CHAPTER XIX.
AT THE BOARD OF WATER-WORKS
“There she comes,” murmured one of the clerks, in the board of water-works offices.
“Who?” murmured the other clerk.
“The beggar-girl,” responded the first one.
The chairman of the board heard them, and looked fearfully over his shoulder.
Roger, Tom, and Bonny knew that Berty’s frequent visits to the city hall had gained for her a nickname, occasioned by the character of her visits. She was always urging the claims of the poor, hence she was classed with them. They carefully shielded from her the knowledge of this nickname, and supposed she knew nothing of it.
However, she did know. Some whisper of the “beggar-girl” had reached her ears, and was a matter of chagrin to her.
The chairman of the board of water-works knew all about her. He knew that if the clerks had seen her passing along the glass corridor outside his office she was probably coming to him; she probably wanted something.
One clerk was his nephew, the other his second cousin, so he was on terms of familiarity with them, and at the present moment was in the outer office discussing with them the chances that a certain bill had of passing the city council.
The door of his own inner office stood open, but of what use to take refuge there? If the beggar-girl really wished to see a man on business, she always waited for him.
He looked despairingly about him. A high, old-fashioned desk stood near. Under it was a foot-stool. As a knock came at the door, he ungracefully folded his long, lank limbs, quickly sat down on the foot-stool, and said, in a low voice, “I’ve gone to Portland for a week!” Then he fearfully awaited results.
Berty, followed by her friend, the mongrel pup, walked into the room and asked if Mr. Morehall were in.
“No,” said the second cousin, gravely, “he has been called to Portland on important business—will be gone a week.”
The girl’s face clouded; she stood leaning against the railing that separated the room into two parts, and, as she did so, her weight pushed open the gate that the second cousin had just hastily swung together.
The pup ran in, and being of quick wits and an inquiring disposition wondered what that man was doing curled up in a corner, instead of being on his feet like the other two.
He began to sniff round him. Perhaps there was something peculiar about him. No—he seemed to be like other men, a trifle anxious and red-faced, perhaps, but still normal. He gave a playful bark, as if to say, “I dare you to come out.”
Berty heard him, and turned swiftly. “Mugwump, if you worry another rat, I’ll never give you a walk again.”
The two young men were in a quandary. Whether to go to the assistance of their chief, or whether to affect indifference, was vexing their clerical souls. Berty, more quick-witted than the pup, was prompt to notice their peculiar expressions.
“Please don’t let him worry a rat,” she said, beseechingly, “it makes him so cruel. Rats have a dreadfully hard time! Oh, please call him off. He’s got it in his mouth. I hear him.”
The chairman, in his perplexity, had thrown him a glove from his pocket, and Mugwump was mouthing and chewing it deliciously.
“He’ll kill it,” exclaimed Berty. “Oh! let me in,” and before the confused clerks could prevent her, she had pushed open the gate and had followed the dog.
Her face was a study. Low down on the floor sat the deceiving chairman, with Mugwump prancing before him.
“Mr. Morehall!” she exclaimed; then she stopped.
The chairman, with a flaming face, unfolded his long limbs, crawled out of his retreat, stumbled over the dog, partly fell, recovered himself, and finally got to his feet. After throwing an indignant glance at the two clerks, who were in a pitiable state of restrained merriment, he concentrated his attention on Berty. She blushed, too, as she divined what had been the case.
“You were trying to hide from me,” she said, after a long pause.
He could not deny it, though he stammered something about it being a warm day, and the lower part of the desk being a cool retreat.
“Now you are telling me a story,” said Berty, sternly, “you, the chairman of the board of water-works—a city official, afraid of me!”
He said nothing, and she went on, wistfully, “Am I, then, so terrible? Do you men all hate the beggar-girl?”
Her three hearers immediately fell into a state of shamefacedness.
“What have I done?” she continued, sadly, “what have I done to be so disliked?”
No one answered her, and she went on. “When I lived on Grand Avenue and thought only of amusing myself, everybody liked me. Why is it that every one hates me since I went to River Street and am trying to make myself useful?”
To Mr. Morehall’s dismay, her lip was quivering, and big tears began to roll down her cheeks.
“Come in here,” he said, leading the way to his own room.
Berty sat down in an armchair and quietly continued to cry, while Mr. Morehall eyed her with distress and increasing anxiety.
“Have a glass of water, do,” said the tall man, seizing a pitcher near him, “and don’t feel bad. Upon my word, I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“It—it isn’t you only,” gasped Berty. “It is everybody. Please excuse me, but I am tired and worried this morning. I’ve had some sick friends on our street—that’s what I came to see you about. The autumn is starting in so dry that we are almost choked with dust. River Street hasn’t been watered for a week.”
“Hasn’t it?” said Mr. Morehall, slowly.
“Grand Avenue was always watered,” continued Berty, as she rested her head against the back of the chair, “even soaked. I never thought about dust in summer. Why is River Street neglected?”
“River Street citizens don’t pay such heavy taxes,” suggested Mr. Morehall.
“But they pay all they can, sir.”
“Poor people are shiftless,” said the official, with a shrug of his shoulders.
“That’s what everybody says,” exclaimed Berty, despairingly. “All well-to-do people that I talk to dismiss the poorer classes in that way. But poor people aren’t all shiftless.”
“Not all, perhaps,” said Mr. Morehall, amiably, and with inward rejoicing that Berty was wiping away her tears.
“And there must be poor people,” continued Berty. “We can’t all be rich. It’s impossible. Who would work for the prosperous, if all were independent?”
“What I meant,” replied Mr. Morehall, “was that poverty is very often the result of a lack of personal exertion on the part of the poor.”
“Yes, sir, but I am not just now advocating the cause of the helpless. It is rather the claims of the respectable poor. I know heaps of people on River Street who have only a pittance to live on. Their parents had only the same. They are not dissipated. They work hard and pay what they can to the city. My argument is that these poorer children of the city should be especially well looked after, just as in a family the delicate or afflicted child is the most petted.”
“Now you are aiming at the ideal,” said Mr. Morehall, with an uneasy smile.
“No, sir, not the ideal, but the practical. Some one was telling me what the city has to spend for prisons, hospitals, and our asylums. Why, it would pay us a thousandfold better to take care of these people before they get to be a burden on us.”
“They are so abominably ungrateful,” muttered Mr. Morehall.
“And so would I be,” exclaimed Berty, “if I were always having charity flung in my face. Let the city give the poor their rights. They ask no more. It’s no disgrace to be born poor. But if I am a working girl in River Street I must lodge in a worm-eaten, rat-haunted tenement-house. I must rise from an unwholesome bed, and put on badly made, uncomfortable clothing. I must eat a scanty breakfast, and go to toil in a stuffy, unventilated room. I must come home at night to my dusty, unwatered street, and then I must, before I go to sleep, kneel down and thank God that I live in a Christian country—why, it’s enough to make one a pagan just to think of it! I don’t see why the poor don’t organize. They are meeker than I would be. It makes me wild to see River Street neglected. If any street is left unwatered, it ought to be Grand Avenue rather than River Street, for the rich have gardens and can go to the country, while the poor must live on the street in summer.”
“Now you are oppressing the rich,” said Mr. Morehall, promptly.
“Heaven forbid,” said the girl, wearily. “Equal rights for all—”
“The poor have a good friend in you,” he said, with reluctant admiration.
“Will you have our street watered, sir?” asked Berty, rising.
“I’ll try to. I’ll have to ask for an appropriation. We’ll want another cart and horse, and an extra man.”
“That means delay,” said Berty, despairingly, “and in the meantime the dust blows about in clouds. It enters the windows and settles on the tables and chairs. It chokes the lungs of consumptives struggling for breath, and little babies gasping for air. Then the mothers put the windows down, and they breathe over and over again the polluted air. And this is stifling autumn weather—come spend a day in River Street, sir.”
“Miss Gravely,” said the man, with a certain frank bluntness and good-will, “excuse my plain speaking, but you enthuse too much. Those poor people aren’t made of the same stuff that you are. They don’t suffer to the extent that you do under the same conditions.”
Berty was about to leave the room, but she turned round on him with flashing eyes. “Do you mean to say that God has created two sets of creatures—one set with fine nerves and sensitive bodies, the other callous and unsensitive to comfort or discomfort?”
“That’s about the measure of it.”
“And where would you draw the line?” she asked, with assumed calmness.
Mr. Morehall did not know Berty well. His family, though one of the highest respectability, moved in another circle. If he had had the pleasure of an intimate acquaintance with the energetic young person before him, he would have known that her compressed lips, her half-closed eyes, and her tense forehead betokened an overwhelming and suppressed anger.
Therefore, unaware of the drawn sword suspended over his head, he went on, unsuspiciously. “To tell the truth, I think there’s a lot in heredity. Now there are some families you never find scrabbling round for something to eat. I never heard of a poor Gravely, or a Travers, or a Stanisfield, or a Morehall. It’s in the blood to get on. No one can down you.”
He paused consequentially, and Berty, biting her lip, waited for him to go on. However, happening to look at the clock, he stopped short. This talk was interesting, but he would like to get back to business.
“Mr. Morehall,” said Berty, in a still voice, “do you know that there are a legion of poor Traverses up in the northern part of the State, that Grandma used to send boxes to every month?”
“No,” he said, in surprise, “I never heard that.”
“And old Mr. Stanisfield took two of his own cousins out of the poorhouse three years ago, and supports them?”
“You astonish me,” murmured the confused man.
“And, moreover,” continued Berty, with a new gleam in her eye, “since you have been frank with me, I may be frank with you, and say that two of the people for whom I want River Street made sweet and wholesome are old Abner Morehall and his wife, from Cloverdale.”
“Abner Morehall!” exclaimed the man, incredulously.
“Yes, Abner Morehall, your own uncle.”
“But—I didn’t know—why didn’t he tell?—” stammered Mr. Morehall, confusedly.
“Yes—why do you suppose he didn’t tell you?” said Berty. “That’s the blood—the better blood than that of paupers. He was ashamed to have you know of his misfortune.”
“He thought I wouldn’t help him,” burst out her companion, and, with shame and chagrin in his eyes, he sat down at the table and put his hand to his head. “It’s those confounded notes,” he said, at last. “I often told him he ought never to put his name to paper.”
“It was his generosity and kindness—his implicit faith in his fellow men,” continued Berty, warmly; “and now, Mr. Morehall, can you say that ‘blood,’ or shrewdness, or anything else, will always keep misfortune from a certain family? Who is to assure you that your great-great-grandchildren will not be living on River Street?”
No one could assure the disturbed man that this contingency might not arise, and, lifting his head, he gazed at Berty as if she were some bird of ill-omen.
“You will come to see your relatives, I suppose?” she murmured.
He made an assenting gesture with his hand.
“They are two dear old people. They give tone to the street—and you will send a watering-cart this afternoon?”
He made another assenting gesture. He did not care to talk, and Berty slipped quietly from his office.
CHAPTER XX.
SELINA’S WEDDING
Selina Everest and the Mayor were married.
On one of the loveliest of autumn mornings, the somewhat mature bride had been united in the holy bonds of matrimony to the somewhat mature bridegroom, and now, in the old family mansion of the Everests, they were receiving the congratulations of their numerous friends. Selina had had a church wedding. That she insisted on, greatly to the distress and confusion of her modest husband. He had walked up the aisle of the church as if to his hanging. One minute he went from red to purple, from purple to violent perspiration, the next he became as if wrapped in an ice-cold sheet, and not until then could he recover himself.
But now it was all over. This congratulatory business was nothing compared to the agonizing experience of being in a crowded church, the shrinking target for hundreds of criticizing, shining, awful eyes.
Yes, he was in an ecstasy to think the ordeal was over. Selina never would have made him go through it, if she had had the faintest conception of what his sufferings would be.
She had enjoyed it. All women enjoy that sort of thing. They are not awkward. How can they be, with their sweeping veils and trailing robes? He had felt like a fence-post, a rail—anything stiff, and ugly, and uncomfortable, and in his heart of hearts he wondered that all those well-dressed men and women had not burst into shouts of laughter at him.
Well, it was over—over, thank fortune. He never had been so glad to escape from anything in his life, as he had been to get out of the church and away from the crowd of people. That alone made him blissfully happy, and then, in addition, he had Selina.
He looked at her, and mechanically stretched out a hand to an advancing guest. Selina was his now. He not only was out of that church and never would have to go into it again for such a purpose as he had gone this morning, but Selina Everest was Mrs. Peter Jimson.
He smiled an alarming smile at her, a smile so extraordinarily comprehensive, that she hurriedly asked under her breath if he were ill.
“No,” he said, and, in so saying, clasped the hand of the advancing friend with such vigour, that the unhappy man retreated swiftly with his unspoken congratulations on his lips.
“I’m not ill,” he muttered. “I’m only a little flustered, Selina.”
“Here’s Mrs. Short,” she said, hastily, “be nice to her. She’s a particular friend of mine.”
“A fine day, ma’am,” murmured the Mayor; “yes, the crops seem good—ought to have rain, though.”
Over by a French window opening on the lawn, Berty and Tom were watching the people and making comments.
“Always get mixed up about a bride and groom,” volunteered Tom. “Always want to congratulate her, and hope that he’ll be happy. It’s the other way, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” murmured Berty. “Oh, isn’t it a dream to think that they’re both happy?”
“Makes one feel like getting married oneself,” said Tom.
“Yes, doesn’t it? A wedding unsettles me. All the rest of the day I wish I were a bride.”
“Do you?” exclaimed Tom, eagerly.
“Yes, and then the next day I think what a goose I am. Being married means slavery to some man. You don’t have your own way at all.”
“Men never being slaves to their wives,” remarked Tom.
“Men are by nature lordly, overbearing, proud-spirited, self-willed, tyrannical and provoking,” said Berty, sweepingly.
But Tom’s thoughts had been diverted. “Say, Berty, where do those Tomkins girls get money to dress that way? They’re visions in those shining green things.”
“They spend too much of their father’s money on dress,” replied Berty, severely. “Those satins came from Paris. They are an exquisite new shade of green. I forget what you call it.”
“I guess old Tomkins is the slave there,” said Tom; then, to avoid controversy, he went on, hastily, “You look stunning in that white gown.”
“I thought perhaps Selina would want me for a bridesmaid,” said Berty, plaintively, “but she didn’t.”
“Too young and foolish,” said Tom, promptly; “but, I say, Berty, where did you get the gown?”
“Margaretta gave it to me. I was going to wear muslin, but she said I shouldn’t.”
“What is it anyway?” said Tom, putting out a cautious finger to touch the soft folds.
“It’s silk, and if you knew how uncomfortable I am in it, you would pity me.”
“Uncomfortable! You look as cool as a cucumber.”
“I’m not. I wish I had on a serge skirt and a shirt-waist.”
“Let me get you something to eat,” he said, consolingly. “That going to church and standing about here are tiresome.”
“Yes, do,” said Berty. “I hadn’t any breakfast, I was in such a hurry to get ready.”
“Here are sandwiches and coffee to start with,” he said, presently coming back.
“Thank you—I am so glad Selina didn’t have a sit-down luncheon. This is much nicer.”
“Isn’t it! You see, she didn’t want speeches. On an occasion like this, the Mayor would be so apt to get wound up that he would keep us here till midnight.”
Berty laughed. “And they would have lost their train.”
“There isn’t going to be any train,” said Tom, mysteriously.
“Aren’t they going to New York?”
“No.”
“To Canada?”
“No.”
“To Europe?”
“No—Jimson says he isn’t going to frizzle and fry in big cities in this lovely weather, unless Selina absolutely commands, and she doesn’t command, so he’s going to row her up the river to the Cloverdale Inn.”
Berty put down her cup and saucer and began to laugh.
“Where are those sandwiches?” asked Tom, trying to peer round the cup.
“Gone,” said Berty, meekly.
He brought her a new supply, then came cake, jellies, sweets, and fruit in rapid succession.
Berty, standing partly behind a curtain by the open window, kept her admirer so busy that at last he partly rebelled.
“Look here, Berty,” he remarked, firmly, “I don’t want to be suspicious, but it’s utterly impossible for a girl of your weight and education to dispose of so much provender at a single standing. You’re up to some tricks with it. Have you got some River Street rats with you?”
“Yes,” she said, smilingly. “Hush, don’t tell,” and, slightly pulling aside the curtain, she showed him four little heads in a clump of syringa bushes outside.
“Newsboy Jim, and Johnny-Boy, and the two girls, Biddy Malone and Glorymaroo, as we call her, from her favourite exclamation,” continued Berty; “they wanted to see something of the Mayor’s marriage, and I let them come. I’ve been handing out ‘ruffreshments’ to them. Don’t scold them, Tom.”
“Come right in, youngsters,” said the young man, heartily. “I’m sure Mr. Jimson is your Mayor as well as ours.”
Without the slightest hesitation, the four grinning children stepped in, and, marshalled by Tom, trotted across the long room to the alcove where Selina and the Mayor stood.
“A River Street delegation,” said Tom, presenting them, “come to offer congratulations to the chief executive officer of the city.”
Selina shook hands with them. The Mayor smiled broadly, patted their heads, and the other guests, who had been bidden, without an exception kindly surveyed the unbidden, yet welcome ones.
The introduction over, Tom examined them from head to foot. The little rats were in their Sunday clothes. Their heads were sleek and wet from recent washing. There was a strong smell of cheap soap about them.
“This way, gentlemen and ladies,” he said, and he led them back to a sofa near Berty. “Sit down there in a row. Here are some foot-stools for you.
“Waiter,” and he hailed a passing black-coated man, “bring the best you have to these children, and, children, you eat as you never ate before.”
Berty stood silently watching him. “Tom Everest,” she remarked, slowly, “I have two words to say to you.”
“I’d rather have one,” he muttered.
“Hush,” she said, severely, “and listen. The two words are, ‘Thank you.’”
“You’re welcome,” returned Tom, “or, as the French say, ‘There is nothing of what—’ Hello, Bonny, what’s the joke?”
Bonny, in a gentlemanly convulsion of laughter, was turning his face toward the wall in their direction.
The lad stopped, and while Berty and Tom stood silently admiring his almost beautiful face, which was just now as rosy as a girl’s, he grew composed.
“I call you to witness, friends,” he said, slightly upraising one hand, “that I never in my life before have laughed at dear Grandma.”
“You’ve been cross with her,” said Berty.
“Cross, yes, once or twice, but Grandma isn’t a person to laugh at, is she?”
“Well, not exactly,” said Berty. “I never saw anything funny about Grandma.”
“Well, she nearly finished me just now,” said Bonny. “I was standing near Selina, when gradually there came a break in the hand-shaking. The guests’ thoughts began to run luncheon-ward. Grandma was close to the bridal pair, and suddenly Selina turned and said, impulsively, ‘Mrs. Travers, you have had a great deal of experience. I want you to give me a motto to start out with on my wedding-day. Something that will be valuable to me, and will make me think of you whenever I repeat it.’ The joke of it was that Grandma didn’t want to give her a motto. She didn’t seem to have anything handy, but Selina insisted. At last Grandma said, in a shot-gun way, ‘Don’t nag!’ then she moved off.”
“Selina stared at the Mayor, and the Mayor stared over her shoulder at me. She didn’t see anything funny in it. We did. At last she said, meekly, ‘Peter, do you think I am inclined to nag?’
“He just rushed out a sentence at her—‘Upon my life I don’t!’
“‘Do you, Bonny?’ she asked, turning suddenly round on me.
“‘No, Selina, I don’t,’ I told her, but I couldn’t help laughing.
“Jimson grinned from ear to ear, and I started off, leaving Selina asking him what he was so amused about.”
Tom began to chuckle, but Berty said, “Well—I don’t see anything to laugh at.”
“She doesn’t see anything to laugh at,” repeated Bonny, idiotically, then he drew Tom out on the lawn where she could hear their bursts of laughter.
Presently the Mayor came strolling over to the low chair where Berty sat watching her little River Street friends.
“Is it all right for me to leave Selina for a few minutes?” he asked, in an anxious voice. “I can’t ask her, for she is talking to some one. I never was married before, and don’t know how to act.”
“Oh, yes,” said Berty, carelessly. “It’s an exploded fancy that a man must always stay close to his wife in general society. At home you should be tied to your wife’s apron-strings, but in society she takes it off.”
“You don’t wear aprons in your set,” said the Mayor, quickly. “I’ve found that out. You leave them to the maids.”
“I don’t like aprons,” said Berty. “If I want to protect my dress, I tuck a towel under my belt.”
“You’ve odd ways, and I feel queer in your set,” pursued the Mayor, in a meditative voice. “Maybe I’ll get used to you, but I don’t know. Now I used to think that the upper crust of this city would be mighty formal, but you don’t even say, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and ‘No, ma’am,’ to each other. You’re as off-hand as street urchins, and downright saucy sometimes I’d say.”
“We’re not as formal as our grandparents were,” said Berty, musingly—“there’s everything in environment. We’re nothing but a lot of monkeys, anyway—see those children how nicely they are eating. If they were on River Street, they would drop those knives and forks, and have those chicken bones in their fingers in a jiffy.”
“Do you ever feel inclined to eat with your fingers?” asked Mr. Jimson, in a low voice, and looking fearfully about him.
“Often, and I do,” said Berty, promptly. “Always at picnics.”
“My father hated fuss and feathers,” remarked Mr. Jimson. “He always went round the house with his hat on, and in his shirt-sleeves.”
“The men on River Street do that,” replied Berty. “I can see some reason for the shirt-sleeves, but not for the hat.”
“Mr. Jimson,” said Walter Everest, suddenly coming up to him. “It’s time to go. Selina’s up-stairs changing her gown, the two suit-cases are in the hall.”
Ten minutes later, Mr. and Mrs. Everest, with their children and their friends, stood on the front steps calling parting good wishes after Selina and the Mayor.
There were many speculations as to their destination, the greater part of the guests imagining a far-away trip, as Berty had done.
“You’re all wrong,” observed Tom. “My boat is at Mrs. Travers’s wharf for them to go to Cloverdale, and it’s cram jam full of flowers with bows of white ribbon on each oar.”
Roger Stanisfield burst out laughing. “You’re sold, Tom, my boy, do you suppose the Mayor would trust a joker like you? He has my boat.”
Bonny was in an ecstasy. “Get out, you two old fellows,” he exclaimed, slapping his brother-in-law on the shoulder. “Mr. Jimson is going to row his beloved up the river in my boat.”
“No, he isn’t,” said Walter Everest. “He’s got mine.”
“I believe he’s fooled us all,” said Tom, ruefully. “Did you have any flowers in your boat, Stanisfield?”
“Margaretta put a little bit of rice in,” said Roger, “just a handful, where no one would see it but themselves.”
“Did you trim your boat, Bonny?” asked Roger.
“Yes,” said the boy, “with old shoes. I had a dandy pair chained to the seat, so they couldn’t be detached, unless Jimson had a hatchet along.”
“Whose boat has he got, for the land’s sake?” inquired Walter Everest. “He’s asked us all, and we’ve all pledged secrecy and good conduct, and we’ve all broken our word and decorated.”
“He’s got nobody’s boat, my friends,” said old Mr. Everest, who was shaking with silent laughter. “Don’t you know Peter Jimson better than to imagine that he would exert himself by rowing up the river this warm day?”
“Well, what are his means of locomotion?” asked Tom.
“My one-hoss shay, my son. It was waiting round the corner of the road for him.”
“I say,” ejaculated Tom, “let’s make up a party to call on them to-morrow. We can take the flowers and other trifles.”
“Hurrah,” said Bonny. “I’ll go ask Margaretta to get up a lunch.”
“Will you go to-morrow, Berty?” asked Tom, seeking her out, and speaking in a low voice.
“Where?”
He explained to her.
“Yes, if you will tell me why you laughed so much at what Grandma said to Selina.”
Tom looked puzzled. “It’s mighty hard to explain, for there isn’t anything hidden in it. It just sounded kind of apt.”
“You men think women talk too much.”
“Some women,” replied Tom, guardedly.
“You want them to do as the old philosopher said, ‘Speak honey and look sunny,’ and, ‘The woman that maketh a good pudding in silence is better than one that maketh a tart reply.’”
“That’s it exactly,” said Tom, with a beaming face. “Now will you go to-morrow?”
“Probably,” said Berty, with an oracular frown. “If I am not teased too much.”
“May I come in this evening and see how you feel about it?”
“How long do you plan to stay?”
“Five minutes.”
“Then you may come,” she said, graciously.