A SOMBRE excitement reigned in Thessaly next day, when it became known that the French-Cana-dian workmen whom the rolling-mill people were importing would arrive in the village within the next few hours. They were coming through from Massachusetts, and watchful eyes at Troy had noted their temporary halt there and the time of the train they took westward. The telegraph sped forward the warning, and fully a thousand idle men in Thessaly gathered about the dép?t, both inside and on the street without, to witness the unwelcome advent.
Some indefinite rumors of the sensation reached the secluded milliner’s shop on the back street, during the day. Ben Lawton drifted in to warm himself during the late forenoon, and told of the stirring scenes that were expected. He was quick to observe that Jessica was not looking well, and adjured her to be careful about the heavy cold which she said she had taken. The claims upon him of the excitement outside were too strong to be resisted, but he promised to look in during the afternoon and tell them the news.
The daylight of the November afternoon was beginning imperceptibly to wane before any further tidings of the one topic of great public interest reached the sisters. One of the better class of factory-girls came in to gossip with Lucinda, and she brought with her a veritable budget of information. The French Canadians had arrived, and with them came some Pinkerton detectives, or whatever they were called, who were said to be armed to the teeth. The crowd had fiercely hooted these newcomers and their guards, and there had been a good deal of angry hustling. For awhile it looked as if a fight must ensue; but, somehow, it did not come off. The Canadians, in a body, had gone with their escort to the row of new cottages which the company had hired for them, followed by a diminishing throng of hostile men and boys. There were numerous personal incidents to relate, and the two sisters listened with deep interest to the whole recital.
When it was finished the girl still sat about, evidently with something on her mind. At last, with a blunt “Can I speak to you for a moment?” she led Jessica out into the shop. There, in a whisper, with repeated affirmations and much detail, she imparted the confidential portion of her intelligence.
The effect of this information upon Jessica was marked and immediate. As soon as the girl had gone she hastened to the living-room, and began hurriedly putting on her boots. The effort of stooping to button them made her feverish head ache, and she was forced to call the amazed Lucinda to her assistance.
“You’re crazy to think of going out such a day as this,” protested the girl, “and you with such a cold, too.”
“It’s got to be done,” said Jessica, her eyes burning with eagerness, and her cheeks flushed. “If it killed me, it would have to be done. But I’ll bundle up warm. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.” Refusing to listen to further dissuasion she hastily put on her hat and cloak, and then with nervous rapidity wrote a note, sealed it up tightly with an envelope, and marked on it, with great plainness, the address: “Miss Kate Minster.”
“Give this to father when he comes,” she cried, “and tell him—”
Ben Lawton’s appearance at the door interrupted the directions. He was too excited about the events of the day to be surprised at seeing the daughter he had left an invalid now dressed for the street; but she curtly stopped the narrative which he began.
“We’ve heard all about it,” she said. “I want you to come with me now.”
Lucinda watched the dominant sister drag on and button her gloves with apprehension and solicitude written all over her honest face. “Now, do be careful,” she repeated more than once.
As Jessica said “I’m ready now,” and turned to join her father, the little boy came into the shop through the open door of the living-room. A swift instinct prompted the mother to go to him and stoop to kiss him on the forehead. The child smiled at her; and when she was out in the street, walking so hurriedly that her father found the gait unprecedented in his languid experience, she still dwelt curiously in her mind upon the sweetness of that infantile smile.
And this, by some strange process, suddenly brought clearness and order to her thoughts. Under the stress of this nervous tension, perhaps because of the illness which she felt in every bone, yet which seemed to clarify her senses, her mind was all at once working without confusion.
She saw now that what had depressed her, overthrown her self-control, impelled her to reject the kindness of Miss Minster, had been the humanization, so to speak, of her ideal, Reuben Tracy. The bare thought of his marrying and giving in marriage—of his being in love with the rich girl—this it was that had so strangely disturbed her. Looking at it now, it was the most foolish thing in the world. What on earth had she to do with Reuben Tracy? There could never conceivably have entered her head even the most vagrant and transient notion that he—no, she would not put that thought into form, even in her own mind. And were there two young people in all the world who had more claim to her good wishes than Reuben and Kate? She answered this heartily in the negative, and said to herself that she truly was glad that they loved each other. Yes, she was glad! She bit her lips, and insisted on repeating this to her own thoughts.
But why, then, had the discovery of this so unnerved her? She answered the question only vaguely. It must have been because the idea of their happiness made the isolation of her own life so miserably clear; because she felt that they had forgotten her and her work in their new-found concern for each other. Yes, that would be the reason. She was all over that weak folly now. She had it in her power to help them, and dim, half-formed wishes that she might give life itself to their service flitted across her mind.
She had spoken never a word to her father all this while, and had seemed to take no note either of direction or of what and whom she passed; but she stopped now in front of the doorway in Main Street which bore the law-sign of Reuben Tracy. “Wait for me here,” she said to Ben, and disappeared up the staircase.
Jessica made her way with some difficulty up the second flight. Her head burned with the exertion, and there was a novel numbness in her limbs; but she gave this only a passing thought.
The door of the office was locked. On the panel was tacked a white half-sheet of paper. It was not easy to decipher the inscription in the failing light, but she finally made it out to be:
“Called away until noon to-morrow (Friday).”
The girl leaned against the door-sill for support. In the first moment or two it seemed to her that she was going to swoon. Then resolution came back to her, and with it a new store of strength, and she went down the stairs again slowly and in terrible doubt as to what should now be done.
The memory suddenly came to her of the one other time she had been in this stairway, when she had stood in the darkness with her little boy, gathered up against the wall to allow the two Minster ladies to pass. Upon the heels of this chased the recollection—with such lack of sequence do our thoughts follow one another—of the singularly sweet smile her little boy had bestowed upon her, half an hour since, when she kissed him.
The smile had lingered in her mind as a beautiful picture. Walking down the stairs now, in the deepening shadows, the revelation dawned upon her all at once—it was his father’s smile! Yes, yes—hurriedly the fancy reared itself in her thoughts—thus the lover of her young girlhood had looked upon her. The delicate, clever face; the prettily arched lips; the soft, light curls upon the forehead; the tenderly beaming blue eyes—all were the same.
Often—alas! very often—this resemblance had forced itself upon her consciousness before. But now, lighted up by that chance babyish smile, it came to her in the guise of a novelty, and with a certain fascination in it. Her head seemed to have ceased to ache, now that this almost pleasant thought had entered it. It was passing strange, she felt, that any sense of comfort should exist for her in memories which had fed her soul upon bitterness for so long a time. Yet it was already on the instant apparent to her that when she should next have time to think, that old episode would assume less hateful aspects than it had always presented before.
But now there was no time to think.
At the street door she found her father leaning against a shutter and discussing the events of the day with the village lamplighter, who carried a ladder on his shoulder, and reported great popular agitation to exist.
Jessica beckoned Ben summarily aside, and put into his hands the letter she had written at the shop. “I want you to take this at once to Miss Minster, at her house,” she said, hurriedly. “See to it that she gets it herself. Be sure you wait for an answer. Don’t say a word to any living soul. Do just what she tells you to do. I’ve said you can be depended upon. If you show yourself a man, it may make your fortune. Now, hurry; and I do hope you will do me credit!”
Under the spur of this surprising exhortation, Ben walked away with unexampled rapidity, until he had overtaken the lamplighter, from whom he borrowed some chewing tobacco.
The girl, left to herself, began walking irresolutely down Main Street. The flaring lights in the store windows seemed to add to the confusion of her mind. It had appeared to be important to send her father away at once, but now she began to regret that she had not kept him to help her in her search. For Reuben Tracy must be found at all hazards.
How to go to work to trace him she did not know. She had no notion whatever as to who his intimate friends were. The best device she could think of would be to ask about him at the various law-offices; for she had heard that however much lawyers might pretend to fight one another in court, they were all on very good terms outside.
Some little distance down the street she came upon the door of another stairway which bore a number of lawyers’ signs. The windows all up the front of this building were lighted, and without further............