John Marvel, Assistant Part 47

I sprang up to follow her, to make my explanation to her; but though, after the first twenty steps, she stopped running and came down to a walk, it was still a rapid walk, and she was fleeing from me. I felt as though the gates of Paradise were closing on me. I followed her at a distance to see that she reached home safely, and with a vain hope that she might slacken her gait and so give me an excuse to make such explanation as I could. She, however, kept on, and soon after she pa.s.sed beyond the park I saw a trap draw up beside the pavement, and, after a moment in which the driver was talking to her, a young man sprang out and throwing the reins to a groom, joined her and walked on with her. In the light of the street lamp I recognized young Canter. I turned back cursing him; but most of all, cursing myself.

It has been well observed that there is no more valuable a.s.set which a young man can possess than a broken heart. In the ensuing weeks I bore about with me if not a broken, at least a very much bruised and wounded one. It is a tragic fact in the course of mortality that a slip of a girl should have the power to shut the gates of happiness on a man.

There were times when I rebelled against myself at being as big a fool as I knew myself to be, and endeavored to console myself by reverting to those wise bits of philosophy which our friends are always offering to us in our distress from their vantage ground of serene indifference.

There were doubtless as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, but I was not after fis.h.i.+ng--somehow I could not get a grasp on the idea that there were as lovely and attractive girls in the world whom I was likely to meet as Eleanor Leigh, whom I now felt I had lost and might possibly never recover.

I walked the streets for some time that evening in a very low state of mind, and Dix, as he trudged solemnly along with his head now against my leg, now a step in the rear, must have wondered what had befallen me. By midnight he looked as dejected as I felt. Even when at length, having formulated my letter, I took him out for a run, he did not cheer up as he usually did. That dog was very near a human being. He sometimes appeared to know just what went on in my mind. He looked so confoundedly sorry for me that night that I found it a real consolation. He had the heart of a woman and the eyes of an angel. The letter I wrote was one of the best pieces of advocacy I ever did. I set forth the facts simply and yet clearly and, I felt, strongly. I told the plain truth about the paper, and I had the sense not to truckle, even while I expressed my regret that my work had been made the basis of the unauthorized and outrageous attack on her father and the lie about herself. With regard to the rights of the public and the arrogance of the cla.s.s that ran the railways and other quasi-public corporations, I stood to my guns.

This letter I mailed and awaited, with what patience I could command, her reply. Several days pa.s.sed before I received any reply, and then I got a short, little cool note saying that she was glad to see that I felt an apology was due to her honored father, and was happy to know that I was not the author of the outrageous headlines. It was an icy little reply to a letter in which I had put my whole heart and I was in a rage over it. I made up my mind that I would show her that I was not to be treated so. If this was the way in which she received a gentleman's full and frank amende, why, I would have no more to do with her. Anger is a masterful pa.s.sion. So long as it holds sway no other inmate of the mind can enter. So long as I was angry I got on very well.

I enjoyed the society of my friends and was much gayer to outward appearances than usual. I spent my evenings with Marvel and Wolffert or some of my less intimate companions, treated myself and them to the theatre, and made altogether a brave feint at bravery. But my anger died out. I was deeply in love and I fell back into a slough of despond. I thought often of confiding in John Marvel; but for some reason I could not bring myself to do so.

Adam driven suddenly out of Paradise with Eve left behind to the temptation of the serpent will give some idea of what I felt. I had the consolation of knowing that I had done the right thing and the only thing a gentleman could have done; but it was a poor consolation when I looked back on the happiness I had been having of late in the presence of Eleanor Leigh. And now between her and me was the flaming sword which turned every way.

My heart gave a sudden drop into my boots one evening when I came across an item in the society columns of an afternoon paper, stating that it was believed by the friends of the parties, that Mr. Canter would, before very long, lead to the altar one of the reigning belles of the city. I had always disliked "Society Columns," as the expression of a latter-day vulgarity. Since then I have detested them.

I finally determined to try to get an interview with her whose absence clouded my world, and wrote her a note rather demanding one. As I received no reply to this, I called one evening to see her, if possible.

The servant took in my card and a moment later returned with the statement that Miss Leigh was not at home. I was sure that it was not true. I came down the steps white with rage and also with a sinking of the heart. For I felt that it was all over between us.

Those whom the G.o.ds hate they first make mad, and it was by no accident that the pa.s.sion of anger and the state of madness have come to be known by the same terms in our tongue. I have always held since then that every true lover has something of madness in him while the pa.s.sion rages. I could cheerfully have stormed her house and carried Eleanor Leigh away. I recalled with grim envy William the Conqueror's savage wooing when he met the Count's daughter who had insulted him and rode her down, to receive soon afterward her full submission. This somewhat barbarous form of proving one's pa.s.sion having pa.s.sed out of vogue, I testified my spleen by falling into a state of general cynicism which I vented so generously that Wolffert finally asked me what had happened to me, and conjectured that I must have met with a cross in love. This recalled me sufficiently to myself to make me dissemble my feelings, at least when in his presence. But I was certainly not rational for some time, and, sleeping or waking, I was haunted by the voice of the siren to whom I had fatally listened. What must I do in my folly the next time I met Miss Leigh, which I did quite accidentally one day on the street, but carry my head so high and bow so slightly that the next time we met, which was far from being as accidental as it might have appeared, she carried her head very high and did not bow at all. It was at some sort of a fair held for charity--and, ever since then I have hated them.

Feeling a.s.sured that Eleanor Leigh would go, I attended myself with no more charitable object than to benefit a very wretched young lawyer, who was deeply conscious that he had made a fool of himself the last time he saw her. When I arrived, she was nowhere to be seen and I was on the point of leaving when, turning, I found her standing in the midst of a group, her arms full of flowers, which she was selling. All I have to say is that since that time I have felt that Pluto was entirely justified in that little affair in the Sicilian meadows. Thinking to make the amende for my foolish airiness when I last saw her, I made my way up to Miss Eleanor Leigh; but as I approached and was in the very act of speaking to her she turned her back on me. It was a dead cut--a public insult, as humiliating as she could make it. I left the fair in a rage which lasted long. As I wandered through the forlorn streets that night I fed my heart on instances of woman's inconstancy, and agreed with the royal lover that, "Mal habil qui s'y fie." But it was a poor occupation and brought me little consolation. In his "Inferno," Dante has given twelve different and successive circles in the depths of perdition, each lower than the other. I pa.s.sed through every one of them, and with no companion but my own folly.

x.x.x

SEEKING ONE THAT WAS LOST

One may not hate his personal enemy; but one should hate an enemy to mankind. Had I known what fresh cause I had to hate Pushkin, I should not have been so supine.

Since I began to work seriously my practice had increased, and I was so interested in working on my old ladies' case that I was often detained at my office until late at night; and several times on my way home I observed a man acting somewhat curiously. He would keep along behind me, and if I turned back, would turn up a by-street or alley. He was a big, brawny fellow, and I never saw him except at night. At first, it had made no impression on me; but at length, I noticed him so often that it suddenly struck me that he was following me. Rendered suspicious by my former experience, I began quietly to test him, and was having a very interesting time leading him around the town, when unexpectedly I discovered who he was. It was a singular feeling to find oneself shadowed; to discover that the man who has pa.s.sed all others indifferently in the crowd has singled you out and follows you, bound to you by some invisible thread, tracking you through the labyrinth of the thoroughfares; disregarding all the thousands who pa.s.s with their manifold interests and affairs, and that, singling you out with no known reason, he sticks to you through all the mazes of the mult.i.tudes.

It comes to you gradually, dawning by degrees; then bursts on you suddenly with a light that astonishes and amazes. You are startled, frightened, incredulous; then you suspect, test, and are convinced; you suddenly spring from obscurity and indifference into an object of interest to yourself; and then it becomes an intellectual game between hunter and hunted. New powers awaken, dormant since the days when man lived in the forest.

When I awoke to the fact that the big man I had noticed was following me, for a moment the sensation was anything but pleasant. My hair almost stirred on my head. The next moment anger took the place of this feeling--indignation that one should dare to shadow me, to spy on my actions. I determined to confront the spy and thwart him. It was not difficult to do; he was an awkward fellow. The game was easier than I had supposed. One night when I had observed him following me, waiting until I reached a favorable spot, I turned quickly with my hand on my pistol, which I had put in my pocket, and faced him under a street lamp, stepping immediately in front of him and blocking his way.

"Otto!"

With a growl he pulled his hat down closer over his brow and, stepping aside, pa.s.sed on. I went home in a maze. Why should he follow me? I had not long to wait before I was enlightened.

One evening shortly afterward I was about to leave my office when there was a heavy step outside the door, and without a knock the door flew open, and the old Drummer entered. He looked so haggard and broken that I was on my feet in a second.

"What is the matter?" I gasped. "Is any one dead?"

"Vorser! Elsa?--Vere iss Elsa?" He stood before me like a wounded bison at bay, his eyes red with pa.s.sion.

"Elsa! What!--'Where is she?' Tell me----?"

"Fhat haf you done vit my daughter?"

"Your daughter! What do you mean?" I asked quietly. "I have not seen her since I left your house. Tell me what has occurred."

He soon saw that I knew nothing of her, and his face changed. Yet he hesitated.

"Ze Count said--" He began hesitatingly and stopped, thinking over something in his mind.

It all came to me in a second. That scoundrel! It was all accounted for now--the change in the family toward me--the notice to leave--the spying of Otto. Count Pushkin had used me as a blind to cover his own wickedness. I suddenly burst out into a wrath which opened the old Drummer's eyes. What I said of Pushkin cannot be repeated. What I proceeded to do was wiser. Why had I not pitched him out of the window that first evening, and so have ended his wicked career! I felt as if I were the cause of my friend's wretchedness; of Elsa's destruction. I sat the old fellow down in a chair, and made him tell me all the facts.

He informed me that for some time past he and her mother had noticed that Elsa had not been the same to Otto, and Otto had been unhappy, and had thrown up his place; then she had wished to break with him; but they would not let her. And of late she had been staying out a good deal, visiting her friends, she said, and when they urged her to marry Otto, she had always begged off, and Otto was wretched, and they were all wretched. Count Pushkin had intimated that she was in love with me, and that I was the cause of her action. They could not believe it.

"Yet, ze Count--?" The old fellow was not able to go on. I relieved him and he took up the thread elsewhere, and told of Otto's following me to find out. And two or three nights before there had been trouble; she had come in late, and her mother had scolded her, and insisted on knowing where she had been, and she had told her a lie--and they had insisted on her carrying out her agreement with Otto, to which she a.s.sented. And this morning she was missing.

The old fellow broke down again. His grief was almost more for Otto than for himself. "He iss a good boy; he iss a good boy," he repeated again and again.

"Maybe, we were too harsh with her, sir, and now she may be dead." He was overcome by grief.

I did not believe she was dead; but I feared for her a worse fate. He still did not suspect Pushkin. The Count was his friend, he said; he had known him since his boyhood.

"I will find her," I said. And I knew I should if I had to choke the truth out of Pushkin's throat.

"If you do, I vill bless you, and her mother vill, too!"

I told him to go home and console her mother.

"She has gone to see the preacher. He will know how to console her--and he will help her also."

"Why do you not go to the police?"

"Oh! Ze police! Ze police! Efery one say 'Ze police!' Ze police vill nod do notings for me. I ham nod von Union-man. Zay haf zeir orders. Ven I hax ze police zay say, 'Don't vorry, Elsa vill come home by-m-by, ven she get readee.'"

I had heard the same thing said about the police, and recalled what I had heard McSheen say to Wringman about keeping them from interfering.

But I felt that they were probably right in their views about Elsa.

I had recourse to my detective again, and gave him all the information I possessed.

"Oh! We'll find out where she is," he said, with that inscrutably placid look on his face which I had learned was the veil under which he masked both his feelings and his purposes. "You can tell her father she isn't dead." This in answer to the old man's suggestion that she had been murdered, which I had repeated. Then he added, "But there are worse things than death."

His eyes glistened and he b.u.t.toned up his coat in a way he had when there was any sharp work on hand. It always reminded me of a duellist.

In a few days he had a clew to the lost girl, and justified my suspicions.

It was as I feared. Pushkin had inveigled her from her home and had taken her to a house which, if not precisely what I apprehended, was not less vile. It was one of those doubly disreputable places which, while professing to be reasonably respectable, is really more dangerous than the vilest den. The girl was possibly not actually at the place now, but had been there. Getting some suspicion of the place, she had insisted on leaving, but the woman of the house, said Langton, knew where she was.

"She is a hard one to handle. She has protection."

"Of the police?"

"Of those who control the police. She has powerful friends."

"I don't care how powerful they are, I will get that girl," I said.