The young face reddened at the insinuation that he might betray a secret.
"I was sure of it," said Archie, so quickly that Roseleaf felt at ease again. "Well, the reason why Isaac wants to know what is going on is, he is connected with the police."
Roseleaf said "Ah!" and opened his eyes wider.
"People who go to places like this," continued Mr. Weil, "are of great interest to the guardians of the peace. And by the police I do not mean the members of the regular force so much as the special service. It is to the latter that we go when a confidential clerk has robbed us or we become suspicious that our wives are unfaithful. Nine times out of ten the chief of the private detective office knows in advance all we wish him to ferret out. When he has told us that we will set investigations on foot, and that he hopes to learn something of the matter within a few days, he bows us out of his bureau with an air that implies that we have not come to the wrong party. And as soon as we are gone he turns to a ledger, and in a few minutes has found an abstract that tells him everything.
"Let us suppose," said Mr. Weil, "that a jeweler misses twenty valuable pieces of _bijouterie_ from his stock. The circ.u.mstances prove that they were taken by some one in his employ. He thinks of his clerks, and cannot find the heart to accuse any of them of such a grave crime. He goes to the detective office and states his case. When he is gone the chief turns to the book and finds this:
""L. M. Jenkins, clerk at Abram Cohen"s, Sixth Avenue; about twenty-three, medium height, dark, dresses well. Rooms at No. -- Twenty-Ninth street. Has been giving expensive suppers as well as valuable jewelry to Mamie Sanders, No. so-and-so, Such-a-street. They dined together at Isaac Leveson"s on such-and-such dates." Etc., etc., etc.
"Now, he can recover the jewelry and get that clerk into quod in three hours, if he likes. Naturally he won"t expedite things in that way, because he wants some excuse for running up a large bill, unless it be a bank case, where he prefers to make a great impression and get himself solid with the directors. But he will collar the fellow and recover the stuff, and all because he knew about it long before any one in the store had a suspicion."
Mr. Leveson returned. Mr. Weil asked that one of the private rooms on the second floor be put in order at once, for himself and friends. He then inquired what ladies were in the house unoccupied by escorts.
"Miss Pelham has been waiting an hour for the Judge," replied Isaac, "but I don"t think he"ll come. He disappoints her half the time now. And Mrs. Delavan, who has just come in, found a note from Col. Lamorest, asking her to excuse him to-night."
Archie looked pleased.
"They"ll do," he said. "Tell them to come and dine with us. But," he paused, and looked at Roseleaf, "we need still another."
The color mounted to the cheeks of the young novelist, as he understood the thought that prompted this statement.
"Not on my account--I would much rather not," he stammered.
"You will kindly leave that to my judgment," replied Archie, impressively. "Remember, you are not the instructor here, but the pupil.
There must be some one else, Isaac."
Mr. Leveson hesitated. He was mentally going over the rooms upstairs and taking stock of what was in them.
"There are two girls," he said, at last, "who used to work in one of the dry goods stores, but you wouldn"t want them. They are very strict, and they dress plainly,--and I am afraid the other ladies wouldn"t like to a.s.sociate with them."
Mr. Weil grew vastly irritated by this statement. He brought his hand down on the table with a bang.
"The other ladies!" he echoed, angrily. "When you tell Mrs. Delavan and Jenny Pelham that you want them to dine with us, you know that ends it!
As to these shop girls, what do you mean by calling them _strict_? What would a _strict_ girl be doing in _this_ house?"
Mr. Leveson cringed before his interrogator and made the old, imploring movement with his hands.
"Let me explain," he said. "These girls came here a few weeks ago with some traveling men. They took dinner, but Adolf says neither drank a drop of wine. A few days later they came again, with other escorts, and the same thing occurred."
"Why did you let them in?" demanded Weil.
"Because I knew the gentlemen."
Archie started to say something, but checked himself.
"And after that they came alone and asked to see me," pursued Isaac, humbly. "They said they had been thrown out of work, and thought there might be an opportunity to do something here, like waiting on the guests. And while we were talking, two old customers of the house called to dine, alone, and asked me if they could get some one to share the meal with them. And, it seemed quite providential--"
Archie stopped the voluble speech by striking his hands sharply together.
"Enough!" he said. "When the dinner is ready send one of them in. That will make the three we need."
In half an hour the dinner was ready to be served. Then Isaac came with the information that the girls refused to be separated.
"What a nuisance!" exclaimed Weil. "Well, send both of them, then. We"ll take care of them, somehow."
CHAPTER XIII.
A QUESTION OF COLOR.
The next morning, when Roseleaf awoke, he was for some time in a sort of stupor. Through the bright sunlight that filled his room he seemed to scent the fumes of tobacco and of liquor. The place was filled, he imagined, with that indefinable aroma that proceeds from a convivial company made up of both s.e.xes. He half believed that Jennie Pelham and Mrs. Delavan were sitting by his bed, more brazen than the bell which, from a neighboring steeple, told him the hour was ten. And surely, by those curtains there, hiding the flame that filled their cheeks, were the two "shop-girls," their pinched faces denoting slow starvation.
Boggs, and Isaac Leveson, and Archie Weil were there, all of them; and the young man tossed uneasily on his pillow, struggling with the remnant of nightmare that remained to cloud his brain.
When he was able to think and see clearly he sat up and rang for a pitcher of ice water. He was consumed by thirst, and his forehead ached blindly. When he had bathed his head and throat he turned, by a sudden impulse, to his table, and took out the MSS. of the story he had begun.
Slowly he read over the pages, to the last one. Then, seizing his pen, he devoted himself to the next chapter, without dressing, without breakfasting.
It was four o"clock when he ceased work. He realized all at once that he was feeling ill. The fact dawned upon him that he needed food, and donning his garments, he took his way listlessly to a restaurant and ordered something to eat. As he swallowed the morsels, he fell to wondering how much temptation _he_ would be able to bear, with hunger as a background.
He pa.s.sed a good part of the evening in walking the streets, selecting, instinctively, sections where he was least likely to meet any one he knew. When he returned to his room he read over the MSS. he had written that day, and into his troubled brain there came a sense of pleasure.
Gouger was right. To tell of such matters in a novel, one should know them himself. Roseleaf could never have written of vice before he saw Leveson"s. Now, it was as plain to him as print, almost as easy to use in fiction as virtue. What was to follow? He pondered over the plot he had mapped out, and it grew clearer.
Daisy had given him no further encouragement--at least in words--since that day she had said it was "risky" to ask her father, but he felt certain that she regarded him with favor, and that if Mr. Fern put no obstacles in the way she would not refuse to wed him when the right time came. He thought it would be wise to obtain one more brief interview with her, before proceeding to extremities, and determined to do his best to draw her aside, when he made his next visit to her house. This settled, he went to bed again and slept soundly.
When the day to go to Midlands arrived Shirley"s courage began to ooze a little. So much depended upon the att.i.tude of his dear one"s mind, which, for all he knew, had changed since he talked with her, that he fairly trembled with apprehension. He avoided Mr. Weil, with whom he usually took the train, and went out early. Alighting at a station a mile or two away from the right one, he walked through the woods, trying to think how to act in case matters did not turn out as he hoped. Under the branches he strolled along, until he came within sight of the roofs of Midlands; and then he threw himself at the foot of a tree close to Mr. Fern"s grounds, and gave himself up to reverie.
When he laid down here it was only five o"clock, and he was not expected at the house for a full hour. It pleased him to be so near the one he loved, and to lie where he could dream of her sweet face and see the outlines of the house that sheltered her, while she had no knowledge of his presence. Just over there was the arbor, where he had first had the supreme bliss of touching her lips with his own. If he could get her to come there with him again--to-night--when the others were occupied with their talk of earthly things, and if she would only tell him frankly that he might go to her father, and that her prayers would go with him!
A soft languor came over his body at the deliciousness of these reflections, but it was dissipated by the sound of voices which presently came to him from the other side of the hedge.
"I can"t exactly understand, Miss Daisy," said one of the voices, which he had no difficulty in recognizing as that of Hannibal, "why you wish me to go away?"
There was an a.s.surance in the tone that Roseleaf did not like. He had noticed it before in the intercourse of this negro with his employers.
There was something which intimated that he was on the most complete level with them.
"I want you to go," said Daisy, in her quiet way, "because education is the only thing that will make you what you ought to be. There are a hundred chances open to you, in the professions, if you can take a college course. Unless you do, you can hope for nothing better than such employment as you have now."
It made the listener"s blood boil to think that these people should be consulting in that way, like friends. Daisy ought to have a better sense of her position.
"I will not refuse your offer, at least not yet," replied Hannibal, after a slight pause. "It may be as you say--if I graduate as a doctor or a lawyer. But I know that I live in a country where my color is despised--and all that could possibly come to me here as a professional man is work among my own race. I should be a black lawyer with black clients; or a black physician, with black patients. To really succeed I should go across the ocean to some land where the shade of my skin would not be counted a crime."
Daisy"s face could not be seen by the listener, but he was sure it was a kindly one, and this made him fume. The situation was atrocious.
"It should not be considered so anywhere," said the girl, gently.