John Marvel, Assistant

by Thomas Nelson Page

"I did not ask you to lend me any money, either," I said, straightening myself up. "I did ask you to give me some advice; but now I do not want that or anything else you have, d——n you! I made a mistake in coming to you, for I am abundantly able to take care of myself."

Of course, I know now that he had something on his side. He supposed me a weak, worthless dog, if not a "dead-beat." But I was so angry with him I could not help saying what I did. I stalked out and slammed the door behind me with a bang that made the glass in the sash rattle; and the two or three young men, busy in the outer office, looked up in wonder. I went straight to the hotel and took the train to the biggest city my money would get me to. I thought a big city offered the best chances for me, and, at least, would hide me. I think the fact that I had once written a brief for Mr. Poole in the matter of his interest in car lines there influenced me in my selection.

I travelled that night and the next day and the night following, and partly because my money was running low and partly on Dix's account, I rode in a day-coach. The first night and day passed well enough, but the second night I was tired and dusty and lonely.

On the train that night I spent some serious hours. Disappointment is the mother of depression and the grandmother of reflection. I took stock of myself and tried to peer into the dim and misty future, and it was gloomy work. Only one who has started out with the world in fee, and after throwing it away in sheer recklessness of folly, suddenly hauls up to find himself bankrupt of all he had spurned in his pride: a homeless and friendless wanderer on the face of the earth, may imagine what I went through. I learned that night what the exile feels; I dimly felt what the outcast experiences. And I was sensible that I had brought it all on myself. I had wantonly wasted all my substance in riotous living and I had no father to return to—nothing, not even swine to keep in a strange land. I faced myself on the train that night, and the effigy I gazed on I admitted to be a fool.

The train, stuffy and hot, lagged and jolted and stopped, and still I was conscious of only that soul-shifting process of self-facing. The image of Peck, the tortoise, haunted me. At times I dozed or even slept very soundly; though doubled up like a jack-knife, as I was, I could not efface myself even in my sleep. But when I waked, there was still myself—grim, lonely, homeless—haunting me like a stabbed corpse chained to my side.

I was recalled to myself at last by the whimpering of children packed in a seat across the aisle from me. They had all piled in together the first night somewhere with much excitement. They were now hungry and frowsy and wretched. There were five of them, red-cheeked and dirty; complaining to their mother who, worn and bedraggled herself, yet never lost patience with one or raised her voice above the soothing pitch in all her consoling.

At first I was annoyed by them; then I was amused; then I wondered at her, and at last, I almost envied her, so lonely was I and so content was she with her little brood.

Hitched on to the train the second night was a private car, said to be that of someone connected with a vice-president of the road. The name of the official, which I learned later, was the same as that of an old college friend of my father's, and I had often heard my father mention him as his successful rival with his first sweetheart, and he used to tease my mother by recalling the charms of Kitty MacKenzie, the young lady in question, whose red golden hair he declared the most beautiful hair that ever crowned a mortal head—while my mother, I remember, insisted that her hair was merely carroty, and that her beauty, though undeniable, was distinctly of the milkmaid order—a shaft which was will aimed, for my mother's beauty was of the delicate, aristocratic type. The fact was that Mr. Leigh had been a suitor of hers before my father met her, and having been discarded by her, had consoled himself with the pretty girl, to whom my father had been attentive before he met and fell "head over heels in love" with a new star at a college ball.

Mr. Leigh, I knew, had gone West, and grown up to be a banker, and I wondered vaguely if by any chance he could be the same person.

The train should have reached my destination in time for breakfast, and we had all looked forward to it and made our arrangements accordingly. The engine, however, which had been put on somewhere during the night, had "given out," and we were not only some hours late, but were no longer able to keep steadily even the snail's pace at which we had been crawling all night. The final stop came on a long upgrade in a stretch of broken country sparsely settled, and though once heavily wooded, now almost denuded. Here the engine, after a last futile, gasping effort, finally gave up, and the engineer descended for the dozenth time to see "what he could do about it." To make matters worse, the water in our car had given out, and though we had been passing streams a little before, there was no water in sight where we stopped. It soon became known that we should have to wait until a brakeman could walk to the nearest telegraph station, miles off, and have another engine despatched to our aid from a town thirty or more miles away. So long as there had been hope of keeping on, however faint, there had been measurable content, and the grumbling which had been heard at intervals all the latter part of the night had been sporadic and subdued; but now, when the last hope was gone, and it was known that we were at last "stuck" for good, there was an outbreak of ill-humor from the men, though the women in the car still kept silent, partly subdued by their dishevelled condition and partly because they were content for once, while listening to the men. Now and then a man who had been forward would come back into the car, and address someone present, or speak to the entire car, and in the silence that fell every one listened until he had delivered himself. But no one had yet given a satisfactory explanation of the delay.