"I don't know about that. Perhaps I ought to call in an officer any way and have the thing investigated. But I give you your choice, either to take this money, or go with a policeman before a justice and have the thing explained," and he laid the money before her.
She shuddered at the thought. Edith Allen in a police court, explaining why she was selling her jewelry, the gifts of her dead father, followed by a rabble in the street, her name in the papers, and she the town-talk and scandal of her old set on the avenue! How Gus Elliot and Van Dam would exult! All passed through her mind in one dreadful whirl. She snatched up the money and rushed out with one thought of escape, and for some time after had a shuddering apprehension of being pursued and arrested.
"Oh, if I had only gone to Tiffany's, where I am known!" she groaned. "It's all mother's work. Her advice is always fatal, and I will never follow it again. It seems as if everything and everybody were against me," and she plunged into the sheltering throng of Broadway, glad to be a mere unrecognized drop in its mighty tide.
But even as Edith passed out of the jeweller's store her eye rested for a moment on the face of a man whom she thought she had seen before, though she could not tell where, and the face haunted her, causing much uneasiness.
"Could he have seen and known me?" she queried most anxiously.
He had done both. He was no other than Tom Crowl, a clerk in the village at one of the lesser dry-goods stores, where the Allens had a small account. He was one of the mean loafers who were present at the bar-room scene, and had cheered, and then kicked Gus Elliot, and "laid for him" in the evening with the "boys." He was one of the upper graduates of Pushton street-corners, and having spent an idle, vicious boyhood, truant half the time from school, had now arrived at the dignity of clerk in a store, that thrived feebly on the scattering trade that filtered through and past Mr. Hard's larger establishment. He was one of the worst phases of the male gossip, and had the scent of a buzzard for the carrion of scandal. The Allens were now the uppermost theme of the village, for there seemed some mystery about them. Moreover, the rural dabblers in vice had a natural jealousy of the more accomplished rakes from the city, which took on something of the air of virtuous indignation against them. Of course the talk about Gus and Van Dam included the Allens; and if poor Edith could have heard the surmises about them in the select coterie of clerks that gathered after closing hours around Crowl, as the central fountain of gossip, she would have felt more bitterly than ever that the spirit of chivalry had utterly forsaken mankind.
When therefore young Crowl saw Edith get on the same train as himself, he determined to watch her, and startle, if possible, his small squad of admirers with a new proof of his right to lead as chief scandal-monger. The scene in the jewelry store thus became a brilliant stroke of fortune to him, though so severe a blow to Edith. (The number of people who are like wolves, that turn upon and devour one of their kind when wounded, is not small.) Crowl exultingly saw himself doubly the hero of the evening in the little room of the loft over the store, where poor Edith would be discussed that evening over a black bottle and sundry clay pipes.
As Edith returned up town toward the depot, the impulse to go and see her old home was very strong. She thought her veil sufficient protection to allow her to venture. Slowly and with heavy step she passed up the well-known street on the opposite side, and then crossed and passed down toward that door from which she had so often tripped in light-hearted gayety, or rolled away in a liveried carriage, the envied and courted daughter of a millionaire. And to-day she was selling her jewelry for bread—to-day she had narrowly, as she thought, escaped the police court—to-day she had no other prospect of support save her unskilled hands, and little more than two short months ago, that house was ablaze with light, resounding with mirth and music, and she and her sisters were known as among the wealthiest belles of the city. It was like a horrid dream. It seemed as if she might see old Hannibal opening the door, and Zell come tripping out, or Laura at the window of her room with a book, or the portly form of her father returning from business, indeed even herself, radiant with pride and pleasure, starting for an afternoon walk as of old. All seemed to look the same. Why was it not? Why could she not enter and be at home! Again she passed. A name on the door caught her eye. With a shudder of disgust and pain, she read—
"Uriah Fox."
"So the villain lives in the home of which he robbed us," she said bitterly. "The world seems made for such. Old Hannibal was right. God lumps the world, but the devil seems to look after his friends and prosper them."