CHAPTER XI
OVERHEARD BY EZRA DAMERON
“As a community we are nearly one hundred years old. We are an enlightened and prosperous people. Ours is a city of homes,—a city in which every man, no matter how humble, may have his own fireside; a city in which the American element has always dominated; a city finely expressive of the best in our native soil. Shame be upon us if we fail in these endeavors to aid and protect the unfortunate among us! And this appeal I speak not primarily for the societies here represented, but for the founders of our commonwealth,—in the name of the sincere and devoted men and women who planned this city and laid its foundations broad and deep, that we who follow them need never waver or hesitate or doubt in doing the work we find to do.”
Such was the close of an address given by Morris Leighton at the annual meeting of the Mariona Organized Charity Society. The society was facing several serious financial problems and this public meeting had been called at the Grand Opera House early in the fall, that support might be asked for the winter’s work. Michael Carr was president of the society and he had appointed Leighton to make this address, wishing, as he told the board of directors, to interest the younger generation in the work which the elders had carried on for so long that the public had grown tired of seeing and hearing them. Leighton was an effective speaker, and Carr had assigned him to this address with confidence that the society’s appeal would be spoken in a way to impress the large audience that always attended the society’s meetings.
A few evenings later Morris called on Zelda. It was now November and winter’s skirmish line had reached Mariona. A fire blazed in the grate of the parlor, which Zelda’s care had now brightened in many ways. She had found in the garret a handsome brass lamp, decorated with a fringe of crystals, and this became well an old table, which had been transferred from its traditional place in the center of the room to a more effective spot between the windows. Mr. Dameron shook hands with Leighton, whom he had seen often in the office of Knight, Kittredge and Carr, and several times at home. He had expected that young men would come to call on his daughter, now that she had returned to his roof, for this was the way of things in Mariona, and he wished Zelda to have the same liberty and the same advantages that other girls enjoyed. If her uncle and aunt expected him to deal churlishly with the girl and make a prisoner of her he would not gratify them. And there was a particular reason why Leighton’s appearance at the house interested him, for, with him as with Mrs. Forrest and Rodney Merriam, the young man’s name carried a certain suggestion which, in Ezra Dameron’s case, was not wholly pleasant.
Ezra Dameron had a sense of the proprieties, and he sat down and talked to Leighton amiably. There was a wide margin between a social and a business acquaintance; and Ezra Dameron studied Michael Carr’s chief clerk with interest in the few minutes that intervened before Zelda came down. There was a strange light in the old man’s eyes as he watched them greet each other. He went out presently to the sitting-room, and before his own fire he pondered long as the voices in the parlor stole out to him.
“I believe this is my fourth appearance, but Mrs. Forrest said I might come; and I hope I may refer confidently to your uncle.”
“I suppose you have to get some sort of permit to leave him for an evening. He never asks me for evenings alone.”
“It’s his natural gallantry. He’s afraid he might not prove sufficiently interesting by himself. Quite possibly he’s afraid of you!”
“I have always understood that he wasn’t afraid of anything.”
“I think he’s a little afraid of inaction. He hates very much the idea of having nothing to do but to take care of himself. He has been about so much,—always, let us say, looking for the moose!”
Zelda smiled at this reference to their talk at her uncle’s house. Zelda had been often in Morris’s mind since his first sight of her at Mrs. Carr’s tea. He had speculated and wondered about her, as a young man will about any girl he meets who appeals to his imagination. Carr, in speaking to him from time to time of matters connected with Ezra Dameron’s business, had let fall his own impression of the old man; and while he always spoke with entire respect and loyalty of his client, Leighton understood that Dameron’s business had grown irksome to the lawyer. Morris knew, too, that Dameron’s reputation in the community was not enviable; and he had heard the gossip occasioned by Zelda’s return, with its note of misgiving as to the girl’s future.
Zelda was decidedly not an object of pity, but the knowledge that every one was praising her piqued him, and he found himself anxious to find her wanting. Her hair was carried up from her forehead in the prevailing mode; there was no special distinction in that. Her dark eyes were fine; but he knew other girls with dark hair and eyes; and he had seen other girls move with the same ease and grace,—at least, he told himself that he had. She wore a plain house-gown with trimmings in orange, and an orange ribbon at her throat. He had certainly looked upon finer raiment. But he hated himself for thus making an inventory; for in the end he knew that he was sure of nothing save that she was Zelda Dameron, and that she interested and puzzled him in curious ways.
“I heard your speech,” said Zelda.
“Then I hope you were moved to give of your substance to the poor.”
“Well, I haven’t contributed anything yet.”
“Oh!”
Leighton’s speech had been praised generously by his friends, and the newspapers had said a good word for it. One of them was carrying an extract from it in large black type in a conspicuous place at the head of its editorial page. He was aware that he awakened in Zelda Dameron a certain antagonism; she did not approve of him. He was not conceited, but her attitude irritated him.
“You have a very good voice for speaking.” Then, after a pause—“My uncle says so.”
“Thank you!”
“And I’ll say, on my own account, that you don’t make gestures,—trying to get things out of the air, like a prestidigitateur. I haven’t heard many speeches, but most of the orators I have heard have been tiresome.”
“And—?”
“Oh, you weren’t so dreadfully tiresome! I have heard a great many that were far more depressing. But there was one thing that occurred to me—”
“Pray tell me the worst!”
“It seemed to me, as you stood there talking to that theater full of solemn people, that you must be awfully good; and I felt almost sorry for you.”
She said this with her eyes bent upon him seriously, and his face flushed. He replied quickly:
“Of course it was assumed. It was a necessity, a part of the game, as we may say. I had been cast for the part, and had to give the best imitation possible.”
“To be sure. I suppose we all have to play a part sometimes,” she said. Her words carried no sympathy, but seemed to express a conviction about which there was no debating, one way or another.
He said nothing, feeling uneasy and uncertain of his ground. She waited a moment and then went on:
“There are things I should like to do if I were good, awfully good. I should like to go about among the poor with little baskets of jelly, and bottles of home-made currant wine, and some real home-made bread of my own baking, and bestow them upon the worthy poor; but I never could make up my mind to do it. I think the idea of giving tickets to tramps, so they may go to the charity society office for inspection before they are given a chance to saw a cord or two of wood before breakfast, is hideously un-Christian. I don’t like your idea of making a business of philanthropy.”
“It isn’t my idea,” said Leighton. “Please don’t identify me with all that you don’t like about organized charities.”
“No; I shan’t; but the idea suggested itself that we ought to do better for the tramps than that. Just imagine, Mr. Leighton, how you would feel if you rang a door-bell,—suppose you were to ring ours!—and some one would thrust a ticket through a crack and beg you to run along and pass an examination somewhere before you could hope for a crust of bread!”
Leighton laughed.
“I think in your case I should keep the ticket as a souvenir.”
“Oh, it wouldn’t be my case; it would be the maid’s. She keeps the tickets.”
“So that to get a dime I should have to see you.”
“I’m afraid so; and I should have to ask you whether you intended to buy bread or drink with it. They always do,—the scientific philanthropists. Then they can report their observations to some dreary headquarters somewhere for tabulation. I think I should always tell my tramps to buy good whisky; they say it’s so much more wholesome than bad bread!”
“I’ve been told so, too, if you are appealing to me!”
“But everything in your speech wasn’t bad! You spoke quite nobly of the founders of the city. I felt a thrill for my grandfather. I suppose you have always lived here, too.”
In the living-room Ezra Dameron had put down his newspapers and was reading his Bible. Leighton could see him plainly from where he sat, beyond Zelda’s shoulder. Her father’s profile was as sharp and hard as though it were cut in granite. It made a curious, incongruous background for the graceful head, with its crown of dead black hair, the soft curving cheeks, and the deep, serious eyes of the girl.
“No; we are country folk. My father came from Mills County,—there weren’t really any mills there to speak of, but a great educator of that name lived there in the early days. My father lived here for a while after the war, but he was glad to get back to Tippecanoe. My mother still lives there. I went to Tippecanoe College, and now here I am; and so you have the story of my life! Perhaps I shall go back, too, just as my father did,—if I can’t find the moose!”
“I have heard that the country about Tippecanoe is very pretty.”
“Yes; I like the town. My father and your uncle went to the college, and I followed them, all unworthily. I go back very often,—it is really home, you know, my mother being there.”
“I hardly know what life in a town of that sort may be like. I suppose everything takes its color from the college.”
“Yes, in a great measure. Tippecanoe is a little old-fashioned and quaint. I always felt that my father missed an opportunity sometime in his life, but I never knew when or how; and I have no right to think so.”
Ezra Dameron, with the old Bible on his knees, raised his eyes and stared into the fire as these words caught and held his attention. He remembered Morris Leighton’s father very well, and he smiled grimly as he watched the hickory logs burning and reconstructed for himself certain pages of his own life. There had been a man that Margaret Merriam had loved, and would have married, if her pride had not betrayed her into an estrangement; but it was her pride that had given her into his own hands. He heard the son of Morris Leighton talking to his daughter,—to Margaret Dameron’s daughter,—and the fact gave him a certain pleasure. He continued to stare into the fire, with the old leather-bound Bible open on his lean knees. The girl was his own and she should not be given to Morris Leighton’s son. He should take care of that. And he nodded to himself as he turned the leaves of his Bible.