If, Yes and Perhaps. Edward Everett Hale
would pay. I had spoken to the clerk, who had sent for a policeman. I could do nothing more, and I did not choose to ruin her chop and coffee by ill-timed news. The officer came before breakfast was over, and called me from table.
On the whole, his business-like way encouraged one. He had some clews which I had not thought possible. It was not unlikely that they should pounce on the trunk before it was broken open. I gave him a written description of its marks; and when he civilly asked if "my lady" would give some description of any books or other articles within, I readily promised that I would call with such a description at the police station. Somewhat encouraged, I returned to Miss Jones, and, when I led her from the breakfast-table, told her of her misfortune. I took all shame to myself for my own carelessness, to which I attributed the loss. But I told her all that the officer had said to me, and that I hoped to bring her the trunk at her aunt's before the day was over.
Fausta took my news, however, with a start which frightened me. All her money, but a shilling or two, was in the trunk. To place money in trunks is a weakness of the female mind which I have nowhere seen accounted for. Worse than this, though—as appeared after a moment's examination of her travelling sac—her portfolio in the trunk contained the letter of the aunt whom she came to visit, giving her her address in the city. To this address she had no other clew but that her aunt was Mrs. Mary Mason, had married a few years before a merchant named Mason, whom Miss Jones had never seen, and of whose name and business this was all she knew. They lived in a numbered street, but whether it was Fourth Street, or Fifty-fourth, or One Hundred and Twenty-fourth, or whether it was something between, the poor child had no idea. She had put up the letter carefully, but had never thought of the importance of the address. Besides this aunt, she knew no human being in New York.
"Child of the Public," I said to myself, "what do you do now?" I had appealed to my great patron in sending for the officer, and on the whole I felt that my sovereign had been gracious to me, if not yet hopeful. But now I must rub my lamp again, and ask the genie where the unknown Mason lived. The genie of course suggested the Directory, and I ran for it to the clerk's office. But as we were toiling down the pages of "Masons," and had written off thirteen or fourteen who lived in numbered streets, Fausta started, looked back at the preface and its date, flung down her pencil in the only abandonment of dismay in which I ever saw her, and cried, "First of May! They were abroad until May. They have been abroad since the day they were married!" So that genie had to put his glories into his pocket, and carry his Directory back to the office again.
The natural thing to propose was, that I should find for Miss Jones a respectable boarding-house, and that she should remain there until her trunk was found, or till she could write to friends who had this fatal address, and receive an answer. But here she hesitated. She hardly liked to explain why—did not explain wholly. But she did not say that she had no friends who knew this address. She had but few relations in the world, and her aunt had communicated with her alone since she came from Europe. As for the boarding-house, "I had rather look for work," she said bravely. "I have never promised to pay money when I did not know how to obtain it; and that"—and here she took out fifty or sixty cents from her purse—"and that is all now. In respectable boarding-houses, when people come without luggage, they are apt to ask for an advance. Or, at least," she added, with some pride, "I am apt to offer it."
I hastened to ask her to take all my little store; but I had to own that I had not two dollars. I was sure, however, that my overcoat and the dress-suit I wore would avail me something, if I thrust them boldly up some spout. I was sure that I should be at work within a day or two. At all events, I was certain of the cyclopædia the next day. That should go to old Gowan's—in Fulton Street it was then—"the moral centre of the intellectual world," in the hour I got it. And at this moment, for the first time, the thought crossed me, "If mine could only be the name drawn, so that that foolish $5,000 should fall to me." In that case I felt that Fausta might live in "a respectable boarding-house" till she died. Of this, of course, I said nothing, only that she was welcome to my poor dollar and a half, and that I should receive the next day some more money that was due me.
"You forget, Mr. Carter," replied Fausta, as proudly as before—"you forget that I cannot borrow of you any more than of a boarding-house-keeper. I never borrow. Please God, I never will. It must be," she added, "that in a Christian city like this there is some respectable and fit arrangement made for travellers who find themselves where I am. What that provision is I do not know; but I will find out what it is before this sun goes down."
I paused a moment before I replied. If I had been fascinated by this lovely girl before, I now bowed in respect before her dignity and resolution; and, with my sympathy, there was a delicious throb of self-respect united, when I heard her lay down so simply, as principles of her life, two principles on which I had always myself tried to live. The half-expressed habits of my boyhood and youth were now uttered for me as axioms by lips which I knew could speak nothing but right and truth.
I paused a moment. I stumbled a little as I expressed my regret that she would not let me help her—joined with my certainty that she was in the right in refusing—and then, in the only stiff speech I ever made to her, I said:—
"I am the 'Child of the Public.' If you ever hear my story, you will say so too. At the least, I can claim this, that I have a right to help you in your quest as to the way in which the public will help you. Thus far I am clearly the officer in his suite to whom he has intrusted you. Are you ready, then, to go on shore?"
Fausta looked around on that forlorn ladies' saloon, as if it were the last link holding her to her old safe world.
"Looked upon skylight, lamp, and chain,
As what she ne'er might see again."
Then she looked right through me; and if there had been one mean thought in me at that minute, she would have seen the viper. Then she said, sadly—
"I have perfect confidence in you, though people would say we were strangers. Let us go."
And we left the boat together. We declined the invitations of the noisy hackmen, and walked slowly to Broadway.
We stopped at the station-house for that district, and to the attentive chief Fausta herself described those contents of her trunk which she thought would be most easily detected, if offered for sale. Her mother's Bible, at which the chief shook his head; Bibles, alas! brought nothing at the shops; a soldier's medal, such as were given as target prizes by the Montgomery regiment; and a little silver canteen, marked with the device of the same regiment, seemed to him better worthy of note. Her portfolio was wrought with a cipher, and she explained to him that she was most eager that this should be recovered. The pocket-book contained more than one hundred dollars, which she described, but he shook his head here, and gave her but little hope of that, if the trunk were once opened. His chief hope was for this morning.
"And where shall we send to you then, madam?" said he.
I had been proud, as if it were my merit, of the impression Fausta had made upon the officer, in her quiet, simple, ladylike dress and manner. For myself, I thought that one slip of pretence in my dress or bearing, a scrap of gold or of pinchbeck, would have ruined both of us in our appeal. But, fortunately, I did not disgrace her, and the man looked at her as if he expected her to say "Fourteenth Street." What would she say?
"That depends upon what the time will be. Mr. Carter will call at noon, and will let you know."
We bowed, and were gone. In an instant more she begged my pardon, almost with tears; but I told her that if she also had been a "Child of the Public," she could not more fitly have spoken to one of her father's officers. I begged her to use me as her protector, and not to apologize again. Then we laid out the plans which we followed out that day.
The officer's manner had reassured her, and I succeeded in persuading her that it was certain we should have the trunk at noon. How much better to wait, at least so far, before she entered on any of the enterprises of which she talked so coolly, as of offering herself as a nursery-girl, or as a milliner, to whoever would employ her, if only she could thus secure an honest home till money or till aunt were found. Once persuaded that we were safe from this Quixotism, I told her that we must go on,