing the payment of debt as an economical
measure, and substituted cash dealings with new purveyors. He gradually
but inevitably took charge of the storeroom, and stopped the waste
there; early in his administration he had observed the gross and foolish
prodigality with which the portions were sent from the carving-room, and
after replacing Mrs. Harmon’s nephew there, he established a standard
portion that gave all the needed variety, and still kept the quantity
within bounds. It came to his taking charge of this department entirely,
and as steward he carved the meats, and saw that nothing was in a way to
become cold before he opened the dining-room doors as head-waiter.

His activities promoted the leisure which Mrs. Harmon had always
enjoyed, and which her increasing bulk fitted her to adorn. Her nephew
willingly relinquished the dignity of steward. He said that his furnaces
were as much as he wanted to take care of; especially as in former
years, when it had begun to come spring, he had experienced a stress of
mind in keeping the heat just right, when the ladies were all calling
down the tubes for more of it or less of it, which he should now be very
glad not to have complicated with other cares. He said that now he could
look forward to the month of May with some pleasure.

The guests, sensibly or insensibly, according to their several
temperaments, shared the increased ease that came from Lemuel’s
management. The service was better in every way; their beds were
promptly made, their rooms were periodically swept; every night when
they came up from dinner they found their pitchers of ice-water at their
doors. This change was not accomplished without much of that rebellion
and renunciation which was known at the St. Albans as kicking.
Chambermaids and table-girls kicked, but they were replaced by Lemuel,
who went himself to the intelligence office, and pledged the new ones to
his rule beforehand. There was even some kicking among the guests, who
objected to the new portions, and to having a second bill sent them if
the first remained unpaid for a week; but the general sense of the hotel
was in Lemuel’s favour.

He had no great pleasure in the reform he had effected. His heart was
not in it, except as waste and disorder and carelessness were painful
to him. He suffered to promote a better state of things, as many a
woman whose love is for books or pictures or society suffers for the
perfection of her housekeeping, and sacrifices her taste to achieve it.
He would have liked better to read, to go to lectures, to hear sermons;
with the knowledge of Mr. Evans’s life as an editor and the incentive
of a writer near him, he would have liked to try again if he could not
write something, though the shame of his failure in Mr. Sewell’s eyes
had burned so deep. Above all, since he had begun to see how city people
regarded the kind of work he had been doing, he would have liked to get
out of the hotel business altogether, if he could have been sure of any
other.

As the spring advanced his cares grew lighter. Most of the regular
boarders went away to country hotels and became regular boarders there.
Their places were only partially filled by transients from the South
and West, who came and went, and left Lemuel large spaces of leisure, in
which he read, or deputed Mrs. Harmon’s nephew to the care of the office
and pursued his studies of Boston, sometimes with Mr. Evans,--whose
newspaper kept him in town, and who liked to prowl about with him,
and to frequent the odd summer entertainments,--but mostly alone. They
became friends after a fashion, and were in each other’s confidence as
regarded their opinions and ideas, rather than their history; now and
then Evans dropped a word about the boy he had lost, or his wife’s
health, but Lemuel kept his past locked fast in his breast.

The art-students had gone early in the summer, and Berry had left Boston
for Wyoming at the end of the spring term of the law-school. He had not
been able to make up his mind to pop before Miss Swan departed, but he
thought he should fetch it by another winter; and he had got leave to
write to her, on condition, he said, that he should conduct the whole
correspondence himself.

Miss Carver had left Lemuel dreaming of her as an ideal, yet true, with
a slow, rustic constancy, to Statira. For all that had been said and
done, he had not swerved explicitly from her. There was no talk of
marriage between them, and could not be; but they were lovers still,
and when Miss Carver was gone, and the finer charm of her society
was unfelt, he went back to much of the old pleasure he had felt in
Statira’s love. The resentment of her narrow-mindedness, the shame for
her ignorance passed; the sense of her devotion remained.

‘Manda Grier wanted her to go home with her for part of the summer, but
she would not have consented if Lemuel had not insisted. She wrote him
back ill-spelt, scrawly little letters, in one of which she told him
that her cough was all gone, and she was as well as ever. She took a
little more cold when she returned to town in the first harsh September
weather, and her cough returned, but she said she did not call it
anything now.

The hotel began to fill up again for the winter. Berry preceded the
art-students by some nervous weeks, in which he speculated upon what he
should do if they did not come at all. Then they came, and the winter
passed, with repetitions of the last winter’s events, and a store of
common memories that enriched the present, and insensibly deepened the
intimacy in which Lemuel found himself. He could not tell whither the
present was carrying him; he only knew that he had drifted so far from
the squalor of his past, that it seemed like the shadow of a shameful
dream.

He did not go to see Statira so often as he used; and she was patient
with his absences, and defended him against ‘Manda Grier, who did not
scruple to tell her that she believed the fellow was fooling with her,
and who could not always keep down a mounting dislike of Lemuel in
his presence. One night towards spring, when he returned early from
Statira’s, he found Berry in the office at the St. Albans. “That you,
old man?” he asked. “Well, I’m glad you’ve come. Just going to leave
a little Billy Ducks for you here, but now I needn’t. The young ladies
sent me down to ask if you had a copy of Whittier’s poems; they want to
find something in it. I told ‘em Longfellow would do just as well, but
I couldn’t seem to convince ‘em. They say he didn’t write the particular
poem they want.”

“Yes, I’ve got Whittier’s poems here,” said Lemuel, unlocking his desk.
“It belongs to Mr. Evans; I guess he won’t care if I lend it.”

“Well, now, I tell you what,” said Berry; “don’t you let a borrowed book
like that go out of your hands. Heigh? You just bring it up yourself.
See?” He winked the eye next Lemuel with exaggerated insinuation.
“They’ll respect you all the more for being so scrupulous, and I guess
they won’t be very much disappointed on general principles if you come
along. There’s lots of human nature in girls--the best of ‘em. I’ll
tell ‘em I left you lookin’ for it. I don’t mind a lie or two in a good
cause. But you hurry along up, now.”

He was gone before Lemuel could stop him; he could not do anything but
follow.

It appeared that it was Miss Swan who wished to see the poem; she could
not remember the name of it, but she was sure she should know it if she
saw it in the index. She mingled these statements with her greetings to
Lemuel, and Miss Carver seemed as glad to see him. She had a little more
colour than usual, and they were all smiling, so that he knew Berry had
been getting off some of his jokes. But he did not care.

Miss Swan found the poem as she had predicted, and, “Now all keep
still,” she said, “and I’ll read it.” But she suddenly added, “Or no;
you read it, Mr. Barker, won’t you?”

“If Barker ain’t just in voice to-night, I’ll read it,” suggested Berry.

But she would not let him make this diversion. She ignored his offer,
and insisted upon Lemuel’s reading. “Jessie says you read beautifully.
That passage in _Romola_,” she reminded him; but Lemuel said it was only
a few lines, and tried to excuse himself. At heart he was proud of his
reading, and he ended by taking the book.

When he had finished the two girls sighed.

“Isn’t it beautiful, Jessie?” said Miss Swan.

“Beautiful!” answered her friend.

Berry yawned.

“Well, I don’t see much difference between that and a poem of
Longfellow’s. Why wouldn’t Longfellow have done just as well? Honestly,
now! Why isn’t one poem just as good as another, for all practical
purposes?”

“It is, for some people,” said Miss Swan.

Berry figured an extreme anguish by writhing in his chair. Miss Swan
laughed in spite of herself, and they began to talk in their usual
banter, which Miss Carver never took part in, and which Lemuel was quite
incapable of sharing. If it had come to savage sarcasm or a logical
encounter, he could have held his own, but he had a natural weight and
slowness that disabled him from keeping up with Berry’s light talk;
he envied it, because it seemed to make everybody like him, and Lemuel
would willingly have been liked.

Miss Carver began to talk to him about the book, and then about Mr.
Evans. She asked him if he went much to his rooms, and Lemuel said no,
not at all, since the first time Mr. Evans had asked him up. He said,
after a pause, that he did not know whether he wanted him to come.

“I should think he would,” said Miss Carver. “It must be very gloomy
for him, with his wife such an invalid. He seems naturally such a gay
person.”

“Yes, that’s what I think,” said Lemuel.

“I wonder,” said the girl, “if it seems to you harder for a naturally
cheerful person to bear things, than for one who has always been rather
melancholy?”

“Yes, it does!” he answered with the pleasure and surprise young
people have in discovering any community of feeling; they have thought
themselves so utterly unlike each other. “I wonder why it should?”

“I don’t know; perhaps it isn’t so. But I always pity the cheerful
person the most.”

They recognised an amusing unreason in this, and laughed. Miss Swan
across the room had caught the name.

“Are you talking of Mrs. Evans?”

Berry got his banjo down from the wall, where Miss Swan allowed him to
keep it as bric-a-brac, and began to tune it.

“I don’t believe it agrees with this banjoseph being an object of
virtue,” he said. “What shall it be, ladies? Something light and gay,
adapted to disperse gloomy reflections?” He played a fandango. “How do
you like that? It has a tinge of melancholy in it, and yet it’s lively
too, as a friend of mine used to say about the Dead March.”

“Was his name Berry?” asked Miss Swan.

“Not Alonzo W., Jr.,” returned Berry tranquilly, and he and Miss Swan
began to joke together.

“I know a friend of Mr. Evans’s,” said Lemuel to Miss Carver. “Mr.
Sewell. Have you ever heard him preach?”

“Oh yes, indeed. We go nearly every Sunday morning.”

“I nearly always go in the evening now,” said Lemuel. “Don’t you like
him?”

“Yes,” said the girl. “There’s something about him--I don’t know
what--that doesn’t leave you feeling how bad you are, but makes you want
to be better. He helps you so; and he’s so clear. And he shows that he’s
had all the mean and silly thoughts that you have. I don’t know--it’s as
if he were talking for each person alone.”

“Yes, that is exactly the way I feel!” Lemuel was proud of the
coincidence. He said, to commend himself further to Miss Carver, “I have
just been round to see him.”

“I should think you would value his acquaintance beyond anything,” said
the girl. “Is he just as earnest and simple as he is in the pulpit?”

“He’s just the same, every way.” Lemuel went a little further; “I knew
him before I came to Boston. He boarded one summer where we lived.”
 As he spoke he thought of the grey, old, unpainted house, and of his
brother-in-law with his stocking-feet on the stove-hearth, and his
mother’s bloomers; he thought of his arrest, and his night in the
police-station, his trial, and the Wayfarer’s Lodge; and he wondered
that he could think of such things and still look such a girl in the
face. But he was not without that strange joy in their being unknown to
her which reserved and latent natures feel in mere reticence, and which
we all experience in some degree when we talk with people and think of
our undiscovered lives.

They went on a long time, matching their opinions and feelings about
many things, as young people do, and fancying that much of what they
said was new with them. When he came away after ten o’clock, he thought
of one of the things that Sewell had said about the society of refined
and noble women: it was not so much what they said or did that helped;
it was something in them that made men say and do their best, and help
themselves to be refined and noble men, to make the most of themselves
in their presence. He believed that this was what Miss Carver had done,
and he thought how different it was with him when he came away from an
evening with Statira. Again he experienced that compassion for her, in
the midst of his pride and exultation; he asked himself what he could do
to help her; he did not see how she could be changed.

Berry followed him downstairs, and wanted to talk the evening over.

“I don’t see how I’m going to stand it much longer, Barker,” he said.
“I shall have to pop pretty soon or die, one of the two; and I’m afraid
either one ‘ll kill me. Wasn’t she lovely to-night? Honey in the comb,
sugar in the gourd, _I_ say! I wonder what it is about popping, anyway,
that makes it so hard, Barker? It’s simply a matter of business, if you
come to boil it down. You offer a fellow so many cattle, and let him
take ‘em or leave ‘em. But if the fellow happens to have on a long,
slim, olive-green dress of some colour, and holds her head like a whole
floral tribute on a stem, and _you_ happen to be the cattle you’re
offering, you can’t feel so independent about it, somehow. Well, what’s
the use? She’s a daisy, if ever there was one. Ever notice what a
peculiar blue her eyes are?”

“Blue?” said Lemuel. “They’re brown.”

“Look here, old man,” said Berry compassionately, “do you think I’ve
come down here to fool away my time talking about Miss Carver? We’ll
take some Saturday afternoon for that, when we haven’t got anything else
to do; but it’s Miss Swan that has the floor at present. What were
you two talking about over there, so long? I can’t get along with Miss
Carver worth a cent.”

“I hardly know what we did talk about,” said Lemuel dreamily.

“Well, I’ve got the same complaint, I couldn’t tell you ten words that
Madeline said--in thine absence let me call thee Madeline, sweet!--but I
knew it was making an immortal spirit of me, right straight along, every
time. The worst thing about an evening like this is, it don’t seem to
last any time at all. Why, when those girls began to put up their hands
to hide their yawns, I felt like I was just starting in for a short
call. I wish I could have had a good phonograph around. I’d put it on my
sleepless pillow, and unwind its precious record all through the watches
of the night.” He imitated the thin phantasmal squeak of the instrument
in repeating a number of Miss Swan’s characteristic phrases. “Yes, sir,
a pocket phonograph is the thing I’m after.”

“I don’t see how you can talk the way you do,” said Lemuel, shuddering
inwardly at Berry’s audacious freedom, and yet finding a certain comfort
in it.

“That’s just the way I felt myself at first. But you’ll get over it
as you go along. The nicest thing about their style of angel is that
they’re perfectly human, after all. You don’t believe it now, of course,
but you will.”

It only heightened Lemuel’s conception of Miss Carver’s character to
have Berry talk so lightly and daringly of her, in her relation to
him. He lay long awake after he went to bed, and in the turmoil of his
thoughts one thing was clear: so pure and high a being must never know
anything of his shameful past, which seemed to dishonour her through his
mere vicinity. He must go far from her, and she must not know why;
but long afterwards Mr. Sewell would tell her, and then she would
understand. He owed her this all the more because he could see now that
she was not one of the silly persons, as Mr. Sewell called them, who
would think meanly of him for having in his ignorance and inexperience,
done a servant’s work. His mind had changed about that, and he wondered
that he could ever have suspected her of such a thing.

About noon the next day the street door was opened hesitatingly, as if
by some one not used to the place; and when Lemuel looked up from the
menus he was writing, he saw the figure of one of those tramps who from
time to time presented themselves and pretended to want work. He scanned
the vagabond sharply, as he stood moulding a soft hat on his hands, and
trying to superinduce an air of piteous appeal upon the natural gaiety
of his swarthy face. “Well! what’s wanted?”

A dawning conjecture that had flickered up in the tramp’s eyes flashed
into full recognition.

“Why, mate!”

Lemuel’s heart stood still. “What--what do you want here?”

“Why, don’t you know me, mate?”

All his calamity confronted Lemuel.

“No,” he said, but nothing in him supported the lie he had uttered.

“Wayfarer’s Lodge?” suggested the other cheerfully. “Don’t you
remember?”

“No----”

“I guess you do,” said the mate easily. “Anyway, I remember you.”

Lemuel’s feeble defence gave way. “Come in here,” he said, and he shut
the door upon the intruder and himself, and submitted to his fate. “What
is it?” he asked huskily.

“Why, mate! what’s the matter? Nobody’s goin’ to hurt you,” said the
other encouragingly. “What’s your lay here?”

“Lay?”

“Yes. Got a job here?”

“I’m the clerk,” said Lemuel, with the ghost of his former pride of
office.

“Clerk?” said the tramp with good-humoured incredulity. “Where’s your
diamond pin? Where’s your rings?” He seemed willing to prolong the
playful inquiry. “Where’s your patent leather boots?”

“It’s not a common hotel. It’s a sort of a family hotel, and I’m the
clerk. What do you want?”

The young fellow lounged back easily in his chair. “Why, I did drop
in to beat the house out of a quarter if I could, or may be ten cents.
Thank you, sir. God bless you, sir.” He interrupted himself to burlesque
a professional gratitude. “That style of thing, you know. But I don’t
know about it now. Look here, mate! what’s the reason you couldn’t get
me a job here too? I been off on a six months’ cruise since I saw you,
and I’d like a job on shore first rate. Couldn’t you kind of ring me in
for something? I ain’t afraid of work, although I never did pretend to
love it. But I should like to reform now, and get into something steady.
Heigh?”

“There isn’t anything to do--there’s no place for you,” Lemuel began.

“Oh, pshaw, now, mate, you think!” pleaded the other. “I’ll take any
sort of a job; I don’t care what it is. I ain’t got any o’ that false
modesty about me. Been round too much. And I don’t want to go back to
the Wayfarer’s Lodge. It’s a good place, and I know my welcome’s warm
and waitin’ for me, between two hot plates; but the thing of it is, it’s
demoralisin’. That’s what the chaplain said just afore I left the--ship,
‘n’ I promised him I’d give work a try, anyway. Now you just think up
something! I ain’t in any hurry.” In proof he threw his soft hat on the
desk, and took up one of the _menus_. “This your bill of fare? Well,
it ain’t bad! Vurmiselly soup, boiled holibut, roast beef, roast turkey
with cranberry sauce, roast pork with apple sauce, chicken corquettes,
ditto patties, three kinds of pie; bread puddin’, both kinds of sauce;
ice cream, nuts, and coffee. Why, mate!”

Lemuel sat dumb and motionless. He could see no way out of the net that
had entangled him. He began feebly to repeat. “There isn’t anything,”
 when some one tried the door.

“Mr. Barker!” called Mrs. Harmon. “You in there?”

He made it worse by waiting a moment before he rose and opened the
door. “I didn’t know I’d locked it.” The lie came unbidden; he groaned
inwardly to think how he was telling nothing but lies. Mrs. Harmon did
not come in. She glanced with a little question at the young fellow, who
had gathered his hat from the table, and risen with gay politeness.

It was a crisis of the old sort; the elevator boy had kicked, and Mrs.
Harmon said, “I just stopped to say that I was going out and I could
stop at the intelligence office myself to get an elevator boy--”

The mate took the word with a joyous laugh at the coincidence. “It’s
just what me and Mr. Barker was talking about! I’m from up his way, and
I’ve just come down to Boston to see if I couldn’t look up a job; and
he was tellin’ me, in here, about your wantin’ a telegraph--I mean a
elevator-boy, but he didn’t think it would suit me. But I should like
to give it a try, anyway. It’s pretty dull up our way, and I got to do
something. Mr. Barker ‘ll tell you who I am.”

He winked at Lemuel with the eye not exposed to Mrs. Harmon, and gave
her a broad, frank, prepossessing smile.

“Well, of course,” said Mrs. Harmon smoothly, “any friend of Mr.
Barker’s----”

“We just been talkin’ over old times in here,” interrupted the mate. “I
guess it was me shoved that bolt in. I didn’t want to have anybody see
me talkin’ with him till I’d got some clothes that would be a little
more of a credit to him.”

“Well, that’s right,” said Mrs. Harmon appreciatively. “I always like
to have everybody around my house looking neat and respectable. I keep
a first-class house, and I don’t have any but first-class help, and I
expect them to dress accordingly, from the highest to the lowest.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the mate, “that’s the way I felt about it myself, me
and Mr. Barker both; and he was just tellin’ me that if I was a mind to
give the elevator a try, he’d lend me a suit of his clothes.”

“Very well, then,” said Mrs. Harmon; “if Mr. Barker and you are a mind
to fix it up between you----”

“Oh, we are!” said the mate. “There won’t be any trouble about that.”

“I don’t suppose I need to stop at the intelligence office. I presume
Mr. Barker will show you how to work the elevator. He helped us out with
it himself at first.”

“Yes, that’s what he said,” the other chimed in. “But I guess I’d better
go and change my clothes first. Well, mate,” he added to Lemuel, “I’m
ready when you’re ready.”

Lemuel rose trembling from the chair where he had been chained, as it
seemed to him, while the mate and Mrs. Harmon arranged their affair with
his tacit connivance. He had not spoken a word; he feared so much to
open his lips lest another lie should come out of them, that his sense
of that danger was hardly less than his terror at the captivity in which
he found himself.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Harmon, “I’ll look after the office till you get back.
Mr. Barker ‘ll show you where you can sleep.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said the mate, with gratitude that won upon her.

“And I’m glad,” she added, “that it’s a friend of Mr. Barker’s that’s
going to have the place. We think everything of Mr. Barker here.”

“Well, you can’t think more of him than what we do up home,” rejoined
the other with generous enthusiasm.

In Lemuel’s room he was not less appreciative. “Why, mate, it does me
good to see how you’ve got along. I got to write a letter home at once,
and tell the folks what friends you’ve got in Boston. I don’t believe
they half understand it.” He smiled joyously upon Lemuel, who stood
stock still, with such despair in his face that probably the wretch
pitied him.

“Look here, mate, don’t you be afraid now! I’m on the reform lay with
all my might, and I mean business. I ain’t a-goin’ to do you any harm,
you bet your life. These your things?” he asked, taking Lemuel’s winter
suit from the hooks where they hung, and beginning to pull off his coat.
He talked on while he changed his dress. “I was led away, and I got my
come-uppings, or the other fellow’s comeuppings, for _I_ wa’n’t to blame
any, and I always said so, and I guess the judge would say so too, if it
was to do over again.”

A frightful thought stung Lemuel to life. “The judge? Was it a
passenger-ship?”

The other stopped buttoning Lemuel’s trousers round him to slap himself
on the thigh. “Why, mate! don’t you know enough to know what a _sea
voyage_ is? Why, I’ve been down to the _Island_ for the last six months!
Hain’t you never heard it called a sea voyage? Why, we _always_ come off
from a cruise when we git back! You don’t mean to say you never _been_
one?”

“Oh, my goodness!” groaned Lemuel. “Have--have you been in prison?”

“Why, of course.”

“Oh, what am I going to do?” whispered the miserable creature to
himself.

The other heard him. “Why, you hain’t got to do anything! I’m on the
reform, and you might leave everything layin’ around loose, and I
shouldn’t touch it. Fact! You ask the ship’s chaplain.”

He laughed in the midst of his assertions of good resolutions, but
sobered to the full extent, probably, of his face and nature, and tying
Lemuel’s cravat on at the glass, he said solemnly, “Mate, it’s all
right. I’m on the reform.”



XXIII.


Lemuel’s friend entered upon his duties with what may also be called
artistic zeal. He showed a masterly touch in managing the elevator from
the first trip. He was ready, cheerful, and obliging; he lacked nothing
but a little more reluctance and a Seaside Library novel to be a perfect
elevator-boy.

The ladies liked him at once; he was so pleasant and talkative, and so
full of pride in Lemuel that they could not help liking him; and several
of them promptly reached that stage of confidence where they told him,
as an old friend of Lemuel’s, they thought Lemuel read too much, and was
going to kill himself if he kept on a great deal longer. The mate said
he thought so too, and had noticed how bad Lemuel looked the minute he
set eyes on him. But he asked what was the use? He had said everything
he could to him about it. He was always just so, up at home. As he found
opportunity he did what he could to console Lemuel with furtive winks
and nods.

Lemuel dragged absently and haggardly through the day. In the evening he
told Mrs. Harmon that he had to go round and see Mr. Sewell a moment.

It was then nine o’clock, and she readily assented; she guessed Mr.
Williams--he had told her his name was Williams--could look after the
office while he was gone. Mr. Williams was generously glad to do so.
Behind Mrs. Harmon’s smooth large form, he playfully threatened her
with his hand levelled at his shoulder; but even this failed to gladden
Lemuel.

It was half-past nine when he reached the minister’s house, and the maid
had a visible reluctance at the door in owning that Mr. Sewell was at
home. Mrs. Sewell had instructed her not to be too eagerly candid with
people who came so late; but he was admitted, and Sewell came down from
his study to see him in the reception-room.

“What is the matter?” he asked at once, when he caught sight of Lemuel’s
face; “has anything gone wrong with you, Mr. Barker?” He could not help
being moved by the boy’s looks; he had a fleeting wish that Mrs. Sewell
were there to see him, and be moved too; and he prepared himself as he
might to treat the trouble which he now expected to be poured out.

“Yes,” said Lemuel, “I want to tell you; I want you to tell me what to
do.”

When he had put the case fully before the minister, his listener was
aware of wishing that it had been a love-trouble, such as he foreboded
at first.

He drew a long and deep breath, and before he began to speak he searched
himself for some comfort or encouragement, while Lemuel anxiously
scanned his face.

“Yes--yes! I see your--difficulty,” he began, making the futile attempt
to disown any share in it. “But perhaps--perhaps it isn’t so bad as it
seems. Perhaps no harm will come. Perhaps he really means to do well;
and if you are vigilant in--in keeping him out of temptation----” Sewell
stopped, sensible that he was not coming to anything, and rubbed his
forehead.

“Do you think,” asked Lemuel, dry mouthed with misery, “that I ought to
have told Mrs. Harmon at once?”

“Why, it is always best to be truthful and above-board--as a principle,”
 said the minister, feeling himself somehow dragged from his moorings.

“Then I had better do it yet!”

“Yes,” said Sewell, and he paused. “Yes. That is to say--As the
mischief is done--Perhaps--perhaps there is no haste. If you exercise
vigilance--But if he has been in prison--Do you know what he was in
for?”

“No. I didn’t know he had been in at all till we got to my room. And
then I couldn’t ask him--I was afraid to.”

“Yes,” said Sewell, kindly if helplessly.

“I was afraid, if I sent him off--or tried to--that he would tell about
my being in the Wayfarer’s Lodge that night, and they would think I had
been a tramp. I could have done it, but I thought he might tell some lie
about me; and they might get to know about the trial----”

“I see,” said Sewell.

“I hated to lie,” said Lemuel piteously, “but I seemed to have to.”

There was another yes on the minister’s tongue; he kept it back; but
he was aware of an instant’s relief in the speculation--the question
presented itself abstractly--as to whether it was ever justifiable or
excusable to lie. Were the Jesuitical casuists possibly right in
some slight, shadowy sort? He came back to Lemuel groaning in spirit.
“No--no--no!” he sighed; “we mustn’t admit that you _had_ to lie. We
must never admit that.” A truth flashed so vividly upon him that it
seemed almost escape. “What worse thing could have come from telling the
truth than has come from withholding it? And that would have been some
sort of end, and this--this is only the miserable beginning.”

“Yes,” said Lemuel, with all desirable humility. “But I couldn’t see it
at once.”

“Oh, I don’t blame you; I don’t blame _you_,” said Sewell. “It was
a sore temptation. I blame _myself_!” he exclaimed, with more
comprehensiveness than Lemuel knew; but he limited his self-accusal by
adding, “I ought to have told Mrs. Harmon myself what I knew of your
history; but I refrained because I knew you had never done any harm, and
I thought it cruel that you should be dishonoured by your misfortunes in
a relation where you were usefully and prosperously placed; and so--and
so I didn’t. But perhaps I was wrong. Yes, I was wrong. I have only
allowed the burden to fall more heavily upon you at last.”

It was respite for Lemuel to have some one else accusing himself, and
he did not refuse to enjoy it. He left the minister to wring all the
bitterness he could for himself out of his final responsibility. The
drowning man strangles his rescuer.

Sewell looked up, and loosened his collar as if really stifling. “Well,
well. We must find some way out of it. I will see--see what can be done
for you to-morrow.”

Lemuel recognised his dismissal. “If you say so, Mr. Sewell, I will go
straight back and tell Mrs. Harmon all about it.”

Sewell rose too. “No--no. There is no such haste. You had better leave
it to me now. I will see to it--in the morning.”

“Thank you,” said Lemuel. “I hate to give you so much trouble.”

“Oh,” said Sewell, letting him out at the street-door, and putting
probably less thought and meaning into the polite words than they had
ever contained before, “it’s no trouble.”

He went upstairs to his study, and found Mrs. Sewell waiting there.
“Well, _now_--what, David?”

“Now what?” he feebly echoed.

“Yes. What has that wretched creature come for now?”

“You may well call him a wretched creature,” sighed Sewell.

“Is he really engaged? Has he come to get you to marry him?”

“I think he’d rather have me bury him at present.” Sewell sat down, and,
bracing his elbow on his desk, rested his head heavily on his hand.

“Well,” said his wife, with a touch of compassion tempering her
curiosity.

He began to tell her what had happened, and he did not spare himself in
the statement of the case. “There you have the whole affair now. And a
very pretty affair it is. But, I declare,” he concluded, “I can’t see
that any one is to blame for it.”

“No one, David?”

“Well, Adam, finally, of course. Or Eve. Or the Serpent,” replied the
desperate man.

Seeing him at this reckless pass, his wife forebore reproach, and asked,
“What are you going to do?”

“I am going around there in the morning to tell Mrs. Harmon all about
Barker.”

“She will send him away instantly.”

“I dare say.”

“And what will the poor thing do?”

“Goodness knows.”

“I’m afraid Badness knows. It will drive him to despair.”

“Well, perhaps not--perhaps not,” sighed the minister. “At any rate, we
must not _let_ him be driven to despair. You must help me, Lucy.”

“Of course.”

Mrs. Sewell was a good woman, and she liked to make her husband feel it
keenly.

“I knew that it must come to that,” she said.

“Of course, we must not let him be ruined. If Mrs. Harmon insists upon
his going at once--as I’ve no doubt she will--you must bring him here,
and we must keep him till he can find some other home.” She waited,
and added, for a final stroke of merciless beneficence, “He can have
Alfred’s room, and Alf can take the front attic.”

Sewell only sighed again. He knew she did not mean this.

Barker went back to the St. Albans, and shrunk into as small space in
the office as he could. He pulled a book before him and pretended to
read, hiding the side of his face toward the door with the hand that
supported his head. His hand was cold as ice, and it seemed to him as if
his head were in a flame. Williams came and looked in at him once,
and then went back to the stool which he occupied just outside the
elevator-shaft when not running it. He whistled softly between his
teeth, with intervals of respectful silence, and then went on whistling
in absence of any whom it might offend.

Suddenly a muffled clamour made itself heard from the depths of the
dining-room, like that noise of voices which is heard behind the scenes
at the theatre when an armed mob is about to burst upon the stage. Irish
tones, high, windy, and angry, yells, and oaths defined themselves,
and Mrs. Harmon came obesely hurrying from the dining-room toward the
office, closely followed by Jerry, the porter. When upon duty, or, as
some of the boarders contended, when in the right humour, he blacked the
boots, and made the hard-coal fires, and carried the trunks up and down
stairs. When in the wrong humour, he had sometimes been heard to swear
at Mrs. Harmon, but she had excused him in this eccentricity because,
she said, he had been with her so long. Those who excused it with her
on these grounds conjectured arrears of wages as another reason for her
patience. His outbreaks of bad temper had the Celtic uncertainty; the
most innocent touch excited them, as sometimes the broadest snub failed
to do so; and no one could foretell what direction his zigzag fury
would take. He had disliked Lemuel from the first, and had chafed at the
subordination into which he had necessarily fallen. He was now
yelling after Mrs. Harmon, to know if she was not satisfied with _wan_
gutther-snoipe, that she must nades go and pick up another, and whether
the new wan was going to be too good to take prisints of money for his
worruk from the boarthers, and put all the rest of the help under the
caumpliment of refusin’ ut, or else demanin’ themselves by takin’ ut?
If this was the case, he’d have her to know that she couldn’t kape anny
other help; and the quicker she found it out the betther. Mrs. Harmon
was trying to appease him by promising to see Lemuel at once, and ask
him about it.

The porter raised his voice an octave. “D’ ye think I’m a loyar, domn
ye? Don’t ye think I’m tellin’ the thruth?”

He followed her to the little office, whither she had retreated on a
purely mechanical fulfilment of her promise to speak to Lemuel, and
crowded in upon them there.

“Here he is now!” he roared in his frenzy. “He’s too good to take the
money that’s offered to ‘um! He’s too good to be waither! He wannts
to play the gintleman! He thinks ‘umself too good to do what the other
servants do, that’s been tin times as lahng in the house!”

At the noise some of the ladies came hurrying out of the public parlour
to see what the trouble was. The street-door opened, and Berry entered
with the two art-students. They involuntarily joined the group of
terrified ladies.

“What’s the row?” demanded Berry. “Is Jerry on the kick?”

No one answered. Lemuel stood pale and silent, fronting the porter, who
was shaking his fist in his face. He had not heard anything definite in
the outrage that assailed him. He only conjectured that it was exposure
of Williams’s character, and the story of his own career in Boston.

“Why don’t you fire him out of there, Barker?” called the law-student.
“Don’t be afraid of him!”

Lemuel remained motionless; but his glance sought the pitying eyes of
the assembled women, and then dropped before the amaze that looked at
him from those of Miss Carver. The porter kept roaring out his infamies.

Berry spoke again.

“Mrs. Harmon, do you want that fellow in there?”

“No, goodness knows I don’t, Mr. Berry.”

“All right.” Berry swung the street-door open with his left hand, and
seemed with the same gesture to lay his clutch upon the porter’s collar.
“Fire him out myself!” he exclaimed, and with a few swiftly successive
jerks and bumps the burly shape of the porter was shot into the night.
“I want you to get me an officer, Jerry,” he said, putting his head out
after him. “There’s been a blackguard makin’ a row here. Never mind your
hat! Go!”

“Oh, my good gracious, Mr. Berry!” gasped Mrs. Harmon, “what have you
done?” “If it’s back pay, Mrs. Harmon, we’ll pass round the hat. Don’t
you be troubled. That fellow wasn’t fit to be in a decent house.”

Berry stopped a moment and looked at Lemuel. The art-students did not
look at him at all; they passed on upstairs with Berry.

The other ladies remained to question and to comment. Mrs. Harmon’s
nephew, to whom the uproar seemed to have penetrated in his basement,
came up and heard the story from them. He was quite decided. He said
that Mr. Berry had done right. He said that he was tired of having folks
damn his aunt up hill and down dale; and that if Jerry had kept on a
great deal longer, he would have said something to him himself about it.

The ladies justified him in the stand he took; they returned to the
parlour to talk it all over, and he went back to his basement. Mrs.
Harmon, in tears, retired to her room, and Lemuel was left standing
alone in his office. The mate stole softly to him from the background of
the elevator, where he had kept himself in safety during the outbreak.

“Look here, mate. This thing been about your ringin’ me in here?”

“Oh, go away, go away!” Lemuel huskily entreated.

“Well, that’s what I intend to do. I don’t want to stay here and git you
into no more trouble, and I know that’s what’s been done. You never done
me no harm, and I don’t want to do you none. I’m goin’ right up to your
room to git my clo’es, and then I’ll skip.”

“It won’t do any good now. It’ll only make it worse. You’d better stay
now. You must.”

“Well, if you say so, mate.”

He went back to his elevator, and Lemuel sat down at his desk, and
dropped his face upon his arms there. Toward eleven o’clock Evans came
in and looked at him, but without speaking; he must have concluded that
he was asleep; he went upstairs, but after a while he came down again
and stopped again at the office door, and looked in on the haggard boy,
hesitating as if for the best words. “Barker, Mr. Berry has been telling
me about your difficulty here. I know all about you--from Mr. Sewell.”
 Lemuel stared at him. “And I will stand your friend, whatever people
think. And I don’t blame you for not wanting to be beaten by that
ruffian; you could have stood no chance against him; and if you had
thrashed him it wouldn’t have been a great triumph.”

“I wish he had killed me,” said Lemuel from his dust-dry throat.

“Oh no; that’s foolish,” said the elder, with patient, sad kindness.
“Who knows whether death is the end of trouble? We must live things
down, not die them down.” He put his arm caressingly across the boy’s
shoulder.

“I can never live this down,” said Lemuel. He added passionately, “I
wish I could die!”

“No,” said Evans. “You must cheer up. Think of next Saturday. It will
soon be here, and then you’ll be astonished that you felt so bad on
Tuesday.”

He gave Lemuel a parting pressure with his arm, and turned to go
upstairs.

At the same moment the figure of Mrs. Harmon’s nephew, distracted,
violent, burst up through the door leading to the basement.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed the editor, “is Mr. Harmon going to kick?”

“The house is on fire!” yelled the apparition.

A thick cloud of smoke gushed out of the elevator-shaft, and poured
into the hall, which it seemed to fill instantly. It grew denser, and
in another instant a wild hubbub began. The people appeared from every
quarter and ran into the street, where some of the ladies began calling
up at the windows to those who were still in their rooms. A stout little
old lady came to an open window, and paid out hand over hand a small
cable on which she meant to descend to the pavement; she had carried
this rope about with her many years against the exigency to which she
was now applying it. Within, the halls and the stairway became the scene
of frantic encounter between wives and husbands rushing down to save
themselves, and then rushing back to save their forgotten friends. Many
appeared in the simple white in which they had left their beds, with the
addition of such shawls or rugs as chance suggested. A house was opened
to the fugitives on the other side of the street, and the crowd that had
collected could not repress its applause when one of them escaped from
the hotel-door and shot across. It applauded impartially men, women, and
children, and, absorbed in the spectacle, no one sounded the fire-alarm;
the department began to be severely condemned among the bystanders
before the engines appeared.

Most of the ladies, in their escape or their purpose of rescue, tried
each to possess herself of Lemuel, and keep him solely in her interest.
“Mr. Barker! Mr. Barker! Mr. Barker!” was called for in various sopranos
and contraltos, till an outsider took up the cry and shouted, “Barker!
Barker! Speech! Speech!” This made him very popular with the crowd,
who in their enjoyment of the fugitives were unable to regard the fire
seriously. A momentary diversion was caused by an elderly gentleman who
came to the hotel-door, completely dressed except that he was in his
stockings, and demanded Jerry. The humourist who had called for a speech
from Lemuel volunteered the statement that Jerry had just gone round the
corner to see a man. “I want him,” said the old gentleman savagely. “I
want my boots; I can’t go about in my stockings.”

Cries for Jerry followed; but in fact the porter had forgotten all his
grudges and enmities; he had reappeared, in perfect temper, and had
joined Lemuel and Berry in helping to get the women and children out of
the burning house.

The police had set a guard at the door, in whom Lemuel recognised
the friendly old officer who had arrested him. “All out?” asked the
policeman.

The smoke, which had reddened and reddened, was now a thin veil drawn
over the volume of flame that burned strongly and steadily up the
well of the elevator, and darted its tongues out to lick the framework
without. The heat was intense. Mrs. Harmon came panting and weeping from
the dining-room with some unimportant pieces of silver, driven forward
by Jerry and her nephew.

They met the firemen, come at last, and pulling in their hose, who began
to play upon the flames; the steam filled the place with a dense mist.

Lemuel heard Berry ask him through the fog, “Barker, where’s old Evans?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” he lamented back.

“He must have gone up to get Mrs. Evans.”

He made a dash towards the stairs. A fireman caught him and pulled him
back. “You can’t go up; smoke’s thick as hell up there.” But Lemuel
pulled away, and shot up the stairs. He heard the firemen stop Berry.

“You can’t go, I tell you! Who’s runnin’ this fire anyway, I’d like to
know?”

He ran along the corridor which Evans’s apartment opened upon. There
was not much smoke there; it had drawn up the elevator-well, as if in a
chimney.

He burst into the apartment and ran to the inner room, where he had once
caught a glimpse of Mrs. Evans sitting by the window.

Evans stood leaning against the wall, with his hand at his breast. He
panted, “Help her--help--”

“Where _is_ she? Where _is_ she?” demanded Lemuel.

She came from an alcove in the room, holding a handkerchief drenched
with cologne in her hand, which she passed to her husband’s face. “Are
you better now? Can you come, dear? Rest on me!”

“I’m--I’m all right! Go--go! I can get along--”

“I’ll go when _you_ go,” said Mrs. Evans. She turned to Lemuel. “Mr.
Evans fainted; but he is better now.” She took his hand with a tender
tranquillity that ignored all danger or even excitement, and gently
chafed it.

“But come--come!” cried Lemuel. “Don’t you know the house is on fire?”

“Yes, I know it,” she replied. “We must get Mr. Evans down. You must
help me.” Lemuel had seldom seen her before; but he had so long heard
and talked of her hopeless invalidism that she was like one risen from
the dead, in her sudden strength and courage, and he stared at the
miracle of her restoration. It was she who claimed and bore the greater
share of the burden in getting her husband away. He was helpless; but
in the open air he caught his breath more fully, and at last could
tremulously find his way out of the sympathetic crowd. “Get a carriage,”
 she said to Lemuel; and then she added, as it drove up and she gave an
address, “I can manage him now.”

Evans weakly pressed Lemuel’s hand from the seat to which he had helped
him, and the hack drove away. Lemuel looked crazily after it a moment,
and then returned to the burning house.

Berry called to him from the top of the outside steps, “Barker, have you
seen that partner of yours?”

Lemuel ran up to him. “No!”

“Well, come in here. The elevator’s dropped, and they’re afraid he went
down with it.”

“I know he didn’t! He wouldn’t be such a fool!”

“Well, we’ll know when they get the fire under.”

“I thought I saw something in the elevator, and as long as you don’t
know where he is--” said a fireman.

“Well,” said Berry, “if you’ve got the upper hands of this thing, I’m
going to my room a minute.”

Lemuel followed him upstairs, to see if he could find Williams. The
steam had ascended and filled the upper halls; little cascades of water
poured down the stairs, falling from step to step; the long strips of
carpeting in the corridors swam in the deluge which the hose had poured
into the building, and a rain of heavy drops burst through the ceilings.

Most of the room-doors stood open, as the people had flung them wide in
their rush for life. At the door of Berry’s room a figure appeared which
he promptly seized by the throat.

“Don’t be in a hurry!” he said, as he pushed it into the room. “I want
to see you.”

It was Williams.

“I want to see what you’ve got in your pockets. Hold on to him, Barker.”

Lemuel had no choice. He held Williams by the arms while Berry went
through him, as he called the search. He found upon him whatever small
articles of value there had been in his room.

The thief submitted without a struggle, without a murmur.

Berry turned scornfully to Lemuel. “This a friend of yours, Mr. Barker?”

Still the thief did not speak, but he looked at Lemuel.

“Yes,” he dryly gasped.

“Well!” said Berry, staring fiercely at him for a moment. “If it wasn’t
for something old Evans said to me about you, a little while ago, I’d
hand you both over to the police.”

Williams seemed to bear the threat with philosophic resignation, but
Lemuel shrank back in terror. Berry laughed.

“Why, you are his pal. Go along! I’ll get Jerry to attend to you.”

Lemuel slunk downstairs with Williams. “Look here, mate,” said the
rogue; “I guess I ha’n’t used you just right.”

Lemuel expected himself to cast the thief off with bitter rejection.
But he heard himself saying hopelessly, “Go away, and try to behave
yourself,” and then he saw the thief make the most of the favour of
heaven and vanish through the crowd.

He would have liked to steal away too; but he remained, and began
mechanically helping again wherever he saw help needed. By and by Berry
came out; Lemuel thought that he would tell some policeman to arrest
him; but he went away without speaking to any one.

In an hour the firemen had finished their share of the havoc, and had
saved the building. They had kept the fire to the elevator-shaft and
the adjoining wood-work, and but for the water they had poured into the
place the ladies might have returned to their rooms, which were quite
untouched by the flames. As it was, Lemuel joined with Jerry in fetching
such things to them as their needs or fancies suggested; the refugees
across the way were finally clothed by their efforts, and were able
to quit their covert indistinguishable in dress from any of the other
boarders.

The crowd began to go about its business. The engines had disappeared
from the little street with exultant shrieks; in the morning the
insurance companies would send their workmen to sweep out the extinct
volcano, and mop up the shrunken deluge, preparatory to ascertaining the
extent of the damage done; in the meantime the police kept the boys
and loafers out of the building, and the order that begins to establish
itself as soon as chaos is confessed took possession of the ruin.

But it was all the same a ruin and a calamitous conclusion for the time
being. The place that had been in its grotesque and insufficient fashion
a home for so many homeless people was uninhabitable; even the Harmons
could not go back to it. The boarders had all scattered, but Mrs. Harmon
lingered, dwelling volubly upon the scene of disaster. She did not
do much else; she was not without a just pride in it, but she was not
puffed up by all the sympathy and consolation that had been offered her.
She thought of others in the midst of her own troubles, and she said
to Lemuel, who had remained working with Jerry under her direction in
putting together such things as she felt she must take away with her--

“Well, I don’t know as I feel much worse about myself than I do about
poor Mr. Evans. Why, I’ve got the ticket in my pocket now that he gave
me for the Wednesday matinee! I do wonder how he’s gettin’ along! I
guess they’ve got you to thank, if they’re alive to tell the tale. What
_did_ you do to get that woman out alive?” Lemuel looked blankly at her,
and did not answer. “And Mr. Evans too! You must have had your hands
full, and that’s what I told the reporters; but I told ‘em I guessed
you’d be equal to it if any one would. Why, I don’t suppose Mrs. Evans
has been out of her room for a month, or hardly stepped her foot to the
floor. Well, I don’t want to see many people look as he did when you
first got him out of the house.”

“Well, I don’t know as I want to see many more fires where I live,” said
her nephew, as if with the wish to be a little more accurate.

Jerry asked Lemuel to watch Mrs. Harmon’s goods while he went for a
carriage, and said sir to him. It seemed to Lemuel that this respect,
and Mrs. Harmon’s unmerited praises, together with the doom that was
secretly upon him, would drive him wild.



XXIV.


The evening after the fire Mrs. Sewell sat talking it over with her
husband, in the light of the newspaper reports, which made very much
more of Lemuel’s part in it than she liked. The reporters had flattered
the popular love of the heroic in using Mrs. Harmon’s version of his
exploits, and represented him as having been most efficient and daring
throughout, and especially so in regard to the Evanses.

“Well, that doesn’t differ materially from what they told us
themselves,” said Sewell.

“You know very well, David,” retorted his wife, “that there couldn’t
have been the least danger at any time; and when he helped her to get
Mr. Evans downstairs, the fire was nearly all out.”

“Very well, then; he would have saved their lives if it had been
necessary. It was a case of potential heroism, that contained all the
elements of self-sacrifice.”

Mrs. Sewell could not deny this, but she was not satisfied. She was
silent a moment before she asked, “What do you suppose that wretched
creature will do now?”

“I think very likely he will come to me,” answered Sewell.

“I dare say.” The bell rang. “And I suppose that’s he now!”

They listened and heard Miss Vane’s voice at the door, asking for them.

Mrs. Sewell ran down the stairs and kissed her. “Oh, I’m _so_ glad you
came. Isn’t it wonderful? I’ve just come from them, and she’s taking the
whole care of him, as if he had always been the sick one, and she strong
and well.”

“What do you mean, Lucy? He isn’t ill!”

“Who isn’t?”

“What are you talking about?”

“About Mr. Evans--”

“Oh!” said Miss Vane, with cold toleration. She arrived at the study
door and gave Sewell her hand. “I scarcely knew him, you know; I only
met him casually here. I’ve come to see,” she added nervously, “if you
know where Lemuel is, Mr. Sewell. Have you seen anything of him since
the fire? How nobly he behaved! But I never saw anything he wasn’t equal
to!”

“Mrs. Sewell objects to his saving human life,” said Sewell, not able to
deny himself.

“I don’t see how you can take the slightest interest in him,” began Mrs.
Sewell, saying a little more than she meant.

“You would, my dear,” returned Miss Vane, “if you had wronged him as I
have.”

“Or as I,” said Sewell.

“I’m thankful I haven’t, then,” said his wife. “It seems to me that
there’s nothing else of him. As to his noble behaviour, it isn’t
possible you believe those newspaper accounts? He didn’t save any one’s
life; there was no danger!”

Miss Vane, preoccupied with her own ideal of the facts, stared at her
without replying, and then turned to Sewell.

“I want to find him and ask him to stay with me till he can
get something else to do.” Sewell’s eyebrows arched themselves
involuntarily. “Sibyl has gone to New York for a fortnight; I shall be
quite alone in the house, and I shall be very glad of his company,”
 she explained to the eyebrows, while ignoring them. Her chin quivered a
little, as she added, “I shall be _proud_ of his company. I wish him to
understand that he is my _guest._”

“I suppose I shall see him soon,” said Sewell, “and I will give him your
message.”

“Will you tell him,” persisted Miss Vane, a little hysterically,
“that if he is in any way embarrassed, I insist upon his coming to me
immediately--at _once?_”

Sewell smiled, “Yes.”

“I know that I’m rather ridiculous,” said Miss Vane, smiling in
sympathy, “and I don’t blame Mrs. Sewell for not entering into my
feelings. Nobody could, who hadn’t felt the peculiar Lemuel glamour.”

“I don’t imagine he’s embarrassed in any way,” said Sewell. “He seems to
have the gift of lighting on his feet. But I’ll tell him how peremptory
you are, Miss Vane.”

“Well, upon my word,” cried Mrs. Sewell, when Miss Vane had taken leave
of them in an exaltation precluding every recurrent attempt to enlighten
her as to the true proportions of Lemuel’s part in the fire, “I really
believe people like to be made fools of. Why didn’t _you_ tell her,
David, that he had done nothing?”

“What would have been the use? She has her own theory of the affair.
Besides, he did do something; he did his duty, and my experience is that
it’s no small thing to do. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t do more.”

He waited some days for Lemuel to come to him, and he inquired each time
he went to see the Evanses if they knew where he was. But they had not
heard of him since the night of the fire.

“It’s his shyness,” said Evans; “I can understand how if he thought he
had put me under an obligation he wouldn’t come near me--and couldn’t.”

Evans was to go out of town for a little while; the proprietors of the
_Saturday Afternoon_ insisted upon his taking a rest, and they behaved
handsomely about his salary. He did not want to go, but his wife got him
away finally, after he had failed in two or three attempts at writing.

Lemuel did not appear to Sewell till the evening of the day when the
Evanses left town. It seemed as if he had waited till they were gone, so
that he could not be urged to visit them. At first the minister scolded
him a little for his neglect; but Lemuel said he had heard about them,
and knew they were getting along all right. He looked as if he had not
been getting along very well himself; his face was thin, and had an air
at once dogged and apprehensive. He abruptly left talking of Evans, and
said, “I don’t know as you heard what happened that night before the
fire just after I got back from your house?”

“No, I hadn’t.”

Lemuel stopped. Then he related briefly and cleanly the whole affair,
Sewell interrupting him from time to time with murmurs of sympathy, and
“Tchk, tchk, tchk!” and “Shocking, shocking!” At the end he said, “I had
hoped somehow that the general calamity had swallowed up your particular
trouble in it. Though I don’t know that general calamities ever do that
with particular troubles,” he added, more to himself than to Lemuel; and
he put the idea away for some future sermon.

“Mr. Evans stopped and said something to me that night. He said we had
to live things down, and not die them down; he wanted I should wait till
Saturday before I was sure that I couldn’t get through Tuesday. He said,
How did we know that death was the end of trouble?”

“Yes,” said the minister, with a smile of fondness for his friend; “that
was like Evans all over.”

“I sha’n’t forget those things,” said Lemuel. “They’ve been in my head
ever since. If it hadn’t been for them, I don’t know what I should have
done.”

He stopped, and after a moment’s inattention Sewell perceived that he
wished to be asked something more. “I hope,” he said, “that nothing more
has been going wrong with you?” and as he asked this he laid his hand
affectionately on the young man’s shoulder, just as Evans had done.
Lemuel’s eyes dimmed and his breath thickened. “What has become of the
person--the discharged convict?”

“I guess I had better tell you,” he said; and he told him of the
adventure with Berry and Williams.

Sewell listened in silence, and then seemed quite at a loss what to say;
but Lemuel saw that he was deeply afflicted. At last he asked, lifting
his eyes anxiously to Sewell’s, “Do you think I did wrong to say the
thief was a friend of mine, and get him off that way?”

“That’s a very difficult question,” sighed Sewell. “You had a duty to
society.”

“Yes, I’ve thought of that since!”

“If I had been in your place, I’m afraid I should be glad not to have
thought of it in time; and I’m afraid I’m glad that, as it is, it’s too
late. But doesn’t it involve you with him in the eyes of the other young
man?” “Yes, I presume it does,” said Lemuel. “I shall have to go away.”

“Back to Willoughby Pastures?” asked Sewell, with not so much faith in
that panacea for Lemuel’s troubles as he had once had.

“No, to some other town. Do you know of anything I could get to do in
New York?”

“Oh, no, no!” said the minister. “You needn’t let this banish you. We
must seek this young Mr.--”

“Berry.”

“--Mr. Berry out, and explain the matter to him.”

“Then you’ll have to tell him all about me?”

“Yes. Why not?”

Lemuel was silent, and looked down.

“In the meantime,” pursued the minister, “I have a message for you from
Miss Vane. She has heard, as we all have, of your behaviour during the
fire--”

“It wasn’t anything,” Lemuel interrupted. “There wasn’t the least
danger; and Mrs. Evans did it all herself, anyway. It made me sick to
see how the papers had it. It’s a shame!”

Sewell smiled. “I’m afraid you couldn’t make Miss Vane think so; but I
can understand what you mean. She has never felt quite easy about the
way--the terms--on which she parted with you. She has spoken to me
several times of it, and--ah--expressed her regret; and now, knowing
that you have been--interrupted in your life, she is anxious to have you
come to her--”

An angry flash lighted up Lemuel’s face.

“I couldn’t go back there! I wouldn’t do any such work again.”

“I don’t mean that,” Sewell hastened to say “Miss Vane wished me to ask
you to come as her guest until you could find something--Miss Sibyl Vane
has gone to New York--”

“I’m very much obliged to her,” said Lemuel, “but I shouldn’t want to
give her so much trouble, or any one. I--I liked her very much, and I
shouldn’t want she should think I didn’t appreciate her invitation.”

“I will tell her,” said the minister. “I had no great hope you would see
your way to accepting it. But she will be glad to know that you received
it.” He added, rather interrogatively than affirmatively, “In the right
spirit.”

“Oh yes,” said Lemuel. “Please to tell her I did.”

“Thank you,” said Sewell, with bland vagueness. “I don’t know that I’ve
asked yet where you are staying at present?”

“I’m at Mrs. Nash’s, 13 Canary Place. Mrs. Harmon went there first.”

“Oh! And are you looking forward to rejoining her in a new place?”

“I don’t know as I am. I don’t know as I should want to go into an hotel
again.”

Sewell manifested a little embarrassment. “Well, you won’t forget your
promise to let me be of use to you--pecuniarily, if you should be in
need of a small advance at any time.”

“Oh no! But I’ve got enough money for a while yet--till I can get
something to do.” He rose, and after a moment’s hesitation he said, “I
don’t know as I want you should say anything to that fellow about me. To
Mr. Berry, I mean.”

“Oh! certainly not,” said Sewell, “if you don’t wish it.”

Whatever it was in that reticent and elusive soul which prompted his
request, the minister now felt that he could not know; but perhaps the
pang that Lemuel inflicted on himself had as much transport as anguish
in it. He believed that he had for ever cut himself off from the
companionship that seemed highest and holiest on earth to him; he should
never see that girl again; Berry must have told Miss Swan, and long
before this Miss Carver had shuddered at the thought of him as the
accomplice of a thief. But he proudly said to himself that he must let
it all go; for if he had not been a thief, he had been a beggar and a
menial, he had come out of a hovel at home, and his mother went
about like a scarecrow, and it mattered little what kind of shame she
remembered him in.

He thought of her perpetually now, and, in those dialogues which we hold
in reverie with the people we think much about, he talked with her
all day long. At first, when he began to do this, it seemed a wrong to
Statira; but now, since the other was lost to him beyond other approach,
he gave himself freely up to the mystical colloquies he held with her,
as the devotee abandons himself to imagined converse with a saint.
Besides, if he was in love with Statira, he was not in love with Jessie;
that he had made clear to himself; for his feeling toward her was wholly
different.

Most of the time, in these communings, he was with her in her own home,
down at Corbitant, where he fancied she had gone, after the catastrophe
at the St. Albans, and he sat there with her on a porch at the front
door, which she had once described to him, and looked out under the
silver poplars at the vessels in the bay. He formed himself some image
of it all from pictures of the seaside which he had seen; and there were
times when he tried to go back with her into the life she had led there
as a child. Perhaps his ardent guesses at this were as near reality
as anything that could be made to appear, for, after her mother and
brothers and sisters had died out of the wide old house, her existence
there was as lonely as if she had been a little ghost haunting it. She
had inherited her mother’s temperament with her father’s constitution;
she was the child born to his last long absence at sea and her mother’s
last solitude at home. When he returned, he found his wife dead and his
maiden sister caring for the child in the desolate house.

This sister of Captain Carver’s had been disappointed, as the phrase
is, when a young girl; another girl had won her lover from her. Her
disappointment had hardened her to the perception of the neighbours;
and, by a strange perversion of the sympathies and faculties, she had
turned from gossip and censure, from religion, and from all the sources
of comfort that the bruised heart of Corbitant naturally turned to, and
found such consolation as came to her in books, that is to say romances,
and especially the romances that celebrated and deified such sorrow
as her own. She had been a pretty little thing when young, and Jessie
remembered her as pretty in her early old age. At heart she must still
have been young when her hair was grey, for she made a friend and
companion of the child, and they fed upon her romances together. When
the aunt died, the child, who had known no mother but her, was stricken
with a grief so deep and wild that at first her life and then her mind
was feared for. To get her away from the associations and influences
of the place, her father sent her to school in the western part of the
State, where she met Madeline Swan, and formed one of those friendships
which are like passions between young girls. During her long absence,
her father married again; and she was called home to his deathbed. He
was dead when she arrived; he had left a will that made her dependent on
her stepmother. When Madeline Swan wrote to announce that she was coming
to Boston to study art, Jessie Carver had no trouble in arranging with
her stepmother, by the sacrifice of her final claim on her father’s
estate, to join her friend there, with a little sum of money on which
she was to live till she should begin to earn something.

Her life had been a series of romantic episodes; Madeline said that if
it could be written out it would be fascinating; but she went to work
very practically, and worked hard. She had not much feeling for colour;
but she drew better than her friend, and what she hoped to do was to
learn to illustrate books.

One evening, after a day of bitter-sweet reveries of Jessie, Lemuel went
to see Statira. She and ‘Manda Grier were both very gay, and made him
very welcome. They had tea for him; Statira tried all her little arts,
and ‘Manda Grier told some things that had happened in the box-factory.
He could not help laughing at them; they were really very funny; but he
felt somehow that it was all a preparation for something else. At last
the two girls made a set at him, as ‘Manda Grier called it, and tried to
talk him into their old scheme of going to wait on table at some of the
country hotels, or the seaside. They urged that now, while he was out of
a place, it was just the time to look up a chance.

He refused, at first kindly, and at last angrily; and he would have
gone away in this mood if Statira had not said that she would never say
another word to him about it, and hung upon his neck, while ‘Manda Grier
looked on in sullen resentment. He came away sick and heavy at heart.
He said to himself that they would be willing to drag him into the mire;
they had no pride; they had no sense; they did not know anything and
they could not learn. He tried to get away from them to Miss Carver in
his thoughts; but the place where he had left her was vacant, and he
could not conjure her back. Out of the void, he was haunted by a look of
grieving reproach and wonder from her eyes.



XXV.


That evening Sewell went to see an old parishioner of his who lived on
the Hill, and who among his eccentricities had the habit of occupying
his city house all summer long, while his family flitted with other
people of fashion to the seashore. That year they talked of taking a
cottage for the first time since they had sold their own cottage at
Nahant, in a day of narrow things now past. The ladies urged that he
ought to come with them, and not think of staying in Boston now that he
had a trouble of the eyes which had befallen him, and Boston would be so
dull if he could not get about freely and read as usual.

He answered that he would rather be blind in Boston than telescopic at
Beverly, or any other summer resort; and that as for the want of proper
care, which they urged, he did not think he should lack in his own
house, if they left him where he could reach a bell. His youngest
daughter, a lively little blonde, laughed with a cousin of his wife’s
who was present, and his wife decorously despaired. The discussion of
the topic was rather premature, for they were not thinking of going to
Beverly before middle of May, if they took the cottage; but an accident
had precipitated it, and they were having it out, as people do, each
party in the hope that the other would yield if kept at long enough
before the time of final decision came.

“Do you think,” said the husband and father, who looked a whimsical
tyrant at the worst, but was probably no easier to manage for his
whimsicality, “that I am going to fly in the face of prosperity, and
begin to do as other people wish because I’m pecuniarily able to do as I
please?”

The little blonde rose decisively from the low chair where she had been
sitting. “If papa has begun to reason about it, we may as well yield
the point for the present, mamma. Come, Lily! Let us leave him to Cousin
Charles.”

“Oh, but I say!” cried Cousin Charles, “if I’m to stay and fight it out
with him, I’ve got to know which side I’m on.”

“You’re on the right side,” said the young lady over her shoulder; “you
always are, Cousin Charles.”

Cousin Charles, in the attempt to kiss his hand toward his flatterer,
pulled his glasses off his nose by their cord. “Bromfield,” he said, “I
don’t see but this commits me against you.” And then, the ladies having
withdrawn, the two men put on that business air with which our sex tries
to atone to itself for having unbent to the lighter minds of the other;
heaven knows what women do when the men with whom they have been talking
go away.

“If you should happen to stay in town,” continued the cousin
treacherously, “I shall be very glad, for I don’t know but I shall be
here the greater part of the summer myself.”

“I shall stay,” said the other, “but there won’t be anything casual
about it.”

“What do you hear from Tom?” asked the cousin, feeling about on the
mantel for a match. He was a full-bodied, handsome, amiable-looking old
fellow, whose breath came in quick sighs with this light exertion.
He had a blond complexion, and what was left of his hair, a sort of
ethereal down on the top of his head, and some cherished fringes at the
temples, was turning the yellowish grey that blond hair becomes.

The other gentleman, stretched at ease in a deep chair, with one leg
propped on a cricket, had the distinction of long forms, which the years
had left in their youthful gracility; his snow-white moustache had been
allowed to droop over the handsome mouth, whose teeth were beginning to
go. “They’re on the other side of the clock,” he said, referring to the
matches. He added, with another glance at his relative, “Charles, you
ought to bant. It’s beginning to affect your wind.”

“_Beginning!_ Your memory’s going, Bromfield. But they say there’s a new
system that allows you to eat everything. I’m waiting for that. In the
meantime, I’ve gone back to my baccy.”

“They’ve cut mine off,” sighed the other. “Doesn’t it affect your
heart?”

“Not a bit. But what do you do, now you can’t smoke and your eyes have
given out?”

“I bore myself. I had a letter from Tom yesterday,” said the sufferer,
returning to the question that his cousin’s obesity had diverted him
from. “He’s coming on in the summer.”

“Tom’s a lucky fellow,” said the cousin. “I wish you had insisted on my
taking some of that stock of his when you bought in.”

“Yes, you made a great mistake,” said the other, with whimsical
superiority. “You should have taken my advice. You would now be rolling
in riches, as I am, with a much better figure for it.”

The cousin smoked a while. “Do you know, I think Tom’s about the best
fellow I ever knew.”

“He’s a good boy,” said the other, with the accent of a father’s pride
and tenderness.

“Going to bring his pretty chickens and their dam?” asked the cousin,
parting his coat-skirts to the genial influence of the fire.

“No; it’s a short visit. They’re going into the Virginia mountains for
the summer.” A manservant came in and said something in a low voice.
“Heigh? What? Why, of course! Certainly! By all means! Show him in! Come
in, parson; come in!” called the host to his yet unseen visitor, and he
held out his hand for Sewell to take when he appeared at the door. “Glad
to see you! I can’t get up,--a little gouty to-day,--but Bellingham’s on
foot. _His_ difficulty is sitting down.”

Bellingham gave the minister a near-sighted man’s glare through his
glasses, and then came eagerly forward and shook hands. “Oh, Mr. Sewell!
I hope you’ve come to put up some job on Corey. Don’t spare him! With
Kanawha Paint Co. at the present figures he merits any demand
that Christian charity can make upon him. The man’s prosperity is
disgraceful.”

“I’m glad to find you here, Mr. Bellingham,” said Sewell, sitting down.

“Oh, is it double-barrelled?” pleaded Bellingham.

“I don’t know that it’s a deadly weapon of any kind,” returned the
minister. “But if one of you can’t help me, perhaps the other can.”

“Well, let us know what the job is,” said Corey. “We refuse to commit
ourselves beforehand.”

“I shall have to begin at the beginning,” said Sewell warningly, “and
the beginning is a long way off.”

“No matter,” said Bellingham adventurously. “The further off, the
better. I’ve been dining with Corey--he gives you a very good dinner
now, Corey does--and I’m just in the mood for a deserving case.”

“The trouble with Sewell is,” said Corey, “that he doesn’t always take
the trouble to have them deserving. I hope this is interesting, at
least.”

“I suspect you’ll find it more interesting than I shall,” said the
minister, inwardly preparing himself for the amusement which Lemuel’s
history always created in his hearers. It seemed to him, as he began,
that he was always telling this story, and that his part in the affair
was always becoming less and less respectable. No point was lost upon
his hearers; they laughed till the ladies in the drawing-room above
wondered what the joke could be.

“At any rate,” said Bellingham, “the fellow behaved magnificently at the
fire. I read the accounts of it.”

“I think his exploits owe something to the imagination of the
reporters,” said Sewell. “He tells a different story himself.”

“Oh, of course!” said Bellingham.

“Well; and what else?” asked Corey.

“There isn’t any more. Simply he’s out of work, and wants something to
do--anything to do--anything that isn’t menial.”

“Ah, that’s a queer start of his,” said Bellingham thoughtfully. “I
don’t know but I like that.”

“And do you come to such effete posterity as we are for help in a case
like that?” demanded Corey. “Why, the boy’s an Ancestor!”

“So he is! Why, so he is--so he is!” said Bellingham, with delight in
the discovery. “Of course he is!”

“All you have to do,” pursued Corey, “is to give him time, and he’ll
found a fortune and a family, and his children’s children will be
cutting ours in society. Half of our great people have come up in that
way. Look at the Blue-book, where our nobility is enrolled; it’s the
apotheosis of farm-boys, mechanics, insidemen, and I don’t know what!”

“But in the meantime this ancestor is now so remote that he has nothing
to do,” suggested Sewell. “If you give him time you kill him.”

“Well, what do you want me to do? Mrs. Corey is thinking of setting up
a Buttons. But you say this boy has a soul above buttons. And besides,
he’s too old.”

“Yes.”

“Look here, Bromfield,” said Bellingham, “why don’t you get _him_ to
read to you?”

Corey glanced from his cousin to the minister, whose face betrayed that
this was precisely what he had had in his own mind.

“Is that the job?” asked Corey.

Sewell nodded boldly.

“He would read through his nose, wouldn’t he? I couldn’t stand that.
I’ve stopped talking through mine, you know.”

“Why, look here, Bromfield!” said Bellingham for the second time. “Why
don’t you let me manage this affair for you? I’m not of much use in the
world, but from time to time I like to do my poor best; and this is just
one of the kind of things I think I’m fitted for. I should like to see
this young man. When I read in the newspapers of some fellow who has
done a fine thing, I always want to see what manner of man he is; and
I’m glad of any chance that throws him in my way.”

“Your foible’s notorious, Charles. But I don’t see why you keep my
cigars all to yourself,” said Corey.

“My dear fellow,” said Bellingham, making a hospitable offer of the
cigar-box from the mantel, “you said they’d cut you off.”

“Ah, so they have. I forgot. Well, what’s your plan?”

“My plan,” said Bellingham, “is to have him to breakfast with me, and
interview him generally, and get him to read me a few passages, without
rousing his suspicions. Heigh?”

“I don’t know that I believe much in your plan,” said Corey. “I should
like to hear what my spiritual adviser has to say.”

“I shouldn’t know what to advise, exactly,” said Sewell. “But I won’t
reject any plan that gives my client a chance.”

“Isn’t client rather euphuistic?” asked Corey.

“It is, rather. But I’ve got into the habit of handling Barker very
delicately, even in thought. I’m not sure he’ll come,” added Sewell,
turning to Bellingham.

“Oh yes, he will,” said Bellingham. “Tell him it’s business. There won’t
be anybody there. Will nine be too late for him?”

“I imagine he’s more accustomed to half-past five at home, and seven
here.”

“Well, we’ll say nine, anyway. I can’t imagine the cause that would get
me up earlier. Here!” He turned to the mantel and wrote an invitation
upon his card, and handed it to Sewell. “Please give him that from me,
and beg him to come. I really want to see him, and if he can’t read well
enough for this fastidious old gentleman, we’ll see what else he can
do. Corey tells me he expects Tom on this summer,” he concluded, in
dismissal of Lemuel as a topic.

“Ah,” said Sewell, putting the card in his pocket, “I’m very glad to
hear that.”

He had something, but not so much, of the difficulty in overcoming
Lemuel’s reluctance that he had feared, and on the morning named Lemuel
presented himself at the address on Bellingham’s card exactly at nine.
He had the card in his hand, and he gave it to the man who opened the
street door of the bachelors’ apartment house where Bellingham lived.
The man read it carefully over, and then said, “Oh yes; second floor,”
 and, handing it back, left Lemuel to wander upstairs alone. He was
going to offer the card again at Bellingham’s door, but he had a dawning
misgiving. Bellingham had opened the door himself, and, feigning to
regard the card as offered by way of introduction, he gave his hand
cordially, and led him into the cozy room, where the table was already
laid for breakfast.

“Glad to see you, glad to see you, Mr. Barker. Give me your coat. Ah,
I see you scorn the effeminacy of half-season things. Put your hat
anywhere. The advantage of bachelors’ quarters is that you _can_ put
anything anywhere. We haven’t a woman on the premises, and you can fancy
how unmolested we are.”

Lemuel had caught sight of one over the mantel, who had nothing but her
water-colours on, and was called an “Etude;” but he no longer
trembled, for evil or for good, in such presences. “That’s one of those
Romano-Spanish things,” said Bellingham, catching the direction of his
eye. “I forget the fellow’s name; but it isn’t bad. We’re pretty snug
here,” he added, throwing open two doors in succession, to show the
extent of his apartment.

“Here you have the dining-room and drawing-room and library in one; and
here’s my bedroom, and here’s my bath.”

He pulled an easy-chair up toward the low fire for Lemuel. “But perhaps
you’re hot from walking? Sit wherever you like.”

Lemuel chose to sit by the window. “It’s very mild out,” he said, and
Bellingham did not exact anything more of him. He talked at him, and
left Lemuel to make his mental inventory of the dense Turkey rugs on
the slippery hardwood floor, the pictures on the Avails, the deep,
leather-lined seats, the bric-a-brac on the mantel, the tall, coloured
chests of drawers in two corners, the delicate china and quaint silver
on the table.

Presently steps were heard outside, and Bellingham threw open the door
as he had to Lemuel, and gave a hand to each of the two guests whom he
met on his threshold.

“Ah, Meredith! Good morning, venerable father!” He drew them in. “Let
me introduce you to Mr. Barker, Mr. Meredith. Mr. Barker, the Rev. Mr.
Seyton. You fellows are pretty prompt.”

“We’re pretty hungry,” said Mr. Meredith. “I don’t know that we should
have got here if we hadn’t leaned up against each other as we came
along. Several policemen regarded us suspiciously, but Seyton’s cloth
protected us.”

“It was terrible, coming up Beacon Street with an old offender like
Meredith, at what he considered the dead hour of the night,” said Mr.
Seyton. “I don’t know what I should have done if any one had been awake
to see us.”

“You shall have breakfast instantly,” said Bellingham, touching an
annunciator, and awakening a distant electric titter somewhere.

Mr. Seyton came toward Lemuel, who took the young Ritualist for a
Catholic priest, but was not proof against the sweet friendliness which
charmed every one with him, and was soon talking at more ease than he
had felt from all Bellingham’s cordial intention. He was put at his
host’s right hand when they sat down, and Mr. Seyton was given the foot,
so that they continued their talk.

“Mr. Bellingham tells me you know my friend Sewell,” said the clergyman.

Lemuel’s face kindled. “Oh yes! Do you know him too?”

“Yes, I’ve known him a long time. He’s a capital fellow, Sewell is.”

“I think he’s a great preacher,” ventured Lemuel.

“Ah--well--yes? Is he? I’ve never heard him lecture,” said Mr. Seyton,
looking down at his bread.

“I swear, Seyton,” said Meredith across the table, “when you put on that
ecclesiastical superciliousness of yours, I want to cuff you.”

“I’ve no doubt he’d receive it in a proper spirit,” said Bellingham, who
was eating himself hot and red from the planked shad before him. “But
you mustn’t do it here.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Seyton, “Sewell is a very able man, and no end of
a good fellow, but you can’t expect me to admit he’s a priest.”

He smiled in sweet enjoyment of his friend’s wrath. Lemuel observed that
he spoke with an accent different from the others, which he thought
very pleasant, but he did not know it for that neat utterance which the
Anglican Church bestows upon its servants.

“He’s no Jesuit,” growled Meredith.

“I’m bound to say he’s not a pagan, either,” laughed the clergyman.

“These gentlemen exchange these little knocks,” Bellingham explained
to Lemuel’s somewhat puzzled look, “because they were boys together at
school and college, and can’t realise that they’ve grown up to be lights
of the bar and the pulpit.” He looked round at the different plates.
“Have some more shad?” No one wanted more, it seemed, and Bellingham
sent it away by the man, who replaced it with broiled chicken before
Bellingham, and lamb chops in front of Mr. Seyton. “This is all there
is,” the host said.

“It’s enough for me,” said Meredith, “if no one else takes anything.”

But in fact there was also an omelet, and bread and butter delicious
beyond anything that Lemuel had tasted; and there was a bouquet of pink
radishes with fragments of ice dropped among olives, and other facts of
a polite breakfast. At the close came a dish of what Bellingham called
premature strawberries.

“Why! they’re actually _sweet_!” said Meredith, “and they’re as natural
as emery-bags.”

“Yes, they’re all you say,” said Bellingham. “You can have strawberries
any time nowadays after New Year’s, if you send far enough for them;
but to get them ripe and sound, or distinguishable from small turnips in
taste, is another thing.”

Lemuel had never imagined a breakfast like that; he wondered at himself
for having respected the cuisine of the St. Albans. It seemed to him
that he and the person he had been--the farm-boy, the captive of the
police, the guest of the Wayfarer’s Lodge, the servant of Miss Vane, and
the head-waiter at the hotel--could not be the same person. He fell into
a strange reverie, while the talk, in which he had shared so little,
took a range far beyond him. Then he looked up and found all the others’
eyes upon him, and heard Bellingham saying, “I fancy Mr. Barker can
tell us something about that,” and at Lemuel’s mystified stare he added,
“About the amount of smoke at a fire that a man could fight through.
Mr. Seyton was speaking of the train that was caught in the forest fires
down in Maine the other day. How was it with you at the St. Albans?”

Lemuel blushed. It was clear that Mr. Bellingham had been reading that
ridiculous newspaper version of his exploit. “There was hardly any smoke
at all where I was. It didn’t seem to have got into the upper entries
much.”

“That’s just what I was saying!” triumphed Bellingham. “If a man has
anything to do, he can get on. That’s the way with the firemen. It’s the
rat-in-a-trap _idea_ that paralyses. Do you remember your sensations
at all, when you were coming through the fire? Those things are very
curious sometimes,” Bellingham suggested.

“There was no fire where I was,” said Lemuel stoutly, but helpless to
make a more comprehensive disclaimer.

“I imagine you wouldn’t notice that, any more than the smoke,” said
Bellingham, with a look of satisfaction in his hero for his other
guests. “It’s a sort of ecstasy. Do you remember that fellow of Bret
Harte’s, in _How Christmas came to Simpson’s Bar_, who gets a shot in
his leg, or something, when he’s riding to get the sick boy a Christmas
present, and doesn’t know it till he drops off his horse in a faint when
he gets back?” He jumped actively up from the table, and found the book
on his shelf. “There!” He fumbled for his glasses without finding them.
“Will you be kind enough to read the passage, Mr. Barker? I think I’ve
found the page. It’s marked.” He sat down again, and the others waited.

Lemuel read, as he needs must, and he did his best.

“Ah, that’s very nice. Glad you didn’t dramatise it; the drama ought to
be in the words, not the reader. I like your quiet way.”

“Harte seems to have been about the last of the story-tellers to give us
the great, simple heroes,” said Seyton.

When the others were gone, and Lemuel, who had been afraid to go first,
rose to take himself away, Bellingham shook his hand cordially and
said, “I hope you weren’t bored? The fact is, I rather promised myself
a _tête-à-tête_ with you, and I told Mr. Sewell so; but I fell in with
Seyton and Meredith yesterday--you can’t help falling in with one when
you fall in with the other; they’re inseparable when Seyton’s in town
and I couldn’t resist the temptation to ask them.”

“Oh no, I wasn’t bored at all,” said Lemuel.

“I’m very glad. But--sit down a moment. I want to speak to you about a
little matter of business. Mr. Sewell was telling us something of you
the other night, at my cousin Bromfield Corey’s, and it occurred to me
that you might be willing to come and read to him. His eyes seem to be
on the wane, some way, and he’s rather sleepless. He’d give you a bed,
and sometimes you’d have to read to him in the night; you’d take your
meals where you like. How does it strike you, supposing the ‘harnsome
pittance’ can be arranged?”

“Why, if you think I can do it,” began Lemuel.

“Of course I do. You don’t happen to read French?”

Lemuel shook his head hopelessly. “I studied Latin some at school--”

“Ah! Well! I don’t think he’d care for Latin. I think we’d better stick
to English for the present.”

Bellingham arranged for Lemuel to go with him that afternoon to his
cousin’s and make, as he phrased it, a stagger at the job.



XXVI.


The stagger seemed to be sufficiently satisfactory. Corey could not
repress some twinges at certain characteristics of Lemuel’s accent,
but he seemed, in a critical way, to take a fancy to him, and he was
conditionally installed for a week.

Corey was pleased from the beginning with Lemuel’s good looks, and
justified himself to his wife with an Italian proverb: “_Novanta su
cento, chi è bello difuori ê buono di dentro_.” She had heard that
proverb before, and she had always considered it shocking; but he
insisted that most people married upon no better grounds, and that what
sufficed in the choice of a husband or wife was enough for the choice
of an intellectual nurse. He corrected Lemuel’s pronunciation where he
found it faulty, and amused himself with Lemuel’s struggles to
conceal his hurt vanity, and his final good sense in profiting by the
correction. But Lemuel’s reading was really very good; it was what, even
more than his writing, had given him a literary reputation in Willoughby
Pastures; and the old man made him exercise it in widely different
directions. Chiefly, however, it was novels that he read, which, indeed,
are the chief reading of most people in our time; and as they were
necessarily the novels of our language, his elder was not obliged to use
that care in choosing them which he must have exacted of himself in the
fiction of other tongues. He liked to hear Lemuel talk, and he used the
art of getting at the boy’s life by being frank with his own experience.
But this was not always successful, and he was interested to find
Lemuel keeping doors that Sewell’s narrative had opened carefully closed
against him. He betrayed no consciousness that they existed, and Lemuel
maintained intact the dignity and pride which come from the sense of
ignominy well hidden.

The week of probation had passed without interrupting their relation,
and Lemuel was regularly installed, and began to lead a life which was
so cut off from his past in most things that it seemed to belie it. He
found himself dropped in the midst of luxury stranger to him than the
things they read of in those innumerable novels. The dull, rich colours
in the walls, and the heavily rugged floors and dark-wooded leathern
seats of the library where he read to the old man; the beautiful forms
of the famous bronzes, and the Italian saints and martyrs in their
baroque or Gothic frames of dim gold; the low shelves with their ranks
of luxurious bindings, and all the seriously elegant keeping of the
place, flattered him out of his strangeness; and the footing on which
he was received in this house, the low-voiced respect with which the
man-servant treated him, the master’s light, cordial frankness,
the distant graciousness of the mistress, and the unembarrassed,
unembarrassing kindliness of the young ladies, both so much older than
himself, contributed to an effect that afterwards deepened more and
more, and became a vital part of the struggle which he was finally to
hold with himself. The first two or three days he saw no one but Mr.
Corey, and but for the women’s voices in the other parts of the house,
he might have supposed himself in another bachelor’s apartments, finer
and grander than Bellingham’s. He was presented to Mrs. Corey when she
came into the library, but he did not see the daughters of the house
till he was installed in it. After that, his acquaintance with them
seemed to go no further. They were all polite and kind when they met
him, in the library or on the stairs, but they showed no curiosity about
him; and his never meeting them at table helped to keep him a
stranger to them under the same roof. He ate at a boarding-house in a
neighbouring street, but he slept at the Coreys’ after he had read their
father asleep, and then, going out to his late breakfast, he did not
return till Mr. Corey had eaten his own, much later.

He wondered at first that neither of those young ladies read to their
father, not knowing the disability for mutual help that riches bring.
Later, he saw how much Miss Lily Corey was engrossed with charity and
art, and how constantly Miss Nannie Corey was occupied with social
cares, and was perpetually going and coming in their performance. Then
he saw that they could not have rendered nor their father have received
from his family the duty which he was paid to do, as they must have done
if they had been poorer. But they were all fond of one another, and the
father had a way of joking with his daughters, especially the youngest;
and they talked with a freedom of themselves which puzzled Lemuel. It
appeared from what they said at different times that they had not always
been so rich, or that they had once had money, and then less, and now
much more. It appeared also that their prosperity was due to a piece of
luck, and that the young Mr. Corey, whom they expected in the summer,
had brought it about. His father was very proud of him, and, getting
more and more used to Lemuel’s companionship, he talked a great deal
about his Tom, as he called him, and about Tom’s wife, and his wife’s
family, who were somehow, Lemuel inferred, not all that his own family
could wish them, but very good people. Once when Mr. Corey was talking
of them, Mrs. Corey came in upon them, and seemed to be uneasy, as if
she thought he was saying too much. But the daughters did not seem to
care, especially the youngest.

He found out that Mr. Corey used to be a painter, and had lived a long
time in Italy when he was young, and he recalled with a voluptuous
thrill of secrecy that Williams had once been in Italy. Mr. Corey
seemed to think better of it than Williams; he liked to talk of Rome and
Florence, and of Venice, which Williams had said was a kind of hole. The
old man said this or that picture was of this or that school, and vague
lights of knowledge and senses of difference that flattered Lemuel’s
intellectual vanity stole in upon him. He began to feel that the things
Mr. Corey had lived for were the great and high objects of life.

He now perceived how far from really fine or fashionable anything at
the St. Albans had been, and that the simplicity of Miss Vane’s little
house, which the splendour of the hotel had eclipsed in his crude fancy,
was much more in harmony with the richness of Mr. Corey’s. He oriented
himself anew, and got another view of the world which he had dropped
into. Occasionally he had glimpses of people who came to see the Coreys,
and it puzzled him that this family, which he knew so kind and good,
took with others the tone hard and even cynical which seemed the
prevailing tone of society; when their acquaintances went away they
dropped back, as if with relief, into their sincere and amiable fashions
of speech. Lemuel asked himself if every one in the world was playing a
part; it did not seem to him that Miss Carver had been; she was always
the same, and always herself. To be one’s-self appeared to him the best
thing in the world, and he longed for it the more as he felt that he too
was insensibly beginning to play a part. Being so much in this beautiful
and luxurious house, where every one was so well dressed and well
mannered, and well kept in body and mind, and passing from his amazement
at all its appointments into the habit of its comfortable beauty, he
forgot more and more the humility and the humiliations of his past. He
did not forget its claims upon him; he sent home every week the greater
part of his earnings, and he wrote often to his mother; but now, when
he could have got the time to go home and see her, he did not go. In the
exquisite taste of his present environment, he could scarcely believe in
that figure, grizzled, leathern, and gaunt, and costumed in a grotesque
unlikeness to either sex. Sometimes he played with the fantastic
supposition of some other origin for himself, romantic and involved like
that of some of the heroes he was always reading of, which excluded her.

Another effect of this multifarious literature through which his duties
led him was the awakening of the ambition to write, stunned by his first
disastrous adventures in Boston, and dormant almost ever since, except
as it had stirred under the promptings of Evans’s kindly interest. But
now it did not take the form of verse; he began to write moralistic
essays, never finished, but full of severe comment on the folly of the
world as he saw it. Sometimes they were examinations of himself, and
his ideas and principles, his doctrines and practice, penetrating quests
such as the theologians of an earlier day used to address to their
consciences.

Meantime, the deeply underlying mass of his rustic crudity and raw
youth took on a far higher polish than it had yet worn. Words dropped at
random in the talk he now heard supplied him with motives and shaped his
actions. Once Mr. Bellingham came in laughing about a sign which he saw
in a back street, of Misfit Parlours, and Lemuel spent the next week’s
salary for a suit at a large clothing store, to replace the dress Sewell
had thought him so well in. He began insensibly to ape the manners of
those about him.

It drew near the time when the ladies of the Corey family were to leave
town, where they had lingered much longer than they meant, in the hope
that Mr. Corey might be so much better, or so much worse, that he would
consent to go to the shore with them. But his disabilities remained much
the same, and his inveterate habits indomitable. By this time that trust
in Lemuel, which never failed to grow up in those near him, reconciled
the ladies to the obstinate resolution of the master of the house to
stay in it as usual. They gave up the notion of a cottage, and they were
not going far away, nor for long at any one time; in fact, one or other
of them was always in the house. Mrs. Corey had grown into the habit of
confidence with Lemuel concerning her husband’s whims and foibles; and
this motherly frankness from a lady so stately and distant at first was
a flattery more poisonous to his soul than any other circumstance of his
changed life.

It came July, and even Sewell went away then. He went with a mind at
rest concerning Lemuel’s material prospects, and his unquestionable
usefulness and acceptability; but something, at the bottom of
his satisfaction, teased him still: a dumb fear that the boy was
extravagant, a sense that he was somehow different, and not wholly for
the better, from what he had been. He had seen, perhaps, nothing worse
in him than that growth of manner which amused Corey.

“He is putting us on,” he said to Bellingham one day, “and making us fit
as well as he can. I don’t think we’re altogether becoming, but that’s
our fault, probably. I can’t help thinking that if we were of better cut
and material we should show to better effect upon that granite soul. I
wish Tom were here. I’ve an idea that Tom would fit him like a glove.
Charles, why don’t _you_ pose as a model for Barker?”

“I don’t see why I’m not a very good model without posing,” said
Bellingham. “What do you want me to do for him? Take him to the club?
Barker’s _not_ very conversational.”

“You don’t take him on the right topics,” said Corey, not minding
that he had left the point. “I assure you that Barker, on any serious
question that comes up in our reading, has a clear head and an apt
tongue of his own. It isn’t our manners alone that he emulates. I can’t
find that any of us ever dropped an idea or suggestion of value that
Barker didn’t pick it up, and turn it to much more account than the
owner. He’s as true as a Tuscan peasant, as proud as an Indian, and as
quick as a Yankee.”

“Ah! I _hoped_ you wouldn’t go abroad for that last,” said Bellingham.

“No; and it’s delightful, seeing the great variety of human nature there
is in every human being here. Our life isn’t stratified; perhaps it
never will be. At any rate, for the present, we’re all in vertical
sections. But I always go back to my first notion of Barker: he’s
ancestral, and he makes me feel like degenerate posterity. I’ve had the
same sensation with Tom; but Barker seems to go a little further back. I
suppose there’s such a thing as getting too far back in these Origin
of Species days; but he isn’t excessive in that or in anything. He’s
confoundedly temperate, in fact; and he’s reticent; he doesn’t allow any
unseemly intimacy. He’s always turning me out-of-doors.”

“Of course! But what can we old fellows hope to know of what’s going
on in any young one? Talk of strangeness! I’d undertake to find more in
common with a florid old fellow of fifty from the red planet Mars than
with any young Bostonian of twenty.”

“Yes; but it’s the youth of my sires that I find so strange in Barker.
Only, theoretically, there’s no Puritanism. He’s a thorough believer
in Sewell. I suspect he could formulate Sewell’s theology a great deal
better than Sewell could.”



XXVII


Statira and ‘Manda Grier had given up their plan of getting places in a
summer hotel when Lemuel absolutely refused to take part in it, and
were working through the summer in the box-factory. Lemuel came less
regularly to see them now, for his Sunday nights had to be at Mr.
Corey’s disposition; but Statira was always happy in his coming, and
made him more excuses than he had thought of, if he had let a longer
interval than usual pass. He could not help feeling the loveliness of
her patience, the sweetness of her constancy; but he disliked ‘Manda
Grier more and more, and she grew stiffer and sharper with him.
Sometimes the aimlessness of his relation to Statira hung round him
like a cloud, which he could not see beyond. When he was with her he
contented himself with the pleasure he felt in her devotion, and the
tenderness this awakened in his own heart; but when he was away from her
there was a strange disgust and bitterness in these.

Sometimes, when Statira and ‘Manda Grier took a Saturday afternoon off,
he went with them into the country on one of the horse-car lines, or
else to some matinee at a garden-theatre in the suburbs. Statira liked
the theatre better than anything else; and she used to meet other girls
whom she knew there, and had a gay time. She introduced Lemuel to them,
and after a few moments of high civility and distance they treated him
familiarly, as Statira’s beau. Their talk, after that he was now used
to, was flat and foolish, and their pert ease incensed him. He came away
bruised and burning, and feeling himself unfit to breathe the refined
and gentle air to which he returned in Mr. Corey’s presence. Then he
would vow in his heart never to expose himself to such things again;
but he could not tell Statira that he despised the friends she was happy
with; he could only go with a reluctance it was not easy to hide, and
atone by greater tenderness for a manner that wounded her. One day
toward the end of August, when they were together at a suburban theatre,
Statira wandered off to a pond there was in the grounds with some other
girls, who had asked him to go and row them, and had called him a bear
for refusing, and told him to look out for Barnum. They left him sitting
alone with ‘Manda Grier, at a table where they had all been having
ice-cream at his expense; and though it was no longer any pleasure to be
with her, it was better than to be with them, for she was not a fool, at
any rate. Statira turned round at a little distance to mock them with
a gesture and a laugh, and the laugh ended in a cough, long and
shattering, so that one of her companions had to stop with her, and put
her arm round her till she could recover herself and go on.

It sent a cold thrill through Lemuel, and then he turned angry. “What is
it Statira does to keep taking more cold?”

“Oh, I guess ‘tain’t ‘ny _more_ cold,” said ‘Manda Grier.

“What do you mean?”

“I guess ‘f you cared a great deal you’d noticed that cough ‘f hers
before now. ‘Tain’t done it any too much good workin’ in that arsenic
paper all summer long.”

‘Manda Grier talked with her face turned away from him.

It provoked him more and more. “I _do_ care,” he retorted, eager to
quarrel, “and you know it. Who got her into the box-factory, I should
like to know?”

“_I_ did!” said ‘Manda Grier, turning sharply on him, “and you _kept_
her there; and between us we’ve killed her.”

“How have I kept her there, I should like to know?”

“‘F you’d done’s she wanted you should, she might ‘a’ been at some
pleasant place in the country--the mount’ns, or somewhere ‘t she’d been
ov’r her cough by this time. But no! You was too nasty proud for that,
Lemuel Barker!”

A heavy load of guilt dropped upon Lemuel’s heart, but he flung it off,
and he retorted furiously,

“You ought to have been ashamed of yourself to ever want her to take a
servant’s place.”

“Oh, a servant’s place! If she’d been ashamed of a servant when you came
meechin’ round her, where’d you been, I sh’d like to know? And now I
wish she had; ‘n’ if she wa’n’t such a little fool, ‘n’ all wrapped
in you, the way ‘t she is, I could wish ‘t she’d never set eyes on you
again, servant or no servant. But I presume it’s too late now, and I
presume she’s got to go on suff’rin’ for you and wonderin’ what she’s
done to offend you when you don’t come, and what she’s done when you
do, with your stuck-up, masterful airs, and your double-faced ways. But
don’t you try to pretend to me, Lemuel Barker, ‘t you care the least
mite for her any more, ‘f you ever did, because it won’t go down! ‘N’
if S’tira wa’n’t such a perfect little blind fool, she could see ‘t
you didn’t care for her any more than the ground ‘t you walk on, ‘n’ ‘t
you’d be glad enough if she was under it, if you couldn’t be rid of her
any other way!” ‘Manda Grier pulled her handkerchief out and began to
cry into it.

Lemuel was powerfully shaken by this attack; he did feel responsible for
Statira’s staying in town all summer; but the spectacle of ‘Manda Grier
publicly crying at his side in a place like that helped to counteract
the effect of her words. “‘Sh! Don’t cry!” he began, looking fearfully
round him. “Everybody ‘ll see you!”

“I don’t care! Let them!” sobbed the girl. “If they knowed what I know,
and could see you _not_ cryin’, I guess they’d think you looked worse
than I do!”

“You don’t understand--I can explain--”

“No, you can’t explain, Mr. Barker!” said ‘Manda Grier, whipping down
her handkerchief, and fiercely confronting him across the table. “You
can’t explain anything so ‘s to blind me any longer! I was a big fool to
ever suppose you had any heart in you; but when you came round at first,
and was so meek you couldn’t say your soul was your own, and was so
glad if S’tira spoke to you, or looked at you, that you was ready to
go crazy, I _did_ suppose there was some _little_ something to you! And
yes, I helped you on all I could, and helped you to fool that poor thing
that you ain’t worthy to kiss the ground she walks on, Lord forgive me
_for_ it! But it’s all changed now! You seem to think it’s the greatest
favour if you come round once a fortnight, and set and let her talk to
you, and show you how she dotes upon you, the poor little silly coot!
And if you ever speak a word, it’s like the Lord unto Moses, it’s so
grand! But I understand! You’ve got other friends now! _You after that
art-student_? Oh, you can blush and try to turn it off! I’ve seen you
blush before, and I know you! And I know you’re in love with that girl,
and you’re just waitin’ to break off with S’tira; but you hain’t got
the spirit to up and do it like a man! You want to let it lag along,
and _lag_ along, and see ‘f something won’t happen to get you out of it!
_You waitin’ for her to die_? Well, you won’t have to wait long! But if
I was a man, I’d spoil your beauty for you first.”

The torrent of her words rolled him on, bruising and tearing his soul,
which their truth pierced like jagged points. From time to time he
opened his lips to protest or deny, but no words came, and in his
silence a fury of scorn for the poor, faithful, scolding thing, so just,
so wildly unjust, gathered head in him.

“Be still!” he ground between his teeth. “Be still, you--” He stopped
for the word, and that saved him from the outrage he had meant to pay
her back with. He rose from the table. “You can tell Statira what you’ve
said to me. I’m going home.”

He rushed away; the anger was like strong drink in his brain; he was
like one drunk all the way back to the city in the car.

He could not go to Mr. Corey’s at once; he felt as if physically
besmeared with shame; he could not go to his boarding-house; it
would have been as if he had shown himself there in a coat of tar and
feathers. Those insolent, true, degrading words hissed in his ears,
and stung him incessantly. They accused, they condemned with pitiless
iteration; and yet there were instants when he knew himself guiltless of
all the wrong of which in another sense he knew himself guilty. In his
room he renewed the battle within himself that he had fought so long in
his wanderings up and down the street, and he conquered himself at last
into the theory that Statira had authorised or permitted ‘Manda Grier
to talk to him in that way. This simplified the whole affair; it offered
him the release which he now knew he had longed for. As he stretched
himself in the sheets at daybreak, he told himself that he need never
see either of them again. He was free.



XXVIII.


Lemuel went through the next day in that licence of revolt which every
human soul has experienced in some measure at some time. We look back at
it afterwards, and see it a hideous bondage. But for the moment Lemuel
rejoiced in it; and he abandoned himself boldly to thoughts that had
hitherto been a furtive and trembling rapture.

In the afternoon, when he was most at leisure, he walked down to the
Public Garden, and found a seat on a bench near the fountain where
the Venus had shocked his inexperience the first time he saw her; he
remembered that simple boy with a smile of pity, and then went back into
his cloud of reverie. There, safely hid from trouble and wrong, he told
his ideal how dear she was to him, and how she had shaped and governed
his life, and made it better and nobler from the first moment they
had met. The fumes of the romances which he had read mixed with the
love-born delirium in his brain; he was no longer low, but a hero of
lofty line, kept from his rightful place by machinations that had failed
at last, and now he was leading her, his bride, into the ancient halls
which were to be their home, and the source of beneficence and hope to
all the poor and humbly-born around them. His eyes were so full of this
fantastic vision, the soul of his youth dwelt so deeply within this
dream-built tabernacle, that it was with a shock of anguish he saw
coming up the walk towards him the young girl herself. His airy
structure fell in ruins around him; he was again common and immeasurably
beneath her; she was again in her own world, where, if she thought of
him at all, it must be as a squalid vagabond and the accomplice of a
thief. If he could have escaped, he would, but he could not move; he sat
still and waited with fallen eyes for her to pass him.

At sight of him she hesitated and wavered; then she came towards him,
and at a second impulse held out her hand, smiling with a radiant
pleasure.

“I didn’t know it was you at first,” she said. “It seems so strange to
see any one that I know!”

“I didn’t expect to see you, either,” he stammered out, getting somehow
upon his feet, and taking her hand, while his face burned, and he could
not keep his eyes on hers; “I--didn’t know you were here.”

“I’ve only been here a few days. I’m drawing at the Museum. I’ve just
got back. Have you been here all summer?”

“Yes--all summer. I hope you’ve been well--I suppose you’ve been away--”

“Yes, I’ve just got back,” she repeated.

“Oh yes! I meant that!”

She smiled at his confusion, as kindly as the ideal of his day-dream.
“I’ve been spending the summer with Madeline, and I’ve spent most of it
out-of-doors, sketching. Have you been well?”

“Yes--not very; oh yes, I’m well--” She had begun to move forward with
the last question, and he found himself walking with her. “Did she--has
Miss Swan come back with you?” he asked, looking her in the eyes with
more question than he had put into his words.

“No, I don’t think she’ll come back this winter,” said the girl. “You
know,” she went on, colouring a little, “that she’s married now?”

“No,” said Lemuel.

“Yes. To Mr. Berry. And I have a letter from him for you.”

“Was he there with you, this summer?” asked Lemuel, ignoring alike
Berry’s marriage and the letter from him.

“Oh yes; of course! And I liked him better than I used to. He is very
good, and if Madeline didn’t have to go so far West to live! He will
know how to appreciate her, and there are not many who can do that! Her
father thinks he has a great deal of ability. Yes, if Madeline _had_ to
get married!”

She talked as if convincing and consoling herself, and there was an
accent of loneliness in it all that pierced Lemuel’s preoccupation;
he had hardly noted how almost pathetically glad she was to see him.
“You’ll miss her here,” he ventured.

“Oh, I don’t dare to think of it,” cried the girl. “I don’t know what
I shall do! When I first saw you, just now, it brought up Madeline and
last winter so that it seemed too much to bear!”

They had walked out of the garden across Charles Street, and were
climbing the slope of Beacon Street Mall, in the Common. “I suppose,”
 she continued, “the only way will be to work harder, and try to forget
it. They wanted me to go out and stay with them; but of course I
couldn’t. I shall work, and I shall read. I shall not find another
Madeline Swan! You must have been reading a great deal this summer, Mr.
Barker,” she said, in turning upon him from her bereavement. “Have you
seen any of the old boarders? Or Mrs. Harmon? I shall never have another
winter like that at the poor old St. Albans!”

Lemuel made what answer he could. There was happiness enough in merely
being with her to have counterbalanced all the pain he was suffering;
and when she made him partner of her interests and associations, and
appealed to their common memories in confidence of his sympathy, his
heavy heart stirred with strange joy. He had supposed that Berry must
have warned her against him; but she was treating him as if he had not.
Perhaps he had not, and perhaps he had done so, and this was her way of
showing that she did not believe it. He tried to think so; he knew
it was a subterfuge, but he lingered in it with a fleeting, fearful
pleasure. They had crossed from the Common and were walking up under the
lindens of Chestnut Street, and from time to time they stopped, in the
earnestness of their parley, and stood talking, and then loitered on
again in the summer security from oversight which they were too rapt to
recognise. They reached the top of the hill, and came to a door where
she stopped. He fell back a pace. “Good-bye--” It was eternal loss, but
it was escape.

She smiled in timorous hesitation. “Won’t you come in? And I will get
Mr. Berry’s letter.”

She opened the door with a latch-key, and he followed her within; a
servant-girl came half-way up the basement stairs to see who it was, and
then went down. She left him in the dim parlour a moment, while she went
to get the letter. When she returned, “I have a little room for my work
at the top of the house,” she said, “but it will never be like the St.
Albans. There’s no one else here yet, and it’s pretty lonesome--without
Madeline.”

She sank into a chair, but he remained standing, and seemed not to
heed her when she asked him to sit down. He put Berry’s letter into his
pocket without looking at it, and she rose again.

She must have thought he was going, and she said with a smile of gentle
trust, “It’s been like having last winter back again to see you. We
thought you must have gone home right after the fire; we didn’t see
anything of you again. We went ourselves in about a week.”

Then she did not know, and he must tell her himself.

“Did Mr. Berry say anything about me--at the fire--that last day?” he
began bluntly.

“No!” she said, looking at him with surprise; there was a new sound in
his voice. “He had no need to say anything! I wanted to tell you--to
write and tell you--how much I honoured you for it--how ashamed I was
for misunderstanding you just before, when--”

He knew that she meant when they all pitied him for a coward.

Her voice trembled; he could tell that the tears were in her eyes. He
tried to put the sweetness of her praise from him. “Oh, it wasn’t that
that I meant,” he groaned; and he wrenched the words out. “That fellow,
who said he was a friend of mine, and got into the house that way, was
a thief; and Mr. Berry caught him robbing his room the day of the fire,
and treated me as if I knew it and was helping him on--”

“Oh!” cried the girl. “How cruel! How could he do that?”

Lemuel could not suffer himself to take refuge in her generous faith
now.

“When I first came to Boston, I had my money stolen, and there were two
days when I had nothing to eat; and then I was arrested by mistake for
stealing a girl’s satchel; and when I was acquitted, I slept the next
night in the tramp’s lodging-house, and that fellow was there, and when
he came to the St. Albans I was ashamed to tell where I had known him,
and so I let him pass himself off for my friend.”

He kept his eyes fixed on hers, but he could not see them change from
their pity of him, or light up with a sense of any squalor in his
history.

“And I used to think that _my_ life had been hard!” she cried. “Oh, how
much you have been through!”

“And after that,” he pursued, “Mr. Sewell got me a place, a sort of
servant’s place, and when I lost that I came to be the man-of-all work
at the St. Albans.”

In her eyes the pity was changing to admiration; his confession which he
had meant to be so abject had kindled her fancy like a boastful tale.

“How little we know about people and what they have suffered! But I
thank you for telling me this--oh yes!--and I shall always think of
myself with contempt. How easy and pleasant my life has been! And you--”

She stopped, and he stood helpless against her misconception. He told
her about the poverty he had left at home, and the wretched circumstance
of his life, but she could not see it as anything but honourable to his
present endeavour. She listened with breathless interest to it all, and,
“Well,” she sighed at last, “it will always be something for you to
look back to, and be proud of. And that girl--did she never say or do
anything to show that she was sorry for that cruel mistake? Did you ever
see her afterwards?”

“Yes,” said Lemuel, sick at heart, and feeling how much more
triumphantly he could have borne ignominy and rejection than this sweet
sympathy.

She seemed to think he would say something more, but he turned away
from her, and after a little silence of expectance she let him go, with
promises to come again, which she seemed to win from him for his own
sake.

In the street he took out Berry’s letter and read it.

“DEAR OLD MAN,--I’ve been trying to get off a letter to you almost any
time the last three months; but I’ve been round so much, and upside
down so much since I saw you--out to W. T. and on my head in Western
Mass.--that I’ve not been able to fetch it. I don’t know as I could
fetch it now, if it wasn’t for the prospective Mrs. A. W. B., Jr.,
standing over me with a revolver, and waiting to see me do it. I’ve just
been telling her about that little interview of ours with Williams, that
day, and she thinks I ought to be man enough to write and say that I
guess I was all wrong about you; I had a sneaking idea of the kind from
the start almost, but if a fellow’s proud at all, he’s proud of his
mistakes, and he hates to give them up. I’m pretty badly balled up now,
and I can’t seem to get the right words about remorse, and so forth; but
you know how it is yourself. I am sorry, there’s no two ways about that;
but I’ve kept my suspicions as well as my regrets to myself, and now I
do the best thing I can by way of reparation. I send this letter by Miss
Carver. She hasn’t read it, and she don’t know what it’s all about; but
I guess you’d better tell her. Don’t spare, yours truly, A. W. BERRY,
JR.”

The letter did not soften Lemuel at all towards Berry, and he was
bitterly proud that he had spoken without this bidding, though he had
seemed to speak to no end that he had expected. After a while he lost
himself in his day-dreams again, and in the fantastic future which he
built up this became a great source of comfort to him and to his ideal.
Now he parted with her in sublime renunciation, and now he triumphed
over all the obstacles between them; but whatever turn he willed his
fortunes to take, she still praised him, and he prided himself that he
had shown himself at his worst to her of his own free impulse. Sewell
praised him for it in his reverie; Mr. Corey and Mr. Bellingham both
made him delicate compliments upon his noble behaviour, which he feigned
had somehow become known to them.



XXIX.


At the usual hour he was at Mr. Corey’s house, where he arrived
footsore, and empty from supperless wanderings, but not hungry and not
weary. The serving-man at the door met him with the message that Mr.
Corey had gone to dine at his club, and would not be at home till late.
He gave Lemuel a letter, which had all the greater effect from being
presented to him on the little silver tray employed to bring up the
cards and notes of the visitors and correspondents of the family.
The envelope was stamped in that ephemeral taste which configured the
stationery of a few years ago, with the lines of alligator leather, and
it exhaled a perfume so characteristic that it seemed to breathe Statira
visibly before him. He knew this far better than the poor, scrawly,
uncultivated handwriting which he had seen so little. He took the
letter, and turning from the door read it by the light of the next
street lamp.

“DEAR LEMUEL--Manda Grier has told me what she said to you and Ime about
crazy about it dear Lem I want you should come and see mee O Lem you
dont Suppose i could of let Manda Grier talk to you that way if I had of
none it but of course you dident only do Say so I give her a real good
goen over and she says shes sory she done it i dont want any body should
care for mee without itse there free will but I shall alwayes care for
you if you dont care for me dont come but if you do Care I want you
should come as soon as ever you can I can explane everything Manda Grier
dident mean anything but for the best but sometimes she dont know what
she is sayin O Lem you mussent be mad But if you are and you dont want
to come ennymore dont come But O i hope you wouldent let such a thing
set you againste mee recollect that I never done or Said anything to set
you against me,

“STATIRA.”


A cruel disgust mingled with the remorse that this letter brought him.
Its illiteracy made him ashamed, and the helpless fondness it expressed
was like a millstone hanged about his neck. He felt the deadly burden of
it drag him down.

A passer-by on the other side of the street coughed slightly in the
night air, and a thought flashed through Lemuel, from which he cowered,
as if he had found himself lifting his hand against another’s life.

His impulse was to turn and run, but there was no escape on any side. It
seemed to him that he was like that prisoner he had read of, who saw the
walls of his cell slowly closing together upon him, and drawing nearer
and nearer till they should crush him between them. The inexperience
of youth denies it perspective; in that season of fleeting and
unsubstantial joys, of feverish hopes, despair wholly darkens a world
which after years find full of chances and expedients.

If Mr. Sewell had been in town there might have been some hope through
him; or if Mr. Evans were there; or even if Berry were at hand, it would
be some one to advise with, to open his heart to in his extremity. He
walked down into Bolingbroke Street, knowing well that Mr. Sewell was
not at home, but pretending to himself, after the fashion of the young,
that if he should see a light in his house it would be a sign that all
should come out right with him, and if not, it would come out wrong. He
would not let himself lift his eyes to the house front till he arrived
before it. When he looked his heart stood still; a light streamed bright
and strong from the drawing-room window.

He hurried across the street, and rang; and after some delay, in which
the person coming to the door took time to light the gas in the hall,
Mr. Sewell himself opened to him. They stood confronted in mutual
amazement, and then Sewell said, with a cordiality which he did not keep
free from reluctance, “Oh--Mr. Barker! Come in! Come in!” But after they
had shaken hands, and Lemuel had come in, he stood there in the hall
with him, and did not offer to take him up to his study. “I’m so glad to
have this glimpse of you! How in the world did you happen to come?”

“I was passing and saw the light,” said Lemuel.

Sewell laughed. “To be sure! We never have any idea how far our little
candle throws its beams! I’m just here for the night, on my way from the
mountains to the sea; I’m to be the ‘supply’ in a friend’s pulpit at
New Bedford; and I’m here quite alone in the house, scrambling a sermon
together. But I’m _so_ glad to see you! You’re well, I hope? You’re
looking a little thin, but that’s no harm. Do you enjoy your life with
Mr. Corey? I was sure you would! When you come to know him, you will
find him one of the best of men--kindly, thoughtful, and sympathetic.
I’ve felt very comfortable about your being with him whenever I’ve
thought of you, and you may be sure that I’ve thought of you often. What
about our friends of the St. Albans? Do you see Mrs. Harmon? You knew
the Evanses had gone to Europe.”

“Yes; I got a letter from him yesterday.”

“He didn’t pick up so fast as they hoped, and he concluded to try the
voyage. I hear very good accounts of him. He said he was going to write
you. Well! And Mr. Corey is well?” He smiled more beamingly upon Lemuel,
who felt that he wished him to go, and stood haplessly trying to get
away.

In the midst of his own uneasiness Sewell noted Lemuel’s. “Is there
anything--something--you wished to speak with me about?”

“No. No, not anything in particular. I just saw the light, and--”

Sewell took his hand and wrung it with affection.

“It was so good of you to run in and see me. Don’t fancy it’s been any
disturbance. I’d got into rather a dim place in my work, but since
I’ve been standing here with you--ha, ha, ha! those things do happen so
curiously!--the whole thing has become perfectly luminous. I’m delighted
you’re getting on so nicely. Give my love to Mr. Corey. I shall see you
soon again. We shall all be back in a little over a fortnight. Glad of
this moment with you, if it’s only a moment! Good-bye!”

He wrung Lemuel’s hand again, this time in perfect sincerity, and
eagerly shut him out into the night.

The dim place had not become so luminous to him as it had to the
minister. A darkness, which the obscurity of the night faintly typified,
closed round him, pierced by one ray only, and from this he tried to
turn his face. It was the gleam that lights up every labyrinth where our
feet wander and stumble, but it is not always easy to know it from
those false lights of feeble-hearted pity, of mock-sacrifice, of sick
conscience, which dance before us to betray to worse misery yet.

Some sense of this, broken and faltering, reached Lemuel where he stood,
and tried to deal faithfully with his problem. In that one steadfast ray
he saw that whatever he did he must not do it for himself; but what his
duty was he could not make out. He knew now, if he had not known before,
that whatever his feeling for Statira was, he had not released himself
from her, and it seemed to him that he could not release himself by any
concern for his own advantage. That notion with which he had so long
played, her insufficiency for his life now and for the needs of his
mind hereafter, revealed itself in its real cruelty. The things that Mr.
Sewell had said, that his mother had said, that Berry had said, in what
seemed a fatal succession, and all to the same effect, against throwing
himself away upon some one inadequate to him at his best, fell to the
ground like withered leaves, and the fire of that steadfast ray consumed
them.

But whom to turn to for counsel now? The one friend in whom he had
trusted, to whom he had just gone, ready to fling down his whole heart
before him, had failed him, failed him unwittingly, unwillingly, as he
had failed him once before, but this time in infinitely greater stress.
He did not blame him now, fiercely, proudly, as he had once blamed him,
but again he wandered up and down the city streets, famished and outcast
through his defection.

It was late when he went home, but Mr. Corey had not yet returned, and
he had time to sit down and write the letter which he had decided to
send to Statira, instead of going to see her. It was not easy to write,
but after many attempts he wrote it.

Dear Statira,--You must not be troubled, at what Amanda said to me. I
assure you that, although I was angry at first, I am entirely willing
to overlook it at your request. She probably spoke hastily, and I am now
convinced that she spoke without your authority. You must not think that
I am provoked at you.

“I received your letter this evening; and I will come to see you very
soon. Lemuel Barker.”

The letter was colder than he meant to make it, but he felt that he must
above all be honest, and he did not see how he could honestly make
it less cold. When it came to Statira’s hands she read it silently to
herself, over and over again, while her tears dripped upon it.

‘Manda Grier was by, and she watched her till she could bear the sight
no longer. She snatched the letter from the girl’s hands and ran it
through, and then she flung it on the ground. “Nasty, cold-hearted,
stuck-up, shameless thing!”

“Oh, don’t, ‘Manda; don’t, ‘Manda!” sobbed Statira, and she plunged her
face into the pillows of the bed, where she sat.

“Shameless, cold-hearted, stuck-up, nasty thing!” said ‘Manda Grier,
varying her denunciation in the repetition, and apparently getting fresh
satisfaction out of it in that way. “Don’t? St’ira Dudley, if you was
a woman--if you was _half_ a woman--you’d never speak to that little
corpse-on-ice again.”

“O ‘Manda, don’t call him names-! I can’t bear to have you!”

“Names? If you was anybody at all, you wouldn’t look at him! You
wouldn’t _think_ of him!”

“O ‘Manda, ‘Manda! You know I can’t let you talk so,” moaned Statira.

“Talk? I could talk my _head_ off! ‘You must not think I was provoked
with you,’” she mimicked Lemuel’s dignity of diction in mincing
falsetto. “‘I will come to see you very soon.’ Miserable, worthless,
conceited whipper-snapper!”

“O ‘Manda, you’ll break my heart if you go on so!”

“Well, then, give him up! He’s goin’ to give you up.”

“Oh, he ain’t; you know he ain’t! He’s just busy, and I know he’ll come.
I’ll bet you he’ll be here to-morrow. It’ll kill me to give him up.”

She had lifted herself from the pillow, and she began to cough.

“He’ll kill you anyway,” cried ‘Manda Grier, in a passion of pity and
remorse. She ran across the room to get the medicine which Statira
had to take in these paroxysms. “There, there! Take it! I sha’n’t say
anything more about him.”

“And do you take it all back?” gasped Statira, holding the proffered
spoon away.

“Yes, yes! But do take your med’cine, St’ira, ‘f you don’t want to die
where you set.”

“And do you think he’ll come?”

“Yes, he’ll come.”

“Do you say it just to get me to take the medicine?”

“No, I really do believe he’ll come.”

“O ‘Manda, ‘Manda!” Statira took her medicine, and then wildly flung her
arms round ‘Manda Grier’s neck, and began to sob and to cry there. “Oh,
how hard I am with you, Manda! I should think if I was as hard with
everybody else, they’d perfectly hate me.”

“You hard!”

“Yes, and that’s why he hate me. He does hate me. You said he did.”

“No, St’ira, I didn’t. You never was hard to anybody, and the meanest
old iceberg in creation couldn’t hate you.”

“Then you think he does care for me?”

“Yes.”

“And you know he’ll come soon?”

“Yes.”

“To-morrow?”

“Yes, to-morrow.”

“O’Manda, O’Manda!”



XXX.


Lemuel had promised himself that if he could gain a little time he
should be able better to decide what it was right for him to do. His
heart lifted as he dropped the letter into the box, and he went through
the chapters which Mr. Corey asked him to read, after he came in, with
an ease incredible to himself. In the morning he woke with a mind that
was almost cheerful. He had been honest in writing that letter, and so
far he had done right; he should keep his word about going soon to
see Statira, and that would be honest too. He did not look beyond this
decision, and he felt, as we all do, more or less vaguely when we have
resolved to do right, that he had the merit of a good action.

Statira showed herself so glad to see him that he could not do less than
seem to share her joy in their making-up, as she called it, though he
insisted that there had been no quarrel between them; and now there
began for him a strange double life, the fact of which each reader must
reject or accept according to the witness of his own knowledge.

He renewed as far as he could the old warmth of his feeling for Statira,
and in his compunction experienced a tenderness for her that he had not
known before, the strange tenderness that some spirits feel for those
they injure. He went oftener than ever to see her, he was very good to
her, and cheered her with his interest in all her little interests;
he petted her and comforted her; but he escaped from her as soon as he
could, and when he shut her door behind him he shut her within it. He
made haste to forget her, and to lose himself in thoughts that were
never wholly absent even in her presence. Sometimes he went directly
from her to Jessie, whose innocent Bohemianism kept later hours, and who
was always glad to see him whenever he came. She welcomed him with talk
that they thought related wholly to the books they had been reading,
and to the things of deep psychological import which they suggested. He
seldom came to her without the excuse of a book to be lent or borrowed;
and he never quitted her without feeling inspired with the wish to
know more, and to be more; he seemed to be lifted to purer and clearer
regions of thought. She received him in the parlour, but their evenings
commonly ended in her little studio, whither some errand took them, or
some intrusion of the other boarders banished them. There he read to her
poems or long chapters out of the essayists or romancers; or else they
sat and talked about the strange things they had noticed in themselves
that were like the things they found in their books. Once when they had
talked a long while in this strain, he told how when he first saw her he
thought she was very proud and cold.

She laughed gaily. “And I used to be afraid of you,” she said. “You used
to be always reading there in your little office. Do you think I’m very
proud now?”

“Are you very much afraid of me now?” he retorted.

They laughed together.

“Isn’t it strange,” she said, “how little we really know about people in
the world?”

“Yes,” he answered. “I wonder if it will ever be different. I’ve been
wrong about nearly every one I’ve met since I came to Boston.”

“And I have too!” she cried, with that delight in the coincidence of
experience which the young feel so keenly.

He had got the habit, with his growing ease in her presence, of walking
up and down the room, while she sat, with her arms lifted and clasped
above her head, forgetful of everything but the things they were saying,
and followed him with her eyes. As he turned about in his walk, he saw
how pretty she was, with her slender form cased in the black silk she
wore, and thrown into full relief by the lifted arms; he saw the little
hands knit above her head, and white as flowers on her dark hair. Her
eyes were very bright, and her soft lips, small and fine, were red.

He faltered, and lost the thread of his speech. “I forgot what I was
going to say!”

She took down her hands to clasp them over her laughing face a moment.
“And I don’t remember what you were saying!” They both laughed a long
time at this; it seemed incomparably droll, and they became better
comrades.

They spent the rest of the evening in laughing and joking.

“I didn’t know you were so fond of laughing,” he said, when he went
away.

“And I always supposed you were very solemn,” she replied.

This again seemed the drollest thing in the world. “Well, I always was,”
 he said.

“And I don’t know when I’ve laughed so much before!” She stood at the
head of the stairs, and held her lamp up for him to find his way down.

Again looking back, he saw her in the undefended grace that had
bewildered him before.

When he came next they met very seriously, but before the evening was
past they were laughing together; and so it happened now whenever he
came. They both said how strange it was that laughing with any one
seemed to make you feel so much better acquainted. She told of a girl
at school that she had always disliked till one day something made them
laugh, and after that they became the greatest friends.

He tried to think of some experience to match this, but he could not;
he asked her if she did not think that you always felt a little gloomy
after you had been laughing a great deal. She said yes; after that first
night when they laughed so, she felt so depressed that she was sure she
was going to have bad news from Madeline. Then she said she had received
a letter from Madeline that morning, and she and Mr. Berry had both
wished her to give him their regards if she ever saw him. This, when
she had said it, seemed a very good joke too; and they laughed at it a
little consciously, till he boldly bade her tell them he came so very
seldom that she did not know when she could deliver their message.

She answered that she was afraid Madeline would not believe that; and
then it came out that he had never replied to Berry’s letter.

She said, “Oh! Is that the way you treat your correspondents?” and he
was ashamed to confess that he had not forgiven Berry.

“I will write to him to-night, if you say so,” he answered hardily.

“Oh, you must do what you think best,” she said, lightly refusing the
responsibility.

“Whatever you say will be best,” he said, with a sudden, passionate
fervour that surprised himself.

She tried to escape from it. “Am I so infallible as that?”

“You are for me!” he retorted.

A silence followed, which she endeavoured to break, but she sat still
across the little table from him where the shaded lamp spread its glow,
leaving the rest of the room, with its red curtains and its sketches
pinned about, in a warm, luxurious shadow. Her eyes fell, and she did
not speak.

“It must sound very strange to you, I know,” he went on; “and it’s
strange to me, too; but it seems to me that there isn’t anything I’ve
done without my thinking whether you would like me to do it.”

She rose involuntarily. “You make me ashamed to think that you’re so
much mistaken about me! I know how we all influence each other--I know
I always try to be what I think people expect me to be--I can’t be
myself--I know what you mean; but you--you must be yourself, and not
let--” She stopped in her wandering speech, in strange agitation, and he
rose too.

“I hope you’re not offended with me!”

“Offended? Why? Why do you--go so soon?”

“I thought you were going,” he answered stupidly.

“Why, I’m at _home!_”

They looked at each other, and then they broke into a happy laugh.

“Sit down again! I don’t know what I got up for. It must have been
to make some tea. Did you know Madeline had bequeathed me her
tea-kettle--the one we had at the St. Albans?” She bustled about, and
lit the spirit-lamp under the kettle.

“Blow out that match!” he cried. “You’ll set your dress on fire!” He
caught her hand, which she was holding with the lighted match in it at
her side, after the manner of women with lighted matches, and blew it
out himself.

“Oh, thank you!” she said indifferently. “Can you take it without milk?”

“Yes, I like it so.”

She got out two of the cups he remembered, and he said, “How much like
last winter that seems!”

And “Yes, doesn’t it?” she sighed.

The lamp purred and fretted under the kettle, and in the silence in
which they waited, the elm tree that rose from the pavement outside
seemed to look in consciously upon them.

When the kettle began to sing, she poured out the two cups of tea, and
in handing him his their fingers touched, and she gave a little outcry.
“Oh! Madeline’s precious cup! I thought it was going to drop!”

The soft night-wind blew in through the elm leaves, and their rustling
seemed the expression of a profound repose, an endless content.



XXXI.


The next night Lemuel went to see Statira, without promising himself
what he should say or do, but if he were to tell her everything, he felt
that she would forgive him more easily than ‘Manda Grier. He was
aware that ‘Manda always lay in wait for him, to pierce him at every
undefended hint of conscience. Since the first break with her, there had
never been peace between them, and perhaps not kindness for long before
that. Whether or not she felt responsible for having promoted Statira’s
affair with him, and therefore bound to guard her to the utmost from
suffering by it, she seemed always to be on the alert to seize any
advantage against him. Sometimes Statira accused her of trying to act
so hatefully to him that he would never come any more; she wildly blamed
her; but the faithful creature was none the less constant and vigilant
on that account. She took patiently the unjust reproaches which Statira
heaped upon her like a wayward child, and remitted nothing of her
suspicion or enmity towards Lemuel. Once, when she had been very bitter
with him, so bitter that it had ended in an open quarrel between them,
Statira sided with him against her, and when ‘Manda Grier flounced out
of the room she offered him, if he wished, to break with her, and never
to speak to her again, or have anything more to do with such a person.
But at this his anger somehow fell; and he said no, she must not think
of such a thing; that ‘Manda Grier had been her friend long before he
was, and that, whatever she said to him, she was always good and true
to her. Then Statira fell upon his neck and cried, and praised him, and
said he was a million times more to her than ‘Manda Grier, but she would
do whatever he said; and he went away sick at heart.

When he came now, with his thoughts clinging to Jessie, ‘Manda Grier
hardly gave him time for the decencies of greeting. She was in a high
nervous exaltation, and Statira looked as if she had been crying.

“What’s become o’ them art-students you used to have ‘t the St. Albans?”
 she began, her whopper-jaw twitching with excitement, and her eyes
glaring vindictively upon Lemuel.

He had sat down near Statira on the lounge, but she drew a little away
from him in a provisional fashion, as if she would first see what came
of ‘Manda Grier’s inquisition.

“Art-students?” he repeated aimlessly while he felt his colour go.

“Yes!” she snapped. “Them girls ‘t used to be ‘t the St. Albans, ‘t you
thought so wonderful!”

“I didn’t know I thought they were very wonderful!”

“Can’t you answer a civil question?” she demanded, raising her voice.

“I haven’t heard any,” said Lemuel, with sullen scorn.

“Oh! Well!” she sneered. “I forgot that you’ve b’en used to goin’ with
such fine folks that you can’t bear to be spoken to in plain English.”

“‘Manda!” began Statira, with an incipient whimper.

“You be still, S’tira Dudley! Mr. Barker,” said the poor foolish thing
in the mincing falsetto which she thought so cutting, “have you any idea
what’s become of your young lady artist friends,--them that took your
portrait as a Roman youth, you know?”

Lemuel made no answer whatever for a time. Then, whether he judged it
best to do so, or was goaded to the defiance by ‘Manda Grier’s manner,
he replied, “Miss Swan and Miss Carver? Miss Swan is married, and
lives in Wyoming Territory now.” Before he had reached the close of the
sentence he had controlled himself sufficiently to be speaking quite
calmly.

“Oh indeed, Mr. Barker! And may I ask where Miss Carver is? She merried
and living in Wyoming Territory too?”

“No,” said Lemuel quietly. “She’s not married. She’s in Boston.”

“Indeed! Then it _was_ her I see in the Garden to-day, S’tira! She b’en
back long, Mr. Barker?”

“About a month, I think,” said Lemuel.

“Quite a spell! _You_ seen her, Mr. Barker?”

“Yes, quite often.”

“I want to know! She still paintin’ Roman boys, Mr. Barker? Didn’t seem
to make any great out at it last winter! But practice makes perfect,
they say. I s’pose _you_ seen her in the Garden, too?”

“I usually see her at home,” said Lemuel. “_You_ probably receive your
friends on the benches in the Garden, but young ladies prefer to have
them call at their residences.” He astonished himself by this brutality,
he who was all gentleness with Miss Carver.

“Very well, Mr. Barker! That’s all right. That’s all I wanted to know.
Never mind about where I meet my friends. Wherever it is, they’re
_gentlemen_; and they ain’t generally goin’ with three or four girls ‘t
the same time.”

“No, one like you would be enough,” retorted Lemuel.

Statira sat cowering away from the quarrel, and making little
ineffectual starts as if to stay it. Heretofore their enmity had been
covert, if not tacit, in her presence.

Lemuel saw her wavering, and the wish to show ‘Manda his superior power
triumphed over every other interest and impulse in him. He got upon his
feet. “There is no use in this sort of thing going on any longer. I came
here because I thought I was wanted. If it’s a mistake, it’s easy
enough to mend it, and it’s easy not to make it again. I wish you good
evening.”

Statira sprang from the lounge, and flung her arms around his neck. “No,
no! You sha’n’t go! You mustn’t go, Lem! I know your all right, and I
won’t have you talked to so! I ain’t a bit jealous, Lem; indeed I ain’t.
I know you wouldn’t fool with me, any more than I would with you; and
that’s what I tell ‘Manda Grier, I’ll leave it to her if I don’t. I
don’t care who you go with, and I hain’t, never since that first time.
I know you ain’t goin’ to do anything underhanded. Don’t go, Lem; oh,
_don’t_ go!”

He was pulling towards the door; her trust, her fond generosity drove
him more than ‘Manda Grier’s cutting tongue: that hurt his pride, his
vanity, but this pierced his soul; he had only a blind, stupid will to
escape from it.

Statira was crying; she began to cough; she released his neck from her
clasp, and reeled backward to the lounge, where she would have fallen,
if ‘Manda Grier had not caught her. The paroxysm grew more violent; a
bright stream of blood sprang from her lips.

“Run! Run for the doctor! Quick, Lemuel! Oh, quick!” implored ‘Manda
Grier, forgetting all enmity in her terror.

Statira’s arms wavered towards him, as if to keep him, but he turned and
ran from the house, cowed and conscience-stricken by the sight of that
blood, as if he had shed it.

He did not expect to see Statira alive when he came back with the doctor
whom he found at the next apothecary’s. She was lying on the lounge,
white as death, but breathing quietly, and her eyes sought him with an
eagerness that turned to a look of tender gratitude at the look they
found in his.

The doctor bent over her for her pulse and her respiration; then when
he turned to examine the crimson handkerchief which ‘Manda Grier showed
him, Lemuel dropped on his knees beside her and put his face down to
hers.

With her lips against his cheek she made, “Don’t go!”

And he whispered, “No, I’ll not leave you now!”

The doctor looked round with the handkerchief still in his hand, as if
doubting whether to order him away from her. Then he mutely questioned
‘Manda Grier with a glance which her glance answered. He shrugged his
shoulders, with a puzzled sigh. An expression of pity crossed his face
which he hardened into one of purely professional interest, and he went
on questioning ‘Manda Grier in a low tone.

Statira had slipped her hand into Lemuel’s, and she held it fast, as if
in that clasp she were holding on to her chance of life.



XXXII.


Sewell returned to town for the last time in the third week of
September, bringing his family with him.

This was before the greater part of his oddly assorted congregation had
thought of leaving the country, either the rich cottagers whose family
tradition or liberal opinions kept them in his church, or the boarding
and camping elements who were uniting a love of cheapness with a love
of nature in their prolonged sojourn among the woods and fields. Certain
families, perhaps half of his parish in all, were returning because the
schools were opening, and they must put their children into them; and it
was both to minister to the spiritual needs of these and to get his own
children back to their studies that the minister was at home so early.

It was, as I have hinted already, a difficult and laborious season with
him; he himself was always a little rusty in his vocation after his
summer’s outing, and felt weakened rather than strengthened by his rest.
The domestic machine started reluctantly; there was a new cook to be
got in, and Mrs. Sewell had to fight a battle with herself, in which she
invited him to share, before she could settle down for the winter to
the cares of housekeeping. The wide skies, the dim mountain slopes,
the long, delicious drives, the fresh mornings, the sweet, silvery
afternoons of their idle country life, haunted their nerves and
enfeebled their wills.

One evening in the first days of this moral disability, while Sewell sat
at his desk trying to get himself together for a sermon, Barker’s name
was brought up to him.

“Really,” said his wife, who had transmitted it from the maid, “I think
it’s time you protected yourself, David. You can’t let this go on
for ever. He has been in Boston nearly two years now; he has regular
employment, where if there’s anything in him at all, he ought to prosper
and improve without coming to you every other night. What _can_ he want
now?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said the minister, leaning back in his chair,
and passing his hand wearily over his forehead.

“Then send down and excuse yourself. Tell him you’re busy, and ask him
to come another time!”

“Ah, you know I can’t do that, my dear.”

“Very well, then; I will go down and see him. You sha’n’t be
interrupted.”

“Would you, my dear? That would be very kind of you! Do get me off some
way; tell him I’m coming to see him very soon.” He went stupidly back to
his writing, without looking to see whether his wife had meant all she
said; and after a moment’s hesitation she descended in fulfilment of her
promise; or, perhaps rather it was a threat.

She met Lemuel not unkindly, for she was a kind-hearted woman; but she
placed duty before charity even, and she could not help making him feel
that she was there in the discharge of a duty. She explained that Mr.
Sewell was very unusually busy that evening, and had sent her in his
place, and hoped soon to see him. She bade Lemuel sit down, and he
obeyed, answering all the questions as to the summer and his occupations
and health, and his mother’s health, which she put to him in proof of
her interest in him; in further evidence of it, she gave him an account
of the Sewell family’s doings since they last met. He did not stay long,
and she returned slowly and pensively to her husband.

“Well?” he asked, without looking round.

“Well; it’s all right,” she answered, with rather a deep breath. “He
didn’t seem to have come for anything in particular; I told him that if
he wished specially to speak with you, you would come down.”

Sewell went on with his writing, and after a moment his wife said, “But
you must go and see him very soon, David; you must go to-morrow.”

“Why?”

“He looks wretchedly, though he says he’s very well. It made my heart
ache. He looks perfectly wan and haggard. I wish,” she burst out, “I
wish I had let you go down and see him!”

“Why--why, what was the matter?” asked Sewell, turning about now. “Did
you think he had something on his mind?”

“No, but he looked fairly sick. Oh, I wish he had never come into our
lives!”

“I’m afraid he hasn’t got much good from us,” sighed the minister. “But
I’ll go round and look him up in the morning. His trouble will keep
overnight, if it’s a real trouble. There’s that comfort, at least. And
now, do go away, my dear, and leave me to my writing.”

Mrs. Sewell looked at him, but turned and left him, apparently reserving
whatever sermon she might have in her mind till he should have finished
his.

The next morning he went to inquire for Lemuel at Mr. Corey’s. The man
was sending him away from the door with the fact merely that Lemuel was
not then in the house, when the voice of Mr. Corey descending the stairs
called from within: “Is that you, Sewell? Don’t go away! Come in!”

The old gentleman took him into the library and confessed in a bit of
new slang, which he said was delightful, that he was all balled up by
Lemuel’s leaving him, and asked Sewell what he supposed it meant.

“Left you? Meant?” echoed Sewell.

When they got at each other it was understood that Lemuel, the day
before, had given up his employment with Mr. Corey, expressing a fit
sense of all his kindness and a fit regret at leaving him, but alleging
no reasons for his course; and that this was the first that Sewell knew
of the affair.

“It must have been that which he came to see me about last night,” he
said, with a sort of anticipative remorse. “Mrs. Sewell saw him--I was
busy.”

“Well! Get him to come back, Sewell,” said Mr. Corey, with his
whimsical imperiousness; “I can’t get on without him. All my moral and
intellectual being has stopped like a watch.”

Sewell went to the boarding-house where Lemuel took his meals, but found
that he no longer came there, and had left no other address. He knew
nowhere else to ask, and he went home to a day of latent trouble of
mind, which whenever it came to the light defined itself as helpless
question and self-reproach in regard to Barker.

That evening as he sat at tea, the maid came with the announcement that
there was a person in the reception-room who would not send in any name,
but wished to see Mr. Sewell, and would wait.

Sewell threw down his napkin, and said, “I’ll bring him in to tea.”

Mrs. Sewell did not resist; she bade the girl lay another plate.

Sewell was so sure of finding Lemuel in the reception-room, that he
recoiled in dismay from the girlish figure that turned timidly from the
window to meet him with a face thickly veiled. He was vexed, too; here,
he knew from the mystery put on, was one of those cases of feminine
trouble, real or unreal, which he most disliked to meddle with.

“Will you sit down?” he said, as kindly as he could, and the girl
obeyed.

“I thought they would let me wait. I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” she
began, in a voice singularly gentle and unaffected.

“Oh, no matter!” cried Sewell. “I’m very glad to see you.”

“I thought you could help me. I’m in great trouble--doubt--”

The voice was almost childlike in its appealing innocence. Sewell sat
down opposite the girl and bent sympathetically forward. “Well?”

She waited a moment. Then, “I don’t know how to begin,” she said
hoarsely, and stopped again.

Sewell was touched. He forgot Lemuel; he forgot everything but the
heartache which he divined before him, and his Christ-derived office,
his holy privilege, of helping any in want of comfort or guidance.
“Perhaps,” he said, in his loveliest way,--the way that had won his
wife’s heart, and that still provoked her severest criticism for
its insincerity; it was so purely impersonal,--“perhaps that isn’t
necessary, if you mean beginning at the beginning. If you’ve any trouble
that you think I can advise you in, perhaps it’s better for both of us
that I shouldn’t know very much of it.”

“Yes?” murmured the girl questioningly.

“I mean that if you tell me much, you will go away feeling that you have
somehow parted with yourself, that you’re no longer in your own keeping,
but in mine; and you know that in everything our help must really come
from within our own free consciences.”

“Yes,” said the girl again, from behind the veil which completely hid
her face. She now hesitated a long time. She put her handkerchief
under her veil; and at last she said: “I know what you mean.” Her voice
quivered pathetically; she tried to control it. “Perhaps,” she whispered
huskily, after another interval, “I can put it in the form of a
question.”

“That would be best,” said Sewell.

She hesitated; the tears fell down upon her hands behind her veil; she
no longer wiped them. “It’s because I’ve often--heard you; because I
know you will tell me what’s true and right--”

“Your own heart must do that,” said the minister, “but I will gladly
help you all I can.”

She did not heed him now, but continued as if rapt quite away from him.

“If there was some one--something--if there was something that it would
be right for you to do--to have, if there was no one else; but if
there were some else that had a right first--” She broke off and asked
abruptly, “Don’t you think it is always right to prefer another--the
interest of another to your own?”

Sewell could not help smiling. “There is only one thing for us to do
when we are in any doubt or perplexity,” he said cheerily, “and that is
the unselfish thing.”

“Yes,” she gasped; she seemed to be speaking to herself. “I saw it,
I knew it! Even if it kills us, we must do it! Nothing ought to weigh
against it! Oh, I thank you!”

Sewell was puzzled. He felt dimly that she was thanking him for anguish
and despair. “I’m afraid that I don’t quite understand you.”

“I thought I told you,” she answered, with a certain reproach, and a
fall of courage in view of the fresh effort she must make. It was some
moments before she could say, “If you knew that some one--some one who
was--everything to you--and that you knew--believed--”

At fifty it is hard to be serious about these things, and it was well
for the girl that she was no longer conscious of Sewell’s mood.

“--Cared for you; and if you knew that before he had cared for you there
had been some else--some else that he was as much to as he was to you,
and that couldn’t give him up, what--should you--”

Sewell fetched a long sigh of relief; he had been afraid of a much
darker problem than this. He almost smiled.

“My dear child,”--she seemed but a child there before the mature man
with her poor little love-trouble, so intricate and hopeless to her, so
simple and easy to him--“that depends upon a great many circumstances.”

He could feel through her veil the surprise with which she turned to
him: “You said, whenever we are in doubt, we must act unselfishly.”

“Yes, I said that. But you must first be sure what is really selfish--”

“I _know_ what is selfish in this case,” said the girl with a sublimity
which, if foolish, was still sublimity. “She is sick--it will kill her
to lose him--You have said what I expected, and I thank you, thank you,
_thank_ you! And I will do it! Oh, don’t fear now but I shall; I _have_
done it! No matter,” she went on in her exaltation, “no matter how much
we care for each other, now!”

“No,” said Sewell decidedly. “That doesn’t follow. I have thought of
such things; there was such a case within my experience once,”--he could
not help alleging this case, in which he had long triumphed,--“and I
have always felt that I did right in advising against a romantic notion
of self-sacrifice in such matters. You may commit a greater wrong in
that than in an act of apparent self-interest. You have not put the
case fully before me, and it isn’t necessary that you should, but if you
contemplate any rash sacrifice, I warn you against it.”

“You said that we ought to act unselfishly.”

“Yes, but you must beware of the refined selfishness which shrinks from
righteous self-assertion because it is painful. You must make sure of
your real motive; you must consider whether your sacrifice is not going
to do more harm than good. But why do you come to me with your trouble?
Why don’t you go to your father--your mother?”

“I have none.”

“Ah--”

She had risen and pushed by him to the outer door, though he tried to
keep her. “Don’t be rash,” he urged. “I advise you to take time to think
of this--”

She did not answer; she seemed now only to wish to escape, as if in
terror of him.

She pulled open the door, and was gone.

Sewell went back to his tea, bewildered, confounded.

“What’s the matter? Why didn’t he come in to tea with you?” asked his
wife.

“Who?”

“Barker.”

“What Barker?”

“David, what _is_ the matter?”

Sewell started from his daze, and glanced at his children: “I’ll tell
you by and by, Lucy.”



XXXIII


A month passed, and Sewell heard nothing of Lemuel. His charge, always
elusive and evanescent, had now completely vanished, and he could find
no trace of him. Mr. Corey suggested advertising. Bellingham said, why
not put it in the hands of a detective? He said he had never helped work
anything up with a detective; he rather thought he should like to do it.
Sewell thought of writing to Barker’s mother at Willoughby Pastures, but
he postponed it; perhaps it would alarm her if Barker were not there;
Sewell had many other cares and duties; Lemuel became more and more a
good intention of the indefinite future. After all, he had always shown
the ability to take care of himself, and except that he had mysteriously
disappeared there was no reason for anxiety about him.

One night his name came up at a moment when Sewell was least prepared
by interest or expectation to see him. He smiled to himself in running
downstairs, at the reflection that he never seemed quite ready for
Barker. But it was a relief to have him turn up again; there was no
question of that, and Sewell showed him a face of welcome that dropped
at sight of him. He scarcely new the gaunt, careworn face or the shabby
figure before him, in place of the handsome, well-dressed young fellow
whom he had come to greet. There seemed a sort of reversion in Barker’s
whole presence to the time when Sewell first found him in that room;
and in whatever trouble he now was, the effect was that of his original
rustic constraint.

Trouble there was of some kind, Sewell could see at a glance, and his
kind heart prompted him to take Lemuel’s hand between both of his. “Why,
my dear boy!” he began; but he stopped and made Lemuel sit down, waited
for him to speak, without further question or comment.

“Mr. Sewell,” the young man said abruptly, “you told me once you--that
you sometimes had money put into your hands that you could lend.”

“Yes,” replied Sewell, with eager cordiality.

“Could I borrow about seventy-five dollars of you?”

“Why, certainly, Barker!” Sewell had not so much of what he called his
flying-charity fund by him, but he instantly resolved to advance the
difference out of his own pocket.

“It’s to get me an outfit for horse-car conductor,” said Lemuel. “I can
have the place if I can get the outfit.”

“Horse-car conductor!” reverberated Sewell. “What in the world for?”

“It’s work I can do,” answered Lemuel briefly, but not resentfully.

“But there are so many other things--better--fitter--more profitable!
Why did you leave Mr. Corey? I assure you that you have been a great
loss to him--in every way. You don’t know how much he valued you,
personally. He will be only too glad to have you come back.”

“I can’t go back,” said Lemuel. “I’m going to get married.”

“Married!” cried Sewell in consternation.

“My--the lady that I’m going to marry--has been sick, ever since the
first of October, and I haven’t had a chance to look up any kind of
work. But she’s better now; and I’ve heard of this place I can get. I
don’t like to trouble you; but--everything’s gone--I’ve got my mother
down here helping take care of her; and I must do something. I don’t
know just when I can pay you back; but I’ll do it sometime.”

“Oh, I’m sure of that,” said Sewell, from the abyss of hopeless
conjecture into which these facts had plunged him; his wandering fancy
was dominated by the presence of Lemuel’s mother with her bloomers in
Boston. “I--I hope there’s nothing serious the trouble with your--the
lady?” he said, rubbing away with his hand the smile that came to his
lips in spite of him.

“It’s lung trouble,” said Lemuel quietly.

“Oh!” responded Sewell. “Well! Well!” He shook himself together, and
wondered what had become of the impulse he had felt to scold Barker for
the idea of getting married. But such a course now seemed not only far
beyond his province,--he heard himself saying that to Mrs. Sewell in
self-defence when she should censure him for not doing it,--but utterly
useless in view of the further complications. “Well! This is great news
you tell me--a great surprise. You’re--you’re going to take an important
step--You--you--Of course, of course! You must have a great many demands
upon you, under the circumstances. Yes, yes! And I’m very glad you came
to me. If your mind is quite made up about----”

“Yes, I’ve thought it over,” said Lemuel. “The lady has had to work
all her life, and she--she isn’t used to what I thought--what I
intended--any other kind of people; and it’s better for us both that
I should get some kind of work that won’t take me away from her too
much----” He dropped his head, and Sewell with a flash of intelligence
felt a thrill of compassionate admiration for the poor, foolish,
generous creature, for so Lemuel complexly appeared to him.

Again he forbore question or comment.

“Well--well! we must look you up, Mrs. Sewell and I. We must come to see
your--the lady.” He found himself falling helplessly into Lemuel’s way
of describing her. “Just write me your address here,”--he put a scrap
of paper before Lemuel on the davenport,--“and I’ll go and get you the
money.”

He brought it back in an envelope which held a very little more than
Lemuel had asked for--Sewell had not dared to add much--and Lemuel put
it in his pocket.

He tried to say something; he could only make a husky noise in his
throat.

“Good night!” said Sewell pressing his hand with both of his again, at
the door. “We shall come very soon.”

“Married!” said Mrs. Sewell, when he returned to her; and then she
suffered a silence to ensue, in which it seemed to Sewell that his
inculpation was visibly accumulating mountains vast and high. “_What did
you say_?”

“Nothing,” he answered almost gaily; the case was so far beyond despair.
“What should _you_ have said?”



XXXIV.


Lemuel got a conductor’s overcoat and cap at half-price from a man who
had been discharged, and put by the money saved to return to Sewell when
he should come. He entered upon his duties the next morning, under the
instruction of an old conductor, who said, “Hain’t I seen you som’ere’s
before?” and he worked all day, taking money and tickets, registering
fares, helping ladies on and off the car, and monotonously journeying
back and forth over his route. He went on duty at six o’clock in the
morning, after an early breakfast that ‘Manda Grier and his mother got
him, for Statira was not strong enough yet to do much, and he was to be
relieved at eight. At nightfall, after two half-hour respites for dinner
and tea, he was so tired that he could scarcely stand.

“Well, how do you like it, as fur’s you’ve gone?” asked the instructing
conductor, in whom Lemuel had recognised an old acquaintance. “Sweet
life, ain’t it? There! That switch hain’t worked again! Jump off, young
man, and put your shoulder to the wheel!”

The car had failed to take the right-hand turn where the line divided;
it had to be pushed back, and while the driver tugged and swore under
his breath at his horses, Lemuel set himself to push the car.

“‘S no use!” said the driver finally. “I got to hitch ‘em on at the
other end, and pull her back.”

He uncoupled the team from the front of the car, and swung round with
it. Lemuel felt something strike him, on the leg, and he fell down. He
scrambled to his feet again, but his left leg doubled under him; it went
through his mind that one of the horses must have lashed out and broken
it; then everything seemed to stop.

The world began again for him in the apothecary’s shop where he had been
carried, and from which he was put into an ambulance, by a policeman.
It stopped again, as he whirled away; it renewed itself in anguish, and
ceased in bliss as he fainted from the pain or came to.

They lifted him up some steps, at last, and carried him into a high,
bright room, where there were two or three cots, and a long glass case
full of surgical instruments. They laid him on a cot, and some one
swiftly and skilfully undressed him. A surgeon had come in, and now he
examined Lemuel’s leg. He looked once or twice at his face.

“This is a pretty bad job, I can’t tell how bad till you have had the
ether. Will you leave it with me?”

“Yes. But do the best you can for me.”

“You may be sure I will.”

Lemuel believed that they meant to cut off his leg. He knew that he had
a right to refuse and to take the consequences, but he would not; he had
no right to choose death, when he had others to live for.

He woke deathly sick at first, and found himself lying in bed, one of
the two rows in a long room, where there were some quiet women in neat
caps and seersucker dresses going about, with bowls of food and bottles
of medicine.

Lemuel still felt his leg, and the pain in it, but he had heard how
mutilated men felt their lost limbs all their lives, and he was afraid
to make sure by the touch of his hand.

A nurse who saw his eyes open came to him. He turned them upon her, but
he could not speak. She must have understood. “The doctor thinks he can
save your leg for you; but it’s a bad fracture. You must be careful to
keep very still.”

He fell asleep; and life began again for him, in the midst of suffering
and death. He saw every day broken and mangled men, drunk with ether,
brought up as he had been, and laid in beds; he saw the priest of the
religion to which most of the poor and lowly still belong, go and come
among the cots, and stand by the pillows where the sick feebly followed
him in the mystical gestures which he made on his brow and breast; he
learned to know the use of the white linen screen which was drawn
about a bed to hide the passing of a soul; he became familiar with the
helpless sympathy, the despair of the friends who came to visit the sick
and dying.

He had not lacked for more attention and interest from his own than the
rules of the hospital allowed. His mother and ‘Manda Grier came first,
and then Statira when they would let her. She thought it hard that she
was not suffered to do the least thing for him; she wished to take him
away to their own rooms, where she could nurse him twice as well. At
first she cried whenever she saw him, and lamented over him, so that
the head nurse was obliged to explain to her that she disturbed the
patients, and could not come any more unless she controlled herself. She
promised, and kept her word; she sat quietly by his pillow and held his
hand, when she came, except when she put up her own to hide the cough
which she could not always restrain. The nurse told her that, of course,
she was not accountable for the cough, but she had better try to check
it. Statira brought troches with her, and held them in her mouth for
this purpose.

Lemuel’s family was taken care of in this time of disaster. The
newspapers had made his accident promptly known; and not only Sewell,
but Miss Vane and Mrs. Corey had come to see if they could be of any
use.

One day a young girl brought a bouquet of flowers and set it by Lemuel’s
bed, when he seemed asleep. He suddenly opened his eyes, and saw Sybil
Vane for the first time since their quarrel.

She put her finger to her lip, and smiled with the air of a lady
benefactress; then, with a few words of official sympathy, she
encouraged him to get well, and flitted to the next bed, where she
bestowed a jacqueminot rosebud on a Chinaman dying of cancer.

Sewell came often to see him, at first in the teeth of his mother’s
obvious hostility, but with her greater and greater relenting. Nothing
seemed gloomier than the outlook for Lemuel, but Sewell had lived too
long not to know that the gloom of an outlook has nothing to do with a
man’s real future. It was impossible, of course, for Lemuel to go back
to Mr. Corey’s now with a sick wife, who would need so much of his care.
Besides, he did not think it desirable on other accounts. He recurred to
what Lemuel had said about getting work that should not take him too far
away from the kind of people his betrothed was used to, and he felt a
pity and respect for the boy whom life had already taught this wisdom,
this resignation. He could see that before his last calamity had come
upon him, Barker was trying to adjust his ambition to his next duty,
or rather to subordinate it; and the conviction that he was right gave
Sewell courage to think that he would yet somehow succeed. It also gave
him courage to resist, on Barker’s behalf, the generous importunities
of some who would have befriended him. Mr. Corey and Charles Bellingham
drove up to the hospital one day, to see Lemuel; and when Sewell met
them the same evening, they were full of enthusiasm. Corey said that
the effect of the hospital, with its wards branching from the classistic
building in the centre, was delightfully Italian; it was like St.
Peter’s on a small scale, and he had no idea how interesting the South
End was; it was quite a bit of foreign travel to go up there. Bellingham
had explored the hospital throughout; he said he had found it the thing
to do--it was a thing for everybody to do; he was astonished that he
had never done it before. They united in praising Barker, and they asked
what could be done for him. Corey was strenuous for his coming back to
him; at any rate they must find something for him. Bellingham favoured
the notion of doing something for his education; a fellow like that
could come to almost anything.

Sewell shook his head. “All that’s impossible, now. With that girl----”

“Oh, confound her!” cried Bellingham.

“I was rather disappointed at not seeing his mother,” said Corey. “I had
counted a good deal, I find, upon Mrs. Barker’s bloomers.”

“With a girl like that for his wife,” pursued Sewell, “the conditions
are all changed. He must cleave to her in mind as well as body, and he
must seek the kind of life that will unite them more and more, not less
and less. In fact, he was instinctively doing so when this accident
happened. That’s what marriage means.”

“Oh, not always,” suggested Corey.

“He must go back to Willoughby Pastures,” Sewell concluded, “to his
farm.”

“Oh, come now!” said Bellingham, with disgust.

“If that sort of thing is to go on,” said Corey, “what is to become of
the ancestry of the future _élite_ of Boston? I counted upon Barker to
found one of our first families. Besides, any Irishman could take his
farm and do better with it. The farm would be meat to the Irishman, and
poison to Barker, now that he’s once tasted town.”

“Yes, I know all that,” said Sewell sadly. “I once thought the greatest
possible good I could do Barker, after getting him to Boston, was to get
him back to Willoughby Pastures; but if that was ever true, the time is
past. Now, it merely seems the only thing possible. When he gets well,
he will still have an invalid wife on his hands; he must provide her a
home; she could have helped him once, and would have done so, I’ve no
doubt; but now she must be taken care of.”

“Look here!” said Bellingham. “What’s the reason these things can’t be
managed as they are in the novels? In any well-regulated romance that
cough of hers would run into quick consumption and carry Barker’s
fiancee off in six weeks; and then he could resume his career of
usefulness and prosperity here, don’t you know. He could marry some one
else, and found that family that Corey wants.”

They all laughed, Sewell ruefully.

“As it is,” said Corey, “I suppose she’ll go on having hemorrhages to a
good old age, and outlive him, after being a clog and burden to him all
his life. Poor devil! What in the world possesses him to want to marry
her? But I suppose the usual thing.”

This gave Sewell greater discomfort than the question of Lemuel’s
material future. He said listlessly, “Oh, I suppose so,” but he was
far from thinking precisely that. He had seen Lemuel and the young girl
together a great deal, and a painful misgiving had grown up in his mind.
It seemed to him that while he had seen no want of patience and kindness
towards her in Lemuel, he had not seen the return of her fondness,
which, silly as it was in some of its manifestations, he thought he
should be glad of in him. Yet he was not sure. Barker was always so
self-contained that he might very well feel more love for her than he
showed; and, after all, Sewell rather weakly asked himself, was the love
so absolutely necessary?

When he repeated this question in his wife’s presence, she told him she
was astonished at him.

“You know that it is _vitally_ necessary! It’s all the more necessary,
if he’s so superior to her, as you say. I can’t think what’s become of
your principles, my dear!”

“I do, you’ve got them,” said Sewell.

“I really believe I have,” said his wife, with that full conviction of
righteousness which her sex alone can feel. “I have always heard you
say that marriage without love was not only sinful in itself, but the
beginning of sorrow. Why do you think now that it makes no difference?”

“I suppose I was trying to adapt myself to circumstances,” answered
Sewell, frankly at least. “Let’s hope that my facts are as wrong as my
conclusions. I’m not sure of either. I suppose, if I saw him idolising
so slight and light a person as she seems to be, I should be more
disheartened about his future than I am now. If he overvalued her, it
would only drag him lower down.”

“Oh, his future! Drag him down! Why don’t you think of her, going up
there to that dismal wilderness, to spend her days in toil and poverty,
with a half-crazy mother-in-law, and a rheumatic brother-in-law, in
such a looking hovel?” Mrs. Sewell did not group these disadvantages
conventionally, but they were effective. “You have allowed your feelings
about that baffling creature to blind you to everything else, David. Why
should you care so much for his future, and nothing for hers? Is that so
very bright?”

“I don’t think that either is dazzling,” sighed the minister. Yet
Barker’s grew a little lighter as he familiarised himself with it, or
rather with Barker. He found that he had a plan for getting a teacher’s
place in the Academy, if they reopened it at Willoughby Pastures, as
they talked of doing, under the impulse of such a course in one of the
neighbouring towns, and that he was going home, in fancy at least, with
purposes of enlightenment and elevation which would go far to console
him under such measure of disappointment as they must bring. Sewell
hinted to Barker that he must not be too confident of remodelling
Willoughby Pastures upon the pattern of Boston.

“Oh no; I don’t expect that,” said Lemuel. “What I mean is that I shall
always try to remember myself what I’ve learnt here--from the kind of
men I’ve seen, and the things that I know people are all the time doing
for others. I told you once that they haven’t got any idea of that in
the country. I don’t expect to preach it into them; they wouldn’t like
it if I did; and they’d make fun of it; but if I could try to _live_
it?”

“Yes,” said Sewell, touched by this young enthusiasm.

“I don’t know as I can all the time,” said Lemuel. “But it seems to me
that that’s what I’ve learnt here, if I’ve learnt anything. I think the
world’s a good deal better than I used to.”

“Do you indeed, my dear boy?” asked Sewell, greatly interested. “It’s a
pretty well-meaning world--I hope it is.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean,” said Lemuel. “I presume it ain’t
perfect--isn’t, I should say,” and Sewell smiled. “Mr. Corey was always
correcting me on that. But if I were to do nothing but pass along the
good that’s been done me since I came here, I should be kept busy the
rest of my life.”

Sewell knew that this emotion was largely the physical optimism of
convalescence; but he could not refuse the comfort it gave him to find
Barker in such a mood, and he did not conceive it his duty to discourage
it. Lofty ideals, if not indulged at the expense of lowly realities, he
had never found hurtful to any; and it was certainly better for Barker
to think too well than too ill of Boston, if it furnished him incentives
to unselfish living. He could think of enough things in the city to
warrant a different judgment, but if Barker’s lesson from his experience
there was this, Sewell was not the person to weaken its force with him.
He said, with a smile of reserved comment, “Well, perhaps you’ll be
coming back to us, some day.”

“I don’t look forward to that,” said Lemuel soberly; and then his face
took a sterner cast, as if from the force of his resolution. “The first
thing I’ve got to do after I’ve made a home for her is to get Statira
away from the town where she can have some better air, and see if she
can’t get her health back. It’ll be time enough to talk of Boston again
when she’s fit to live here.”

The minister’s sympathetic spirit sank again. But his final parting with
Barker was not unhopeful. Lemuel consented to accept from him a small
loan, to the compass of which he reduced the eager bounty of Miss Vane
and Mr. Corey, representing that more would be a burden and an offence
to Barker. Statira and his mother came with him to take leave of the
Sewells.

They dismounted from the horse-car at the minister’s door; and he saw,
with sensibility, the two women helping Lemuel off; he walked with a
cane, and they went carefully on either side of him. Sewell hastened
to meet them at the door himself, and he was so much interested in the
spectacle of this mutual affection that he failed at first to observe
that Mrs. Barker wore the skirts of occidental civilisation instead of
the bloomers which he had identified her with.

“She _says_ she’s goin’ to put ‘em on again as soon as she gets back
to Willoughby,” the younger woman explained to Mrs. Sewell in an aside,
while the minister was engaged with Lemuel and his mother. “But I
tell her as long as it ain’t the fashion in Boston, I guess she hadn’t
better, he-e-e-re.” Statira had got on her genteel prolongation of her
last syllables again. “I guess I shall get along with her. She’s kind
of queer when you first get acquainted; but she’s _real_
good-_heart_-e-e-d.” She was herself very prettily dressed, and though
she looked thin, and at times gave a deep, dismal cough, she was so
bright and gay that it was impossible not to feel hopeful about her. She
became very confidential with Mrs. Sewell, whom she apparently brevetted
Lemuel’s best friend, and obliged to a greater show of interest in
him than she had ever felt. She told her the whole history of her love
affair, and of how much ‘Manda Grier had done to help it on at first,
and then how she had wanted her to break off with Lemuel. “But,” she
concluded, “I think we’re goin’ to get along real nice together. I don’t
know as we shall live all in the same _hou_-ou-se; I guess it’ll be the
best thing for Lem and I if we can board till we get some little of our
health back; I’m more scared for him than what I am for my-_se_-e-lf. I
don’t presume but what we shall both miss the city some; but he might be
out of a job all winter in town; I shouldn’t want he should go back on
them _ca_-a-rs. Most I hate is leavin’ ‘Manda Grier, she is the one
that I’ve roomed with ever since I first came to Boston; but Lem and her
don’t get on very well; they hain’t really either of ‘em _got_ anything
against each other now, but they don’t _like_ very _we_-e-ll; and, of
course, I got to have the friends that he wants me to have, and that’s
what ‘Manda Grier says, _to_-o-o; and so it’s just as well we’re goin’
to be where they won’t _cla_-a-sh.”

She talked to Mrs. Sewell in a low voice; but she kept her eyes upon
Lemuel all the time; and when Sewell took him and his mother the length
of the front drawing-room away, she was quite distraught, and answered
at random till he came back.

Sewell did not know what to think. Would this dependence warm her
betrothed to greater tenderness than he now showed, or would its excess
disgust him? He was not afraid that Lemuel would ever be unkind to
her; but he knew that in marriage kindness was not enough. He looked
at Lemuel, serious, thoughtful, refined in his beauty by suffering; and
then his eye wandered to Statira’s delicate prettiness, so sweet,
so full of amiable cheerfulness, so undeniably light and silly. What
chiefly comforted him was the fact of an ally whom the young thing
had apparently found in Lemuel’s mother. Whether that grim personage’s
ignorant pride in her son had been satisfied with a girl of Statira’s
style and fashion, and proven capableness in housekeeping, or whether
some fancy for butterfly prettiness lurking in the fastnesses of the old
woman’s rugged nature had been snared by the gay face and dancing eyes,
it was apparent that she at least was in love with Statira. She allowed
herself to be poked about and rearranged as to her shawl and the
narrow-brimmed youthful hat which she wore on the peak of her skull, and
she softened to something like a smile at the touch of Statira’s quick
hands.

They had all come rather early to make their parting visit at the
Sewells, for the Barkers were going to take the two o’clock train for
Willoughby Pastures, while Statira was to remain in Boston till he could
make a home for her. Lemuel promised to write, as soon as he should be
settled, and tell Sewell about his life and his work; and Sewell, beyond
earshot of his wife, told him he might certainly count upon seeing them
at Willoughby in the course of the next summer. They all shook hands
several times. Lemuel’s mother gave her hand from under the fringe of
her shawl, standing bolt upright at arm’s-length off, and Sewell said it
felt like a collection of corn-cobs.



XXXV.


“Well?” said Sewell’s wife, when they were gone.

“Well,” he responded; and after a moment he said, “There’s this comfort
about it which we don’t always have in such cases: there doesn’t seem to
be anybody else. It would be indefinitely worse if there were.”

“Why, of course. What in the world are you thinking about?”

“About that foolish girl who came to me with her miserable love-trouble.
I declare, I can’t get rid of it. I feel morally certain that she went
away from me and dismissed the poor fellow who was looking to her love
to save him.”

“At the cost of some other poor creature who’d trusted and believed in
him till his silly fancy changed? I hope for the credit of women that
she did. But you may be morally certain she did nothing of the kind.
Girls don’t give up all their hopes in life so easily as that. She might
think she would do it, because she had read of such things, and thought
it was fine, but when it came to the pinch, she wouldn’t.”

“I hope not. If she did she would commit a great error, a criminal
error.”

“Well, you needn’t be afraid. Look at Mrs. Tom Corey. And that was her
own sister!”

“That was different. Corey had never thought of her sister, much less
made love to her, or promised to marry her. Besides, Mrs. Corey had her
father and mother to advise her, and support her in behaving sensibly.
And this poor creature had nothing but her own novel fed fancies, and
her crazy conscience. She thought that because she inflicted suffering
upon herself she was acting unselfishly. Really the fakirs of India and
the Penitentes of New Mexico are more harmless; for they don’t hurt any
one else. If she has forced some poor fellow into a marriage like this
of Barker’s she’s committed a deadly sin. She’d better driven him to
suicide, than condemned him to live a lie to the end of his days. No
doubt she regarded it as a momentary act of expiation. That’s the way
her romances taught her to look at loveless marriage--as something
spectacular, transitory, instead of the enduring, degrading squalor that
it is!”

“What in the world are you talking about, David? I should think _you_
were a novelist yourself, by the wild way you go on! You have no proof
whatever that Barker isn’t happily engaged. I’m sure he’s got a much
better girl than he deserves, and one that’s fully his equal. She’s only
too fond of that dry stick. Such a girl as the one you described,--like
that mysterious visitor of yours,--what possible relation could she have
with him? She was a lady!”

“Yes, yes! Of course, it’s absurd. But everybody seems to be tangled
up with everybody else. My dear, will you give me a cup of tea? I think
I’ll go to writing at once.”

Before she left her husband to order his tea Mrs. Sewell asked, “And do
you think you have got through with him now?”

“I have just begun with him,” replied Sewell.

His mind, naturally enough in connection with Lemuel, was running upon
his friend Evans, and the subject they had once talked of in that room.
It was primarily in thinking of him that he begun to write his sermon
on Complicity, which made a great impression at the time, and had a more
lasting effect as enlarged from the newspaper reports, and reprinted in
pamphlet form. His evolution from the text, “Remember them that are
in bonds as bound with them,” of a complete philosophy of life, was
humorously treated by some of his critics as a phase of Darwinism,
but upon the whole the sermon met with great favour. It not only
strengthened Sewell’s hold upon the affections of his own congregation,
but carried his name beyond Boston, and made him the topic of editorials
in the Sunday editions of leading newspapers as far off as Chicago.
It struck one of those popular moods of intelligent sympathy when the
failure of a large class of underpaid and worthy workers to assert their
right to a living wage against a powerful monopoly had sent a thrill of
respectful pity through every generous heart in the country; and it
was largely supposed that Sewell’s sermon referred indirectly to the
telegraphers’ strike. Those who were aware of his habit of seeking to
produce a personal rather than a general effect, of his belief that you
can have a righteous public only by the slow process of having righteous
men and women, knew that he meant something much nearer home to each
of his hearers when he preached the old Christ-humanity to them, and
enforced again the lessons that no one for good or for evil, for sorrow
or joy, for sickness or health, stood apart from his fellows, but each
was bound to the highest and the lowest by ties that centred in the hand
of God. No man, he said, sinned or suffered to himself alone; his error
and his pain darkened and afflicted men who never heard of his name. If
a community was corrupt, if an age was immoral, it was not because
of the vicious, but the virtuous who fancied themselves indifferent
spectators. It was not the tyrant who oppressed, it was the wickedness
that had made him possible. The gospel--Christ--God, so far as men had
imagined him,--was but a lesson, a type, a witness from everlasting
to everlasting of the spiritual unity of man. As we grew in grace,
in humanity, in civilisation, our recognition of this truth would be
transfigured from a duty to a privilege, a joy, a heavenly rapture. Many
men might go through life harmlessly without realising this, perhaps,
but sterilely; only those who had had the care of others laid upon them,
lived usefully, fruitfully. Let no one shrink from such a burden, or
seek to rid himself of it. Rather let him bind it fast upon his neck,
and rejoice in it. The wretched, the foolish, the ignorant whom we found
at every turn, were something more; they were the messengers of God,
sent to tell his secret to any that would hear it. Happy he in whose
ears their cry for help was a perpetual voice, for that man, whatever
his creed, knew God and could never forget him. In his responsibility
for his weaker brethren he was Godlike, for God was but the
impersonation of loving responsibility, of infinite and never-ceasing
care for us all.

When Sewell came down from his pulpit, many people came up to speak to
him of his sermon. Some of the women’s faces showed the traces of tears,
and each person had made its application to himself. There were two
or three who had heard between the words. Old Bromfield Corey, who was
coming a good deal more to church since his eyes began to fail him,
because it was a change and a sort of relief from being read to, said--

“I didn’t know that they had translated it Barker in the revised
version. Well, you must let me know how he’s getting on, Sewell, and
give me a chance at the revelation, too, if he ever gets troublesome to
you again.”

Miss Vane was standing at the door with his wife when Sewell came out.
She took his hand and pressed it.

“Do you think I threw away my chance?” she demanded. She had her veil
down, and at first Sewell thought it was laughter that shook her voice,
but it was not that.

He did not know quite what to say, but he did say, “He was sent to
_me_.’”

As they walked off alone, his wife said--

“Well, David, I hope you haven’t preached away all your truth and
righteousness.”

“I know what you mean, my dear,” answered Sewell humbly. He added, “You
shall remind me if I seem likely to forget.” But he concluded seriously,
“If I thought I could never do anything more for Barker, I should be
very unhappy; I should take it as a sign that I had been recreant to my
charge.”



XXXVI


The minister heard directly from Barker two or three times during the
winter, and as often through Statira, who came to see Mrs. Sewell.
Barker had not got the place he had hoped for at once, but he had got a
school in the country a little way off, and he was doing something; and
he expected to do better.

The winter proved a very severe one. “I guess it’s just as well I stayed
in town,” said Statira, the last time she came, with a resignation which
Mrs. Sewell, fond of the ideal in others as most ladies are, did not
like. “‘Manda Grier says ‘twould killed me up there; and I d’ know but
what it would. I done so well here, since the cold weather set in that
‘Manda Grier she thinks I hadn’t better get married right away; well,
not till it comes summer, anyway. I tell her I guess she don’t want I
should get married at all, after all she done to help it along first
off. Her and Mr. Barker don’t seem to get along very well.”

Now that Statira felt a little better acquainted with Mrs. Sewell, she
dropped the genteel elongation of her final syllables, and used such
vernacular forms of speech as came first to her. The name of ‘Manda
Grier seemed to come in at every fourth word with her, and she tired
Mrs. Sewell with visits which she appeared unable to bring to a close of
herself.

A long relief from them ended in an alarm for her health with Mrs.
Sewell, who went to find her. She found her still better than before,
and Statira frankly accounted for her absence by saying that ‘Manda
thought she had better not come any more till Mrs. Sewell returned some
of her calls. She laughed, and then she said--

“I don’t know as you’d found me here if you’d come much later. ‘Manda
Grier don’t want I should be here in the east winds, now it’s coming
spring so soon; and she’s heard of a chance at a box factory in
Philadelphia. She wants I should go there with her, and I don’t know but
what it _would_ be about the best thing.”

Mrs. Sewell could not deny the good sense of the plan, though she was
sensible of liking Statira less and less for it.

The girl continued: “Lem--Mr. Barker, I _should_ say--wants I should
come up _there_, out the east winds. But ‘Manda Grier she’s opposed to
it: she thinks I’d ought to have more of a mild climate, and he better
come down there and get a school if he wants me too,” Statira broke into
an impartial little titter. “I’m sure I don’t know which of ‘em ‘ll win
the day!”

Mrs. Sewell’s report of this speech brought a radiant smile of relief to
Sewell’s face. “Ah, well, then! That settles it! I feel perfectly sure
that ‘Manda Grier will win the day. That poor, sick, flimsy little
Statira is completely under ‘Manda Grier’s thumb, and will do just what
she says, now that there’s no direct appeal from her will to Barker’s;
they will never be married. Don’t you see that it was ‘Manda Grier’s
romance in the beginning, and that when she came to distrust, to dislike
Barker, she came to dislike her romance too--to hate it?”

“Well, don’t _you_ romance him, David,” said Mrs. Sewell, only
conditionally accepting his theory.

Yet it may be offered to the reader as founded in probability and
human nature. In fact, he may be assured here that the marriage which
eventually took place was not that of Lemuel with Statira; though
how the union, which was not only happiness for those it joined, but
whatever is worthier and better in life than happiness, came about, it
is aside from the purpose of this story to tell, and must be left for
some future inquiry.


THE END.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.