xt7tht2g809g https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7tht2g809g/data/mets.xml Page, Thomas Nelson, 1853-1922. 190618  books b92-230-31280747v15 English C. Scribner's sons, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Novels, stories, sketches, and poems of Thomas Nelson Page (vol. 15) text Novels, stories, sketches, and poems of Thomas Nelson Page (vol. 15) 1906 2002 true xt7tht2g809g section xt7tht2g809g 











PLANTATION

  EDITION



VOLUME: XV

 

















































"But you must not come in.,"



-Page 172

 



- THE NOVELS, STORIES,
SKETCHES AND POEMS OF
THOMAS NELS)ON PAGE 



JOHN MARVEL
  ASSISTANT
        I





CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK . - S  1909



I

 































   Copyright, 1909, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'e SONS


   AU Rights Reserved





















           '9  

 
















                TO
Those loved ones whose never failing
sympathy has led me all these years

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CONTENTS



MY FIRST FAILURE ......

THE JEW AND THE CHRISTIAN

THE FIGHT ..........

DELILAH.

THE HARE AND THE TORTOISE.

THE METEOR .........

THE HEGIRA .........

PADAN-ARAM.

I PITCH MY TENT .......

A NEW GIRLR.  ........

ELEANOR LEIGH .. .

JOHN MARVEL. . . . .. . .

MR. LEIGH ..........

MISS LEIGH SEEKS WORK . .

THE LADY OF THE VIOLETS .
               vii



       PAGE
       .3



.........21

..... ......33

..... ......43

...... ........ 55

.....b.....69

..... ......84

..... .......104

..... ......127

..... ......140

...........169

        180

     .189

       .212



CHAPTETP
   1.

   II.

   I11.

   IV.

   V.

   VI.

 VII.

 Vill.

 Ix.

 X.

 Xi.

 Xl.

 xill.

 XIV.

 XV.



R

 


CONTENTS



CHAPTRR
  XVI. THE SHADOW OF SHAM . .

  XVII. THE GULF ... . . ..

  XVIII. THE DRUMMER ......

  XIX. RE-ENTER PECK ......

  XX. MY FIRST CLIENT .....

  XXI. THE RESURRECTION OF DIX

  XXII. THE PREACHER ......



           PAGE
. I... . .,229

.... .  .               .243

....  .               .264

... . . ..279

....   ..301

.. . . . ..318

.... .  .               .337



viii

 


























                ILLUSTRATIONS


- BUT YOU MUST NOT COME IN ... . . . . . . Frontspiece
                                          FACING PAGE
'Hi I WHAT YOU DOIN' '' HE. STAMMERED.. , . .   76


"TO PLY YOUR OLD TRADE- I ASKED  . . . . . . 272

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JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT

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JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT

                      I

              MY FIRST FAILURE

I SHALL feel at liberty to tell my story in my
    own way; rambling along at my own gait;
now going from point to point; now tearing
ahead; now stopping to rest or to ruminate, and
even straying from the path whenever I think a
digression will be for my own enjoyment.
  I shall begin with my college career, a period to
which I look back now with a pleasure wholly in-
commensurate with wLat I achieved in it; which
I find due to the friends I made and to the mem-
ories I garnered there in a time when I possessed
the unprized treasures of youth: spirits, hope,
and abounding conceit. As these mriemories, with
the courage (to use a mild term) that a college
background gives, are about all that I got out of
my life there, I shall dwell on them only enough
to introduce two or three friends and one enemy,
who played later a very considerable part in my
life.
                      3

 


        JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT
  My family was an old and distinguished one;
that is, it could be traced back about two hundred
years, and several of my ancestors had accom-
plished enough to be known in the history of the
State-a fact of which I was so proud that I was
quite satisfied at college to rest on their achieve-
ments, and felt no need to add to its distinction
by any labors of my own.
  We had formerly been well off: we had, indeed,
at one time prior to the Revolutionary War owned
large estates-a time to which I was so fond of re-
ferring when I first went to college that one of my
acquaintances, named Peck, an envious fellow,
observed one day that I thought I had inherited
all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of
them. My childhood was spent on an old planta-
tion, so far removed from anything that I have
since known that it might almost have been in
another planet.
  It happened that I was the only child of my
parents who survived, the others having been car-
ried off in early childhood by a scourge of scarlet
fever, to which circumstance, as I look back, I
now know was due my mother's sadness of ex-
pression when my father was not present. I was
thus subjected to the perils and great misfortune
of being an only child, among them that of think-
                      4

 
MY FIRST FAILURE



ing the sun rises and sets for his especial benefit.
I must say that both my father and mother tried
faithfully to do their part to counteract this dan-
ger, and they not only believed firmly in, but
acted consistently on, the Solomonic doctrine
that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. My
father, I must say, was more lenient, and I think
gladly evaded the obligation as interpreted by my
mother, declaring that Solomon, like a good many
other persons, was much wiser in speech than in
practice. He was fond of quoting the custom of
the ancient Scythians, who trained their youth to
ride, to shoot, and to speak the truth. And in
this last particular he was inexorable.
  Among my chief intimates as a small boy was
a little darkey named "Jeams." Jeams was the
grandson of one of our old servants--Uncle Ralph
Woodson. Jeams, who was a few years my senior,
was a sharp-witted boy, as black as a piece of old
mahogany, and had a head so hard that he could
butt a plank off a fence. Naturally he and I be-
came cronies, and he prLcked up information on
various subjects so readily that I found him
equally agreeable and useful.
  My father was admirably adapted to the condi-
tions that had created such a character, but as
unsuited to the new conditions that succeeded

 
        JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT
the collapse of the old life as a shorn lamb would
be to the untempered wind of winter. He was a
Whig and an aristocrat of the strongest type, and
though in practice he was the kindest and most
liberal of men, he always maintained that a gen-
tleman was the choicest fruit of civilization; a
standard, I may say, in which the personal element
counted with him far more than family connec-
tion. "A king can make a nobleman, sir," he used
to say; "but it takes Jehovah to make a gentle-
man." When the war came, though he was op-
posed to "Locofocoism" as he termed it, he en-
listed as a private as soon as the State seceded,
and fought through the war, rising to be a major
and surrendering at Appomattox. When the war
closed, he shut himself up on his estate, accepting
the situation without moroseness, and consoling
himself with a philosophy much more misan-
thropic in expression than in practice.
  My father's slender patrimony had been swept
away by the war, but, being a scholar himself,
and having a high idea of classical learning and
a good estimate of my abilities-in which latter
view I entirely agreed with him-he managed by
much stinting to send me to college out of the
fragments of his establishment. I admired greatly
certain principles which were stamped in him as
                      6

 
MY FIRST FAILURE



firmly as a fossil is embedded in the solid rock;
but I fear I had a certain contempt for what ap-
peared to me his inadequacy to the new state of
things, and I secretly plumed myself on my supe-
riority to him in all practical affairs. Without the
least appreciation of the sacrifices he was making
to send me to college, I was an idle dog and
plunged into the amusements of the gay set-that
set whose powers begin below their foreheads-in
which I became a member and aspired to be a
leader.
  My first episode at (college brought me some
6clat.



7'

 






II



         THE JEW AND THE CHRISTIAN

I ARRIVED rather late and 'the term had al-
    ready begun, so that all the desirable rooms
had been taken. I was told that I would either
have to room out of college or take quarters with a
young man by the name of Wolffert-like myself,
a freshman. I naturally chose the latter. On
reaching my quarters, I found my new comrade
to be an affable, gentlemanly fellow, and very nice
looking. Indeed, his broad brow, with curling
brown hair above it; his dark eyes, deep and lumi-
nous; a nose the least bit too large and inclin-
ing to be aquiline; a well-cut mouth with mobile,
sensitive lips, and a finely chiselled jaw, gave him
an unusual face, if not one of distinction. He was
evidently bent on making himself agreeable to me,
and as he had read an extraordinary amount for
a lad of his age and I, who had also read some, was
lonely, we had passed a pleasant evening when
he mentioned casually a fact which sent my heart
down into my boots. He was a Jew. This, then,
                      8

 

THE JEW AND THE CHRISTIAN



accounted for the ridge of his well-carved nose,
and the curl of his soft brown hair. I tried to be
as frank and easy as I had been before, but it was
a failure. He saw my surprise as I saw his disap-
pointment-a coolness took the place of the
warmth that had been growing up between us for
several hours, and we passed a stiff evening. He
had already had one room-mate.
  Next day, I found a former acquaintance who
offered to take me into his apartment, and that
afternoon, having watched for my opportunity,
I took advantage of my room-mate's absence and
moved out, leaving a short note saying that I had
discovered an old friend who was verv desirous
that I should share his quarters. When I next
met Wolffert he wasi so stiff that, although I felt
sorry for him and was ready to be as civil as I
might, our acquaintance thereafter became merely
nominal. I saw, in fact, little of him during the
next months, for he soon forged far ahead of me.
There was, indeed, no one in his class who pos-
sessed his acquirements or his ability. I used to
see him for a while standing in his doorway look-
ing wistfully out at the groups of students gathered
under the trees, or walking alone, like Isaac in the
fields, and until I formed my own set, I would
have gone and joined hi:m or have asked him to
                      PI

 

        JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT
join us but for his rebuff. I knew that he was
lonely; for I soon discovered that the cold shoul-
der was being given to him by most of the stu-
dents. I could not, however, but feel that it
served him right for the "airs" he put on with
me. That he made a brilliant exhibition in his
classes and was easily the cleverest man in the class
did not affect our attitude toward him; perhaps
it only aggravated the case. Why should he be
able to make easily a demonstration at the black-
board that the cleverest of us only bungled
through One day, however, we learned that the
Jew had a room-mate. Bets were freely taken
that he would not stick, but he stuck-for it was
John Marvel. Not that any of us knew what John
Marvel was; for even I, who, except Wolffert,
came to know him best, did not divine until many
years later what a nugget of unwrought gold that
homely, shy, awkward John Marvel was!
  It appeared that Wolffert had a harder time
than any of us dreamed of.
  He had come to the institution against the ad-
vice of his father, and for a singular reason: he
thought it the most liberal institution of learning
in the country! Little he knew of the narrow-
ness of youth! His mind was so receptive that
all that passed through it was instantly appro-
                     10

 

THE JEW AND) THE CHRISTIAN



priated. Like a plant, he drew sustenance from
the atmosphere about him and transmuted what
was impalpable to us to forms of beauty. He
was even then a man of independent thought; a
dreamer who peopled the earth with ideals, and
saw beneath the stony surface of the commonplace
the ideals and principles that were to reconstruct
and resurrect the world. An admirer of the Law
in its ideal conception, he reprobated, with the
fury of the Baptist, the generation that had be-
littled and cramped it to an instrument of torture
of the human mind, and looked to the millennial
coming of universal brotherhood and freedom.
  His father was a leading man in his city; one
who, by his native ability and the dynamic force
that seems to be a characteristic of the race, had
risen from poverty to the position of chief mer-
chant and capitalist of the town in which he
lived. He had been elected mayor in a time of
stress; but his popularity among the citizens
generally had cost him, as I learned later, some-
thing among his own people. The breadth of his
views had not been approved by them.
  The abilities that in the father had taken this
direction of the mingling of the practical and the
theoretical had, in the son, taken the form I have
stated. He was an idealist: a poet and a dreamer.
                      11

 
        JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT
  The boy from the first had discovered powers
that had given his father the keenest delight, not
unmingled with a little misgiving. As he grew
up among the best class of boys in his town, and
became conscious that he was not one of them,
his enquiring and aspiring mind began early to
seek the reasons for the difference. Why should
he be held a little apart from them He was a
Jew. Yes, but why should a Jew be held apart
They talked about their families. Why, his fam-
ily could trace back for two thousand and more
years to princes and kings. They had a different
religion. But he saw other boys with different
religions going and playing together. They were
Christians, and believed in Christ, while the Jew,
etc. This puzzled him till he found that some of
them-a few-did not hold the same views of
Christ with the others. Then he began to study
for himself, boy as he was, the history of Christ,
and out of it came questions that his father could
not answer and was angry that he should put to
him. He went to a young Rabbi who told him
that Christ was a good man, but mistaken in His
claims.
  So, the boy drifted a little apart from his own
people, and more and more he studied the
questions that arose in his mind, and more and
                     12

 
    THE JEW AND THE CHRISTIAN
more he suffered; but more and more he grew
strong.
  The father, too proud of his son's independence
to coerce him by an order which might have
been a law to him, had, nevertheless, thrown
him on his own resources ,and cut him down to
the lowest figure on which he could live, confident
that his own opinions would be justified and his
son return home.
  Wolffert's first experience very nearly justified
this conviction. The fact that a Jew had come
and taken one of the old apartments spread
through the college with amazing rapidity and
created a sensation. Not that there had not been
Jews there before, for there had been a number
there at one time or another. But they were
members of families of distinction, who had been
known for generations as bearing their part in
all the appointments of life, and had consorted
with other folk on an absolute equality; so that
there was little or nothing to distinguish them
as Israelites except their name. If they were
Israelites, it was an accidentl and played no larger
part in their views than if they had been Scotch or
French. But here was a man who proclaimed
himself a Jew; who proposed that it should be
known, and evidently meant to assert his rights
                      13

 
        JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT
and peculiarities on all occasions. The result was
that he was subjected to a species of persecution
which only the young Anglo-Saxon, the most
brutal of all animals, could have devised.
  As college filled rapidly, it soon became neces-
sary to double up, that is, put two men in one
apartment. The first student assigned to live
with Wolffert was Peck, a sedate and cool young
man-like myself, from the country, and like
myself, very short of funds. Peck would not
have minded rooming with a Jew, or, for that
matter, with the Devil, if he had thought he could
get anything out of him; for he had few preju-
dices, and when it came to calculation, he was the
multiplication-table. But Peck had his way to
make, and he coolly decided that a Jew was likely
to make him bear his full part of the expenses-
which he never had any mind to do. So he looked
around, and within forty-eight hours moved to a
place out of college where he got reduced board
on the ground of belonging to some peculiar set
of religionists, of which I am convinced he had
never heard till he learned of the landlady's
idiosyncrasy.
  I had incurred Peck's lasting enmity-though
I did not know it at the time-by a witticism at
his expense. We had never taken to each other
                      14

 
THE JEW AND THE CHRISTIAN



from the first, and one evening, when some one was
talking about Wolffert, Peck joined in and said
that that institution was no place for any Jew. I
said, "Listen to Peck sniff. Peck, how did you
get in" This raised a laugh. Peck, I am sure,
had never read "Martin Chuzzlewit"; but I am
equally sure he read it afterward, for he never for-
gave me.
  Then came my turn and desertion which I have
described. And then, after that interval of lone-
liness, appeared John Marvel.
  Wolffert, who was one of the most social men I
ever knew, was sitting in his room meditating on
the strange fate that had made him an outcast
among the men whom he had come there to study
and know. This was my interpretation of his
thoughts: he would probably have said he was
thinking of the strange prejudices of the human
race-prejudices to which he had been in some
sort a victim all his life, as his race had been all
through the ages. He was steeped in loneliness,
and as, in the mellow October afternoon, the
sound of good-fellowship floated in at his window
from the lawn outside, he grew more and more
dejected. One evening it culminated. He even
thought of writing to his father that he would
come home and go into his office and accept the
                      15

 
        JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT
position that meant wealth and luxury and power.
Just then there was a step outside, and some one
stopped, and after a moment knocked at the
door. Wolffert rose and opened it and stood
facing a new student-a florid, round-faced,
round-bodied, bow-legged, blue-eyed, awkward
lad of about his own age.
  "Is this number    " demanded the new-
comer, peering curiously at the dingy door and
half shyly looking up at the occupant.
  "It is. Why" Wolffert spoke abruptly.
  "Well, I have been assigned to this apartment
by the Proctor. I am a new student and have
just come. My name is Marvel-John Marvel."
Wolffert put his arms across the doorway and
stood in the middle of it.
  "Well, I want to tell you before you come in
that I am a Jew. You are welcome not to come,
but if you come I want you to stay." Perhaps
the other's astonishment contained a query, for
he went on hotly:
  "I have had two men come here already and
both of them left after one day. The first said
he got cheaper board, which was a legitimate ex-
cuse, if true; the other said he had found an
old friend who wanted him. I am convinced that
he lied and that the only reason he left was that
                     16

 
THE JEW AND THE CHRISTIAN



I am a Jew. And now you can come in or not, as
you please, but if you come you must stay." He
was looking down in John Marvel's eyes with a
gaze that had the concentrated bitterness of
generations in it, and the latter met it with a
gravity that deepened into pity.
  "I will come in and I will stay; Jesus was a
Jew," said the man on the lower step.
  "I do not know Him," said the other bitterly.
  "But you will. I know Him."
  Wolffert's arms fell and John Marvel entered
and stayed.
  That evening the two men went to the supper
hall together. Their table was near mine and
they were the observed of all observers. The
one curious thing was that John Marvel was
studying for the ministry. It lent zest to the
jokes that were made on this incongruous pairing,
and jests, more or less insipid, were made on the
Law and the Prophets; the lying down together
of the lion and the lamb, etc.
  It was a curious mating-the light-haired,
moon-faced, slow-witted S axon, and the dark,
keen Jew with his intellectual face and his deep-
burning eyes in which glowed the misery and
mystery of the ages.
  John Marvel soon became well known; for he
                      17

 
        JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT
was one of the slowest men in the college. With
his amusing awkwardness he would have become
a butt except for his imperturbable good-humor.
As it was, he was for a time a sort of object of
ridicule to many of us-myself among the num-
ber-and we had many laughs at him. He would
disappear on Saturday night and not turn up
again till Monday morning, dusty and dishevelled.
And many jests were made at his expense. One
said that Marvel was practising preaching in the
mountains with a view to becoming a second De-
mosthenes; another suggested that, if so, the
mountains would probably get up and run into
the sea.
  When, however, it was discovered later that
he had a Sunday-school in the mountains, and
walked twelve miles out and twelve miles back,
most of the gibers, except the inveterate humor-
ists like myself, were silent.
  This fact came out by chance. Marvel disap-
peared from college one day and remained away
for two or three weeks. Wolffert either could not
or would not give any account of him. When
Marvel returned, he looked worn and ill, as if he
had been starving, and almost immediately he
was taken ill and went to the infirmary with a
case of fever. Here he was so ill that the doctors
                     i8

 

THE JEW AND THIE CHRISTIAN



quarantined him and no one saw him except the
nurse-old Mrs. Denny, a wrinkled and bald-
headed, old, fat woman, something between a
lightwood knot and an angel-and Wolffert.
  Wolffert moved down and took up his quarters
in the infirmary-it was siggested, with a view
to converting Marvel to Judaism-and here he
stayed. The nursing never appeared to make any
difference in Wolffert's preparation for his classes;
for when he came back he still stood easily first.
But poor Marvel never caught up again, and awas
even more hopelessly lost in the befogged region
at the bottom of the class than ever before.
When called on to recite, his brow would pucker
and he would perspire and stammer until the
class would be in ill-suppressed convulsions, all
the more enjoyable because of Leo Wolffert's
agonizing over his wretchedness. Then Marvel,
excused by the professor, would sit down and
mop his brow and beam quite as if he had made
a wonderful performance (which indeed he had),
while Wolffert's thin face would grow whiter, his
nostrils quiver, and his deep eyes burn like coals.
  One day a spare, rusty man with a frowzy beard,
and a lank, stooping woman strolled into the col-
lege grounds, and after wandering around aim-
lessly for a time, asked for Mr. Marvel. Each of
                     19

 

        JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT
them carried a basket. They were directed to his
room and remained with him some time, and when
they left, he walked some distance with them.
  It was at first rumored and then generally re-
ported that they were Marvel's father and mother.
It became known later that they were a couple of
poor mountaineers named Shiflett, whose child
John Marvel had nursed when it had the fever.
They had just learned of his illness and had come
down to bring him some chickens and other things
which they thought he might need.
  This incident, with the knowledge of Marvel's
devotion, made some impression on us, and gained
for Marvel, and incidentally for Wolffert, some
sort of respect.



20

 





III



                   THE FIGHT

A  LL this time I was about as far aloof from
     Marvel and Wolffert as I was from any one
in the college.
  I rather liked Marvel, partly because he ap-
peared to like me and I h(lped him in his Latin,
and partly because Peck sniffed at him, and Peck
I cordially (lisliked for his cold-blooded selfishness
and his plodding way.
  I was strong and active and fairly good-looking,
though by no means so h:Landsome as I fancied
myself when I passed the large plate-glass win-
dows in the stores; I was conceited, but not arro-
gant except to my family and those I esteemed
my inferiors; was a good poker-player; was open-
handed enough, for it cost me nothing; and was
inclined to be kind by nature.
  I had, moreover, several accomplishments which
led to a certain measure of popularity. I had a
retentive memory, and could get up a recitation
with little trouble; though I forgot about as
quickly as I learned. I could pick a little on a
                      21

 

        JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT
banjo; could spout fluently what sounded like a
good speech if one did not listen to me; could
write what, some one has said, looked at a distance
like poetry and, thanks to my father, could both
fence and read Latin. These accomplishments
served to bring me into the best set in college, and,
in time, to undo me. For there is nothing more
dangerous to a young man than an exceptional
social accomplishment. A tenor voice is almost
as perilous as a taste for drink; and to play the
guitar, about as seductive as to play poker.
  I was soon to know Wolffert better. He and
Marvel, after their work became known, had
been admitted rather more within the circle,
though they were still kept near the perimeter.
And thus, as the spring came on, when we all
assembled on pleasant afternoons under the big
trees that shaded the green slopes above the ath-
letic field, even Wolffert and Marvel were apt to
join us. I would long ago have made friends with
Wolffert, as some others had done since he distin-
guished himself; for I had been ashamed of my
poltroonery in leaving him; but, though he was
affable enough with others, he always treated me
with such marked reserve that I had finally aban-
doned my charitable effort to be on easy terms
with him.
                      22

 
THE FIGHT



  One spring afternoon we were all loafing under
the trees, many of us stretched out on the grass.
I had just saved a game of baseball by driving a
ball that brought in three men from the bases,
and I was surrounded by quite a group. Marvel,
who was as strong as an ox, was second-baseman
on the other nine and had missed the ball as the
centre-fielder threw it wildly. Something was
said-I do not recall what--and I raised a laugh
at Marvel's expense, in which he joined heartily.
Then a discussion began on the merits in which
Wolffert joined. I started it, but as Wolffert
appeared excited, I drew out and left it to my
friends.
  Presently, at something Wolffert said, I turned
to a friend, Sam Pleasants, and said in a half-
aside, with a sneer: "He did not see it; Sam,
you-" I nodded my head, meaning, "You ex-
plain it."
  Suddenly, Woliffert rose to his feet and, without
a word of warning, poured out on me such a torrent
of abuse as I never heard before or since. His
least epithet was a deadly insult. It was out of
a clear sky, and for a moment my breath was
quite taken away. I sprang to my feet and, with
a roar of rage, made a rush for him. But he was
ready, and with a step to one side, planted a
                     23

 
        JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT
straight blow on my jaw that, catching me unpre-
pared, sent me full length on my back. I was up
in a second and made another rush for him, only
to be caught in the same way and sent down again.
  When I rose the second time, I was cooler.
I knew then that I was in for it. Those blows
were a boxer's. They came straight from the
shoulder and were as quick as lightning, with
every ounce of the giver's weight behind them.
By this time, however, the crowd had interfered.
This was no place for a fight, they said. The pro-
fessors would come on us. Several were holding
me and as many more had Wolffert; among them
John Marvel, who could have lifted him in his
strong arms and held him as a baby. Marvel was
pleading with him with tears in his eyes. WIolffert
was cool enough now, but he took no heed of his
friend's entreaties. Standing quite still, with the
blaze in his eyes all the more vivid because of the
pallor of his face, he was looking over his friend's
head and was cursing me with all the eloquence of
a rich vocabulary.  So far as he was concerned,
there might not have been another man but my-
self within a mile.
  In a moment an agreement was made by which
we were to adjourn to a retired spot and fight it
out. Something that he said led some one to sug-
                     24

 
THE FIGHT



gest that we settle it with pistols. It was Peck's
voice. Wolffert sprang at it. "I will, if I can
get any gentleman to represent me," he said with
a bitter sneer, casting his flashing, scornful eyes
around on the crowd. "I have only one friend
and I will not ask him to do it."
  "I will represent you,' said Peck, who had his
own reasons for the offer.
  "All right. When and where" said I.
  "Now, and in the railway cut beyond the
wood," said Wolffert.
  We retired to two rooms in a neighboring
dormitory to arrange matters. Peck and another
volunteer represented Wolffert, and Sam Pleas-
ants and Harry Houston were my seconds. I
had expected that some attempt at reconciliation
would be made; but there was no suggestion of
it. I never saw such cold-blooded young ruffians
as all our seconds were, and when Peck came to
close the final cartel he had an air between that
of a butcher and an undertaker. He looked at
me exactly as a butcher does at a fatted calf.
lIe positively licked his chops. I did not want
to shoot Wolffert, but ]I could cheerfully have
murdered Peck. While, however, the arrange-
ments were being made by our friends, I had had
a chance for some reflection and I had used it. 1
                      25

 

        JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT
knew that Wolffert did not like me. He had no
reason to do so, for I had not only left him, but
had been cold and distant with him. Still, I
had always treated him civilly, and had spoken
of him respectfully, which was more than Peck
had always done. Yet, here, without the least
provocation, he had insulted me grossly. I knew
there must be some misunderstanding, and I de-
termined on my "own hook" to find out what
it was. Fortune favored me. Just then Wolffert
opened the door. He had gone to his own room
for a few moments and, on his return, mistook the
number and opened the wrong door. Seeing his
error, he drew back with an apology, and was
just closing the door when I called him.
  "Wolffert! Come in here a moment. I want
to speak to you alone."
  He re-entered and closed the door; standing
stiff and silent.
  "Wolffert, there has been some mistake, and I
want to know what it is." He made not the
least sign that he heard, except a flash, deep in
his eyes, like a streak of lightning in a far-off cloud.
  "I am ready to fight you in any way you wish,"
I went on. " But I want to know what the
trouble is. Why did you insult me out of a clear
sky What had I done "
                     26

 
THE FIGHT



  "Everything."
  "What Specify. What was it"
  " You have made my life Hell-all of you! " His
face worked, and he made a wild sweep with his arm
an(1 brought it back to his side with clenched fist.
  "But I"
  "You were the head. You have all done it.
You have treated me as an outcast-a Jew! You
have given me credit for nothing, because I was
a Jew. I could have stood the personal contempt
and insult, and I have tried to stand it; but I will
put up with it no longer. It is appointed once
for a man to die, and I can die in no better cause
than for my people."
  He was gasping with suppressed emotion, and I
was beginning to gasp also-but for a different
reason. He went on:
  "You thought I was a coward because I was
a Jew, and because I wanted peace-treated me
as a poltroon because I was a Jew. And I made
up my mind to stop it. So this evening my
chance came. That is all."
  "But what have I done"
  "Nothing more than you have always done;
treated the Jew with contempt. But they were
all there, and I chose you as the leader when you
said that about the Jew."
                     27

 

        JOHN MARVEL, ASSISTANT
  "I said nothing about a Jew. Here, wait!
Did you think I insulted you as a Jew this after-
noon" I had risen and walked over in front of
him.
  "Ye