John Marvel, Assistant

by Thomas Nelson Page

"Thank you, sir," he said finally.

I turned away with the consciousness that I had had a new light thrown on life, and had found it more selfish than I had dreamed. I had begun with high hopes. It was, indeed, ever my nature to be hopeful, being healthy and strong and in the prime of vigorous youth. I was always rich when at my poorest, only my heavy freighted ship had not come in. I knew that though the larder was lean and storms were beating furiously off the coast, somewhere, beating her way against the contrary winds, the argosy was slowly making headway, and some day I should find her moored beside my pier and see her stores unladen at my feet. The stress and storm of the struggle were not unwelcome to me. I was always a good fighter when aroused; but I was lazy and too indolent to get aroused. Now, however, I was wide awake. The greatness of the city stirred my pulses. Its blackness and its force aroused my sleeping powers, and as I stepped into the surf and felt the rush of the tides as they swept about and by me, I felt as a fair swimmer might who steps for the first time in a fierce current and feels it clutch his limbs and draw him in. I was not afraid, only awakened and alive to the struggle before me, and my senses thrilled as I plunged and rose to catch my breath and face the vast unknown. Later on I found that the chief danger I had not counted on: the benumbing of the senses, the slow process under which spirit, energy, courage, and even hope finally die.

One who has never had the experience of starting in a big city alone, without a connection of any kind, cannot conceive what it means: the loneliness—utter as in a desert—the waiting—the terrible waiting—being obliged to sit day after day and just wait for business to come, watching your small funds ooze out drop by drop, seeing men pass your door and enter others' offices and never one turn in at yours, till your spirit sinks lower and lower and your heart dies within you. One who has not felt it does not know what it is to be out of work and not able to get it. The rich and fat and sleek—the safe and secure—what know they of want! Want, not of money, but of work: the only capital of the honest and industrious poor! It is the spectre that ever haunts the poor. It makes the world look as though the whole system of society were out of joint—as if all men were in conspiracy against you—as if God had forgotten you. I found men in a harder case than mine—men in multitude, with wives and children, the babe perishing at the mother's withered breast, the children dying for food, staggering along the streets seeking work in vain, while wealth in a glittering flood poured through the streets in which they perished. This bitter knowledge I came to learn day after day till I grew almost to hate mankind. The next step is war against society. Not all who wage it hate the men they fight. It is the cause they hate. There I sat day after day, full of hope and eagerness and—now that my conceit was somewhat knocked out of me—with not only abundant ability, but the stern resolve to transact any business which might be entrusted to me, and just rotted to despair. No wonder men go to the devil, and enlist to fight the whole establishment of organized society. I almost went. When I look back at it now it seems like a miracle that I did not go wholly. Pride saved me. It survived long after hope died. Sometimes, I even thought of the pistol I had in my trunk. But I had made up my mind to live and win. There, too, came in Pride. I could not bear to think of Lilian Poole and Peck. How she would congratulate herself and how Peck would gloat! No, I could not give him that satisfaction. Peck did me a good turn there. A strong enmity, well based, is not always without good results; but Peck should not smear my memory with pretended pity. So I starved, but held on. When I got so that I could endure it no longer, I used to go out and walk up and down the streets—sometimes the fashionable streets—and look at the handsome residences and the fine carriages and automobiles flashing by and the handsomely dressed people passing, and recall that I was as good as they—in my heart, I thought, better. Some of them with kind faces I used to fancy my friends; but that they did not know I was in town. This conceit helped me. And at times I used to fancy that I lived in a particular house, and owned a particular team: thus living for a brief moment like a child in "making pictures." A house is sometimes personal and well-nigh human to me. It appears to have qualities almost human and to express them on its face: kindness, hostility, arrogance, breadth or narrowness, and brutal selfishness are often graven on its front. I have often felt that I could tell from the outside of a house the characteristics of the people within. Arrogance, ignorance, want of tact, pretentiousness and display, spoke from every massy doorway and gaudy decoration with a loudness which would have shocked a savage. This being so, what characters some of the wealthy people of our cities must have! It must be one of the compensations of the poor that the houses of the rich are often so hideous and unhome-like.

The mansion I selected finally as mine was a light stone mansion, simple in its style, but charming in its proportions; not one of the largest, but certainly one of the prettiest in the whole city. Amid a waste of splendid vulgarity it was almost perfect in its harmonious architectural design and lines, and had a sunny, homelike look. It stood in an ample lot with sun and air all around it, and grass and flowers about it. Our fathers used to say, "seated," which has a more established and restful sound. It looked a home of refinement and ease. Its stable was set back some distance behind and a little to one side, so that I could see that it was of the same stone with the mansion and just enough of the same general style to indicate that it belonged to the mansion, and the teams that came out of it were the nattiest and daintiest in the city.

One day as I was walking, trying to divert myself from my loneliness, a brougham rolled out of this stable with a pair of airy, prancing bays, shining like satin, and drew up to the carriage-block a little before me, and a young lady came out of the house as I passed by. My heart gave a leap, for it was the girl I had seen on the train. I took her in, rather than scanned her as she tripped down the stone steps, and she glanced at me for a second as if she thought I might be an acquaintance. She made as she stood there one of the loveliest pictures I had ever laid eyes on: her trim, slim figure, exquisitely dressed, in the quietest way; soft, living brown hair, brushed back from a white, broad forehead; beautiful, speaking eyes under nearly straight brows; and a mouth neither too big for beauty nor too small for character; all set off by a big black hat with rich plumes that made a background for what I thought the loveliest face I had ever seen.

Something pleasant had evidently just happened within; for she came out of the door smiling, and I observed at the same moment her eyes and her dimples. I wondered that people did not always smile: that smile suddenly lit up everything for me. I forgot my loneliness, my want of success, myself. Her hands were full of parcels as she came down the steps, and just as I passed the wind lifted the paper from one—a bunch of flowers, and in trying to recover it she dropped another and it rolled down to my feet. I picked it up and handed it to her. It was a ball, one of those big, squashy, rubber balls with painted rings around it, that are given to small children because they cannot do anything with them. She thanked me sweetly and was turning to her carriage, when under a sudden impulse, I stepped to the door, just as I should have done at home, and, lifting my hat, said, "I beg your pardon, but mayn't I open your door for you?"

She bowed, looking, perhaps, just the least shade surprised. But, having handed her in, I was afraid of embarrassing her, and was backing away and passing on when she thanked me again very graciously. Again I lifted my hat and again got a look into her deep eyes. As the carriage rolled off, she was leaning back in it, and I felt her eyes upon me from under the shade of that big hat with a pleasant look, but I had assumed an unconscious air, and even stopped and picked up, as though carelessly, a couple of violets she had dropped as she crossed the sidewalk; and after a sniff of their fragrance, dropped them into my pocket-book, because they reminded me of the past and because I hated to see them lie on the hard pavement to be crushed by passing feet. The book was empty enough otherwise, but somehow I did not mind it so much after the violets were there.

"Who lives in that house?" I asked of an officer.

"Mr. Leigh, the banker and big west-side street-car man—runs all the lines out that way—all the Argand estate don't run," he added. He waved his arm to include a circle that might take in half the town or half the world. "The big house in the middle of the block is Mrs. Argand's—the great Philanthropist, you know? Everybody knows her." I did not, but I did not care; I knew all I wanted to know—I knew who Miss Leigh was. I reflected with some concern that this was the name of the vice-president of the Railway whom I had attacked through Kalender and of the man to whom Mr. Poole's perfunctory letter was addressed. I went back to my office in better spirits, and, having no brief to work on, even wrote a poem about the violets—about her leaving a track of violets behind her.

I was drawn to that street a number of times afterward, but I saw her no more.