Helen Ford. Alger Horatio Jr.
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tea it was the custom for father and daughter to walk out, sometimes in one direction sometimes in another. Often they would walk up Broadway, and Helen, at least, found amusement in watching the shifting scenes which present themselves to the beholder in that crowded thoroughfare. Life in all its varieties, from pampered wealth to squalid poverty, too often the fruit of a mis-spent life jostled each other upon the sidewalk, or in the street. The splendid equipage dashes past the humble handcart; the dashing buggy jostles against the loaded dray. Broadway is no exclusive thoroughfare. In the shadow of the magnificent hotel leans the foreign beggar, just landed on our shores, and there is no one to bid him “move on.” The shop windows, too, are a free “World’s Fair Exhibition,” constantly changing, never exhausted. Helen and her father had just returned from a leisurely walk, taken at the close of a day of labor and confinement, and paused to rest for a moment on the west side of the Park.
While they were standing there, a handsome carriage drove past. Within were two gentlemen. One was already well advanced in years, as his gray hairs and wrinkled face made apparent. He wore an expression of indefinable sorrow and weariness, as if life had long ago ceased to have charms for him. His companion might be somewhat under forty. He was tall and spare, with a dark, forbidding face, which repelled rather than attracted the beholder.
As the carriage neared the Park, the elder of the two looked out to rest his gaze, wearied with the sight of brick and stone, upon the verdure of this inclosure. This, be it remembered, was twenty years since, before the Park had so completely lost its fresh country look. He chanced to see Mr. Ford and Helen. He started suddenly in visible agitation.
“Look, Lewis!” he exclaimed, clutching the arm of his companion, and pointing to Mr. Ford.
The younger man started almost imperceptibly, and his face paled, but he almost instantly recovered himself.
“Yes,” he said, carelessly; “the Park is looking well.”
“Not that, not that,” said the old man, hurriedly. “That man with the little girl. He is,—he must be Robert, my long-lost son. Stop the carriage. I must get out.”
“My dear uncle,” expostulated the younger man, who had been addressed as Lewis, “you are laboring under a strange hallucination. This man does not in the least resemble my cousin. Besides, you remember that we have undoubted proof of his death in Chicago two years since.”
“You may be right,” said the old man, as he sank back into his seat with a sigh, “but the resemblance was wonderful.”
“But, uncle, let me suggest that more than fifteen years have passed away since my cousin left home, and even if he were living, he must have changed so much that we could not expect to recognize him.”
“Perhaps you are right, Lewis; and yet, when I looked at that man, I was startled by a look that brought before me my dead wife,—my precious Helen. I fear I have dealt harshly with her boy.”
He relapsed into a silence which his companion did not care to disturb. He watched guardedly the expression of the old man, and a close observer might have detected a shade of anxiety, as if there were something connected with his uncle’s present mood which alarmed him. After a short scrutiny he himself fell into thought, and as we are privileged to read what is concealed from all else, we will give the substance of his reflections.
“Here is a new danger to be guarded against, just at the most critical time, too. Shall I never attain the object of my wishes? Shall I never be paid for the years in which I have danced attendance upon my uncle? I must succeed by whatever means. He cannot last much longer.”
The evident weakness of his uncle seemed to justify his prediction. He looked like one whose feet are drawing very near the brink of that mysterious river which it is appointed to all of us at some time to cross.
CHAPTER IV.
A GLANCE BACKWARDS
It was growing late. Night had drawn its sombre veil over the great city, and the streets, a little while before filled with busy passers-by, now echoed but seldom to the steps of an occasional wayfarer. The shops were closed, the long day assigned to trade being over. To plodding feet and busy brains, to frames weary with exhausting labor, to minds harassed by anxious cares, night came in friendly guise, bringing the rest and temporary oblivion of sleep.
From a small building in a by-street, or rather lane, which nevertheless was not far removed from the main thoroughfare, there gleamed a solitary candle, emitting a fitful glare, which served, so far as it went, to give a very unfavorable idea of the immediate vicinity. Within, a young man, painfully thin, was seated at a low table, engrossing a legal document. The face was not an agreeable one. The prevailing expression was one of discontent and weak repining. He was one who could complain of circumstances without having the energy to control them; born to be a subordinate of loftier and more daring intellects.
He wrote with rapidity and, at the same time, with scrupulous elegance. He was evidently a professional copyist.
After bending over his writing for a time, during which he was rapidly approaching the completion of his task, he at length threw aside the pen, exclaiming, with an air of relief, “At last it is finished! Thank Heaven! that is,” he added, after a slight pause, “if there be such a place, which I am sometimes inclined to doubt. Finished; but what after all is a single day’s work? To-night I may sleep in peace, but to-morrow the work must begin once more. It is like a tread-mill, continually going round, but making no real progress. I wish,” he resumed, after a slight pause, “there were some way of becoming suddenly rich, without this wear and tear of hand and brain. I don’t know that I am so much surprised at the stories of those who, in utter disgust of labor, have sold themselves to the arch fiend. Why should I have been born with such a keen enjoyment of luxuries, and without the means of obtaining them? Why should I be doomed–”
When discontent had thus opened the way for its favorable reception, temptation came.
There was a knock at the door.
Thinking it might be some strolling vagabond who, in his intoxication, was wandering he knew not whither, he did not at first respond, but waited till it should be repeated.
It was repeated, this time with a considerable degree of force.
The young man approached the door, but feeling apprehensive that it might prove to be some unwelcome visitor, he paused before drawing the bolt, and called out, in a voice marked by a tremulous quaver, for he possessed but little physical courage, “Who are you that come here at such an unseasonable hour? Unless I know your name, I shall not let you in.”
“Don’t be alarmed, Jacob,” was the reply. “It is only I, Lewis Rand. Open at once, for I come on business which must be quickly despatched.”
The explanation was evidently satisfactory, for the scrivener in eager haste opened the door, and admitted his visitor. It was the younger of the two men upon whom the chance meeting with Helen and her father seemed to have produced an impression so powerful. Jacob, though well acquainted with him, was evidently surprised at his presence at an hour so unseasonable, for he exclaimed, in a tone of mingled surprise and deference, “You here, Mr. Rand, and at this time of night! It must be something important which has called you at an hour when most men are quietly sleeping in their beds.”
“Yet you are up, Jacob, and at work, as I conjecture,” said the visitor, pointing to the table on which the completed sheets were still lying.
“True,” said the copyist, for this recalled to him the grounds of his discontent; “but I must work while others sleep, or accept a worse alternative. Sometimes I am tempted to give up the struggle. You have never known what a hard taskmaster poverty is.”
“Perhaps not,” returned the other; “but I can testify that the apprehension of poverty is not less formidable. However, I can perhaps lend you a helping hand, since the business on which I come, if successfully carried out, of which with your co-operation I have strong hopes, will prove so important to me that I shall be able to put a better face upon your affairs.”
“Ah!” said the young man, with suddenly awakening interest; “what may