Part 8

"I wish 'n he hed a friend," he said, after a pause, breaking off bits of the sunken wall. "Not like me, Jane," raising his voice, and trying to speak carelessly. "Like himself. I'm so poor learned, I can't do anything for sech as them. Like him. Jane," after another silence, "I've seen IT."

She looked at him.

"The engine. Jane"--

"I know."

She turned sharply and walked away, the bluish light of the first moonbeams lighting up her face and shoulders suddenly as she went off down the wall. Was it that which brought out from the face of the middle-aged working woman such a strange meaning of latent youth, beauty, and passion? God only knows when the real childhood comes into a life, how early or late; but one might fancy this woman had waited long for hers, and it was coming to-night, the coarse hardness of look was swept away so suddenly. The great thought and hope of her life surged up quick, uncontrollably; her limbs shook, the big, mournful animal eyes were wet with tears, her very horny hands worked together uncertainly and helpless as a child's. On the face, too, especially about the mouth, such a terror of pain, such a hungry wish to smile, to be tender, that I think a baby would have liked to put up its lips then to be kissed, and have hid its face on her neck.

"Summat ails her, sure," said Andy, stupidly watching her a moment or two, and then going in to kick off his boots and eat his supper, warm on the range.

The moonlight was cold; he shut it out, and sat meditating over his cigar for an hour or two before the Quaker came in. When she did, he went to light her night-lamp for her,--for he had an odd, old-fashioned courtesy about him to women or the aged. He noticed, as he did it, that her hair had fallen from the close, thin cap, and how singularly soft and fine it was. She stood by the window, drawing her fingers through the long, damp folds, in a silly, childish way.

"Good night, Andrew," as he gave it to her.

"Good night."

She looked at him gravely.

"I wish, lad--Would thee say, 'God bless thee, Jane'? It's long since as I've heard that, an' there's no one but thee t' 'll say it."

The boy was touched.

"Often I thinks it, Jane,--often. Ye've been good to me these six years. I was nothin' but a beggar's brat when ye took me in. I mind that, though ye think I forget, when I'm newly rigged out sometimes. God bless ye! yes, I'll say it: God knows I will."

She went out into the little passage. He heard her hesitate there a minute. It was a double house: the kitchen and sitting-room at one side of the narrow hall; at the other, Jane's chamber, and a room which she usually kept locked. He had heard her there at night sometimes, for he slept above it, and once or twice had seen the door open in the daytime, and looked in. It held, he saw, better furniture than the rest of the house: a homespun carpet of soft, grave colors, thick drab curtains, a bedstead, one or two bookcases, filled and locked, of which Jane made as little use, he was sure, as she could of the fowling-piece and patent fishing-rod which he saw in one corner. There were no shams, no cheap makeshifts in the Quaker's little house, in any part of it; but this room was the essence of cleanness and comfort, Andy thought. He never asked questions, however: some ingredient in his poor hodge-podge of a brain keeping him always true to this hard test of good breeding. So to-night, though he heard her until near eleven o'clock moving restlessly about in this room, he hesitated until then, before he went to speak to her.

"She's surely sick," he said, with a worried look, lighting his candle. "Women are the Devil for nerves."

Coming to the open door, however, he found her only busy in rubbing the furniture with a bit of chamois-skin. She looked up at him, her face very red, and the look in her face that children have when going out for a holiday.

"How does thee think it looks, Andy?" her voice strangely low and rapid.

He looked at her curiously.

"I'm makin' it ready, thee knows. Pull to this shutter for me, lad. A good many years I've been makin' it ready"--

"You shiver so, ye'd better go to bed, Jane."

"Yes. Only the white valance is to put to the bed; I'm done then,"--going on silently for a while.

"I've been so long at it,"--catching her breath. "Hard scrapin', the first years. We'd only a lease on the place at first. It's ours now, an' it's stocked, an'--Don't thee think the house is snug itself, Andrew? Thee sees other houses. Is't home-like lookin'? Good for rest"--

"Yes, surely. What are you so anxious an' wild about, Jane? It's yer own house."

"I'm not anxious,"--trying to calm herself. "Mine, is it, lad? All mine; nobody sharin' in it."

She laughed. In all these years he had never heard her laugh before; it was low and full-hearted,--a live, real laugh. Somehow, all comfort, home, and frolic in the coming years were promised in it.

"Mine?" folding up her duster. "Well, lad, thee says so. Daily savin' of the cents got it. Maybe thee thought me a hard woman?"--with an anxious look. "I kept all the accounts of it in that blue book I burned to-night. Nobody must know what it cost. No. Thee'd best go to sleep, lad. I've an hour's more work, I think. There'll be no time for it to-morrow, bein' the last day."

He did not like to leave her so feverish and unlike herself.

"Well, good night, then."

"Good night, Andrew. Mine, eh?"--her face flushing. "Thee'll know to-morrow. Thee thinks it looks comfortable?"--holding his hand anxiously. "Heartsome? Mis' Hale called the place that the other day. I was so glad to hear that! Well, good night. _I_ think it does."

And she went back to her work, while Andy made his way up-stairs, puzzled and sleepy.

The next day was cool and grave for intemperate August. Very seldom a stream of fresh sunshine broke through the gray, mottling the pavements with uncertain lights. Summer was evidently tired of its own lusty life, and had a mind to put on a cowl of hodden-gray, and call itself November. The pale, pleasant light toned in precisely, however, to the meaning of Arch and Walnut Streets, where the old Quaker family-life has rooted itself into the city, and looks out on the passers-by in such a sober, cheerful fashion. There was one house, low down in Arch, that would have impressed you as having grown more sincerely than the others out of the character of its owner. There was nothing bigoted or purse-proud or bawbling in the habit of the man who built it; from the massive blocks in the foundation, to the great horse-chestnuts in front, and the creeping ivy over pictures and bookshelves, there was the same constant hint of a life liberal, solid, graceful. It had its whim of expression, too, in the man himself,--a small man, lean, stoop-shouldered, with gray hair and whiskers, wearing a clergyman's black suit and white cravat: his every motion was quiet, self-poised, intelligent; a quizzical, kind smile on the mouth, listening eyes, a grave forehead; a man who had heard other stories than any in your life,--of different range, yet who waited, helpful, for yours, knowing it to be something new and full of an eternal meaning. It was Dr. Bowdler, rector of an Episcopal church, a man of more influence out of the Church than any in it. He was in the breakfast-room now, trimming the hanging-baskets in the window, while his niece finished her coffee: he "usually saved his appetite for dinner, English fashion; cigars until then,"--poohing at all preaching of hygiene, as usual, as "stuff."

There were several other gentlemen in the room,--waiting, apparently, for something,--reading the morning papers, playing with the Newfoundland dog that had curled himself up in the patch of sunshine by the window, or chatting with Miss Defourchet. None of them, she saw, were men of cultured leisure: one or two millionnaires, burly, stubby-nosed fellows, with practised eyes and Port-hinting faces: the class of men whose money was made thirty years back, who wear slouched clothes, and wield the coarser power in the States. They came out to the talk fit for a lady, on the open general field, in a lumbering, soggy way, the bank-note smell on every thought. The others, more unused to society, caught its habit better, she thought, belonging as they did to a higher order: they were practical mechanicians, and their profession called, she knew, for tolerably powerful and facile faculties of brain. The young lady, who was waiting too, though not so patiently as the others, amused herself in drawing them out and foiling them against each other, with a good deal of youthful tact, and want of charity, for a while. She grew tired at last.

"They are long coming, uncle," she said, rising from her chair.

"They are here, Mary: putting up the model in the back lobby for the last hour. Did you think it would be brought in here?"

"I don't know. Mr. Aikens is not here,"--glancing at the timepiece uneasily.

"He's always slow," said one of the machinists, patting the dog's head. "But I will rely more on his judgment of the engine than on my own. He'll not risk a dollar on it, either, if there's a chance of its proving a failure."

"It cannot be a failure," she said, impatiently, her peremptory brown eyes lighting.

"It has been tried before," said her uncle, cautiously,--"or the same basis of experiment,--substitution of compressed air for steam,--and it did not succeed. But it is the man you reason from, Mary, not the machine."

"I don't understand anything about the machine," in a lower voice, addressing the man she knew to possess most influence in the party. "But this Starke has given his life to it, and a life worth living, too. All the strength of soul and body that God gave him has gone into that model out yonder. He has been dragging it from place to place for years, half starving, to get it a chance of trial"--

"All which says nothing for the wheels and pulleys," dryly interrupted the man, with a critical look at her flushing and paling face.

People of standfast habit were always shy of this young person, because, having an acute brain and generous impulses, and being a New-Englander by birth, she had believed herself called to be a reformer, and had lectured in public last winter. Her lightest remarks had, somehow, an oratorical twang. The man might have seen what a true, grand face hers would be, when time had taken off the acrid, aggressive heat which the, to her, novel wrongs in the world provoked in it.

"When you see the man," interposed her uncle, "you will understand why Miss Defourchet espouses his cause so hotly. Nobody is proof against his intense, fierce belief in this thing he has made. It reminds me of the old cases of possession by a demon."

The young girl looked up quickly.

"Demon? It was the spirit of God, the Bible says, that filled Bezaleel and that other, I forget his name, with wisdom to work in gold and silver and fine linen. It's the spirit of God that you call genius,--anything that reveals truth: in pictures, or actions, _or_--machines."

Friend Turner, who was there, took her fingers in his wrinkled hand.

"Thee feels strongly, Mary."

"I wish you could see the man," in a lower voice. "Your old favorite, Fichte," with a smile, "says that 'thorough integrity of purpose is our nearest approach to the Divine idea.' There never was such integrity of purpose as his, I believe. Men don't often fight through hunger and want like death, for a pure aim. And I tell you, if fate thwarts him at this last chance, it is unjust and cruel."

"Thee means _God_, thee knows?"

She was silent, then looked up.

"I do know."

The old Quaker put his hand kindly on her hair.

"He will find His own teachers for thee, dear," was all the reproof he gave.

There was a noise in the hall, and a servant, opening the door, ushered in Andy, and behind him the machinist, Starke. A younger man than Friend Turner had expected to see,--about fifty, his hair prematurely white, in coarse, but decent brown clothes, bearing in his emaciated limbs and face marks of privation, it was true, but with none of the fierce enthusiasm of expression or nervousness he had looked for. A quiet, grave, preoccupied manner. While Dr. Bowdler and some of the others crowded about him, he stood, speaking seldom, his hands clasped behind him and his head bent forward, the gray hair brushed straight up from his forehead. Miss Defourchet was disappointed a little: the best of women like to patronize, and she had meant to meet him as an equal, recognize him in this new atmosphere of refinement into which he was brought, set him at his ease, as she did Andy, by a few quiet words. But he was her equal: more master of this or any occasion than she, because so thoroughly unconscious, standing on something higher. She suspected, too, he had been used to a life as cultivated as this, long ago, by the low, instructed voice, the intangible simplicity of look and word belonging to the bred gentleman.

"They may fuss as they please about him now," chuckled Andy to himself, "but darn a one of 'em would have smuggled him into them clothes. Spruce they look, too; baggy about the knees, maybe. No, thank you, Miss; I've had sufficient," putting down the wine he had barely sipped,--groaning inwardly; but he knew what was genteel, I hope, and that comforted him afterwards.

"The model is ready," said Starke to Dr. Bowdler. "We are keeping your friends waiting."

"No. It is Aikens who is not here. You know him? If the thing satisfies him, he'll bring it into his factories over the Delaware, and make Johns push it through at Washington. He's a thorough-goer, Aikens. Then it will be a success. That's Johns,--that burly fellow in the frock-coat. You have had the model at Washington, I think you told me, Mr. Starke?"

"Three years ago. I exhibited it before a committee. On the Capitol grounds it was."

"Well?"

"Oh, with success, certainly. They brought in a bill to introduce it into the public works, but it fell through. Woods brought it in. He was a young man: not strong, maybe. That was the reason they laughed, I suppose. He tried it for two or three sessions, until it got to be a sort of joke. I had no influence. That has been the cause of its failure, always."

His eyes dropped; then he suddenly lifted his hand to his mouth, putting it behind him again, to turn with a smile when Miss Defourchet addressed him. Dr. Bowdler started.

"Look at the blood," he whispered to Friend Turner. "He bit his finger to the bone."

"I know," said the old Quaker. "The man is quiet from inanition and nervous tension. This trial means more to him than we guess. Get him out of this crowd."

"Come, Mr. Starke," and the Doctor touched his arm, "into my library. There are some curious plates there which"--

Andy had been gulping for courage to speak for some time.

"Don't let him go without a glass of wine," he muttered to the young lady. "I give you my honor I haven't got food across his lips for"--

She started away from him, and made the machinist drink to the success of "our engine," as she called it; but he only touched the glass to his lips and smiled at her faintly: then left the room with her uncle.

The dog followed him: he had kept by Starke since the moment he came into the breakfast-room, cuddling down across his feet when he was called away. The man had only patted him absently, saying that all dogs did so with him, he didn't know why. Thor followed him now. Friend Turner beckoned the clergyman back a moment.

"Make him talk, Richard. Be rough, hurt him, if thee chooses; it will be a safety-valve. Look in his eyes! I tell thee we have no idea of all that has brought this poor creature into this state,--such rigid strain. But if it is broken in on first by the failure of his pump, if it be a pump, I will not answer for the result, Richard."

Dr. Bowdler nodded abruptly, and hurried after Starke. When he entered the cozy south room which he called the library, he found Starke standing before an oil-painting of a baby, one the Doctor had lost years ago.

"Such a bright little thing!" the man said, patting the chubby bare foot as if it were alive.

"You have children?" Dr. Bowdler asked eagerly.

"No, but I know almost all I meet in the street, or they know me. 'Uncle Joe' they call me,"--with a boyish laugh.

It was gone in a moment.

"Are they ready?"

"No."

The Doctor hesitated. The man beside him was gray-haired as himself, a man of power, with a high, sincere purpose looking out of the haggard scraggy face and mild blue eyes,--how could he presume to advise him? Yet this Starke, he saw, had narrowed his life down to a point beyond which lay madness; and that baby had not been in life more helpless or solitary or unable than he was now, when the trial had come. The Doctor caught the bony hands in his own fat healthy ones.

"I wish I could help you," he said impetuously.

Starke looked in his face keenly.

"For what? How?"

"This engine--have you nothing to care for in life but that?"

"Nothing,--nothing but that and what it will gain me."

There was a pause.

"If it fails?"

The dark blood dyed the man's face and throat; he choked, waited a moment before he spoke.

"It would not hurt me. No. I'm nearly tired out, Sir. I hardly look for success."

"Will you try again?"

"No, I'll not try again."

He had drawn away and stood by the window, his face hidden by the curtain. The Doctor was baffled.

"You have yourself lost faith in your invention?"

Something of the old fierceness flashed into the man's eye, but died out.

"No matter," he said under his breath, shaking his head, and putting his hand in a feeble way to his mouth.

"Inanition of soul as well as body," thought the Doctor. "I'll rouse him, cruel or not."

"Have you anything to which to turn, if this disappoints you? Home or friends?"

He waited for an answer. When it came, he felt like an intruder, the man was so quiet, far-off.

"I have nothing,--no friends,--unless I count that boy in the next room. Eh? He has fragments of the old knightly spirit, if his brain be cracked. No others."

"Well, well! You'll forgive me?" said the Doctor. "I did not mean to be coarse. Only I--The matter will succeed, I know. You will find happiness in that. Money and fame will come after."

The old man looked up and came towards him with a certain impressive dignity, though the snuff-colored clothes were bagging about his limbs, and his eyes were heavy and unsteady.

"You're not coarse. No. I'm glad you spoke to me in that way. It is as if you stopped my life short, and made me look before and behind. But you don't understand. I"--

He put his hand to his head, then began buttoning his coat uncertainly, with a deprecating, weak smile.

"I don't know what the matter is. I'm not strong as I used to be."

"You need success."

How strong and breezy the Doctor's voice sounded!

"Cheer up, Mr. Starke. You're a stronger-brained man than I, and twenty years younger. It's something to have lived for a single high purpose like yours, if you succeed. And if not, God's life is broad, and needs other things than air-engines. Perhaps you've been 'in training,' as the street-talk goes, getting your muscles and nerves well grown, and your real work and fight are yet to come."

"I don't know," said the man, dully.

Dr. Bowdler, perhaps, with well-breathed body and soul, did not quite comprehend how vacant and well worn out both heart and lungs were under poor Starke's bony chest.

"You don't seem to comprehend what this engine is to me.--You said the world was broad. I had a mind, even when I was a boy, to do something in it. My father was a small farmer over there in the Jerseys. Well, I used to sit thinking there, after the day's work was done, until my head ached, of how I might do something,--to help, you understand?"

"I understand."

"To make people glad I had lived. I was lazy, too. I'd have liked to settle down and grub like the rest, but this notion kept driving me like, a sting. I can understand why missionaries cross the seas when their hearts stay behind. It grew with me, kept me restless, like a devil inside of me. I'm not strong-brained, as you said. I had only one talent,--for mechanism. They bred me a lawyer, but I was a machinist born. Well,--it's the old story. What's the use of telling it?"

He stopped abruptly, his eyes on the floor.

"Go on. It will be good for both of us. Aikens has not come."

"There's nothing to tell. If it was God or the Devil that led me on to this thing I don't know. I sold myself to it, soul and body. The idea of this invention was not new, but my application was. So it got possession of me. Whatever I made by the law went into it. I tried experiments in a costly way then, had laboratories there, and workshops in the city. My father left me a fortune; _that_ was swallowed up. I worked on with hard struggle then. I was forty years old. I thought success lay just within my reach. God! You don't know how I had fought for it, day by day, all that long life! I was near mad, I think. And then"--

He stopped again, biting his under lip, standing motionless. The Doctor waited until he was controlled.

"Never mind," gently. "Don't go on."

"Yes, I'll tell you all. I was married. A little Quaker girl she was, uneducated, but the gentlest, truest woman God ever made, I think. It rested one to look at her. There were two children. They died. Maybe, if they had lived, it would have been different with me,--I'm so fond of children. I was of her,--God knows I was! But after the children were gone, and the property sunk, and the experiments all topped just short of success, for want of means, I grew irritable and cross,--used to her. It's the way with husbands and wives, sometimes. Well"--

He swallowed some choking in his throat, and hurried on.

"She had some money,--not much, but her own. I wanted it. Then I stopped to think. This engine seemed like a greedy devil swallowing everything. Another step, and she was penniless, ruined: common sense told me that. And I loved her,--well enough to see how my work came between us every hour, made me cruel to her, kept her wretched. If I were gone, she would be better off. I said that to myself day after day. I used to finger the bonds of that money, thinking how it would enable me to finish all I had to do. She wanted me to take it. I knew some day I should do it."

"Did you?"

"No,"--his face clearing. "I was not altogether lost, I think. I left her, settling it on herself. Then I was out of temptation. But I deceived her: I said I was tired of married life, wished to give myself to my work. Then I left her."

"What did she say?"

"She? Nothing that I remember. 'As thee will, Joseph,' that was all, if anything. She had suspected it a long time. If I had stayed with her, I should have used that money,"--his fingers working with his white whiskers. "I've been near starving sometimes since. So I saved her from that,"--looking steadily at the Doctor, when he had finished speaking, but as if he did not see him.

"But your wife? Have you never seen her since?"

"Once." He spoke with difficulty now, but the clergyman suffered him to go on. "I don't know where she is now. I saw her once in the Fulton ferry-boat at New York; she had grown suddenly old and hard. She did not see me. I never thought she could grow so old as that. But I did what I could. I saved her from my life."

Dr. Bowdler looked into the man's eyes as a physician might look at a cancer.

"Since then you have not seen her, I understand you? Not wished to see her?"

There was a moment's pause.

"I have told you the facts of my life, Sir," said the old machinist, with a bow, his stubbly gray hair seeming to stand more erect; "the rest is of trifling interest."

Dr. Bowdler colored.

"Don't be unjust to me, my friend," he said, kindly. "I meant well."