The memory suddenly came to her of the one other time she had been in this stairway, when she had stood in the darkness with her little boy, gathered up against the wall to allow the two Minster ladies to pass. Upon the heels of this chased the recollection—with such lack of sequence do our thoughts follow one another—of the singularly sweet smile her little boy had bestowed upon her, half an hour since, when she kissed him.
The smile had lingered in her mind as a beautiful picture. Walking down the stairs now, in the deepening shadows, the revelation dawned upon her all at once—it was his father’s smile! Yes, yes—hurriedly the fancy reared itself in her thoughts—thus the lover of her young girlhood had looked upon her. The delicate, clever face; the prettily arched lips; the soft, light curls upon the forehead; the tenderly beaming blue eyes—all were the same.
Often—alas! very often—this resemblance had forced itself upon her consciousness before. But now, lighted up by that chance babyish smile, it came to her in the guise of a novelty, and with a certain fascination in it. Her head seemed to have ceased to ache, now that this almost pleasant thought had entered it. It was passing strange, she felt, that any sense of comfort should exist for her in memories which had fed her soul upon bitterness for so long a time. Yet it was already on the instant apparent to her that when she should next have time to think, that old episode would assume less hateful aspects than it had always presented before.
But now there was no time to think.
At the street door she found her father leaning against a shutter and discussing the events of the day with the village lamplighter, who carried a ladder on his shoulder, and reported great popular agitation to exist.
Jessica beckoned Ben summarily aside, and put into his hands the letter she had written at the shop. “I want you to take this at once to Miss Minster, at her house,” she said, hurriedly. “See to it that she gets it herself. Be sure you wait for an answer. Don’t say a word to any living soul. Do just what she tells you to do. I’ve said you can be depended upon. If you show yourself a man, it may make your fortune. Now, hurry; and I do hope you will do me credit!”
Under the spur of this surprising exhortation, Ben walked away with unexampled rapidity, until he had overtaken the lamplighter, from whom he borrowed some chewing tobacco.
The girl, left to herself, began walking irresolutely down Main Street. The flaring lights in the store windows seemed to add to the confusion of her mind. It had appeared to be important to send her father away at once, but now she began to regret that she had not kept him to help her in her search. For Reuben Tracy must be found at all hazards.
How to go to work to trace him she did not know. She had no notion whatever as to who his intimate friends were. The best device she could think of would be to ask about him at the various law-offices; for she had heard that however much lawyers might pretend to fight one another in court, they were all on very good terms outside.
Some little distance down the street she came upon the door of another stairway which bore a number of lawyers’ signs. The windows all up the front of this building were lighted, and without further examination she ascended the first flight of stairs. The landing was almost completely dark, but an obscured gleam came from the dusty transoms over three or four doors close about her. She knocked on one of these at random, and in response to an inarticulate vocal sound from within, opened the door and entered.