I started to ask after another who had been in the riot, but I could not
frame the question. I saw that Marvel knew what I wished. I learned
afterward that I had talked of her constantly during my delirium. She
was well, he told me. She had not been hurt, nor had the child or old
Loewen. She had left the city. Her father was involved now in a great
lawsuit, the object of which Marvel did not know, and she had gone
away.
"Where has she gone?"
He did not answer, and I took it for granted that he did not know.
"If I had been you, I would have found out where she went to," I said
peevishly.
He took no notice of this. He only smiled. He did not say so; but I
thought from his manner that she had gone abroad. He had had a note from
her saying that she would be away a long time, and inclosing him a
generous contribution for his poor.
"She is an angel," he said.
"Of course she is."
Though he spoke reverently, I was almost angry with him for thinking it
necessary to say it at all.
"Yes; but you do not know how good she is. None but God knows how good
some women are."
One or two other pieces of news he told me. The old Drummer and his wife
had gone off, too; but only on a visit to Elsa. Elsa and Otto had been
married, and were living in another State. I saw that he still had
something else to tell, and finally it came out. As soon as I was able,
I must go away for a while. I needed change and rest, and he knew the
very place for me, away off in the country.
"You appear to be anxious to depopulate the city," I said. He only
smiled contentedly.
"I am going to send you to the country," he said with calm decision.
"I have to work----"
"When you come back. I have made all the arrangements."
"I am going to find Eleanor Leigh. I will find her if the world holds
her."
"Yes, to be sure," he smiled indulgently. He was so strong that I
yielded.
I learned that a good offer was waiting for me to go into the law office
of one of the large firms when I should be well enough to work, in a
capacity which Jeams would have termed that of a "minor connectee"; but
it was coupled with the condition that I should get well first. My
speech at the meeting when I denounced Wringman, and my part in the
riots, had become known, and friends had interested themselves in my
behalf. So John Marvel reported; and as he appeared to be managing
things, I assumed that he had done this, too.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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