The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker. William Dean Howells
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newspapers how they gave soup at the police-stations in Boston in the winter; perhaps they gave something in summer. He mustered up courage to ask a gentleman who passed where the nearest station was, and then started in search of it. If the city gave it, then there was no disgrace in it, and Lemuel had as much right to anything that was going as other people; that was the way he silenced his pride.
But he missed the place; he must have gone down the wrong street from Tremont to Washington; the gentleman had said the street that ran along the Common was Tremont, and the next was Washington. The cross-street that Lemuel got into was filled with people, going and coming, and lounging about. There were girls going along two or three together with books under their arms, and other girls talking with young fellows who hung about the doors of brightly lighted shops, and flirting with them. One of the girls, whom he had seen the day before in the Common, turned upon Lemuel as he passed, and said, “There goes my young man now! Good evening, Johnny!” It made Lemuel's cheek burn; he would have liked to box her ears for her. The fellows all set up a laugh.
Towards the end of the street the crowd thickened, and there the mixture of gas and the white moony lights that glared higher up, and winked and hissed, shone upon the faces of a throng that had gathered about the doors and windows of a store a little way down the other street. Lemuel joined them, and for pure listlessness waited round to see what they were looking at. By and by he was worked inward by the shifting and changing of the crowd, and found himself looking in at the door of a room, splendidly fitted up with mirrors and marble everywhere, and coloured glass and carved mahogany. There was a long counter with three men behind it, and over their heads was a large painting of a woman, worse than that image in the garden. The men were serving out liquor to the people that stood around drinking and smoking, and battening on this picture. Lemuel could not help looking, either. “What place is this?” he asked of the boy next him.
“Why, don't you know?” said the boy. “It's Jimmy Baker's. Just opened.”
“Oh,” said Lemuel. He was not going to let the boy see that he did not know who Jimmy Baker was. Just then something caught his eye that had a more powerful charm for him than that painting. It was a large bowl at the end of the counter, which had broken crackers in it, and near it were two plates, one with cheese, and one with bits of dried fish and smoked meat. The sight made the water come into his mouth; he watched like a hungry dog, with a sympathetic working of the jaws, the men who took a bit of fish, or meat, or cheese, and a cracker, or all four of them, before or after they drank. Presently one of the crowd near him walked in and took some fish and cracker without drinking at all; he merely winked at one of the bartenders, who winked at him in return.
A tremendous tide of daring rose in Lemuel's breast. He was just going to go in and risk the same thing himself, when a voice in the crowd behind him said, “Hain't you had 'most enough, young feller? Some the rest of us would like a chance to see now.”
Lemuel knew the voice, and turning quickly, he knew the impudent face it belonged to. He did not mind the laugh raised at his expense, but launched himself across the intervening spectators, and tried to seize the scamp who had got his money from him. The scamp had recognised Lemuel too, and he fell back beyond his grasp, and then lunged through the crowd, and tore round the corner and up the street. Lemuel followed as fast as he could. In spite of the weakness he had felt before, wrath and the sense of wrong lent him speed, and he was gaining in the chase when he heard a girl's voice, “There goes one of them now!” and then a man seemed to be calling after him, “Stop, there!” He turned round, and a policeman, looking gigantic in his belted blue flannel blouse and his straw helmet, bore down upon the country boy with his club drawn, and seized him by the collar.
“You come along,” he said.
“I haven't done anything,” said Lemuel, submitting, as he must, and in his surprise and terror losing the strength his wrath had given him. He could scarcely drag his feet over the pavement, and the policeman had almost to carry him at arm's length.
A crowd had gathered about them, and was following Lemuel and his captor, but they fell back when they reached the steps of the police-station, and Lemuel was pulled up alone, and pushed in at the door. He was pushed through another door, and found himself in a kind of office. A stout man in his shirt-sleeves was sitting behind a desk within a railing, and a large book lay open on the desk. This man, whose blue waistcoat with brass buttons marked him for some sort of officer, looked impersonally at Lemuel and then at the officer, while he chewed a quill toothpick, rolling it in his lips. “What have you got there?” he asked.
“Assaulting a girl down here, and grabbing her satchel,” said the officer who had arrested Lemuel, releasing his collar and going to the door, whence he called, “You come in here, lady,” and a young girl, her face red with weeping and her hair disordered, came back with him. She held a crumpled straw hat with the brim torn loose, and in spite of her disordered looks she was very pretty, with blue eyes flung very wide open, and rough brown hair, wavy and cut short, almost like a boy's. This Lemuel saw in the frightened glance they exchanged.
“This the fellow that assaulted you?” asked the man at the desk, nodding his head toward Lemuel, who tried to speak; but it was like a nightmare; he could not make any sound.
“There were three of them,” said the girl with hysterical volubility. “One of them pulled my hat down over my eyes and tore it, and one of them held me by the elbows behind, and they grabbed my satchel away that had a book in it that I had just got out of the library. I hadn't got it more than——”
“What name?” asked the man at the desk.
“A Young Man's Darling,” said the girl, after a bashful hesitation. Lemuel had read that book just before he left home; he had not thought it was much of a book.
“The captain wants to know your name,” said the officer in charge of Lemuel.
“Oh,” said the girl, with mortification. “Statira Dudley.”
“What age?” asked the captain.
“Nineteen last June,” replied the girl with eager promptness, that must have come from shame from the blunder she had made. Lemuel was twenty, the 4th of July.
“Weight?” pursued the captain.
“Well, I hain't been weighed very lately,” answered the girl, with increasing interest. “I don't know as I been weighed since I left home.”
The captain looked at her judicially.
“That so? Well, you look pretty solid. Guess I'll put you down at a hundred and twenty.”
“Well, I guess it's full as much as that,” said the girl, with a flattered laugh.
“Dunno how high you are?” suggested the captain, glancing at her again.
“Well, yes, I do. I am just five feet two inches and a half.”
“You don't look it,” said the captain critically.
“Well, I am,” insisted the girl, with a returning gaiety.
The captain apparently checked himself and put on a professional severity.
“What business—occupation?”
“Sales-lady,” said the girl.
“Residence?”
“No. 2334 Pleasant Avenue.”
The captain leaned back in his arm-chair, and turned his toothpick between his lips, as he stared hard at the girl.
“Well, now,” he said, after a moment, “you know you've got to come into court and testify to-morrow morning.”
“Yes,” said the girl, rather falteringly, with a sidelong glance at Lemuel.
“You've got to promise to do it, or else it will be my duty to have you locked up overnight.”
“Have me locked up?” gasped the girl, her wide blue eyes filling with astonishment.