Thomas Nelson Page

“ Ere morning came one of the children had passed away; but the mother and the other children survived; and Eleanor Leigh knew that John Marvel, now on his knees, now leaning over the bed administering stimulants, had saved them.
As Eleanor Leigh stepped out into the morning light, she looked on a new earth, as fair as if it had just been created, and it was a new Eleanor Leigh who gazed upon it. The tinsel of frivolity had shrivelled and perished in the fire of that night. Sham had laid bare its shallow face and fled away. Life had taken on reality. ”

“ The door opened slowly and John Marvel entered an abode which he said to me afterward he was glad for the first time in his life to be so near-sighted as not to be able to see. A pallet of rags lay in a corner, and on a box crouched, rather than sat, a little girl with a broken crutch by her side, her eyes fastened on the newcomer with a gaze of half bewilderment. It was some time before John Marvel could get anything out of the woman, but he held a key which at last unlocks every heart,—a divine and penetrating sympathy. ”

“ Pride saved me. It survived long after hope died. Sometimes, I even thought of the pistol I had in my trunk. But I had made up my mind to live and win. There, too, came in Pride. I could not bear to think of Lilian Poole and Peck. How she would congratulate herself and how Peck would gloat! No, I could not give him that satisfaction. Peck did me a good turn there. A strong enmity, well based, is not always without good results; but Peck should not smear my memory with pretended pity. ”

“ I, a Jew!" exclaimed Wolffert, whose eyes were sparkling. "My dear sir, I am the believer of the ages—I only do not believe that any forms established by men are necessary to bring men into communion with God—I refuse to believe selfishness, and arrogance, and blindness, when they step forth with bell, book, and candle, and say, obey us, or be damned. I refuse to worship a ritual, or a church. I will worship only God." ”

“ Also life began to take on for me a wholly new significance; as a field of work in which a man might escape from the slavery of a selfish convention which cramped the soul, into a larger life where service to mankind was the same with service to God, a life where forms were of small import and where the Christian and the Jew worked shoulder to shoulder and walked hand in hand. How much of my new feeling was due to Miss Eleanor Leigh, I did not take the trouble to consider. ”

“ He opened my eyes to the fact that every man who contributes to the common good of mankind is one of the chosen people and that the fundamental law is to do good to mankind.
I discovered that John Marvel knew he was in love with Eleanor Leigh, though how he knew it I never learned. "He never told her," he said, "but died with it locked in his heart—as was best," he added after a pause, and then he looked out of the window, and as he did not say anything from which I could judge whether he knew why Wolffert never told his love, I did not tell what I knew. ”

“ As the well-to-do look with anxiety to the loss of their property and the consequent sinking to some lower plane of moderate poverty, so the poor look with shuddering or, at last, with despair to sinking into the slough of this hopeless state for which there is no name, because none has been devised adequate to describe its desperate misery. Often but a block, or even but a wall divides the reeking slum where they creep and fester and rot, from the broad, well-lighted, smooth-paved avenue where irresponsible wealth goes clattering by in its wild orgy of extravagance and reckless mirth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Leigh, looking with clear and scornful eyes at his work, gave him to feel that at least one man knew him to the bottom of his scoundrelly soul. For a while it appeared as though Mr. Leigh would be irretrievably ruined and McSheen and his friends and secret backers like Canter would secure easy possession of the properties his power of organization had built up; but suddenly an unlooked-for ally with abundant resources had come to Mr. Leigh's assistance in the person of an old friend, and the ripened fruit of their labors had been plucked from their hands outstretched to grasp it. ”

“ She talked more than ever before of John Marvel, varied at times by admiring allusions to Leo Wolffert, until I almost began to hate them both. And all the while, she was so exasperatingly natural and innocent. A man may be a true friend to another, ready to serve him to the limit and may wish him all the happiness in the world, and yet may not desire the girl who has become his sun, moon and stars to appear to draw her light from his source. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There were times when I rebelled against myself at being as big a fool as I knew myself to be, and endeavored to console myself by reverting to those wise bits of philosophy which our friends are always offering to us in our distress from their vantage ground of serene indifference. There were doubtless as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, but I was not after fishing—somehow I could not get a grasp on the idea that there were as lovely and attractive girls in the world whom I was likely to meet as Eleanor Leigh, whom I now felt I had lost and might possibly never recover. ”

“ Among all the people affected by the strike none suffered more, I believe, than John Marvel and Wolffert. I never saw any one more distressed by the suffering about them than these two men. Others suffered physically, they mentally, and in the reflexive way which comes from over-wrought sympathies. Where gloom and dull hate scowled from the brows of the working class, sadness and sorrow shadowed John's brow, though at need he always had a smile and a cheery word for every one. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Its rewards were undeniable: luxury, reputation and power beyond anything he had ever conceived of. Yet what had he not sacrificed for them! Everything that he had once held up before his mind as a noble ambition: study, reading, association with the great and noble of all time; art and love of art; appreciation of all except wealth that men have striven for through the ages; friendship—domestic joy—everything except riches and the power they bring. For as he thought over his past in his growing loneliness he found himself compelled to admit that he had sacrificed all the rest. ”

“ It is said that every woman has in her nature something feline. I will not venture on so sweeping an assertion; but I will say that one of the sex was never excelled by any feline in her ability to torture and her willingness to tease the victim of her charms.
When I met Eleanor Leigh next after the memorable session on the dusty steps, I could not tell for my life what were her feelings toward me. They were as completely veiled as though she had been accustomed from her infancy to enfold herself in impenetrable mystery. ”

“ I thought. "Wolffert's in love with her," I said.
"Wolffert—in love with her! Why!" I saw that I had suggested the idea for the first time—but it had found a lodgment in his mind. "Oh! no, he is not," he declared, but rather arguing than asserting it. "They are only great friends—they work together and have many things in common—Wolffert will never marry—he is wedded to his ideal."
"And her name is Eleanor Leigh—only he is not wedded to her yet." And I added in my heart, "He will never be if I can beat him." ”

“ But Wolffert assured me that John Marvel would never think of anything but the happiness of meeting me again.
"He is a friend whom God gives to a man once in his lifetime," he said, as he took his leave. "Cherish such an one. His love surpasseth the love of women."
"Has he improved?" I asked.
A little spark flashed in Wolffert's eyes. "He did not need to improve. He has only ripened. God endowed him with a heart big enough to embrace all humanity—except—" he added, with a twinkle in his eye, "the Jew." ”

“ Mr. Marvel! Marvel! Marvel! John Marvel!" rang from their throats, and suddenly, as with one impulse, the men turned to our corner where John Marvel had sunk in his seat to escape observation, and in an instant he was seized, drawn forth and lifted bodily on the shoulders of men and borne to the platform as if on the crest of a tidal wave. Coll McSheen and Dr. Capon were both shouting to the audience, but they might as well have addressed a tropical hurricane. ”

“ One who has never had the experience of starting in a big city alone, without a connection of any kind, cannot conceive what it means: the loneliness—utter as in a desert—the waiting—the terrible waiting—being obliged to sit day after day and just wait for business to come, watching your small funds ooze out drop by drop, seeing men pass your door and enter others' offices and never one turn in at yours, till your spirit sinks lower and lower and your heart dies within you. One who has not felt it does not know what it is to be out of work and not able to get it. ”

“ I confess that, outraged as I was by the virago's attack, I was equally surprised by John Marvel's placidness and the officer's quiet contempt. The only thing that John Marvel said was:
"There were some men here just now."
"Liar! Liar! Liar!" screamed the woman. "You know you lie. There is not a man in this house except that man, and he came here to insult me—he who comes here all the time—you know you do, —— —— ——!"
"Where are the men?" demanded the marshal quietly, but he got no answer except her scream of denial. ”

“ I hunted for Dix all day, but without success, and was so busy about it that I did not have time to begin my search for Jeams. That evening, as it was raining hard, I treated myself to the unwonted luxury of a ride home on a street-car. The streets were greasy with a thick, black paste of mud, and the smoke was down on our heads in a dark slop. Like Petrarch, my thoughts were on Laura, and I was repining at the rain mainly because it prevented the possibility of a glimpse of Miss Leigh on the street: a chance I was ever on the watch for. ”

“ And there was not a greater contrast between the vastness of the one and the pitiful squalor of the other than between the life of the owners of the former and that of the denizens of the closely packed tenements which dwindled in their shadow. Splendor and squalor were divided often only by a brick wall. The roar of the tide that swept through the teeming streets drowned the cry of wretchedness, and only the wretched knew how loud it was. I had never seen such wealth, and I had never dreamed of such poverty.
The vulgar make the parade; the refined pass so quietly as scarcely to be observed. ”

“ I was bitter; for I was still thinking of Wolffert and Pushkin and McSheen.
"The doctors tell me that a hundredth part of an inch more, and a friend of mine would never have known anything again," said Marvel, gravely, looking down at me with sorrowful, kind eyes.
Under this argument ad hominem I was silent, if not convinced. We are always ready to think Providence interferes in our especial behalf.
I started to ask after another who had been in the riot, but I could not frame the question. I saw that Marvel knew what I wished. ”

“ When, at last, she met John Marvel, what was her amusement to discover, in place of her young Antinous, a stout, strapping young fellow, with rather bristly hair, very near-sighted and awkward, and exceedingly shy, a person as far from a man of the world as a stout, country-bred cart-horse would be from a sleek trick-pony. His timidity in her presence caused her endless amusement, and for lack of some better diversion and partly to scandalize her staid kinswomen, she set herself to tease him in every way that her fertile brain could devise. ”

“ 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 ”