The Minister's Charge Part 36

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? n.o.body'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. G.o.d bless you, sir." He interrupted himself to burlesque a professional grat.i.tude. "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 sh.o.r.e 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--s.h.i.+p, '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-cla.s.s house, and I don't have any but first-cla.s.s 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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.senger-s.h.i.+p?"

The other stopped b.u.t.toning 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.