John Marvel, Assistant

by Thomas Nelson Page

I will not go into the steps I took to reach my ends, nor the difficulties I encountered, which grew as I progressed in my investigation until they appeared almost insurmountable; but finally I struck a lead which at last led me to a conviction that if I could but secure the evidence I could establish such a case of fraud for my two old clients as would give promise of a fair chance to recover for them, at least, a part of their patrimony. The difficulty, or one of them—for they were innumerable—was that to establish their case it was necessary to prove that several men who had stood high in the public esteem, had been guilty of such disregard of the rights of those to whom they stood in the relation of trustees that it would be held a fraud. I was satisfied that had McSheen taken proper steps to secure his clients' rights, he might have succeeded and further, that he had been bought off, but the difficulty was to prove it.

However, I determined to make the effort to get the proof and my zeal was suddenly quickened.

I had now begun to watch for my young lady wherever I went, and it was astonishing how my quickened senses enabled me to find her in the most crowded thoroughfare, or in strange and out-of-the-way places. It was almost as if there were some secret power which drew us together. And when I was blessed to meet her the day was always one of sunshine for me, however heavy lowered the dim clouds.

The next afternoon our meeting was so unexpected that I could not but set it down to the ruling of a higher power. I had gone out to see how my McNeil clients were coming on, having doubtless some latent hope that I might find her there; but she had not been there for several days. They had heard of her, however, for she had got the husband and father a place and that made sunshine in the wretched little hovel, as bare as it was. I was touched by their gratitude, and after taking note of the wretched poverty of the family, and promising that I would try to get the mother some sort of work, I strolled on. I had not gone far when I suddenly came on her face to face. The smile that came into her eyes must have brought my soul into my face.

Love is the true miracle-worker. It can change the most prosaic region into a scene of romance. At sight of Eleanor Leigh's slim figure the dull street suddenly became an enchanted land.

"Well, we appear fated to meet," she said with a smile and intonation that my heart feasted on for days. She little knew how assiduously I had played Fate during these past weeks, haunting the streets near her home or those places which she blessed with her presence. This meeting, however, was purely accidental, unless it be true, as I sometimes almost incline to think, that some occult power which we cannot understand rules all our actions and guides our footsteps toward those we love supremely. John Marvel always called it Providence.

"Well, may I not see you home?" I asked, and without waiting for her consent, I took it for granted and turned back with her, though she protested against taking me out of my way. I had indeed some difficulty in not saying then and there, "My way is where you are."

She had been to see one of her scholars who was sick, "the little cripple, whom you know," she said. I suddenly began to think cripples the most interesting of mortals. She gave me, as we strolled along, an account of her first acquaintance with her and her mother; and of how John Marvel had found out their condition and helped them. Then she had tried to help them a little, and had gotten the mother to let her have the little girl at her school.

"Now they are doing a little better," she said, "but you never saw such wretchedness. The woman had given up everything in the world to try to save her husband, and such a wretched hole as they lived in you couldn't imagine. They did not have a single article of furniture in their room when I—when Mr. Marvel first found them. It had all gone to the Loan Company—they were starving."

John Marvel had a nose like a pointer for all who were desolate and oppressed. How he discovered them, except, as Eleanor Leigh said, by some sort of a sixth sense like that of the homing pigeon, surpasses my comprehension. It is enough that he found and furrowed them out. Thus, he had learned that a little girl, a child of a noted criminal, had been ill-treated by the children at a public school and that her mother and herself were almost starving, and had hastened at once to find her. Like a hunted animal she had gone and hidden herself in what was scarcely better than a den. Here John Marvel found her, in a wretched cellar, the mother ill on a pallet of straw, and both starving, without food or fire. The door was barred, as was her heart, and it was long before any answer came to the oft-repeated knock. But at last his patience was rewarded. The door opened a bare inch, and a fierce black eye in a haggard white face peered at him through the chink.