One of My Sons — The Little House in New Jersey

THE LITTLE HOUSE IN NEW JERSEY

The surprise was great, but I doubt if I betrayed the fact to the unsuspicious eye of the patient lass who attended me.

"I wish to see one of your captains," I explained.

"I will gladly await his convenience."

"Captain Smith will be at liberty soon," she answered, going back to her work.

I was thus left to study the face of the man whom at that very moment I was bent upon connecting with a great crime.

I had not seen him since that touching scene at the inquest; and I found him looking both older and sadder.

Perhaps his health was broken; perhaps there were other and deeper reasons for the great change I saw in him.

I had instinctively withdrawn a few steps when the lass left me and stood in as inconspicuous a position as possible, with my face turned from the light.

But I had not retreated far enough to lose a word of the conversation going on so near me.

They were discussing an approaching meeting; Leighton with deep interest, the Captain with an embarrassment not often seen in one of his calling.

Listening, I heard these words.

"It will be a full one, won't it?"

This from Leighton.

"It usually is on a day like this," was the hesitating reply.

"Do women come?"

"More women than men."

"I should like to speak at the meeting."

The Captain, with an uncomfortable flush, fumbled with the ribbon on his cap, and said nothing.

Leighton repeated his request.

The Captain summoned up courage.

"I am sorry, sir," he remarked, in an apologetic tone.

"You have given the Army much help, and we have listened to many good words from you, but I have received orders not to let you speak again; that is, from the platform."

A painful silence ensued.

Then Leighton remarked, with a forced composure and something more than his usual melancholy: "Because of the unhappy prominence given me by the circumstances attending my father's death?"

"That, and something else.

I may as well be frank, sir.

We have heard of the little house, leased under your name, in New Jersey."

"Ah!"

A chord had been touched which vibrated keenly in this mysterious breast.

I saw his hand go to his throat and fall again quickly.

Meantime the Captain went on: "We are not frightened by sin and we hold out our hands to sinners;

but we have no use for a man who prays in New York and has his pleasure on the other side of the North River.

It shows hypocrisy, sir, and hypocrisy is the enemy of religion."

A smile, whose dark depths betrayed anything but hypocrisy at that moment, crossed Leighton's pale lips as he remarked without anger (which I could not but consider strange in a man so openly attacked): "That little house is empty now.

Has the thought struck you that my heart might be so too?"

The Captain, who evidently did not like his task, seemed to experience some difficulty in answering; but when he had settled upon his reply, spoke both clearly and with resolution: "The house of which you speak may lack its occupant just now, but everything goes to show she is always expected.

Or why are the lamps invariably lighted there at nightfall, the rooms kept warm, and the larder replenished?

Some birds in flitting come round again to their forsaken nest.

Your bird may; meanwhile the nest remains ready."

"Enough!"

The tone was sharp now, the words cutting.

"You do not understand me nor my interest in the poor and forsaken.

As for my place among you, let it be filled by whom you will.

I have my own griefs, and they are not light, and I have anxieties such as visit few men.

A ban is upon me and upon all who bear the name of Gillespie.

This is known to you and possibly to every man and woman soon to assemble here.

Perhaps you do well not to submit me to their curiosity.

But there is something you _can_ do for me--something which you will do for me, I am sure; something which would place me under lasting obligation to you without doing you or anyone else the least harm in the world.

A woman may come in here; a woman, wild-eyed, unkempt, but with a look--I am sure you will know her.

There is an unearthly loveliness in her wan features.

She has--But what use is there in my attempting to describe her?

If she answers to the name of Mille-fleurs--some persons call her Millie--she is the woman I seek.

Will you give her this?"

(He had torn the edge off a newspaper lying near and was rapidly writing on it a few words.

) "It will do no harm to the cause for which you are working, and it may save a most unhappy woman.

Of myself I make no count, yet it might save me, too."

He handed over to the Captain the slip carelessly folded.

It was received with reluctance.

Mr. Gillespie, noting this, observed with some agitation: "You are here to do God's work.

Sometimes you are called upon to do it blindly and without full enlightenment."

And having emphasised this with a bow of remarkable dignity he went out, little realising that the possible clue to his own future fate lay in the hands of one he at that moment passed without a look.

"These are the crosses we are called upon to bear," spoke up the Salvation Army Captain as the door closed upon the man they had once held in deepest reverence.

"Now, what am I to do with this?"

he added, turning over in his hands the half-rolled-up slip which had just been given into his charge.

Involuntarily my hand went out to it.

It was a perfectly unconscious action on my part, and I blushed vividly when I realised what I had done.

I had no authority here.

I was not even known to the good man and woman before me.

The Captain, who may or may not have noted my anxiety, paid no heed either to my unfortunate self-committal or to the apologetic question with which I endeavoured to retrieve myself.

Turning to the lass beside him, he handed her the slip, with the look which a man gives to a woman on whose good sense and judgment he has come to rely.

"Take it, Sally," he said.

"You will know the girl if she comes in, and, what's more, you'll know how to manage the matter so as to give satisfaction to all the parties concerned.

And now, sir?

--" he inquired, turning towards me.

But at this instant a diversion was created by the arrival of Detective Sweetwater, a man for whose presence I was certainly little prepared.

"The gentleman who has just gone out passed you something," he cried, approaching the lass without ceremony, though not without respect.

Me he did not appear to see.

"The gentleman left a note with us for one of the poor women who sometimes straggle in here," was her quiet response.

"He is interested in poor girls; tries to reclaim them."

"I am sorry," protested the detective "but I must have a glance at what he wrote.

It may be of immediate importance to the police.

Here is my authority," he added in lower tones, opening his coat for a moment.

"You know under what suspicion the Gillespie family lies.

He is a Gillespie; let me see those lines--or, stay, read them out yourself--that may be better."

The young woman hesitated, consulted the Captain with a look, then glanced down at the slip trembling in her hand.

It was half unrolled, and some of its words must have met her eye.

"Why do you think this has anything to do with the serious matter you mention?"

she ventured to ask.

The detective approached his mouth to her ear, but my hearing did not fail me even under these unfavourable circumstances.

"Everything has connection with it," I heard him say.

"Everything they do and think.

I wouldn't trust one of them round the corner.

I should make the greatest mistake of my life if I allowed any secret communication written by a Gillespie to pass under my nose without an attempt to see what it was.

This one may be of an innocent nature;

probably is.

The gentleman who left it with you passes for a philanthropist, and as such might very readily hold communication with the worst characters in town without any other motive than the one you yourselves can best appreciate.

But I must be sure of this.

I have been detailed to watch his movements, and his movements have brought him here.

You will therefore oblige me, Miss, if you can make it clear that the cause of justice--by which I mean the cause which I here personally represent--will not suffer injury by the free transmission of this slip to the person for whom it is meant."

"I will read you what he has written here," replied the girl.

"He left it open or almost open to anyone's perusal."

And I heard her read out, in low but penetrating tones, the following words: When I last saw you, you were suffering.

This is an unbearable thought to me, yet I cannot go to you for reasons which you can readily appreciate.

Come to me, then.

The house is always open and the servants have received orders to admit anyone who asks for me.

This was certainly warm language from a mere philanthropist to a city waif whose misery had attracted his notice.

But no remarks passed, and Sweetwater did not seek to hinder even by a look the careful refolding of the slip and the putting of it away in the young lass's desk.

Indeed, he seemed to approve of this, for the next moment I heard him say: "That's right; take good care of the slip.

If the young woman comes in, give it to her.

I suppose you know her?"

"Not at all; he simply described her to us; or attempted to.

She may not come in at all."

"Then keep a grip on those lines.

What kind of a person did he say she was?"

"Oh, I don't know.

He said she was wild-looking, but beautiful, and that she answered to some such name as Millie."

"It's likely to be a fake, the whole mess.

Good-day, Captain;

good-day, Miss." And Detective Sweetwater stepped away.

I had thought him keen, yet he had paid no more attention to me than if I had been a stick.

Was the corner in which I sat darker than I thought, or had he been so full of his own affairs that he failed to recognise me?

I had kept my face turned away, but he assuredly must have known my figure.

When he was gone the two laid their heads together for a moment, then began to bustle towards me.

In the meantime I had planned a _coup d'etat_.

I had considered if, by a little acting on my part, I could put them in the wrong, I might succeed in getting from them some positive facts to work upon.

Accordingly, I was in a state of suppressed feeling when the Captain found himself face to face with me.

"I heard you," said I, flinging down the book I had taken up.

"I have ears like a hare and I couldn't help it.

I know Mr. Gillespie, and it made my blood boil to hear him addressed with suspicion.

How anyone who has ever heard him speak to the poor and unfortunate could associate him with the atrocious death of his father, I cannot imagine.

So good to poor girls!

So bountiful in his charities!

I

thought you were Christians here."

The Captain may have been a Christian, but he was also a man, and, being a man, looked nettled.

"It was a mistake for us to discuss Army affairs within reach of two such sharp ears," said he.

"Mr. Gillespie has done some good work, and far be it from me to add myself to those who have associated his name with the crime which has just made the family notorious.

I simply fail to stand by him because he uses us as a cloak for his personal indulgences.

He is infatuated with a woman whom he has never presumed to present to his family.

This won't do for us.

The other matter belongs to the police."

I allowed myself to cool down a trifle.

"I beg your pardon; you know your own business, of course.

But it's a little hard for me to believe that such a refined man as Mr. Gillespie could find any other than a charitable interest in any woman likely to come straying in here.

Did you ever see his home, his child, his friends?"

The Captain shrugged his shoulders and curtly replied: "I can imagine."

Then in a tone calculated to end the interview so far as this topic was concerned: "We count nothing as strange in this place, sir.

We come too near the unregenerate heart.

Human nature's the same, sir, in rich and in poor.

And now, sir, your business?

It's most time for our noon meeting, so I must ask you to be concise."

I had almost forgotten I had any business there, but I pulled myself up under his eye and told him I was on the search for a woman, too.

"But she's an old one," I made haste to assure him; "a lodging-house keeper who is in the possession of evidence of great importance to a client of mine.

Her name, as told me, is Mother Merry; do you know any such person?"

He did not, but informed me that there were several queer old places down by the wharves where I might hear of her.

This was enough.

I had now an excuse for penetrating the district towards which I had been pointing from the first.

Thanking him, and asking his pardon for my few brusque words, I went out, and, giving my policeman a wink, turned in the direction of the river.

XXI