John Marvel, Assistant Part 67

"Good evening--" solemnly.

"Good evening--" seriously.

I was choosing amongst a half-dozen choice sentences I had framed as an introduction to my parting speech, when she said quietly, looking up: "I thought you might not come back this evening."

"I have come to say good-by."

"Are you going away?" Her voice expressed surprise--nothing more.

"Yes." Solemnly.

"For how long?"--without looking up.

"Perhaps, forever." Tragically.

"You are better at making a fire than I had supposed. Will you give me Dix?" This with the flash of a dimple.

"I--I--yes--if you want him."

I glanced at her face just in time to see the dimples disappear. "I am thinking of being married next week." My heart stopped beating.

"You were--what?"

"But of course, if you are going away I could not do it, could I?" Her eyes sought mine, then fell.

"Eleanor!" I tried to possess myself of her hand; but she put it behind her. I tried to secure the other; but that also disappeared. Then I took--herself. "Eleanor!" Her face next second had grown grave. She looked up suddenly and looked me full in the eyes.

"You are a goose. What would you think if I were to say I would marry you right away?" She looked down again quickly, and her face was sweet with tenderness.

I was conscious of a sudden drawing in of my breath, and a feeling as if I were rising into the sky, "rimmed by the azure world." Then my brain began to act, and I seemed to have been lifted above the darkness. I was up in the sunlight again.

"I should think I was in Heaven," I said quietly, almost reverently.

"But for G.o.d's sake, don't say that to me unless you mean it."

"Well, I will. I have written my father. Write to Mr. Marvel and ask him to come here."

I have never known yet whether this last was a piece of humor. I only know I telegraphed John Marvel, and though I rode all night to do so, I thought it was broad daylight.

In the ripe autumn John Marvel, standing before us in his white surplice in the little chapel among the oaks and elms which had been his first church, performed the ceremony that gave me the first prize I had really striven for--the greatest any man on earth could have won.

Still, as often as I spoke of my future plans, there was some secret between them: a shadowy suggestion of some mystery in which they both partic.i.p.ated. And, but that I knew John Marvel too well, I might have been impatient. But I knew him now for the first time as she had known him long.

On our arrival in the city, after I had given the driver an order where to go, she gave another, and when the carriage drew up, it was not at my hotel, but at the door of the sunny house on the corner where I had first seen Eleanor Leigh come tripping down the steps with her parcels for the poor little crippled child and her violets for the Miss Tippses.

Springing out before me, with her face radiant with joy and mystery, she tripped up the steps now just as the door was flung open by a butler who wore a comical expression of mingled pleasure and solemnity, for the butler was Jeams, and then having introduced him to me, she suddenly took the key from the lock, and handing it to me with a bow and a low laugh of delight:

"I make you, sir, livery of seisin."

This, then, was the mystery.

She still lived in the house on the corner--through the aid offered by my namesake and kinsman her father had been enabled to retain it, and had given it to her as a wedding present.

So after long striving by ways that I knew not, and by paths that I had not tried, my fancy was realized.

I now dwell in the house on the corner that I picked so long ago for its suns.h.i.+ne.

It is even sunnier than I thought it. For I have found that sunlight and sweetness are not from without, but from within, and in that home is the radiance I caught that happy morning when I first saw Eleanor Leigh come tripping down the steps, like April, shedding suns.h.i.+ne and violets in her path.

XL

THE CURTAIN

In closing a novel, the old novelists used to tell their readers, who had followed them long enough to become their friends, what in the sequel became of all the princ.i.p.al characters; and this custom I feel inclined to follow, because it appears to me to show that the story is in some sort the reflection of life as it is and not as novelist or reader would make it. Fate may follow all men, but not in the form in which every reader would have it fall.

It might have satisfied one's ideas of justice if I could have told how Collis McSheen reaped in prison the reward of his long hidden crimes, and the adventurer, Pushkin, unmasked and degraded, was driven out from among the wealthy, whom he so sedulously cultivated; but this would not have been true to the facts. Collis McSheen moved into the great house which he had bought with his ill-gained wealth to gratify his daughter's ambition, and lived for many years, to outward seeming, a more or less respectable man; gave reasonably where he thought it would pay, from the money of which he had robbed others, and doubtless endeavored to forget his past, as he endeavored to make others forget it; but that past was linked to him by bands which no effort could ever break. And though he secured the adulation of those whom he could buy with his gaudy entertainments, he could never secure the recognition of any worthy man.

In his desperate hope to become respectable he broke with many of his old friends and with all whom he could escape from, but he could not escape from one, however he strove to break with him: himself. Chained to him by a bond he could not break was the putrescent body of his reeking past. It is the curse of men like him that those he longs to make his friends are the element who will have none of him. Thus, like Sisyphus, he ever strives to roll the stone to the hill-top, and, like Tantalus, he ever strives to reach the water flowing below his lips.

Though he had escaped the legal punishment of his crimes, his punishment was that he lived in constant dread of the detection which appeared ever to dog his footsteps. The last measure in the bitter cup which he had filled with his own hand came from his daughter, who now called herself Countess Pushkin. Finding that, notwithstanding her so-called t.i.tle and large establishment, she was excluded from that set to which she had been tolerantly admitted while she had youth and gayety and the spirits of a schoolgirl, not to mention the blindness of that age to things which experience sees clearly enough, she conceived the idea that it was her father's presence in her home which closed to her the doors of those houses where she aspired to be intimate. The idea, though it had long had a lodgment in her mind, had been fostered by Pushkin. Having to make her choice between her father and her social aspirations, she decided promptly. The scene which occurred was one which neither Collis McSheen nor his daughter could ever forget. In the sequel McSheen moved out and took quarters in a hotel, where he gradually sank into the hopelessness of a lonely misanthrope, shorn of his power, feared only by those he despised, detested by those he admired, and haunted by the fear of those he hated.

Pushkin remained in some sort in possession of the field, but though McSheen's daughter had been able to banish her father from his own home, she could not escape from her husband, whose vices, if apparently less criminal than McSheen's, were not less black. His capacity for spending money was something she had never dreamed of, and, like the horse-leech's daughter, he continually called for more, until after a furious scene, his wife awoke to her power, and already half-beggared, suddenly shut her purse as her heart had been long shut against him, and bade him go. From this time her power over him was greater than it had ever been before; but unless rumor belied them desperately, they lived a life of cat and dog with all that it implied, until finally Pushkin was driven out, and after hanging about for a few years, died, as I learned, while his wife was off in Europe.

Peck continued, to outward appearance, a prosperous lawyer. His inveterate economy enabled him to preserve the appearance of prosperity; but no lawyer of standing ever spoke of him without a shrug of the shoulder or a lift of the eyebrow. Rumor dealt somewhat freely with his domestic affairs, but I never knew the facts, and rumor is often as great a liar almost as--I had nearly said as Peck, but that would be impossible. My last personal experience of him was in the case of Mr.

Leigh's suit to keep control of his railway. In the final suit involving the straightening out of all matters connected with the attempt of the Canters and their set to get control of this property, I was retained as junior counsel along with my kinsman, Mr. Glave, and other counsel, representing Mr. Leigh's and his a.s.sociates' interest. Peck appeared in the case as one of the representatives of a small alleged interest held by his father-in-law, Mr. Poole, which, as turned out on the final decision of the cause, had no value whatever. This having been decided, Peck, who was not without energy, at least where money was concerned, brought forward a claim for compensation to be allowed him out of the fund, and when this also was decided against him, he sought and secured a conference with our counsel, at which I was present. The contention which he set forth was based upon an equitable claim, as he termed it, to compensation for expenses and professional services expended under color of t.i.tle, and if the facts he stated had been so, he might have been ent.i.tled equitably to some allowance. I had satisfied myself that his claims were without a shadow of foundation, yet he had the nerve, when he concluded his argument, or rather his personal appeal to our counsel, to turn to me for corroboration of his statement.

"I admit, gentlemen," he said, "that these facts rest largely on my personal a.s.surances, and, unfortunately, I am not known personally to most of you, though I trust that my professional standing where I am known may be accepted as a guarantee of my statements; but happily, there is one of you to whom I can refer with confidence, my old college mate and valued friend, Henry Glave. I might almost term him my former partner, so closely were we a.s.sociated in the days when we were both struggling young attorneys, living in adjoining offices--I might, indeed, almost say the same office. He, I feel quite sure, will corroborate every statement I have made, at least so far as he knows the facts, and even where they rest wholly on my declaration, I feel sure of his indors.e.m.e.nt, for he knows that I would cut off my right hand and have my tongue torn from its roots, before I would utter an untruth in any matter whatsoever; and least of all, where so paltry a thing as money is concerned. I appeal to Henry Glave."

He sat down with his eyes fixed blandly on me. I was so taken aback that I scarcely knew what to say. The smoothness of his words and the confidence of his manner had evidently made an impression on the others.

They had, indeed, almost influenced me, but suddenly a whole train of reflection swept through my mind. Peck's duplicity from his earliest appearance in Wolffert's room at college down to the present, with my two old clients, the Miss Tippses, at the end, deceived and robbed by Collis McSheen, with Peck, as the facile instrument, worming himself into their confidence for what he called so paltry a thing as money, all came clearly to my mind. I stood up slowly, for I was thinking hard; but my duty appeared clear.

I regretted, I said, that Mr. Peck had appealed to me and to my long acquaintance with him, for it made my position a painful one; but as he had cited me as a witness, I felt that my duty was plain, and this was to state the facts. In my judgment, Mr. Peck was not ent.i.tled to any compensation whatever, as the evidence, so far as it existed outside of Mr. Peck's statements, was contrary to his contention, and so far as it rested on his personal testimony, I considered it as nothing, for I would not believe one word he said where his personal interest was concerned.

"And now," I added, "if Mr. Peck wishes me to give the grounds on which this opinion of mine is based, either orally or in writing, I will do so."

I paused, with my gaze fastened on him, and, with a sudden settling in their seats, the other counsel also turned their eyes on him. His face had suddenly blanched, but beyond this his expression did not change. He sat for a few seconds rather limply, and then slowly rose.

"I am astonished," he began slowly, and his voice faltered. "I am surprised, gentlemen, that Mr. Glave should think such things of me." He took out his watch, fumblingly, and glanced at it. It was the same watch he had got of me. "I see I must ask you to excuse me. I must catch my train," he stammered. "Good morning," and he put on his hat and slunk out of the door.

As the door closed every one drew a long breath and settled in his seat, and nearly every one said, "Well."

My kinsman, whose eyes had been resting on me with a somewhat unwonted twinkle in them, reached across the board and extended his large hand.

"Well, young man, you and I had a misunderstanding a few years ago, but I hope you bear me no grudge for it now. I should like to be friends with you. If you had needed it, you would have squared all accounts to-day. I know that man. He is the greatest liar on earth. He has lost the power to tell the truth."

It may well be believed that I had gripped his hand when he first held it out, and the grip was one of a friends.h.i.+p that has lasted.