Читать книгу John Marvel, Assistant - Thomas Nelson Page - Страница 16

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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.