Half A Chance Part 33

"I'll wait here in the cab," she had said to her uncle, when he had left it before John Steele's dwelling. "At least," meeting the puzzled gaze that had rested on her more than once lately, "I may, or may not wait.

If I get tired--if when you come back, you don't find me, just conclude," capriciously, "I have gone on some little errand of my own.

Shopping, perhaps."

"Jocelyn!" he had said, momentarily held by her eyes, her feverish manner. "There is something wrong, isn't there? Hasn't the time come yet, to tell?"

"Something wrong? What nonsense!" she had laughed.

She recalled these words now, found it intolerable to sit still.

Abruptly she rose and stepped from the cab.

"My uncle is gone a long while," she said to the man, up behind.

"Oh, no, miss; not so werry!" consulting a watch. "A matter of ten minutes; no more."

No more! She half started to move away; looked toward the house. Bra.s.s plates, variously disposed around the entrance and appearing nearly all alike as to form and size, stared at her. One metal sign a shock-headed lad was removing--"John Steele"--she read the plain, modest letters, the inscription, "Barrister" beneath; she caught her breath slightly.

"He certainly is very long," she repeated mechanically.

"Why don't you go in and see wot's detaining of him?" vouchsafed the cabby in amicable fas.h.i.+on as he regarded the hesitating, slender figure.

"That's wot my missus allus does, when she thinks the occasion--which I'll not be mentioning--the proper one."

"Third floor to the right, miss!" said the boy, occupied in removing the sign and stepping aside as he spoke, to allow her to pa.s.s. "If it's Mr.

Steele's office you're looking for! You'll see 'Barrister' in bra.s.s letters, as I said to the old gentleman; I haven't got at them yet; to take them down, I mean."

"Thank you," she said irresolutely, and without intending to enter, found herself within the hall. There a narrow stairway lay before her; he pointed to it; with an excess of juvenile solicitude and politeness, boyhood's involuntary tribute to youth and beauty in need of a.s.sistance, he told her to go on, "straight up."

And she did, unreasoningly, mechanically; one flight, two flights! The steps were well worn; how many people had walked up and down here carrying burdens with them. Poor people, crime-laden people! Before many doors, she saw other signs, "Barristers." And of that mult.i.tude of clients, how many left these offices with heavy hearts! In that dim, vague light of stairway and landings she seemed to feel, to see, a ghostly procession, sad-eyed, weary. But Captain Forsythe had said that John Steele had helped many, many. Her own heart seemed strangely inert, without life; she stood suddenly still, as if asking herself why she was there.

Near his door! About to turn, to retrace her steps--an illogical sequence to the illogical action that had preceded it, she was held to the spot by the door suddenly opening; a man--a servant, broom in hand--who had evidently been engaged in cleaning one of the chambers within, was stepping out! In surprise he regarded her, this unusual type of visitor, simply yet perfectly gowned. A lady, or a girl--patrician, aristocratic to her finger-tips; very fair, striking to look upon! So different from most of the people who came hither to air their troubles, to seek a.s.sistance.

"You wished to see Mr. Steele?"

For an instant the servant's words and his direct, almost challenging look held the girl. Usually self-contained as she was, she felt that perhaps he had caught some fleeting expression in her eyes, when at his abrupt appearance she had lifted them with a start from the bra.s.s letters. The proud head nodded affirmatively to the inquiry.

"Well, you can be stepping into the library, miss," said the man. "Mr.

Steele is engaged just now; but--"

"That is just it," she said, straightening. "My uncle is with him, and I wished to see--"

"If you will walk in," he said. "You can wait here."

Jocelyn on the instant found no reason for refusing; the door closed behind her; she looked around. She stood in a library alone; beyond, in another chamber, she heard voices--her uncle's, John Steele's.

CHAPTER XXIII

PAST AND PRESENT

And yet those tones were not exactly like John Steele's; they sounded familiar, yet different. What made the difference? His recent illness?

The character of what he was saying, the fact that he represented himself, not another, in this case? He was speaking quickly, clearly, tersely. Very tersely, thought the girl; not, however, to spare himself; a covert ring of self-scorn precluded that idea.

"Those boxes contained books; yours, Sir Charles!" were the first words the girl caught.

"Mine! Bless my soul!" Her uncle's surprised voice broke in. "You don't mean to tell me that all those volumes I had boxed for Australia and which I thought lost on the _Lord Nelson_ came ash.o.r.e on your little coral isle?"

Came ash.o.r.e on his coral isle; the girl caught at the words. Of course he had been saved, he who had saved her from the wild sea; she had realized that after their last meeting at Strathorn House. But how? He had reached an island, then--by what means? Some day her uncle would tell her; she understood now why he had sent for Sir Charles, the motive that had prompted him to an ordeal, not at all easy. She was glad; she would never have told herself, and yet she could realize, divine, the poignant pain this lifting of the curtain, this laying bare the past, must cost him. She, too, seemed to feel a part of that pain; why? It was unaccountable.

"Exactly!" said John Steele succinctly. "And never were angels in disguise more foully welcomed!"

"Bless my soul!" Sir Charles' amazed voice could only repeat. "I remember most of those books well--a brave array; poets, philosophers, lawmakers! Then that accounts for your--! It is like a fairy tale."

"A fairy tale!" Jocelyn Wray gazed around her; at books, books, on every side. She regarded the door leading out; was half-mindful to go; but heard the man-servant in the hall--and lingered.

"Nothing so pleasant, I a.s.sure you," John Steele answered Sir Charles shortly. Then with few words he painted a picture uncompromisingly; the girl shrank back; perhaps she wished she had not come. This, truly, was no fairy tale, but a wild, savage drama, primeval, the picture of a soul battling with itself on the little lonely isle. She could see the hot, angry sun, feel its scorching rays, hear the hissing of the waves. All the man's strength for good, for ill, went into the story; the isle became as the pit of Acheron; at first there were no stars overhead. The girl was very pale; she could not have left now; she had never imagined anything like this. She had looked into Greek books, seen pictures of men chained to rocks and struggling against the anger of the G.o.ds--but they had appeared the mere fantasies of mythology. The drama of the little coral isle seemed to unfold a new and real vista of life into which she had unconsciously strayed. She hardly breathed; her hand had leaped to her breast; she felt alternately oppressed, thrilled. Her eyes were star-like; but like stars behind mist. Strange! strange!

"When the man woke," he had said, "he cursed the sea for bringing him as he thought nothing. One desire tormented him. It became intolerable. Day after day he went down to the ocean, but the surf only leaped in derision. For the thousandth time he cursed it, the isle to which he was bound. Weeks pa.s.sed, until, almost mad through the monotony of the long hours, one day he inadvertently picked up a book. The brute convict could just read. Where, how he ever learned, I forget. He began to pick out the words. After that--"

"After that?" The girl had drawn closer; his language was plain, matter-of-fact. The picture that he drew was without color; she, however, saw through a medium of her own. The very landscape changed now, remained no longer the terrible, barren environment. She seemed to hear the singing of the birds, the softer murmur of the waves, the purring of the stream. It was like a mask, one of those poetic interpolations that the olden poets sometimes introduced in their tragedies. John Steele paused. Was it over?--Almost; the coral isle became a study; there was not much more to tell. Through the long months, the long years, the man had fought for knowledge as he had always fought for anything; with all his strength, pa.s.sion, energy.

"Incredible! By Jove!" she heard Sir Charles' voice, awed and admiring.

"I told you, Steele, when you were about to begin, that we people of the antipodes take a man for what he is, not for what he was. But I am glad to have had your confidence and--and--tell me, how did you happen to light on the law, for special study and preparation?"

"You forget that about half your superb library was law-books, Sir Charles. A most comprehensive collection!"

"So they were! But you must have had wonderful apt.i.tude."

"The law--the ramifications it creates for the many, the attendant restraints for the individual--I confess interested me. You can imagine a personal reason or--an abstract one. From the lonely perspective of a tiny coral isle, a system, or systems,--codes of conduct, or morals, built up for the swarming millions, so to speak!--could not but possess fascination for one to whom those millions had become only as the far-away shadows of a dream. You will find a few of those books, minus fly-leaf and book-plate, it shames me to say!--still in my library, and--"

"Bless you; you're welcome to them," hastily. "No wonder that day in my library you spoke as you did about books. 'Gad! it's wonderful! But you say at first you could hardly read? Your life, then, as a boy--pardon me; it's not mere idle curiosity."

"As a boy!" John Steele repeated the words almost mechanically. "My parents died when I was a child; they came of good stock--New England."

He uttered the last part of the sentence involuntarily; stopped. "I was bound out, was beaten. I fought, ran away. In lumber camps, the drunken riffraff cursed the new scrub boy; on the Mississippi, the sailors and stevedores kicked him because the mate kicked them. Everywhere it was the same; the boy learned only one thing, to fight. Fight, or be beaten!

On the plains, in the mountains, before the fo'castle, it was the same.

Fight, or--" he broke off. "It was not a boyhood; it was a contention."

"I believe you." Sir Charles' accents were half-musing. "And if you will pardon me, I'll stake a good deal that you fought straight." He paused.

"But to go back to your isle, your magic isle, if you please. You were rescued, and then?"

"In a worldly sense, I prospered; in New Zealand, in Tasmania. Fate, as if to atone for having delayed her favors, now lavished them freely; work became easy; a mine or two that I was lucky enough to locate, yielded, and continues to yield, unexpected returns. Without especially desiring riches, I found myself more than well-to-do."

"And then having fairly, through your own efforts, won a place in the world, having conquered fortune, why did you return to England knowing the risk, that some one of these fellows like Gillett, the police agent, might--"

"Why," said John Steele, "because I wished to sift, to get to the very bottom of this crime for which I was convicted. For all real wrong-doing--resisting officers of the law--offenses against officialdom--I had paid the penalty, in full, I believe. But this other matter--that was different. It weighed on me through those years on the island and afterward. A jury had convicted me wrongfully; but I had to prove it; to satisfy myself, to find out beyond any shadow of a doubt, and--"