Volume 8 — Chapter V.

When Christmas came around again, and made the first break in the routine of his life after his ever-memorable visit to the country, Dick, now no longer a follower at a distance of that Sunday morning crowd, but a devout and well-instructed Catholic, to whom all the glory and grandeur of the Christmas lights and flowers, the music and the bells, were no longer mysteries; after hearing the grand high mass—not the only one he had heard that day—turned down Fourteenth street, according to the custom of many years, in order that he might pass the Brandons' house, which had ever held a charm for him, since on its broad steps he had first seen the beauty and loveliness of charity. But he was not thinking just then of Miss Brandon, nor of his newsboy days, nor yet of the fast approaching hour when he should present himself at Carl Stoffs's table, in a quarter of the city very different from this, where he was to eat his piece of Christmas turkey. His thoughts, I am afraid, will seem wild ones; but he was young, it was Christmas-day, he had just come from that glorious mass, and the world seemed so small and easy to conquer to one who had heard the "glad tidings," so that he may be forgiven for dreaming, in a less prosaic and unspiritual manner than I can tell you, of a time when he would eat his Christmas dinner neither at a boarding-house nor at another man's board, but would carve his own Christmas turkey, at his own table. Of whatever he was thinking, he did not fail to notice the house, and to glance upward when he came to the stoop where he—was it really he, that rough, shaggy, ragged little newsboy, ignorant and dirty?—where he had, for the first time in his hard young life, heard a voice address him kindly; and his glance changed to a steady gaze of surprise when his eye caught a name on the door-plate that was not Brandon. He looked at the number—that was all right, but the old name was gone. He was perplexed, and walked absently backward and forward for several moments.

"Then Mr. Stoffs was right," he said, "and he" (meaning Mr. Brandon) "has had to come down a peg or two, or he would not have given up his house at this season. I wonder where they have gone now."

He remembered, at this moment, that none of the family had been at Ames & Harden's during the whole fall, and that he had not seen Miss Brandon since she and Mr. Irving had ridden down the lane for the flowers that Rose had forgotten to have ready at the usual hour. It so happened that, remembering the neglected flowers, why they had been forgotten, and how the negligence had been repaired, Dick's thoughts strayed from the graceful figure of the beautiful lady, who had seemed to him more magnificent and gentle than a vision, and turned to another figure, not tall nor stately—to another face, not grand nor graciously sweet.

But when he met Mr. and Mrs. Stoffs, almost the first words he said were,

"I went by the house on Fourteenth street to-day, and Mr. Brandon's name was off the door. I had not heard of their going away."

"It's long ago, though," said Mr. Stoffs.

"Is it any difficulty made them leave their old house?" asked Dick.

"There's been no end of difficulties," answered the German, puffing out great clouds of smoke between every sentence. "Things were bad enough last summer, and when Mrs. Brandon died—"

"Mrs. Brandon dead!" exclaimed Dick.

"Oh! I forgot that was after you left; it was quite an excitement. The horses ran away one night—those same stylish bays of which she was so proud—when she and her daughter were returning from some party, and she was dead before morning."

"And Miss Brandon?" Dick could hardly ask, his terror of the answer was so great.

"Miss Brandon," answered Mr. Stoffs in a formal way, and puffing out greater clouds of smoke than ever, "Miss Brandon was ill for some days, and they were afraid would never get over the shock; your fine ladies are so nervous!"

"Miss Brandon is not that kind," said Dick hastily, vexed by the contemptuous tone of his friend's remark. "And I don't believe fine ladies are any more—more—fussy than others."

"I suppose you know them well enough to be a certain judge," said Carl, who seemed in a very ugly humor.

"Of course I don't know one in the world," answered Dick, with considerable animation and a deeper color in his face. "But I can't see the good of always running down people, just because they happen to be richer than ourselves."

"Hush! now," interposed Mrs. Stoffs, as her husband was about answering, "or no dinner shall you have this day. I will not let you two quarrel."

"You were going to tell me about Mr. Brandon's difficulties," suggested Dick very gently, after both he and Mr. Stoffs had assured their peacemaker that they were never in better humor toward each other. "You were going to tell me about Mr. Brandon's difficulties."

"Yes. His wife she died, and it was found he had used all her money and had lost it, as he had his own; there was a failure and everything was sold out, and so—there's an end of him."

"Did he leave New-York?"

"I don't know. Who asks what has become of a one-time rich man after the bubble has burst?"

"I think I heard he wanted some situation to start life again," said Mrs. Stoffs. "Poor man!"

Mrs. Stoffs was right. Mr. Brandon had tried to start again; but he had been a hard man in his days of prosperity, and an unfaithful man, or he would not be as he was now; and so, many who heartily pitied him and his family for their fall, and who would willingly have given them assistance out of their own pockets, did not feel justified in giving him a position that could be better filled by some man in whom they could trust. Thus among all his rich friends, not one of whom felt unkindly toward him, there was none to push him a plank with which to save himself from drowning.

Dick had learned all that his hosts could tell, and knowing well how fearfully rapid is a man's fall when once he is over the precipice of failure, his heart was heavier than it had ever been for troubles of his own. He sought to sustain his part in the conversation, feeling that a silent guest seems selfish and ungrateful, and tried to laugh as heartily at his friend's jokes as ever; but it was not without an effort, and his friends were keen and saw that he was troubled.

"I do not like it," Carl grunted in his deepest tones, that Christmas night after Dick had gone and the children were asleep; "I do not like it."

"You must not think too hardly of him," answered Mrs. Stoffs, who, with that sort of perception women obtain when they become wives, knew her husband referred to Dick's troubled manner, the anxious way in which he had asked about Miss Brandon, and his hot resenting of Carl's careless words. "You are too hard on him," said Mrs. Stoffs, not because she did not equally dislike it all, but because there would be no conversation between them if old married folks were always to agree.

"Fine ladies, indeed!" muttered Mr. Stoffs, puffing away harder than ever. "Miss Brandon—what for should he care if Miss Brandon was hurt, more than for any other lady?"

"She is poor enough now," said Mrs. Stoffs musingly. "It would not be so strange now;" and under her breath she sighed, "Poor Rose!"

"Not that he has one thought of such a thing," Carl went on consistently; "you women always get such ideas into your heads."

Mrs. Stoffs, being an experienced wife, raised no question about the ownership of the "ideas," whatever they were, but sat looking into the fire for a long time before she spoke again, and then it was to say, "After all, I am glad we were too poor to have Rose come up for Christmas."

"If she would not be satisfied with what we had, so am I," grumbled Mr. Stoffs.

"I was not thinking of that," answered his wife mildly.

"I know Heremore's never such a fool as to be thinking of one so much above him as Miss Brandon," remarked Mr. Stoffs.

"She is not above him now that they are poor," answered his wife.

"It isn't the money that made the difference," said Carl rather impatiently, "it's the habits that money gives. That's what is the matter. Miss Brandon may not be half worthy of him, and yet he would be mad to think of her; it is misery when people marry out of their rank, misery to both."

"But if they love each other?" suggested his wife.

"That only makes the matter worse; he knows not her ways. She has a language that is not his; if they did not care, they could go their own ways, and seek their own. I think Heremore is a great fool; I do!"

"I don't believe he has a thought of such a thing," said Mrs. Stoffs; but there was a manifest question in her voice.

"If he has, he'll rue the day he thought of it first," said her husband emphatically; and there the conversation ended; but when Mrs. Stoffs wrote again to Mrs. Alaine, which she did not do for some time—for to write a letter was an event in the honest woman's life—she thought proper to give her sister a hint of that which they had observed; and Mrs. Alaine, in her turn, thought proper to convey the hint, in the form of information, to Rose, who, however, answered readily,

"Love Miss Brandon? Well, mamma, and why shouldn't he?"

"Because Miss Brandon is not in the same class of life that he is, dear."

"I am sure Mr. Heremore is better off than her father is now," urged Rose; "for he has a regular salary, and Mr. Brandon has nothing left, and nobody will give him any place."

"No doubt, my child; but it is not money that makes the difference. Miss Brandon has her ideas of life now just as she had them when she was rich; and Mr. Heremore is what he is, and would not be different if he were suddenly made a millionaire."

So Rose said no more.

While Mr. and Mrs. Stoffs were thus disturbed about him, Dick, unconscious of any cause he had given for their disquietude, was walking slowly and thoughtfully home. "Where was that little Mary with her fair hair and gentle smile this cold Christmas night?" was the question he kept putting to himself. It was a clear, bright night, with the moon shining on the pavements and the frozen earth, not at all such a night as that during which he had slept by her father's steps, and there was no fear that her fair head was shelterless; but still it was very sad to think of her, whose Christmas days had been such pleasant ones, in mourning for her mother, and perhaps in troubles such as those which men hear, but shudder to see, clouding the girlish youth that is so short, and should be so sunny.

"With God's help I'll find them out before to-morrow night if they are in this city," said Dick to himself, and then walked on more rapidly.

And he kept his word, though not without much trouble; and within twenty-four hours he stood in front of the wretched boarding-house to which poverty and sickness had already reduced the family that, a few months before, had never dreamed of the meaning of want.

But though he had found them out and stood before their door, Dick had done and could do nothing to lessen their trouble. Mr. Brandon had not seemed more unapproachable when, a rich man, he scowled and said hard words to the ill-dressed errand-boy—than he now did to the simple clerk, though Dick himself was richer now than was the once rich merchant. Miss Brandon was, in his eyes, now no less a lady, belonging to a sphere far above him, than she had been when, in all the glory of wealth, youth, and beauty, he had seen her ride down to the Stoffs's cottage to buy flowers for her hair. It seemed to him greater presumption for him to think of approaching her now than it would have been then, so he passed and repassed her door, grieved for her trouble, but more grieved, if possible, that he, with his youth and strength, should be powerless to give her one grain of comfort. How often and often, as he had watched her—she all unconscious of him and his grateful reverence—in her days of prosperity, had he dreamed of her as like some damsel of olden romance in sore distress, and thought that never had knight rushed more joyously or more potently to the rescue than he would to hers. Now his dream had come to pass—she was a damsel in sore distress; but where was his prancing steed, his burnished armor, his ready lance? Then, as he smiled in remembrance of his boyish fancy, he suddenly thought of Mr. Irving, the gentleman—just a boy's ideal of a gallant knight—whom he had seen so often with Miss Brandon in the country. He recollected well the manly bearing of that "perfect gentleman," whom he and Rose had looked upon as a veritable Sir Launcelot; he had seen many an act of "gentle courtesy" shown in a grave, tender way, to the fair lady by whose side he always rode; and where was he now that that fair lady needed her knight as never before?

There was nothing morbid or bitter about Dick. When he asked himself that question, it was with no thought of the common judgment pronounced upon "summer friends." He recognized Mr. Irving's right to aid and comfort the family of his former host. He knew that he had wealth, position, character, and, of course, ample influence, and not for an instant doubted that he would use every means in his power to befriend Mr. Brandon, if only for the sake of that beautiful daughter whom he so evidently admired. Where, then, was Mr. Irving? If he had been here, all this could not have happened. But as Dick asked himself this, it did not occur to him that Mary thought as he thought: if Mr. Irving had been here, all this would not have happened.

At last Dick, fully convinced that he would be guilty of no presumption in speaking his mind to Mr. Irving on this subject, cheerfully turned his steps homeward, and resolved that the first moment he had of his own should be spent in seeking Mr. Irving, and informing him of what he could not now be aware of, the downfall of the Brandons. For the fall of the Brandons, as he heard from one or two who knew, had been very great, very rapid, and, it was feared, was not yet completed. Mr. Brandon had never held his head up since his failure, but dragged around, shabbily dressed, querulous and half-sick, dejected and clearly miserable. His two sons had been given very poor situations, on very niggardly pay, by a relative in another city, who, having always been odiously cringing to Mr. Brandon when he had money, seemed to delight now in heaping humiliations upon his sons. So great a crime it was in his eyes to be better bred, better educated, and more kindly cared for than were his own rude, blustering, ignorant boys. If only Fred and Joe had been taught whence come adversity and prosperity, doubtless these humiliations would have been crowns of glory for them; but theirs had been only a vague, dreamy sort of faith, which they never suspected had any application to their real life. I dare say they were very idle, useless, self-conceited and aggravating boys; but I can't help feeling sorry for them in their troubles. Miss Brandon, Dick was told, had not recovered her strength since the accident, and however well she might have been, with all her accomplishments, could not have done more than she was now doing: giving music-lessons to a few persons residing near her new home.

But all hope of seeing Mr. Irving faded the first thing the next day; for Dick's questions brought the unwelcome information that he had left home in October for two years' travel in Europe, and Dick, of course, could not presume to write to him.