JOHN MARVEL

ASSISTANT

BY THOMAS NELSON PAGE

ILLUSTRATED BY
JAMES MONTGOMERY FLAGG

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1909

Copyright, 1909, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published October, 1909

TO THOSE LOVED ONES
WHOSE NEVER FAILING SYMPATHY HAS
LED ME ALL THESE YEARS

"To ply your old trade?" I asked.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT

I

MY FIRST FAILURE

I shall feel at liberty to tell my story in my own way; rambling along at my own gait; now going from point to point; now tearing ahead; now stopping to rest or to ruminate, and even straying from the path whenever I think a digression will be for my own enjoyment.

I shall begin with my college career, a period to which I look back now with a pleasure wholly incommensurate with what I achieved in it; which I find due to the friends I made and to the memories I garnered there in a time when I possessed the unprized treasures of youth: spirits, hope, and abounding conceit. As these memories, with the courage (to use a mild term) that a college background gives, are about all that I got out of my life there, I shall dwell on them only enough to introduce two or three friends and one enemy, who played later a very considerable part in my life.

My family was an old and distinguished one; that is, it could be traced back about two hundred years, and several of my ancestors had accomplished enough to be known in the history of the State—a fact of which I was so proud that I was quite satisfied at college to rest on their achievements, and felt no need to add to its distinction by any labors of my own.

We had formerly been well off; we had, indeed, at one time prior to the Revolutionary War, owned large estates—a time to which I was so fond of referring when I first went to college that one of my acquaintances, named Peck, an envious fellow, observed one day that I thought I had inherited all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them. My childhood was spent on an old plantation, so far removed from anything that I have since known that it might almost have been in another planet.

It happened that I was the only child of my parents who survived, the others having been carried off in early childhood by a scourge of scarlet fever, to which circumstance, as I look back, I now know was due my mother's sadness of expression when my father was not present. I was thus subjected to the perils and great misfortune of being an only child, among them that of thinking the sun rises and sets for his especial benefit. I must say that both my father and mother tried faithfully to do their part to counteract this danger, and they not only believed firmly in, but acted consistently on, the Solomonic doctrine that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. My father, I must say, was more lenient, and I think gladly evaded the obligation as interpreted by my mother, declaring that Solomon, like a good many other persons, was much wiser in speech than in practice. He was fond of quoting the custom of the ancient Scythians, who trained their youth to ride, to shoot, and to speak the truth. And in this last particular he was inexorable.

Among my chief intimates as a small boy was a little darkey named "Jeams." Jeams was the grandson of one of our old servants—Uncle Ralph Woodson. Jeams, who was a few years my senior, was a sharp-witted boy, as black as a piece of old mahogany, and had a head so hard that he could butt a plank off a fence. Naturally he and I became cronies, and he picked up information on various subjects so readily that I found him equally agreeable and useful.

My father was admirably adapted to the conditions that had created such a character, but as unsuited to the new conditions that succeeded the collapse of the old life as a shorn lamb would be to the untempered wind of winter. He was a Whig and an aristocrat of the strongest type, and though in practice he was the kindest and most liberal of men, he always maintained that a gentleman was the choicest fruit of civilization; a standard, I may say, in which the personal element counted with him far more than family connection. "A king can make a nobleman, sir," he used to say; "but it takes Jehovah to make a gentleman." When the war came, though he was opposed to "Locofocoism" as he termed it, he enlisted as a private as soon as the State seceded, and fought through the war, rising to be a major and surrendering at Appomattox. When the war closed, he shut himself up on his estate, accepting the situation without moroseness, and consoling himself with a philosophy much more misanthropic in expression than in practice.

My father's slender patrimony had been swept away by the war, but, being a scholar himself, and having a high idea of classical learning and a good estimate of my abilities—in which latter view I entirely agreed with him—he managed by much stinting to send me to college out of the fragments of his establishment. I admired greatly certain principles which were stamped in him as firmly as a fossil is embedded in the solid rock; but I fear I had a certain contempt for what appeared to me his inadequacy to the new state of things, and I secretly plumed myself on my superiority to him in all practical affairs. Without the least appreciation of the sacrifices he was making to send me to college, I was an idle dog and plunged into the amusements of the gay set—that set whose powers begin below their foreheads—in which I became a member and aspired to be a leader.

My first episode at college brought me some éclat.

II

THE JEW AND THE CHRISTIAN

I arrived rather late and the term had already begun, so that all the desirable rooms had been taken. I was told that I would either have to room out of college or take quarters with a young man by the name of Wolffert—like myself, a freshman. I naturally chose the latter. On reaching my quarters, I found my new comrade to be an affable, gentlemanly fellow, and very nice looking. Indeed, his broad brow, with curling brown hair above it; his dark eyes, deep and luminous; a nose the least bit too large and inclining to be aquiline; a well-cut mouth with mobile, sensitive lips, and a finely chiselled jaw, gave him an unusual face, if not one of distinction. He was evidently bent on making himself agreeable to me, and as he had read an extraordinary amount for a lad of his age and I, who had also read some, was lonely, we had passed a pleasant evening when he mentioned casually a fact which sent my heart down into my boots. He was a Jew. This, then, accounted for the ridge of his well-carved nose, and the curl of his soft brown hair. I tried to be as frank and easy as I had been before, but it was a failure. He saw my surprise as I saw his disappointment—a coolness took the place of the warmth that had been growing up between us for several hours, and we passed a stiff evening. He had already had one room-mate.

Next day, I found a former acquaintance who offered to take me into his apartment, and that afternoon, having watched for my opportunity, I took advantage of my room-mate's absence and moved out, leaving a short note saying that I had discovered an old friend who was very desirous that I should share his quarters. When I next met Wolffert, he was so stiff, that although I felt sorry for him and was ready to be as civil as I might, our acquaintance thereafter became merely nominal. I saw in fact, little of him during the next months, for he soon forged far ahead of me. There was, indeed, no one in his class who possessed his acquirements or his ability. I used to see him for a while standing in his doorway looking wistfully out at the groups of students gathered under the trees, or walking alone, like Isaac in the fields, and until I formed my own set, I would have gone and joined him or have asked him to join us but for his rebuff. I knew that he was lonely; for I soon discovered that the cold shoulder was being given to him by most of the students. I could not, however, but feel that it served him right for the "airs" he put on with me. That he made a brilliant exhibition in his classes and was easily the cleverest man in the class did not affect our attitude toward him; perhaps, it only aggravated the case. Why should he be able to make easily a demonstration at the blackboard that the cleverest of us only bungled through? One day, however, we learned that the Jew had a room-mate. Bets were freely taken that he would not stick, but he stuck—for it was John Marvel. Not that any of us knew what John Marvel was; for even I, who, except Wolffert, came to know him best, did not divine until many years later what a nugget of unwrought gold that homely, shy, awkward John Marvel was!

It appeared that Wolffert had a harder time than any of us dreamed of.

He had come to the institution against the advice of his father, and for a singular reason: he thought it the most liberal institution of learning in the country! Little he knew of the narrowness of youth! His mind was so receptive that all that passed through it was instantly appropriated. Like a plant, he drew sustenance from the atmosphere about him and transmuted what was impalpable to us to forms of beauty. He was even then a man of independent thought; a dreamer who peopled the earth with ideals, and saw beneath the stony surface of the commonplace the ideals and principles that were to reconstruct and resurrect the world. An admirer of the Law in its ideal conception, he reprobated, with the fury of the Baptist, the generation that had belittled and cramped it to an instrument of torture of the human mind, and looked to the millenial coming of universal brotherhood and freedom.

His father was a leading man in his city; one who, by his native ability and the dynamic force that seems to be a characteristic of the race, had risen from poverty to the position of chief merchant and capitalist of the town in which he lived. He had been elected mayor in a time of stress; but his popularity among the citizens generally had cost him, as I learned later, something among his own people. The breadth of his views had not been approved by them.

The abilities that in the father had taken this direction of the mingling of the practical and the theoretical had, in the son, taken the form I have stated. He was an idealist: a poet and a dreamer.

The boy from the first had discovered powers that had given his father the keenest delight, not unmingled with a little misgiving. As he grew up among the best class of boys in his town, and became conscious that he was not one of them, his inquiring and aspiring mind began early to seek the reasons for the difference. Why should he be held a little apart from them? He was a Jew. Yes, but why should a Jew be held apart? They talked about their families. Why, his family could trace back for two thousand and more years to princes and kings. They had a different religion. But he saw other boys with different religions going and playing together. They were Christians, and believed in Christ, while the Jew, etc. This puzzled him till he found that some of them—a few—did not hold the same views of Christ with the others. Then he began to study for himself, boy as he was, the history of Christ, and out of it came questions that his father could not answer and was angry that he should put to him. He went to a young Rabbi who told him that Christ was a good man, but mistaken in His claims.

So, the boy drifted a little apart from his own people, and more and more he studied the questions that arose in his mind, and more and more he suffered; but more and more he grew strong.

The father, too proud of his son's independence to coerce him by an order which might have been a law to him, had, nevertheless, thrown him on his own resources and cut him down to the lowest figure on which he could live, confident that his own opinions would be justified and his son return home.

Wolffert's first experience very nearly justified this conviction. The fact that a Jew had come and taken one of the old apartments spread through the college with amazing rapidity and created a sensation. Not that there had not been Jews there before, for there had been a number there at one time or another. But they were members of families of distinction, who had been known for generations as bearing their part in all the appointments of life, and had consorted with other folk on an absolute equality; so that there was little or nothing to distinguish them as Israelites except their name. If they were Israelites, it was an accident and played no larger part in their views than if they had been Scotch or French. But here was a man who proclaimed himself a Jew; who proposed that it should be known, and evidently meant to assert his rights and peculiarities on all occasions. The result was that he was subjected to a species of persecution which only the young Anglo-Saxon, the most brutal of all animals, could have devised.

As college filled rapidly, it soon became necessary to double up, that is, put two men in one apartment. The first student assigned to live with Wolffert was Peck, a sedate and cool young man—like myself, from the country, and like myself, very short of funds. Peck would not have minded rooming with a Jew, or, for that matter, with the Devil, if he had thought he could get anything out of him; for he had few prejudices, and when it came to calculation, he was the multiplication-table. But Peck had his way to make, and he coolly decided that a Jew was likely to make him bear his full part of the expenses—which he never had any mind to do. So he looked around, and within forty-eight hours moved to a place out of college where he got reduced board on the ground of belonging to some peculiar set of religionists, of which I am convinced he had never heard till he learned of the landlady's idiosyncrasy.

I had incurred Peck's lasting enmity—though I did not know it at the time—by a witticism at his expense. We had never taken to each other from the first, and one evening, when someone was talking about Wolffert, Peck joined in and said that that institution was no place for any Jew. I said, "Listen to Peck sniff. Peck, how did you get in?" This raised a laugh. Peck, I am sure, had never read "Martin Chuzzlewit"; but I am equally sure he read it afterward, for he never forgave me.

Then came my turn and desertion which I have described. And then, after that interval of loneliness, appeared John Marvel.

Wolffert, who was one of the most social men I ever knew, was sitting in his room meditating on the strange fate that had made him an outcast among the men whom he had come there to study and know. This was my interpretation of his thoughts: he would probably have said he was thinking of the strange prejudices of the human race—prejudices to which he had been in some sort a victim all his life, as his race had been all through the ages. He was steeped in loneliness, and as, in the mellow October afternoon, the sound of good-fellowship floated in at his window from the lawn outside, he grew more and more dejected. One evening it culminated. He even thought of writing to his father that he would come home and go into his office and accept the position that meant wealth and luxury and power. Just then there was a step outside, and someone stopped and after a moment, knocked at the door. Wolffert rose and opened it and stood facing a new student—a florid, round-faced, round-bodied, bow-legged, blue-eyed, awkward lad of about his own age.

"Is this number ——?" demanded the newcomer, peering curiously at the dingy door and half shyly looking up at the occupant.

"It is. Why?" Wolffert spoke abruptly.

"Well, I have been assigned to this apartment by the Proctor. I am a new student and have just come. My name is Marvel—John Marvel." Wolffert put his arms across the doorway and stood in the middle of it.

"Well, I want to tell you before you come in that I am a Jew. You are welcome not to come, but if you come I want you to stay." Perhaps the other's astonishment contained a query, for he went on hotly:

"I have had two men come here already and both of them left after one day. The first said he got cheaper board, which was a legitimate excuse—if true—the other said he had found an old friend who wanted him. I am convinced that he lied and that the only reason he left was that I am a Jew. And now you can come in or not, as you please, but if you come you must stay." He was looking down in John Marvel's eyes with a gaze that had the concentrated bitterness of generations in it, and the latter met it with a gravity that deepened into pity.

"I will come in and I will stay; Jesus was a Jew," said the man on the lower step.

"I do not know him," said the other bitterly.

"But you will. I know Him."

Wolffert's arms fell and John Marvel entered and stayed.

That evening the two men went to the supper hall together. Their table was near mine and they were the observed of all observers. The one curious thing was that John Marvel was studying for the ministry. It lent zest to the jokes that were made on this incongruous pairing, and jests, more or less insipid, were made on the Law and the Prophets; the lying down together of the lion and the lamb, etc.

It was a curious mating—the light-haired, moon-faced, slow-witted Saxon, and the dark, keen Jew with his intellectual face and his deep-burning eyes in which glowed the misery and mystery of the ages.

John Marvel soon became well known; for he was one of the slowest men in the college. With his amusing awkwardness, he would have become a butt except for his imperturbable good-humor. As it was, he was for a time a sort of object of ridicule to many of us—myself among the number—and we had many laughs at him. He would disappear on Saturday night and not turn up again till Monday morning, dusty and disheveled. And many jests were made at his expense. One said that Marvel was practising preaching in the mountains with a view to becoming a second Demosthenes; another suggested that, if so, the mountains would probably get up and run into the sea.

When, however, it was discovered later that he had a Sunday-school in the mountains, and walked twelve miles out and twelve miles back, most of the gibers, except the inveterate humorists like myself, were silent.

This fact came out by chance. Marvel disappeared from college one day and remained away for two or three weeks. Wolffert either could not or would not give any account of him. When Marvel returned, he looked worn and ill, as if he had been starving, and almost immediately he was taken ill and went to the infirmary with a case of fever. Here he was so ill that the doctors quarantined him and no one saw him except the nurse—old Mrs. Denny, a wrinkled and bald-headed, old, fat woman, something between a lightwood knot and an angel—and Wolffert.

Wolffert moved down and took up his quarters in the infirmary—it was suggested, with a view to converting Marvel to Judaism—and here he stayed. The nursing never appeared to make any difference in Wolffert's preparation for his classes; for when he came back he still stood easily first. But poor Marvel never caught up again, and was even more hopelessly lost in the befogged region at the bottom of the class than ever before. When called on to recite, his brow would pucker and he would perspire and stammer until the class would be in ill-suppressed convulsions, all the more enjoyable because of Leo Wolffert's agonizing over his wretchedness. Then Marvel, excused by the professor, would sit down and mop his brow and beam quite as if he had made a wonderful performance (which indeed, he had), while Wolffert's thin face would grow whiter, his nostrils quiver, and his deep eyes burn like coals.

One day a spare, rusty man with a frowzy beard, and a lank, stooping woman strolled into the college grounds, and after wandering around aimlessly for a time, asked for Mr. Marvel. Each of them carried a basket. They were directed to his room and remained with him some time, and when they left, he walked some distance with them.

It was at first rumored and then generally reported that they were Marvel's father and mother. It became known later that they were a couple of poor mountaineers named Shiflett, whose child John Marvel had nursed when it had the fever. They had just learned of his illness and had come down to bring him some chickens and other things which they thought he might need.

This incident, with the knowledge of Marvel's devotion, made some impression on us, and gained for Marvel, and incidentally for Wolffert, some sort of respect.

III

THE FIGHT

All this time I was about as far aloof from Marvel and Wolffert as I was from any one in the college.

I rather liked Marvel, partly because he appeared to like me and I helped him in his Latin, and partly because Peck sniffed at him, and Peck I cordially disliked for his cold-blooded selfishness and his plodding way.

I was strong and active and fairly good-looking, though by no means so handsome as I fancied myself when I passed the large plate-glass windows in the stores; I was conceited, but not arrogant except to my family and those I esteemed my inferiors; was a good poker-player; was open-handed enough, for it cost me nothing; and was inclined to be kind by nature.

I had, moreover, several accomplishments which led to a certain measure of popularity. I had a retentive memory, and could get up a recitation with little trouble; though I forgot about as quickly as I learned. I could pick a little on a banjo; could spout fluently what sounded like a good speech if one did not listen to me; could write, what someone has said, looked at a distance like poetry and, thanks to my father, could both fence and read Latin. These accomplishments served to bring me into the best set in college and, in time, to undo me. For there is nothing more dangerous to a young man than an exceptional social accomplishment. A tenor voice is almost as perilous as a taste for drink; and to play the guitar, about as seductive as to play poker.

I was soon to know Wolffert better. He and Marvel, after their work became known, had been admitted rather more within the circle, though they were still kept near the perimeter. And thus, as the spring came on, when we all assembled on pleasant afternoons under the big trees that shaded the green slopes above the athletic field, even Wolffert and Marvel were apt to join us. I would long ago have made friends with Wolffert, as some others had done since he distinguished himself; for I had been ashamed of my poltroonery in leaving him; but, though he was affable enough with others, he always treated me with such marked reserve that I had finally abandoned my charitable effort to be on easy terms with him.

One spring afternoon we were all loafing under the trees, many of us stretched out on the grass. I had just saved a game of baseball by driving a ball that brought in three men from the bases, and I was surrounded by quite a group. Marvel, who was as strong as an ox, was second-baseman on the other nine and had missed the ball as the center-fielder threw it wildly. Something was said—I do not recall what—and I raised a laugh at Marvel's expense, in which he joined heartily. Then a discussion began on the merits in which Wolffert joined. I started it, but as Wolffert appeared excited, I drew out and left it to my friends.

Presently, at something Wolffert said, I turned to a friend, Sam Pleasants, and said in a half-aside, with a sneer: "He did not see it; Sam, you—" I nodded my head, meaning, "You explain it."

Suddenly, Wolffert rose to his feet and, without a word of warning, poured out on me such a torrent of abuse as I never heard before or since. His least epithet was a deadly insult. It was out of a clear sky, and for a moment my breath was quite taken away. I sprang to my feet and, with a roar of rage, made a rush for him. But he was ready, and with a step to one side, planted a straight blow on my jaw that, catching me unprepared, sent me full length on my back. I was up in a second and made another rush for him, only to be caught in the same way and sent down again.

When I rose the second time, I was cooler. I knew then that I was in for it. Those blows were a boxer's. They came straight from the shoulder and were as quick as lightning, with every ounce of the giver's weight behind them. By this time, however, the crowd had interfered. This was no place for a fight, they said. The professors would come on us. Several were holding me and as many more had Wolffert; among them, John Marvel, who could have lifted him in his strong arms and held him as a baby. Marvel was pleading with him with tears in his eyes. Wolffert was cool enough now, but he took no heed of his friend's entreaties. Standing quite still, with the blaze in his eyes all the more vivid because of the pallor of his face, he was looking over his friend's head and was cursing me with all the eloquence of a rich vocabulary. So far as he was concerned, there might not have been another man but myself within a mile.

Wolffert ... was cursing me with all the eloquence of a rich vocabulary

In a moment an agreement was made by which we were to adjourn to a retired spot and fight it out. Something that he said led someone to suggest that we settle it with pistols. It was Peck's voice. Wolffert sprang at it. "I will, if I can get any gentleman to represent me," he said with a bitter sneer, casting his flashing, scornful eyes around on the crowd. "I have only one friend and I will not ask him to do it."

"I will represent you," said Peck, who had his own reasons for the offer.

"All right. When and where?" said I.

"Now, and in the railway-cut beyond the wood," said Wolffert.

We retired to two rooms in a neighboring dormitory to arrange matters. Peck and another volunteer represented Wolffert, and Sam Pleasants and Harry Houston were my seconds. I had expected that some attempt at reconciliation would be made; but there was no suggestion of it. I never saw such cold-blooded young ruffians as all our seconds were, and when Peck came to close the final cartel he had an air between that of a butcher and an undertaker. He looked at me exactly as a butcher does at a fatted calf. He positively licked his chops. I did not want to shoot Wolffert, but I could cheerfully have murdered Peck. While, however, the arrangements were being made by our friends, I had had a chance for some reflection and I had used it. I knew that Wolffert did not like me. He had no reason to do so, for I had not only left him, but had been cold and distant with him. Still, I had always treated him civilly, and had spoken of him respectfully, which was more than Peck had always done. Yet, here, without the least provocation, he had insulted me grossly. I knew there must be some misunderstanding, and I determined on my "own hook" to find out what it was. Fortune favored me. Just then Wolffert opened the door. He had gone to his own room for a few moments and, on his return, mistook the number and opened the wrong door. Seeing his error, he drew back with an apology, and was just closing the door when I called him.

"Wolffert! Come in here a moment. I want to speak to you alone."

He re-entered and closed the door; standing stiff and silent.

"Wolffert, there has been some mistake, and I want to know what it is." He made not the least sign that he heard, except a flash, deep in his eyes, like a streak of lightning in a far-off cloud.

"I am ready to fight you in any way you wish," I went on. "But I want to know what the trouble is. Why did you insult me out of a clear sky? What had I done?"

"Everything."

"What! Specify. What was it?"

"You have made my life Hell—all of you!" His face worked, and he made a wild sweep with his arm and brought it back to his side with clenched fist.

"But I?"

"You were the head. You have all done it. You have treated me as an outcast—a Jew! You have given me credit for nothing, because I was a Jew. I could have stood the personal contempt and insult, and I have tried to stand it; but I will put up with it no longer. It is appointed once for a man to die, and I can die in no better cause than for my people."

He was gasping with suppressed emotion, and I was beginning to gasp also—but for a different reason. He went on:

"You thought I was a coward because I was a Jew, and because I wanted peace—treated me as a poltroon because I was a Jew. And I made up my mind to stop it. So this evening my chance came. That is all."

"But what have I done?"

"Nothing more than you have always done; treated the Jew with contempt. But they were all there, and I chose you as the leader when you said that about the Jew."

"I said nothing about a Jew. Here, wait! Did you think I insulted you as a Jew this afternoon?" I had risen and walked over in front of him.

"Yes." He bowed.

"Well, I did not."

"You did—you said to Sam Pleasants that I was a 'damned Jew.'"

"What! I never said a word like it—yes, I did—I said to Sam Pleasants, that you did not see the play, and said, 'Sam, you—' meaning, you, tell him. Wait. Let me think a moment. Wolffert, I owe you an apology, and will make it. I know there are some who will think I do it because I am afraid to fight. But I do not care. I am not, and I will fight Peck if he says so. If you will come with me, I will make you a public apology, and then if you want to fight still, I will meet you."

He suddenly threw his right arm up across his face, and, turning his back on me, leaned on it against the door, his whole person shaken with sobs.

I walked up close to him and laid my hand on his shoulder, helplessly.

"Calm yourself," I began, but could think of nothing else to say.

He shook for a moment and then, turning, with his left arm still across his face, he held out his right hand, and I took it.

"I do not want you to do that. All I want is decent treatment—ordinary civility," he faltered between his sobs. Then he turned back and leant against the door, for he could scarcely stand. And so standing, he made the most forcible, the most eloquent, and the most burning defence of his people I have ever heard.

"They have civilized the world," he declared, "and what have they gotten from it but brutal barbarism. They gave you your laws and your literature, your morality and your religion—even your Christ; and you have violated every law, human and divine, in their oppression. You invaded our land, ravaged our country, and scattered us over the face of the earth, trying to destroy our very name and Nation. But the God of Israel was our refuge and consolation. You crucified Jesus and then visited it on us. You have perpetuated an act of age-long hypocrisy, and have, in the name of the Prince of Peace, brutalized over his people. The cross was your means of punishment—no Jew ever used it. But if we had crucified him it would have been in the name of Law and Order; your crucifixion was in the name of Contempt; and you have crucified a whole people through the ages—the one people who have ever stood for the one God; who have stood for Morality and for Peace. A Jew! Yes, I am a Jew. I thank the God of Israel that I am. For as he saved the world in the past, so he will save it in the future."

This was only a part of it, and not the best part; but it gave me a new insight into his mind.

When he was through I was ready. I had reached my decision.

"I will go with you," I said, "not on your account, but on my own, and make my statement before the whole crowd. They are still on the hill. Then, if any one wants to fight, he can get it. I will fight Peck."

He repeated that he did not want me to do this, and he would not go; which was as well, for I might not have been able to say so much in his presence. So I went alone with my seconds, whom I immediately sought.

I found the latter working over a cartel at a table in the next room, and I walked in. They looked as solemn as owls, but I broke them up in a moment.

"You can stop this infernal foolishness. I have apologized to Wolffert. I have treated him like a pig, and so have you. And I have told him so, and now I am going out to tell the other fellows."

Their astonishment was unbounded and, at least, one of the group was sincerely disappointed. I saw Peck's face fall at my words and then he elevated his nose and gave a little sniff.

"Well, it did not come from our side," he said in a half undertone with a sneer.

I suddenly exploded. His cold face was so evil.

"No, it did not. I made it freely and frankly, and I am going to make it publicly. But if you are disappointed, I want to tell you that you can have a little affair on your own account. And in order that there may be no want of pretext, I wish to tell you that I believe you have been telling lies on me, and I consider you a damned, sneaking hypocrite."

There was a commotion, of course, and the others all jumped in between us. And when it was over, I walked out. Three minutes later I was on the hill among the crowd, which now numbered several hundred, for they were all waiting to learn the result; and, standing on a bench, I told them what I had said to Wolffert and how I felt I owed him a public apology, not for one insult, but for a hundred. There was a silence for a second, and then such a cheer broke out as I never got any other time in my life! Cheers for Wolffert—cheers for Marvel, and even cheers for me. And then a freckled youth with a big mouth and a blue, merry eye broke the tension by saying:

"All bets are off and we sha'n't have a holiday to-morrow at all." The reprobates had been betting on which of us would fall, and had been banking on a possible holiday.

Quite a crowd went to Wolffert's room to make atonement for any possible slight they had put on him; but he was nowhere to be found. But that night, he and Marvel sat at our table and always sat there afterward. He illustrated George Borrow's observation that good manners and a knowledge of boxing will take one through the world.

IV

DELILAH

My career at college promised at one time after that to be almost creditable, but it ended in nothing. I was not a good student, because, I flattered myself, I was too good a fellow. I loved pleasure too much to apply myself to work, and was too self-indulgent to deny myself anything. I despised the plodding ways of cold-blooded creatures like Peck even more than I did the dullness of John Marvel. Why should I delve at Latin and Greek and Mathematics when I had all the poets and novelists. I was sure that when the time came I could read up and easily overtake and surpass the tortoise-like monotony of Peck's plodding. I now and then had an uneasy realization that Peck was developing, and that John Marvel, to whom I used to read Latin, had somehow come to understand the language better than I. However, this was only an occasional awakening, and the idea was too unpleasant for me to harbor it long. Meantime, I would enjoy myself and prepare to bear off the more shining honors of the orator and society-medalist.

At the very end I did, indeed, arouse myself, for I had a new incentive. I fell in love. Toward the mid-session holiday the place always filled up with pretty girls. Usually they came just after "the exams"; but occasionally some of them came a little in advance: those who were bent on conquest. At such times, only cold anchorites like Marvel, or calculating machines like Peck, stuck to their books. Among the fair visitants this year was one whose reputation for beauty had already preceded her: Miss Lilian Poole. She was the daughter of a banker in the capital of the State, and by all accounts was a tearing belle. She had created a sensation at the Mardi Gras the year before, and one who could do that must be a beauty. She was reported more beautiful than Isabelle Henderson, the noted beauty of the Crescent city, whom she was said to resemble. Certainly, she was not lacking in either looks or intelligence; for those who had caught a glimpse of her, declared her a Goddess. I immediately determined that I would become her cavalier for the occasion. And I so announced to the dozen or more fellows who composed our set. They laughed at me.

"Why, you do not know her."

"But I shall know her."

"You are not on speaking terms with Professor Sterner"—the Professor of Mathematics at whose house she was stopping. The Professor, a logarithmic machine, and I had had a falling out not long before. He had called on me for a recitation, one morning after a dance, and I had said, "I am not prepared, sir."

"You never are prepared," he said, which the class appeared to think amusing. He glanced over the room.

"Mr. Peck."

Peck, also, had been at the dance the night before, though he said he had a headache, and caused much amusement by his gambols and antics, which, were like those of a cow; I therefore expected him to say, "unprepared" also. But not so.

"I was unwell last night, sir."

"Ah! Well, I am glad, at least, that you have some sort of a legitimate excuse."

I flamed out and rose to my feet.

"Are you alluding to me, sir?"

"Take your seat, sir. I deny your right to question me."

"I will not take my seat. I do not propose to sit still and be insulted. I demand an answer to my question."

"Take your seat, I say. I will report you to the Faculty," he shouted.

"Then you will have to do so very quickly; for I shall report you immediately." And with that, I stalked out of the room. The Faculty met that afternoon and I laid my complaint before them, and as the students, knowing the inside facts, took my side, the Faculty held that the Professor committed the first breach and reprimanded us both. I was well satisfied after I had met and cut the Professor publicly.

I now acknowledge the untowardness of the situation; but when the boys laughed, I pooh-poohed it.

"I do not speak to old Sterner, but I will speak to her the first time I meet her."

"I will bet you do not," cried Sam Pleasants.

"Supper for the crowd," chimed in several. They were always as ready to bet as their long-haired ancestors were in the German forests, where they bet themselves away, and kept their faith, to the amazement of a Roman gentleman, who wrote, "istam vocant fidem."

We were all in a room, the windows of which looked across the lawn toward the pillared portico of Professor Sterner's house, and some of the boys were gazing over toward the mansion that sheltered the subject of our thoughts. And as it happened, at that moment, the door opened and out stepped the young lady herself, in a smart walking costume, topped by a large hat with a great, drooping, beguiling, white ostrich feather. An exclamation drew us all to the window.

"There she is now!" Without doubt, that was she.

"Jove! What a stunner!"

"She is alone. There is your chance."

"Yes, this is the first time you have seen her; now stop jawing and play ball."

"Or pay up."

"Yes, supper for the crowd: porterhouse steak; chicken, and waffles to end with."

So they nagged me, one and all.

"Done," I said, "I will do it now."

"You have never seen her before?"

"Never." I was arranging my tie and brushing my hair.

"You swear it?"

But I hurried out of the door and slammed it behind me.

I turned down the walk that led across the campus to the point whither Miss Poole was directing her steps, and I took a gait that I judged should meet her at the intersection of the walks. I was doing some hard thinking, for I knew the window behind me was crowded with derisive faces.

As I approached her, I cut my eye at her, and a glance nearly overthrew my resolution. She was, indeed, a charming picture as she advanced, though I caught little more than a general impression of a slim, straight, statuesque figure, a pink face, surmounted by a profusion of light hair, under a big hat with white feathers, and a pair of bluish eyes. I glanced away, but not before she had caught my eye. Just then a whistle sounded behind me, and my nerve returned. I suddenly quickened my pace, and held out my hand.

"Why, how do you do?" I exclaimed with well-feigned surprise and pleasure, plumping myself directly in front of her. She paused; looked at me, hesitated, and then drew back slightly.

"I think—, I—. You have made a mistake, I think."

"Why, do you not remember Henry Glave? Is this not Miss Belle Henderson?" I asked in a mystified way.

"No, I am not Miss Henderson."

"Oh! I beg your pardon—I thought—" I began. Then, as I moved back a little, I added, "Then you must be Miss Lilian Poole; for there cannot be more than two like you on earth. I beg your pardon."

I backed away.

"I am," she said. Her mounting color showed that she was at least not angry, and she gave proof of it.

"Can you tell me? Is not that the way to Dr. Davis's house?"

"Yes—I will show you which it is." My manner had become most respectful.

"Oh! Don't trouble yourself, I beg you."

"It is not the least trouble," I said sincerely, and it was the only truth I had told. I walked back a few steps, hat in hand, pointing eagerly to the house. And as I left, I said, "I hope you will pardon my stupid mistake."

"Oh! I do not think it stupid. She is a beauty."

"I think so." I bowed low. I saw the color rise again as I turned away, much pleased with myself, and yet a good deal ashamed, too.

When I returned to "the lair," as we termed Sam Pleasants's room, the boys seized me. They were like howling dervishes. But I had grown serious. I was very much ashamed of myself. And I did the only decent thing I could—I lied, or as good as lied.

"I will give the supper if you will stop this yelling. Do you suppose I would make a bet about a girl I did not know?"

This took the spirit out of the thing, and only one of them knew the truth. Marvel, who was present, looked at me seriously, and that night said to me half sadly,

"You ought not to have done that."

"What? I know it. It was an ungentlemanly thing."

"I do not mean that. You ought not to have told a story afterward."

How he knew it I never knew.

But I had gotten caught in my own mesh. I had walked into the little parlor without any invitation, and I was soon hopelessly entangled in the web at which I had hitherto scoffed. I fell violently in love.

I soon overcame the little difficulty that stood in my way. And, indeed, I think Miss Lilian Poole rather helped me out about this. I did not allow grass to grow under my feet, or any impression I had made to become effaced. I quickly became acquainted with my Diana-like young lady; that is, to speak more exactly, I got myself presented to her, for my complete acquaintance with her was of later date, when I had spent all the little patrimony I had. I saw immediately that she knew the story of the wager, though she did not at that time refer to it, and so far as I could tell, she did not resent it. She, at least, gave no sign of it. I asked her to allow me to escort her to a German, but she had an engagement.

"Who is it?" I inquired rather enviously.

She had a curious expression in her eyes—which, by the way, were a cool blue or gray, I never could be sure which, and at times looked rather like steel.

She hesitated a moment and her little mouth drew in somewhat closely.

"Mr. Peck." Her voice was a singular instrument. It had so great a compass and possessed some notes that affected me strangely; but it also could be without the least expression. So it was now when she said, "Mr. Peck," but she colored slightly, as I burst out laughing.

"Peck! Pecksniff? Did you ever see him dance? I should as soon have thought of your dancing with a clothes-horse."

She appeared somewhat troubled.

"Does he dance so badly as that? He told me he danced."

"So he does—like this." I gave an imitation of Peck's gyrations, in which I was so earnest that I knocked over a table and broke a fine lamp, to my great consternation.

"Well, you are realistic," observed Miss Poole, calmly, who struck me as not so much concerned at my misfortune as I might have expected. When, however, she saw how really troubled I was, she was more sympathetic.

"Perhaps, if we go out, they will not know who did it," she observed.

"Well, no, I could not do that," I said, thinking of Peck, and then as her expression did not change, I fired a shot that I meant to tell. "Peck would do that sort of thing. I shall tell them."

To this she made no reply. She only looked inscrutably pretty. But it often came back to me afterward how calmly and quite as a matter of course she suggested my concealing the accident, and I wondered if she thought I was a liar.

She had a countenance that I once thought one of the most beautiful in the world; but which changed rarely. Its only variations were from an infantile beauty to a statuesque firmness.

Yet that girl, with her rather set expression and infantile face, her wide open, round eyes and pink prettiness, was as deep as a well, and an artesian well at that.

I soon distanced all rivals. Peck was quickly disposed of; though, with his nagging persistence, he still held on. This bored me exceedingly and her too, if I could judge by her ridicule of him and her sarcasm which he somehow appeared too stupid to see. He succumbed, however, to my mimicry of his dancing; for I was a good mimic, and Peck, in a very high collar and with very short trousers on his dumpy legs, was really a fair mark. Miss Poole was by no means indifferent to public opinion, and a shaft of satire could penetrate her mail of complacency. So when she returned later to the classic shades of the university, as she did a number of times for Germans and other social functions, I made a good deal of hay. A phrase of Peck's, apropos of this, stuck in my memory. Some one—it was, I think, Leo Wolffert—said that I appeared to be making hay, and Peck said, "Yes, I would be eating it some day." I often wondered afterward how he stumbled on the witticism.

Those visits of my tall young dulcinea cost me dear in the sequel. While the other fellows were boning I was lounging in the drawing-room chattering nonsense or in the shade of the big trees in some secluded nook, writing her very warm poems of the character which Horace says is hated both of Gods and men. Several of these poems were published in the college magazine. The constant allusions to her physical charms caused Peck to say that I evidently considered Miss Poole to be "composed wholly of eyes and hair." His observation that a man was a fool to write silly verses to a girl he loved, because it gave her a wrong idea of her charms, I, at the time, set down to sheer envy, for Peck could not turn a rhyme; but since I have discovered that for a practical person like Peck, it has a foundation, of truth.

V

THE HARE AND THE TORTOISE

Meantime, my studies—if any part of my desultory occupation could be so termed—suffered undeniably. My appearance at the classroom door with a cigarette, which I flung away just in time not to carry it into the room, together with my chronic excuse of being "unprepared," moved the driest of my professors to the witticism that I "divided my time between a smoke and a flame." It was only as the finals drew near that I began to appreciate that I would have the least trouble in "making my tickets," as the phrase went. Sam Pleasants, Leo Wolffert and my other friends had begun to be anxious for me for some time before—and both Wolffert and John Marvel had come to me and suggested my working, at least, a little: Wolffert with delicacy and warmth; John Marvel with that awkward bluntness with which he always went at anything. I felt perfectly easy in my mind then and met their entreaties scornfully.

"Why, I did well enough at the Intermediates," I said.

"Yes, but," said John Marvel, "Delilah was not here then——"

I was conscious, even though I liked the reference to Samson, of being a little angered; but John Marvel looked so innocent and so hopelessly friendly that I passed it by with a laugh and paid Miss Poole more attention than ever.

The Debater's Medal had for a long time been, in the general estimation, as good as accorded me; for I was a fluent, and I personally thought, eloquent speaker, and had some reading. But when Wolffert entered the debate, his speeches so far outshone mine that I knew at once that I was beat. They appeared not so much prepared for show, as mine were, as to come from a storehouse of reading and reflection. Wolffert, who had begun to speak without any design of entering the contest for the Medal, would generously have retired, but I would not hear of that. I called Peck to account for a speech which I had heard of his making: that "the contest was between a Jew and a jug"; but he denied making it, so I lost even that satisfaction.

I worked for the Magazine Medal; but my "poems"—"To Cynthia" and "To Felicia," and my fanciful sketches, though they were thought fine by our set, did not, in the estimation of the judges, equal the serious and solemn essays on Julius Cæsar and Alexander Hamilton, to which the prize was awarded. At least, the author of those essays had worked over them like a dog, and in the maturer light of experience, I think he earned the prizes.

I worked hard—at least, at the last, for my law degree, and every one was sure I would win—as sure as that Peck would lose; but Peck scraped through while mine was held up—because the night before the degrees were posted I insisted on proving to the professor who had my fate in his hands, and whom I casually ran into, that a "gentleman drunk was a gentleman sober," the idea having been suggested to my muddled brain by my having just been good-natured enough to put to bed Peck. I finally got the degree, but not until I had been through many tribulations, one of which was the sudden frost in Miss Poole's manner to me. That girl was like autumn weather. She could be as warm as summer one minute and the next the thermometer would drop below the freezing point. I remember I was her escort the evening of the Final Ball. She looked like Juno with the flowers I had gone out in the country to get for her from an old garden that I knew. Her face was very high bred and her pose majestic. I was immensely proud of her and of myself as her escort—and as Peck stalked in with a new and ill-fitting suit of "store-clothes" on, I fancy I put on my toppiest air. But Peck had a shaft and he came there to shoot it. As he passed near us, he said in a loud voice to someone, "The B. L. list is posted."

"Are you through?" demanded the other.

"Yep."

"Anybody failed 't we expected to get through?"

"'T depends on who you expected to get through. Glave's not on it."

His shaft came home. I grew cold for a minute and then recovered myself. I saw my partner's face change. I raised my head and danced on apparently gayer than ever, though my heart was lead. And she played her part well, too. But a few minutes later when Peck strutted up, a decided cock to his bullet head, I heard her, as I turned away, congratulate him on his success.

I slipped out and went over to the bulletin-board where the degree-men were posted, and sure enough, I was not among them. A curious crowd was still standing about and they stopped talking as I came up, so I knew they had been talking about me. I must say that all showed concern, and sympathy was written on every face. It was, at least, sweet to know that they all considered it a cursed shame, and set my failure down to hostility on the part of one of the professors. I was determined that no one should know how hard hit I was, and I carried my head high till the ball was out, and was so lofty with Miss Poole that she was mystified into being very receptive. I do not know what might have happened that night if it had not been for old John Marvel. I learned afterward that I was pretty wild. He found me when I was wildly denouncing the law professor who had failed to put me through in some minor course, and was vowing that I would smash in his door and force my diploma from him. I might have been crazy enough to attempt it had not old John gotten hold of me. He and Wolffert put me to bed and stayed with me till I was sober. And sober enough I was next day.

As I have said, I received my diploma finally; but I lost all the prestige and pleasure of receiving it along with my class, and I passed through some of the bitterest hours that a young man can know.

Among my friends at college—I might say among my warmest friends—was my old crony "Jeams," or, as he spoke of himself to those whom he did not regard as his social equals, or whom he wanted to amuse himself with, "Mister Woodson"; a little later changed to "Professor Woodson," as more dignified and consonant with the managing class of the institution. When I left for college he followed me, after a brief interval, and first appeared as a waiter at the college boarding-house where I boarded, having used my name as a reference, though at home he had never been nearer the dining-room than the stable. Here he was promptly turned out, and thereupon became a hanger-on of mine and a "Factotum" for me and my friends.

He was now a tall, slim fellow, with broad shoulders and the muscles of Atlas—almost but not quite black and with a laugh that would have wiled Cerberus. He had the shrewdness of a wild animal, and was as imitative as a monkey, and this faculty had inspired and enabled him to pick up all sorts of acquirements, ranging from reading and writing to sleight-of-hand tricks, for which he showed a remarkable aptitude. Moreover, he had a plenty of physical courage, and only needed to be backed by someone, on whom he relied, to do anything.

I was naturally attached to him and put up with his rascalities, though they often taxed me sorely, while he, on his part, was so sincerely attached to me, that I believe he would have committed any crime at my bidding.

He considered my old clothes his property, and what was far more inconvenient, considered himself the judge of the exact condition and moment when they should pass from my possession to his.

He was a handsome rascal, and took at times such pride in his appearance that, as he was about my size, I had often to exercise a close watch on my meagre wardrobe. He had not only good, but really distinguished manners, and, like many of his race, prided himself on his manners. Thus, on an occasion when he passed Peck at college, and touched his hat to him, a civility which Peck ignored, Wolffert said to him, "Jeams, Mr. Peck don't appear to recognize you."

"Oh! yes," said Jeams, "he recognizes me, but he don't recognize what's due from one gent'man to another."

"Are you going to keep on touching your hat to him?" asked Wolffert.

"Oh! yes, suh," said Jeams, "I takes keer o' my manners, and lets him take keer o' hisn'."

Such was "Jeams," my "body servant," as he styled himself, on occasions when he had an eye to some article of my apparel or stood in especial need of a donation.

He hated Peck with as much violence as his easygoing nature was capable of, and had no liking for Wolffert. The fact that the latter was a Jew and yet my friend, staggered him, though he put up with him for my sake, and on the night of my fight with Wolffert, I think he would, had he had a chance, have murdered him, as I am sure he would have murdered the professor who threw me on my degree. He got much fuller than I got that night, and his real grief and shame were among the heaviest burdens I had to bear.

Miss Poole returned home the next afternoon after the delivery of the diplomas, and I heard that Peck went off on the same train with her.

I expected some sympathy from the girl for whom my devotion had cost me so much; but she was as cool and sedate over my failure as if it had been Peck's.

All she said was, "Why did not you win the honors?"

"Because I did not work enough for them."

"Why did not you work more?"

I came near saying, "Because I was fooling around you"; but I simply said, "Because I was so certain of winning them."

"You showed rather bad judgment." That was all the sympathy I received from her.

The old law professor when he took leave of me said—and I remember said it gravely—"Mr. Glave, you have the burden of too many gifts to carry."

I was pleased by the speech and showed it. He looked at me keenly from under his bushy eyebrows. "I commend to you the fable of the hare and the tortoise. We shall hear of Peck."

I wondered how he knew I was thinking of Peck with his common face, hard eyes, and stumpy legs.

"You shall hear of me, too," I declared with some haughtiness.

He only smiled politely and made no answer.

Nettled, I asked arrogantly, "Don't you think I have more sense—more intellect than Peck?"

"More intellect—yes—much more.—More sense? No. Remember the fable. 'There are ways that you know not and paths that you have not tried.'"

"Oh! that fable—it is as old as——"

"Humanity," he said. "'To scorn delights and live laborious days.' You will never do that—Peck will."

I left him, angry and uncomfortable.

I had rather looked forward to going to the West to a near cousin of my father's, who, if report were true, had made a fortune as a lawyer and an investor in a Western city. He and my father had been boys together, but my cousin had gone West and when the war came, he had taken the other side. My father, however, always retained his respect for him and spoke of him with affection. He had been to my home during my early college-life—a big, stolid, strong-faced man, silent and cold, but watchful and clear-minded—and had appeared to take quite a fancy to me.

"When he gets through," he had said to my father, "send him out to me. That is the place for brains and ambition, and I will see what is in him for you."

Now that I had failed, I could not write to him; but as he had made a memorandum of my graduation year, and as he had written my father several times, I rather expected he would open the way for me. But no letter came. So I was content to go to the capital of the State.

VI

THE METEOR

I am convinced now that as parents are the most unselfish creatures, children are the veriest brutes on earth. I was too self-absorbed to think of my kind father, who had sacrificed everything to give me opportunities which I had thrown under the feet of Lilian Poole and who now consoled and encouraged me without a word of censure. Though I was deeply grieved at the loss of my parents, I did not know until years afterward what an elemental and life-long calamity that loss was.

My father appeared as much pleased with my single success as if I had brought him home the honors which I had been boasting I would show him. He gave me only two or three bits of advice before I left home. "Be careful with other people's money and keep out of debt," he said. "Also, have no dealings with a rascal, no matter how tightly you think you can tie him up." And his final counsel was, "Marry a lady and do not marry a fool."

I wondered if he were thinking of Lilian Poole.

However, I had not the least doubt in my mind about winning success both with her and with that even more jealous Mistress—The Law. In fact, I quite meant to revolutionize things by the meteoric character of my career.

I started out well. I took a good office fronting on the street in one of the best office-buildings—an extravagance I could not afford. Peck had a little dark hole on the other side of the hall. He made a half proposal to share my office with me, but I could not stand that. I, however, told him that he was welcome to use my office and books as much as he pleased, and he soon made himself so much at home in my office that I think he rather fell into the habit of thinking my clients his own.

Before I knew many people I worked hard; read law and a great deal of other literature. But this did not last long, for I was social and made acquaintances easily. Moreover, I soon began to get cases; though they were too small to satisfy me—quite below my abilities, I thought. So, unless they promised me a chance of speaking before a jury, I turned them over to Peck, who would bone at them and work like a horse, though I often had to hunt up the law for him, a labor I never knew him to acknowledge.

At first I used to correspond with both John Marvel and Wolffert; but gradually I left their letters unanswered. John, who had gone West, was too full of his country parish to interest me, and Wolffert's abstractions were too altruistic for me.

Meantime, I was getting on swimmingly. I was taken into the best social set in the city, and was soon quite a favorite among them. I was made a member of all the germans as well as of the best club in town; was welcomed in the poker-game of "the best fellows" in town, and was invited out so much that I really had no time to do much else than enjoy my social success. But the chief of the many infallible proofs I had was my restoration to Lilian Poole's favor. Since I was become a sort of toast with those whose opinion she valued highly, she was more cordial to me than ever, and I was ready enough to let by-gones be by-gones and dangle around the handsomest girl in the State, daughter of a man who was president of a big bank and director of a half-dozen corporations. I was with her a great deal. In fact, before my second winter was out, my name was coupled with hers by all of our set and many not in our set. And about three evenings every week I was to be found basking in her somewhat steady smile, either at some dance or other social entertainment; strolling with her in the dusk on our way home from the fashionable promenade of —— Street—which, for some reason, she always liked, though I would often have preferred some quieter walk—or lounging on her plush-covered sofa in her back drawing-room. I should have liked it better had Peck taken the hint that most of my other friends had taken and kept away from her house on those evenings which by a tacit consent of nearly every one were left for my visits. But Peck, who now professed a great friendship for me, must take to coming on precisely the evenings I had selected for my calls. He never wore a collar that fitted him, and his boots were never blacked. Miss Lilian used to laugh at him and call him "the burr"—indeed, so much that I more than once told her, that while I was not an admirer of Peck myself, I thought the fact that he was really in love with her ought to secure him immunity from her sarcasm. We had quite a stiff quarrel over the matter, and I told her what our old law professor had said of Peck.

I had rather thought that, possibly, Mr. Poole, knowing of the growing relation of intimacy between myself and his daughter, would throw a little of his law business my way; but he never did. He did, in fact, once consult me at his own house about some extensive interests that he owned and represented together in a railway in a Western city; but though I took the trouble to hunt up the matter and send him a brief on the point carefully prepared, he did not employ me, and evidently considered that I had acted only as a friend. It was in this investigation that I first heard of the name Argand and also of the P. D. and B. D. R.R. Co. I heard long afterward that he said I had too many interests to suit him; that he wanted a lawyer to give him all his intellect, and not squander it on politics, literature, sport, and he did not know what besides. This was a dig at my rising aspirations in each of these fields. For I used to write now regularly for the newspapers, and had one or two articles accepted by a leading monthly magazine—a success on which even Peck congratulated me, though he said that, as for him, he preferred the law to any other entertainment. My newspaper work attracted sufficient attention to inspire me with the idea of running for Congress, and I began to set my traps and lay my triggers for that.

Success appeared to wait for me, and my beginning was "meteoric."

Meteoric beginnings are fatal. The meteor soon fades into outer darkness—the outer darkness of the infinite abyss. I took it for success and presumed accordingly, and finally I came down. I played my game too carelessly. I began to speculate—just a little at first; but more largely after awhile. There I appeared to find my proper field; for I made money almost immediately, and I spent it freely, and, after I had made a few thousands, I was regarded with respect by my little circle.

I began to make money so much more easily by this means than I had ever done by the law that I no longer thought it worth while to stay in my office, as I had done at first, but spent my time, in a flock of other lambs, in front of a blackboard in a broker's office, figuring on chances which had already been decided in brokers' offices five hundred miles away. Thus, though I worked up well the cases I had, and was fairly successful with them, I found my clients in time drifting away to other men not half as clever as I was, who had no other aim than to be lawyers. Peck got some of my clients. Indeed, one of my clients in warning me against speculating, which, he said, ruined more young men than faro and drink together, told me he had learned of my habit through Peck. Peck was always in his office or mine. I had made some reputation, however, as a speaker, and as I had taken an active part in politics and had many friends, I stood a good chance for the commonwealth's attorneyship; but I had determined to fly higher: I wanted to go to Congress.

I kept a pair of horses now, since I was so successful, and used to hunt in the season with other gay pleasure-lovers, or spend my afternoons riding with Miss Poole, who used to look well on horseback. We often passed Peck plodding along alone, stolid and solemn, "taking his constitutional," he said. I remember once as we passed him I recalled what the old professor had said of him, and I added that I would not be as dull as Peck for a fortune. "Do you know," said Miss Poole, suddenly, "I do not think him so dull; he has improved." Peck sat me out a few nights after this, and next day I nearly insulted him; but he was too dull to see it.

I knew my young lady was ambitious; so I determined to please her, and, chucking up the fight for the attorneyship, I told her I was going to Congress, and began to work for it. I was promised the support of so many politicians that I felt absolutely sure of the nomination.

Peck told me flatly that I did not stand the ghost of a show; and began to figure. Peck was always figuring. He advised me to stand for the attorneyship, and said I might get it if I really tried. I knew better, however, and I knew Peck, too, so I started in. To make a fight I wanted money, and it happened that a little trip I had taken in the summer, when I was making a sort of a splurge, together with an unlooked-for and wholly inexplicable adverse turn in the market had taken all my cash. So, to make it up, I went into the biggest deal I ever tried. What was the use of fooling about a few score dollars a point when I could easily make it a thousand? I would no longer play at the shilling-table. I had a "dead-open-and-shut thing" of it. I had gotten inside information of a huge railroad deal quietly planned, and was let in as a great favor by influential friends, who were close friends of men who were manipulating the market, and especially the P. D. and B. D., a North-western road which had been reorganized some years before. Mr. Poole had some interest in it and this made me feel quite safe as to the deal. I knew they were staking their fortunes on it. I was so sure about it that I even advised Peck, for whom I had some gratitude on account of his advice about the attorneyship, to let me put him in for a little. But he declined. He said he had other use for his money and had made it a rule not to speculate. I told him he was a fool, and I borrowed all I could and went in.

It was the most perfectly managed affair I ever saw. We—our friends—carried the stock up to a point that was undreamed of, and money was too valuable to pay debts with, even had my creditors wanted it, which they did not, now that I had recouped and was again on the crest of the wave. I was rich and was doubling up in a pyramid, when one of those things happened that does not occur once in ten million times and cannot be guarded against! We were just prepared to dump the whole business, when our chief backer, as he was on his way in his carriage to close the deal, was struck by lightning! I was struck by the same bolt. In twenty minutes I was in debt twenty thousand dollars. Telegrams and notices for margin began to pour in on me again within the hour. None of them bothered me so much, however, as a bank notice that I had overchecked an account in which I had a sum of a few hundred dollars belonging to a client of mine—an old widowed lady, Mrs. Upshur, who had brought it to me to invest for her, and who trusted me. She had been robbed by her last agent and this was really all that was left her. I remembered how she had insisted on my keeping it for her against the final attack of the wolf, she had said. "But suppose I should spend it," I had said jesting. "I'm not afraid of your spending it, but of myself—I want so many things. If I couldn't trust you, I'd give up." And now it was gone. It came to me that if I should die at that moment she would think I had robbed her, and would have a right to think so. I swear that at the thought I staggered, and since then I have always known how a thief must sometimes feel. It decided me, however. I made up my mind that second that I would never again buy another share of stock on a margin as long as I lived, and I wrote telegrams ordering every broker I had to sell me out and send me my accounts, and I mortgaged my old home for all I could get. I figured that I wanted just one hundred dollars more than I had. I walked across the hall into Peck's little dark office. He was poring over a brief. I said, "Peck, I am broke."

"What? I am sorry to hear it—but I am not surprised." He was perfectly cool, but did look sorry.

"Peck," I went on, "I saw you pricing a watch the other day. Here is one I gave three hundred dollars for." I showed him a fine chronometer repeater I had bought in my flush time.

"I can't give over a hundred dollars for a watch," he said.

"How much will you give me for this?"

"You mean with the chain?"

"Yes"—I had not meant with the chain, but I thought of old Mrs. Upshur.

"I can't give over a hundred."

"Take it," and I handed it to him and he gave me a hundred-dollar bill, which I took with the interest and handed, myself, to my old lady, whom I advised to let Peck invest for her on a mortgage. This he did, and I heard afterward netted her six per cent—for a time.

That evening I went to see Lilian Poole. I had made up my mind quickly what to do. That stroke of lightning had showed me everything just as it was, in its ghastliest detail. If she accepted me, I would begin to work in earnest, and if she would wait, as soon as I could pay my debts, I would be ready; if not, then—! However, I walked right in and made a clean breast of it, and I told her up and down that if she would marry me I would win. I shall never forget the picture as she stood by the heavy marble mantel in her father's rich drawing-room, tall and uncompromising and very handsome. She might have been marble herself, like the mantel, she was so cold, and I, suddenly aroused by the shock, was on fire with resolve and fierce hunger for sympathy. She did not hesitate a moment; and I walked out. She had given me a deep wound. I saw the sun rise in the streets.

Within two weeks I had made all my arrangements; had closed up my affairs; given up everything in the world I had; executed my notes to my creditors and told them they were not worth a cent unless I lived, in which case they would be worth principal and interest; sold my law books to Peck for a price which made his eyes glisten, had given him my office for the unexpired term, and was gone to the West.

The night before I left I called to see the young lady again—a piece of weakness. But I hated to give up.

She looked unusually handsome.

I believe if she had said a word or had looked sweet at me I might have stayed, and I know I should have remained in love with her. But she did neither. When I told her I was going away, she said, "Where?" That was every word—in just such a tone as if she had met me on the corner, and I had said I was going to walk. She was standing by the mantel with her shapely arm resting lightly on the marble. I said, "God only knows, but somewhere far enough away."

"When are you coming back?"

"Never."

"Oh, yes, you will," she said coolly, arranging a bracelet, so coolly that it stung me like a serpent and brought me on my feet.

"I'll be—! No, I will not," I said. "Good-by."

"Good-by." She gave me her hand and it was as cool as her voice.

"Good-by." And mine was as cold as if I were dead. I swear, I believe sometimes I did die right there before her and that a new man took my place within me. At any rate my love for her died, slain by the ice in her heart; and the foolish fribble I was passed into a man of resolution.

As I walked out of her gate, I met Peck going in, and I did not care. I did not even hate him. I remember that his collar was up to his ears. I heard afterward that she accepted him that same week. For some inexplicable reason I thought of John Marvel as I walked home. I suddenly appeared nearer to him than I had done since I left college, and I regretted not having answered his simple, affectionate letters.

I started West that night.

VII

THE HEGIRA

In my ménage was a bull-terrier puppy—brindled, bow-legged and bold—at least, Jeams declared Dix to be a bull-pup of purest blood when he sold him to me for five dollars and a suit of clothes that had cost sixty. I found later that he had given a quarter for him to a negro stable-boy who had been sent to dispose of him. Like the American people, he was of many strains; but, like the American people, he proved to have good stuff in him, and he had the soul of a lion. One eye was bleared, a memento of some early and indiscreet insolence to some decisive-clawed cat; his ears had been crookedly clipped and one perked out, the other in, and his tail had been badly bobbed; but was as expressive as the immortal Rab's eloquent stump. He feared and followed Jeams, but he adored me. And to be adored by woman or dog is something for any man to show at the last day. To lie and blink at me by the hour was his chief occupation. To crawl up and lick my hand, or failing that, my boot, was his heaven.

I always felt that, with all my faults, which none knew like myself, there must be some basic good in me to inspire so devoted a love.

When I determined to leave for the West the night of my final break with Lilian Poole, in my selfishness I forgot Dix; but when I reached home that night, sobered and solitary, there was Dix with his earnest, adoring gaze, his shrewd eye fixed on me, and his friendly twist of the back. His joy at my mere presence consoled me and gave me spirit, though it did not affect my decision.

Jeams, who had followed me from college, at times hung around my office, carried Miss Poole my notes and flowers and, in the hour of my prosperity, blossomed out in a gorgeousness of apparel that partly accounted for my heavy expense account, as well as for the rapid disappearance of the little private stock I occasionally kept or tried to keep in a deceptive-looking desk which I used as a sideboard for myself and friends. He usually wore an old suit of mine, in which he looked surprisingly well, but on occasions he wore a long-tailed coat, a red necktie and a large soft, light hat which, cocked on the side of his head, gave him the air of an Indian potentate. I think he considered himself in some sort a partner. He always referred to me and my business as "us" and "our" business, and, on some one's asking him derisively if he were a partner of mine, he replied, "Oh, no, sir, only what you might term a minor connectee of the Captain." He was, however, a very useful fellow, being ready to do anything in the world I ordered, except when he was tight or had some piece of rascality on foot—occasions by no means rare. He wore, at election time, a large and flaming badge announcing that he was something in his party—the opposite party to mine; but I have reason to believe that when I was in politics he perjured himself freely and committed other crimes against the purity of the ballot on which economists declare all Representative Government is founded. One of my ardent friends once informed me that he thought I ought not to allow Jeams to wear that badge—it was insulting me openly. I told him that he was a fool, that I was so afraid Jeams would insist on my wearing one, too, I was quite willing to compromise. In fact, I had gotten rather dependent on him. Then he and I held such identical views as to Peck, not to mention some other mutual acquaintances, and Jeams could show his contempt in such delightfully insolent ways.

I had intimated to Jeams some time before, immediately after my first serious reverse in the stock market, that I was no longer as flush as I had been, and that unless affairs looked up I might move on to fresh pastures—or, possibly, I put it, to a wider field for the exercise of my powers; whereupon he promptly indicated his intention to accompany me and share my fortune. But I must say, he showed plainly his belief that it was a richer pasture which I was contemplating moving into, and he viewed the prospect with a satisfaction much like that of a cat which, in the act of lapping milk, has cream set before it. The only thing that puzzled him was that he could not understand why I wanted more than I had. He said so plainly.

"What you want to go 'way for, Cap'n? Whyn't you stay where you is? You done beat 'em all—evy one of 'em——"

"Oh! no, I haven't."