I thought I knew of a better artificer than even John Marvel or Leo Wolffert, to whom was due all the light that was shed from her life, but I did not wish to question anything she said of old John. I was beginning to feel at peace with all the world.
We were dawdling along now and I remember we stopped for a moment in front of a place somewhat more striking looking and better lighted than those about it, something between a pawnbroker's shop and a loan-office. The sign over the door was of a Guaranty Loan Company, and added the word "Home" to Guaranty. It caught my eye and hers at the same moment. The name was that of the robber-company in which my poor client, McNeil, in his futile effort to pay his rent, had secured a small loan by a chattel-mortgage on his pitiful little furniture at something like three hundred per cent. The entire block belonged, as I had learned at the time, to the Argand Estate, and I had made it one of the points in my arraignment of that eleemosynary institution that the estate harbored such vampires as the two men who conducted this scoundrelly business in the very teeth of the law. On the windows were painted legends suggesting that within all money needed by any one might be gotten, one might have supposed, for nothing. I said, "With such a sign as that we might imagine that the poor need never want for money."
She suddenly flamed: "I know them. They are the greatest robbers on earth. They grind the face of the Poor until one wonders that the earth does not open and swallow them up quick. They are the thieves who ought to be in jail instead of such criminals as even that poor wretch, Talman, as great a criminal as he is. Why, they robbed his poor wife of every stick of furniture she had on earth, under guise of a loan, and turned her out in the snow with her crippled child. She was afraid to apply to any one for redress, and they knew it. And if it had not been for John Marvel, they would have starved or have frozen to death."
"For John Marvel and you," I interjected.
"No—only him. What I did was nothing—less than nothing. He found them, with that wonderful sixth sense of his. It is his heart. And he gets no credit for anything—even from you. Oh! sometimes I cannot bear it. I would like to go to him once and just tell him what I truly think of him."
"Why don't you, then?"
"Because—I cannot. But if I were you, I would. He would not—want me to do it! But some day I am going to Dr. Capon and tell him—tell him the truth."
She turned, facing me, and stood with clenched hands, uplifted face, and flashing eyes—breasting the wind which, at the moment, blew her skirts behind her, and as she poured forth her challenge, she appeared to me almost like some animate statue of victory.
"Do you know—I think Mr. Marvel and Mr. Wolffert are almost the most Christian men I ever saw; and their life is the strongest argument in favor of Christianity, I ever knew."
"Why, Wolffert is a Jew—he is not a Christian at all."