John Marvel, Assistant Part 57

"I do."

"Well, which would you say?"

"Neither," said I. I wanted to add that I would cheerfully murder them both before I would allow either of them to destroy Eleanor Leigh's life; but I contented myself with my brief reply.

"Oh! Mr. Glave is evidently one of her victims," laughed our hostess, for which I was grateful to her.

I came away from my friend's with the heroic determination to prevent Miss Leigh's life from being ruined and to accomplish this by the satisfactory method of capturing her myself. My resolve was a little dampened by reading in a newspaper next day the headlines announcing an "Important Engagement," which though no names were used pointed clearly at Miss Leigh and the hopeful heir and partner of Mr. James Canter, Sr.

Reading carefully the article, I found that the engagement was only believed to exist. I felt like a reprieved criminal.

He who has not felt the pangs of a consuming pa.s.sion has no conception of the true significance of life. The dull, cold, indifferent lover knows nothing of the half-ecstatic anguish of the true lover or the wholly divine joy of reconciliation even in antic.i.p.ation. As well may the frozen pole dream of the sun-bathed tropic. It was this joy that I hugged in my heart even in face of the declaration of her expected engagement.

Next day I was talking to two or three young fellows when Canter and some episode in which he had figured as rather more defiant than usual of public opinion, came up, and one of them said to another, a friend of his and an acquaintance of mine, "What is Jim going to do when he gets married? He'll have to give up his 'friends' then. He can't be running two establishments."

"Oh! Jim ain't going to get married. He's just fooling around."

"Bet you--the old man's wild for it."

"Bet you--not now. He can't. Why, that woman--"

"Oh! he can pension her off."

"Her?--which her?"

"Well, all of 'em. If he don't get married soon, he won't be fit to marry."

It was here that I entered the conversation. They had not mentioned any name--they had been too gentlemanly to do so. But I knew whom they had in mind, and I was inwardly burning.

"He isn't fit to marry now," I said suddenly.

"What!" They both turned to me in surprise.

"No man who professes to be in love with any good woman," I said, "and lives as he lives is fit for any woman to marry. I am speaking generally," I added, to guard against the suspicion that I knew whom they referred to. "I know Mr. Canter but slightly; but what I say applies to him too."

"Oh! you'd cut out a good many," laughed one of the young men with a glance at his friend.

"No, gentlemen, I stand on my proposition. The man who is making love to a pure woman with a harlot's kisses on his lips is not worthy of either.

He ought to be shot."

"There'd be a pretty big exodus if your views were carried out," said one of them.

"Well, I don't want to pose as any saint. I am no better than some other men; but, at least, I have some claim to decency, and that is fundamental. Your two-establishment gentry are no more nor less than a lot of thorough-paced blackguards."

They appeared to be somewhat impressed by my earnestness, even though they laughed at it. "There are a good many of them," they said. "Your friends, the Socialists----"

"Yes. I know. The ultra-Socialist's views I reprobate, but, at least, he is sincere. He is against any formal hard and fast contract, and his motive is, however erroneous, understandable. He believes it would result in an uplift--in an increase of happiness for all. He is, of course, hopelessly wrong. But here is a man who is debasing himself and others--all others--and, above all, the one he is pretending to exalt above all. I say he is a low-down scoundrel to do it. He is prost.i.tuting the highest sentiment man has ever imagined."

"Well, at any rate, you are vehement," said one.

"You've cut Jim out," said the other.

The conversation took place in a sort of lounging-room adjoining a down-town cafe frequented by young men. At this moment who should walk in but Mr. James Canter himself. The talk ceased as suddenly as cut-off steam, and when one of the young men after an awkward silence made a foolish remark about the fine day, which was in reality rainy and cold, Canter's curiosity was naturally excited.

"What were you fellows talking about? Women?"

"No," said one of the others--"nothing particular."

"Yes!" I said, "we were--talking about women."

"Whose women?"

"Yours." I looked him steadily in the eye.

He started, but recovered himself.

"Which of 'em?" he inquired as he flung himself into a chair and looked around for a match for the cigarette which he took from a jewel-studded gold case. "I am rather well endowed with them at present. What were you saying?"

I repeated my remark about the two-establishment gentry. His face flushed angrily; but my steady eye held him in check and he took a long, inhaling breath.

"Well, I don't give a blank what you think about it, or anything else."

He expelled the smoke from his lungs.

"Perhaps--but that does not affect the principle. It stands. You may not care about the Rock of Gibraltar; but it stands and is the key to the situation."

He was in a livid rage, and I was prepared for the attack which I expected him to make; but he restrained himself. His forte was insolence.

"You teach Sunday-school, don't you?"

I thought this was a reference to one whose name I did not mean his lips to sully, and I determined to forestall him.

"I do," I said quietly. "I teach for Mr. Marvel."

"I know--the psalm-singing parson who has made all that trouble in this town--he and his Jew partner. We are going to break them up."

"Both are men whose shoes you are not fit to clean; and as to making trouble, the trouble was made by those a good deal nearer you than John Marvel--your precious firm and your side-partners--Coll McSheen and David Wringman."

"Well, you'd better confine your labors to your dirty Jews and not try to interfere in the affairs of gentlemen."

"As to the latter, I never interfere in the affairs of gentlemen, and as to the dirty Jews, I a.s.sure you they are not as dirty as you are; for their dirt is all outside while yours is within."

I had supposed he would resent this, but he had his reasons for not doing so, though they were none too creditable to him. Mr. Canter was too bold with women and not bold enough with men. And a little later it transpired that with one woman, at least, he was as tame as he was with the other s.e.x. The woman the young men referred to kept him in fear of his life for years, and he had neither the physical nor moral courage to break away from her.

x.x.xV

MR. LEIGH HAS A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE MADE HIM