The True Northerner

JACK STEBBINS' STORY.

Told by Himself.

"If your name is Stebbins," the second auditor said, "there's a message for you from Mr. Blacklock."

"That's my name, sir."

"Well, he expected you here before noon to-day, and, as you didn't put in an appearance, you're to report at his house to-night. There's a messenger going up in an hour or so, and you can send any word you like."

"I'll write a note if you'll lend me a pen," I said.

And he told me I'd find one at Mr. Blacklock's desk. So I sat down in his chair, and wrote that I would be at his house by 9 o'clock in the evening, and hoped to make things satisfactory. I took care not to sign my name, or say anything that could be used against me.

And I went off, feeling as if I had a lease of life for a few hours longer, anyhow. Tom Lippincott might get home before I had time to see Mr. Blacklock, and Higginson had promised to be on the watch for him and let me know. I might be all right yet, I tried to believe. And I put it out of my mind as well as I could till night came, and I got word from Higginson that it was all wrong. Tom Lippincott hadn't come, and, worse still, didn't expect to come for a week. Something had got away in Pittsburgh, and Block & Gilsey had telegraphed for him to go on at once and wait instructions.

This knocked everything, of course, and I gave up beat. There was nothing to do but to go and tell Mr. Blacklock that I couldn't pay, and let him do his worst. I was so tired, and discouraged and disheartened, that I didn't seem to care much for anything except Molly, at least. It was rough on her, poor little woman! And there was her ring in my pocket still, the unlucky ring that had cost me so dear.

I went up to Mr. Blacklock's house a little before the time I had named, with a dogged feeling that I'd best get to the bottom of things as quick as possible. A servant girl showed me into a beautiful library, with books all along the walls, and pictures, and easy chairs, and everything warm, and bright, and elegant. Nobody was there, and I looked around me, envious and bitter enough, I can tell you.

"He needn't be so hard on a poor devil like me. I wouldn't, if I could sit down in such a nest as this," I thought. "But what does he care, confound him! I wish he'd hurry along and put me out of my misery one way or another."

The door was partly open, and I heard a movement on the stairs; presently the soft rustle of a lady's dress; and the next moment, very much to my surprise, a lady came in and spoke to me.

"You wish to see Mr. Blacklock," she said, "but he has gone out with a friend, and will not be in for some time. If you are the person who sent him this note to-day, I will attend to the business. I am Mrs. Blacklock."

She held out my letter to me, and I took it and looked at it all in a fluster, For this was something that I hadn't bargained for. I could stand having a man blow me up for a rogue, when there was no help for it; but how was I going to talk to this lady about my own disgrace? The first thought was to get out of it with a lie.

"I don't want you to think, ma'am," said, "that this is any of my affairs. I came here at the request of a friend of mine—"

"Then I've nothing to say to you, sir," she interrupted me, very quick. "If you're not the person who wrote this letter and brought Mr. Blacklock a check with a false signature, two weeks ago, I advise you to go back to your friend who did and tell him to speak for himself. Mr. Blacklock will not deal with any go-between."

She looked straight at me, with a flush in her eyes that said, plain as words, "You need not try to lie to me; I know the truth." And I hung my head, tongue-tied for shame, and my face fiery to the tips of my ears.

She looked at me—I could feel her look all over me, though I didn't raise my head—and said presently, in a gentle tone:

"If you would be honest with me, it would make the matter easier for us both. I'm quite sure that what you said just now was not the truth. You can't look in my eyes and repeat it."

"No, I can't; you're right there!" I cried out, hot and angry, and not caring now what I said. "But it's Mrs. Blacklock's fault if I told you a lie. He wasn't called upon to expose me to a lady!"

"Indeed!" she answered, scornfully "I do not see why you should expect him to spare your feelings. Perhaps you will say next it was his fault that you took the check"

"No, I shan't. I put that blame where it belongs—on the men that keep honest men out of their due. If I could have got my pay I had no need to do what I did, and I never should have done it, either. I'm not such a scamp as you think me, ma'am."

"Perhaps not," she said, coldly. "But what I think of you is of no consequence, Mr. Stebbins. You come, I believe, to return the money which you misappropriated. I am here to give you a receipt for it."

She sat down as she said this in an arm-chair that was drawn up before a library table, and motioned me to take a seat opposite her. There was paper on the table and an inkstand, and she took up a pen and held it, looking at me in a waiting sort of way. I pulled out my forty dollars and tossed it down before her, not as civilly as I might have done it, I must confess. But I was reckless, for her hard way took the last spark of hope from me.

"That's all I've got," I said, doggedly. "It's only forty dollars, and the check was seventy-five. I've done my best to get the whole of it, and if I was to be hanged for it to-morrow, I couldn't raise another dollar."

She looked at me with those clear steady eyes of hers for half a minute, and I looked straight back at her, for I was telling her nothing but the truth now.

"Of course, you know," she said presently, "that Mr. Blacklock has paid the money out of his own pocket?"

"Yes, I know it," I answered.

"And you can't expect that he will bear the loss quietly. He has given you an opportunity to save yourself, and shown you more forbearance than some others might in his place."

"Much more than you would, I've no doubt, ma'am. It takes a woman to be hard on a fellow-creature," I said, savagely.

Her face flushed as if I had struck her and she gave me a look that made me feel like dirt under her feet.

"Does offering a gratuitous insult help to redeem your self-respect?" she asked, gently. "If it does, I can excuse you—more readily, perhaps, than you would excuse yourself, by and by."

The look, and the words, and the tone, were so different from what I'd expected for an answer that I was upset completely. The stubborn, reckless spirit in me broke down somehow, and a kind of light seemed to shine in. I can't put it into story-book words, you know, but I seemed to feel all at once that she understood me, and that she would help me if I had the sense to let her. Somehow or other, I contrived to stammer out an apology, and to beg her to listen to me.

"If you'd only let me tell you how I happened to get that check, and to use it," I entreated her. "Mr. Blacklock wouldn't hear a word—but you'll understand, I know you will, if you'll only listen to me."

Well, she said she would, and she did. I began at the beginning, and it was such a relief to speak out plain, after all the shuffling and concealing I'd been through with, that I let my tongue run on as if it would never stop. She stood it like an angel and I might as well say here that she looked like an angel, too—one of the sort that rejoice in heaven, you know, when a sinner repents. Her eyes shone soft and sweet when I told her about Molly, and somehow or other I found myself taking out Molly's picture presently, and showing it to her. She looked at it and smiled—the sunshiny kind of smile that makes one's heart warm—and she said:

"It's a sweet little face—honest, and sensible, and brave. If I were the man that loved her I would have no secrets from a face like that."

"Wouldn't you," I said. "Not even if it was such a thing as this I'm telling you?"

"Not even such a thing as this. She doesn't look like a girl that would quarrel with her lover for a fault confessed. She would love you more for trusting her, and have a stronger motive for bringing all her good influence to bear on you."

"I'll tell her this very night before I sleep," I cried out. "Mr. Blacklock can't have me arrested till Monday morning, anyhow, and I'll make a clean breast of it to Molly before then."

"It is the best thing you can do," she said. "As for Mr. Blacklock, I may as well tell you frankly that he directed me to accept no compromise in this matter; if you were not ready to pay the money, he said he should certainly have you arrested, as you say."

"I expected that," I answered forlornly.

"But I shall take it upon myself for once," she went on, "to go contrary to his directions, or rather to act independently of them. You have but forty dollars, you say; well, I will lend you thirty-five." And she took out her purse and counted seven five-dollar bills, then pushed them toward the forty that she hadn't touched.

"Now you have the amount required for Mr. Blacklock. I will give you a receipt for it, and trust to your honor to repay what I lend you as soon as you are able."

She began to write the receipt directly, and put it into my hands before I could even blunder out a word of thanks. She didn't do things in halves, you see, God bless her! I didn't either. I was ready to cry before, and you can say what you please about it, but I ain't ashamed to own that I blubbered out then: and she, though she was such a fine lady—and I was only a poor devil of a clerk that she had just saved from State prison, she came round to where I sat, shaking all over, and patted my big shoulder with her little white hands as if she had been my mother.

"There, there, there," she said soft and gentle as you'd soothe a child. Not a bit of preaching, to grind the thing into me. Just womanly kindness and sympathy, and that sort of noble confidence that would have put heart into a stone, and made a man out of a Digger Injun! I don't brag on Jack Stebbins—not anything to signify—but if he could have gone back on a trust like that, he wouldn't have been worth saying rom Sing Sing, or another place not polite to mention.

At any rate, he wouldn't be spinning this long yarn about himself here to-night. It's pretty nearly wound up, that's one comfort. I got home some time or other, or rather to Molly's home, where I found the old folks and the boys gone to bed long ago. But my little woman was nursing the parlor fire still.

"For I knew you'd come, Jack; I knew it," she said; "and I know something has happened to you; I see it in your face. You might as well tell me all about it first as last."

That is just what I came for, Molly.

And we had it out, sitting there by the fire that she had kept red and bright for me, scamp that I was! The small hours crept upon us before the story was done, for there were a good many interruptions, you see, and more than once Molly had to have her cry out, with her head upon my shoulder. Hard as she took it, she hadn't a word of reproach for me, not one, even when I told her the meanest bit of it all, the shabby history of how I tried to sell her ring, and meant to lie to her about it.

"Poor Jack!" was all she said. "My poor, dear old Jack! to think that I should have brought you such trouble!"

For she would persist in thinking she was somehow or other to blame, which was the silliest thing in the world, of course. When I told her what Mrs. Blacklock said about her picture, she colored up with delight.

"Jack, I've got an idea!" she exclaimed. "It's no use asking me what it is, for I shan't tell you."

"Well, that's cool," I said, "when I'm just turning myself inside out for you, Miss."

"Never mind: I'm going to do something, but I won't tell you:" and she wouldn't; and I never found out what it was till days and weeks afterward—not till such time as the Grand Mogul condescended to give us another bite on a cherry, and I was lucky enough to get a warrant for two months' salary. You can guess if any grass grew under my feet between the bank and Mr. Blacklock's house after I got that warrant cashed. I picked out (while I was waiting in the library for Mrs. Blacklock) the newest and cleanest bills—seven fives; and I think it was the happiest moment of my life, all things considered, when I put them into her hand.

I don't know if I've said it before, but I say it now, at any rate: she had beautiful hands. Molly's were pretty, and they are pretty still, as you can see for yourself; but Mrs. Blacklock's hands had a delicate, refined sort of beauty that you couldn't help noticing. I did, that first night, in spite of the trouble I was in: and to-day, when she held out the little hand for me to put the money in, it seemed more delicate than ever, in contrast with the color of the ring she wore—an amethyst ring, so like Molly's that I gave a little start without meaning to. She saw it—such quick eyes as she had!—and in a second the ring was off her finger, and she offered it to me.

"Take it back to your little girl," she said, laughingly. "I think she has done penance long enough for your sins; but it was not my fault. I do assure you."

"What does it mean?" I asked, a light breaking in upon me. "Is it Molly's ring?"

"Yes, certainly; didn't you know that she brought it here, the foolish child, and insisted upon my keeping it?"

No, indeed. I had never guessed that, as often I had teased her to tell me what was the thing she intended to do. When I asked her where her ring was, for she had not worn it since that night she said, gravely, that it was put away in a safe, but she could never wear it again till she knew it was really paid for.

"She brought it in here," Mrs. Blacklock continued, "the very day after I had seen you, and I couldn't persuade her to take it away again. I told her it was unheard of for a girl to part with her engagement ring, but she would not listen to me. It was not hers, she said until you had returned the money. And I sympathized with her feelings so much that I could not refuse to take charge of it. You may tell her that I have worn it sometimes in remembrance of a good little girl, and I am very glad to send it back to her."

Well, I had nothing to say, of course. It takes a woman to have the right word ready, and to understand what a fellow means when he can only blush, and stammer, and look like a fool. Mrs. Blacklock did.

"You must give my very kind remembrance to your little Molly," said she, as she bowed me out. "I am sure she will make you a good wife, and my advice to you is to put yourself into her safe keeping just as soon as possible."

I thought that was such good advice that I persuaded Molly to agree to it, and the end of it was that we were married next month. We didn't have any cards or nonsense, but we let Mrs. Blacklock know it was to be on such a day, round at the church where Molly was a member (and where she's kept me up to one service a Sunday pretty regular ever since), and prompt to the hour Mrs. Blacklock's carriage was at the church door. I don't know what her husband thought of it, or whether he ever knew she went to Jack Stebbins' wedding. Anyhow, she gave Molly her kind good wishes, and when we got home there was a box directed to "Mrs. John Stebbins, with Mrs. Blacklock's compliments," with a dozen silver spoons inside.

Since then there has been a silver cup for the baby, that came a girl, you know, and was immediately christened (by permission) Helen Blacklock; also several bits of toggery for the other two youngsters, that came boys, and consequently don't signify. All of which, I suppose, anybody might say, is putting a premium on fraud.

I don't pretend to justify such conduct on any lady's part. I only mean to say that, whatever happens in this world, there are two women in it that will always make me believe in heaven. God bless 'em both forever! And that's the end of my story.—Mary E. Bradley, in Appletons' Journal.