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[Illustration: In her dainty bathing-dress, Miss Allison's wings were
discarded.
Page 8.]




A
TAME SURRENDER


_A STORY OF THE CHICAGO STRIKE_

By

CAPTAIN CHARLES KING, U.S.A.


AUTHOR OF "THE COLONEL'S DAUGHTER," "MARION'S
FAITH," "CAPTAIN BLAKE," "A SOLDIER'S
SECRET," "SERGEANT CROESUS,"
"CAPTAIN CLOSE," ETC.


_ILLUSTRATED_


PHILADELPHIA

J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

1896




COPYRIGHT, 1895 AND 1896,
BY
J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.


PRINTED BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.




ILLUSTRATIONS.


                                                             PAGE

In her dainty bathing-dress, Miss Allison's wings
were discarded                                _Frontispiece_.

"May I trouble you for those despatches, Mr.
Elmendorf?"                                                  176

"All that space in there will be needed in five
minutes from this time."                                     207

"Is it potent--only at Christmas?"                           277




[Illustration]




A TAME SURRENDER.




CHAPTER I.


She had met him the previous summer on the Rhine, and now "if they
aren't engaged they might as well be," said her friends, "for he is her
shadow wherever she goes." There was something characteristically
inaccurate about that statement, for Miss Allison was rather undersized
in one way and oversized in another; at least that, too, is what her
friends said. She was not more than five feet in height nor less than
five feet in breadth "measured from tip to tip of her wings," as her
brother said. Miss Allison had wings, not because she was an angel, but
because it was the fashion,--wings that sprouted at her fair, plump,
shapely shoulders and billowed out like balloons. Her brother Cary,
above referred to, a sixteen-year-old specimen of Young American
impudence and independence, said further of her, in the spring of '94,
that if Floy's sleeves were only inflated with gas she could float on
air as easily as she did on water, and on water Miss Allison was
buoyancy personified. On water, too, and in her dainty bathing-dress,
Miss Allison's wings were discarded and her true proportions more
accurately defined. She was anything but slender. She was simply
deliciously, exquisitely rounded _now_; but the question which so
disturbed her feminine friends as to call for perennial repetition was,
What _would_ she be a few years hence? This, however, was a matter that
seemed to give the lady in question no uneasiness whatever. Certainly it
resulted in no loss of flesh. Perhaps it might have been better for her
future figure if it had. With her perfect health, digestion, and
disposition, there was absolutely no way of worrying off a pound or two
a week. She was the soul of good nature and content. She had an
indulgent father, a luxurious home, abundant wealth, an unimpeachable
complexion, character, and social position. She had a swarm of enviously
devoted girl friends on the one hand and selfishly devoted male admirers
on the other, or on both if she chose. She was absolutely without a mean
or unkind thought of anybody. She was full of every generous impulse.
She was lazy and energetic by turns, had been a romping idler in her
earlier school-days, and had been polished off and finished in an
expensive Eastern establishment without finishing anything herself. She
had lived an almost unshadowed life, had laughed off a dozen lovers
when she went abroad in '93, and had then fallen in with her fate across
the water.

There was really no excuse for her falling in love with Mr. Floyd
Forrest. An utter dissimilarity to her other admirers, a romantic and
somewhat absurd adventure, and, above all, proximity, were what did it.
He must have been over ten years her senior; she was barely twenty when
they met. He was tall, slender, and strong, with deep burning brown eyes
and heavy brows and lashes. She was short and plump and distractingly
fair and fresh and blue-eyed,--big melting blue eyes, too, they were.
His lips were well-nigh hidden by a heavy moustache; hers were well-nigh
faultless in their sweet, warm, rosy curves, faultless as the white,
even teeth that gleamed in her merry laughter. He was reserved and
taciturn, even gloomy at times, facts which, through no fault or
connivance of hers, were presently explained and only served to heighten
the interest she had begun to feel in him. She was frankness, almost
loquacity itself,--a girl who could no more keep a secret than she could
harbor a grudge. He was studious, thoughtful, forever reading. She loved
air, sunshine, action, travel, tennis, dancing, music (of the waltz
variety), and, beyond her Bible and her Baedeker, read nothing at all,
and not too much of them! She was with her aunt and some American
friends when first she met him. It was the morning they hove in sight
of England, and the steamer was pitching through a head sea. Her party
were wretchedly ill; she was aggressively well. She had risen early and
gone up to the promenade deck in hopes of getting the first glimpse of
Bishop's Rock, and found the spray dashing high over the bows, drenching
her accustomed perch on the forward deck and keeping people
within-doors.

It was too early for those who had been her beaux and gallants on the
swift spring run; a late session in the smoking-room the night before
had kept them below. Only one man was visible at the rail under the
bridge,--the tall, dark, military-looking American who seemed to divide
his time between reading and tramping on the promenade deck, pacing the
planks with long, swinging stride and never seeming to care for other
society than his own thoughts. He was on deck and keenly enjoying the
strong, salt wind and its whistling load of spray; and, clinging to the
stanchions at the saloon door, wistfully did Miss Allison regard him,
but only as the means to an end. She wanted to get there, and did not
see a way without a helping hand, and just here old Neptune seemed to
tender it. A huge, foam-crested billow came sweeping straight from the
invisible shores of Albion, burst in magnificent deluge upon the port
bow, lifted high in air one instant the heaving black mass of the stem,
then let it down with stomach-stirring swish deep into the hollow
beyond,--deep, deep into the green mountain that followed, careening
the laboring steamer far over to starboard, and shooting Miss Allison,
as plump and pleasing a projectile as was ever catapulted, straight from
the brass-bound door-way, across the slippery deck and into the
stranger's welcoming arms. Springing suddenly back from under the bridge
to avoid the coming torrent, Mr. Forrest was spun along the rail until
nearly opposite the companion-way, and just in the nick of time.

"I think I'd have gone overboard if it hadn't been for you," said Miss
Allison, all smiles and salt water, as she clung to the rail a moment
later, while Mr. Forrest's steamer-cap, bumped off in the collision,
rode helplessly astern on the crest of the hissing wave. "But I couldn't
swim like your cap. Do take my Tam," she cried, tearing off her knitted
head-gear and letting her soft, fair curls whip out into so many briny
strings.

"I'll use this," he shouted, turning up the capote of his ulster, while
the cape thrashed furiously in the wind. "Will you pardon my saying you
are a trifle venturesome?"

"Oh, I love the ocean and the wind and the sea," she cried,
enthusiastically. "Don't you pity people who are too ill or too lazy to
get up and see this?" And she stretched forward one white, dimpled,
dainty hand over the seething waters. "Dare we get over on the other
side?"

"You couldn't stand there," he said, briefly, "and would be drenched if
you could. Best stay here."

And stay they did until breakfast, by which time she had told him a
great deal about herself and learned next to nothing about him.

"Remember," she said, "you are to give me your address, and I'm to send
you a new steamer-cap to replace the one I knocked overboard." And he
merely smiled, thanked her, said it was entirely unnecessary, but did
not present the expected card at all. "Perhaps he hadn't any," suggested
Aunt Lawrence, after they got into sheltered waters off the Start Point.
"He doesn't look like a society man. There are so many of these
commercial people travelling now."

"Oh, he didn't talk at all like a drummer," said Miss Allison in prompt
defence of her new protector. "In fact, I don't think he talked at all."

"Not if you had first innings, Flo," drawled Master Cary, from the
shelter of his steamer-rug. "He ain't a drummer, but like's not he's
been one. He's an army officer. Hubbard said so." Hubbard was one of the
belated admirers.

Whether soldier or not, however, Mr. Forrest did not prosecute the
chance acquaintance. He lifted the successor to the shipwrecked cap on
passing Miss Allison's party later in the day, but never approached them
nearer, never seemed to see the invitation in Miss Allison's shining
blue eyes. "Really, Cary," said she, as they neared Southampton, "you
must go and get his address and the size of the steamer-cap." But Cary
was the type of the traditional younger brother, a spoiled one at that,
and Cary wouldn't. It was Mr. Hubbard who went on the mission and came
back with the man.

"Pray don't think of getting me a cap," said Mr. Forrest, bowing and
smiling rather gravely. "I'd much rather you did not. Indeed, it
wouldn't find me, as I make no stay in England at all. I--I wish you a
very pleasant sojourn," he finished, somewhat abruptly, and with a
comprehensive bow to the party backed away.

But just two months later they ran upon him on the Rhine. The express
steamer had picked them up at Bonn and paddled them up the crowded
stream to Coblentz, and there at the dock, chatting with two immensely
swell Prussian officers, was Mr. Forrest.

"Here's your drummer again, Flo," said Cary, turning disdainfully from
the contemplation of the battlements of Ehrenbreitstein. "Just catch on
to the cut of those Dutch trousers, will you?" indicating by a nod of
his sapient head the tight-fitting, creaseless garments in which were
encased the martial lower limbs visible below the long, voluminous
skirts of their double-breasted frock-coats. Flo gazed with frank
animation in her eyes, but Forrest never saw her until after he had
waved adieu to his German friends, standing in statuesque and superb
precision at the salute beyond the foaming wake of the Deutscher Kaiser.

"I knew we'd see you again," said Miss Allison, smiling sunshine up into
his face, "and I've brought your cap. It's in one of those trunks now,"
she concluded, indicating the pile of luggage on the deck abaft the
wheel. Hubbard and other admirers, who had besieged her on the steamer,
were no longer in attendance. In their stead was a well-groomed, sedate,
prosperous-looking man referred to as "my father" when Mr. Forrest was
presented a moment later, and with him, conversing eagerly and fluently
in a high-pitched, querulous voice, was a younger man whose English was
as pure as his accent was foreign. "Mr. Elmendorf," said Miss Allison,
but she did not explain, as perhaps she might have done, "Cary's tutor."
Forrest bowed civilly to both, but looked hard at the latter, and Miss
Allison presently went on to explain. "Father joined us nearly a week
ago. He couldn't come before. I wish I could have stayed to see the
World's Fair, but auntie was so miserable the doctor said she must get
away from Chicago at once, and so we had to come. Then Cary's a perfect
hoodlum at home,--one scrape after another as fast as he can get in and
father can get him out. They sent him with us," she continued, in the
flow of her boundless confidences.

"Herr Max is a very highly educated young man, but I don't think he's
doing Cary any good."

That night at Mainz there was an episode. Mr. Allison senior, fatigued,
had gone to bed as soon as they reached their hotel. Mrs.
Lawrence,--"auntie," that is,--Miss Allison, and their maid were
billeted in very comfortable rooms under Herr Schnorr's hospitable roof.
Elmendorf stepped in to write letters, and Cary sneaked out for a smoke.
It was after ten. The shops were closed. Cigarettes had been strictly
forbidden, and the boy's small stock of contraband had been discovered
and seized that morning at Bonn. Herr Max wrote _currente calamo_, and
as he turned off page after page he lost all thought of his charge.
Among Cary's treasured possessions was a calibre 32 Smith & Wesson, and
with this pellet-propeller in his hip-pocket the boy fancied himself as
dangerous as an anarchist. Twice had it been captured by paterfamilias
and twice recovered, the last time at Cologne. Carrying concealed
weapons was as much against the law in Cologne as it is in Chicago, and
much more of an offence, but nothing had there occurred to impel him to
draw it. The boat-landing was not five hundred yards away. There under
the arching lights of its beautiful bridge, sparkling with the
reflection of myriad stars, silently flowed the Rhine, and there lay the
Deutscher Kaiser, with her well-stocked larder and wine-room. Thither
went the boy in quest of forbidden fruit. A waiter to whom he had
confided his desire had promised to have the cigarettes on hand, and
kept his promise. For one small package he demanded a four-mark
piece,--a silver coin of about the size and rather more than the value
of the American dollar. Cary responded with "What you giving us?" which
the Teutonic kellner couldn't understand. The boy proffered a mark, the
German equivalent for the American quarter, and sought vainly through
the misty memories of his lessons for the German equivalent of "Size me
up for a chump?" The waiter had friends and fellow-conspirators, the boy
had none, and when a grab was made for his portemonnaie he backed
against the stone wall and whipped out his pygmy six-shooter. Miss
Allison, looking out from her casement over the moonlit beauty of the
scene before her, had recognized her brother's form and later his
uplifted voice. She knew there was trouble, and felt that worse would
follow unless prompt measures were taken. She was not dressed for
promenade, being already in _peignoir_, slippers, and dishevelled hair;
but the sudden sound of a shot and a scream banished her scruples. She
darted into the corridor and on towards the head of the stairs just in
time to collide once again with her Atlantic protector, but was not
received with open arms. Forrest bade her run back to her room while he
sped on to the boy. German police are slow, if sure, but the waiter's
associates were quick enough. They had scattered before the police could
converge, and Forrest was first at the scene. Just as he supposed, the
boy had peppered himself.

It was only a flesh-wound, something to scare and distress and confine
Young America to his bed for ten days, and so to be bragged about
prodigiously later on. But the injury to German institutions, the
affront to the majesty of German law, was not so slight. It took some
days of consular and diplomatic correspondence and a week of official
espionage to satisfy the local authorities that no deep-rooted
conspiracy was at the bottom of this discovery of murderous weapons in
the hands of the Amerikaner. In the care of the patient and in all the
formalities attendant upon the case, Mr. Forrest proved of infinitely
more value than the accomplished tutor. The former, an officer reared
with deep regard for established law and order, accepted the situation
as a fact, the laws as incontrovertible, and considered himself and
friends, although involuntarily, as the offenders. The German-American
scholar, on the contrary, spent fruitless hours in striving to argue the
officials out of their stand and in preaching a crusade against the laws
they were sworn to obey. Forrest won their regard and Elmendorf their
distrust, if not disgust, and from the moment Forrest reappeared bearing
the limp and lamenting Cary in his arms, Miss Allison had chosen to
look upon him as in some sense the family's good angel. They were much
together for a week about young Cary's bedside, and the boy swore that
if he had "a feller like him for a toot" he wouldn't mind trying to
obey. Then, when Forrest had to go his way, she found that she missed
him as she never before had missed mortal man. It was the first shadow
on her life since her mother's death, five years before.

In September, most unexpectedly, they met him again at Geneva. Cary had
been feeding the swans in the blue waters about the little isle of J.J.
Rousseau, and was figuring how much he'd have to pay in costs and fines
if he yielded to his consuming desire to "drop a donick" on the head of
one of them that had spit at him, when Flo suddenly gasped, "Oh!
there's----" and stopped short. Loungers and passers-by looked up and
shrugged their Gallic shoulders and exchanged glances of commiseration
at sight of a sixteen-year-old boy rushing yelling after a cab. But the
boy was fleet, despite his recent flesh-wound, and presently reappeared,
dragging a man by the arm, who bared his brown head and bowed low over a
frankly extended hand. He looked a trifle dusty and travel-stained to
Cary's critical eye, and the boy meant to comment on the foreign cut of
his Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, provided a chance were afforded
him to enter a remark edgewise, but Florence, with glowing cheeks and
sparkling eyes, was pouring forth a volume of welcome and explanation
all in one. Forrest was on his way to the station _en route_ to
Montreux.

"Oh, don't go by rail! Wait and take the boat with us; it's so much
lovelier!"

Over at the quay lay moored the Major Davel, and thither Forrest bade
the cabman take his luggage. It was indeed lovelier,--the evening voyage
up that beautiful Alp-locked lake,--and while auntie, fatigued with her
day's shopping and sight-seeing, snoozed placidly in the salon, and
Cary, on honor not to smoke cigarettes again until his next birthday,
was puffing a Swiss "penny-grab" at the bow, Mr. Forrest and this fair,
joyous girl sat and talked while the sun went down over the Jura and
turned to purple and gold and crimson the dazzling summits of Mont Blanc
and the far-away peaks up the valley of the Rhone. Elmendorf was
enjoying a week's leave, Mr. Allison was sampling the waters at
Carlsbad, and auntie and Florence had Cary on their hands. The boy
adored Forrest by this time. Couldn't Forrest spend a day or two? They
would take him to Chillon and up to the Rochers de Naye. _There_ was a
view worth seeing! "I can stand on that point up yonder," said Cary, "a
mile and a quarter high, and fire a stone down the chimney of the hotel
at Territet." And they did take him, for Forrest remained four days. Mr.
Elmendorf wrote that, on the advice of his physician, he had asked for
a week more to spend in quiet at his home in the shades of his alma
mater in a placid old German town. Stopping at Berne a few hours after
leaving his friends on Lac Leman, Mr. Forrest found the quaint old
capital crowded. A congress of Socialists had been called, and from all
over Europe the exponents of the Order were gathered, and almost the
first voice to catch his ear as Forrest strolled through the throng in
the open platz near the station was high-pitched, querulous, and oddly
familiar. Turning sharply the officer came face to face with Mr.
Elmendorf, still presumably recuperating in the shades of the university
at Jena; and that night Mr. Elmendorf called upon him at his hotel.

"I found myself so much better," said he, "that I decided to push ahead,
and, still availing myself of my leave, to stop and see some of these
most interesting old Helvetic cities. My coming here to-day was
fortuitous, yet possibly unfortunate. Mr. Allison has a deep-rooted
prejudice against anything of this kind,--against anything, I may say,
that has a tendency to improve the condition of the laboring man,--and,
while I have nothing to shrink from in the matter, I prefer not to
offend the sensibilities, whether right or wrong, of my employer, and
therefore should, on his account, ask that you make no mention, should
you write, of having seen me here." And Elmendorf waited a moment.

"I shall not be apt to write," said Forrest, coldly, after a pause.

"Well--in case you--you see any of the family again. If it's all the
same to you----"

"I shall not volunteer any information, Mr. Elmendorf; but should I ever
be asked the direct question, since you have nothing to shrink from in
the matter, there need be, I presume, no hesitancy in my saying that I
saw you here."

"Oh, not at all,--not at all," was the answer, though in tone by no means
cheery or confident; and Elmendorf departed with the conviction that
Forrest did not like him,--which was simply a case of reciprocity.

There was yet another meeting, as unexpected as its predecessors,
between the Allisons and Mr. Forrest, and this was of all perhaps the
most decisive. Forrest's leave was soon to expire. He was returning from
Vienna to Paris, and met Allison senior at Basle. The Bohemian waters,
or the rest and regimen, or both combined, had greatly benefited the
merchant. His manner was brisk and buoyant, his face shone with health
and content. He was cordiality itself to the man whom he had greeted
with but cool civility on the Rhine. "I feel ready for anything," said
he, "and am going back at once. Cary and Elmendorf go with me, but Flo
and her aunt want to stay awhile in Paris. Look them up, will you, if
you go there?--Hôtel Lafond." Forrest promised. He was going to Metz
and Luxembourg on the way, and purposed spending only a few days in the
capital. He found the ladies packing and almost ready to start. Once
again he crossed the Atlantic in Miss Allison's company, and this time,
though there might have been Hubbards and other gallants aboard, she had
no use for them. It was Mr. Forrest's figure her eye sought the moment
she came on deck, Forrest's arm on which she leaned in the joyous,
exhilarating tramps on the breezy promenade. Every woman on board except
Aunt Lawrence believed her engaged to him before they were half-way
over, and would have sworn to it at Sandy Hook. Anything more blissful,
gladsome, confident than her manner at first could hardly be described,
but when it presently began to give way to something half shy, half
appealing, almost tender,--when long silences and down-drooping lashes
replaced the ceaseless prattle and frankly uplifted eyes,--then there
was little room for doubt in Aunt Lawrence's mind that Flo had flung
herself away.

"Well, I wash my hands of it," said the pious lady. "It was Fate and her
father. He deliberately threw them together again after my warning. Now
I suppose he'll have to do something for him, for if Flo loves the man
she'll marry him if he hasn't a penny beyond his pay,--which he probably
hasn't. There ought to be a law against such things."

But never a confession or confidence did Flo have to offer. The ladies
spent a week in New York before going West. Mr. Forrest went on about
his business. It was when he met them at Chicago and calmly escorted
them from their state-room on the Limited to their waiting carriage that
Aunt Lawrence felt the time had come for her to speak; and speak she did
the moment Mr. Forrest had closed the carriage door, raised his hat, and
was left behind.

"Has that young man asked you to marry him, Florence?"

And Florence burst into tears.

From having been a bitter opponent of the possibility, Mrs. Lawrence
from this moment veered squarely around. A month agone she would have
resented his daring to speak of such a thing. Now she raged at his
daring not to. Here they were home again at Chicago with all Florence's
friends crowding about and rejoicing in her return, and here, said Aunt
Lawrence, was this extraordinary young man detained on some mysterious
duty on the staff of the general commanding, working in his office at
the Pullman building by day and meeting Flo at dinners, dances,
theatres, and operas by night, coming occasionally to the house,
welcomed by her brother, the millionaire, with whom the young man often
sat now and had long talks about the questions of the hour, welcomed
shyly but unmistakably by Florence, adored by Cary, who took to paying
long visits to the lieutenant's workshop and meeting those swells his
brother officers, and looked upon with distrust only by Elmendorf and
herself. Never before had the lady fancied the tutor or shown a
disposition to listen to his dissertations, which were long. Now she
rejoiced his soul by encouraging him. It was an easy step to discreet
confidences with Forrest as the subject. Mr. Elmendorf became a seeker
for truth. Other officers whom Florence met in society came to the house
to call, and presently to dine. Mr. Elmendorf and his pupil were seldom
absent from the table, and Mr. Elmendorf made martial acquaintances
which, as a member of the Allison household, he was welcome to
cultivate. One day he came in big with news, and that evening, after a
long conference with Elmendorf, Mrs. Lawrence decided on another warning
talk with her charming niece.

"Florence," she said, finally, "I am the last woman on earth to pry into
any one else's affairs" (a conviction with regard to herself which is
cherished by almost every woman), "but I have felt it my duty to learn
something about Mr. Forrest's past life. I own I did object to him as a
possible suitor, but better that than a man insincere in his intentions.
What would you say were I to tell you what I have heard recently?"

Miss Allison turned and faced her aunt unflinchingly, "That he was
engaged to Miss Hosmer,--now Mrs. Stuyvesant,--that she broke it off,
and that he has never cared for any one since? I know all about it,
auntie,--mainly from his own lips."

"Then all I've got to say is, you are the most extraordinary persons I
ever met,--_both_ of you."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER II.


There are many excellent people in this bright world who, like Mrs.
Lawrence, are prone to assert that all they've got to say on a given
subject is so and so, and then to stultify themselves by proceeding to
talk a whole torrent. Mrs. Lawrence said a great deal in the course of
this initial interview, and followed it up with a very great deal more.
She considered Mr. Forrest's conduct worse than incomprehensible. What
business had he to tell a girl his heart was buried in the past and pay
her all lover-like attentions in the present? "He hasn't," said Miss
Allison, promptly and flatly. "He has simply been kind and friendly. He
would have been discourteous, un-American, had he done anything less."
It wasn't he who told her he never had cared or would care for any one
after Miss Hosmer; Kate Lenox told her that, and so did other girls
here. When, then, did Mr. Forrest inform her of his broken engagement?
asked Aunt Lawrence. "On the steamer coming home," said Florence. "He
couldn't help himself. I met Mrs. Stuyvesant in Washington last
winter,--such a lovely woman,--and some one said she was once engaged to
an army officer and it was broken off; she found she didn't love him
enough to leave her luxurious home to live on the frontier among
Indians. I don't know how her name came up, or what prompted me to talk
as I did. I was saying that I thought her cruel, heartless, and that she
should have considered all that before ever she engaged herself to him;
and then he simply put up his hand, saying, 'Do not speak of it, Miss
Allison: I was the man.' It fairly took my breath away," said
Florence,--which her aunt could hardly believe,--"and I didn't know what
to say; and then he went on quietly to speak of her in the most
beautiful way, and assured me there were other and graver reasons which
led to her decision, some of which, at least, he could not gainsay, and
Mr. Stuyvesant's wealth and social position had very little to do with
the fact of her finally marrying him, as she did, and not until several
years after the engagement was broken."

Indeed, Miss Allison waxed tearfully eloquent in defence of Mr. Forrest,
whom she declared high-minded and honorable and manly. He wasn't in love
with her, nor she with him,--not a bit; but she honored him and
respected him and liked him better than any man she knew, and papa
thought him such a superior man, and Cary was devoted to him, and he
had been of infinite service to them abroad, and was welcome now and
should be welcome any time--any time--to their doors, and if Aunt
Lawrence or anybody spoke ill of him to her she'd defend him to the
bitter end, and as for hinting or insinuating that he was trifling with
her, it was simply outrageous--outrageous, and if Aunt Lawrence dared to
let him suppose it was his duty to propose to her now she'd never
forgive her,--never. And so Aunt Lawrence discovered that her blithe,
merry, joyous niece of the years gone by had developed a fine temper of
her own and a capacity for independent thought and action that was
simply appalling.

Florence went dancing down into the parlor with flushed cheeks and
briny, indignant eyes and the mien of an offended five-foot goddess,
leaving Aunt Lawrence to the contemplation of the field of her
disastrous defeat and the card of the unworthy object of their
discussion:

[Illustration: _Mr. Benton Floyd Forrest,_ --th Regiment of Infantry,
U.S.A.]

"What on earth brings him here at this time of day?" quoth she, irate
and ruffled. "For a man who is neither lover nor fiancé, he assumes the
airs and, for aught I know, the rights of both. The girl is as
ill-balanced as her mother." And not all women, it must be owned, think
too well of an only brother's wife. "The manners of these army men are
simply uncouth. Who ever heard of calls at ten A.M.?"

It was but a few minutes before Miss Allison returned. In fact, she did
not return to the scene of the late struggle,--a lovely boudoir
overlooking the flashing blue waters of the lake from high over the
intervening boulevard. Miss Allison went direct to her own rooms on the
opposite side of the broad hall-way, and not until evening was Mrs.
Lawrence favored with explanation.

"Why are you not dressed?" she somewhat caustically inquired, as her
niece came down arrayed for dinner.

For answer Miss Allison contemplated her pretty white arms, and took a
backward and downward glance at the fall of the trailing skirt of heavy
silk, then--must it be recorded?--she calmly asked, "What's the matter
with this?"

"This," said Aunt Lawrence, with marked emphasis, "may do for home
dinners, but won't for an opera-party. Here it is seven. You can't
change your dress before eight, and you simply can't go to the
Langdons' box in that."

"I'm not going to the Langdons' box."

"You were, and Mr. Forrest was to dine here and take you."

"Mr. Forrest left for the West on sudden orders at noon, and came at ten
to tell me."

Mrs. Lawrence's hands and eyes went up in mad dismay. "You don't mean to
tell me you've given up going because that man's ordered off? Child,
child, you are simply bent on ruining yourself socially. I don't wonder
people say you're daft about him."

"Who says I'm daft about him?" queried Miss Allison, flushing instantly,
but looking dangerous.

"Well, not just that, perhaps," returned Mrs. Lawrence. "But that's what
they will say now. Surely Mrs. Langdon could ask somebody in his place
who could have escorted you,--or else I could."

"Mrs. Langdon did invite somebody else,--two somebody elses, in fact, as
my letter urged her to do. Fanny Tracy was wild to go, and Captain
Farwell wild to take her. I did a charitable thing in suggesting them."

"Then the result of that piece of charity will be that all Chicago will
say you are so much in love with that man you couldn't go 'Faust' when
he went away."

"Chicago has too many other things to think of, and---- Where's papa?"
said Miss Allison, turning abruptly from her aunt and moving with
quick, impetuous step towards the heavy portière that hung between the
parlor and Mr. Allison's library. But she stopped short at the
threshold, for there, just within the rich folds of the hanging barrier,
apparently searching for some particular book among the shelves nearest
the parlor and farthest from the library lights, and humming musically
to himself as he did so, was Cary's tutor.

"I did not know you were here, Mr. Elmendorf," said Miss Allison,
coldly. "I supposed you were in the study with my brother."

"I was until a moment ago. We needed a book, and I came down for it."

Mr. Allison's easy-chair and reading-lamp with the evening papers were
all arranged as usual, awaiting, at the other end of the room, the
coming of the master of the house. It was his custom to read there some
hours each evening, and the library was the one room in which he reigned
supreme. His books, papers, desks, and tables were sacred to his use,
and might not at any time be disturbed by other hands. Even Mrs.
Lawrence, who had her own books in her own little snuggery up-stairs,
rarely ventured to touch her brother's library shelves. As for Florence,
she never cared to. It was well known that Mr. Elmendorf had more than
once been sharply rebuked for having helped himself without first
seeking the owner's permission. Yet here he was again. The odd thing
about it was that this end of the library was dark. The books on these
shelves were huge folios, the size of some Brobdingnagian atlas, any one
of which required all Mr. Elmendorf's strength to lift from its place.
Miss Allison was not over-shrewd. She was frankness, guilelessness
itself. She rarely saw through the meanness of man or the duplicity of
woman. This, however, was not the first, but the second or third time
that Mr. Elmendorf had been revealed behind those curtains when she was
in conversation in the parlor, and it dawned upon her at last that
Cary's tutor was as good a listener as talker, and there were times when
Mr. Elmendorf was fluency itself. He was a shrewd fellow, too, and he
read his sentence in her face.

"Miss Allison," said he, quitting his search and stepping boldly
forward, "it would be idle in me to disguise, that I have unwittingly
heard a portion of the conversation between your aunt and yourself; and,
as your brother's friend and tutor, your father's trusted adviser in
many a way, both professional and personal,--indeed, if I may say so
without offence, as one who would gladly be your friend,--I feel bound
to support Mrs. Lawrence in the view she takes of this--pardon
me--unfortunate matter."

"Mr. Elmendorf!" interrupted Miss Allison, with eyes and cheeks aflame.

"Bear with me one moment," persisted Mr. Elmendorf, with deprecatory
gesture. "I am aware that I have not possessed your friendship in the
past; indeed, I may say I have been conscious of a distinctly hostile
influence; but my devotion to your father and your brother and the
interests of the family and all that may affect its good name make it
mandatory upon me to speak. I appeal to Mrs. Lawrence to support me in
my assertion that I am prompted only by the worthiest motives in thus
apparently intrusively, officiously if you will, claiming your
attention." Mrs. Lawrence bowed grave assent. She had many a time
expressed her disapprobation of Mr. Elmendorf's propensity to interfere
in domestic matters wherein he had no concern, but here was a case where
unlooked-for support was accorded her side of an unfinished argument.
Mrs. Lawrence considered all comment of Mr. Elmendorf on her affairs as
utterly unwarrantable, but poor Flo really laid herself open to
criticism.

It was Miss Allison who brought matters to a climax. "I refuse to
listen," said she, with something very like a stamp of her plump little
foot. "Mr. Elmendorf forgets himself entirely when he attempts to--to
criticise my conduct."

"Pardon me, Miss Allison, it is not your conduct, it is, on the
contrary, Mr. Forrest's, that I consider deserving criticism,--more than
criticism. It is of him, not of yourself, that I feel it my duty to
speak. I should be disloyal to my employer, to my friends, to my own
sense of honor and propriety, were I to keep silence. I know whereof I
speak when I say that he is unfit to step within these doors, to presume
to address you even as an acquaintance; and if you will but listen----"

"But I won't listen. I forbid your ever daring to speak to me in any
such way or on any such subject again." And, so saying, Miss Allison
swept angrily from the room.

Elmendorf shrugged his shoulders. "You see," he said, in the
high-pitched, querulous tone that so closely resembled a whine, "you see
the hopelessness of arguing with a woman in love. I have only succeeded
in making another enemy, and my position here will become all the more
embarrassing."

"In so far as I can uphold you, Mr. Elmendorf," said Mrs. Lawrence,
promptly, "you may count upon me. Flo is stubborn and hot-headed. She
looks upon Mr. Forrest as a hero, whereas he is really a detriment to
her social future. I rejoice in his being ordered West, and hope the
duty will keep him a long time away from Chicago."

"Ah! did he say he was ordered away on any special duty?" asked Mr.
Elmendorf.

"I certainly so understood Florence."

Mr. Elmendorf elevated his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders anew.
"That is very unlike the story that was told me at head-quarters," said
he, significantly.

"What was that?" asked Mrs. Lawrence, with prompt and pardonable
curiosity.

"That he was ordered away--under a cloud--in order to put an end to
probable scandal."

"Gambling?" asked Mrs. Lawrence, whose own first-born left college
prematurely because of fatal propensities in that line.

"W-e-l-l," answered Elmendorf, pursing up his lips, "I won't say there
may not have been something of that kind, but the main trouble is more
serious. I speak from excellent authority in saying that the general
gave him just sixteen hours in which to pack and start, fixing the noon
train to-day as the limit,--very probably to prevent his seeing
the--er--woman in the case again."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER III.


Miss Allison declined to come down to dinner that night, and Mrs.
Lawrence had no power to compel her attendance. What she hoped was that
when Mr. Allison came in he would send his mandate; but Mr. Allison did
not come. Instead there was a messenger from the club. Mr. Allison was
unexpectedly detained by an important meeting of a board of directors,
and might not be home until late. The butler made the announcement with
his usual impassive face, and Mrs. Lawrence directed dinner served
without further delay. When told to summon Master Cary, a servant
presently returned with the information that that young gentleman had
stepped out. "Slipped out," muttered Elmendorf between his teeth, for no
sooner did Cary discover that "dad" was not to be home than he
tobogganed down the baluster rail and shot forth into the surrounding
darkness, and was blocks away among cronies of his own before his
absence was discovered. "My brother is far too lax in his discipline
with Cary," said Mrs. Lawrence, in that profound disapprobation which
most people have of other people's methods, especially when their own
system, or lack of it, has proved conspicuous failure.

"Mr. Allison," said Elmendorf, diplomatically, "is somewhat wedded to
his theory, but that may not stand the test of practice. I had flattered
myself that the few months of my tuition were beginning to bear good
fruit, and that Cary was steadying, so to speak; but ever since the boy
began to get this West Point idea into his head I have found him
becoming more and more difficult to guide and control. Indeed, while I
do not wish to be considered as complaining, I feel bound to say, since
you have done me the honor to open the subject, that the influence of
Mr. Forrest upon both your nephew and your brother has been detrimental
to my usefulness in this household, so much so, in fact, as to prove at
times a serious embarrassment."

Now, Mrs. Lawrence had by no means "opened the subject," as intimated by
Mr. Elmendorf, but he was adroit in the manipulation of language. He
noted unerringly the cloud of dissent in her face, and knew it would
find verbal expression provided opportunity were afforded. To head off
disclaimer, therefore, he resorted to the time-honored feminine
expedient of talking down the other side and giving it no chance to be
heard,--an easy matter with him, for when Elmendorf got to talking
there was no telling when he would stop or what he might say. He was a
man who loved talk for talk's sake, who had an almost maternal fondness
for the sound of his own voice, and who petted and cajoled and patted
and moulded his phrases and sentences as an indulgent mother might humor
a child or a school-girl dress and adorn a doll. Before he had been two
months an inmate of the household, old Allison had come to wish he had
not begun by prescribing that Cary and his tutor should regularly appear
at the family table. Once established there, Elmendorf speedily became
dominant. If friends of Miss Allison dropped in to luncheon and the chat
was of social matters or other girls, if Allison brought home
fellow-magnates to take pot-luck at his hospitable board, if Mrs.
Lawrence and her especial cronies discoursed on that never-ending
problem, the servants, if Forrest and his army friends came informally,
no matter what the subject or who the speakers, Elmendorf speedily
"chipped in," as Cary expressed it, and once in could not be driven out.
His pet theme was the wrongs of the wage-workers, his pet theory the
doctrine of incessant change. His watchword seemed to be "Whatever is is
wrong," for against the existing order of things in state, society, or
home he was ever ready to wage determined war. Armed with propensities
such as these, a profound conviction of his own sense and sagacity and
consummate distrust in those of everybody else, it is easy to see that
once encouraged to break the ice and join in the current of conversation
he could not readily be eliminated. A man of good education was
Elmendorf, and during the European trip he had not been so much in the
way, but once home again, more and more as the winter wore on did the
head of the household find himself wishing he had never set eyes on the
man. He heard of him presently as addressing socialistic meetings and
appearing prominently at the sessions of the labor unions. Then in the
columns of papers of marked anarchistic tendencies, that had been under
the ban ever since the riots of '86, long articles began to appear over
his initials, and both in his speeches and in his contributions
Elmendorf was emphatic in his condemnation of capital, and in his
demands that labor should unite, unite everywhere, and by concerted and
persistent effort wring from the congested coffers of capital--Elmendorf
loved alliteration--a large share of its hoarded wealth. The hands that
wrought the fabric, said he, should share and share alike in every
profit. The man who riveted the bolt or swung the hammer deserved equal
wage with him whose brain evolved the plan, or whose fortune built the
mammoth plant and purchased the costly machinery.

"What I employed him for," said Allison, "was to prepare Cary for
college, and to keep him out of mischief; but the boy's running wilder
than before. Elmendorf's welcome to his theories, but not to the time
they take from the education of my son." It presently transpired that
many an evening when they were supposed to be in the study or at the
library or the theatre, Elmendorf was off at some meeting of the
laboring men, largely attended by loafers who labored not at all, and no
one knew just where Cary had gone unless he chose to tell. Elmendorf had
long since offended Miss Allison and her friends by intrusion in their
talk; he had offended Mrs. Lawrence by comment and criticism on
household affairs that were none of his business; he had annoyed Allison
by persistence in taking part in the discussion when his business or
professional friends happened in. He had time and again thrown down the
gauntlet, so to speak, when Forrest or his comrades were present, and
challenged the army men to debate as to whether there was the faintest
excuse for the existence of even so small a force as ours in a land so
great and free; but Forrest coolly--even courteously--refused to be
drawn into controversy, and, though treating the tutor with scrupulous
politeness, insisted on holding him at a distance. Naturally, therefore,
Elmendorf hated the lieutenant and all who trained with him. None the
less did he continue making frequent visits to the officers at
head-quarters, and there the officers who met him on equal footing at
Mr. Allison's table could not snub him. They grew suspicious of him,
however, especially after reading his speeches, etc., which as the
spring came on grew more and more significant, and so they shut up like
so many clams on all professional topics whenever Elmendorf appeared.

For it was well known in the great community that "the regulars" were
keeping close watch on the changing phases of what the papers termed
"the situation." Twice or thrice before in the history of the city had
its mobs overpowered the municipal authority and defied that of the
State. Right or wrong, the majority among the prominent citizens
believed that in greater force and fury than ever before the turbulent
element among the people, taking advantage of some convenient strike,
would break bounds once more, and nothing short of disciplined military
force would down them. The State troops, vastly improved by the
experiences of the past, had won their way to increased confidence and
respect, but all the same people took comfort in the thought that only
an hour's railway ride away there was posted a compact little body of
regulars, and, despite the jealousy aroused in the heart of a free
people through the existence of a standing army, it is marvellous to see
how much comfort its proximity brings to law-abiding men.

Now, one of Elmendorf's theories, and one upon which he descanted by the
hour, was that in the very nature of things it was impossible for
people well to do in the world to sympathize with or understand the
needs of those who were not so favored. Divine writ, said he, was with
him. Just as impossible as for a camel to pass through the needle's eye
or for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven was it that the wealthy
could feel for the poor. Opulence and indigence were no more sympathetic
than oil and vinegar. The poor must ever have a champion, a savior, a
mediator, or they are ground beneath a relentless heel. It was
Elmendorf's belief that no manufacturer, employer, landlord, capitalist,
or manager could by any possible chance deal justly with the employed.
It was a conviction equally profound that manifest destiny had chosen
him to be the modern Moses who was to lead his millions out of the house
of bondage. It was astonishing that with purpose so high and aim so
lofty he could find time and inclination to meddle with matters so far
beneath him; but the trouble with Elmendorf was that he was a born
meddler, and, no matter what the occasion, from a national convention to
a servants' squabble, he was ever eager to serve as adviser or
arbitrator. It was his proclivities in this line that brought on the
first clash with Mrs. Lawrence, for in a difference between the lady of
the house and the belle of the kitchen, which was, as usual, none of his
affair, Elmendorf took sides with the cook. In the light of his conduct
on this occasion, Mrs. Lawrence declared him a pest, and she only
recanted when thus unexpectedly he arrayed himself under her own banner
against her recreant niece.

And so this evening they sat alone in the stately dining-room, and
Elmendorf found in Mrs. Lawrence an eager and even sympathetic listener,
for just so soon as the services of the butler could be dispensed with
the tutor opened fire on Forrest and his alleged iniquities, and from
this as entering wedge he found it easy to favor the aunt with his views
as to what should be done towards reclaiming the niece, so lamentably
and notoriously infatuated.

Mrs. Lawrence winced. It is all very well for a woman to say such things
herself in the heat of argument and to the object of her wrath, but
quite another matter to hear them applied by somebody else, and that
somebody a dependent, so to speak, in the household. Mrs. Lawrence, it
may be remembered, was indignant at Forrest first because she thought he
meant to offer himself to Florence, and then because she thought he
didn't. She did not want Florence to marry him, but still less did she
want that he should not want her. That was unbearable. She upbraided
Florence for seeing so much of Forrest, because it made people think her
in love with him, and she raged at the people who dared to think as she
said they did. Mrs. Lawrence, therefore, may with safety be set down as
somewhat inconsistent.

"I do not think my niece is at all infatuated with Mr. Forrest, Mr.
Elmendorf," said she, somewhat severely. "She admires him greatly, and
there happens to be no one else to occupy her thoughts just now. I beg
you, therefore, to dismiss that idea at once and for all time."

"I should be glad to do so, Mrs. Lawrence," replied the tutor, with much
gravity, "and could do so, perhaps, were it not that you yourself gave
me, in the conversation I was so unfortunate as accidentally to
overhear, the confirmation. Would it not be better now, instead of
working at cross-purposes in this matter, if you were to trust me more
fully and enable me to act in harmony with your plans and wishes? I
shrink from intruding unasked, but, believe me, I too have heard such
talk as convinces me that it is high time Miss Allison's friends took
counsel together to protect her good name."

Indignant, as most women would be, at being reminded of her own
responsibility for a false impression, Mrs. Lawrence could have found it
easy to put an end to the conference then and there, but for Elmendorf's
adroit reference to "other talk." That piqued her curiosity and held
her.

"What talk? Where?" she asked.

"I do not like to mention names, Mrs. Lawrence. My acquaintance among
the officials at head-quarters has become extensive, and much is said in
confidence to me that perhaps wouldn't be heard in their chat with
others. Indeed, I may say that some among the more thoughtful and
broad-minded of their number--there are a few such--have sought my views
upon important questions of the day and have favored me with their
opinions."

"And do you mean that Florence has been discussed there, among all those
men,--those officers?" interrupted Mrs. Lawrence, with justifiable
wrath.

Elmendorf shrugged his shoulders. "Of course I ought not to betray my
hosts or give away their secrets, but do you suppose that there, any
more than among the loungers of the clubs, a woman's name is never
discussed?"

"I thought they prided themselves on being gentlemen," said Mrs.
Lawrence, wrathfully; "and gentlemen would never permit it."

"Ah, my dear madam, there's the trouble. A man is not necessarily a
gentleman because wealth and social position impel him to membership in
one of these forcing-houses of luxurious iniquity we call clubs, or
because four years in a West-Point monkey-jacket win him a commission as
a genteel loafer. A woman's name is held far less in reverence among
them than it is among the humblest of our masses. Oh, yes, I anticipate
your question," said he, at this juncture, with deprecatory gesture and
faint, significant smile. "True, I am not personally a member of any of
those clubs, nor do I wish to be, but I know men and mingle with them
elsewhere,--everywhere else, in fact. The roof of the club-house cloaks
their misdeeds, and worse things are said and done beneath it than
outside. As for officers, the only reason why there is apt to be a
stronger percentage of common decency among them is that they are chosen
from the masses of the people and sent to the Point simply to be
moulded, not reformed. Mr. Forrest is an example of the so-called
blue-blooded stock. His people are 'swells,' so to speak,--people whose
heads are held very high and their morals correspondingly low,--people
who think it condescension on their part to notice wage-workers except
as menials. Hence I am in no wise surprised to hear of him as I do, even
among those who are--well, of his own cloth."

"Surely, Mr. Elmendorf, the officers who have so often dined here do not
entertain ill opinions of Mr. Forrest. Such men as Colonel Kenyon,
Captain Waring, Major Cranston,--they have known him long and well, and
they speak of him, to us at least, most highly."

Again the significant shrug of Elmendorf's shoulders and the sneer in
his tone. "Oh, certainly," said he. "_Noblesse oblige_, or honor among
thieves, whichever maxim you choose. I doubt not that in his younger
days each of the eminently respectable trio you mention was no more a
model of morality than is Mr. Forrest. I have, indeed, heard as much of
Captain Waring; but one has only once to penetrate beyond the veil of
that professional reserve which they assume, and the details of one
another's lives are not such guarded secrets, after all."

"And you really mean that from them--among them you have learned
these--these----"

"These particulars of Mr. Forrest's sudden orders to leave the city?"
said Elmendorf, dryly, with another shrug. "From where else? Even to the
name and station of the lady in the case."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER IV.


Not half a mile away from the Allisons' costly residence was the home of
Major Cranston, an officer of some thirty years' experience in the
cavalry. It was an unpretentious, old-fashioned frame house, that had
escaped the deluge of fire that swept the city in '71, and that looked
oddly out of place now in the midst of towering apartment blocks or
handsome edifices of brick and stone. But Cranston loved the old place,
and preferred to keep it intact and as left to him at the death of his
father until such time as he should retire from active service. Then he
might see fit to rebuild. The property was now of infinitely more value
than the house. "You could move that old barrack out to the suburbs, cut
down them trees, and cut up the place into buildin'-lots and sell any
one of them for enough to build a dozen better houses," said a neighbor
who had prospered, as had the Cranstons, by holding on to the paternal
estate. But Cranston smilingly said he preferred not to cut up or cut
down. "Them" trees and he had grown up together. They were saplings
when he was a boy, and had grown to sturdy oakhood when his own
youngsters, plains-bred little cavaliers, used to gather their Chicago
friends about them under the whispering leaves and thrill their juvenile
souls with stirring tales of their doings "out in the Indian county."
Louis Cranston was believed to have participated with his father's troop
in many a pitched battle with the savage foe before his tenth birthday,
and "Patchie," the younger, was known to be so called not because of his
mother's having sprung from the distinguished family in which George
Patchen was a patron saint, but because he had been born in the Arizona
mountains and rocked in a Tonto cradle. Those two boys were now stalwart
men, cattle-growers in the Far West, whose principal interest in Chicago
was as a market for their branded steers. They had their own vines and
fig-trees, their own wives and olive-branches, and after the death of
the venerable grandparents the homestead on the shores of Lake Michigan
was for some years untenanted.

But therein were stored the old furniture and the old books and
pictures, all carefully guarded by one of Cranston's veteran sergeants,
who, disabled by wounds and infirmities, was glad to accept his
commander's offer to give to him and his a home and suitable pension in
return for scrupulous care of the old place. At long intervals the
master had come in on leave, and the neighbors always knew when to
expect him, for the snow-shovel or the lawn-mower, holly wreaths or
honeysuckles, seemed to pervade the premises, and old McGrath's neatest
uniform was hung out to sun and air on the back piazza. Mac was a
bibulous veteran at times, a circumstance of which place-hunters were
not slow to take advantage on those rare occasions of the owner's
home-coming, and many a time did the major receive confidential
intimation from the Sheehans, Morriseys, and Meiswinkles in service in
the neighborhood that McGrath was neglectful of his patron's premises
and over-given to the flowing bowl; but in Mrs. McGrath's stanch
protectorate, as in McGrath's own fidelity, Cranston had easy
confidence. Twenty years of close communion all over the frontier give
fair inkling as to one's characteristics, and Cranston had known Mac and
his helpmeet even longer. "Dhrink, yer honor? Faith an' I do, as
regularly as iver I drunk the captain's health and prosperity in the
ould regiment; and I'd perhaps be doin' it too often, out of excessive
ghratitude, but for Molly yonder. She convinces me wid me own crutch,
sorr." And Molly confirmed the statement: "I let him have no more than
is good for him, major, barrin' Patrick's Day and the First of April,
that's Five Forks,--when he always dhrinks as many fingers at a time.
Then he's in arrest till Appomattox, nine days close,--and then I let
him out for a bit again. Never fear, major, I'm the dishbursin' officer
of the family, an' the grocer has his orders." Mac had his other
anniversaries, be it understood, on all of which occasions he repaired
to Donnelly's Shades on a famous thoroughfare two blocks west of the
Cranstons' back gate, and entertained all comers with tales of dragoon
days that began in the 50's and spread all over the century. Shrewd
historians of the neighborhood made it a point to look up the dates of
Brandy Station and Beverly Ford, of Aldie, Winchester, and Waynesboro',
of Yellow Tavern and Five Forks, as well as to keep tab on subsequent
events of which history makes no mention, but which troopers know well,
for Summit Springs, Superstition Mountain, Sunset Pass, and Slim
Buttes--a daring succession of sibilant tongue-tacklers--were names of
Indian actions from Dakota to the Gila the old soldier loved to dwell
upon, even if Donnelly's whiskey had not put clogs on his tongue. Two
things was Mac always sure of at the Shades,--good listeners and bad
liquor; but the trooper who has tasted every tipple, from "pine-top" to
mescal, will forgive the latter if sure of the former. Donnelly had his
"ordhers," as Mrs. Mac said. The sergeant was to be accorded all respect
and credit, and a hack to fetch him home when his legs got as twisted as
his tongue: Mrs. McGrath would be around within forty-eight hours to
audit and pay the accounts. Donnelly sought to swindle the shrewd old
laundress at the start, and thereby lost Mac's valuable custom for six
long and anniversary-laden months. Then he came to terms, and didn't try
it again for nearly two years, which was remarkable in a saloon-man.
This time Donnelly was forgiven only upon restitution of the amount
involved and the presentation to Mrs. McGrath of a very ornate brooch in
emeralds and brilliants--or something imitative thereof--representing
the harp of Erin. From this time on things had gone smoothly.

A wonderful woman was Mrs. Mac, as her husband never failed to admit.
She had slaved and saved for him in a score of garrisons. They had their
little hoard carefully invested. They hired a young relative and
countryman to do the hard work about the premises, and they guarded
every item of the major's property with a fidelity and care that knew no
lapse, for Mrs. Mac was never so scrupulous as when her lord was in his
cups. "No," said Cranston, when a neighbor once asked him if he wasn't
afraid of serious losses through Mac's occasional inebriety. "The more
he drinks the stricter her vigilance, and she's the smarter of the two."

But there came a time when the major found it necessary to caution Mrs.
Mac, and that was when it was brought to his ears that McGrath's nephew,
the young Irish helper above referred to, was a frequent attendant at
certain turbulent meetings held over on the west side, where he had
been seen drunk on two occasions. "It's one thing to allow an old
soldier like Mac his occasional indulgence," said Cranston; "he was
started that way, and he never becomes riotous or ugly; but there is no
excuse for the boy. Those meetings alleged to be held in the interests
of the workingmen are attended mainly by tramps and loafers, fellows who
couldn't be hired to do a day's honest work, and are addressed by
professional demagogues who have no end but mischief in view. You saw
what resulted here when you first came in, seven years ago. I don't want
to hurt Mac's feelings by saying he's a bad example to his nephew, and I
don't want to let him know where the boy has been spending his evenings.
He'd break every bone in the youngster's skin if he thought he was
consorting with anarchists and rioters; and I tell you because you
couldn't have heard of it or you yourself would have taken the boy in
hand."

"Taken him in hand, sorr? I'd 'a' broke the snow-shovel over the
scandalous back av him if I'd heerd a worrd av it. He's aff to-day
sparkin' the girls in the block beyant, but I'll wait for him to-night.
Thank ye, sorr, for not tellin' Mac. It's his own poor sister's boy, an'
like his own that was tuk from us at Apache, but Mac would kill him
before he'd have him trainin' wid them Dutchmen and daygoes." (Mrs.
McGrath did not share Mulvany's views that "There are Oirish and
Oirish." Even Phoenix Park had failed to shake her view that anarchy
and assassination belonged only to "foreigners." No Irishman, said she,
was in the bloody bomb business of '86; and as for Dr. Cronin, that was
a family matther entirely.) "But if Tim's been goin' to meetin' wid the
like av them, he's been misguided by them as knows betther. Savin' your
presence, major, what would the gentleman be doin' wid him that was here
last week?"

Cranston looked at his housekeeper in surprise. "The gentleman who came
to look over my books?--Mr. Elmendorf?"

"The same, sorr. He came three times while the major was away, and Tim
was forever sayin' what a fine, smart man he was for a foreigner, and
how he was for helpin' the poor man."

Cranston gave vent to a long whistle of surprise and sudden
enlightenment. "When was Mr. Elmendorf last there?" he presently
inquired.

"All last week, sorr; three times at least I let him into the library as
usual, but he only stayed there awhile. He was talkin' outside wid Tim
an hour."

The major turned away in deep thought. Only two months before, ordered
from the Far West to take station at the new post near the city, he had
met Elmendorf when dining at the Allisons'. The next morning he found
him at head-quarters, chatting affably with the aides-de-camp, and
later he encountered him at Brentano's. Just how it came about Cranston
could not now remember, but he had invited Elmendorf to step in and look
over some old books of his father's, and as the tutor became
enthusiastic he was bidden to come again. Out at the post the major
established his modest soldier home, much missing the companionship of
his devoted wife, who was in Europe at the time with their only
daughter. Every week, perhaps, he would run in for half a day to look
over his possessions, but meantime he had given Elmendorf authority to
make a complete catalogue of the books, as well as to make himself at
home in the library, a room which Mrs. McGrath kept in apple-pie order.
But the fame of Elmendorf had spread from the city to the garrison, and
Cranston had already begun to wish he had been less impulsive in his
invitation, when Mrs. Mac told him of the missionary work being done
among his retainers by this stranger within his gates. The question now
was, what action could be justifiably taken?

Entering the old dimly-lighted study, long sacred to his father's use
and now sacred to his memory, the major found on every hand evidences
that Elmendorf had indeed been at work. Out from their accustomed places
on the shelves the books had been dragged, and were now stacked up about
the room in perplexing disarray. Some lay open upon the table, others
on the desk near the north window, his father's favorite seat, and here
some of the rarest of the collection were now piled ten and fifteen
deep. On the table in loose sheets were some pencilled memoranda on
names, authors, and dates of publication. On the desk were several pads
or blocks of the paper much used by writers for the press, and, face
upward, among them, held by an old-fashioned glass paper-weight, were a
dozen leaves closely pencilled in Elmendorf's bold hand. Cranston raised
the weight, expecting to find some more memoranda concerning his
precious books, but was not entirely surprised to read, in glaring
head-lines, "The Wage-Worker's Weapon," followed by some vehement lines
denunciatory of capital, monopoly, "pampered palates in palatial homes,
boodle-burdened, beer-bloated legislators," etc., the sort of
alliterative and inflammatory composition which, distributed in the
columns of the papers of the _Alarm_ and _Arbeiter Zeitung_ stamp, was
read aloud over the evening pipes and beer to knots of applauding men,
mostly tramps and idlers, in a thousand groggeries throughout the
bustling city. Cranston lifted the file from the desk as though to read
beyond the first sheet, but on second thought replaced it. Something
about the "threatening bayonets of Federal hirelings" at the foot of the
first page promised lively developments farther on, and recalled vividly
the editorials in similar strain that had been brought to the attention
of the officials at head-quarters, more than one of whom had expressed
the belief that they could spot the author on sight. Cranston turned
from it in some disgust, and resumed the contemplation of the work
already done. All he expected--all he had stipulated for--was a
catalogue of the books,--something he himself had not had time to make,
and a "job" which, to a man of scholarly tastes and education upon whose
hands time was apparently hanging heavily and that equivalent of time,
money, hanging not at all, would prove agreeable and acceptable.
Cranston's father loved those books, and had grouped them on his shelves
according to their subjects, history, art, science, the drama, the
classics, standard fiction, and modern literature having received each
its allotted space, and not for a heavy reward would the son have
changed them; but here already were more than half these prized
possessions tumbled promiscuously all over the room, and the soldier
could have sworn in hearty trooper fashion over the disarray, but for
the silent presence of his mother's portrait above the mantel facing the
father's desk. He had heard only recently of the tutor's avowed
proclivities for tearing down and stirring up the existing order of
things, and here was conclusive evidence that the gifted Elmendorf
proposed the complete rebuilding on his own lines of the fabric that
was the revered father's happiest work, even while incidentally devoting
some hours each day to stirring up a similar overturning in society.
That Elmendorf was not destitute of practical business views, however,
may be made apparent from the fact that when Cranston had intimated a
desire to have him name the sum he would consider a fair compensation
for the work, intending then to add a liberal percentage to the
estimate, the scholar replied that it would have to depend upon the
number of days and hours it took from other avocations, and it was now
evident that a long engagement was in contemplation.

Closing the door after him and bidding Mrs. McGrath allow no one to
enter the study until his return unless Mr. Elmendorf should come in,
Major Cranston went in search of him. It was barely noon, up to which
hour he was supposed to be closeted with his pupil at the Allisons'
home. Then after a light luncheon it was his wont to sally forth on a
tramp, Cary starting, but rarely returning, with him. When Cranston was
at head-quarters a fortnight previous, the officers were speaking of the
almost daily appearance about two o'clock of Mr. Elmendorf, who was
possessed with a desire to get into the general's office and impress
that magnate with his views concerning the impending crisis. The
general, however, being forearmed, was always too busy to accord the
interview, one experience having proved more than enough. Everybody was
beginning to give Elmendorf the cold shoulder there, and by this time,
reasoned Cranston, he must have had sense enough to discontinue his
visits. Here, however, he underrated Elmendorf's devotion to his
principles, for such was the tutor's conviction of their absolute wisdom
and such his sense of duty to humanity that he was ready to encounter
any snub rather than be balked in his determination to right the
existing wrongs. Cranston did not want to go to the Allisons' and ask
for Elmendorf. He had that to say which could not be altogether pleasant
and was altogether personal, and he had no right to carry possible
discord into a fellow-citizen's home. The Lambert Library, a noble
bequest, stood within easy range of Allison's house and his own, a sort
of neutral ground, and from there did Cranston despatch a special
messenger with a note.

"Will Mr. Elmendorf kindly drop in at the Lambert Library when he has
finished luncheon? I have to take the three P.M. train back to Sheridan,
and desire five minutes' conversation relative to affairs at the study
as I found them this morning," was all the major wrote, but it was
nearly half-past one before that boy returned with the answer. There was
no telephone at the Allisons', for the millionaire had long since
ordered it out, finding his home peace broken up by incessant summonses
from all manner of people. Cranston waited impatiently, and meant to
upbraid the boy. "It wasn't my fault, sir: the gentleman was at lunch
and wouldn't write until he had finished," was the explanation. Cranston
tore open the unexpected reply:

"Mr. Elmendorf deeply regrets that an important engagement in a distant
quarter of the city will render it impossible to meet Major Cranston as
proposed. If the major will kindly write his suggestions they will
receive all consideration and prompt acknowledgment."

"And it had taken Elmendorf," said Cranston, wrathfully, "at least
three-quarters of an hour to concoct that palpable dodge."

The railway station was a mile away, and he had several matters to
attend to. It was one of his weaknesses that when he had a thing to say
and meant to say it, delay was a torment. The librarian was a man whom
he knew well. "Mr. Wells, I've got to write quite a letter and do it
quick," said he, entering the office. "Can I impose upon your good
nature here?"

"Why, certainly, major. Miss Wallen will type it for you as fast as you
can talk it," said the librarian, rising and indicating a slender girl
who was bending busily over her typewriter.

"Oh, I didn't mean that," the major began; "and yet I don't know, I've
sometimes had to dictate reports. The only thing is, I shouldn't care to
hurt a man's feelings by letting him see that somebody else knew of the
matter; yet I'll want to keep a copy, for I've got to give him a
rasping."

"Miss Wallen can write a dozen copies at once, if you wish," said Wells;
"and as for hurting anybody's feelings, nobody could extract a word from
her on the subject."

"Then if the young lady will be so kind," said Cranston, bowing
courteously, "I should be most glad to avail myself." Making no reply,
the girl deftly fitted the sheets to the roller and waited expectant.
"Don't go, Mr. Wells. I assure you there is no need," said Cranston, as
the librarian started to leave the room.

"I've got to; it's my dinner-hour. Miss Wallen goes at twelve, and I
after her return. If there's anything the office can do for you, don't
hesitate to ask." And with that he was gone.

Miss Wallen's slim white hands were poised in readiness. "Chicago,
June--, 1894," began the major. There was an instant of swift-clicking
keys and a pause for more. "June--, 1894," repeated Cranston.

"Yes, sir, I have that."

"Already? I didn't suppose it could be done so fast. Do I give you the
address now?"

"If you please."

"Mr. Max Elmendorf," he began. "Shall I spell it for you?"

The swift fingers faltered. Some strange sudden cloud overshadowed the
bright intelligent face. The girl turned abruptly away a moment, then
suddenly arose and hastened to the water-cooler under the great window
across the room. Keeping her back resolutely towards the visitor, she
swallowed half a glass of water, then presently resumed her seat.
"Excuse me," she said. "I am ready now."

"You found the heat very trying, I fear," said the major. "Pray do not
attempt this if you are tired after your walk. It can wait as well as
not."

"It is something that doesn't have to be done to-day?" she asked,
looking quickly up.

"Certainly not, if the sun has been too much for you. Has it?"

No answer for a moment. "It isn't the sun," finally replied Miss Wallen,
"but I--should rather not take this."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER V.


That evening as Major Cranston was getting into uniform again and
pondering not a little over the odd behavior of Mr. Wells's
stenographer, the young lady in question, her day's library duties at an
end, was walking thoughtfully homeward. She chose a route that carried
her close to the dancing waters of the lake. It was a longer way, but
she loved it and the fresh, cool wind sweeping inland from the seemingly
boundless sheet of blue. She was a slender girl, rather above the medium
height, a girl with dark earnest eyes and heavy coils of brown, lustrous
hair, and a grave, sweet face, whereon already there were traced
indelibly lines that told of responsibility and work and care. She
dressed simply, inexpensively, yet with a certain style that well became
the willowy grace of her figure. She moved swiftly, but without apparent
effort. She walked well, bore herself well, and sped along on her
homeward way as though absorbed in her thoughts, except when
occasionally glancing out over the sparkling expanse to her right. Other
women, and nurse-maids with romping children, dawdled about the sunny
foot-path along the breakwater; Miss Wallen alone seemed walking with
definite purpose. Nearly opposite the Grant Memorial the roadway swept
close by the path, and here it became necessary for her to cross to the
western side. Carriages were rolling almost ceaselessly by, and, seeing
her waiting an opportunity, a Park policeman signalled to the drivers of
those nearest at hand and beckoned to the girl to come on. She obeyed,
somewhat timidly glancing about her. One carriage, drawn by spirited
bays, had too much headway, and was well upon the crossing before the
coachman could help it. It brought her almost face to face with the
occupants, and for an instant hid her from the sight of the friendly
policeman. When she disappeared, her eyes were downcast, her features
placid, even a little pale; when, an instant later, he again caught
sight of her, Miss Wallen's eyes were flashing and her soft cheeks
aflame. A man in the carriage sitting opposite two ladies, one of middle
age and dignified bearing, the other young and divinely fair, had seemed
suddenly to recognize her and whipped off his hat in somewhat careless
fashion. Taking no notice whatever of the salutation beyond coloring
vividly, Miss Wallen passed quickly behind the carriage and was speedily
over the crossing.

"A friend of yours, Mr. Elmendorf?" asked the elder lady, languidly.

"A friend of--Mr. Forrest's, rather," was the significant reply, and
both ladies started, the younger turning to see who it could be, the
elder staring one instant after her, then suddenly confronting Elmendorf
again. One swift glance at her niece, and Mrs. Lawrence, with uplifted
eyebrows, framed her question with sensitive, speechless lips. Elmendorf
nodded sapiently. Then Miss Allison turned around.

"What's her name? Who is she?"

"Her name is Wallen. She is employed at the Lambert Library."

"Oh, indeed!" exclaimed Miss Allison, in quick and lively interest.
"I've heard Mr. Forrest speak of her. I do wish we could see her again."
Whereupon Mrs. Lawrence and Mr. Elmendorf exchanged glances of
commiseration.

A quarter of a mile farther up the drive Mr. Elmendorf checked the
driver. "If you will excuse me now, ladies, I have a call to make near
here, and will leave you. Should Cary return before I do, kindly ask him
not to go out again until I see him."

Mrs. Lawrence suggested driving him to his destination, but Elmendorf
declined. Two minutes more, and he had disappeared from their view among
the shrubbery, and in ten was rapidly walking southward along a busy
thoroughfare. Just as he expected, coming up the opposite side of the
street, moving swiftly and with downcast eyes, was Miss Wallen.
Springily he crossed, and the next instant was lifting his hat in more
respectful fashion than when in the park, half confronting, half turning
as though to join her. Barely noticing him at all, Miss Wallen moved
determinedly on, and Elmendorf, following, placed himself at her side.

"I could not but note your manner to me yesterday in the library, Miss
Wallen, and indeed on several previous occasions, and in spite of it I
venture to ask you to listen patiently to me for a moment. My object is
such as to entitle my words to your respect, not resentment. It is for
your own sake, your mother's, your name, that I brave your indignation
again."

"If it is to repeat what you intimated the other day, Mr. Elmendorf,"
said the girl, in low, firm tone, "I refuse to listen. You have no right
to speak in such a way."

"I have the right to try and save a poor girl from fatal error. I have
devoted the best years of my life to the cause of the poor as against
the rich, the down-trodden against the purse-proud. I should not have
presumed to speak to you on such a subject had I not heard your name
lightly, slightingly used among these very satraps whom Mr. Forrest
hails as companions,--comrades. It is to protect you from the
misjudgment, the censure of others that I strive to warn you. Pardon me
if I recall to you that it was partially, at least, on my
recommendation that you were given the position at the library, and that
now my name as your endorser is measurably involved. Of course if after
what I have to say you persist in receiving Mr. Forrest's--attentions,
as we will call them, you must do so at your own risk."

"Mr. Elmendorf, I have told you that there is no truth whatever in these
reports."

"I do not say there is. It is to warn you of the scandalous, outrageous
things these people in so-called high society say of people who are in
humbler walks of life that I ventured to relate what I'd heard. It is to
obviate the possibility of them in future."

"I have told you, Mr. Elmendorf, that I need no such warning, that I
will listen to no such affront. I refuse to believe that any gentleman
of Mr. Forrest's set has spoken ill of me. I know none of them, they
know nothing of me."

"Knew nothing, perhaps, until your name became linked with his,--how,"
said he, with significant shrug of his shoulders, "I know not, unless he
himself has boyishly boasted of----"

But here Miss Wallen stopped short and faced him. "I will hear no more
of this, either now or hereafter," she said, with blazing eyes, then
turned abruptly, and entered the hall-way of an apartment-house close at
hand and shut the door in his face. It was not her home, as Elmendorf
knew very well, but possibly friends lived there who would give her
refuge and welcome. At all events, he had received his _congé_, and
there was nothing for it but to go; and go he did, in high dudgeon. Not
until Miss Wallen, watching from an upper window in the room of a friend
and fellow-worker, had seen him board a car and disappear with it far
down the street, did she resume her homeward walk; and now her eyes were
wet with indignant tears.

That Mr. Elmendorf should have asserted that it was through his
influence, "partially, at least," Miss Wallen had received her
appointment in the library was characteristic of Mr. Elmendorf. Coming
to the city himself a stranger, only the year previous, he had spent
some hours there each day in reading and writing and study, and had
early made acquaintance with Mr. Wells, the librarian, greatly
impressing that gentleman at first with the fluency of his chat and the
extent of his travel, information, and culture. John Allison,
millionaire and manager, was one of the trustees of the Lambert bequest,
and when Cary came home from boarding-school in April--a premature
appearance which the superintendent's letter fully explained--Allison
didn't know what to do with him. "I wish I knew the right sort of tutor
to take him in hand," said he to Wells, and Elmendorf, apparently deep
in a volume across the office, heard, and promptly acted upon the
hearing. He asked Wells for a letter of introduction and
recommendation. Wells, having known the applicant less than a fortnight,
was pleased with him and said what he could. Allison was impressed by
the applicant's fluency and apparent frankness, and in less than a week
the erudite Elmendorf found himself in halcyon waters. Then came the
foreign trip, another thing to rejoice in; but before he sailed
Elmendorf had had an opportunity of doing good to his kind, as he
conceived it. Seeking an inexpensive lodging on his arrival in Chicago,
he had found a neat, cheerful home under the roof of an elderly widow, a
Mrs. Wallen, in a little house on the north side. She lived alone with
her daughter, who, it presently transpired, was her main support. There
was a son, a stalwart fellow, too, who, being only twenty-four and a man
of some education and ability, should have been the mother's prop and
stay in her declining years, and so he would have been, very possibly,
but for the fact that he had provided himself with encumbrances of his
own in the shape of a wife, two children, and numerous debts. He was
provident in no other way. "Martin," as the mother fondly said, "would
have made a mark in the world if he'd only been started right," but as
Mart started himself he started wrong. So long as the father lived, both
brother and sister had been well educated and gently reared, for Mr.
Wallen was a man of scholarly tastes, but a poor man slaving on a poor
man's salary. He had little to leave his children beyond his blessing
and the care of their aging mother. Martin was already pledged to a girl
schoolmate when the father died, and Jeannette, his sister, who seemed
to be the only practical member of the household, promptly withdrew from
school, invested her savings in a typewriter, spent her days in the care
of her mother and the little house, two rooms in which were presently
advertised as to let furnished, went to evening school at a business
school, practised stenography and typewriting when not doing housework,
washing dishes, or making clothes for her mother and herself, and
patiently, pluckily, cheerily looked forward to the time when Mart could
help. Mart spent six months "hunting for something to suit," and found
nothing he liked so much as making love to his pretty, penniless
neighbor. The clerkships he was offered didn't pay twenty dollars a
week, which was the least he thought a man of his ability and education
should accept. Jeannette told him the proper way was to take ten if he
could get it, and work his way up; but Mart disapproved of women's
interference in his affairs. It ended in his finally getting a
bottom-of-the-list berth in the freight dépôt of a big railway, and a
wife forthwith. Jeannette said nothing. She had taken Mart's measure and
saw this coming. "If I do not soon have to take care of Mart's wife and
babies, I'll be in luck," was the thought that possibly occurred to
her; but she was a silent little body, much given to shrewd and
common-sense observation of the world in which she lived. She was a
sunny-natured, merry-hearted child in the old days, and even as she grew
older and more burdened with care the little home still echoed to the
sound of her blithe song as she flitted from room to room about her
work, ever brave, hopeful, uncomplaining. "If I only had Jenny's
spirits," said the widow to her one lodger, "I might do something, too,"
but, as she hadn't Jenny's spirits or disposition, by a good deal, the
bereaved lady thought it unnecessary to try. It was Jenny who bore the
burden of every detail, Jenny who did their humble marketing, Jenny who
made the hard bargains with landlord and coal-merchant, Jenny who taught
and supervised the one clumsy damsel who was brought in as cook,
scullion, laundress, and maid-of-all-work, and Jenny who, after all, did
more than she taught. It was Jenny who cut and fashioned almost every
garment worn by either her mother or herself, who made and trimmed the
modest little hats or bonnets, who watched the bargain-counters at the
great retail shops and wished that women didn't have to wear gloves and
buttoned boots; Jenny who had to follow up their flitting
lodgers,--young men who folded their tents like the Arabs they were, and
as silently stole away out of the house, leaving sometimes a big
lodging-bill and little luggage; Jenny who presently had to nurse Mart's
wife and baby, just as she expected, for Mart lost that job, and the
house he had rented, and the furniture he hadn't paid for and that was
seized just when most needed. So baby Number One first saw the light
under the roof that Jenny's hard work paid for,--a lodger having
opportunely "skipped." And all the while she managed to keep up her
study and practice, and to do little odd jobs in copying, sitting far
into the dawn sometimes with aching arms and wrists and burning eyes and
whirling brain. There was no yielding to "beauty sleep" for poor Jenny.
Dark circles often settled underneath the brave, steadfast eyes, and
big, blinding tears sometimes welled up from unseen depths when no one
was near to spy upon her woman's weakness, and the very people she
slaved for were often querulous and complaining, and Mart's wife had
about as much helpfulness as a consumptive old cow. Jenny had to tell
Mart he must find work and pay their board, or some portion of it, and
Mart got another berth at another railway dépôt, and, without paying
anything whatever for the months he and his had lived under the mother's
roof, or much for the new furniture, moved into another house, where the
family circle was presently reinforced by the coming of another baby.
Meantime, however, Jenny's skill, quickness, and accuracy had been
steadily bringing her work into favor. A girl friend and fellow-student
had a good position in a down-town office, where lawyers and
business-men brought many a long paper demanding immediate copies, and
thither Jenny moved her typewriter, shrewdly calculating that the money
she could earn would more than offset the expense of a good servant at
home. As for car-fare, she meant to walk: she needed exercise. As for
luncheon, she'd carry it with her in her little basket. The plan worked
well. There were some days and weeks in which she was given as much as
she could possibly finish, but there were others--alack! many
others--when nothing came. There was a winter when she wore old clothes,
a winter through which other young women in the great hive of a business
block were blooming in gowns and garments that were of latest mode and
material. It was, so far as work was concerned, either a feast or a
famine with her, and she longed for just such a position as that held by
an older scholar, who was stenographer and typewriter on salary in the
office of a great law firm and yet was enabled to take frequent
transcribing or copying from outside; but for a billet of this kind she
looked in vain. Then came another winter. How it affected Miss Wallen
can best be told through this simple fact, that she was no longer able
to ride home even in the dark wet evenings. Mart had again been turned
out of house and home, and came with his ailing wife and wailing babies
to the doting mother's door, and again was Jenny burdened with their
maintenance. Mart had struck. There had been a scaling down of wages for
all hands. Most of them, realizing that these were hard times and that
other and better were coming, stood by the company. Mart was a leader at
the meetings of the employees, and a brilliant orator. With all the
eloquence of which he was capable he urged his fellows to stand together
and strike. He was one of a committee of five sent to see the local
manager. The manager showed the facts, and the other men were satisfied
that things were about as he showed. They had been long in his employ,
and Mart but a short time. The manager addressed himself to the old men,
rather ignoring the new, and Mart's tongue and temper got away with him.
He said he'd strike anyhow, and he did. He struck his own name off the
company's books.

And so during these dark, dreary winter evenings, sometimes wet and raw,
sometimes bitterly cold, quitting when she could her desk at five
o'clock, yet often kept pegging away until later, Miss Jeannette Wallen
walked those crowded blocks below the State Street bridge and all the
many, many squares that interposed between her and her little home. As
the days began to lengthen and the cold to strengthen, she sometimes
reached there well-nigh frozen and exhausted, to be welcomed and
regaled not so much with hot tea and loving words as by wailing infants
and complaining women,--Mart being, as usual, away at some soul-stirring
meeting, where much was said about the wrongs of the workingman, but
nothing thought of those of the workingwoman.

And then came an adventure. Many a time had she been accosted by street
prowlers, and sometimes followed, but her rule had been to make no
reply, simply to walk straight on, and look neither to the right nor to
the left. One dark evening in early January she had been working late,
and it was nearly seven as she passed the river. A few blocks farther
north she overtook a man whose unsteady gait did not prevent his
quickening speed and striving in turn to overtake her. Finding him at
her heels and his detaining hand actually on her arm, her nerve gave
way, and she took to flight, her pursuer following. Half a block ahead
and around a corner was the apartment-house where she had acquaintances,
and into the hall-way Jenny bolted, hoping to turn and slam the door
into the blackguard's face, but, to her horror, the heavy portal refused
to swing. Despairingly she touched the electric button, then turned
pluckily to face her pursuer and warn him off. But the fellow was daft
with drink, and, with maudlin exultation, he sprang after her and strove
to seize her in his arms, laughing at her frantic blows. Then the inner
door suddenly opened and tumbled them both into the hall and into the
arms of a tall, dark, heavily-moustached man who looked amazed one
second and enlightened the next, for he seated the half-fainting girl in
a chair, kicked the intruder into the gutter, and then sprang back into
the hall in time to catch her as she was almost toppling over on the
tiled floor. This brought her the second time within the clasp of a
muscular arm, and then she gasped an inquiry for her friends, and he
sent the staring hall-boy to ask if they were in, and stepped into his
own room and brought forth a glass of wine, which he calmly ordered her
to sip, and then, seeing her heart was fluttering like a terrified
bird's, he spoke gently and soothingly, and little by little she had
regained some composure when the boy came down from the fourth floor to
say the ladies were out.

Then she would have gone, and she strove to go, but her knees shook, and
he sent the boy with a message and made her wait, seated in the hall
chair, and came forth again from his room in a fur overcoat and cap, and
a moment later a cab was at the door. She recoiled and said she could go
in a car; but the cars were two blocks away. "Kindly permit me to see
you safely home," he said. "You have had a terrible fright, and are in
no condition to walk." At all events, she was in no condition to rebel,
and was glad to sink back into the cushioned corner of the hansom. "I'll
have to trouble you for the street and number," said he,
apologetically, as he stepped calmly in beside her.

"Oh, indeed I mustn't trouble you to come. The driver can----" And then,
alas! she remembered that she had but ten cents about her.

"The driver can, perhaps, but in this case he won't," was the grave,
half-smiling answer. "Number what? Which street, if you please?"

Helplessly she gave them. Commandingly he repeated them to cabby peeping
down through his pygmy man-trap in the roof, and away went the
two-wheeler. Her home was but six blocks distant. "You must let me pay
the cabman," she faltered, not well knowing how she was going to do so.

"I would, if it would comfort you," said he, calmly, "but he's already
engaged to me by the hour for the evening."

"Then my share of it, at least," she persisted.

"That I estimate to be possibly fifteen cents," said he, as the vehicle
drew up at the curb; "and I think I owe you ten times the amount for the
pleasure of kicking such an arrant cur as that specimen. Has he ever
annoyed you before? Do you know him?"

"By sight only," said she, the color at last reappearing in her face.
"He is often on that street corner below the Beaulieu, but I do not know
his name."

"He will be there less frequently in future. And now is there nothing I
can do? Are you sure you have everything you need at home?"

"More than I need,"--very much more, she could have added to herself,
thinking of her many unbidden lodgers,--"but you haven't given me your
name, and I owe you so much--besides the fifteen cents." She was trying
to smile now.

"You owe me nothing, unless----" he was turning away, but something in
her sweet, earnest face drew him back,--"unless it be permission to call
and ask how you are after all this excitement."

Miss Wallen's face clouded. Where could she receive him? Were not every
nook and corner of the house except her own little room given over to
the use of occupants in whom this distinguished-looking gentleman could
be expected to feel no interest whatever? He saw the hesitation, and
spoke at once.

"I beg your pardon," said he, frankly and heartily. "I had no right
whatever to be intrusive. Good-night, and--better luck next time." With
that he was into the cab and off in a trice.

Two days afterwards Miss Wallen called at the Beaulieu on her way down
town, clambered to the fourth floor, and asked her friends the name of
the gentleman who occupied the left front room, ground-floor. They said
he was a Mr. Forrest, but he'd gone away--he was often away; from which
she decided him to be one of the knights errant of the commercial
world, but vastly unlike in tone and manner those who usually accosted
her. Two weeks afterwards, as she was seated at her desk in the big
office building, while her friend Miss Bonner was clicking away at the
opposite window, the door opened, and in came an elderly lawyer for whom
she had done many a page of accurate work. "Miss Wallen," said he, "can
you do some quick copying for a friend of mine? Let me present
Lieutenant Forrest, of the regular army."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER VI.


That Miss Wallen was no more surprised than her new customer was
apparent at a glance, but there was no time wasted in remarks on
previous meetings or present weather. It seemed that the gentleman in
question needed three typewritten copies of a long essay he had written,
and needed them at once. It was now four P.M. on Tuesday. He came for
the work at five o'clock Wednesday afternoon, and, although she had
wrought hard and faithfully, it lacked completion by just a page. "It
will be ready in ten minutes, sir, if you can wait," said Miss Wallen,
rising.

"Pray be in no hurry," said Mr. Forrest. "I have nothing to do to-night
but read it over." He took a vacant chair and produced the evening
paper, but through its pages he had already glanced while at the club;
over its pages he was glancing now at the slender, fragile-looking girl
with those busy, flying fingers and the intent gaze in her tired eyes.
He saw how wan, even sallow, she looked. The lines of care were on her
forehead and already settling about the corners of the soft, sensitive
mouth. He did not know that all alone she had returned to the office the
previous evening and worked until midnight, then hied her homeward fast
as cable-car could bear her, only, with racking nerves and aching limbs,
to toss through almost sleepless hours until the pallid dawn. He did not
know that in order that he might have this work on time she had never
left the building since eight A.M. that day. Silently she finished the
last page, counted and arranged the sheets, shaking out the intervening
carbons, quickly bound each set with heavier cover, and then stood
before him with her work. The pale yellow gleam of the wintry twilight
was streaming through the west window, the most unbecoming and trying
ever girl had to face, and she faced it unflinchingly. Forrest quickly
arose.

"I fear this has been heavy work, Miss Wallen," he said, regretfully.
"You must make allowance for my inexperience. I have to leave town
to-morrow, and needed this before going. Mr. Langston--an old
friend--brought me in to you. I--I hope you will let me pay you--all I
think it worth."

"I could have got along faster if the manuscript had been a little
clearer," said the girl, smiling slightly. "Some of it was hard to
decipher, and the technical terms were new to me. If you will look it
over and let me know how nearly correct it is, I will then make out my
bill accordingly."

"There won't be any time for that," said he, "and Mr. Langston says you
are never inaccurate. He tells me, furthermore, that you brought my
scrawl to him three times to-day for words he himself could hardly make
out. It is over eighteen thousand words, according to my count. I know
what such work is worth in New York,"--and now he held forth three crisp
ten-dollar bills,--"but this had to be done so rapidly. Will thirty
dollars be--anywhere near right?" he asked.

Miss Wallen consulted a memorandum on her desk, gravely searched through
her portemonnaie, found some small coin and a two-dollar bill, then as
gravely took two of the bills and handed him the ten, the two, and the
small change. "More than sufficient by just twelve dollars and fifteen
cents," she quietly said, "provided it be understood that you are to
send me a memorandum of any and all errors detected, and I shall be here
early to-morrow morning and will be glad to rewrite the pages in which
they occur."

But Forrest protested. "I gave twenty-five dollars in New York for work
much shorter and done leisurely," said he, "and you have worked long
hours. I feel under very great obligation."

"You needn't," said she. "I have made more in the last twenty-four hours
than in the previous week. I was only too glad to get the work."

Down the iron stairs clerks and office-boys were clattering. From the
crowded pavement a hundred feet below, the thunder of hoofs and wheels
and thronging traffic rose on the frosty air. Over the roofs,
wind-driven, came the screech of a hundred whistles from foundry,
factory, and mill on the wide-spreading west side. Toil-worn men by
thousands were laying down their tools and turning eagerly, wearily
homeward. The gongs of the cable-cars hammered mad alarums, and swarms
of people squeezed upon the platforms. In adjacent office blocks the
electric lights were beginning to gleam, and the pallid hues of dying
day were fading from the wintry sky. Forrest's business was done, and he
had no excuse to linger. She stood there facing him, evidently expecting
him to go. Never before in his life had he encountered anything of this
description. He had read and heard that many a girl delicately reared
was now employed as book-keeper, typewriter, and stenographer, in
offices all over the land, and here was one, plainly--even poorly--clad,
yet proud, independent, self-reliant, and in every word and look and
act, no matter how humble her lot, as unmistakably a "lady" as his own
sister. He wanted to stay, wanted to impress upon her his appreciation
of the service she had done him, wanted to persuade her to accept what
he felt she sorely needed,--the remaining ten dollars of the sum
Langston had told him would be about what she would probably
charge,--but, after a moment's irresolute pause, he turned abruptly and
went to the door.

"I shall be back in a month with more such work, and I shall be
fortunate if I can get you to do it for me. Good-night, Miss Wallen,
and--thank you."

"Good-night, sir, and thank you."

Forrest went discontentedly over to the Union League. He felt somehow
that he hadn't treated that girl right. One or two men from the fort
were there,--Waring of the light battery and little "Chip" Sanders of
the cavalry. These jovial captains hailed him and besought him in
cordial soldier fashion to stay and dine, especially in view of the long
trip ahead of him on the morrow, but he begged off. He had an evening's
work ahead, and must get home betimes, said he. He compromised, however,
on a modest tipple, and, not caring to fight his way through the crowd
in either car or street, summoned a cab and was soon comfortably
trundling to the north side. One block beyond the river, under the
electric lights, he caught sight of a slender, girlish form, swiftly
threading a way along the pavement, and recognized at a glance the
heroine of the adventure of a fortnight gone, the transcriber of those
fruitful pages on the seat by his side, and the object of his thoughts.

"Hold up under those lights yonder," he cried to cabby through the trap
in the roof, and cabby, seeing no bar in close proximity, marvelled as
he obeyed. Forrest sprang out, turned back, and in another moment was
raising his hat to the girl, who glanced up with nervous start and
repellent mien that only slowly changed to recognition. Even then there
was womanly reserve, and much of it, in her manner.

"Pardon me, Miss Wallen, I never dreamed of such a thing as your walking
all the way home, and after such a long day's work. My cab is right
here; please let me drive you the rest of the way."

"Thank you, no," she answered, quietly. "I always walk after a long
day's work. It is exercise and pleasure both."

"But surely you are very late, and--forgive my reminding you of your
recent unpleasant experience."

"No one else ever chased me," she said, "and I don't think even he would
had he not been drinking. You seem to have scared him away, for not once
have I set eyes on him since."

"But you will ride, won't you? It would be a pleasure--some comfort to
my conscience--if I might send you home, after the lot that you have
done and the little you would take." They had reached the cab now, and
he stopped invitingly, but she never faltered, and only turned towards
him and slackened her steps sufficiently to repeat her thanks and a
courteous refusal.

"Upon my word, you make me ashamed of my own laziness," said Forrest. "I
used to be a good tramper on the Plains, but have been getting out of
the way of it. At least I may walk a little way with you, may I not?"

And this she could not well see how to decline. Cabby was dismissed with
a _douceur_, and Forrest hastened after his new acquaintance. She
carried some bundles in her arms, and he offered to take them. He had
his own, however, and she declined. He shifted his packet of triplicates
under the right arm and tendered her, with courteous bow, the left, and
she "preferred to trudge along without it, thank you," yet in so
pleasant a way he could not find fault. He walked all the way to her
little home, and bade her good-night with the promise that when he
returned in February he would be glad to have another eighteen thousand
words transcribed in triplicate for seventeen dollars and odd cents.

"You can't," said she, with her same quiet smile. "It will cost eighteen
at least. Your fifteen cents change to-day was for my share of the cab."

He was on duty in the judge-advocate's office of the department, as has
been said, and had been ordered off on a court-martial. He was back in
two weeks, and more work went through that typewriter, and then came
days which he spent in study at the Lambert Library, and pages of
memoranda and notes which he read to her at her office, which were
faithfully stenographed and promptly, accurately typewritten, and there
were soon some evening walks home,--several of them,--and Forrest found
the way curiously short as compared with the original estimate. He was
deeply interested in his work at head-quarters, but the detail was only
to last a month or two longer, for then the regular incumbent would have
returned from the long leave of absence granted him on account of ill
health, and then Forrest himself purposed spending some months abroad,
all arrangements for his leave having been already consummated.

One afternoon at the library Mr. Wells came and seated himself by the
lieutenant's side. They had had many a long chat together, and were fast
friends.

"I'm out of luck," said Wells. "I've seen it coming for months, and
ought to have been prepared. My typewriter has given me warning."

"Going to be married, I suppose?"

"Yes, and within six weeks. She's a girl I simply can't replace."

"Why not?"

"Because in my work only a well-educated and highly intelligent girl
will answer. I have to dictate sometimes fifty letters a day filled with
strange names and technicalities and foreignisms, and there's no time to
consult dictionaries and the like,--no leisure, half the time, to read
over the letters submitted for my signature. I must trust to my
typewriter; and girls educated up to that standard come too high for our
salary. I gradually taught Miss Stockton what she knows, so she was
content with sixty dollars a month, but I can't get one who can do as
well for a hundred, which is more by forty than the directors will allow
me."

Forrest was silent a moment. "It is work that demands all a girl's time,
I suppose?" he ventured.

"Yes, every bit of it from nine to five, and often to six. She has her
evenings at home, however, unless some of our library assistants are
sick; then she would have to help at the shelves."

"If you are in no great hurry, will you hold the offer open one week? I
know a g--a lady, I should say, who is intelligence and accuracy
combined, and who might take it. She has done much work for me, and I
know her worth."

"Would she come for sixty dollars, do you suppose?"

"I will ask her," said Forrest, guardedly. He well knew how glad his
hard-working typewriter would be to have so permanent and pleasant a
station. He more than suspected that many men who came to the busy
office in the heart of the city were far from respectful. He remembered
how his blood boiled one afternoon when he found a bulky fellow, his
hat on the back of his head, his legs outstretched, and a vile cigar
tiptilted in his mouth, sitting leering beside her desk.

"You shouldn't permit it," he said to her, later.

"Ah, but I must not quarrel with my bread and butter," was her reply,
half mournful, half whimsical. "Not one man in ten thinks of taking off
his hat or dropping his cigar when he enters our 'shop.' No, Mr.
Forrest, we are wage-workers who can't afford to draw the line at the
manners of our customers."

"But--are there not some who--who become impertinent--familiar--if not
checked at the start?" he found himself constrained to ask, and the
flame that shot into her cheeks told him his suspicion was correct.

"Not often," she answered, presently, "and never more than once. We
simply try not to notice small impertinences, Miss Bonner and I, and
generally, you know, we are together here."

This was mid-April. The vacancy was to occur at the end of the month.
Forrest himself brought Miss Wallen to the library and presented her to
Mr. Wells. A gentleman was seated in the librarian's room at the
time,--an industrious fellow who had recently appeared, who spent some
hours turning over many books, and whom Wells described as a most
interesting and travelled man, a graduate of Jena, etc.; but at sight
of him Miss Wallen showed slight though unmistakable signs of
embarrassment, almost annoyance. He pretended to busy himself with his
books, but was evidently listening to what was going on, and Miss Wallen
was decidedly constrained. Presently he arose and came forward, saying,
with much suavity of manner, "You must pardon my intrusion. I could not
but catch something of this conversation, and had I known before that
Mr. Wells was contemplating a change here I should have eagerly availed
myself of the privilege our friendship gives to recommend this young
lady, of whose character and qualifications--we being inmates of the
same household--I can speak _ex cathedra_, as it were, and can hardly
speak too highly." He went on to say more, taking the floor, as was his
custom, to the exclusion of everybody else, and Mr. Forrest withdrew to
a distant part of the room. Miss Wallen presently bade Mr. Wells
good-night and asked when she might come to see him again, and Wells,
looking a trifle vexed, asked for her address and said he would write.

And then Mr. Elmendorf announced that it would give him much pleasure to
see Miss Wallen home, and what could she do? Forrest had said nothing
about going further. Elmendorf had certainly been most flattering in his
commendation. She had taken a decided dislike to him during the few
weeks he had occupied the lodger's room, and had avoided him as much as
possible, but it might well be that he was a man of influence in library
matters. She had no reason for rebuffing, but good reason for showing
gratitude. Forrest gravely bade her good-evening and good luck, and Miss
Wallen walked away with her lodger in close attendance. All the way home
he descanted on his influence with Wells and the trustees. He was
already, he said, contemplating taking a position in the household of
Mr. Allison, the millionaire magnate. He took it, in truth, within the
week, and wrote Miss Wallen that it had given him much pleasure to urge
warmly her claim for the position soon to become vacant. He found they
had several other applications, and some who had strong influence, but
he would not cease to urge her appointment and keep her well-being in
mind. But meantime one day Mr. Wells gladdened the girl's heart by a
brief note saying that he had been so favorably impressed with the work
she had done for Mr. Forrest that he had determined to tender her the
place.

Two days later Forrest came to congratulate her and to bid her adieu, as
he would sail for Europe within the week. She tried to thank him, but
could not frame the words. She did not lack for language, however, when
her mother read to her that night the charming note she had just
received from Mr. Elmendorf, felicitating her upon the promotion of her
devoted and dutiful daughter, and himself upon the fact that this good
fortune was probably due to his determined and persistent presentation
of her daughter's claims before the trustees, whom he had frequent
opportunity of meeting at Mr. Allison's house. Doubtless Elmendorf
considered this presentation equivalent in full for the three weeks'
arrears of room rent, a cheque for which he had said should be
forthcoming as soon as Mr. Allison paid in advance his first quarter's
salary, but which never came at all.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER VII.


When Mr. Forrest returned from Europe in the late autumn of '93, he
expected to go forthwith to the station of his regiment and devote his
energies to those ceaseless, engrossing, yet somewhat narrowing duties
that keep a man of mature years, capable of much better things,
attending roll-calls, drilling two sets of fours addressed by courtesy
as "company," grilling on the rifle-range, and consuming hours of
valuable time in work allotted in older services to sergeants. Calling
at the War Department on his way, he was asked about the autumn
manoeuvres and if he had seen any of them. He had seen a great deal,
the interest of friends in both the German and Austrian services having
enabled him to follow the armies assembled about Metz and Güns to
excellent advantage. Returning to his billet after each long day in the
saddle, he had spent some hours before retiring in recording his
impressions and observations, the result being several big note-books
crammed with data of deep interest to the professional soldier. The
adjutant-general took Forrest in to the Secretary of War, and there was
some significant talk, the result of which was the intimation that he
should again be assigned to temporary duty at department head-quarters
in Chicago in order to give him opportunity to write out his notes. Long
before this, Forrest's essays on grand tactics and certain papers on
military history had won much favor among the studious men in the army,
and it was with pride and pleasure that he entered on the allotted task.
He wrote, as did Zachary Taylor, a hand that looked much as though a
ramrod rather than a pen had been used, and naturally his first thought
was to find his transcriber of the previous winter. There she was at her
desk in the library, and looking far younger, happier, and better than
when he saw her last, and the frank pleasure in her face was good to see
as she welcomed him more in manner than in words.

"Certainly," said Miss Wallen; "I shall be glad to give as many evenings
to the work as may be necessary. I am too busy here by day." And so as
the autumn wore out and the winter wore on, her slender white fingers
danced over the keys, and page after page, in neatly typed duplicates,
his voluminous notes on the armies of Germany and Austria-Hungary were
faithfully transcribed. Home was not so far away now, and her brisk
walks led her no longer through sections she had learned to dread.
Accustomed for some years to far longer and lonelier tramps in the
wintry evenings, she thought nothing of tripping to and fro between the
Lambert and the rather crowded little house in which she dwelt. Mart and
his wife and babies still sojourned there, and the babies waxed strong
and loud and lusty on Aunt Jenny's bounty, never caring whose fingers
earned the porridge, so long as their share was ample and frequent. Mart
was out of work, and correspondingly out of elbows and temper. Mart had
taken to continual meetings and to such drink as he could get treated to
or credit for, and still the mother condoned, the wife complained, and
Jenny carried the family load. Mart loved to tread the rostrum boards
and portray himself as a typical victim of corporation perfidy and
capitalistic greed. The railway company from which he had seceded
refused to take him back, and other companies, edified by the reports of
his speeches in _The Switch Light_, _The Danger Signal_, and other
publications avowedly devoted to the interest of the down-trodden
operatives of the railway and manufacturing companies, thought that in a
winter when many poor fellows were out of work through no fault of their
own, beyond having exercised the right of suffrage the wrong way, the
few vacancies should be given to men more likely to render faithful
service. Mart's wife, impressed with the idea that she must do
something, took in sewing, and took the sewing to ask Jenny to show her
how, which in nine cases out of ten Jenny did practically. If the
little money thus earned had gone to pay for the babies' milk or Mart's
whiskey bills, Jenny would have been grateful; but even these shillings,
earned with her numbed and weary fingers, somehow found their way to
Mart's broad palm and thence to the dram-shop, though not to that which
had claims for goods already delivered. And then followed scenes that
covered the poor girl with shame and indignation. To her office at the
library one winter evening, when Wells was reading the late mail, and
Mr. Forrest, seated at a neighboring desk with a big atlas before him
was far away among the glinting _pickelhaubes_ on the banks of the
Moselle, a man came with an account which he wished Miss Wallen to
settle. It was Martin Wallen's bar bill for the autumn months at
Donnelly's Shades, and the girl flushed with mortification. "This is
something with which I have nothing to do," said she. "I would not pay
it if I had the money."

"I was told to come to you," said the man. "It's your brother's account,
and he said you'd promised him the money time and again. If it ain't
paid we'll send for the furniture." And then he wanted to show it to
Wells, who waved him off in annoyance; and then he looked as though he
would like to interest the other occupant of the room in the matter, but
something about that gentleman's face as he arose and came forward
proved unsympathetic. "I'll send this bill in again on the 31st," said
Mr. Donnelly, "and if it ain't paid then----"

But the tall, brown-eyed, brown-moustached man was walking straight at
him, looking him through and through, and there would have been a
collision in the office had not Donnelly backed promptly out through the
door-way. This merely transferred the scene of it and involved a third
party, for there, just outside the ground-glass partition, ostensibly
hunting for a book in the revolving case and humming a lively tune, was
Elmendorf. Recoiling to avoid contact with the advancing Forrest, the
bill-collector backed into the listening tutor and bumped him up against
a table.

"Oh, beg pardon," said Elmendorf, as though in no wise aware who his
bumper might be, and then edged off towards the corridor beyond,
apparently desirous of escaping further connection with the affair. But
Forrest, even in the dim light of the anteroom, recognized him at a
glance. More and more, ever since the return from Europe, had he grown
to dislike and distrust the man. More than once had he seen an
expression on Miss Wallen's face when Wells happened to mention
Elmendorf that gave ground for the belief that she, too, had no pleasant
recollection of her erstwhile lodger; but never had she opened her lips
upon the subject. Indeed, bright and intelligent as was the girl when
she chose to talk, both Wells and Forrest had found that when she
preferred to be silent it was useless to question. But here, skulking in
the anteroom, where reading was out of the question, where, however, one
might easily hear what was going on in the private office, here was
Elmendorf again, and though Donnelly's foot-falls were audible to all as
he came pounding up the stairway and turned from the corridor into the
office rooms, not a sound of others had been heard. The main
stairway--that which led to the great reading-rooms of the library
proper--was on the southern front. Only those having business with the
head librarian or the trustees were supposed to come this way. Forrest
often read, wrote, and studied here, because the more valuable atlases
and books of reference were near at hand, and whenever not writing for
Wells Miss Wallen was at work on his notes. It flashed upon Forrest that
the tutor had some object other than book-hunting in that noiseless
visit, and he called him back. "Would you mind waiting a moment, Mr.
Elmendorf?" said he. "I should like to speak with you after I've said a
word to this--gentleman." Then, coolly pushing beyond both, he closed
the corridor door and turned on the electric light.

"Mr. Donnelly," said he, facing the now nervous-looking Irishman, "you
know as well as I that no woman on earth is liable for the liquor bills
of any man, even a relative. What brought you here?"

"Me legs, I s'pose, an' me own affairs. What's it to you, anyhow?" But
Donnelly was shifting rather unsteadily on those same legs and twisting
his bill in his hands.

"This, to begin with," said Forrest, very coolly, though his blood was
boiling, and the impulse to floor the fellow was strong within him. "An
old fellow campaigner of mine, Sergeant McGrath, has told me----" but
there was no need to go further. Donnelly's tone and manner underwent
instant change.

"Is this Lieutenant Forrest?"

"It is Lieutenant Forrest; and I have this to say to you here and now.
You came here to bring shame and distress on an honest girl,--you, an
old soldier and an Irishman,--the first soldier and the first Irishman I
ever knew to be guilty of so low and contemptible a piece of
persecution. When I write to Major Cranston of this, and when I tell
McGrath----"

"Don't be hard on me, lieutenant. I meant no harm to the lady at all.
Sure the bill's been unpaid ever since October. I tuk it to the house--I
thought mebbe she could inflooence Mart, but I'd never have come here
wid it at all, sorr, but--but----" And his troubled gaze wandered now to
where Elmendorf stood biting his nails and watching a chance to speak.

"But what, Donnelly? Who put you up to such a dirty piece of business?"

"Permit me. Nothing dirty was intended for a minute, if I may be allowed
to speak," said Elmendorf, as he came forward. "As a friend of all
parties concerned, for I know Mr. Wallen well and have remarked his
bibulous propensities with distress, I merely suggested to Mr. Donnelly
that perhaps if he could get Miss Wallen's ear he might possibly induce
her to exercise a restraining influence upon her brother. I thought it
best that she should know how and where he was spending so much money
_in esse_ as well as money _in posse_. That Mr. Donnelly should have
misconstrued my well-meant words into----"

"Oh, sure ye told me to show this bill when everybody could see it,
sorr, and that would take the starch out av her."

"Settle it between you, gentlemen," said Mr. Forrest, turning
contemptuously away. "I have heard more than enough."

"I will see you about this later this evening," said Elmendorf, as the
lieutenant disappeared within the sanctum, slamming the door after him
and vouchsafing no answer.

That evening Wells's letters seemed interminable. It was nearly
half-past six when he finished dictating, and with aching heart and
burning face Miss Wallen closed her desk and silently went for her cloak
and overshoes. For over half an hour Mr. Forrest had stood to his guns
across the room, making much pretence of being busy with the atlas and
his notes, but time and again his eyes wandered, following his thoughts,
to the other two,--Wells rapidly dictating, his stenographer with bowed
head, determinedly wielding her pencil. When Wells finally started, the
lieutenant arose and strolled out with him, closing the door behind
them. "I shall see Miss Wallen home," said he, in low tone. "She's had
more than enough indignity for one day."

"I'd do it if you couldn't, Mr. Forrest, even though they're waiting for
me at home. That girl's a lady, by Jupiter! You've no idea how she's
studied and developed ever since she's been here; and it's a damned
outrage that such fellows should be allowed to annoy her."

"Such fellows won't, another time," said Forrest, quietly. "Elmendorf
was back of this, for some reason that I mean to fathom."

"That's all very well as far as the Irishman's concerned, Mr.
Forrest,--he's had his fill,--but look out for that other. I'm no judge
of character, now, if he isn't a snake."

When Forrest re-entered the room Miss Wallen had turned out the electric
lights over her desk and was standing by the window, her face bowed in
her thin white hands. Forrest's overcoat and hat always hung in the
closet without. He had gone with Wells, closing the door. She was, as
she supposed, at last alone, and the reaction had come. All the weary
months of work, work, work, all the patient slaving to provide for the
improvident, all the brave, cheery, hopeful, uncomplaining days of
honest toil and honest effort, only to end in such a scene of shame and
mortification as this! What could Mr. Wells think of his secretary,
chased to her desk with the liquor-bills of her kindred! What would not
Mr. Forrest think! A weaker woman would have found refuge and comfort in
a passion of tears, but her eyes seemed burning. Leaning against the
open casement, she stood there fairly quivering with wrath and the sense
of indignity and wrong. She, too, had recognized Elmendorf's nasal whine
in the anteroom, and felt well assured that he was in some way
responsible for Donnelly's action. Mart had had much to say of late of
the foreigner's convincing logic and thrillingly eloquent appeals to the
workingman. _There_ was the man to wring the neck of capital and bring
the bloated bond-holders to terms, said he. Mart never missed a meeting
where Elmendorf was to speak, and had more than once been brought home,
fuddled, in the cab which conveyed the agitator back to the scene of his
labors in the Allison homestead. The cab was paid for by the Union, and
Elmendorf didn't mind having it wait outside while he assisted Mart
within and stopped to condole with Mrs. Wallen the elder, or Mrs. Wallen
junior, and to inquire significantly, if he did not see her, where Miss
Wallen was; he always supposed the library closed at nine o'clock, and
was not aware, he said, that anybody except the janitor was permitted to
remain there later. He knew very well that the librarian was sometimes
there until nearly midnight. He knew well that it was there and in the
evenings, mainly, that Miss Wallen worked at the transcript of
Forrest's reports. "At least," as he said to himself, and suggested to
others, "that is the _ostensible_ purpose of her frequently prolonged
visits." He often walked by the lighted windows of the sanctum and
occasionally slipped into the dark hall-way, so the watchman later said.
The same irrepressible propensity to meddle in the affairs of everybody
in the household where he was employed, in the councils of the various
labor unions, in the meetings of political associations, in the official
duties or off-hand chats of the men at military head-quarters, in the
management of the Lambert Library, seemed to follow him in his casual
intercourse with this obscure little household. One night when towards
ten o'clock Miss Wallen came blithely down the corridor stairs, she was
surprised to find the tutor awaiting her. "As I know Mr. Forrest to be
otherwise engaged to-night, Miss Wallen, I have ventured to offer my
services as escort," said he, and though she shrank from and could not
bear him, there was no reason at that time for denying him; but when he
presently began talking of Forrest in his suggestive, insinuating way,
and excusing his references to the lieutenant on the ground of his
extreme regard for her widowed mother, her impoverished but amiable
relatives, and her own refined, intellectual, and accomplished self, she
shrank still more and strove to silence him,--a difficult matter. She
had, however, a trait that proved simply exasperating to a man of
Elmendorf's calibre,--a faculty of listening in absolute silence where
she did not desire to confirm or approve,--and when he had spent much
breath and nearly half an hour in descanting upon his impressions of the
demoralizing tendencies of military associations in general and of idle
officers in particular, it rasped him to find that she did not seem to
consider his views worthy the faintest comment; nor would she nor did
she invite him in. When her mother reproved her for this, Miss Wallen
smiled, and said, "Next time I will, and then you might ask him for the
three weeks' lodging he hasn't paid," and Mart said she ought to be
ashamed of speaking so of a man who had done everything for her. She'd
never have got that library place at all if it hadn't been for
Elmendorf, no matter what her fine friends might have told her. Oh, Mart
knew all about it; needn't try to pull the wool over his eyes! Another
time had Elmendorf come, and again had he talked more of what he had
done for her and the rights it gave him to tender her counsel, and this
time his references to Forrest took a graver form and became offensive.
It was then, indignant, she refused to hear more of it, and that night
Elmendorf went away gritting his teeth, and now had come this
contemptible essay to humiliate her before her employer. Oh, it was
cowardly! shameful! She threw up her arms, clinching her little white
hands and stamping as slender a foot as ever walked in a machine-made
shoe, and then, ejaculating, as women will, in moments of supreme
exasperation, "If I were only a man!" whirled about and beheld one.

"In your present mood," said Mr. Forrest, quietly, "I am rather glad you
are not, especially as what I have to say refers to you rather in your
capacity as 'the clever woman of the family.' Did you ever read an
English book of that title?" And then in the most matter-of-fact way in
the world he proceeded to assist her into the heavy winter cloak he had
lifted from its accustomed peg. "No, of course you haven't," he went on,
chatting unconcernedly, and well knowing she was too overwrought to talk
at all; "a girl who works from morning till late at night has little
chance to read anything beyond stenographic notes and hideous
hieroglyphics--mine, for instance. Now, this sensible head-gear, if you
please---- How can a woman wear a hat in winter? Yes, it's on quite
straight,--quite as straight as though you had a glass in front of you.
Now the overshoes. No, pardon me, Miss Wallen, you're not going to put
them on yourself. Sit down, if you please, or stand, if you don't." And
down he dropped on one knee and in a trice had stowed away the thin,
worn little boots, with their frayed button-holes, within the warm yet
clumsy Arctics. "You are sensible to wear such things as these," he
said. "The snow is falling heavily, and I mean to walk you home
to-night. Now the gloves.--Yes, you may have your own way there, as I
shouldn't know how." And, so saying, he seemed calmly to have taken
possession of the hitherto self-willed and independent young woman, who
for the first time in her life began to realize how much sweetness there
was, after all, in having some one to do something for one, instead of
being expected to do everything for every one else. She submitted
silently to be led forth into the cool, fresh evening air, and then when
he as calmly took her hand and placed it within his arm she made no move
to withdraw it, neither did she seem to know how by means of it to lean
upon his strength. Passively she let it lie, and, walking by his side,
turned her face to the drifting snowflakes and cared not that the night
was raw and chill, the lake wind blustering.

For a moment more Forrest did not speak. He glanced keenly up the dim
avenue, holding his head very high, as was his way, and himself very
erect. Already the sting and shame of her recent experience seemed
fading in Jenny's past. There was something so new, strange, sweet, in
this masterful assumption on his part of all control and command, there
was something so complete in her faith in him, something so like girlish
admiration if not hero-worship surging up in the throbbing little heart
beneath that worn old winter cloak, that much of her old bright,
buoyant, merry self came back to her. "If I can't be a man," said she
to herself, "I'm the next thing to one, if there ever was one," and then
was amazed at her own impulse to peer up into his grave, soldierly face
and aghast to find herself drawing closer to his side. In the suddenness
and alarm of this revelation she nearly jumped beyond arm's length, and
he felt constrained to retake her hand and draw it farther through his
arm.

"You will find it easier if you will let me bear a little of the weight
to-night," said he, gravely, "and that is why I have made it my business
to intrude upon your time and attention. Miss Wallen, will you kindly
tell me what claim your brother has upon you?"

"He _is_ my brother and out of work," she answered, simply.

"Can't he get work?"

"He says he can't."

"What can he do?"

"He writes well, and he had a clerkship, but Mart was--unsteady, and he
lost it. Then he got a place in the freight-yards, but there was a
strike, and he went out. They wouldn't take him back then because he was
so foolish in his talk; and they can't take him now, for hundreds of
better men, steadier men, old employees, have been laid off. Ever since
the World's Fair business has been falling away."

"And you have had not only that house and your mother to care for, but
an able-bodied brother?"

Jenny dropped her head. Able-bodied brother, indeed!--with wife, babies,
debts, duns, and all! She had borne the weight of the whole
establishment upon her fragile shoulders; but that wasn't a thing to
speak of to him,--to anybody. Her silence touched him.

"Do you mean that out of your little salary you have paid that
house-rent and all the expenses and your mother's and his too?"

No answer.

"I wish you would tell me," he said, in such grave, courteous tones that
they went to her heart. "I beg you not to think me intrusive. I have
never heard of such a case before. Why, Miss Wallen, I'm appalled when I
see how thoughtless I have been. You simply cannot afford the time to
work for me at the price you fixed."

"It pays better than mending Mart's clothes, etc., at home," said she,
whimsically; "very much better than anything I can get to do up town."

"Good heavens! cannot your mother mend Mart's clothes? Can't he mend
them himself? My--my--poor little friend, I had no idea matters were as
bad as this!"

He had no idea even now how bad matters were, nor did she care to edify
him. "Why, Mr. Forrest," said she, "when I look around me this winter
and see all the want and suffering on every side--the absolute
destitution in places--I think my fortune regal. I only wish all the
girls I know of were half as well-to-do."

Forrest drew a long breath. "Well, of all the incarnations of pluck and
cheerfulness I ever heard of, commend me to this," thought he. They were
within two squares of home, and at the corner was a large family grocery
store. She faltered now. "I'm very much obliged to you for coming with
me so far, and--I have to stop here."

"But only to make some purchases. You are going on to tea, and I have
something I want to say."

"I may have to wait, and you have your engagements."

"Nothing in the world but to dine, _solus_, at the Virginia, and my
appetite's about gone. I mean to wait, Miss Wallen."

Miss Wallen flushed, but made no further remonstrance. Entering the
store, she gave her orders. Some little packages of tea and sugar were
speedily ready. In the window were some pyramids of Florida oranges,
rich and luscious fruit. Watching her with uncontrollable interest, he
saw her eyes glancing towards them, saw and knew the question framed by
her soft lips, saw and realized what was passing as the salesman
answered and she shook her head. Turning to another clerk, he pencilled
a number on a card he handed him and gave some orders of his own.
Presently she stored her change in the little portemonnaie and picked
up her bundles. Promptly he relieved her of them, and again as they came
forth he tendered his arm. The side street into which they turned was
darker than the broad avenue. The houses were poor and cheap, the
gas-lamps few and far between. Silently now they walked rapidly along,
for he was deep in thought. He longed to find some way of opening the
subject uppermost in his mind, but knew not how. At last he spoke:

"Miss Wallen, where and how can I see your brother? I've an idea of a
place he might fill. He is unmarried, I presume?"

Silence a moment. "No, Mart has a wife."

"A wife? Where is she? What does she do?"

"She isn't strong, and can't do much of anything."

"Not even mend his clothes, or stop---- How about children?"

"You know the old adage," said she, with a quiet smile, "and Mart is a
poor man."

"And they, too, are your care--you their support--and--this has been
going on since last year?"

"Oh, no; Mart gets odd jobs now and then."

"The proceeds of which he spends in---- But I entreat your pardon,
my--my friend. This is beyond anything I ever dreamed of; and--don't
come to the library to-night, please. There's no hurry about those
pages; to-morrow night will be better."

They were at the little gateway now, and he released her arm.
Over-against them on the opposite side of the street two men, skulking
back in the shadows of a dark entrance-way, edged a little farther
forward, watched him as he restored the bundles, watched him as he took
again her hand, then lifted his hat and bowed over it as he might have
done reverence to a queen, watched her as she tripped within-doors, and
then Forrest again as he slowly turned and walked thoughtfully away.

"That's the man, then?" asked, in cautious, querulous tone, the shorter,
slighter of the two.

"That's him--damn him! I can feel his kick to this day."

"And it was with him--in his room--she took refuge? you could swear to
it?"

"'Course I could, on a stack of Bibles."

And this was early in the week of Mr. Elmendorf's conversation with Aunt
Lawrence, only forty-eight hours prior to the sudden orders which
prevented Mr. Forrest's dining at the Allisons' and escorting Miss
Florence to the opera, and which hurried him miles away on a mission
whereof only two other men at head-quarters knew the purport,--the
general and his chief of staff. There was good reason for the
aides-de-camp an "understrappers," as Elmendorf referred to them, being
even more mysterious than usual.

[Illustration]




CHAPTER VIII.


There was a month or more during the late winter in which Mr. Elmendorf,
cold-shouldered out of official society at department head-quarters,
became quite the managing director of the Allison mansion. John Allison,
with a party of fellow-magnates, was on a long tour of inspection over
the southernmost of the transcontinental lines, and, finding home life a
trifle uncongenial just now, owing to some discussions with Aunt
Lawrence, finding, too, that the wives and daughters of other magnates
were to accompany them on the trip, sojourning days at a time in many of
the charming resorts among the mountains or along the Pacific seaboard,
Miss Allison eagerly accepted their invitation to be one of the party.
Mrs. Lawrence was to remain in charge at home, and was permitted to send
for and receive under her wing her own graceless duckling, with the
distinct understanding that he was in no wise to be allowed to interfere
with Cary's studies or duties. Allison "had no use," as he expressed it,
for his nephew Lawrence. He had helped pull the cub through many a
scrape, but had tired of it, and having secured him a place in an
Eastern office where he had enough to live on and little to do, desired
to wash his hands of him in future; but mother-love watches over even
the renegades from the home circle, and Mrs. Lawrence persuaded Brother
John that Herbert's health was failing and that he sorely needed change
and rest and coddling. The brother growled out something cynical about
Chicago as a winter resort, but told her to go ahead. The party left in
early February, and about the last thing before going Allison had
another conference with Elmendorf. The latter had received warning that,
unless he gave more time to the instruction of his pupil and less to
that of the populace, the engagement would terminate. Elmendorf argued,
and Allison cut him short. "I have listened to this for over eight
months, and am further from conviction than ever, Mr. Elmendorf," said
he. "So waste no more eloquence on me. Take your choice between serving
me on salary or writing 'screamers' and speeches for nothing. You've
done no great harm outside as yet, but there is a growing tendency to
disorder that such counsels as yours will only serve to stimulate." A
blunt man was Allison, and furnished excellent text for Elmendorf's
article on The Brutality of Capital, which presently appeared, but over
a very different _nom de plume_, in the columns of the socialistic
press. Elmendorf agreed that of course, as his employer took such
extreme views of the case, he must perforce acquiesce in the decision.
He agreed not to appear on the platform or write any more leaders so
long as he should remain in John Allison's employ, and then, when
Allison was well beyond range, interpreted the agreement to suit
himself.

As a means of increasing his influence over the mother, Elmendorf made
himself useful and agreeable to young Lawrence when he came. The lessons
went on with fair regularity, Cary and his tutor occupying their study
each day until luncheon-time, and again, occasionally, later in the
afternoon or evening. But, while he no longer appeared on the stage or
rostrum as one of the leading speakers of the evening, the eloquent
gentleman was pretty sure to be heard from the body of the house or the
midst of the audience at the various meetings held from time to time in
what were referred to as "the disturbed districts." There was a familiar
ring about many of the articles that appeared in the papers, but they
were no longer fulminated over his name or initials. For several weeks
no more dinner-parties were given at the Allisons', and few officers
called there. Then the general commanding went off on a tour of
inspection, taking a brace of aides with him, and these were Forrest's
friends and associates and the men who least liked the tutor. But while
Elmendorf had ceased to spend some time each afternoon in the offices
adjoining the general's sanctum, picking up all stray items of military
news and haranguing such men as would listen, his was by no means an
unfamiliar figure about the great building. True to his policy, he had
made acquaintance among the clerks, messengers, etc., first appearing
among them as an associate and friend of their superior officers,
thereby commanding, as it were, their respectful attention, and then,
after studying their personal characteristics, little by little
establishing confidential relations. Simple-minded, straightforward
fellows, as a rule, were these soldier clerks, men who lived in a groove
and knew little of the wiles of the outer world. A few there were of the
decayed gentleman stamp, and other few of the bibulous. Through their
hands passed much of the correspondence, in their keeping were many of
the secrets, of the official life of the far-spreading department, and
Elmendorf saw his opportunity. It was no difficult matter to assert in
his confidential chats, conducted only when and where their superiors
could get no wind of them, that he had been told by his friend the
adjutant-general or by Captain and Aide-de-Camp So-and-so all about the
matter in question, and all he asked was some little item of
corroborative detail. Now, there were days, as the winter wore away,
when sundry things had happened within the limits of the general's
command which the news-gatherers of the Chicago press, always
sensational, were eager to exploit, not so much, perhaps, as they
actually occurred, but as the management and direction of each paper
desired to make it appear they had. The reporters sounded many a
possible source of information without avail, for the chief of staff had
cautioned his clerks and subordinates. Great were his surprise and
disgust, therefore, to find the columns suddenly blossoming out with
glowing particulars of matters he had supposed discreetly hidden. The
reports were by no means truthful,--they were even more than customarily
colored and exaggerated,--but there was the foundation of fact in more
than one. Next it began to be noted that Elmendorf, hitherto a
contributor only to papers of the socialistic stamp, was frequently to
be seen hobnobbing with the reporters of the prominent journals. Now,
these gentlemen, as a rule, are shrewd judges of human nature and quick
to determine between the gold and the glitter, between the actual
possessor of important news and the mere pretender; but there was
another period of a month or six weeks in which Elmendorf was sought and
followed almost as eagerly as the adjutant-general himself. Never,
perhaps, in his varied life had the graduate of Jena rolled in sweeter
clover than during the months of the late winter and early spring of
'94. An oracle at the table in a luxurious home, with no one to dispute
his sway and no one actually to disapprove, unless it were his much
disgusted but helpless pupil, with access to public offices and public
libraries, with occasional touch with officials who might and did
dislike but could not actually snub him, with occasional driblets of
information to supply foundation and a vivid imagination to do the rest,
he found himself an object of interest to the men of all others whom he
most desired to influence,--the reporters of the daily press. Elmendorf
was never in higher feather. He was even able to neglect for a time the
clamors of his erstwhile hearers, his suffering brethren among the sons
of toil.

And he had been managing matters at home with rare diplomacy, too. Mrs.
Lawrence was mad to find out just exactly what peccadillo had brought
about Mr. Floyd Forrest's sudden relief from duty at Chicago and orders
to proceed to the frontier; but this was a subject on which the tutor
was now decidedly coy. He had given Mrs. Lawrence to understand that
because of some scandal and to prevent further talk the officer had been
summarily sent away. Finding that none of the officers knew what had
brought about the order, he worked among the clerks,--who knew nothing
at all. One of these latter lived not far from the Lambert Library, was
a tippler at times, and had a grievance. Forrest had twice come upon him
when he was boisterously drunk, and, recognizing him, had given him
warning, Forrest was only a "casual" at head-quarters, said the clerk,
and when a fellow was off duty what he did "was none of Forrest's damned
business." Elmendorf found he didn't know what had brought about
Forrest's relief, and so proceeded to ask him if he'd ever heard this
and that,--which the man had not, but was glad to hear now. Later,
Elmendorf made him acquainted, one cold evening, at a comfortable
groggery not too far from the Allison house, with a young fellow who
could and did tell how he had followed a girl whom he suspected and saw
her go to Forrest's lodgings. That he made no mention of certain
concomitant facts, such as his being kicked into the gutter by the
lieutenant and the girl's being a total stranger to that officer at that
time, was due perhaps to native modesty and possibly to Elmendorf's
editorial skill. What Elmendorf wanted to create at head-quarters was
the belief that it was for some such indiscretion that Forrest was
exiled, well reasoning that then the entire establishment would suddenly
bethink itself of all manner of suspicious circumstances that it had
thought nothing of before.

He planned equally well at home. Miss Allison knew only that Forrest was
ordered away on duty for an indefinite time, and speedily went away
herself on the jaunt to the Pacific. Mrs. Lawrence, who longed to say
something to her niece upon the subject, was cautioned by Elmendorf to
say nothing at all until he could place her in possession of all the
facts, which he promised shortly to do. He felt somehow that if Allison
ever consulted Forrest as to the propriety of further employing him, the
days of tutorship and ease were ended; but Forrest was gone, with a stab
in the back, and gone probably not to return. Allison's stay promised to
be prolonged until mid-April, possibly May. Miss Wallen, bending over
her task at the Lambert Library, mutely avoided, and Wells openly
scowled at, Elmendorf whenever he sauntered into the rooms where once he
was welcome. So again he took an interest in Mart and his meanderings.
Mart had steadied a bit, had a job over among the lumber-yards on the
north branch, and had been keeping away from the meetings on the west
side; but it wasn't a fortnight before Mart was staying out late at
night again and coming home without his wits or wages Sunday mornings
and denouncing his employers as scoundrels and some new men as scabs.
The next thing poor Jenny knew, Mart's unpaid bills were coming to her
again, and the brother had lost his situation a third time. There was no
extra work now to add to her earnings, no strong, manly, courteous,
thoughtful fellow to help her into her cloak and out of her troubles.
The days lengthened, and so did the faces at home; so would the bills
have done had she ever yielded to the importunities of her
Mrs.-Nickleby-like mother or Mart's weakling of a wife; but Jenny was
Spartan in self-denial; what she couldn't pay for on the spot she
wouldn't have.

More and more, however, she recognized in Elmendorf the evil genius of
the family, and implored Mart to have no more to do with him, whereat
Mart laughed wildly. "Just you wait a bit, missy," he declaimed. "The
day is coming when capitalists and corporations will bow down to him as
they have to the Goulds and Vanderbilts in the past. I tell you, in less
than two months, if they don't come to our terms, if they refuse to
listen to our dictation not one wheel will turn from one end of this
country to the other. We'll tie up the business of the whole United
States, by God! That's what'll happen to capital."

"And then what will happen to us, Mart,--to you, your wife and
babies,--to your mother and to me? Where will the money come from?"

"Oh, there's money enough--more than enough--millions more than
enough--to feed and clothe and keep us all in luxury--tied up in the
coffers of those bond-holders, and when the men whose hands have made it
get their hands once more on it----"

"Mart, Mart, your head is crazed with whiskey," laughed Jenny, sadly.
"No wonder capital is being withdrawn from us; no wonder the gold is
going back to Europe. People who have it dare not invest in communities
where the employees are allowed to talk as they are here. If I had a
million to invest, do you think I'd venture it where the workmen openly
threatened they'd stop every wheel throughout the land? You are killing
your own prospects, Mart, simply to cripple theirs."

"I don't care. What do you know of such things, anyhow? I don't mean to
stand by and see my brothers starving and swindled day by day down there
at Pullman."

"Who have the greater claims, Mart, those whom you call your brothers
down there at Pullman, or your wife and children here at home? I feel
for those people just as much as you do,--more probably,--but your duty
lies here."

"Oh, that's right. Stand by your swell friends, and toss it into my
teeth that I and mine are sponging on you for a living, and you want
your money. Make a man more desperate than he is by your nagging and
fault-finding. Drive a fellow to striking one minute and then torment
him with accusations the next. I tell you if it comes to riot and
bloodshed here, it's--it's just women like you--that'll--that'll have
brought it all about."

But this was a statement so absurd that Jenny turned away in speechless
indignation. What was the use of logic or argument with one of her
brother's mental make-up? Leaving Mart to go on with his harangue and
confirm the mother and his wife in their view of her utter lack of
appreciation of her brother's noble nature, the girl walked wearily
away to her desk at the library. It was barely eight o'clock, and her
duties began only at nine, but she was an early bird, this New World
Little Dorrit, and loved to be promptly at her work, and the janitor and
scrub-women often listened to her cheery song as she plied the duster
among the shelves and desks of the sanctum. Wells, perhaps, never
noticed how much neater everything looked since Miss Wallen took charge,
but she was a dainty creature, in whose eyes dusty books and littered
desks were abominations. Mrs. Wells, however, was not so blind.

"That girl's worth two of Miss Stockton," was the lady's verdict, and
then, noting with self-comforting criticism the inexpensive material of
Jenny's gown, the absence of all attempt at ornamentation, as well,
alas! as of her predecessor's brilliancy of color and clearness of skin,
she added conclusively, "and she isn't pretty."

And these raw blustering days of late winter and early spring--or
something--had left their mark upon poor Jenny's grave and gentle face.
The circles seemed purpler and deeper under the soft dark eyes. There
was even less of color in the pallid skin. There was something languid,
almost droopy, in her carriage now. She had fought her fight without
repining or complaint all the long months through, and knew, alas! that
she was only losing ground. A year agone she looked forward with joy to
this position, and now she was loaded with even heavier cares and
burdens. She had found some outside work, but everything she made was
rapidly swallowed up by her home cormorants. "It would be just the same,
perhaps, if I had five hundred dollars a month," said Jenny. She was
blue, disheartened, and discouraged,--perhaps a little weak,--as she
walked rapidly on. She thought a sight of the foam-crested waves might
stir her sluggish blood, and so sped eastward a block or two and out
upon the lake front. Passing the Allison homestead south of the Park,
she saw the family carriage just rolling away,--not the open barouche
that had once so nearly run her down, but the heavy, closed carriage.
She knew the coachman and the handsome bays at a glance. A few blocks
farther south she again turned westward to resume her way to the
library, and came suddenly upon two men standing in close conversation.
One was haranguing the other, speaking in nasal, querulous, unmistakable
tones and the speaker's back was towards her. Overcome by a sudden sense
of repulsion, she hesitated, stopped, and was about to turn back and
cross the street, when the listening party glanced up, saw the girl as
she halted and seemed to be watching them, and, all in an instant,
turned and sneaked, or rather lurched, up the street. Miss Wallen knew
that gait in an instant. There was the ruffian who had chased her and
seized her that never-to-be-forgotten night.

And here, turning about now and facing her, was Elmendorf.

For an instant the tutor's _aplomb_ was gone. He stammered as he raised
his hat and bade her good-morning. "I was just giving some advice to a
poor devil who accosted me for alms, Miss Wallen," he said, lamely, "but
I seem to have driven him off. My speeches are not universally well
received, as you probably know." But Jennie was in no mood for
conversation. With but scant recognition, she pushed rapidly on, and
Elmendorf followed.

"There is a matter I much desire to speak about," said he, placing
himself at her side. "I'm aware I have not the good fortune to stand
well in Miss Wallen's opinion," he added, with a half-sneer, "and a man
more vindictive and less devoted to principle would have felt like
resenting the--the slights you have seen fit to put upon me. I shall
observe your prohibition with regard to the--alleged officer and
gentleman of whom I had occasion to speak to you, since his superiors
have taken that responsibility off my hands by summarily sending him
away, and as it is not likely that he will ever cross your path in this
neighborhood again,--a matter in which I find sincere cause for
rejoicing, for of all men I have ever met he seemed to me the least
worthy of such confidence as you placed in him----"

"Is this observing my prohibition, Mr. Elmendorf?" said Jenny, stopping
and facing him.

"Oh, well, possibly not."

"Then you will kindly say at once what your business is. I have told you
I will not listen to anything you say about Mr. Forrest."

"I am detaining you here," he said, evasively. "Let us walk on."

"No, I will not walk on. Mr. Elmendorf, I have learned to look upon you
as anything but a friend to me or mine, and I mean to be perfectly frank
with you here and now. You have slandered my friend, you have tricked
and misled my brother, you have deceived my mother, and I know well you
have sought to injure me with my employer----"

"Oh, only so far as was justifiable in the protection of my own name. As
your recommender and endorser for the position you hold, I had a right,
when you showed yourself heedless of my counsel and defiant of my
injunctions, to say to your immediate superior that he should be
cautious about allowing your intimacy with Mr. Forrest to be prosecuted
within the shelter of his sanctum and practically under his own nose.
I----"

"That's quite enough, Mr. Elmendorf. You have added insult to injury.
Once and for all, let there be an end of this. I decline any and all
communication with you from this time on." And with cheeks that lacked
no color now, and eyes all ablaze with wrath, Miss Wallen turned and
left him. But Elmendorf pursued. He had one arrow left, and meant to
send it home.

"At least I may accompany you to the corner, only twenty yards away, and
there, as you suggest, our paths shall separate. You decline to believe
my estimate of Mr. Forrest, and hold him up as something knightly and
chivalric, forsooth. My deluded friend, all the time he was making you
the object of those charming little attentions he was pressing his suit
under my own eyes at home, and, in spite of all her father, her aunt, or
her friends could do, I regret to say that Miss Florence Allison became
so infatuated as to follow that young man to his exile, and should he
ever return here it will doubtless be as her husband. Good-morning, Miss
Wallen."

She had turned from him in renewed anger and disgust as they reached the
corner, had hastened along with flaming eyes and cheeks and loudly
throbbing heart. She was furious at him for daring to speak of such
things, daring to couple Forrest's name with hers, with--anybody's. She
was ready to cry out against the man for such malignity--mendacity; and
then her cooler judgment and common sense began to reassert themselves.
Why shouldn't it be true? Why shouldn't he seek the hand of one so--so
lovely and wealthy as Miss Allison? What more natural than that Miss
Allison should learn to love him? Why shouldn't she--she, Jenny
Wallen--rejoice with her whole heart that her friend and protector could
look forward to such happiness? He had never been anything but kind,
thoughtful, courteous, to her. Other men had taken advantage of her
defenceless post to accost her with low gallantries, with _bourgeois_
flattery, with ridiculous attempts at flirtation or love-making, and she
had laughed or stormed them off; but Forrest had shown her from the
first the high-bred courtesy he would have accorded the proudest lady in
the land, had never presumed upon a look, a word, a touch, that was not
marked by respect and deference. He was a gentleman, she said; any girl
might be proud of such a lover; and if it was true that he and Florence
Allison were engaged, she would congratulate him and her with all her
heart and rejoice with them and for them, and pray that their lives
might be happy,--happy as her own was desolate,--and then the day became
dark and dull and hopeless despite a brilliant sun, for just as the
Lambert towers loomed in sight, the Allison carriage came spinning up
the avenue, a radiant, happy, lovely face beaming upon her from the
window, then turning to look up into the dark, soldierly features of the
man at her side. Florence Allison was home, then, from her wanderings,
bringing her beloved with her.

[Illustration]




CHAPTER IX.


Elmendorf was an astonished man. He had confidently told Mrs. Lawrence
that the objectionable lieutenant had been ordered off under a cloud of
official censure and forbidden to return. He really believed it. It was
one of his peculiarities that he invariably attached a sinister
explanation to every action of his fellow men and women whose social
station, at least, was superior to his own, when other explanation was
withheld. He had sneeringly told Miss Wallen that unless the gentleman
resigned from the army and returned to be the husband of Miss Allison,
he would not return at all. He believed this too. He was so constituted
mentally that he believed Forrest guilty of anything that could be
alleged against him, believed that Miss Allison was interested in him to
a certain extent, but would probably lose her interest when once the
gallant himself was well out of the way, believed that he could even
convince her, as he had convinced her aunt, that Forrest was totally
unworthy her regard, provided Forrest himself did not return; and, lo
and behold! Forrest had returned, and returned with Miss Allison
herself, brought back on their train,--in their carriage, as he learned
from Aunt Lawrence,--and apparently more influential with the father and
daughter than ever before. Not until luncheon-time that day did he know
of this, and the news came like a dash of ice-water on shivering skin.
It was plain that Mrs. Lawrence looked to him to defend his statement
and name his authorities then and there; for Miss Allison did not come
down to luncheon, Cary was speedily excused and permitted to go about
his own affairs, and then Mrs. Lawrence whirled upon the tutor with the
tidings that not only was Mr. Forrest back, but that Florence had
brought him back; that Mr. Allison, so far from objecting, had
approved--had invited him to lunch with his fellow-magnates at the club
and to dine _en famille_ in the evening. As for Mr. Forrest being under
the ban of official censure, Mrs. Lawrence declared she couldn't
understand it, in view of the fact that he was with the general and his
staff when the party encountered them at Wichita, and that the general
himself had authorized his return to Chicago. "Authorized!" said
Elmendorf, with his ready sneer; "_ordered_, very probably, with the
view of having him tried by court-martial here where the witnesses are
ready; and Mr. Forrest has had the effrontery to saddle himself on
respectable company by way of establishing high connection to start
with. I have heard of just such expedients before. My informants are
men who thoroughly know the ins and outs of military affairs in the
department, and they are not likely to be mistaken." All the same the
tutor was glad to get away and to go post-haste to the Pullman building,
hoping to catch his one intimate in the clerical force and to dodge the
officials with whom he stood in evil odor. Luck often follows audacity.
In the elevator he met two officers to whom he had been presented during
the earlier days of his tutorship, when he was still cordially received.
These gentlemen had been away on duty in the interim, and, knowing
nothing of his lapse from grace, greeted him as pleasantly as ever,
invited him into the aide-de-camps' offices, and there made him at home
in the absence of the usual occupants. They knew nothing of Forrest's
movements beyond the fact that he had not been with his regiment at all.
One of the two was Major Cranston; the other was Lieutenant-Colonel
Kenyon, of Forrest's own regiment. "I suppose you know he--left here
under very sudden--rather summary, orders some two months ago,"
suggested Elmendorf; "and it created, as you can readily imagine, some
little comment in society." No, Kenyon hadn't heard, and he eyed the
speaker sharply from under his bushy, overhanging brows. Cranston,
however, promptly replied that there was nothing in the least remarkable
in it. Officers were frequently hurried off on sudden orders, and there
was no reason why society should be exercised over it. Elmendorf
promptly disavowed any intention of casting the faintest aspersion on
Mr. Forrest, whom he at least had found to be certainly quite the equal
of his comrades in most things pertaining to the officer and gentleman,
although there were some things, perhaps, which to a humble civilian
like himself might call for explanation. He was merely stating a fact,
one which he regretted, of course, as he did all the idle talk that
circulated in superficial circles of society. He was glad to find
officers of such prominence as Kenyon and Cranston so ready to stand up
for Forrest, as some men--he preferred not to mention names--had been
less outspoken, at least, in his behalf. And then Kenyon impatiently
arose and went out, Cranston met a brace of cavalrymen going back to
their regiment after a leave, and Elmendorf drifted away in search of
his clerk and found him.

A glance at the register showed that Forrest had already been in to
report his arrival, had given his old rooms as his present address, and
"verbal instructions of Dept. Comdr." as the explanation of his return.
The adjutant-general, seated in his own office, had seen Forrest, and
had further instructions to communicate, evidently, for they had been
closeted together nearly half an hour, but what passed between them the
clerk could not say, and Elmendorf was left to his own vivid
imagination. Forrest certainly had not rejoined his regiment, and
Elmendorf had chosen to think that that was what he was ordered to do
when leaving Chicago. Thinking of it so much, he had come to believe it
a fact; but Forrest was now back here in Chicago, as suddenly and
mysteriously as he went. He was not, however, back in his old office,
was not then restored to his functions at head-quarters. What more was
needed, therefore, to warrant the belief that he was picked up by the
general in his wanderings in the Indian Territory and sent in for trial
on charges of disobedience of orders and absence without leave? At all
events, it was a working theory in the absence of any other. Elmendorf
strolled away discontentedly, and was presently overhauling books on
Brentano's counters, and there Cranston found him, and, when books were
the theme, found him more to his liking. They walked up to Cranston's
old home that afternoon together, and Elmendorf, as previously detailed,
made his first appearance before Mrs. Sergeant McGrath.

Later he strolled up to the Lambert Memorial, revolving many things in
his mind. With all the discomfort and uneasiness and foreboding
Forrest's sudden reappearance cost him, with all the embarrassment
likely to follow, one reflection had given him joy. There at least
within those walls was a proud and wilful girl whose spirit he had
longed to tame, whose distrust and defiance he had smarted under, but
who now would have to admit the truth of some of the most salient of his
accusations and prophecies with regard to Forrest. There was still
abundant opportunity for him to rejoice in that triumph. Wells did not
like him, but what of that? Wells was probably gone by this time, and
she would be there all alone, bending as usual over her typewriter. She
couldn't order him out or refuse him admittance, since Wells had never
yet done so. She would have to listen, and he would go and break to her
the news of Forrest's return,--of Forrest's return with Florence
Allison, of his luncheon with the magnates at the club to-day, of his
coming to dinner informally, like one of the family, at the Allisons'
to-night. It would be comfort to watch her sensitive face, thought
Elmendorf, and he meant to make the successive announcements as humorous
and lingering as his command of rhetoric would permit. His step was
light, his smile significant, his bearing quite debonair, as he turned
into the private hall-way and encountered the janitor at the first turn.
The janitor was Irish. "Misther Wells is gone--if it's him ye want,
sorr," said he, with scant civility, for the Celt had become imbued with
distaste for the Teuton.

"Then I'll see his secretary," answered Elmendorf, with his usual shrug,
and without a stop.

"Ye wouldn't, bedad, if I saw her first," said honest Maloney, as he
looked after the agitator. "Maneness goes wid the loikes of him, and
mischief and trouble wherever he sets his fut."

Springily did Elmendorf go up the echoing stairway, and then, reaching
the second floor, he saw fit to saunter, and that, too, with noiseless
footfall. He approached the familiar door-way, and the anteroom--the
scene of his discomfiture when Donnelly presented Mart's
liquor-bill--stood invitingly open. But the door to the private office
beyond was closed, and it was barely five o'clock. She was there; he
felt assured of that. He could hear the busy clicking of the typewriter.
She was probably alone, too. Hitherto he had entered unannounced, but
then the door stood open. Why should he knock now? He would not. He
decided to enter as hitherto, and so, quietly, turned the knob and
pushed.

But the door resisted. Evidently it was latched from within. Twice he
made the trial, noiselessly as possible, and then paused to consider.
This was something new. Miss Wallen had locked herself in, or possibly
had locked him out. If not at her desk, she might easily have seen him
sauntering leisurely up the street, might have seen him cross, and,
divining that his object was to see her and perhaps renew his offensive
talk, have taken prompt measures to resist. Well, even if lettered
"Private Office" on the door, it was a public office in point of fact;
and that public office was not for personal use or benefit he had the
authority, in one sententious form or other, of many an Executive, from
Jefferson down. So Elmendorf rapped, and rapped loudly. The clicking
presently ceased, a light footstep was heard, then the voice of the
official stenographer:

"What is wanted?"

"Open the door, please."

"Whom do you wish to see."

"I desire to speak with Miss Wallen."

"Miss Wallen declines."

"I have business to transact."

"Mr. Wells is not here, and Miss Wallen is not empowered to act for him.
You will have to wait and see him to-morrow."

"Miss Wallen, you are barring me out of an office I have a perfect right
to enter, and that I mean to enter here and now, or make formal
complaint to the trustees. If this door is not opened in twenty seconds
I warn you there will be trouble."

To this remark no answer whatever was vouchsafed. Miss Wallen quietly
returned to her typewriter, and the only sound from within was the
clicking of that ingenious machine. Elmendorf had sense enough not to
shout his news, but he had not sense enough to abandon the attempt to
tell her. There was another way of reaching the sanctum, provided he
moved with promptness and decision. It was through the library itself.
Turning away, muttering angrily, he returned through the darkening
corridor, down the stairs, and around to the main entrance. Another
moment, and he was at the lattice that separated the reading-room from
the library proper. There, beyond, were the long aisles and rows of
crowded shelves. Here was the customary throng of patrons, returning or
taking out books. There were the busy attendants bustling to and fro,
and beyond them and beyond those vaults and dim recesses was the passage
leading to the sanctum of the head librarian. A young girl, standing
within the lattice, was noting the numbers of some books upon a slip of
card-board, and, with quick decision, Elmendorf addressed her. "Pardon
me," said he, "I have to go into Mr. Wells's office at once. Miss Wallen
has accidentally locked the door, and can't open it. Will you kindly let
me through this way?"

The girl hesitated an instant. It was against orders, but she had often
seen the gentleman in the library and in the sanctum itself with the
librarian. "I suppose it will be all right," said she, doubtfully.

"Oh, certainly," said Elmendorf. "Pardon my haste; I have left some
papers there that I need at once. Ah, thank you." And slipping through
the wicket, he hastened on his way before any one else could interpose,
and in another moment stood within the sanctum and closed the door
behind him.

Nor was he much surprised to find Miss Wallen no longer at her
instrument, but leaning wearily against the casement, apparently gazing
out into the street. "You see," he began, with cold, sarcastic emphasis,
"the power to lock one door does not make a woman the mistress of an
entire situation. It would have been better had you accepted what was
meant for your good and spared me the necessity of forcing it upon you,
as it were; but I have had my own sisters to protect in the past, and
knew what was best for you. Nor am I to be balked in what I consider my
duty by the obstinacy of a moonstruck, passion-blinded girl."

She had turned her back upon him as he began to speak. Now she turned
and faced him. He half expected fierce denunciation, but, to his
surprise, her manner was as contemptuously cool as his was sardonically
cold.

"You have succeeded in getting in here on the plea of business, Mr.
Elmendorf; but this is insolence."

"It is my business, and has ever been and shall ever be, to stand
between the helplessness of the poor and the oppression of the rich. My
business is to see that you and yours suffer no wrong at the hands of
those who consider such as you their natural prey. I see the ghost of a
smile flickering about your lips, Miss Wallen, and am aware you regard
my mission with disfavor, but you cannot and shall not treat it with
contempt."

She was smiling, poor girl, and it was but the ghost of a wintry smile,
too, for, even in her exasperation and distress, the whimsical,
humorous side of her nature--its helpful, sunny side--was asserting
itself at the moment. For the life of her she could not feel the
indignation he deserved just then, for the contrast between the
grandiloquence of his sentiments and the pettiness of that unpaid
lodging-bill almost forced her to laugh outright.

"I am here," he went on, "because you would not believe my statements
regarding Mr. Forrest, because I feel it my duty to open your eyes as to
his character and intentions. You refused to believe what I said
concerning him and you, and that only confirms my fears. I am powerless
to contend against the logic of a woman's love, but when I spoke of him
and her whom I may be pardoned for referring to as your rival, I spoke
the truth."

Now she was smiling in contemptuous amusement again, as though she
actually considered it beneath her to answer. How amazed would Miss
Allison be at the idea of her being placed on the same plane with a
working-girl!

Her silence and self-control maddened Elmendorf. "Have you no reason, no
sense?" he demanded. "I told you this very day that she had gone to
follow and bring him back, did I not?"

A cool nod of assent.

"I told you he would reappear here, if at all, only as her husband, or
possibly her affianced, did I not?"

Another nod as cool as the first.

"And you turned away in contemptuous unbelief, did you not?"

"Contempt certainly, but unbelief--not entirely."

Elmendorf was fairly trembling with wrath by this time. The idea that
this simple, unlettered, friendless "girl of the people" should so
coolly brave him--him on whose words enraptured ears were wont to hang,
at whose eloquence enthusiastic hundreds burst into applause! It stung
him to the very marrow of his conceit. Something must be said or done to
bring her to her knees, and, believing that she loved and dearly loved
the man in question, he prepared his final _coup_.

"Well, it may modify your contempt to know that my words have come
true."

"That Mr. Forrest was ordered away in disgrace?" she calmly asked.

"Not so much that, as that he has returned, brought back, as I said, by
Miss Allison."

"Why, but that is no news at all. I knew he was coming, and I saw them
together this morning."

"You--saw them--and you knew he was coming?" faltered the tutor. "You
mean to--you mean he writes to you,--that you correspond with him?"

"I mean nothing whatsoever beyond what I said, Mr. Elmendorf,--that I
knew Mr. Forrest would be here this week, that I saw them this morning;
and, as it is his work that lies here unfinished, interrupted by this
visitation, I may now, I presume, return to my business--and you to
yours."

"Then he has been here, too?"

"Yes, and will be again,--another reason, perhaps, why you would better
not linger. I will open the door now,--since it is to let you out."

"Yes, and to let him in, I suppose, and see him behind locked doors, as
you doubtless have before, Miss Wallen----"

"The door is both unlocked and open, Mr. Elmendorf," said she, throwing
it wide, but now in her turn the girl was quivering with indignation.
"Furthermore, one touch on this button brings our janitor here--Mr.
Wells speaks of him as 'our bouncer.'" And her white hand poised not six
inches from the button.

Elmendorf took a long breath. "You may consider this a moral victory,
Miss Wallen," said he, backing to the portal, "but you will do well to
remember this. As I have said before, I have a duty to perform that I
owe to society,--to my employers on the one hand, to the people on the
other. Rest you well assured that whatever may have been his successes,
so called, in the past, there are two schemes of your paragon, Mr.
Forrest, that shall fail, even if I have to fight him through the public
press. In one or other, separately, he may be too much for my efforts,
but at one and the same time that accomplished _roué_ shall never win a
wife in that household and a mistress here."

And immediately thereafter a gentleman coming up the dim corridor
without heard a sound that resembled the loud crack of a toy torpedo,
followed by the reverberant bang of a door, and, a moment later,
encountered an oddly familiar figure hurrying out and hanging on to its
left jowl as though afflicted with a violent attack of _tic douloureux_.

"Why, I believe that's Mr. Elmendorf!" remarked the new-comer, and then
was surprised to find the inner door locked,--to find that he had to
knock thrice before it was opened, and by that time it seemed quite
dark.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER X.


The dinner at Allison's the night of his return from the long journey
was not a success. It was to be an entirely informal affair,--no guests
present but a high official of the road in which the host was so heavily
interested, and Mr. Forrest, whom Miss Allison had invited on her own
account. The brother magnate came, and Mr. Forrest did not. True, his
acceptance had been conditioned on his being able to finish certain
papers, which, so he told both Florence and her father, would be
required at the office early the next day. Mr. Elmendorf came hurrying
in and went up to his room about half-past six, and fifteen minutes
later came a messenger with a note which was taken at once to Miss
Allison's room. She was dressed for dinner and ready to come down, but
she took it and read it hurriedly, uttered an exclamation of
disappointment, and sharply closed her door. Not until Mr. Allison sent
for her with the information that dinner was on the table did she
appear. Elmendorf eyed her covertly, and Aunt Lawrence sharply. There
were unmistakable traces of tears. "Did he say why he couldn't come?"
asked Mrs. Lawrence, presently.

"Yes--no--at least--he had told me before that he thought it might be
impossible," answered Florence, in embarrassment and annoyance. Her
father was laying down the law on Interstate Commerce to his guest at
the moment, and it was a subject on which he never tired. Even while
listening intently, watching for his chance to "chip in," as Cary said,
Elmendorf caught Miss Allison's every word. What he had not yet been
enlightened upon was the explanation of Forrest's return with the party.
All he knew was that early on the previous day the general, with two of
his aides and Mr. Forrest, boarded the train in Southern Kansas. Allison
invited them all into the private car and proposed making them his
guests on the homeward run. The chief declined for himself and staff,
saying that they had other matters to detain them, but it transpired
that Mr. Forrest was to go right on. He had his berth engaged in an
adjoining sleeper, but spent several hours with the railway party, and
on their arrival in Chicago the Allisons had insisted on his taking a
seat in their carriage. Allison himself was dropped at his club,
Florence in turn left Mr. Forrest at his lodgings, and then was driven
home. This was actually all Elmendorf had been able to learn.

But here was basis enough for all manner of theory and conjecture, none
of them to Forrest's advantage, and Elmendorf felt that the more he
could make of them the better for his own cause and the worse for
Forrest. There had been an intangible something in Allison's manner to
warn the tutor that just so soon as the guests were out of the way he
might look out for squalls. Allison had greeted him with utter absence
of cordiality, and Elmendorf felt that his employer was even more
displeased with him than when he went away. Under such circumstances a
wise man would have avoided saying or doing anything to augment the
feeling against him, but Elmendorf, except in his own conceit, was far
from wise, and his propensity for putting his foot in it was phenomenal.
Allison loved his post-prandial cigar,--it agreed with him,--and so did
his guest. The ladies withdrew quite early, Cary slipped away, and
Elmendorf should have slipped after him, but here were two great men of
the railway world, the natural oppressors of the masses, the very type
of the creatures he delighted in describing upon the platform as
"bloated bond-holders;" their conversation could hardly fail to be of
interest to him, and he remained. Warming up to their work, they were
discussing the situation at Pullman and its probable effect upon the
employees of the roads centring in Chicago. That their views should be
radically opposed to those of their absorbed listener was of course to
be expected, and Elmendorf was fidgeting furiously upon his chair,
every now and then striving to interject a sentence and claim the floor,
but Allison knew his man, and knew that once started, Elmendorf could
not well be suppressed. Every attempt on the part of the tutor to
interpose, therefore, was met by uplifted and warning hand and prompt
"Permit me" or "Permit Mr. Sloan to finish, if you please," which was
galling in the last degree. Elmendorf had planned to have a conciliatory
word or two with Miss Allison, with whom he knew himself to have been in
grave disfavor ever since the occasion of his presuming to tender advice
and remonstrance on the score of Mr. Forrest, but she had escaped to her
own room again immediately after quitting the table. Her manner towards
him showed that she had neither forgiven nor forgotten the impertinence,
and that was additional reason why he should have done nothing more, in
that household at least, to add to the array of his offences. But
presently the opportunity came, and he could not resist. The Interstate
Commerce Law was again under discussion. Allison had always fiercely
opposed it, declaring it to be an utterly unconstitutional and
unwarrantable interference with the rights of corporations and
individuals. Mr. Sloan was rather more conservative. He was contending
that, despite its restrictions upon certain railway companies, the
appointment of the Commission had resulted in much that was beneficial
to most parties concerned.

Allison burst forth impetuously: "Why, Sloan, look at the thing! It is
direct and absolute usurpation on the part of the general government of
the functions of the State. Here's a road running from Chicago to Cairo,
for instance. Its traffic is entirely within the State; its offices,
road-bed, and rolling-stock--everything concerning it, in fact--within
the limits of the State; and yet, just because it delivers freight and
passengers over on the Kentucky shore, here comes the general government
formulating laws for its control, which should be the province of the
State and of the State only. If we've got to be trammelled by
legislation, let it be at the hands of our own legislators---- Eh,
what?" he asked, breaking suddenly off to acknowledge the presence of
the butler standing solemnly beside him with a card on the salver.
Allison took the card mechanically, glanced at the name, and, even as he
was saying, "Oh, show him in here. Send this up to Miss Florence,"
Elmendorf had seized his opportunity and "chipped in."

"Yes, but, my dear sir," he began, in his eager, nerve-racking, whining
tone, "is there not inconsistency here? Can you deny that when the
legislature, not only of this, but of neighboring States, essayed to
enact laws on these very subjects, your attorneys were promptly on the
ground to argue against it and to declare that only Congress had the
power under the Constitution to regulate commerce between the States?
Can you deny that at the meeting of managers and business-men here one
of the most prominent of your number declared that you objected to any
and all legislation? Can you deny that when Congress did take the matter
up your attorneys were just as promptly in Washington, proclaiming that
any attempt to legislate in your affairs was a violation of the rights
of the sovereign States? Can you deny, in fine, that when the whole
subject was under discussion here a second time, one of your most
eminent _confrères_ put himself on record as saying that, while he was
opposed to any legislation, of two evils he preferred to choose the less,
and if any legislators were to meddle with the affairs of the roads, better
let it be the State Solons, who were far more--well--approachable and ready
to listen to--let us say--reason? Can you deny that----" But here Elmendorf
found himself without listeners. The odd point in it all was that very much
that he said was true; and Allison was reddening with wrath, and Sloan
chuckling with suppressed merriment, when the entrance of a tall,
brown-eyed, brown-moustached man in evening dress gave both opportunity
to escape the deluge.

"Forrest at last!" exclaimed the host, turning and seizing his hand. "So
sorry you were detained, lad; but sit you down, sit you down, and let me
ring for some dinner for you. No? Had a bite? All right. Take a chair
and some wine. Sloan and I were whacking away at the old bone."

"Yes, Allison, and here's a Federal officer who won't agree with you for
a moment."

With a dissatisfied shake of his head, Elmendorf had arisen as though to
pull his chair nearer the end of the table and resume his attack, but
Allison had purposely turned his back squarely upon him and was drawing
Forrest to the very place the tutor had hoped to occupy. Sloan arose and
cordially shook hands with the new-comer, who then for the first time,
apparently, caught sight of Elmendorf. The latter had started as though
to come forward, but something in Forrest's eyes restrained him. The
lieutenant simply bowed, and said, very coldly, "Good-evening," but did
not even mention the tutor by name.

"Now, Mr. Forrest," began Mr. Sloan, with much heartiness of manner, "I
want you to say to Allison here just what you said to me. He's a trifle
hot-headed to-night. He thinks the government has been paternalizing at
our expense, and that only harm will come from it."

Forrest looked from one to the other a moment, a quiet smile upon his
lips. All the previous afternoon as they trundled along in the cosy
private car had these gentlemen been disputing over the same thing, and
late in the evening, as Mr. Sloan and Forrest were enjoying a cigar
together, they, too, had had a chat upon the subject, and Sloan had
turned and looked upon the officer in some surprise. In common with
most of his class, the man of wealth and worldly wisdom had regarded the
_genus_ regular officer as a something impressive, possibly, on parade,
useful probably on the frontier, but out of place anywhere else. That he
should have read or studied anything beyond drill and dime novels was
not to be expected. The magnates had even had their modest game of draw
poker at a late hour and laughingly referred some mooted question to
Forrest as a probable expert, and were astonished to hear that he had
never played, not so much because he disapproved of it as because he had
never had time. Allison had already found out that Forrest was a student
and a thinker, but up to that evening he was the only man of the party
who believed that the average officer had any other use for time than to
kill it. Whatever it was that Mr. Forrest might have said to Mr. Sloan,
it was evident he did not care to repeat it now.

"I would rather not reopen the matter," said he. "Possibly I had no
right to forecast the action of the government, even speculatively, in a
contingency that may not arise."

Elmendorf planted his chair and lighted a cigarette, throwing himself
down with an air as much as to say, "Well, I've got to be bored and must
be resigned to it, since they won't listen to a man of intelligence;"
and Allison, with blacker gloom in his eyes, looked squarely at him as
he began to speak:

"Sloan, you're not even sipping your wine; Forrest, you never seem to
indulge. Suppose we three adjourn to my den, where the books are right
at hand. Mr. Elmendorf has his duties and will excuse us."

If he had struck him, the master of the house could not more have stung
his employee. Even Forrest, who by this time had many reasons of his own
for bringing Elmendorf to book, tingled with something like sympathy at
a slight so marked. There were so many other and better ways of letting
Elmendorf know that in the coming conference his presence could be
dispensed with, that Sloan spoke of it the moment they reached the
library; but Allison was imperious and positive. "You don't begin to
know the man," said he. "Anything less than unmistakable prohibition he
would consider as invitation, and he'd turn our talk into a lecture on
the relations of capital to labor. You saw how he got in the instant I
stopped a moment, Sloan."

"Faith and I did," said Sloan, laughing, "and he hit you fellows in the
ribs. Why, where'd he find it all out?"

"I'm blessed if I know, unless it was from the newspaper men. They get
hold of almost everything,--wrong side foremost, as a rule, but they get
it. Now I heard something of your talk last night. Brooks was speaking
of it. He looks upon the Interstate Bill just as I do. What do you mean
by saying it might prove our salvation?" he asked, abruptly, turning to
Forrest.

"I was simply supposing a case," said Forrest, calmly. "Say that the
Granger element in one State, the Populists in another, the Socialists
in a third, were to obtain control of the legislature and elect their
own governor. You say they are utterly antagonistic to the railways;
that in the event of a general strike, mob violence, etc., they would
refuse you help or protection; that as common carriers you would be
powerless to carry out your contracts, and that not only passenger and
freight traffic would be blocked, but the government mails. Now, prior
to February, '87, the general government, as I understand it, had left
the management of the railways to the States. It had neither formulated
laws for their control nor adopted measures for their protection. In the
great railway riots of '77, when the police and militia were whipped and
cowed by the mobs, such States as Pennsylvania and Illinois begged for
government aid and got it. Our troops were called in from the Rocky
Mountains to Chicago, and from Louisiana to Pittsburg. In the riots at
Buffalo, three years ago, New York's fine National Guard, and in those
at Homestead the Pennsylvania division, were sufficient to put an end to
the mischief, and neither State had to ask for help; but here lies
within your limits far greater possibility for riot and bloodshed than
can be found elsewhere in the Union, and suppose that to pander to the
masses here, as he has done in pardoning the Anarchists, your governor
should deny you protection and permit assault, riot, and violence
whenever you attempted to move engines or trains. It is my belief that
you can now look where you could not before the passage of that
Interstate Commerce Bill in '870 for the protection denied you at home.
When the Congress of the United States enacted that 'every common
carrier should, according to their respective powers, afford all
reasonable, proper, and equal facilities for the interchange of traffic
between their respective lines,'--I am quoting now,--'and for receiving,
forwarding, and delivery of passengers and property to and from their
several lines,' the supreme power of the land asserted its right to
assume control over all roads except those doing business exclusively
within the limits of some one State; and when the general government
says to a common carrier that it must do this or must not do that, it
means that the general government will back it in carrying out its
orders; and whether it be mails, passengers, live stock, perishable
goods, time freight or construction trains, the railway companies can
now look to the United States for protection, whether any individual
State likes it or not. You have abused that law as a menace to your
rights as a business-man, Mr. Allison. You may live to bless it as all
that stood between you and anarchy."

Forrest had spoken in a quiet, conversational tone, noting that Allison
had closely eyed the heavy folds of the portière, and once, stepping
quickly thither, had drawn it aside and glanced about him; but the tutor
had vanished, if that was what he was looking for. When Forrest stopped,
Sloan turned to his friend with a merry twinkle in his eyes. "How's that
for Federalist doctrine as opposed to States' rights, Allison? I expect
to hear you saying, 'Almost thou persuadest me to be a Federalist,'
before Forrest is done with you."

"Well, I certainly never looked for such an interpretation of the law.
It has only been a bother, a nuisance, a senseless trammel upon us thus
far, interfering with all our business, breaking up our long-haul and
short-haul tariffs, requiring us to account practically to the
government for every penny we charge and almost every one we expend. Do
you mean this is the way the law is looked upon at head-quarters?" he
asked, glancing keenly at the soldier.

"I have no means of knowing how the general understands it," said Mr.
Forrest, simply. "The matter may be tested before we think possible. I
understand that the condition of these poor people at Pullman is getting
worse every day, and that there is wide-spread sympathy for them among
the wage-workers everywhere; and I don't wonder at it."

"Why, they've only themselves to blame, Forrest. They seem to have done
no laying up for a rainy day. They had good homes and good wages so
long as business boomed, and they have spent just as freely as they got
the money. Now there's no business for the company, no orders for cars,
not enough to keep them going. No man can expect a company to run its
business at a loss; and yet these people kick because they can't have
the same wages they were getting when work was brisk."

"Well, now, is that strictly so, Mr. Allison? I have talked with these
people. I have been told by them, quiet, conservative, well-informed
Pullman men, that they concede that the wages must come down, and that
all hands will have to retrench awhile until better times. They are
willing to do that and stand by their company. But, on the other hand,
they think, and I think, the company owes something to them. Here are
honest, capable, intelligent fellows who have served the company fifteen
and twenty years, have reared families within its walls, occupied its
houses, and paid its rents. They may not have saved, I admit, but they
have _served_ faithfully and long and well. They have never failed in
their obligation to the company, and prompt payment of wages is not the
only duty of a corporation to its people. The company is wealthy. It is
even declaring a dividend. None of its salaries have been cut down as a
consequence of the business depression. It has simply said to its
wage-workers, 'You alone are the ones to suffer. You and your families
and your cares and troubles are nothing to us. Here's the difference
between your last month's wages and your last month's rent. Next month
there'll be no wages to speak of, but we'll expect the rent all the
same.' In my opinion, that company is losing the chance of winning the
love and gratitude of thousands of men and women whose affection is
worth a good deal more than all the money they'll ever save this way. It
would have been an easy thing to say, 'We'll bear our share of the
burden. These are hard times, and we've had to cut down your wages until
the dawning of a better day; we'll cut the rents down, too."

"Forrest, that's Utopia," said Mr. Allison.

"I admit it, but I know something of these people, Mr. Allison. The past
year perhaps has done more to open my eyes than all those which have
preceded. I have seen something of the struggles, the self-denial, the
charity, the patience, the helpfulness, of the working classes. I have
learned a feeling of respect and sympathy for those who are the workers
that is exceeded only by the contempt I feel for the drones and for
those whom they hail as their advisers."

"Like our----, for instance," said Allison, uplifting his eyes as though
to include the study aloft.

"Well, I know less of him or his speeches, perhaps, except by vague
report, than of others who are prominent. They are preaching a doctrine
that can only make matters worse for the laborer. They counsel strike,
and forcible, riotous resistance to the employment of others. It can
lead only to tumult, to rioting that brings out the criminal and the
desperate classes; outrage results, and the sympathy they might have
received goes against them. Their very worst enemies are these men who
are posing as strike-leaders."

"Well, what do you think of the prospect? Does it look like an
outbreak?" asked Mr. Sloan.

"To me, yes, for every day makes the suffering worse at Pullman, and the
company refuses to hear of arbitration. From a purely business point of
view I cannot deny their right to do so, but the very attitude assumed
by the corporation makes many of the labor-leaders' accusations true.
The company has not contracts enough for new cars to keep all hands
employed on full time and full wages, perhaps. Many of its employees are
single men, comparatively new at the business; they can afford to be
frankly told to go elsewhere in search of work; but to hold everybody
while scaling the wages of all hands, month after month, down, down
until a family man cannot pay his rent and feed his children, then the
cord breaks. Just or unjust, the impression prevails among the railway
men everywhere I have been that the Pullman Company has made vast sums,
that it is about the only company not actually losing money now, and
that it is protecting itself through a bad year by heavily taxing its
people. There have been sympathetic strikes before; what if one should
be ordered now?"

"That's the enormity of the whole business," broke in Mr. Allison. "What
I wish could be done with our hands would be to have them regularly
enlisted for the work,--so many years unless sooner discharged,--just
like the soldiers, by Jove! Then when a man quit work it would be
desertion, and when he combined with others to strike it would be
mutiny. Ah, we'd have a railway service in this country then that would
beat the world."

Forrest smiled. "Rather too much like a standing army controlled by
corporation that would be; and a standing army is a luxury the
Constitution forbids even to sovereign States. Besides, would men enlist
in such a service?"

"Well, how do _you_ get them, then? The Lord knows you treat them worse
than we do."

"The Lord might believe that if he knew nothing but what the papers
say," answered Forrest, half laughing. "But in point of fact we don't
begin to work our men as you do, and we give them far more for their
work. Another thing: our workman knows just what he is going to get from
month to month, and he signs his contract to accept such bounty, pay,
rations, etc., as may be provided by law. No corporation can scale him
down ten, twenty, thirty, or fifty per cent. when times are hard; it
takes the Congress of his country to do that; and when, as once
happened, Congress did adjourn without appropriating a cent for our pay,
the whole army stood by its obligation, because it knew the people would
stand by it next term. That, by the way, was the year you railway men
had most urgent need of its aid,--'77. But," said Forrest, suddenly
starting to his feet, "here I have been inflicting a half-hour's
monologue, and--I had hoped to see Miss Allison."

"You have fed Allison some truths that will do him good, if he can only
digest them," said Mr. Sloan, whimsically, "and put me up to some things
I'm glad to hear. Was that what took you off so hurriedly and kept you
away so long,--investigating the feeling of the railway hands all over
the West?"

"No, indeed," said Forrest, promptly. "It was a very different thing."

"By the way, Forrest, that reminds me," said Allison, with a grin on his
face, as he touched his bell to summon the butler, "you've never told us
what did take you off, and my sister has been consumed with scandal or
something about it. She began at me this afternoon. I told her to apply
to you for particulars." _Bang_ again on the bell, also "Damn that
butler! He's never around after nine o'clock. I believe he goes to
sleep."

A quick step through the drawing-room and parlor. The folds of the
portière were drawn aside, and Elmendorf stood revealed. "The butler
stepped out a moment ago, sir. I met him at the front. Can I summon any
one else for you?"

Allison's face showed added annoyance. "No. Unless--at least---- Is Miss
Florence in the parlor?"

"Miss Allison some time since, sir, begged to be excused."

"Isn't she well?" asked Allison, looking at the tutor in some amaze.

"I cannot say as to that, sir. Miss Allison was in conversation with her
aunt awhile."

"Odd," said Allison, irritably. "These women are queer. Excuse me a
moment, will you?" And, rising, he left the room.

They felt, rather than heard, that he had gone up to make his own
inquiries. His voice presently was audible, growling in his sister's
boudoir. Elmendorf had disappeared and gone they knew not whither.

"Well, it's time for me to be off," said Sloan, consulting his watch,
"yet I don't want to leave without saying good-night."

"As for me, I have to go," said Forrest, "because of an engagement."

"Oh, you can go any time, as you merely dropped in to call on the
ladies; but I dined here. Now---- Excuse me, Mr. Forrest, I've only
known you a day or two, but you've interested me, so to speak. You stick
to Allison, and you'll be of infinite use to him in case of trouble
here. He gets off his base sometimes. Stick to him, my lad, and your
fortune's made."

Ten minutes later, when John Allison, with vexation and trouble on his
brow, came down to the library, his guests were gone. A few lines on a
card explained. Each had engagements. "No wonder," said Mrs. Lawrence,
joining him presently. "I know what his engagement is, and Mr. Forrest
seemed to know what was coming."

Impatiently, irritably, the master of the house turned away. "I want to
hear no more of this. Of course, if it's true, I shall know how to act.
I'll--I'll go to the library in the morning, early."

This he did, and apparently to some purpose, for when he saw Mr. Forrest
at the club at noon he turned his back upon him and moved quickly away.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XI.


During the week that followed, Mr. Elmendorf seemed to tread on air and
bask in sunshine and favoring breeze. When returning from the trip,
Allison had almost made up his mind to get rid of him. Now, while at the
bottom of his heart he felt that he liked, and suspected that he
trusted, him less than ever, Allison found himself powerless to carry
out his intention. In the first place, Cary was certainly behaving
better than he had behaved in long months before: Aunt Lawrence vouched
for that. She deplored only the fact that he seemed unable now to fix
his ambition on any other career than the army. Still, even doting and
distracted parents have been known to cherish such an ambition long
months at a time, and to stimulate it by promises of "working all
possible wires" to secure the much-desired cadetship. Then if it
couldn't be had they were just so much ahead: the boy had been weaned
from evil habits and associations through his longing to enter the army.
That he should have been disappointed at the last was through no fault
of theirs, even though it gave them secret joy. They were doubly the
gainers. Had the father stopped to think, he would perhaps have seen
that Cary's steadiness and studious ways were all due to this new and
consuming desire and to the advice of his friends at head-quarters; but
Allison had many cares and worries now, and could only thank heaven, and
perhaps, as Aunt Lawrence suggested, Elmendorf, that such reformation
had been achieved in his boy.

But never until the evening of his return had he seriously faced the
problem as to Forrest for a son-in-law. Only once or twice had he
vaguely asked himself if there was danger of Flo's falling in love with
him. With parental fondness he looked upon it as quite natural that
Forrest should fall in love with her, and with worldly wisdom thought it
more than probable that Forrest should desire to become possessed of so
many charms and concomitant stocks and bonds. All that made no serious
difference. Forrest might love and languish all he liked, if it was fun
for Flo. It never occurred to him that her father's daughter could fall
in love on her own account with a penniless lieutenant. But now he and
Aunt Lawrence had had a sharp talk. Florence was not to go down, said
she, and it was time her brother knew why. The child was infatuated with
a man unworthy of her from almost every point of view, yet who, while
paying her lover-like devotions, dared to slight her at times for
a--creature with whom he was maintaining relations that needed to be
promptly investigated and put an end to. He, that man Forrest, had dared
to send a note to Florence Allison excusing himself from dinner on the
plea of urgent work that had to be finished, and then was seen in a
public place supping with the low-bred person herself. Yes, since
Allison demanded to know, Mr. Elmendorf _was_ her informant. But ask
anybody at the Hotel Belmont, where the two brazenly appeared together
at the very hour Forrest was due here. It wasn't a block from the
library. Then ask the janitor of the Lambert who were there in the
private office afterwards, and, though he is here now, see if from here
Forrest does not go back to her, back to that same office where so often
they have been closeted before this. Mrs. Lawrence had been compelled,
she said, to open Florence's eyes as to this deceit and duplicity of her
lover, and naturally she had declined to go downstairs and receive him.
She did not say, however, that Florence had indignantly refused at first
to believe that there was anything wrong, had worked herself up into a
glorious passion of tears over the matter, and was looking like a fright
in consequence when, full twenty minutes after its arrival, Mrs.
Lawrence pushed Forrest's card under the locked door of her niece's
room. Elmendorf had slipped out twice during the evening, was in and out
like a flitting shadow, and on each return had brought Mrs. Lawrence
new and more significant tidings. Florence had bathed her face and done
all she could to make herself presentable, and was preparing to go down,
when informed that Forrest was gone. And later that night Mrs. Lawrence
deluged her, as she had her brother, with the details of Forrest's
scandalous doings.

Wells was out when Allison visited the library the following morning,
but the janitor was on hand to do reverence to the great director and
trustee. "Who was in the private office last night, Maloney?" said he,
sternly. And, distressed to think that anybody could suppose he'd allow
any one there who had no business, Maloney promptly answered, "Sure
nobody, sorr, barrin' Miss Wallen and Mr. Forrest. He come back twice
and took her home. Misther Elmendorf was here, sorr----" But Allison did
not wait to hear about him. Seated at her desk when he entered, Jenny
promptly arose in respect to the distinguished arrival, but he merely
growled an inquiry for Mr. Wells, looked her sharply over, and banged
out again, leaving the poor girl with vague sense of new trouble to add
to the weight of care she was already bearing. As he tramped away down
town, Allison told himself he was not sorry that he had so crushing a
piece of circumstantial evidence with which to demolish Forrest's
aspirations, yet down in the depths of his heart he knew he was sorry,
for he had grown to like him well. Just what course to pursue he had
not determined. He would see Wells, see the Hotel Belmont people, see
one or two parties referred to by Mr. Elmendorf as "highly respectable
and responsible" who could tell him far more in the same strain, then
see his brother trustees and dispose of Miss Wallen's case. Meantime,
Florence was kindly, affectionately urged not to see Mr. Forrest in the
event of his calling. And so Elmendorf's schemes were working grandly.
He could well afford now to let them seethe and bubble. He could hold
his peace and position at home, give renewed attention to those grander
projects for the elevation of the down-trodden and the down-treading of
the elevated, keep out of Forrest's way, and occupy himself in the
cultivation of his new acquaintance Major Cranston, in the enjoyment of
the privileges accorded him in Cranston's library, and in the incidental
conversion to the true political faith of those dyed-in-the-wool
devotees to Cranston's service,--iniquitous, feudalistic, slave-like
service Elmendorf deemed it,--old Sergeant McGrath, his better half, and
the nephew.

And while he was in the midst of this, came other helping hands.
Florence Allison's social friends were prompt to hear of her return and
of her bringing with her the objectionable aspirant, and were equally
prompt to call in eager shoals. Somewhere the impression had got abroad
that her army friend had been ordered off under a cloud, and, though no
one at head-quarters could explain it, many society people could, and
entirely to their own satisfaction. The men who knew Forrest liked him,
but few women seemed to know him at all. After standing a social siege
of some forty-eight hours, even Miss Allison's nerves gave way, and she
had to deny herself to callers. In the midst of the speculation and
sensation ensuing at the moment came the news that once more, suddenly
and without the faintest explanation, Mr. Forrest had left Chicago. "I
deeply regret your illness and that I was unable to see you to-day," he
wrote from the club to Miss Allison, "but I am ordered away on duty that
may cover several weeks, and have not a moment to spare. Tell Cary for
me that I will leave with my landlady the books I promised him. I would
urge his reading them carefully. With my regards to Mr. Allison and Mrs.
Lawrence, believe me, Yours faithfully." And this was only four days
after the luckless dinner. Florence ministered to the consuming
curiosity of her aunt and showed her the letter, but the
adjutant-general at head-quarters was less considerate; even society
reporters could extract from him no hint as to why or where Lieutenant
Forrest had gone. But that only served to stimulate conjecture and
suggestion; and, to gossips born, a little stimulant goes, like the
stories it sets afloat, long leagues beyond hope of recapture.

Then there were some lonely, anxious days for a pale-faced, slender,
sad-eyed girl who seemed to get no benefit from the bracing breezes, and
then, bursting suddenly from winter to summer, as is often the way with
our ill-ordered, turbulent, defiant, and generally indescribable
climate, came the first day of moisture-laden heat, depressing,
debilitating,--a day when the tide of his affairs swept Elmendorf from
his moorings at Cranston's and sent the freeholder thereof in search of
a stenographer,--the day when poor Jenny begged to be excused from
having even to write that detested name. And then speedily came the
long-threatened outbreak, the demand of the American Railway Union that
the public cease to patronize or the railway companies to run, no matter
what their contracts, the cars of the Pullman Company. "We've got 'em by
the throat at last," screamed Mart Wallen at Donnelly's Shades that
night. "This means that the people, the people of the whole nation, have
risen to down that damned old miser, and we'll make a clean sweep of
other misers while we're about it."

"We've got 'em foul," echoed with drunken hiccoughs the graceless nephew
Mrs. Mac and her sobered sergeant were dragging home between them, deaf
to the eloquence of Elmendorf haranguing the crowd in the open square
beyond. What was he saying?--"Stand firm, and the blood of the innocent
victims of the glorious appeal of seven years ago, the martyred lives
of the innocent men who died upon the scaffold, strangled in their
effort to speak for you and your children, not only will not have been
lost in vain, but soon shall be magnificently avenged. Oh, that it had
been my lot to lead you here in '86! God be thanked, it is my lot to
lead you now!"

"Oh, that ye had been here to lead in '86, ye howling lunatic," echoed
Mrs. Mac, shaking her one unoccupied fist at the glorified but luckily
distant face of the speaker; "yer only lot this night would have been in
the graveyard, for ye never would have lived to lead anything, barrin'
yer own funeral."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XII.


Then came a few days in which Elmendorf was in his glory. To be in a
position where he could command attention, where he could practically
compel people of all classes and conditions to be his listeners, to hang
upon his words and regard him as clothed with power backed by authority,
this was indeed joy and triumph new to him, though still far below the
dreams he had dreamed. Though not even a member of the great railway
union, not even possessing the confidence of its leaders, the fervor of
his speeches had won him favor and admitted him to their councils. Not
even tolerated for days at head-quarters, he suddenly reappeared there
with all the assurance of the past, and during the first forty-eight
hours of the memorable strike no one man in all Chicago seemed to carry
on his shoulders the weight of information, authority, and influence of
John Allison's whilom tutor, whose note of dismissal, unopened, awaited
him at the deserted study. To the officials of the American Railway
Union he represented himself as deep in the confidence of the officials
at military head-quarters, personally intimate with most of the staff,
and a man to whose warnings the general himself ever lent attentive ear.
To the adjutant-general and others in authority, the chief being still
away, he declared himself the envoy of the leaders of the strike, a man
empowered to levy war or compass peace. In both assumptions he was
impudent, yet not without support. What he craved was prominence,
notoriety, the fame, if not the fact, of being an arbiter in the
destinies of Chicago in this crisis of her history. From the Pullman to
the Leland, from inner dépôt to outlying freight-yards, from meetings to
municipal offices, he sped, never stopping for rest or refreshment.
Irascible officers at Springfield, receiving despatches signed
Elmendorf, put an H to his name and lopped it off at the neck. There
were two precincts he left unpenetrated,--the head-quarters of the
railway managers and those of the National Guard. Allison had made him
known at the one, his public utterances and persistent sneers at "the
militia boys," "our tin soldier boys," at the other. His appearance in
the armory of any regiment in the city would have been the signal for a
demonstration he had no desire to face. Through the newspaper offices,
too, he flitted, shedding oracular statement and prophecy, claiming to
speak "by the card" when he had news to tell, and preserving
mysterious, suggestive silence when questioned on matters whereof he
knew nothing.

Two days had the strike been in force. Switchmen, yardmen, firemen, had
quit their posts, and they or sympathizing gangs of toughs stoned and
cursed the men who took their places. Yard-masters and master-mechanics
leaped into the cabs and handled the levers of switch-engines;
white-handed clerks and electricians swung lanterns and coupled cars;
conductors turned switchmen, superintendents became conductors, and
managers stepped down to yard-masters; and still the mob, gaining in
numbers and wrath and villany with every hour, blackguarded the
trainmen, blockaded the trains, and bombarded with sticks and stones and
coupling-pins the few shrinking and terrified passengers. Trains
reaching the city were towed in with every pane smashed and their
inmates a mass of cuts and bruises. Trains due in the city and seized by
the strikers were side-tracked at desolate prairie stations miles from
food and water, and helpless, pleading women and children were penned up
in them and left to hunger and thirst and tremble. In vain the railway
officials pleaded with the city authorities for protection for
passengers and trains. "We have been watching everywhere; we've seen no
violence," was the answer. Policemen along the railway lines laughed and
looked on while, almost within swing of their clubs, strikers were
kicking a victim to death. In vain all appeals to the State. This was a
popular movement,--a poor man's protest against the tyranny of a
grasping monopolist,--The People _vs._ Pullman. Let the railways join in
and discard his cars, and all would be well. Contracts be damned! What
cared they for the law of contract when on the eve of revolution--and
election? Feigning to believe that the managers were merely pretending
that their roads were blocked, openly asserting that the managers could
run their trains if they really wanted to, and slyly intimating that all
the destruction thus far effected was at the hands of paid emissaries of
the managers themselves, officials of a great State and of a great city,
sworn to preserve peace and good order and enforce the laws, dared to
look idly on and trust the masses, to whom they betrayed the honor of
the commonwealth, for the vindication of a re-election. Within three
days of the start, passenger traffic, except on the two or three roads
in the hands of the Federal courts, was practically ended, freight
traffic paralyzed, and the great stock-yards were in the hands of a mob
of frantically rejoicing men. "Not one wheel shall turn in any yard in
all Chicago with the morrow's sun," said Elmendorf, slyly and jeeringly
exultant in the presence and hearing of officers and clerks at the
Pullman building late that night. "The managers have played their last
card, made their last bluff. The State and the city virtually tell them
that it is their own fight, with their own men, men whom they have
systematically browbeaten, bullied, swindled, and starved until now the
worm has turned. At last you see the beginning of the end, the dawn of
the glorious future, the rise of labor against capital, and your friends
the magnates have the option of ruin or surrender. I tell you,
gentlemen, three hundred thousand freemen will line those tracks at noon
to-morrow, and if their----" But the officers to whom he addressed
himself turned impatiently away. Clerks were passing to and fro along
the hall between the office of the adjutant-general and their desks.
Some powerful but subdued excitement pervaded the building. Watchers of
the strikers had noted the increasing number of officers in civilian
dress long after the usual business hours, and Elmendorf, quick to take
the alarm, had hastened thither to ferret out the cause. Vain his effort
to communicate with his one victim. He was at his desk, and a vigilant
ex-sergeant-major of cavalry scowled at the would-be intruder and told
him visitors could not enter the clerks' rooms. Vain his effort to
extract news along the corridors. No man seemed to know why so many of
them were there. Perplexed, he rushed back to his associates, the
strike-leaders. "Are you sure they're stanch at Springfield?" he asked;
"sure they haven't asked for aid from Washington?" The idea was laughed
to scorn.

"The governor is with us to the bitter end," was the loud boast of
prominent sympathizers, "and until he touches the button no power in or
out of Illinois can stand between us and victory. To-morrow we lock the
lines from Pittsburg to the Pacific."

Exultant, he sprang into a cab and drove to the north side. It was late
at night, but he had his latch-key. A bath, a few hours' rest, a change
of linen, and he would issue forth on the morrow refreshed, invigorated,
ready to launch his shallop on this tide in his affairs which, taken at
full flood, must lead to everlasting fame and fortune. Who would now
dare crush him with curt refusal to listen? Who would pooh-pooh his
prophecies, who deny his views, who withhold the homage due him now, as
he strode, agitator, elevator, inspirer, _Anax andrôn_,--King of
men,--the divinely appointed, heaven-anointed leader of mankind in this
sublime movement for liberty and the Lord only knew what else? It was
late, and the great house was dark, but he let himself in, and, seeking
first the butler's pantry, ransacked the larder for refreshment. He had
eaten and drunk his fill, when the electric bell called his eye to the
indicator. Some one at the street door. Humming softly his blithe tune,
he shuffled over the tiled pavement and unbolted the inner door. A
telegraph-boy handed him two messages, with a receipt-book and pencil.
"John Allison," was all he said.

"I don't think he's home," said Elmendorf. "Did you try the club?"

For answer the boy sleepily pointed with grimy finger to the address on
the envelope. Street and number were distinct.

"Well, just wait, youngster, and I'll see if he's in," said Elmendorf,
and trotted swiftly, noiselessly up-stairs. Mr. Allison's room was open,
the gas burning dimly at the toilet-table, but no one was there. Even as
he hesitated what to do, a door at the east end of the wide corridor
quietly opened, and a flood of light from Miss Allison's boudoir shot
across the darkness. Elmendorf heard the soft rustle of silken folds,
and hastened towards the light. Florence stood there at the door-way in
some rich wrap of a pale, delicate shade of pink. Billows of creamy lace
broke away from the shoulders and down along the entire front. The short
elbow-sleeves seemed to burst into creamy foam, while a band of sable
fur encircled and contrasted with the pure white throat, and was caught
at the back by a knot of ribbon. It was one of her Parisian purchases, a
modern conceit, something she never wore except in her own room or Aunt
Lawrence's, but Elmendorf looked upon her with a glow of admiration in
his keen, eager eyes that even in her hour of anxiety and fatigue she
could not fail to notice and resent.

"If you have messages for my father, I will take charge of them," she
simply said.

"Er--pardon me. I was about to offer my services, Miss Allison, as these
may be immediate. If you will tell me where Mr. Allison is to be
found----"

"I will not trouble you," she answered, coldly, and the plump white
hand, extended for the messages, was the only thing about her that did
not seem to turn from him in dislike.

Flushed with the triumph of the two days gone, intoxicated, possibly, by
the dreams of his own dawning greatness, Elmendorf refused to accept
rebuff. Who was she to treat with scorn the man whose merest word now
could move a million stalwarts! "You must pardon me, Miss Allison," he
answered, with emphasis. "I am not here in the capacity of a menial in
the household. The events of the past few days have conspired to make me
a factor in affairs, with power and influence far exceeding that wielded
by my late employer. Furthermore, I should see him, or rather he should
seek to see me, within the next few hours, unless he has resigned
himself to the crash which must involve all he holds priceless in
business and may even involve all he holds precious here."

"May I trouble you for those despatches, Mr. Elmendorf?" she asked,
wearily, almost disgustedly.

Elmendorf flushed with wounded vanity. "The despatches are yours," he
said, bowing with marked reverence. "But, as this may be my last
opportunity of speaking to you in some days, I have that to say which I
urge you for your own sake, your brother's sake, your father's sake, to
hear and heed. On many occasions I have conscientiously striven to point
out to your honored, if somewhat opinionated, sire the injustice, indeed
I may say the brutality, of the views he so openly expresses towards the
labor class. He has not received my advice in the kindly spirit in which
it was offered, but, as possibly you know, matters have come to a
climax, and such is the gravity of the situation that not only is his
property in jeopardy, but his life. Nay, I know you have not forgiven me
for words spoken only through motives of the most loyal and honorable
devotion to your best interests. I see this bores you; but, Miss
Allison, let me say to you in so many words that if the P.Q. & R. road
persists in its refusal to restore those trainmen who were discharged
yesterday for side-tracking a Pullman car at Grand Crossing, your
father's life may be the forfeit."

[Illustration: "May I trouble you for those despatches, Mr. Elmendorf?"]

"And yet the strike-leaders declare there is no violence, and that the
strikers will commit none," she said, wearily.

"That was the spirit with which they entered upon this controversy; but
when the managers persisted in hiring men to fill their places, and even
dared to discharge employees for no worse crime than sympathy with their
own brothers, even they who have listened to and obeyed me in the past
murmur and threaten now. It will take my uttermost--as it shall be my
sweetest--effort to stand between you and harm----"

But here the pink corded silk swished disdainfully about, its Watteau
pleat flashed out of sight through the door-day, and that portal was
slammed in the speaker's face. The mover of multitudes found himself
alone in the darkened hall, snubbed and wrathful. Cary's room was just
above, and the tutor smiled sardonically as, peering in there, he saw
the boy lying half dressed upon his bed, covered by a Navajo blanket
that Forrest had given him on his birthday, a revolver on the chair. A
moment later, in his own room, he found pinned on his toilet-table a
note addressed in Allison's well-known hand. It was a curt dismissal
from his service, subject to the stipulated "one month's notice," and an
intimation that in the interim his services and his presence could both
be dispensed with. No reason was assigned, though the teeming columns of
the press contained reason more than enough.

"Turned out like a dog," he snarled. "Let us see what they'll say in the
morning."

And then he started and listened, for down on the floor below, light
hurried foot-falls sped along the corridor. It was Florence hastening to
her father's room. Stealthily Elmendorf sprang to the landing without,
leaned over the balustrade, and bent his ear. He heard the unmistakable
r-r-r-r-ing of the telephone bell,--Allison's own room, too. Then he had
had to yield one pet prejudice at least as a result of the wide-spread
influence of the strike. "He'll have to yield to more than that," said
Elmendorf.

"Give me 332,--quick, please," he heard her call, her voice tremulous
with excitement. That was not Allison's office; that was not the club
nor the managers' association. Where then was he? What scheme was afoot?
Hist! "Is that the superintendent's office P.Q. & R.?" she asked, "Is
Mr. Allison there--Mr. John Allison? No? Where? Down at the dépôt?
Please send for him at once to come to the 'phone. Say his daughter has
despatches for him of the utmost importance. Yes, I'll hold the line."

Silence for a long, long minute. Elmendorf could hear his heart thumping
loud. What on earth could Allison be doing at the dépôt of the P.Q. & R.
at one in the morning? The tracks of the road in a dozen places between
the station and the suburbs were piled high with wrecked freight-cars at
nine o'clock. The beautiful Silver Special, scheduled to leave each
night at eleven-thirty, had been stalled there since the strike began,
yet rumor had it that the management meant to launch it southwestward,
mails, express, buffet, chair-car, and sleepers complete, if they had to
cram its roofs and platforms with deputies armed with Winchesters.
Could it be that already wrecking-trains were clearing a passage, and
that this hated train, the reddest rag that could be flaunted in the
face of the raging bull of the strike, was to burst the blockade and
cover the strikers with derision? Perish all thought of sleep or change
of linen! That station was a long three miles away, but he could get
there, and to the haunts of the strikers farther beyond. But first he
must hear the purport of those despatches. Now--her voice again!

"Yes. What is it? Oh, papa? Can you hear me?--distinctly? Then listen.
Here are two despatches, the first from Washington--Wait! I must close
the door----" Bang! And then came only muffled and inarticulate sound.

Down the winding stairs he sped and knelt at Allison's door. Oh, wise
young daughter! not only that, but the inner, the closet door, was shut.
No time for squeamishness this. Noiselessly turning the knob, he
stealthily entered and tiptoed to the closet just in time to catch these
words:

"Entire system will be tied up. Trainmen cannot face such assaults."

"Did you hear? Yes? They were handed Mr. Elmendorf at the door ten
minutes--What? Certainly. He came in after midnight. Yes--At least I
think he is--He went up to his room--Don't let him get what?--the
contents? the despatches? Certainly not. Who will come for them? Why?
Aren't you ever coming home? Oh, papa, do be careful! You've no idea of
the wild things that--that fellow said. What? The Silver Special going
out in an hour--Oh, goody!"

But Elmendorf did not stop to hear more. Slinking away, he sped down the
stairway, and in another moment was hastening southward through the
starlit summer night.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XIII.


Down in the southwestward district of the far-spreading city a howling
mob of half-drunken men, women, and street-boys had surged through the
freight-yards of a great railway company, and, first looting the
contents, were now setting fire to the cars. Here and there along the
glistening lines on which ordinarily sped the swift express or suburban
trains were toppled now bulky brown boxes, with their greasy, dripping
trucks protruding in air. At adjacent street-corners helmeted policemen,
idly swinging their clubs behind them, looked on and laughed. Where at
sundown the previous day perhaps a thousand angry-looking men and women
had hovered, menacing, above the great crossing of the Central and the
P.Q. & R., ten thousand furies now seemed loose. The triumphant boast of
the strike-leaders that not a wheel should turn on Allison's road had
been laughed to scorn. Not only had Allison, with a force of deputies
and loyal trainmen, cleared his tracks at midnight and sent the famous
Silver Special, full panoplied, on its way, but the armed deputies that
took it to the county line brought in under cover of their Winchesters
and the darkness of early morning three side-tracked trains from the far
West.

And now indeed was there raging and gnashing of teeth. Men thus braved
and thwarted turned to fiends. The sun was not an hour high when the
emissaries of the Railway Union were haranguing the people all along
these outlying districts. The striking railway-men themselves were
redoubling their pleadings with the men who had stood firm, and from
pleadings turned to threats. By eight o'clock the flames were shooting
high from scores of cars, and under the fierce heat rails were warping
and twisting. At half a dozen points the city firemen, gallant fellows,
everybody's friends and defenders, loyal to their duty, had dashed up
with their hose, only to be furiously assaulted and beaten back. And
still the police looked on and laughed. "Like a thief in the night,"
screamed Elmendorf to his audience of strikers and rioters, "the P.Q. &
R. has stolen its trains,--sneaked out its fell purpose. In the hours of
rest and slumber, when honest men, brave men, worthy men, seek their
pillows and the sanctity of their homes, these despoilers of the poor,
these tyrants of a confiding people, conspiring together and corrupting
with infamous gold the brethren who have betrayed us, reckless of their
pledges, false to their promises--when were they ever else?--have
succeeded in running two or three trains through the blockade. Now it
remains with you to say how long, how great shall be their triumph.
Summon from far and near your manhood and your strength. Call to action
every man with a man's heart and a man's arm. See to it that none but
stalwarts go on guard to-night or from this time forth, and be ready to
act when the sun climbs high. Be ready, I say, for noon shall bring you
tidings to make each heart bound in its seat. Be ready, a million strong
if need be, to force your ultimatum down these managerial throats."

Mad with excitement and nervous strain seemed Elmendorf. From point to
point his cab was dashing. He had slept but such catnaps as he could
catch when whirling from one part of the city to another. It was he who
rushed in to announce to the strike-leaders the astounding fact that,
despite his efforts, the P. Q. & R. had pushed out the Silver Special,
and was chagrined to find they knew all about it. It galled him through
the night to realize that, every time he drove with tidings to anybody
else, somebody was sure to be previously informed. He had left Allison's
home to hasten to a point three miles distant to rouse the strikers with
warnings of the proposed sending out of the train, only to find that in
that as in everything else he was too late. With sympathizing spies and
friends in every nook and corner, how could it be otherwise? Yet
Elmendorf could never divest himself of the idea that without him to
warn, advise, or control, chaos would come again. The strikers and their
sympathetic mob of toughs had become dispersed during the night, and
could not in time be reassembled in sufficient force to oppose
successfully all those armed deputies. That was how the road was opened.

But it was closed now, and others, despite the injunctions of United
States courts and the efforts of the Federal officials, found it
practically useless to attempt to force even the mail trains through the
rioting districts. Such was the peril to life and limb that trained
engineers and firemen refused to serve, and those who dared were in some
cases kicked and beaten into pulp. "Damn the United States courts!" said
the mob. "Injunctions don't go here!" And so in vastly augmented numbers
and in fury that vented itself in wrecking miles and miles of railway
property, the mob was reopening the day. "They'll pay for last night's
trick," said an official of the Railway Union, smilingly announcing
another distant road tied up. "There's a higher power in the land than
even the United States courts, and to-night they'll come to any terms we
dictate." And he added, significantly, "Terms are already being
dictated."

A messenger entered at the moment. "Mr. Allison isn't at the office, and
they don't know where he is. He slept awhile and breakfasted at the
club, but left there half an hour ago."

"This is a matter in which probably I can be of more avail than any one
else," promptly said the ubiquitous Elmendorf. "My personal acquaintance
with the gentleman and his family may, and doubtless will, enable me to
give more weight to your dictum than it might otherwise bear. Then, too,
I may reasonably hope to influence him to agree to the proposed terms
and render further harsh measures unnecessary."

The leaders eyed one another and hesitated. Already had they begun to
see that Elmendorf assumed much more than he carried. But no one could
gainsay his eagerness and devotion to the cause. Red-eyed, sleepless,
pallid, he was yet here, eager to devote more hours of effort to the
good cause. At all events, it would get him out of the way for a time,
and he was becoming too prevalent.

"Oh, very well; if you think you can find him, Mr. Elmendorf, and obtain
his written assurance that no further attempt will be made to run a
train on the P.Q. & R., there's no objection. The brotherhood of Railway
Trainmen stands ready and eager to back us, and if we call it out the
managers are simply crushed."

And so, delighted, Elmendorf whisked away on this new mission.

Mr. Allison was not at home, such was the answer by telephone, in the
silvery tones he knew so well.

"Then may I ask you to await my coming, Miss Allison?" said he. "I am
charged with matters of the utmost consequence to him and to his. I will
be there just as fast as a cab can carry me."

The reply was not assuring, but he went, and she waited. Indeed, the
girl was waiting anxiously for her father's return. Squads of
workingmen, passing the house, had shaken their fists at it and cursed
its occupants. The morning wind, sweeping eastward from the lumber-yards
along the North Branch, bore ominous sounds of tumult and uproar even so
far from the great railway properties. Elmendorf bade his cabman wait,
and rang at the bell. The tutor could let himself in with his latch-key:
the envoy of five-hundred thousand embattled freemen very properly sent
his card to the magnate's daughter, and presently she appeared.
Sleepless nights and sorrowing days had begun to play havoc with that
fair complexion, and Florence Allison's feminine friends could not have
failed to remark upon it.

But in the shrouded light of the south parlor these defects were but
faintly visible. Elmendorf was pacing nervously up and down, as was his
wont when deeply moved, and Miss Allison entered so quietly that he did
not hear her, and became conscious of her presence on his return trip
from the east window only in time to avert collision. "I beg pardon,"
he stammered; "I was so deep in thought. Miss Allison, permit me." And
he brought forward a chair.

"Thank you, no. It can hardly take that long."

"As you will," he replied, with shrugging shoulders. "Yet I protest I
deserve less arrogance of manner. Listen to me," he continued, coming
impetuously towards her, whereon she coldly recoiled a pace or two.
"From the heat and fury of the battle I have come here once more to
attest my devotion, my loyalty, to the interests of those under whose
roof I have at least found temporary shelter, if not a home and friends.
I come to you clothed with power to speak and to act, turning from
public duties, abandoning against their protest the control of thousands
of fellow-creatures who lean on me for guidance in this crisis of their
lives. On every side this morning I have heard invective, execration,
denunciation, threats of the most summary vengeance hurled against your
father's name. I tell you, not only does he stand in peril of his life,
but that this household, even you--you, so fair, so gentle, so
delicate--may at any moment become the prey of a populace as frenzied as
ever dragged to the guillotine the shrieking beauties of the Court of
France. Miss Allison, whatsoever may be the injustice with which your
father has treated me, it sinks into nothingness in comparison with my
sense of the peril that threatens you. I am charged with a mission of
most sacred character. I am the envoy of the masses, sent to present
their last plea to the man. You know where he is: my carriage is at the
door: as you would save him and save yourself, I adjure you to accompany
me at once and add your prayers to mine to bend his obdurate heart. Nay,
Florence, I implore----"

But Miss Allison had darted back, a fine flush mounting to her forehead
at the climax of his impassioned address. She had faint appreciation of
histrionics.

"Mr. Elmendorf, I think you're simply crazy," was her eminently
practical way of putting an end to the address. "If you wish to see
pa--my father, you'll find him at the managers' office at half-past ten,
or if you hurry you may catch him at the Lambert." And then she would
have turned; but he sprang to her.

"How can you treat me with disdain?" he said. "Because I have been poor,
is that reason why I may not one day be rolling in wealth? Number you
among your friends my superior in education, in intellect? Is it in the
ranks of these empty-headed officers or these brainless, vapid sons of
vice and luxury that make up the men of your social circle, you are to
be mated? I tell you that this movement means revolution, that within
this very week the long-oppressed people shall be paramount, and we who
reap shall rule. I have long seen it coming, long foretold and long been
ridiculed, but now the hour, ay, the hour and the man have come. Already
I have saved you from the dishonor of alliance with---- Nay, you must
listen," for, with infinite disgust upon her face, she turned angrily
away. But, as she would not listen, he sprang forward and seized her
wrists. "Florence," he cried, "I----"

And then her voice re-echoed through the hall. "Cary!" she screamed, and
far aloft there was a shout of "Coming!" and, six steps at a bound, that
exuberant specimen of Young America came thundering down the broad
spiral of the stairway. The portentous butler, too, hove suddenly in
sight. Elmendorf dropped the subject--and her wrist, whisked his hat off
the hall table, and was out of the house and into his cab before the
wrathful brother could reach him.

Not until cabby had driven blindly for six blocks did Elmendorf poke his
cane through the trap and bid him speed for the Lambert. A carriage
stood at the private entrance, and the driver said it was Mr. Allison's.
The anteroom was open; the glazed doors to the private office were
closed, but excited voices arose from within. He recognized Allison's,
Wells's, and that of the chairman of the board of trustees, in hot
altercation. The chairman seemed siding with Wells, which added to
Allison's wrath, and he wound up with an explosion:

"I've given you more than reason enough. She has been shut up here alone
with him time and again at night; she has been seen going to his rooms
long after dark; she has been seen walking or driving with him as late
as midnight; and the very evening he is due at a gentleman's house at
dinner he sends 'urgent business' as his plea, and is found supping
alone with her at the Belmont. If she stays, I resign."

"And I answer," thundered Wells, "that that girl's as pure-hearted a
woman as ever lived. She has been shut up here with me time and again,
working at my letters until late at night; she has been to my rooms a
dozen times to leave her finished work on her homeward way; she has been
seen, or could have been seen, walking or driving with me late at night,
for I'm proud to say I've taken her home instead of letting her go it
alone in the rain; and as for the Belmont, it's the nearest and neatest
restaurant I know of, and a dozen times when we had work to be finished
in a hurry have I taken her, as Mr. Forrest did, to have her cup of tea
there, instead of letting her tramp two miles to get it at home. I'm a
married man, and he isn't; that's the only difference. You say if she
stays, you resign. All right, Mr. Allison. If she goes, I go."

And then upon this stormy scene entered Elmendorf, the blessed, the
peacemaker.

"It would be idle to assume ignorance of the subject of this
conference," he began, before any one had sufficiently recovered from
surprise to head him off, "and, as it is audible throughout this portion
of the building, I could not but hear and be attracted by it. I am here,
as ever, to take the side of the oppressed, and to say that should that
young woman be punished thus summarily for her--indiscretions, I shall
consider it my duty to make public certain circumstances in connection
with the case, notably Mr. Forrest's relations with certain families in
our midst, that may prove unpleasant reading."

"Enough of this, Mr. Elmendorf," began Wells, angrily. "This young
woman, as you term her, is not to be summarily punished, because she has
done nothing to deserve it, and despite every sneaking endeavor on your
part to cloud her good name. And now, like the double-dealing cad you
are, you come here posing as her defender. She needs none, by God, as
long as my wife and I are left in the land; and I would trust her cause
with Mr. Allison himself at any other time than now, when he is
overstrained and worn out.--Miss Wallen is at home," he continued,
addressing himself to the two trustees, "owing, she explains, to her
mother's severe illness. She, too, is far from well. She has been
looking badly for weeks. I was going up there to see what I could do for
her, when surprised by this visit. Mr. Waldo, as president of the board
of trustees you may understand that I declare these allegations against
Miss Wallen to be utterly, brutally unjust, and that I protest against
the action proposed by Mr. Allison. Most unfortunately our talk has been
overheard by the man whom of all others I distrust in this connection."

"What business have you here, Mr. Elmendorf, anyway?" said Allison,
glowering angrily. "I have forbidden you my doors, yet you follow me."

"My business is with you, sir, not as a suppliant pleading for mercy, as
you seem to think, but as the representative of a great people demanding
immediate answer to their----"

"What? Why, you meddling, insignificant----" scowled Allison, gripping
his cane as though eager to use it.

"Spare your insults and your cane, Mr. Allison. Our relative positions
have been utterly reversed in the last forty-eight hours. At this moment
there is a clamor for your downfall in the throats of three hundred
thousand toil-worn, honest laboring men. Between their victim and their
vengeance no State, no municipal authority will interpose a hand. Last
night, false to your promises to the Brotherhood of Trainmen, you sent
strong bodies of armed men to terrorize the few strikers gathered in the
effort to establish their just claims. You broke their blockade, ran
your trains in and out, and indulged in insolent triumph before the
people in the morning press. At this moment within easy range of your
palatial home ten thousand determined men are assembled, awaiting the
word. Once launched upon their work, not one stone of your railway
buildings, not a shingle on the roofs of your elevators, not one brick
in the walls of your homestead, will be left to show where once they
stood. Only my appeals, only my urgent counsels, have thus far
restrained them. What will be the consequences if you refuse to listen
God alone can tell. Despite my personal wrongs, I have come to you as
mediator, deprecating riots and destruction. All the Union asks of you,
all I implore you to do is to sign a written promise that until such
time as this unhappy controversy be settled the railway company of which
you are the virtual head will make no further attempt to move a single
train."

Allison's face was a sight to see, purpling with wrath and amaze, yet
quivering with sense of the wild absurdity of the situation. Glancing
from one to another, portly Mr. Waldo stood uneasily by. He believed
some escaped lunatic had invaded the Lambert. Even Wells, who had known
Elmendorf for months, seemed unprepared for the sublimity of this
flight. He turned away towards the window to let them settle it between
them. At last Allison spoke, with exaggerated calm:

"And if I refuse this modest request, what am I to expect as the
consequence?"

"The immediate consequence will be the calling out at noon to-day of the
Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen and the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers, thus tying up every road in the country, to be followed
to-morrow by similar action on the part of the Knights of Labor,
involving every industry in the land and turning millions of idle men
loose upon our streets. What will stand between you, your hoarded
wealth, and your cherished ones--your lives--and the wild vengeance of a
long oppressed and starving populace, I leave you to imagine."

"And you actually expect me to believe this trash,--expect me to believe
that the State of Illinois will stand idly by and see----"

"The governor of Illinois," interrupted Elmendorf, "has refused to
interfere. His heart beats in sympathy with that of his people. He knows
their wrongs. He has dared to say that never by his call shall sabre or
bayonet be used to intimidate the workingman in the effort to secure his
rights. The blood of the martyred men you hanged eight years ago as
Anarchists cries aloud for vengeance, and the day of the people has come
at last. They govern the governor; _they_ are the legislature of
Illinois, and when they rise no power on earth can save you."

But Wells could stand it no longer. He was fuming at the great window
overlooking the street, and now burst impetuously into speech. "No power
on earth, you absurd lunatic? do you mean that because this State has a
crank like you temporarily at the top there's nothing beyond or behind
it to save us from pillage and murder and anarchy? Listen to that, you
foreign-born fraud!" and far up the street the morning air was ringing
with shouts of acclaim; "listen to that! There's some American music for
you, you half-witted, stall-fed socialist!" For loud and clear a
trumpet-call echoed down the thoroughfare. "Look at that!" he cried,
throwing aside the lower shutters, "look at that, you mad-brained,
moon-blinded dreamer!"

And there, covering the space almost from curb to curb, a squadron of
regular cavalry came sweeping down the avenue, the guidons fluttering
over the uniforms of dusty blue, the drab campaign hats shading the
stern, soldierly faces, the grim cartridge-belts bulging with copper and
lead, the ugly little brown barkers of carbines and revolvers peeping
from their holsters. Troop after troop, they swung steadily by, the guns
of a light battery following close at their heels. "No power on earth!"
persisted the incensed man of books. "You stuffed owl! Go back to your
mobs and murderers, and when you've told them what you've seen, keep
going until you get back out of this to the country where such as you
belong,--if there is one on earth that'll own you,--and tell them the
United States is a government, a _Nation_,--by the Eternal! and don't
you dare forget it again." And, stupefied, thunderstruck, Elmendorf
turned and fled.

"But this is invasion! this is treason!" he gasped, as he bolted madly
from the room.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XIV.


And these were but the advanced guard of the little army of regulars
that, welcomed with glad acclaim by every law-abiding, order-loving
citizen, came pouring into Chicago all through that day and for some
days that followed, their very presence bringing assurance of peace and
safety to thousands and thousands of anxious householders, and confusion
and dismay to the leaders of the mob. Believing as had these latter
that, despite the vast and valuable Federal properties in the heart of
the city, despite the fact that some of the railways involved were at
that very moment under the wing of the Federal courts, despite the laws
of the general government affecting the working and management of every
one of over a dozen great trunk lines centring in Chicago, Uncle Sam
would be ass enough to confide them all to the care of State authorities
notoriously dependent upon the masses, and that he would not venture to
protect his property, sustain his courts, enforce his laws, demand and
command respect and subordination, or even venture upon his own, except
at the invitation and permission of a hesitant State government, there
had been little short of triumph and exultation in the camp of the
American Railway Union until this fatal July morning. Now their wrath
was frantic.

And Elmendorf was madder than ever. The general and his staff reappeared
in the midst of the concentration. Their coming was announced. After
vainly haranguing the stolid officials at head-quarters upon the
enormity of their conduct in declining to see the fearful blunder made
by their President and commander-in-chief, after attempting to harangue
a battalion of dusty infantry in the vague hope that, inspired by his
eloquence, they might do something the enlisted men of the United States
never yet have done, no matter what the temptation,--revolt against
their government and join the army of the new revolution,--and being
induced to desist only when summarily told to "Go on out of that!
or----" while a bayonet supplied the ellipsis, poor Elmendorf flew to
the station, to be the first to meet the general on his return and to
open his eyes to a proper conception of law, order, and soldierly duty.
Even here those minions from head-quarters were ahead of him. Three or
four officers were already on the spot awaiting their chief, and
Elmendorf felt convinced that they had come solely to prevent his
getting the ear of the commander. Even as they waited and a curious
crowd began to gather, numbers of strike sympathizers among them, down
the broad steps from the street above came the tramp, tramp of martial
feet, and in solid column of fours, in full marching order, every man a
walking arsenal of ball cartridges, a battalion of infantry filed
sturdily into the grimy train-shed, formed line, facing the murmuring
crowd, and then stood there in composed silence "at ease." Then the
little knot of staff-officers and newspaper men was presently joined by
Lieutenant-Colonel Kenyon, commanding the --th Infantry, one battalion
of which had just taken position as indicated; and to him came others,
officers of the battalion. Again did Elmendorf raise his voice in appeal
for the rights of his fellow-men.

"Colonel Kenyon," he declaimed, his shrill tones distinctly audible
above the hoarse murmur of voices in the rapidly augmenting throng, "you
have been so considerate as to listen to a humble outsider before this,
and to express appreciation of some, at least, of the views I have felt
constrained to express. You are, as I understand, the commanding officer
of the regiment that has just arrived in this city. You are an officer
sworn to maintain the Constitution of the United States; and is not your
very presence here--you and your men--in glaring violation of that
Constitution?"

Here the few officers who had joined their commander, all strangers to
Elmendorf, turned upon him in astonishment. The newspaper men chuckled
and nudged each other companionably. Some of the staff turned away,
plainly indicating that they had already had to listen to too much of
that sort of thing. Kenyon looked him curiously over.

"Mr. Elmendorf, do you ask that question in your sober senses, or only
as a jocular reminder? Those identical words were addressed to me by an
irate gentleman in Virginia in '62." So far from being irritated, old
Kenyon seemed to find amusement in drawing his interlocutor out.

"Ah, but, my dear sir, there the whole State--the whole South--was in
armed rebellion against the Federal government. Here is neither
insurrection nor rebellion. Here, honest, law-abiding, patriotic men, as
loyal to the Union of States as ever you could be, are exerting their
prerogative as men, their rights as citizens, to obtain justice for
themselves and their brethren at the hands of a defiant and oppressive
monopoly. They have done no wrong, violated no law, and yet here you
come with bayonets and ball cartridges to intimidate, if not to shoot
down in cold blood, husbands and fathers and peaceable citizens who are
only pleading for justice at the hands of their employers."

"Some mistake here, Mr. Elmendorf. Your leaders have already declared it
a rebellion. The husbands and fathers we are here to look after are the
amiable parties who stove in our car-windows and soaped our rails and
let drive such pygmy projectiles as coupling-pins, a wild switch engine
or two, and blazing freight-cars at us as we came in awhile ago."

"Our people are in no wise connected with that," cried Elmendorf. "All
this alleged violence is the work of lawless classes whom we cannot
control, or of the emissaries of the railways themselves. It has been
grossly and purposely exaggerated."

"Oh! Then all this rioting is done by outsiders, not by your friends the
strikers, who heartily condemn the whole business, do they?"

"Most assuredly. We have forbidden violence in any and every form."

"I see. And yet the rabble and the railway folks have insisted on it.
Well, now, how grateful you ought to be to the President for ordering us
here to help you suppress them! Really, Mr. Elmendorf, I am glad to find
we are on the same side of this question, after all." But here a shout
of laughter drowned Kenyon's words and drove Elmendorf frantic.

"You don't understand," he almost shrieked. "It is our people who are
intimidated,--beaten back in the moment of victory." And then some of
the crowd, now thronging the open space in front of the battalion, began
to cheer. A man pushed through, handed Kenyon a telegram, and whispered
a few words in his ear. Kenyon glanced quickly around upon the
multitude now surging close about the group, and stepped back a few
paces to read his despatch. Elmendorf followed, eager to resume his
harangue. Kenyon uplifted his hand. "Pardon me now, Mr. Elmendorf. I
have business to attend to." But Elmendorf was wild with excitement and
wrath. He had been laughed at,--he, the mover of millions. Here were
already a thousand fellow-citizens at his back, and more coming. From
the freight-yards up and down the tracks, from the docks, the elevators,
the neighboring saloons, they were swarming to the scene. There in
double rank stood the four compact little companies of regulars in the
business-like rig of blue and brown, resting on their arms, chatting in
low tones, or calmly surveying from under the broad hat-brims the
gathering crowd. To their right and left, up and down the long vista of
train-sheds, letting themselves down from overarching bridges, or
pushing boldly past the feeble railway police, hundreds of tough-looking
citizens were slowly closing in. Back of the battalion, separated from
it by only two tracks, were long files of passenger and Pullman cars,
behind which and on whose platforms, in knots of half a dozen, other men
were gathering. It was the general superintendent of the road who had
spoken to Kenyon and was now exchanging a few words with the chief
quartermaster of the department. Dozens in the crowd pushed forward
instantly, newspaper men as a matter of business, others from
curiosity, as Kenyon opened his despatch. A burly, gray-haired major was
quickly at his side, and a tall young subaltern, the adjutant of the
regiment. One brief glance over the paper, and the commander turned to
his right. "Clear the station," was all he said. Major Cross touched his
hat, an eager light shooting across his frank, soldierly face, and
strode quickly back to the line. A mere gesture brought the four company
commanders to him. Not a dozen words were spoken, but in an instant the
swords of the officers leaped from their scabbards, and then, obeying
some low-toned commands, the right and left flank companies, simply
lifting their rifle-butts, enough to clear the ground, changed front to
right and left respectively, thus bringing them facing the outer ends of
the train-sheds. About a dozen men, led by a sergeant, broke suddenly
away from the eastward flank of each of the two companies thus moved,
and, without so much as an audible word, scattered away to the
passenger-cars, covering a hundred yards of their length in a dozen
seconds. Then under the cars dove some of the lot, up the steps sprang
others, and away before them scattered the intruders. A long brick wall
hemmed the yards in at the eastern side, and there, dividing into two
parties in the same prompt, business-like way, the squads drove before
them north or south every one of the late lookers-on, some grinning,
some scowling and swearing, some remonstrating, but all going. Up from
the throats of the dense throng in front of the battalion went a chorus
of jeers and laughter. It is always fun to one part of a street crowd to
see some other part of it, especially if it occupied a better point of
view, driven from its enviable ground. The moment the space behind their
new alignment was thus cleared, the flank companies each threw forward
another squad of eight, which, promptly shaking itself out into a long
thin rank and fixing bayonet as it went, marched straight at the thin
crowds which had entered the station along the right of way. A solid
platoon followed in support, and in less time than it takes to tell it
the populace was on the move.

Then came the turn of the centre companies; and here a very different
problem presented itself. Leading up to the street was one broad
stairway in the middle of the great depot building, and one, somewhat
narrower, a hundred feet farther north, next to the baggage-rooms.
Between the tracks and the offices on this floor, enclosing a space
perhaps a hundred yards in length by ten in breadth, was a high iron
fence, pierced here and there with little turnstile gates, now closed,
and by three or four rolling gates, the main or centre one of which
stood open. This was directly opposite the broad stairway. It was this
through which the battalion had marched, the newspaper men and officials
had followed, and the crowd had speedily bulged. No good would result
from shoving back this protruding swarm of curious or combative
citizens, for the space behind the bars was packed solid. The crowd
began to grin and exchange jocular remarks. It would take a long time to
squeeze them back through the stairway, and meanwhile they could have
lots of fun, and Elmendorf a chance for a speech, so they began to shout
for him. He was still squeaking and gesticulating about the knot of
newspaper men and staff-officers, but Kenyon, climbing on a
baggage-truck, was calmly looking over the sea of upturned and often
leeringly impudent faces beyond the grating. Then he called Major Cross
to his side, and together they looked it over.

The crowd began to wax facetious. They knew the soldiers wouldn't shoot
so long as they were not shooting. They knew they wouldn't prod with
their bayonets men who manifestly couldn't get back. They thought they
had the regulars, in fine, where they couldn't do a blessed thing unless
the police would come and pull the crowd out from behind, and the police
were not interfering with the populace just then. An American street
crowd is gifted with a fine sense of humor, and the sight of these two
veteran officers perched on a baggage-truck and reconnoitring their
ground was full of suggestion. "Don't jump on us, major: we couldn't
stand them feet!" shouted one jovial tough. "A speech from
Old-Man-Afraid-Of-His-Dignity!" sang out a second. The gang guffawed,
and the officers went on with their conference utterly unmoved, deaf,
apparently, to the salutations. Then Kenyon climbed down and said a word
to the superintendent, who nodded appreciatively. The adjutant went one
way, the regimental quartermaster the other. Each took half a dozen men
from the supporting platoons of the flank companies, who had by this
time pushed the scattering throng beyond the yard limits and set their
guards at the entrances. Then the gray-headed, white-moustached major
whipped out his watch and held up his hand. There was a good deal of
chaff going on, but a half-silence fell on the throng.

[Illustration: "All that space in there will be needed in five minutes
from this time."]

"All that space in there will be needed in five minutes from this time,"
he said, in a quiet, conversational tone. "The way out is open, and you
will oblige me very much by quietly withdrawing. Begin the move back
there by the main staircase, and up there also, if you please, so that
these gentlemen who are crowded in here can follow you. Move at once,
and you'll be out in plenty of time."

Not a few on the outskirts did begin subordinately to move away, and a
dozen or more were already going up the steps, when the crowd gave
tongue. "Come back, there. Stay where you are. We've got as much right
here as they have," were the cries. And then the luckless Elmendorf was
seized with an inspiration. Bounding upon a baggage-truck, he waved his
hat and shouted, "Hear me, fellow-citizens. You have said right. We have
indeed more right here than these----" But here a muscular hand grasped
him by the seat of his trousers, and Elmendorf's speech wound up in a
shriek, as he was lifted backward off the truck, a big Irish sergeant
glowering at him as he landed him on _terra firma_. "I yield to force,"
screamed Elmendorf. "Go and tell it." And then between a couple of
brawny, unsympathetic soldiers he was rushed back, and, in the twinkling
of an eye, hustled into the smoking-compartment of a vacant Pullman and
there locked in, with a bayonet at the window. For a moment the throng
howled, but there was no forward impulse. The motionless line of the two
centre companies seemed to have a soothing effect, and still the major
coolly stood there, watch in hand. Two minutes passed, three, and not
ten men of the crowd had slipped away. Certain railway men and reporters
edged forward, away from the crowd. Certain of the crowd strove to
follow, but some men in plain clothing whipped open their coats,
displaying silver stars, and warned them back. Three minutes and a half,
and still the major stood calmly glancing over the crowd and then at his
watch, and then the corners of his mouth began to twitch, for he had
cast one quick glance up and down the line of that iron fence.
Unreeling something behind them as they reappeared, the squads that had
followed the regimental staff officers quickly trotted into sight again
at the upper and lower ends of the pen, and the outskirts of the crowd
"caught on" at a glance. They were manning the hose. Already the
gleaming nozzles were being screwed on, and the humor of the situation
became suddenly clouded. "Watch out!" was the cry from both ends of the
dense mass. Dozens of men at the north end who could readily escape were
already in rush for the upper stairway, but those at the south were less
lucky. A dense mass of fellow-citizens was wedged between them and the
exits, but rapidly the alarm was spreading inward from the flanks. "Four
minutes," said the major, grimly, though his lips were twitching like
mad. Then the upturned faces began to blanch, the crowd to heave and
swell, and a backward sway sent a hundred or more surging up the main
staircase. The next minute panic seemed to seize on all, for the jeers
gave way to shouts of fright and pain as men were squeezed breathless in
the crush; and then, tumbling over one another's heels, climbing one
another's backs in sheep-like terror, they fought for air and escape,
and the last coat-tails went streaming up the stairs sharp on time, as
Kenyon said, with the bayonets of the left centre company threateningly
close in their wake.

Once out in the open street, they strove to rally and encourage one
another and to shower defiance and stones at their assailants; but these
latter contented themselves with clearing a space for carriages about
the doors and calmly stationing their guards to hold it; and when, a few
moments later, the general's special train came steaming in, Elmendorf
raged in vain. There was neither orator nor deputation to meet him on
behalf of the strike-leaders. Not until after the chief had driven away
in his carriage was the agitator released from the hated confines of the
Pullman and bidden to go his way. Fuming with the indignity of his
position, he left, vowing that he would return if there was law in the
land, backed with warrants for the arrest of Kenyon for felonious
assault and false imprisonment; and Kenyon smiled and said the warrant
wouldn't surprise him in the least.

And then followed the stirring scenes of a riot week that showed not
only the depth and extent of the insurrectionary spirit among the
unlettered masses of the people, but also the wisdom of the President in
ordering the prompt concentration of regular troops in the heart of the
threatened city. Silently, in disciplined order, the various detachments
had marched to their stations. Silently, in disciplined order, puny in
points of numbers as compared with the vast mob of their howling
antagonists, they faced the throng, grimly peering from under their
slouched hat-brims, gripping with their brown, sinewy hands the muzzles
of the old trusty rifles, listening with utter amaze, with tingling
nerves, to the furious yells of "Down with the government!" "To hell
with the United States!" and wondering how long their fathers would have
stood such treason thirty years ago. Calm, grim, and silent, conscious
of their power, merciful in their strength, superb in their disdain of
insult, their contempt of danger, their indifference to absolute
outrage,--for maddened men showered the ranks with mud and gravel, and
foul-mouthed, slatternly women--vile, unclean harpies of the
slums--dipped their brooms in the reeking gutters and slashed their
filth into the stern, soldierly faces,--for hours, for days, they coolly
held that misguided, drink-crazed, demagogue-excited mob at bay,
reopening railways, protecting trains, escorting Federal officials,
forcing passage after passage through the turbulent districts, until the
fury of the populace wore itself out against the rock of their iron
discipline, and one after another the last of the rioters slunk to their
holes, unharmed by even one avenging shot. Fire and flame had wrought
their havoc, miles of railway lines and cars had been wrecked and
ruined, but otherwise the mad-brained effort had utterly failed of its
purpose, and for the third time had the regulars stood almost the sole
bulwark between the great city and absolute anarchy. True, the
regiments of the National Guard were at last ordered into service, but
not until after the presence of the Federal force had given assurance
that, whether the State officials liked it or not, the general
government would tolerate such insurrection no longer. True, the State
troops stood ready, eager to do their work, and some of them, at least,
so capable, so drilled and disciplined, that, left to the orders of
their own officers, they could and would have suppressed the riots. But,
there was the difference, even when called into action the most reliable
and experienced of the regimental commanders were practically deprived
of their commands; their regiments were broken up into pygmy detachments
and scattered hither and thither by companies and squads, covering
sometimes a tract of suburbs fifteen miles long and half as wide, while
the entire force was placed under the orders of a city official
notoriously in sympathy with the initial strike and seeking the
suffrages of the very class from which the mobs were drawn. The
extraordinary spectacle was seen of a veteran colonel with only half a
company to guard the head-quarters of the regiment in a remote and
dangerous spot, and absolutely forbidden to summon any of his own
regiment to his defence in case of emergency, except upon the advice and
consent of some official of the city police. Well was it for Chicago and
the nation that the President of the United States stood as unmoved by
the puerile protests of the demagogue in office as were his loyal
soldiery by the fury of insult, abuse, and violence heaped upon them by
that mob of demagogue-supporters.

"By heaven," said the editor of a great daily to old Kenyon at the close
of the week, "I never dreamed of such superb discipline, and under such
foul insult. I swear I don't see how you fellows could stand it."

"Oh," said Kenyon, grimly, "it wasn't half as hard to bear as what your
columns have been saying about us any time these last five years."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XV.


When the President of the United States declined to withdraw the
regulars from Chicago as urged by the governor of Illinois, Mr.
Elmendorf decided that it was because he had not been heard from on the
subject, and so started for Washington. This was how it happened that he
abandoned his project of leading his friends and fellow-citizens in
their determined assault upon the serried ranks of capital, backed
though they were by "the bristling bayonets of a usurper." For several
days his deluded disciples looked for him in vain. The telegraphic
despatches of the Associated Press told briefly of another crank
demanding audience at the White House, claiming to represent the people
of Chicago and persisting in his demand until, "yielding to force," he
was finally ejected. But Elmendorf was silent upon this episode when he
returned, so the story could hardly have referred to him. Calling at
Allison's to attend to the long-deferred duty of packing his trunk, he
was informed by the butler that that labor had been spared him and that
he would find all his things at his former lodging-place, Mrs. Wallen's.
Going thither to claim them, he was met at the threshold by Mart, whose
face was gaunt and white and worn, and who no sooner caught sight of the
once revered features of the would-be labor leader than he fell upon
them with his fists and fragmentary malediction. Mart battered and
thumped, while Elmendorf backed and protested. It was a policeman, one
of that body whom ever since '86 Elmendorf had loved to designate as
"blood-hounds of the rich man's laws," who lifted Mart off his prostrate
victim, and Mrs. McGrath who partially raised the victim to his feet. No
sooner, however, had she recognized him than she loosed her hold,
flopped him back into the gutter, and, addressing the policeman, bade
him "Fur the love of hivvin set him on again!" which the policeman
declined to do, despite Mrs. McGrath's magnificent and descriptive
denunciation, addressed to the entire neighborhood, in which Elmendorf's
personal character and professional career came in for glowing and not
altogether inaccurate portrayal. Slowly the dishevelled scholar found
his legs, Mart making one more effort to break away from the grasp of
the law and renew the attack before he was led to the station-house,
where, however, he had not long to languish before a major of cavalry
rode up and bailed him out; but by that time, and without his luggage,
the victim of his wrath had disappeared. "There's three weeks' board
ag'in' it," said Mrs. McGrath, "and the ould lady not buried three days,
and the young lady sick and cryin' her purty eyes out, and divil a cint
or sup in the house for Mart's wife and babies, barrin' what me and Mac
could spare 'em. Och, that's only wan of five-and-twinty families that
furrin loonattic has ruined."

At the camp of his squadron Major Cranston had been informed by his
veteran, McGrath, of the reappearance of Elmendorf, and of the arrest of
Mart for spoiling his beauty. Mac also told something of the straits to
which Mart's family were reduced. Mrs. Mac had known Mrs. Mart in the
days when, as a blooming school-girl, the latter used to trip by the
Cranston homestead, and had striven to aid her through the failing
fortunes of the months preceding Mart's last strike; it was her voluble
account of the state of affairs that prompted this soft-hearted squadron
commander to take Mart by the hand and bid him tell his troubles. Mart
broke down. He'd been a fool and a dupe, he knew and realized it, but
Elmendorf had so preached about his higher destiny and the absolute
certainty of triumph and victory if they but made one grand concerted
effort, that he had staked all on the result, and lost it. He knew it
was all up with the strikers when once the general government said stop,
and so had gone home, to be greeted by the tidings that his mother was
sick unto death. Jenny was there, calm, brave, silent, full of resource,
but, oh, so pale and wan! She had employed the best physician to be had,
but she alone would be nurse. She never reproached, never chided him for
his long absence when most needed. Then had followed a few days of
sorrow and suspense, and then the gentle, harmless, helpless,
purposeless life fluttered away. Jenny paid all the bills, the doctor,
the undertaker, everything, and Mart tried vainly to get some work; but
he was a marked man. Then, the day after Jenny had settled up everything
and made herself some simple mourning garb, she went to resume her
duties at the library, and came back in a little while, white and ill,
and she had been very ill since,--out of her head at times, he believed,
said Mart, and he had gone and got the doctor whom she had employed for
her mother, a kind fellow who had been unremitting in his attentions,
and who told him bluntly to shut up when he talked about not knowing
where the money was to come from to pay him, and said that that little
woman was worth ten times her weight in gold, which, said Mart, was
God's truth, as he himself ought to have had sense enough to know
before.

Little by little, as they walked homeward together, Cranston's orderly
riding with the horses along the street, and dozens of people turning
curiously to gaze at the cavalry officer and the late striker, it began
to dawn upon Cranston that Mart's sister, who was worth so much more
than her weight in gold, was the very Miss Wallen who had been so oddly
unwilling to write at his dictation the letter to Elmendorf. Arrived at
the house, he was sure of it, for there, with solemn face, was Mr.
Wells. "My wife," said he, "is up-stairs, trying to see what she can do.
This is Martin Wallen, is it?--Well, Martin, I regret exceedingly to
hear you assaulted Mr. Elmendorf to-day--and didn't kill him."

Manifestly Mr. Wells was not a proper person for the position he held,
being far too impulsive in speech for a bookish man; but then Wells had
been sorely tried. He told Cranston something of it as they walked away
together after loading Mart with provisions and fruit at the corner
grocery. Together they stopped to see Dr. Francis and have a brief chat
with him about his patient, and then Cranston mounted and rode
thoughtfully back to camp at the lake front. Captain Davies, with his
troop, had just returned from a long day's dusty, dirty, exasperating
duty at the stock-yards, and no sooner had he made his brief report than
the major queried, "Do you happen to know whether Forrest is back with
his regiment?"

"He was commanding his company at the yards to-day, sir. I heard he
returned four days ago."

"H'm!" said the major, reflectively: "I think I'll stroll over to-night
and find Kenyon."

They were both sons of Chicago, these two field officers, and had always
been close friends. Forrest, however, was a New Yorker, many years their
junior in the service. Cranston had liked him well, yet now he felt that
he should be glad to consult Kenyon, who had known him still longer, for
that which he had heard from Wells as they walked to the doctor's filled
him with vague anxiety. In common with most society people, Cranston
shared the belief that, if not actually engaged to Florence Allison,
Forrest certainly would be as soon as old Allison's objections were
removed; but in speaking of the probable cause of Miss Wallen's illness
Wells had used some vehement language. Plainly the librarian told
Cranston of the stormy interview between Allison and himself, in which,
in presence of Mr. Waldo and "that man Elmendorf," Allison had demanded
her discharge. Plainly he told him his own views of Miss Wallen's
character and conduct, and what his wife thought of her,--that she was a
girl to be honored and admired and respected above her kind; "but," said
he, "Mr. Forrest always treated her as though he thought so too, and it
may be that she learned to care for him before she had heard about his
being a suitor for the hand of Miss Allison. I sent the girl who was
temporarily occupying her place back into the library when we had our
talk," said Wells, "but I reckon she didn't go beyond the passage-way
and heard pretty much the whole thing. Allison bellowed, like the bull
he is, and perhaps I did, too. Still, it hadn't occurred to me to
question her on the subject, though I was minded to tell her if she had
heard anything she was on no account to repeat it or any part of it; but
Miss Wallen came back to her desk sooner than I expected, and the moment
this young minx hesitatingly told me she had been here and had gone home
I suspected something, and presently pumped the whole truth out of her.
The contemptible meanness of some women passes all my descriptive
powers. There are several girls employed in the library, and it seems
some of them were jealous of Miss Wallen, or rather of her superior
position, and one evening that fellow Elmendorf got in there and
threatened her with exposure or something of the kind and insulted her,
so that she slapped his face, and two of those library girls heard it.
It happened just before Forrest came in, and he found her all quivering
and unstrung. She was to have finished some work for him that evening,
and he was to have dined at Allison's, but she was so broken up it was
some time before she could go on with it. Neither could she tell him the
cause. Well, it was one of these very girls whom, all unthinkingly, I
had put in her place, and what does the little wretch do the morning
that Jeannette returned but tell her all about Allison's row with me,
and his demand and reasons for her discharge! Of course she didn't tell
of my refusal; she says she didn't happen to hear that, which is a lie,
I reckon. However, that's the big, big last pound that broke the heart
of that poor hard-working, long-suffering girl and sent her home a sick
woman. Francis says she'll pull through; but what do you suppose will
come of it even then?" Wells told him more about poor Jenny, all the
story of her long, brave struggle so far as he knew it, which was far
less than the facts, and Cranston wished with all his heart that Meg,
his own bonny wife, were home to help and counsel. All the same he meant
to see Kenyon, and later, perhaps, Forrest.

But he saw the latter first.

There was a brilliant gathering at the club that night. Matters had so
quieted down in the disturbed districts that many of the regular
officers had been permitted to accept invitations to be present. Allison
had not wished to go, but Florence begged. She was looking "absolutely
saffron," said Aunt Lawrence, and if something wasn't done to break up
that child's nervous melancholy she wouldn't be responsible for her.
That she herself was in the faintest degree responsible for the alleged
nervous melancholy Aunt Lawrence would not have admitted for a moment.
Allison was in evil humor, as is many a better man when beginning to
realize that he has made an ass of himself. Wells had been after him
with a hot stick on discovering that the only authority for his
accusations against Miss Wallen was "that devil's tool Elmendorf and a
creature of his own coaching." Allison knew, moreover, that Forrest was
back, commanding a company of his regiment, for his own associates were
pouring into his ears their praises for Forrest's nerve and calm courage
in facing with only twenty men a furious mob of nearly a thousand and
rescuing some so-called "scabs" from their hands, poor fellows who had
been pulled from the platforms of the P.Q. & R. trains. "He's 'way down
below the stock-yards, anyhow, and won't be there to-night," said
Allison to himself: so, at ten o'clock, with Florence on his arm, he
entered the brilliantly lighted parlor. It was full of well-gowned women
and of men in the appropriate garb of the hour and occasion, while not a
few of the officers were in uniform. The general and some of his staff
were almost the first to greet them. Presently Mr. Sloan joined the
party, and the first thing he did was to begin telling of Forrest's
prediction as to the attitude of the general government in the event of
trouble. Allison shifted uncomfortably, the general and his aides looked
politely interested, and somebody attempted to make some arch remark for
Miss Allison's ears, but she was plainly nervous and ill at ease. The
chief presently presumed Miss Florence had heard how admirably Forrest
had behaved in the rescue of certain railway men from the mob the
previous day, and Florence owned that she had heard nothing at all,--it
was the first intimation she had that Forrest was there; whereat the
three officers looked astonished and embarrassed. Evidently something
was amiss. There had perhaps been a quarrel. "Oh," said Captain Morris,
in prompt explanation, "Forrest was away down in the depths of Oklahoma
when he heard his regiment was ordered here, and he had to wait for
telegraphic authority to come on. He never even got up into town. His
company was at Grand Crossing, and he joined it there. He hasn't been
north of the stock-yards since."

But Allison got away as quickly as possible. This sort of thing wasn't
helping Flo to forget, and presently Flo herself concluded she'd rather
go home, and just at eleven o'clock they came forth to their carriage.
Three officers in full uniform were directly in front, chatting with two
others in rough campaign rig, and the taller, slenderer of these latter,
a soldierly, brown-eyed fellow with a heavy moustache and a week-old
brown stubble on cheeks and chin, stepped quickly forward and whipped
off his drab slouch hat. For the first time in her life Florence Allison
saw her friend the lieutenant in service dress, and knew not what to
say. All the response to his cordial "Good-evening, Miss Allison. How
are you, Mr. Allison?" was the hurried hustling past of the pair, the
girl with averted head, the father reddening and embarrassed. Florence
was bundled quickly into the carriage, and then Allison turned. "You'll
have to excuse my daughter to-night, Mr. Forrest. She isn't well,
and--er--er--I'll hope to see you to-morrow." And, lifting his hat, he
followed Florence. The door was slammed, and away they went, leaving
Forrest gazing after them in no pleasant frame of mind.

Major Cranston touched his arm. "Come over to my tent, Forrest. I can
explain something of this," he said.

And the next morning, after some sleepless hours, with permission from
Colonel Kenyon to be absent from camp until noon, Mr. Forrest took a cab
and drove far up town, making only one stop--at a florist's--on the way.
The Allison carriage was coming forth just as he reached the well-known
gates. Mrs. Lawrence and Florence, seated therein, did not catch sight
of the occupant of the cab until he raised his hat. Florence gasped,
grabbed Aunt Lawrence by the arm, called to their coachman, and glanced
back.

But no, Mr. Forrest had no thought of stopping there at all. The cab
drove straight on past the Allison homestead, and something told her
whither it was bound.

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XVI.


Mr. Allison did not meet Lieutenant Forrest that day as he had "hoped
to." He did not hope to at all. He hoped not to for several days, and a
very uncomfortable man he was. Forrest, however, seemed making no effort
to find him, as the millionaire rather expected him to do. Forrest's
duties were somewhat confining, and Allison even kept away from his pet
club awhile, dreading to meet with officers who were being entertained
there at all hours. The Lambert was another place that for a while he
religiously avoided. He was becoming afraid of Wells. It gave him a
queer feeling, however, when driving home to luncheon one day, to see an
orderly holding two officers' horses opposite the private entrance, and
Cranston and Forrest in conversation with Mr. Wells. They were absorbed
and did not look up, but something told Allison there was trouble ahead
for him. Even his friend Waldo had been embarrassed and constrained in
his presence. He made up his mind to stop and see Wells that very
afternoon, and did so, bursting in in his fine old English manner.
After fidgeting a few moments until Wells had had his stenographer
(acting) withdraw, he impetuously began:

"Hum--haw--Wells, tell me about that girl. How's she getting on?"

"If by 'that girl,' Allison, you mean Miss Wallen, she's not getting on
at all. A lady who is robbed of her mother, her health, her good name,
and threatened with the loss of her means of livelihood, at one fell
swoop, cannot be expected to get on."

"Mr. Wells, I don't like the tone which you assume towards me."

"Mr. Allison, I shouldn't like it if you did."

For one moment Allison stared at the librarian, and Wells glared
unflinchingly back. The magnate was mad in earnest now. "By God! Mr.
Wells, you're the only man in this city who dares treat me with
disrespect, and I won't have it!"

"By gad, Mr. Allison, it's because I'm probably the only one who
thoroughly knows you. Wait till I tell all about your demands regarding
Miss Wallen, and you'll find others in plenty."

"You can't, without looking elsewhere for a position."

"I can, for the position is looking for me, and the only reason I
haven't accepted it is that I mean to stay right here until full justice
has been done my stenographer,--full justice, sir. If that young lady
were to place this case in the hands of even a tolerable lawyer, yours
wouldn't have a leg to stand on."

"You don't mean she's going to law!"

"It's what my wife says would serve you right; and I agree with her.
Just let this community know that solely on the statements of a cur you
kicked out of your own employ you had defamed that brave, honest girl,
and there'd be a tempest about your head compared to which this riot was
a zephyr."

Allison's wrath was cooling now. He sank back in a chair and stared
gloomily at the librarian. "Where is that" (gulp) "Elmendorf?" he
finally asked.

"In jail, I hope; in the gutter, the last time I heard of him, being
pommelled by her brother. Major Cranston and Mr. Forrest are looking for
him."

"What do they want?" asked Allison, suspiciously.

"Several things; one is to find out how much he will admit having told
you, and how much to hold you solely responsible for."

Allison fidgeted for a moment, and then turned again upon the librarian.
"You mean to tell me that you think she's entirely good and honest and
all that, do you?"

"No. I told you I knew she was."

"Well, then, what does it mean that Forrest is trying to hunt up or run
down my witnesses?"

"It simply means that he's a gentleman who intends to defend the girl
whose name you have coupled with his."

"Why don't he come to me? He hasn't been near my house since he came
back," said Allison, in a tone of complaint. "He hasn't given me a
chance to--fix things. Who was fool enough to tell him?"

"You, principally, by your reception of him. He knew all about it before
he came here to me. Of course he hasn't been to your house, and probably
never will go there again. I wouldn't in his place."

Allison pondered painfully awhile. "Well, I suppose this thing is
beginning to get around the neighborhood?--people are talking about it?"
he queried guardedly.

"Beginning?" was the answer. "Lord, no! It began the day you shouted the
whole business so that everybody in the library could hear. Of course
people are talking, but not as loud as you did."

"And you say she's down sick and can't see people. Of course if I've
been--made a victim of in this matter by that fellow Elmendorf--why,
damn him, he's been trying to make up to my own daughter! she had to
order him out of the house,--of course I want to straighten things out.
I withdraw my demand for her discharge, under the circumstances; and if
I might send her a check--or something, in reason----"

"You might, if you wanted to see how quick it would come back."

"Why, hang it, Wells, what _should_ a man do? What can a man do?"

"Sit down and write her that you have made a consummate ass of yourself.
That might not be a delicate way out of it, but it would be telling the
truth. Anyhow, you've got to do something, and that right soon. My wife
tells me that her one idea is to get well enough to come over here for
one day, just to confront her accusers. Then where'll you be, and your
invaluable witnesses?"

Allison went home and had a conference with his sister which left that
lady dissolved in tears. It was a brutally hot July afternoon, and he
ordered the carriage for a drive in the Park and bade Florence drive
with him, and obediently she went. There wasn't a whiff of breeze off
the lake; it all came pouring from the hot prairies to the southwest,
and everybody looked languid and depressed. The sun was almost down, and
the walks and roadways in the Park were but sparsely occupied. Slowly
the heavy family carriage rolled along the smooth macadam and drew up,
with others of its kind, near a shaded kiosk where a band was playing.
Presently from under her parasol Florence caught sight of a familiar
figure. Leaning against the door of an open livery carriage, a tall man
in straw hat and white duck suit was chatting with the occupants, one a
middle-aged woman, with a gentle, motherly face, the other a slender
girl in deep mourning, reclining languidly as though propped on
cushions. Allison, anxiously watching his daughter, saw the light in her
eyes, the faint color rising in her cheeks; and he, too, looked, then
reddened, for all that other party seemed to face him at the instant.
The tall man in duck came promptly around and stood beside them, bowing
coldly to the father, but raising his hat and holding out his hand to
Florence. She took it, her eyes not downcast, but seeking his.

"I am glad to see you out, Miss Allison," he said, in frank and cordial
tone. "You were looking far from--yourself the night we met in front of
the club. I hope you are well?"

"I am--better," she answered, rather faintly, "and I had hoped to see
you--before this."

"That was why I went to the club that night," he answered, gravely. "How
is Cary?"

"Oh, he's just miserable, because pa--father kept him cooped up and
wouldn't let him out to the riots. He was simply mad when he heard of
your experience with the mob. But you are coming to see us?" she
finished, looking appealingly at her father.

"Yes, Forrest," said Allison, "I wish you would. There's a matter I want
to talk to you about."

"Possibly the same that Mr. Elmendorf is to bring up at department
head-quarters to-morrow afternoon, which I believe you will be invited
to hear," said Forrest, calmly. Then, turning once more to Florence, he
held forth his hand. "I am very glad to meet you again, Miss Allison,"
he said, "and to find you looking better. But now I must return to my
friends." And, bowing again to her, but almost ignoring Allison, he
walked away, and was soon in earnest talk with the ladies in the open
carriage.

"Do you know who they are?" asked Florence presently of her father.

"Yes. One is Mrs. Wells, wife of our librarian. The other is a Miss
Wallen, one of the library employees. She has been ill.--Go on, Parks,"
he said to his coachman, and they drove silently home.

"He came and talked with me," said Florence to her aunt that night. "He
was polite and kind, and didn't seem angry,--didn't say anything,
but--he went--he said he must go to his friends,--to his _friends_, do
you understand? We're no longer--no longer of them." Then she turned and
sought her own room.

And there was an invitation for Mr. Allison,--a very pressing
invitation, for an aide-de-camp delivered it personally,--a request that
Mr. Allison should be at head-quarters the next afternoon at four
o'clock; and Allison went. He was received by Captain Morris, who
expressed the general's regrets at being unable to see him in person,
and was ushered into a room where were Colonel Kenyon, Major Cranston,
and Lieutenant Forrest, still in service dress, and two of the senior
staff-officers. These latter came forward and shook hands with the
magnate, the others simply bowed.

"See if Mr. Elmendorf is anywhere about," said Captain Morris to a
messenger. But it was ten minutes before that intellectual party
appeared. The great strike had collapsed, the leaders were under the
indictment of the law, and this particular agitator's occupation, like
that of hundreds of his hapless dupes, was gone. Nevertheless it pleased
him to lurk about the neighborhood until fifteen minutes after the
appointed time, so that he might be the last to arrive and might thereby
keep the so-called upper classes waiting. The moment he arrived the
chief of staff proceeded to business.

"You set four o'clock as the time you would appear to make your charges,
Mr. Elmendorf, and we've been waiting here a quarter of an hour."

"Affairs of greater importance, sir, occupied my time."

"Oh, yes; our janitor tells us that you have been communing with
yourself over a glass of beer in the saloon across the way for the last
hour.--Gentlemen, I received a letter from Mr. Elmendorf yesterday
morning, which I will read:

"'SIR,--Having been informed that Mr. Warren Starkey, a clerk
in your employ, has been discharged because of his having been accused
of revealing to the press certain facts relative to the circumstances
under which Lieutenant Forrest was twice ordered away from Chicago, this
is to inform you that unless Mr. Starkey is immediately reinstated I
shall consider it my duty, as an accredited correspondent of numerous
newspapers of high repute, to publish all the facts in the case as well
known to me, and to demand the dismissal of Lieutenant Forrest. That you
may know I speak by the card, I purpose calling at your office at four
P.M. to-morrow, at which time, if you see fit, the gentleman
and those he may claim as his friends can hear the grounds on which I
base my demand. Let the laws which oppress the poor and friendless now
apply to the proud and powerful.

"'MAX ELMENDORF.'

"Now, Mr. Elmendorf, Mr. Starkey has been discharged, and has not been
reinstated. We'll hear him first, and then you."

"Very good, sir. Though I seem to be alone in the lions' den, I shall
not flinch from my duty even in the face of all this array that has been
carefully selected from among mine enemies."

"They are exactly as indicated by yourself," coldly answered the
colonel. "Send in Starkey."

And Starkey came,--Elmendorf's one weak victim among head-quarters
force,--and Starkey was in a sorry plight. He told his story ruefully:

"I supposed this gentleman was all right. I used to see him with the
officers. He was with them every day or two for hours. Then he made
himself pleasant and sociable, and used to get me to lunch, or treat to
drinks sometimes, and seemed to know everything that was going on. I
didn't know anything whatever about Mr. Forrest's affairs except what he
told me from time to time, and I believed what he told. Perhaps I did
let on I knew more. He got me to drinking, and God only knows how it all
came about. That reporter came to me and said that Mr. Elmendorf had
told him this and that and Captain Morris had told him more, and then he
got things up around the Lambert and around Forrest's lodgings, and
asked me if 'twasn't so that Forrest had been ordered off on account of
things happening there. Well, I suppose perhaps I did say that it was
so, but I never dreamed that he'd make what he did of it. And then when
the chief clerk caught me drunk and accused me of the whole thing I
broke down and owned up to everything, and I've been a--well, I've just
been that man's dupe."

The unhappy ex-clerk was withdrawn. Mr. Elmendorf cleared his throat in
readiness to speak. Forrest, with a smouldering fire in his eyes and
with compressed lips, sat gazing sternly at the ex-tutor. The others,
with faces indicative of various shades of contempt and indifference or
indignation, not unmingled with the curiosity which one feels in
studying some uncommon type of animal or man, silently awaited his
remarks. "I will begin by saying that my suspicions in this case were
aroused long months ago," said Elmendorf, when the judge-advocate of the
department suavely spoke:

"Kindly spare us your suspicions, Mr. Elmendorf. You promised facts,
and, as time is short, owing to your own delay, we desire facts alone."

"The facts," said Elmendorf, nettled, "are that the gentleman in
question, while posing as a man of honor and a welcome guest in a most
estimable family circle, has long been secretly laying siege to the
affections of a young and comparatively friendless girl, with such
success that their relations became the talk of the neighborhood. I
found that she had been seen at his lodgings after dark, that they were
frequently seen alone together as late as midnight, and that they were
often alone in the private rooms at the Lambert. These facts were so
well known that when he was suddenly ordered to leave Chicago last
winter the explanation arrived at by common consent was that the general
sent him off to his regiment to avert further scandal, and that his
second orders were for practically the same reason. It is notorious
that because of this affair the girl has been threatened with discharge
from the position she holds, and so I am here to say that since this
poor clerk and this poor girl are made the sufferers and the only ones,
I, as the ever ready representative of the people, demand the prompt
punishment of the real offender, whom doubtless his class would shield.
Nothing but my dislike of involving a poor working-girl in further
scandal and trouble has held me silent until now."

"I see," said the judge-advocate, reflectively; "and you have intimated
that in order to spare her further publicity you would be willing to
abandon your purpose, provided----?"

"Provided Mr. Forrest tender his immediate and unconditional resignation
from the service, and I be furnished written assurance that it will be
accepted, also admission that my statement as to the cause of his sudden
orders to leave Chicago was true."

The scene in the office that sultry afternoon was something to remember
long days after. Cranston couldn't help thinking what a blessing it was
that the breeze at last was blowing fresh from the lake and the white
caps were bounding beyond the breakwater. It was a group worthy of a
painter's brush,--Elmendorf's sublime confidence in the criminality of
his fellow-man and the unassailable integrity of his own position,
Kenyon's attitude of close and appreciative study of this unique
specimen, Cranston's twitching lips and clinching fists, Allison's
almost apoplectic face at one moment, contrasting oddly with the
infinite consternation with which he contemplated his own probable
connection with the plot the next:--the speaker was a monument of
conceit and "cheek,"--might even be a lunatic, but what--what could be
said of himself? The chief of staff was fuming. Forrest was inwardly
raging, yet by a strong effort maintained, as he had agreed, utter
silence, leaving to his friends their own method of conducting the
affair. One officer alone seemed to be deriving entertainment from the
situation: the judge-advocate had never had a professional treat to
compare with it.

"Before committing ourselves to any promise, Mr. Elmendorf," said he,
most blandly, "you will pardon me if I refer to what seems a trifle weak
link in your chain of evidence. You say the young lady was in the habit
of visiting Mr. Forrest's lodgings. How often have you seen her there?"

"I said she was seen there. I did not keep watch."

"On Mr. Forrest's _lodgings_, no. But how often was she seen there?"

"I am not prepared to state. Once is considered enough, I venture to
say."

"How often did the witness tell _you_ she was there, Mr. Allison?" asked
the judge-advocate, turning, to his consternation, upon that gentleman.

Allison went crimson in an instant. "Well, I paid so little attention.
It was all so frivolous," he stammered.

"Yet he was the witness named by Mr. Elmendorf, I believe,--the only
one; and you had him come to your office and you questioned him there,
did you not?"

"I did, yes, but the impression passed away almost immediately. The man
wasn't worthy of confidence."

"When you hear his story you may think otherwise," said Elmendorf, with
a contemptuous sneer.

"I have heard," said the judge-advocate; "but we'll hear it again.--Send
Starkey's friend in here," he said to the messenger; and presently in
came a hangdog, corner-loafer specimen of the shabby-genteel young man,
supremely impudent on his native heath, but wofully ill at ease now.
"This is your reputable witness, Mr. Elmendorf."

"I protest against indignity to my witnesses or browbeating of any kind.
This is not a court, and he's not on oath."

"Certainly not. He's saved us all the trouble by telling the truth
beforehand.--Now you can tell us how you came to chase the young lady
into that door-way," said the judge-advocate, turning suddenly on the
shrinking new-comer.

"Well, sir, I'd been drinking, and I thought she was--a girl I knew."

"Yes? and when you caught her in the vestibule what happened?"

"Nothin' much. She fought, and the door flew open, and----" here the
shifting eyes wandered around until they rested on Forrest--"this
gentleman kicked me out. I wouldn't 'a' said anything about it,
only--him there found me afterwards." And he nodded at Elmendorf.

"Didn't you declare to me you'd seen the lady going in there with him?
Didn't you see them together late at night up near her own home?" asked
Elmendorf, excitedly.

"Well, you took me up and showed 'em to me."

"Didn't you tell me you knew she often went to his rooms?"

"Well, you asked me if I hadn't seen her, and I said no, and then you
asked if I didn't think it was more'n likely, and----" Here Starkey's
friend faltered.

"That will do," said the judge-advocate. "You both knew very well then,
and you know now, that it is an apartment-house, in which several
families dwell, some of them friends of the young lady in question. You
can go, young man,--I merely introduced that party as a specimen of the
evidence for the prosecution. Now, Mr. Elmendorf, let me give you a
specimen of the evidence for the defence.--Colonel," said he to the
chief of staff, "would you mind saying in the presence of these
gentlemen whether the faintest inkling of any such charge as this of
Mr. Elmendorf's against Mr. Forrest had ever reached you?"

"Not a whisper."

"Were Mr. Forrest's sudden orders in any way the result of any such
rumor?"

"Not in the least. He was selected by the general to make certain
confidential investigations regarding the encroachments of settlers,
boomers, etc., on the Oklahoma tract. It was necessary that the object
should not be heralded beforehand by the press, and so we had to keep it
quiet."

"There, Mr. Elmendorf; admitting these as specimen bricks of the
probable testimony, we decline to reinstate the clerk, or to attach the
slightest importance to your allegations at the expense of Mr. Forrest,
and I am constrained to say that your propensity for meddling has got
you into a nasty mess. So far as head-quarters are concerned, we've done
with you. Now I'll leave you to settle with the friends of the young
lady." Here Elmendorf made for the door.

"I'm not to be assaulted, and----" he began; but Allison blocked the
way.

"You lied to me and mine," he cried. "You declared on your honor that
gentlemen high in authority in this office told you the reasons you gave
for Mr. Forrest's summary orders to quit Chicago. I demand now to know
whether it was not that poor devil whom you've ruined here,--Starkey.
Answer me."

"What good would it do?" whined Elmendorf, shrugging his shoulders.
"Would not my statement be promptly denied? _Noblesse oblige_, sir; the
first business of these Knights of the Sword is to stand together, and
woe betide the knave who dare accuse one of them. But if you'll be
guided by my advice, Mr. Allison, you'll look well to your own vine and
fig-tree, lest the despoiler----"

But here Allison hurled himself upon the fellow and grasped him by the
throat. "You whelp!" he cried, banging the luckless head against the
door-post before any one could interfere. In an instant, however, the
officers had seized him, shaking the tutor loose. Madly sped the latter
to the elevator, but, finding Starkey and his crestfallen friend
awaiting him there, he turned and dashed down the stairway, his
ex-witnesses after him.

For a moment there was silence in the office, while Allison recovered
breath. Bowing coldly to him, Colonel Kenyon, with Cranston and Forrest,
turned to leave the room.

"Mr. Forrest," said the magnate, stepping hastily forward, "I am more
rejoiced at your vindication than I can say. Of course I see I've been
led into doing you an injustice, and I hope you'll permit me to make
amends."

But Forrest declined the outstretched hand and thrust his own within the
breast of his uniform.

"You have amends to make elsewhere, Mr. Allison," he answered, with
lips that trembled despite his efforts at control, "and a wrong to right
beside which mine is insignificant. Good-day, sir."

And so they left him.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XVII.


The regulars were gradually withdrawn from the Garden City, as
old-timers loved to call Chicago, and Kenyon with his sturdy battalion
was among the first to be restored to his own station. The crusty
veteran left the home of his boyhood to resume duty at his proper post,
and left with feelings somewhat mixed. "We never had more temper-trying
work to do," said he, "and there isn't a man in the whole regiment that
wouldn't rather stand six months Indian-fighting than six hours mobbing
in Chicago. It's my own old home, so I've got a right to speak the truth
about it. For years its newspapers, with one exception, have made it a
point to sneer at, vilify, and hold up to public execration the officers
of the regular army. During the past four or five years the lampooning
and lying have been redoubled, and it is like heaping coals of fire on
their heads that the very regiment they have abused the most was the
most conspicuous in Chicago's defence. _We_ had no picnic, but the
Fifteenth simply had hell and repeat,--the meanest, most trying, most
perilous duty, from first to last. Those fellows were scattered in
little detachments all over Cook County, and faced fifty times their
weight in toughs, and carried out their orders and stood all manner of
foul abuse and never avenged it, when if any one of those young captains
or lieutenants commanding detachments had lost his temper and let drive
the lightning sleeping in those brown Springfields, there'd 'a' been a
cleaning out of the rabble that would have thinned the ranks of one
political party in our blessed country, at least. Oh, we're glad enough
to get away and see the change of tone in the Chicago press; but it
won't last."

And Kenyon's was by no means an exaggerated statement. In the
far-spreading course of the great strike "the regulars" came in for many
a hard knock from the mob and for not a few from the press. At one point
experienced railway-hands, not mere ruffian rioters, wrecked the track
at a trestle in front of a coming troop train, hurling the engine, with
its gallant guard of half a dozen artillerymen, into the depths below,
crushing or drowning them like rats. At another point, when baffled in
their efforts to overturn a sleeping-car in front of a patrol engine,
and dispersed by a dozen well-aimed shots, the rioters impanelled their
coroner's jury, and declared the red-handed participants innocent
spectators and the officer and his men murderers. At a third, when a
great railway centre was found in the hands of the strikers and the
troops were ordered to clear the platform, one surly specimen not only
refused to budge, but lavished on the captain commanding the foulest
epithets in a blackguard's vocabulary. The crowd outnumbered the troops
by twenty to one. The faintest irresolution or hesitancy would have been
fatal. One whack with the sword knocked the fight out of the bully, and,
while he was led off to be plastered in hospital, the maddened rioters
held their indignation meeting, and not only they, but high officials
eager for their votes, united in denouncing the officer to the President
of the United States, declaring the victim a model citizen, sober and
peaceable, and the captain drunk, foul-mouthed, and abusive. The press
of the neighborhood aided in spreading abroad the utterly false report
of the affair, with the usual result of the temporary humiliation and
distress of the officer and his friends, the inevitable official
investigation, and the prompt verdict, "The officer deserves
commendation, not condemnation." One paper, within five days of its
original report, announced that it had discovered that it was the
civilian who was drunk and who used the foul language attributed to the
officer. It furthermore said that the officer had done just right; but
this was the single and phenomenal instance. The other papers, like
Elmendorf, probably reasoned that if the officer wasn't the blackguard
they had striven to make him appear, he might as well have been.

These are specimens of experiences too well known to all concerned. "May
the Lord preserve us from any more riot duty!" said Kenyon, piously, as
they steamed away across the Illinois prairies; "but," he added, "I'll
bet ten dollars to ten cents the politicians will get us into more and
worse another year."

Yet even such scenes have their humorous side. It was Daniel O'Connell,
I believe, who defeated the female champion of Billingsgate by calmly
referring to her as the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle, which
was something utterly beyond her powers of repartee: it was he, at all
events, who silenced another virago with the cutting response, "Sure
every one knows, ma'am, ye're no better than a parallelogram, and you
keep a whole parallelopipedon concealed in your closet at home;" and it
was one of the trimmest, nattiest, most punctilious of our captains who
stood in front of the silent ranks, listening in apparently absorbed
attention to the furious tirade lavished on him by the spokeswoman of
the mob, a street drab of uncommon stature and powers of expression and
command of expletive. Winding up a three-minute speech with the remark,
"I could pick ye up and ate ye, only the taste would turn me stomach,
you white-livered, blue-bellied son of a scut," the lady had to pause
for breath, and the soldier looked up from under his hat-brim and
mildly remarked, "Madam, you're prejudiced," whereat even some of her
sympathizers forgot their rancor and roared with laughter, and the
idolatrous rank of his soldiery doubled up like so many blue
pocket-rules, and the newspaper men chuckled with glee. By tacit
consent, apparently, the Chicago papers were saying as little as
possible against the regulars just then, and many a bright fellow who
owned that he hadn't known anything about them before, except what he
had read in his paper in the past, found many a friend among them and
many a cause for writing of them in a new and different vein.

Cranston's old home was decorated in style the day the cavalry marched
away. Mrs. Mac had the old guidons and a big flag swung out on the
porch, Mac in his most immaculate uniform standing at the salute. Many
an eye in the long, dusty column danced at sight of the honest couple,
and one young fellow, their graceless nephew, now a recruit in Captain
Davies's troop, braced up in saddle and fixed his eyes fiercely on his
file-leader, and for fear of the stern avuncular injunction to "Kape yer
eyes to the front, there!" couldn't be induced to peep at Aunt Mollie as
she swung a tattered guidon that had been carried by Mac in the ranks of
"C" troop many a year before. Captain Davies himself rode out of column
and held forth a cordial hand to the old sergeant, as the last troop
went clinking by. "We'll make a soldier of the boy, sergeant, as you
tried to make of me when I joined," said he; "and if he has half the
stuff there was in his uncle it'll be no trouble at all."

And so they went on up the avenue, with hats and handkerchiefs waving
adieu and cordial voices shouting approving words. Presently, riding at
ease now, they filed along under the beautiful façade of the Lambert
Memorial, and, glancing up, Cranston saw at the broad bow window the
familiar features of Mr. Wells and caught his joyous "Hurrah!" By his
side, smiling and nodding and kerchief-waving, was his buxom helpmeet,
one arm thrown about a fragile, pale-faced girl in black. Off came
Cranston's broad campaign hat; he bent low over the pommel of his
saddle, ay, and looked back again with admiration in his eyes and a
fervent "Thank God!" upon his lips. There were decorations in plenty,
and enthusiastic demonstrations, too, from a wide portico, "crowded with
prominent society people," as the papers said, when a few moments later
the column swung by Allison's impressive home; but here the major merely
raised his hat and neither bent nor bowed.

Riot duty over for the time being, Mr. Forrest was recalled from the
command of his company to a desk at head-quarters and bidden to complete
the maps and reports of his Oklahoma work. The maps he went at
methodically enough, but the report he hesitated over. "No," said
Wells, in response to his call and question, "Miss Wallen is not ready
to resume work at the Lambert, and it is my belief she never will be."
Then he looked keenly at the officer's face, and was gratified to see
the deep shade of anxiety and distress with which it was instantly
covered. "She'll be _well_ enough; it isn't that," he continued; "but
the girl is proud and sensitive, as any lady has a right to be, and she
hasn't forgiven Allison. Oh, yes, he sent her a sort of apology,--five
lines of somebody else's fault and ten pounds of fruit. She gave the
fruit to Mart's hopeful family, and I think she gave Allison the devil.
I didn't see her letter, but the old man dropped in here the other day
to ask when she'd be back, and incidentally remarked that she seemed to
be rapidly recovering, if fifty pounds of temper to the square inch was
any indication. 'How the mischief was I to know,' said he, 'that
hundreds of girls had to work in offices at night, had to find their way
home late at night, and that much of their work was dictated to them
during the day and had to be typed before early morning?' Even if he
didn't know, by gad," said Wells, bringing his fist down with resounding
whack on his big desk, "it's time he did know that this country isn't
France, and that these brave girls who are honorably earning their own
bread, and often, as was the case with her, supporting whole families,
are entitled to the respect, yes, by gad, the reverence, of every man
with a grain of decency in him. This is America, by the Eternal!--the
one country on the face of the globe where an honest girl may go
wheresoever her work may call her."

"Amen to that!" said Forrest, "But do you mean that she will not return
here?"

"Not unless she can be induced to withdraw her resignation. She comes to
live under our roof to-morrow, you know. That good fellow Cranston has
given Mart pay work. Her plan is to join forces with her old friend Miss
Bonner and reopen her typewriter down town, and I find she has a will of
her own."

This, too, was something Mr. Forrest became convinced of, even had he
not suspected it before. Though still sorrowing deeply over her mother's
death, Jenny was able to receive some callers by the time the troops
were going, and very prettily she thanked her friend and customer, as
she was pleased to call him, for the flowers sent so frequently during
her illness. Despite the faint color with which she had welcomed him,
Forrest could not but see how pale and fragile she looked, and the
slender white hand that he had watched so often flying over the clicking
keys seemed very limp and listless now. It only passively responded to
the warmth of his clasp. In fact, it hardly could be said to respond at
all. She was reclining in an easy-chair. A soft breeze, playing through
the open window, rippled the shining little curls about her white
temples, and Forrest drew his chair close to hers.

It was the first time they had been alone together since the night
following his home-coming in the late spring, the night of the luckless
dinner at Allison's, the night in which, leaving her to work alone at
the Lambert over his rough notes, he had gone, as she believed, to spend
the evening with his _fiancée_, the night when with almost frenzied
fingers she worked to finish every word of his report that he might find
it ready on his return, and that she might find, as she did, her way
home without him. Then had come the sudden cloud of her mother's serious
illness, of Mart's disappearance, the gloom of the strike, the crash of
the riots, the blow of her mother's death, a grief the more pathetic
because for several years mother and daughter seemed to have reversed
their relative positions and the child had become the protector,
guardian, and provider. Then the brutal wrong of Allison's accusation,
told her with such well-simulated sympathy and reluctance, but with such
exquisitely feminine stab in every sentence; the collapse, the struggle,
the suffering, the half-reluctant convalescence--and the sudden sunshine
of that afternoon when he turned from the carriage of the girl to whom
he was declared engaged, let her drive away without another glance, and
stood there, tall and stalwart and manly, his soft brown eyes fastened
on her face,--hers, Jenny Wallen's, a penniless, motherless, homeless
working-girl. Mrs. Wells had hugged herself with delight all the way
back, and would have said no end of foolish things but for her patient's
prohibition. Even the prohibition had not kept her afterwards from
telling Jenny how Forrest had refused his hand to Mr. Allison, refused
once more to set foot within his doors, and what, what could that mean?

But the girl, despite her woman's heart, had a clear brain and cool
judgment. Holding herself in honesty, independence, and integrity the
peer of any man she ever heard of, brave, proud, and self-reliant, she
had schooled herself to study the difference between his social
surroundings and her own. Wells had spoken of Forrest's proud and
powerful kindred in the East, of a mother and sister who held their
heads far higher than ever could John Allison, who forty years before
was but a train-boy peddling peanuts for a livelihood. Even in the
wildly improbable event of her soldier knight's learning to love her,
what madness it would be to expect his people to welcome her, what
madness to think of being his without that welcome! Even if through love
for him they opened their arms to her, what would they say to Mart and
his brood? Jenny's sense of the humorous prevailed over her troubles at
this juncture and made her laugh at the contemplation of that mental
picture. Then she bristled again with honest pride. Mart was her own
brother, anyway, her father's son. He had been a dear boy and she very
fond of him in the old days; he had married beneath him, weakling as he
was; she'd stand by Mart and work for his wife and babies; they would
learn to love Aunt Jenny, and she would forget she ever had cried for
the moon or learned to love a soldier. She didn't love him! She
wouldn't! But here were boxes of exquisite cut flowers that had been
coming in for a fortnight, and here was the sender, his chair close to
hers, and he bending still closer. Then he began to speak, and his
voice--how utterly different it sounded now from that in which she heard
him say good-by to Florence Allison! She wasn't strong yet. How could
she control the throbbing of her heart?

And then the room seemed to begin a slow, solemn waltz, even when she
closed her eyes and firmly shut her hands, for his first words were, "I
have a world of things to say, and only this one blessed evening in
which to speak. I am ordered to my regiment at once."

Coming home later that night, Mr. Wells found the partner of his joys
and sorrows a tearful, lonely wreck on the parlor sofa. Jenny had
disappeared. For all explanation Mrs. Wells drew him by the coat-sleeve
into the room, shut the door behind him, precipitated herself upon her
shoulder, and sobbed, "She--she--she's refused him."

"Well, I suppose she thought he belonged to Miss Allison."

"No, no. It isn't that at all: it's pride. It's obstinacy. I don't know
what to call it. He told her--he told _me_ there had never been such a
thing as an engagement between Miss Allison and himself, and that there
probably never would or could have been. I could see he was cut to the
heart, that he loves our brave Jenny deeply, truly, and there isn't any
quixotism about it. But she--why, the girl's just marble! It was he who
called me and stood there with such sadness and reproach in his eyes and
told me what he'd told her and begged that I should plead with her when
he was gone, but she only covered her face, with the tears trickling
down through her fingers, and when he had to go she stood up like a
little queen and said she thanked him and honored him, and even assured
him that there was no other man on earth she cared for, but no, _no_,
NO, was her one answer to his plea that she would be his wife.
She will not even let him write to her."

And Wells comforted his wife as best he could, but there was no
comforting himself.

That was the first of August,--the hottest, dryest ever known along the
lake, yet the dismal fog-horn tooted day after day and night after night
when not so much as a single tear could have been wrung from the ambient
air. It was all on account of the smoke-clouds that obscured the sun and
shut out the horizon weeks at a time, for the whole Northwest was one
blaze of forest fires, and Wells grew crabbed and ill tempered at his
desk and snapped at his new typewriter until, between the smoke and the
tears, her eyelids smarted. He delighted in bullying Allison whenever he
saw him. The magnate had offered Miss Wallen a permanent position and a
good salary in his own office, and marvelled at her refusal. She still
occupied her pretty room at the Wellses', but solely on her own
conditions,--that she should pay her board. She reopened her typewriter
in the big business block down town, and seemed to gain health, color,
and elasticity in her daily tramps to and fro. Business seemed to
prosper, now that the urgent need was over, and Jenny could have
afforded a better gown than that she chose to wear, but she didn't know
how soon Mart might lose his job again, and, as he never saved for the
wife and babies, she must needs save for them. Despite her prohibition,
two letters came from Forrest. She read them, answered the first, gently
and with womanly dignity in every line, but made no reply to the second.
Frequently on her evening homeward walk she encountered Miss Allison
riding or driving with some of the _jeunesse dorée_ of society. Hubbard
was immensely attentive again, with many prospects, said his friends, of
landing a winner, and as for Florence, it is due to her to say that she
hid her woe most womanfully, if ever woe existed. Indeed, her Lady
friends took much comfort in saying that she certainly had lost no flesh
over her _affaire de coeur_,--in fact, quite the contrary. And twice
did Jenny catch sight of Elmendorf, despite his promptitude in dodging
around the corner. He had become a full-fledged journalist now, writing
police reports for a daily and resounding leaders for a semi-occasional,
but, like Cary, his former pupil, who was bent still on going to the
Point, he had unlimited faith in the future.

So, too, have his fellow strike-leaders, and with some show of reason.
Not that their principles have been endorsed, but that, just as in 1877,
the active participants in the great riots have been allowed to go
practically unpunished. The individual citizen who should heave a brick
through the window of a crowded car, set fire to a sleeper, or slug a
locomotive engineer at his post of duty would undoubtedly be sent to
jail or the lunatic asylum, if detected; but when he conspires and
combines with hundreds of others, thereby a thousandfold increasing the
danger and damage, it becomes a delicate matter for office-holders to
handle, and so, while the leaders are free to roam the land and preach
sedition and rebellion, the criminal and vagabond classes, the ignorant
and vicious, and the great array of foreign-born, foreign-bred laborers,
eagerly await the next opportunity. The real sufferers are the
native-born or naturalized citizens, who, listening to the false
promises of professional agitators, have been egged on to riot and
outlawry and have lost through them their situations, their savings,
and, in some cases, even their little homes. This and what one of our
ablest generals aptly described as the "affected sympathy" of the men in
office, high or low, for the men in the workshop,--the more affected the
louder,--brought about and will bring about again these scenes of
tumult, riot, and rage that, but for the restraining hand of the regular
army, would result in anarchy.

"We've had to step in between two fires many a time before," said old
Kenyon, "and we'll have to do it many a time again. Any of you fellows
who like that sort of thing may welcome this change of station, but I
don't." And, indeed, marching orders had come. The autumn shaking up was
distributing regiments anew, and once more Kenyon's battalions were
striding through the Chicago streets,--Forrest, after sixteen years of
subaltern life, wearing at last the new shoulder-straps of the
captaincy. Cranston and his squadron, still retained within supporting
distance of the old homestead, eagerly welcomed their comrades of the
riot days, and no sooner were they fairly settled down in the fine
quarters at Sheridan than the new captain was out of uniform and into
civilian dress and speeding townward,--"to see Wells," he said. Forrest
lived with Cranston a few days while getting his own quarters in
readiness, and was there to help the major welcome home his wife on her
return from Europe late in October. Going to town "to see Wells" seemed
to prove a bootless errand, for he came back with gloom in his dark
brown eyes,--very pathetic gloom, Mrs. Cranston called it, and she, who
had early gone to town to call on Mrs. Wells, began going rather more
frequently than ever the major had contemplated, so interested was she
in Mrs. Wells's boarder. "I want to know her well enough to be able to
talk to her," she explained to her husband; but Cranston demurred.
Possibly he knew from old experiences that one way not to influence a
girl in favor of a friend was for Margaret to set to work to try. With
the caution born of a quarter of a century of married bliss, however, he
did not remind his better half of previous experiments. He meekly
suggested that, as Forrest was likely to remain on duty all winter
within besieging distance, it might be well to leave him and the lady to
work out their own destiny.

"But it's so absurd, Wilbur!" said Margaret. "He is deeply, honestly,
utterly in love with her, and she's worthy of every bit of it, if I'm
any judge of a girl, and if she isn't careful she'll drive him away or
anger him with her refusals to hear him. Why, she has refused even to
see him, Mrs. Wells tells me, and--it's nothing but stubborn pride."
Evidently, therefore, these two dames had been putting their heads
together and were now in the combination to force Jenny to surrender.

Yet Jenny was right, knew she was right, and was to be moved neither by
Forrest's pleadings nor by his friends' reproaches. There had been one
long and painful interview between her and her lover soon after his
return, and then very gently but very firmly she had told him that the
matter must end then and there. She had asked him one question, and only
one, in the course of that interview, and he could not answer her: "Mr.
Forrest, what welcome would your mother, your sister, extend to me, a
working-girl?"

Forrest said he really hadn't consulted them; he was seeking a wife for
himself, not for the family. He said that once they knew her they would
honor and love her as she deserved. But that wouldn't do. Miss Wallen
had seen something of society leaders, and had formed her own opinion as
to the law of caste. She had seen Robertson's charming play, too, and
had her own views as to the matrimonial joys in store for its heroine.
She had asked herself whether she would submit to being either tolerated
or patronized by people who had wealth and position, to be sure, but not
one whit more pride or principle, nor, for that matter, refinement, than
she had. Down in the bottom of her brave heart was the craving of the
woman to be loved for herself, to be appreciated for her true worth, but
she believed that people in high position would not and could not
accept one of her antecedents and connections, and she would have no
concealment whatever. "Knowing me just as I am, just as I have been,
knowing my brother and his people, you know well yours could not welcome
me."

And Forrest knew even more. Divining one cause of Jeannette's refusal,
he had told the whole story to his mother in the longest letter he had
ever written,--and sorely he missed his typewriter in doing it,--and
that letter proved a shock. The Forrests had built upon the story of his
engagement to the beauty and heiress Miss Allison, and had long been
awaiting his announcement to write the glowing letters of welcome, but
here was a thunderbolt. Floyd had fallen in love with a working-girl, a
shop-girl, a nobody, and actually wished his mother and sister to send
gushing letters expressive of their approval and assurance of loving
welcome. It was preposterous. They had expected a Florence and were told
to be content with a Jenny. It was absurd in Floyd to point out that
forty years ago Miss Allison's father was a peanut-peddler and Miss
Wallen's a professor. Forty years in this country made vast changes.
Floyd was simply pelting them with some of his ridiculous theories about
the common people, their rights and wrongs. Lincoln, not Washington, was
Floyd's ideal of the good and great and grand type of the American, and
it had spoiled him. All this was what was said to one another in excited
household chat. What was written was more diplomatic, but quite to the
purpose. They could not endorse his choice, and he could not assure his
proud, independent lady-love that they would. "He was awfully in love
once before for years, and got over it," said Floyd's married sister,
"and he'll get over this."

But there were those nearest to Captain Forrest about that time who
arrived at a widely different conclusion. Jenny Wallen might have
yielded could she have seen him and listened. Perhaps that was why she
would not. It was no longer "Starkey's friend" who waylaid her on her
homeward walks in the gloaming,--it was Captain Floyd Forrest, when he
could get to town, and she took long, roundabout ways of reaching home
and outmanoeuvred her soldier. With her whole heart crying out against
her, pleading for him and home and love and protection, she stilled it
like the sturdy little aristocrat she was, and would have none of him or
his. "What can one do with a girl like that?" asked Mrs. Cranston of her
grizzled major one bleak November evening on her return from town. "She
has told Mrs. Wells that she is going to leave her roof and live with
Miss Bonner away down on the south side, and it's all because Forrest is
received at the Wellses' and she is determined not to see him." The
major was hard-hearted enough to say he believed that interference even
on Meg's part would only make matters worse.

But the captain heard of the proposed move, and then he placed in Mrs.
Wells's hands a brief note. He was conquered now. Rather than see her
leave the roof of such devoted friends, he pledged himself to vex her no
more. Neither there nor on her homeward way would he seek to speak with
her again. Jenny, yielding perhaps as much to the Wellses' pleading as
to this, remained. What ever could be the outcome? was now the question.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XVIII.


Meantime the little blind god was working a combination of his own. One
stinging wintry evening, when the wind was whistling from the northwest
and a cold wave of most approved and vicious pattern had swooped down on
Chicago, when the pavements were coated with ice and the populace with
extra garments, and the visible features of pedestrians were
unbecomingly red, a tall, soldierly-looking man, garbed in furs, was
patrolling an up-town street and keeping anxious watch across the way.
He had not promised not to look at her, at all events, and the thought
of the fragile form he loved, shivering, possibly, in that bitter blast,
had lured him from the Lambert to within sight of the Wellses' door-way.
The yellow green of the wintry west was fading, the lamps were
flickering in the gale, and the electric globes, swinging at the corner,
threw black, shifting shadows across the pavement. The captain gazed
wistfully up at a certain window across the way. She was not yet home,
for all there was darkness. Then he peered along the sidewalk towards
the avenue. A social function of some kind was going on, and a number of
carriages were drawn up at the curb near a great stone house that faced
the broader and more fashionable thoroughfare to the east, or else were
moving slowly up and down, their coachmen thrashing vigorously with
their arms to restore circulation in their numbed fingers. Forrest
recognized the once familiar brougham of the Allisons', and conjectured
that Florence, with her now desperately devoted Hubbard, was among the
guests. At the eastward end of the street all was light and bustle,
clattering hoofs and slamming carriage-doors. All to the west was gloom
and silence; yet out of that darkness was he looking for the light, the
one light, that could bring even momentary gladness to his eyes. He knew
that on certain evenings it was her habit to stop and see how Mart's
little brood was faring, and their new home was on a back street not
four blocks distant. She was later than usual this evening; wondering
why, he tramped westward towards the corner. He heard the swift hoofs of
horses coming behind him, and the smooth roll of carriage-wheels. He saw
sudden commotion and excitement among some children issuing from a
baker's shop at the corner, and heard their shrill, eager voices, then
the clang of gongs, the louder thunder of galloping hoofs, and the
ponderous bounding bulk of a fire-engine as it came tearing down the
cross street. Like a rushing volcano it dashed southward, leaving a
trail of sparks and smoke, and then there was sudden warning cry. Some
of the children, unmindful of anything except the engine, had sprung
upon the crossing to see it go by, just as the carriage came spinning
out from behind them. The coachman shouted, hauled at his reins, and did
his best, but the little ones heard only the thunder in front, and in an
instant, though almost sliding on their powerful haunches, John
Allison's beautiful bays dashed through the frightened group, yet not
before the alert soldier, with one spring, landed in their midst,
brushing them aside, and then, with one shrieking little maid in his
arms, went down on the icy pavement in the midst of a tangle of lashing
hoofs and struggling, affrighted horses. How he got out he could not
say. A giant policeman was tugging at his shoulder; ready-handed men
were at the horses' heads, and, breathless, he stood erect, conscious of
something wrong in one side, but mainly anxious about the child. She was
picked up, stunned and senseless, and in the white glare of the electric
lamp he recognized the features of Mart Wallen's four-year old Kitty. A
sympathetic crowd had gathered. A young man poked a silk-hatted head
from the carriage-window, and, with a face nearly the color of the Queen
chrysanthemum in the lapel of his coat, besought Parks to hang on to his
horses. A surly voice in the crowd said, "Damn your horses, and you
too! If it hadn't been for this gentleman you'd have killed a dozen of
these kids." Forrest's head was beginning to swim, but he took the limp
little burden on his left shoulder. "Let me have her," he said. "I know
where to take her. Bring a doctor to Mr. Wells's at once, please." And
as he turned away he caught one glimpse of a fair, anxious face peering
out across Mr. Hubbard's elegantly draped shoulder, and found that he
could not raise his hand to his fur cap. "All right, Miss Allison," he
smiled to her reassuringly. "Drive on." And then some one helped him in
to Wells's parlor, and Mrs. Wells came fluttering down, all sympathy and
welcome. Her deft, womanly hands stripped off the cheap hood and coat of
the little sufferer; other friendly, sympathetic souls came in to help;
and then, feeling oddly faint and queer, Forrest quietly stole away.
Closing the glazed hall door behind him, he paused a moment in the
vestibule, finding himself face to face with a slender form at sight of
which even then his heart gave one great bound. Instinctively one arm
was outstretched in longing, in greeting, and then at sight of him the
form recoiled, and, cold as the biting wind that swept his cheek, he
heard the brief sentence, "You have broken your word."

Bowing his head, conscious of rapidly increasing dizziness, raging at
the thought of breaking down before her, yet smarting under the lash of
her undeserved rebuke, he pushed blindly by and went forth into the
night. The street was rocking like the steamer of the summer twice gone
by as it pitched through the "roaring forties." He remembered trying to
make his way back towards that corner--where the horses went down--there
were friends there--and that big policeman--he'd help. The lamp-post
leaned over and tapped him hard on top of the head. He tried to grapple
it, but the right arm would not answer. Then his feet shot out from
under him on the icy pavement, and the curb flew up and struck him a
violent blow at the base of the skull.

Ten minutes later, as Jeannette Wallen was rejoicing over the returning
consciousness of a sorely bumped but otherwise unharmed little maid, and
hugging that precious niece to her heart, while the doctor administered
a soothing draught, and Mrs. Wells was pulling off the pygmy shoes and
stocking, the servant admitted an abashed citizen who faltered at the
parlor door and mumbled, "Say, doctor, that gen'l'm'n that saved that
little girl must 'a' got badly hurt. He's lyin' out here down the
street--senseless----"

That was all Jeannette heard. Who caught little Kate was a question the
distracted aunt never asked until many a long day after. Nobody caught
_her_ until, a dozen doors away, under the gas-light, in the midst of a
little knot of neighbors, a battered, bleeding head was lifted from a
rough coat-sleeve, and, folded in the slender, clasping arms of a
kneeling girl, was pillowed on the pure heart where the baby curls were
nestling but a moment before.

Fractured ribs and collar-bones yield not unreadily to treatment; even
fractured skulls have been known to mend; and in a week, though dazed
and bewildered, Captain Forrest was convalescing. Cranston and other
fellows from the fort were in frequent attendance. The army surgeon from
head-quarters had been unflagging, and Colonel Kenyon himself was at the
railway station when the "Limited" arrived from New York, bringing a
much-alarmed mother and sister, who relieved, if they did not entirely
replace, certain other nurses at the patient's bedside. Upon their
arrival, after three days and nights of vigil, Miss Wallen disappeared.
She betook herself to Miss Bonner's refuge far down town, and just what
Mrs. Forrest could have heard from the Cranstons, from her son's
commanding officer, and from the fluent lips of Mrs. Wells, the reader
may best conjecture, for it is a recorded fact that no sooner was her
son out of all danger and well on the road to recovery than two ladies
drove to the south side to seek this modest abode of working-girls and
to call in person on Jeannette.

That afternoon came Cary Allison to visit his old friend the captain.
Day after day had the boy been there to inquire, and it was good to see
his rejoicing in the mending of the stalwart patient and refreshing to
hear his comments on affairs domestic. Flo and her spoons just made him
sick, he said, and the idea of having a Stoughton bottle like that for a
brother-in-law was disgusting. "Why couldn't _he_ have jumped out and
lent a helping hand, instead of sneaking inside the coach and crying at
Parks? Hubbard's a muff! I tell Flo he belongs to the family the squash
was named for, and I call him Squash, too, and so does pa, though he's
glad enough to rope him in to buying more stocks, I notice." It was
plain that in Cary's eyes sister Titania had found her Bottom and was
enamoured of an ass. Brother-like, he had made her wince many and many a
time, and now it was Forrest's turn.

"Say, cap, I do wish you'd come around and cheer the governor up a bit.
He's been warped all out of shape since the strike, and seems to feel
all broke up over home matters, too. He won't stay there at all. The
last thing he did was to drive around to Wallen's and offer him a
first-class clerkship, and now he's rowing with Wells because he won't
let on what's become of your typewriter."

His typewriter? The girl he loved with all the strength of his being,
honored and revered and longed to make his wife,--and the world could
speak of her in that loose, pragmatical, possessive, chattel-like way.
His typewriter! No more his than any man's who gave her employment. No
longer his, in fact, since he was virtually forbidden her presence. He
who had offered her his hand and name and love was actually of less
account in the arrangement of her daily life than any one of the
thousands who trod the pavement under her office windows, for they could
offer work. Forrest threw himself back upon his pillow, buried his face
in his arms, groaned aloud as the innocent youth went gayly forth into
the wintry sunshine, and the doctor and the household of anxious women
wondered what had happened to set back their impatient patient. Could it
be, suggested that social prophet, his sister, that he was, after all,
really interested in Florence Allison and chagrined at the news of her
engagement, now formally announced? Might it not be, after all, that, as
she had originally suggested, his apparent infatuation for Jeannette
Wallen was mere sentiment, quixotism, proximity, and that he would
speedily recover could they only get him away awhile? Surely it was
worth the trial. His mother's health was suffering in the rigors of a
Chicago winter. They had spent three months in St. Augustine each winter
for years past, and but for Floyd should be there now.

It was arranged somehow. He was passive, submissive, indifferent. He
knew nothing of the one wild moment of Jenny's break-down. He had never
been allowed one hint of where his blessed head had been pillowed that
bitter November night. The girl had pledged her friend to absolute
secrecy. Removed on his convalescence from Wells's roof to his mother's
rooms at The Virginia, Forrest saw no more of his hostess for several
days. Then, with a three months' leave on surgeon's certificate, he was
driven, under his mother's wing, to bid her adieu, and that night they
were off for Florida.

"I'll never forgive him as long as I live," said Mrs. Wells. "He never
gave me a chance to tell what--I can't tell you, Mrs. Cranston, but you
_know_; and those two proud women have just got him between them now,
and they'll never let him out of their leading-strings again."

"You don't know him," said Mrs. Cranston. "He'll break the strings and
be back, or he isn't worth another thought of a girl like her."

But Jenny was not so certain. Never yet had she had opportunity to unsay
the cutting words with which she had met him that bitter night. Time and
again in her heart of hearts had she planned how those unsaying words
should be said, and said just as soon as ever he came, but he came
rather soon and suddenly.

They were great Christmas farers at Wellses'. With no children of their
own, the sweet holiday season would have lost its sweetest charm but
that Jenny was again with them. They rigged up a lovely Christmas-tree
for Mart's babies, and summoned in sundry little waifs from the
neighborhood, and had games and romps and laughter and merry voices.
Later in the week there was a dinner at which the Cranstons and some
fort friends appeared; there was a mistletoe bough that night and not a
little coquetry and merriment, for Wells had invited the library girls
and numerous young men to be present, and the customs of Old England
were reproduced with characteristic American exaggeration. That
mistletoe bough remained suspended from its chandelier, a reminder of
the joys of the old year, even after '95 came knocking at the door, and
in some odd way a little sprig thereof was found one evening to be
clinging to the top of a cabinet photograph of Mr. Forrest which stood
on the mantel shelf.

It was a sharp, cold January evening, and Jenny Wallen's soft cheek was
glowing, and her eyes sparkling, as she tripped lightly up the stone
steps, let herself into the warm hall-way, and peered into the parlor.
No one was there. A bright coal fire blazed in the open grate. The
pretty room looked cosy and inviting. The library beyond--"Wells's
particular"--was dark. Mrs. Wells, said the maid, from the head of the
kitchen stairs, had been home, but was gone over to the Lambert to meet
Mr. Wells. So Jenny was alone. Some women lose courage at such times.
She seemed to gain it. Drawing off her gloves and throwing aside the
heavy cloak, she stood there in front of the blaze, her eyes fixed upon
that unconscious portrait, her hands extended over the flames. What
speaking eyes the girl had! What would be the words the soft, rosy lips
were framing? With all her soul she was gazing straight into that
unresponsive, soldierly, handsome face. With all her heart she was
murmuring some inarticulate appeal, lavishing some womanly caresses upon
the dumb and senseless picture. Then the little hands were upraised, and
the next instant, frame and all, the shadow was nestled just where the
substance had lain, clasped in those encircling arms, long weeks before.
A moment or two it was held there, the sweet face bending over, the soft
lips murmuring, crooning to it as a mother might to a precious child,
and then it was raised still more, until those lips were pressed upon it
long, long, long and fervently.

Then down went everything with a crash.

In striving to explain matters and set himself right in the eyes of his
lady-love some hours later, Captain Forrest protested that he had had no
intention whatever of spying upon, much less of startling her. They had
speedily discovered at St. Augustine that it was useless trying to bring
back this wayward son and brother, a man of thirty-five, to live without
the heart so unmistakably in the keeping of the girl he'd left behind.
"I have written to her--all you could ask, Floyd, my son," were at last
the mother's words. "Go, and God bless you." And three days later he
surprised Mrs. Wells. "I've just got to go out," said she, after a
while, "and you've simply got to stay here. I'll leave directions that
I'm out to everybody, and----" Then did that designing matron pick up
his furs and deposit them--and him--in the library. "You're to stay
here, mind, till I get back."

"But you didn't," interposed his hearer, reproachfully, at this
juncture. "You burst in there like a--like a tiger, and scared me out of
my seven senses."

"That was entirely your fault. I was merely trying to escape from the
house. You see when I left Florida you were living, as I supposed, at
Miss Bonner's, and as soon as you came in it was my cue to leave, in
view of the ferocity of your remarks the last time we met here."

"Knowing how I must regret that, you need not have been so precipitate.
It was what I think you gentlemen call a 'stand-off,'" said she, with a
pretty grimace at the slang, "but--do you always take the roundabout way
to reach the door?" Miss Wallen's lips were twitching with suppressed
delight, and Captain Forrest was watching them with ill-suppressed
emotion. He rallied promptly, however.

"Rarely, but in this case I flew--to pick up the picture you had
dropped."

"Oh, the maid would have done that. She was promptly on hand."

"Yes, too promptly. So promptly as to inspire the belief that she
suspected something was on foot when you--when I---- By the way, what
became of that sprig of potato-vine, or chickweed, or something, that
was on top of the frame? Mrs. Wells missed it as soon as she came in."

"It fell into the grate, I presume; but it wasn't chickweed. There's
more of it if Mrs. Wells needs it," she added, nodding to the pendent
spray beneath the chandelier. "It doesn't signify."

"Oh, I thought it did--at least I hoped so. Mistletoe generally does."

"Not when mistaken for potato-vine," she answered, yet her eyes were
smiling at him.

"Jeannette," he said, impulsively, his deep voice trembling, as he stood
close before her and strove to seize the little hand that was toying at
her white, round throat, "mother's letter must surely be with you by
morning. It is very hard to keep my faith and plead no more until she
has pleaded for me. Must I wait? Will Miss Bonner bring it to you at
once?"

"I--hardly think so."

"Then may I not go to-night, if need be, and get it? It was addressed,
you know, to her care."

"Yes, so I observed."

"Jenny! Then you have it? You have read what she says? Oh, my darling!
Then----"

And what imploring love was in those soft, brown eyes of his! What
tenderness and longing and passion in the outstretched arms! She looked
shyly up at him, trembling in spite of herself, but not yet yielding.

"You know I've had no time to more than glance at it," she said. "I had
hoped to read it this evening, but, you see, visitors came in. I must
read it all carefully to-morrow."

"Ah," he said, "you have me at your mercy. You wrung those promises from
me, and now----" She backed away from him a bit, he looked so fiercely
reproachful, but he followed. She upheld her hands in warning, and he
strove to seize them, but they evaded him.

"You are proud, stern, unyielding," he said at last, and turned half
helplessly away, then caught sight of the feathery spray now almost over
her bonny, curly head. "If it were _only_ Christmas time again! I'd
claim the privilege of the mistletoe."

The room was very still a moment. She stood there with bounding,
throbbing heart, her swimming eyes fixed on his strong, soldierly face,
so powerful in its pleading, so helpless through his pledge. She saw
that he would not break his promise, yet that her lightest word, her
faintest signal, would unchain him. She saw even in the sterner lines
about his forehead something of the look of utter weariness and defeat
that hovered there the night they bore the senseless burden within those
very doors, and in one great wave of tenderness, of answering love and
joy and longing, the woman in her triumphed at last.

[Illustration: "Is it potent--only at Christmas?"]

Only like a whisper, so soft, so tremulous was her voice, the needed
words were spoken:

"Is it potent--only at Christmas?"

But he heard, and sprang to her and caught her in his arms. Little
heroine though she was, what a tame surrender after all!


THE END.


_THE LOTOS LIBRARY_.

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A SOCIAL HIGHWAYMAN.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.

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IN SIGHT OF THE GODDESS.

A Tale of Washington Life.

By ROBERT BUCHANAN.


A MARRIAGE BY CAPTURE.

A Romance of To-Day.

By JULIAN HAWTHORNE.


THE GOLDEN FLEECE.

BY CAPTAIN CHARLES KING, U.S.A.


A TAME SURRENDER. A Story of the Chicago Strike.