John Marvel, Assistant Part 14

"Oh! Aunt Sophia and Milly McSheen. They are always talking about their money."

Mr. Leigh's eyes were twinkling.

"You must not talk that way about your Aunt Sophia--she is very fond of you."

"She is always nagging at me--correcting me."

"She wants you to grow up to be a fine woman."

"Like her?" said Miss Eleanor pertly.

Mr. Leigh felt that it was wise to check this line of criticism, and he now spoke seriously.

"You must not be so critical of your Aunt. She is really very fond of you--and she was your mother's half-sister. You must respect her and love her."

"I love her, but I don't like her. She and Milly McSheen are just alike--always boasting of what they have, and do, and running down what others have, and do."

"Oh, well, it takes a great many people to make a world," said Mr. Leigh indulgently. Eleanor felt a want of sympathy and made another bid for it.

"Milly McSheen says that her father is going to be the richest man in this town."

"Ah! who is talking about money now?" said Mr. Leigh, laughing.

"I am not--I am merely saying what she said."

"You must not tell the silly things your friends say."

"No--only to you--I thought you said I must tell you everything. But, of course, if you don't wish me to--I won't."

Mr. Leigh laughed and took her on his knee. He was not quite sure whether she was serious or was only laughing at him, but, as he began to explain, she burst into a peal of merriment over her victory.

In appearance she was like her mother, only he thought her fairer--as fair as he had thought her mother in the days of his first devotion; and her deeper eyes and firmer features were an added beauty; the well-rounded chin was his own. Her eyes, deep with unfathomable depths, and mouth, firm even with its delicate beauty, had come from some ancestor or ancestress who, in some generation past, had faced life in its most exacting form with undaunted resolution and, haply, had faced death with equal calm for some belief that now would scarcely have given an hour's questioning. So, when she grew each year, developing new powers and charm and constancy, he began to find a new interest in life, and to make her more his companion and confidante than he had ever made her mother. He left his business oftener to see her than he had left it to see her mother; he took her oftener with him on his trips, and took more trips, that he might have her company. She sat at the head of his table, and filled her place with an ability that was at once his astonishment and his pride.

At one time, as she changed from a mere child to a young girl, he had thought of marrying again, rather with a view to giving her a guide and counsellor than for any other purpose. Her storminess, however, at the mere suggestion, and much more, her real grief, had led him to defer the plan from time to time, until now she was a young lady, and he could see for himself that she needed neither chaperon nor counsellor. He sometimes smiled to think what the consequences would have been had he taken to wife the soft, kindly, rather commonplace lady whom he had once thought of as his daughter's guardian. A domestic fowl in the clutches of a young eagle would have had an easier time.

One phase alone in her development had puzzled and baffled him. She had gone off one spring to a country neighborhood in another State, where she had some old relatives on her mother's side. Mr. Leigh had been called to Europe on business, and she had remained there until well into the summer. When she returned she was not the same. Some change had taken place in her. She had gone away a rollicking, gay, pleasure-loving, and rather selfish young girl--he was obliged to admit that she was both wilful and self-indulgent. Even his affection for her could not blind his eyes to this, and at times it had given him much concern, for at times there was a clash in which, if he came off victor, he felt it was at a perilous price--that, possibly, of a strain on her obedience. She returned a full-grown woman, thoughtful and self-sacrificing and with an aim--he was glad it was not a mission--and as her aim was to be useful, and she began with him, he accepted it with contentment. She talked freely of her visit; spoke warmly, and indeed, enthusiastically, of those she had met there. Among these were a young country preacher and a friend of his, a young Jew. But, though she spoke of both with respect, the praise she accorded them was so equal that he dismissed from his mind the possibility that she could have been seriously taken with either of them. Possibly, the Jew was the one she was most enthusiastic over, but she spoke of him too openly to cause her father disquietude. Besides, he was a Jew.

The preacher she plainly respected most highly, yet her account of his appearance was too humorous to admit a serious feeling for him, even though she had gotten him called to be one of Dr. Capon's a.s.sistants.

What had happened was that the girl, who had only "lain in the lilies and fed on the roses of life," had suddenly been dropped in an out-of-the-way corner in a country neighborhood in an old State, where there were neither lilies nor roses of the metaphorical kind, though a sufficiency of the real and natural kind, with which nature in compensatory mood atones to those who have of the metaphorical sort but thistles and brambles and flinty soil.

When she first landed there, after the very first excitement of being thrown into a wholly new situation, among strangers whom, though her relatives, she had always regarded much as she had regarded geographical places in distant lands, was over, she found herself, as it were, at a loss for occupation. Everything was so quiet and calm. She felt lost and somewhat bored. But after a little time she found occupation in small things, as on looking closely she discovered beauties in Nature which her first glance had failed to catch. The people appeared so novel, so simple, so wholly different from all whom she had known; the excitements and amus.e.m.e.nts and interests of her life in the city, or at summer watering-places, or in travelling, were not only unknown to them--as unknown as if they were in another planet, but were matters of absolute indifference. Their interest was in their neighbors, in the small happenings about them; and occurrences an hundred miles away were as distant to them as though they had taken place in another era. Among the few notabilities in this rural community was a young clergyman whom she always heard spoken of with respect--as much respect, indeed, as if he had been a bishop. What "Mr. Marvel thought" and what he said was referred to, or was quoted as something to be considered--so much so that she had insensibly formed a picture in her own mind of a quite remarkable looking and impressive person. When, at last, she met John Marvel, what was her amus.e.m.e.nt to discover, in place of her young Antinous, a stout, strapping young fellow, with rather bristly hair, very near-sighted and awkward, and exceedingly shy, a person as far from a man of the world as a stout, country-bred cart-horse would be from a sleek trick-pony. His timidity in her presence caused her endless amus.e.m.e.nt, and for lack of some better diversion and partly to scandalize her staid kinswomen, she set herself to tease him in every way that her fertile brain could devise.

Visiting the young clergyman at the time was a friend who came much nearer being in appearance what Eleanor had imagined John Marvel to be: a dark, slender young man with a cla.s.sical face, but that its lines were stronger and more deeply graven, and unforgettable eyes. He had just come to visit Mr. Marvel and to get a needed rest, John Marvel said. He had been a worker among the poor, and his views were so different from any that Eleanor Leigh had ever heard as to appear almost shocking. He was an educated man, yet he had lived and worked as an artisan. He was a gentleman, yet he denounced vehemently the conditions which produced the upper cla.s.s. But an even greater surprise awaited her when he announced that he was a Jew.

When John Marvel brought his friend to see Miss Eleanor Leigh, the first impression that she received was one of pleasure. He was so striking and unusual looking--with deep, burning eyes under dark brows. Then she was not sure that she liked him, she even thought she was sensible of a sort of repulsion. She had a feeling as if he were weighing her in his mind and, not approving of her, treated her at times with indifference, at times with a certain disdain. She was conscious of an antagonism as Wolffert showed scorn of conditions and things which she had been brought up to believe almost as much a necessary part of life as air and light. She promptly began to argue with him, but when she found that he usually had the best of the argument, she became more careful how she opened herself to his attack. He aroused in her the feeling of opposition. His scorn of the money-making spirit of the day led her to defend what she secretly held in contempt. And once when he had been inveighing against commercialism that set up G.o.ds of Bra.s.s to wors.h.i.+p, and declared that it was the old story of Nebuchadnezzar over again--and was the fore-runner to brotherhood with the beasts of the field, she wheeled on him, declaring that it was "only people who had no power to make money who held such views."

"Do you think that I could not make money if I wished to do so?" said Wolffert quietly, with an amused light in his eyes as they rested on her with an expression which was certainly not hostile; for her eagerness had brought warm blood to her cheeks and her eyes were sparkling with the glow of contention.

"Yes, if you were able you would be as rich as a Jew."

A yet more amused look came into Wolffert's eyes.

"Are all Jews rich?" he asked.

"Yes--all who are capable--you know they are."

"No, for I am a Jew and I am not rich," said Wolffert.

"What! You!--You a--Oh, I beg your pardon! I--" she blushed deeply.

"Pray don't apologize--don't imagine that I am offended. Would you be offended if I charged you with coming from a race of poets and philosophers and scientists--of a race that had given the world its literature and its religion?"

She burst out laughing.

"No; but I was such a fool--pray forgive me." She held out her hand and Wolffert took it and pressed it firmly--and this was the beginning of their friends.h.i.+p.

Wolffert walked home slowly that evening, that is, across the fields to the little farmhouse where John Marvel lived. He had food for thought.

When Eleanor Leigh saw John Marvel a few days later she told him of her conversation and the speech she had made to his friend. "You know," said John, "that he is rich or could be, if he chose to go home. His father is very rich."

"He is a new Jew to me," said Eleanor Leigh; "he is quite different from the typical Jew."

"I wonder if there is a typical Jew," questioned John to himself, and this set Eleanor wondering too.

But Eleanor Leigh found other causes for wonder in Wolffert besides the salient fact of his race which she had mentioned to her cousins, and they forced upon her the consciousness that she would have to readjust her ideas of many things as she had been compelled to do in regard to the appearance and aims of this singular people. Her idea of the Israelites had always been curiously connoted with hooked noses, foreign speech of a far from refined type, and a persistent pursuit of shekels by ways generally devious and largely devoted to shops containing articles more or less discarded by other people. Here she found a cultivated gentleman with features, if not wholly cla.s.sical, at least more regular and refined than those of most young men of her acquaintance; speech so cultivated as to be quite distinguished, and an air and manner so easy and gracious as to suggest to her complete knowledge of the great world. No matter what subject was discussed between them, he knew about it more than any one else, and always threw light on it which gave it a new interest for her. He had a knowledge of the Literature and Art, not only of the ancients, but of most modern nations, and he talked to her of things of which she had never so much as heard. He had not only travelled extensively in Europe, but had travelled in a way to give him an intimate knowledge not merely of the countries, but of the people and customs of the countries which no one she had ever met possessed. He had crossed in the steerage of ocean-liners more than once and had stoked across both to England and the Mediterranean.

"But what made you do it?" she asked. "Did not you find it terrible?"

"Yes--pretty bad." Wolffert was at the moment showing her how tea was made in certain provinces along the Caspian Sea which he had visited not long before. "About as bad as it could be."

"Then what made you do it?"

"Well, I saved money by it, too."

What the other reason was she did not press him to give. She only thought, "That is the Jew of it." But after she had seen more of him she discovered that the other reason was that he might learn by personal experience what the condition was in the emigrant s.h.i.+ps and the holes where the stokers lived deep down amid the coal-bunkers and the roaring furnaces, and further, that he might know the people themselves.

Incidentally, he had learned there and elsewhere Italian and Russian, with the strange Hebraic faculty of absorbing whatever he came in touch with, but he thought no more of knowing that than of knowing Yiddish.

It was this study of conditions that finally gave her the key to his design in life, for it developed as their acquaintance grew that this clear-headed, cultivated, thoughtful man held strange views as to the ordinary things of life, the things which she had always accepted as fundamental and unchangeable as the solid earth or the vaguely comprehended but wholly accepted revolution of the spheres. In fact, he held that the conditions of modern life, the relations of people in ma.s.s, which she had somehow always considered as almost perfect and, indeed, divinely established, were absolutely outworn and fundamentally unrighteous and unjust. She at first did not take him seriously. She could not. To find a pleasant and, indeed, rather eloquent-spoken young man denounce as wicked and vile usurpation the establishment of compet.i.tive enterprises, and the acc.u.mulation of capital by captains of industry, appeared to her almost impious. Yet, there he sat with burning eyes and thrilling voice denouncing the very things she had always considered most commendable. "Why, that is Socialism, isn't it?" she asked, feeling that if she could convict him of this somewhat vaguely comprehended term she would prove her old foundations unshaken.

Wolffert smiled. He was very good-looking when he smiled. "No, not exactly--if it is, it is only an elementary and individual kind of Socialism; but it is Socialism so far as it is based on a profound desire to reconstruct society and to place it on a natural and equitable social foundation where every one shall have a chance to work and to reap the fruit of such work."

"What is Socialism?" she demanded suddenly.

"It is not what you mean by the term," he laughed. "It is not taking the property of those who have worked for it and giving to those who neither have worked nor will work--that is what you have in mind."

"Precisely," she nodded.

"It is--at least, the Socialism I mean--the application of the same method of general order by the people at large to labor and the product of labor: property--that is now employed in Government. The reconstruction of the present methods so that all should partic.i.p.ate both in the labor, and in the product." He went on to picture glowingly the consequences of this Utopian scheme when all men should work and all should reap. But though he made it appear easy enough to him, Eleanor Leigh's practical little head saw the difficulties and the flaws much more readily than the perfect result which he appeared to find so certain.