Part 42 (2/2)

”Oh, mamma, I could shed for him all the blood left in my body.”

”Nonsense!” cried the matter-of-fact Belle. ”He doesn't want your blood; he only wants a sensible girl who will love him as he deserves, and who will help him to help us all.”

Mildred made a despairing gesture and went to her room. She soon reappeared with a quilt and a pillow, and placing them on the floor beside the low bed in which the children slept, said, ”I'll stay here, and you take my place with Belle, mamma. No,” she added resolutely, as her mother began to remonstrate; ”what I resolve upon I intend to do hereafter, even to the least thing. You shall not go near the room where papa is to-night.”

Throughout the evening, while love, duty, and generous sympathy planned for his redemption; throughout the long night, while the sad-hearted wife prayed for success in their efforts, the husband and father lay shrouded in the heavy, rayless darkness of a drunken stupor.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

STRONG TEMPTATION

Well, I must admit that I have rarely been so touched and interested before,” said Mr. Wentworth, as he and Roger walked homeward together; ”and that is saying much, for my calling brings human life before me in almost every aspect. Mildred Jocelyn is an unusual girl.

Until to-day I thought her a trifle cold, and even incapable of very deep feeling. I thought pride--not a common pride, you know, but the traditional and proverbial pride of a Southern woman--her chief characteristic, but the girl was fairly volcanic with feeling to-night. I believe she would starve in very truth to save her father, though of course we won't permit any such folly as they are meditating, and I do not believe there is any sacrifice, not involving evil, at which she would hesitate. She's a jewel, Atwood, and in winning her, as you will, you will obtain a girl for whom a prince might well sue. She's one of a thousand, and beneath all her wonted self-control and reserve she has as true and pa.s.sionate a heart as ever beat in a woman's breast.”

”Good-night,” said Roger, a little abruptly. ”I agree with all you can say in regard to Miss Jocelyn's n.o.bility, and I shall not fail her, nor shall I make bargains or conditions in my loyalty. The privilege of serving such a woman is enough. I will see you again soon,” and he walked rapidly down the street on which his uncle resided.

Roger and Mr. Wentworth had become very good friends, and the latter had been of much service to the young fellow by guiding him in his reading and study. The clergyman had shown his usual tact in dealing with Roger. Never once had he lectured or talked religion at him, but he preached interestingly, and out of the pulpit was the genial, natural, hearty man that wins the respect and goodwill of all. His interviews with Roger were free from the faintest trace of religious affectation, and he showed that friendly appreciation and spirit of comrades.h.i.+p which young men like. Roger felt that he was not dealing with an ecclesiastic, but with a man who was as honest, earnest, and successful in his way as he ever hoped to be in his. He was therefore being drawn by motives that best accorded with his disposition toward the Christian faith--by a thorough respect for it, by seeing its practical value as worked out in the useful busy life of one who made his chapel a fruitful oasis in what would otherwise have been a moral desert. In his genuine humanity and downright honesty, in his care of people's bodies as well as souls, and temporal as well as spiritual interests, the minister was a tower of strength, and his influence for good over the ambitious youth, now fast developing the character which would make or mar him for life, was most excellent. While Roger spoke freely to him of his general hopes and plans, and gave to him more confidence than to any one else, there was one thing that, so far as words were concerned, he hid from all the world--his love for Mildred.

The sagacious clergyman, however, at last guessed the truth, but until to-night never made any reference to it. He now smiled to think that the sad-hearted Jocelyns might eventually find in Roger a cure for most of their troubles, since he hoped that Mr. Jocelyn, if treated scientifically, might be restored to manhood.

Mr. Ezra Atwood, Roger's uncle, sat in his small parlor far beyond his usual hour for retiring, and occasionally he paced the floor so impatiently as to show that his mind was deeply perturbed. While his nephew had studied books he had studied his nephew, and in the process the fossilization of his heart had been arrested, and the strong, steady youth had suggested hopes of something like a filial relation to the childless man. At first he had growled to himself, ”If the boy were only mine I'd make a man of him,” and then gradually the idea of adopting and making a man of him, had presented itself and slowly gained full possession of his mind. Roger was capable, persevering, and tremendously ambitious--qualities that were after the old man's heart, and, after maintaining his shrewd furtive observation for months, he at last muttered to himself, ”I'll do it, for he's got the Atwood grit and grip, and more brains than any of us. His father is shrewd and obstinate enough, but he's narrow, and hasn't breadth of mind to do more than pinch and save what he can scratch out of that stony farm of his. I'm narrow, too. I can turn an honest penny in my line with the sharpest in the market, and I'm content; but this young fellow is a new departure in the family, and if given a chance and kept from all nonsense he can climb to the top notch. There's no telling how high a lawyer can get in this country if he has plenty of brains and a ready tongue.”

Thus the old man's dominant trait, ambition, which he had satisfied in becoming known as one of the most solid and wealthy men of his calling, found in his nephew a new sphere of development. In return for the great favors which he proposed to confer, however, he felt that Roger should gratefully accept his wishes as absolute law.

With the egotism and confidence of many successful yet narrow men, he believed himself perfectly capable of guiding the young fellow's career in all respects, and had little expectation of any fortunate issue unless he did direct in all essential and practical matters.

Mr. Atwood wors.h.i.+pped common-sense and the shrewd individuality of character which separates a man from his fellows, and enables him to wrap himself in his own interests and pursuits without babbling to others or being impeded by them. Influenced by his wife, he was kind to the poor, and charitable in a certain methodical way, but boasted to her that in his limited circle he had no ”hangers-on,”

as he termed them. He had an instinctive antipathy to a cla.s.s that he called ”ne'er-do-weels,” ”havebeens,” and ”unlucky devils,” and if their misfortunes and lack of thrift resulted from causes like those destroying Mr. Jocelyn he was sternly and contemptuously implacable toward them. He was vexed that Roger should have bothered himself with the sick man he had discovered on s.h.i.+pboard the day before Christmas. ”It was no affair of his,” he had grumbled; but as the young fellow had been steady as a clock in his business and studies after Mr. Jocelyn had recovered, he had given no further thought to these friends, nor had it occurred to him that they were more than pa.s.sing acquaintances. But a letter from Roger's father, who had heard of Mr. Jocelyn's condition and of his son's intimacy with the family, awakened the conservative uncle's suspicions, and that very afternoon the well-meaning but garrulous Mrs. Wheaton had told his wife all about what she regarded as brilliant performances on the part of Roger at the police court. Mrs. Atwood was a kind-hearted woman, but she had much of her husband's horror of people who were not respectable after her strict ideal, and she felt that she ought to warn him that Roger's friends were not altogether desirable.

Of course she was glad that Roger had been able to show that the young girl was innocent, but shop-girls living in low tenements with a drunken father were not fit companions for their nephew and possible heir. Her husband indorsed her views with the whole force of his strong, unsympathetic, and ambitious nature, and was now awaiting Roger with the purpose of ”putting an end to such nonsense at once.” The young man therefore was surprised to find, as he entered the hallway, that his uncle was up at an hour late for him.

”I wish to see you,” was the prompt, brief greeting from Mr. Atwood, who was uneasily tramping up and down the small stiff parlor, which was so rarely used that it might almost have been dispensed with as a part of the residence. Roger came forward with some anxiety, for his uncle lowered at him like a thunder-cloud.

”Sit there, where I can see your face,” was the next curt direction.

There was neither guilt nor fear in the frank countenance that was turned full upon him. ”I'm a man of few words,” he resumed more kindly, for Roger's expression disarmed him somewhat. ”Surely,” he thought, ”when the boy gets a hint of what I can do for him, he'll not be the fool to tangle himself up with people like the Jocelyns.”

”Where have you been to-night?” he asked bluntly. Roger told him.

”Where were you last night and this morning?” Roger briefly narrated the whole story, concluding, ”It's the first time I've been late to business, sir.”

The old man listened grimly, without interruption, and then said, ”Of course I'm glad you got the girl off, but it's bad management to get mixed up in such sc.r.a.pes. Perhaps a little insight into court-room scenes will do you no harm since you are to be a lawyer.

Now that the affair is over, however, I wish you to drop these Jocelyns. They are of no advantage to you, and they belong to a cla.s.s that is exceedingly disagreeable to me. I suppose you know what kind of a man Mr. Jocelyn is?”

”Yes, sir; but you do not know what kind of a woman Mrs. Jocelyn is. She is--”

”She is Jocelyn's wife, isn't she?”

”Certainly; but--”

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