John Marvel, Assistant Part 68

I had expected to hear from Peck, but no word came from him, and the last I ever heard of him was that he and McSheen had had a quarrel, in which McSheen had kicked him out of his office. A suit appeared on the docket against McSheen, in which Peck was the plaintiff, but no declaration was ever filed, and the case was finally dropped from the docket.

Jeams failed to hold long the position of butler in our modest household, for though my wife put up--on my account, as I believe--with Jeams's occasionally marked unsteadiness of gait or mus.h.i.+ness of utterance, she finally broke with him on discovering that Dix showed unmistakable signs of a recent conflict, in which the fact that he had been worsted had possibly something to do with Jeams's discharge, for Dix was the idol of her heart, and it came to her ears that Jeams had taken Dix out one night and matched him against the champion of the town. But though Jeams lost the post of butler, he simply reverted to his old position of factotum and general utility man about my premises.

His marriage to a very decent woman, though, according to rumor, with a termagant's tongue, helped to keep him reasonably straight, though not uniformly so; for one afternoon my wife and I came across him when he showed that degree of delightful pomposity which was the unmistakable sign of his being "half-shot."

"Jeams," I said, when I had cut short his grandiloquence, "what will Eliza say to you when she finds you this way again?"

Jeams straightened himself and a.s.sumed his most dignified air. "My wife, sir, knows better than to take me to task. She recognizes me, sir, as a gentleman."

"She does? You wait and see when you get home."

Jeams's manner suddenly changed. He sank back into his half-drivelling self. "Oh, she ain't gwine to say nothin' to me, Ma.r.s.e Hen. She ain't gwine to say no more than Miss Nelly there says to you when you gets this way. What does she say to you?"

"She doesn't say anything to me. She has no occasion to do so."

Jeams twisted his head to one side and burst into a drunken laugh. "Oh!

Yes, she do. I've done heard her. Eliza, she regalates me, and Miss Nelly, she regalates you, an' I reckon we both knows it, and we better know it, too."

And this was the fact. As usual, Jeams had struck the mark.

As for John Marvel, he remained the same old John--plodding, quiet, persistent, patient, zealous, cheery and self-sacrificing, working among the poor with an unfaltering trust in human nature which no shocks could shake, because deep down in the untroubled depths of his soul lay an unfaltering trust in the Divine Goodness and wisdom of G.o.d. He had been called to a larger and quite important church, but after a few days of consideration he, against the earnest wishes and advice of his friends, myself among them, declined the call. He a.s.signed among other reasons the fact that he was expected to work to pay off the debt for which the church was somewhat noted, and he knew nothing about business, his duty was to preach the gospel, but when friends made it plain that the debt would be taken care of if he became the rector, he still shook his head.

His work was among the poor and he could not leave them.

My wife and I went out to his church the Sunday evening following his decision, and as we strolled along through the well-known squalid streets, I could not help expressing my disappointment that after all our work he should have rejected the offer.

"He is really the most unpractical man on earth," I fumed. "Here we have gotten him a good call to a church that many a man would jump at, and when he finds a difficulty in the way, we work until we have removed it and yet he rejects it. He will remain an a.s.sistant to the end of his days." My wife made no reply, a sure sign that she did not agree with me, but did not care to discuss the matter. It is her most effective method of refuting me.

When we arrived we found the little church packed to suffocation and men on the outside leaning in at the windows. Among them I recognized the tall form of my old Drummer. As we joined the group, John Marvel's voice, clear and strong, came floating out through the open windows.

He was giving out a hymn.

"One sweetly solemn thought Comes to me o'er and o'er: I am nearer home to-day Than I ever have been before."

The whole congregation joined in, those without the church as well as those who were within.

As I heard the deep ba.s.s of the old Drummer, rolling in a low, solemn undertone, a sudden s.h.i.+fting of the scene came to me. I was in a great auditorium filled with light, and packed with humanity rising tier on tier and stretching far back till lost in the maze of distances. A grand orchestra, banked before me, with swaying arms and earnest faces, played a wonderful harmony which rolled about me like the sea and whelmed me with its volume till I was almost swept away by the tide, then suddenly down under its sweep I found the low deep roll of the ba.s.s drum. No one appeared to mark it or paid any heed to him. Nor did the big Drummer pay any heed to the audience. All he minded was the harmony and his drum.

But I knew that, unmarked and unheeded, it set athrob the pulsing air and stirred the billows through which all that divine music reached and held the soul.

As we walked home that night after pressing our way into the throng of poor people to wring John Marvel's hand, I said to my wife after a struggle with myself to say it:

"I think I was wrong about John, and you were right. He did right. He is well named the a.s.sistant."

My wife said simply: "I feel that I owe him more than I can say." She slipped her hand in my arm, and a warm feeling for all mankind surged about my heart.