Roland Graeme. Agnes Maule Machar
of his face, that the young man was constrained to begin in a tone of apology:
"I trust, sir, you will pardon the seeming intrusion of a stranger on your valuable time. May I ask you to grant me the favor of a brief conference on an important subject?" inquired the visitor, with a gentle courtesy of manner that impressed Mr. Chillingworth in spite of himself. "As a Christian minister, you——"
"As a Christian minister, sir, my time is much engaged. I must ask you to state the object of your visit as briefly as possible. Just at present, I am specially occupied with important work."
"I shall be as brief as possible," the young man replied. "I think you will recognize my object also as important. May I ask you to be kind enough to look at this prospectus?"
Mr. Chillingworth's high, arched forehead assumed a more and more clouded aspect. He made an impatient gesture as he said:
"I am afraid you really must excuse me! I cannot undertake to examine a long prospectus. Time is precious, and my own work is too exacting in its claims."
"That is what brings me here," the young man replied, still with a cheerful, undaunted look. "It is, I think, in line with your work, the importance of which I fully recognize. This is the prospectus of a paper which I propose to issue in the interest of our common humanity. It is designed to promote the brotherhood of man, to secure a better feeling between class and class, employer and employed—a fairer scale of wages and hours for the operative, fuller coöperation between employer and employés and mutual consideration for each other's interests; in short, to propagate that spirit of Christian socialism which the minister of Christ——"
But here the clergyman's ill-controlled impatience broke its bounds. Preoccupied as he was, he had caught little more than the last words.
"I can have nothing to do with any socialistic schemes," he exclaimed. "There is far too much mischievous nonsense afloat!—simply producing discontent with existing conditions, and with the differences which, in Providence, have always existed. I must really decline any further conversation on this subject," and, with unmistakable suggestiveness, Mr. Chillingworth placed his hand on the half-open door.
A faintly perceptible shade of vexation seemed just to flit across the bright serenity of the young man's frank, open face. He saw very well that persistence would do no good, and yielded to the force of circumstances with the best grace he could muster.
"Good afternoon, then, sir," he said, in a tone that, if not quite so cheery, was as amiable as ever. "I am sorry I cannot enlist your sympathy in our undertaking, as I should like to have all Christian ministers with us. I shall send you a specimen copy of the paper, and hope you will kindly read it."
"Good afternoon," the minister reiterated curtly, showing his visitor to the door with very scant courtesy.
Just as the door was about to close behind him, an unexpected interruption occurred, in the shape of an apparition of a character very unusual at Mr. Chillingworth's door. It was a little girl, who looked about eight or nine years old, but might have been older, quaintly wrapped in a shawl that had once been handsome, while a little fur-trimmed hood that was quite too small for her framed a mass of dark tangled curls, out of which large, lustrous gray eyes, strikingly beautiful in form and color, looked up from under their long dark eyelashes, with a soft, grave, appealing gaze. Her shabby, old-fashioned garb gave her, at first sight, the appearance of an ordinary vagrant child; but there was nothing sordid about the little creature. Her childish beauty, indeed, caught Roland Graeme, whose heart was always open to such spells, with an irresistible fascination.
The little girl looked eagerly up at the two men; then, seeming to divine which was the object of her quest, she said timidly, yet with a refinement of tone and accent somewhat out of keeping with her poverty-stricken aspect:
"Please, minister, my mother is very ill, and she wants——"
"I never give anything to begging children," interrupted Mr. Chillingworth, more sternly than he was himself aware of; for his irritation with his previous visitor preoccupied him so much that he heard and saw the child vaguely, without taking in the sense of her words, or according her any more consideration, than, to his mind, was ordinarily deserved by the nuisances he indiscriminately classed as "juvenile mendicants." "If your mother wants anything, she can come herself," he added, from behind the resolutely closing door. He was not an unfeeling man, but he never knew what to do with children, and had grown hardened by the sight of misery that he could not prevent;—the words he used being a well-worn formula, the crystallized result of many vexatious impositions. He had only, to "save his precious time," delivered himself over to a set of rules, and in so far, cramped and limited the flow of human sympathy.
Roland, left on the door-steps with the little morsel of womanhood, looked down at her, while she looked up at him with the keenly scrutinizing glance, which, in some children as in animals, seems to have been developed by force of circumstances. In the mutual glance, brief and inquiring as it was, a certain sympathy seemed to establish itself between the young man and the child. He noted, with an eye always minutely observant of human faces, the grieved, discouraged look which the child's flexible mouth had assumed at the unexpected rebuff. But she only said, in an explanatory tone, as if answering an unspoken inquiry,
"Mother's too sick to come; she's awful sick!"
"What's your name, my child, and where do you live?" asked Roland Graeme, who could no more divest himself of the quick sympathy that was always catching hold of other people's lives, than he could of the winning candor of his blue-gray eyes.
"Miss Travers!"—was the unexpected reply to his first question, given with a certain quaint dignity that touched Roland's sense of humor. "We live way up there," pointing in the direction of a long street that ran from the neighboring corner toward the outskirts of the city.
"And what ails your mother, and why did she send you here?" he continued.
"She said I was to come to this house," pointing to the number above the door, "and to say that she wanted to see him very particularly," said the child, evidently repeating her message, word for word, "and she's very sick and can't eat bread, and there's nothing else in the house!" she added, in a tone in which perplexity and resignation were strangely mingled.
The young man sighed heavily. Here was another atom, added to that pile of human misery which had begun to weigh upon his spirit like a nightmare. But he replied in the same cheery tone he had used to the minister:
"Well, I'm going that way, and if you'll wait a minute or two for me at a house I have to stop at, I'll go with you to see your mother, and perhaps I can help her a little." And, taking the little one's hand, the two passed on in the fast gathering dusk. The child, who had acquiesced with a look of real satisfaction, trotted on beside him, occasionally looking up, to study the face of her new friend and to return his smile, while doing her best to keep up with the unconsciously rapid pace which had grown habitual with him.
He drew up suddenly before a modest abode, the door-plate of which bore the inscription, "Rev. John Alden." The door was opened by a bright fair-haired boy, to whom Roland's heart went out at once—for he loved boys, as much as some people detest them, and that is saying a good deal. This boy was evidently accustomed to all sorts of visitors, and did not even look surprised at Roland's odd little companion. Yes, his father was at home. Would they walk in? He seemed to know just what to do with the little girl, whom he carefully lifted to a chair in the hall, while he courteously ushered the young man into a parlor whose comfortable confusion and open piano, littered with music and books, indicated as much life and occupancy as the precise and frigid order of Mr. Chillingworth's reception-room betokened the reverse. A merry tumult of children's voices and laughter came through open doors, seriously diverting Roland's attention from the business part of his mission.
A quick decided step soon sounded in the hall, and, with a kindly word to the child as he passed, Mr. Alden entered. He was a man of rather less than medium height, and rather more than middle-age, strongly built, alert, with a large head, broad forehead and bright gray eyes, in which kindliness and humor often seemed to contend for the mastery. His cordial greeting