Chapter III: Alex. and the Pledgers

He had no difficulty in finding the place, and was rather surprised that the street was so clean and well kept. He had an idea that the side streets down town must be untidy, with a second-class air about them. This street was decidedly clean, with a kind of old-time look, as if old-fashioned but highly respectable people lived there,—not people like his mother and Amy and Ruth, but nice people such as the Pledgers and the girl who was visiting them from the country. He guessed there might be boarding-houses there, for occasionally he caught a whiff from a basement of something cooking, which confirmed him in his belief. In the centre of the block was the number he was looking for, and to make sure he was right he ran up the steps and read upon a brass plate, “Joel Pledger.” The house was three-storied, with a brick front and an air of great respectability, although very different from the tall, brown stone building far up the avenue where Alex. lived.

“This is the place, and I don’t believe it is a boarding-house either,” he said; “but what reason have I to think this Joel Pledger ever knew Uncle Amos? None whatever, and I don’t know why I came here.” Then he thought of the girl, and knew that in some way she was connected with his interest in the Pledgers. “I’m a fool, but I’ll follow it up now I have commenced,” he said, as he retraced his steps towards his own home, which he reached just in time for lunch.

The day was fine and warm for winter, and after lunch he proposed a drive in the park, but there was an afternoon tea on hand for the ladies, and he decided to go alone and drive himself in his light buggy behind his thoroughbred bay, with high check and bobtail. The sun was so bright and the air so balmy that it seemed to him everybody was out, and he met many of his acquaintances in their elegant turnouts, and was thinking what a gay scene it was, when suddenly, at a bend in the road, he came upon Whitey, and behind him Old Pledger and the girl, her eyes shining and her face fresh and bright with the cool air blowing upon it.

“By George, this is luck!” Alex. thought, involuntarily pulling the reins of his horse as if to stop her.

Then, remembering himself, he kept on until he reached a convenient place to turn round, and letting the bay mare have her head, he soon overtook Whitey, jogging on always at the same pace and caring as little for the high steppers around him as did his master. To keep behind the slow vehicle was not an easy matter, for the bay fretted and tossed her head, and would have whisked her tail if she had one to whisk. But Alex. kept her well in hand and followed on, wondering if the “old duffer” would never leave the park. He did leave it at last, and Alex. left it, too, and drove down Fifth Avenue and into Sixth, and still on into a cross street, where Whitey stopped before the respectable looking house with a brick front, a brass plate and “Joel Pledger” upon it. Alex. had been sure he would stop there, and was glad, for the bay mare was getting restless and pulling hard at the bit, and the moment she felt the reins loosened she dashed on over the rough pavement with a clatter, scarcely allowing Alex. time to turn his head and make sure that the girl was going up the steps. He knew now where she was stopping and where Joel Pledger lived, but was it the Joel his uncle Amos knew?

“I’ll find out to-morrow, and if it isn’t, maybe I’ll see the girl,” he thought; and the next morning about eleven o’clock he was ringing the bell at No. 28, noticing, while he stood waiting, how clean everything was around the door and the narrow windows on the sides. “It takes ’em a long time to get here. They must have a mighty lazy maid,” he thought, giving a second pull at the old-fashioned bell.

He was taking out his card for the servant girl, when the door opened and he was confronted by Mrs. Pledger herself, a tall and portly woman of sixty-five, her lips shut tightly together and a look as if she scented a peddler or an agent, both her abominations. But Alex.’s face and manner disarmed her. He was neither an agent nor a peddler, and her lips relaxed a little of their tightness, and in response to his interrogatory, “Mrs. Pledger?” she replied:

“Yes, I am Mrs. Pledger; walk in and take a chair.”

He walked in and took a chair in what he was sure was the best room, and at which he looked curiously, contrasting it with the grand rooms at home, where one article of furniture must have cost nearly as much as every article here would sell for. And yet there was an air of comfort about it, with its cushioned easy-chairs, its wide sofa, its footstools and rugs, made by hand he was sure, and the centre-table, with some books and a vase, with a few roses filling the room with perfume. Somebody liked flowers. Probably the girl and not Mrs. Pledger, whose personal appearance did not bear much relation to hot-house roses, and who was habited in a dark calico with a wide apron, suggestive of the kitchen, from which she had come in answer to Alex.’s summons. She was the most indulgent of mistresses, and her maid of all work went and came about as she pleased. On this particular occasion she had gone to see her cousin off by steamer, and Mrs. Pledger, in the basement, was preparing their twelve o’clock dinner when Alex.’s ring called her upstairs.

“Did you want to see me or Joel?” she asked, as Alex. sat wondering what he was to say and why he was there.

It seemed such a flimsy reason, but he must say something, and he began:

“You will do as well as your husband, and I really think I ought to apologize for intruding upon you, an entire stranger, who may not be the one I want at all.”

“Suppose you tell me what you do want, and not beat around the bush. We can get at it better,” Mrs. Pledger said, her lips beginning to tighten.

Alex. braced up at once and began:

“I want to know if you ever knew my great-uncle Amos Marsh? I’ve had a letter from him, and he’s dead.”

“Dead! How you talk! Amos Marsh dead! That beats me! When did he die, and what ailed him?” Mrs. Pledger exclaimed.

She knew him then, and Alex. hastened to explain, saying nothing at first of the property, but speaking of the letter to himself, in which Mr. Joel Pledger was mentioned.

“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Pledger said, with emotion. “Remembered us, the dear old man. I knew he would. What did he say?”

This was more than Alex. had reckoned on. Uncle Amos had merely written Joel Pledger’s name, but the woman expected something more, and Alex. wished awfully to lie and say something complimentary, but he didn’t. He said hurriedly:

“He wrote such a nice letter that it made me wish to find you and a Mr. Crosby. Do you know him, and do you know anything about the farm where Uncle Amos used to live? I believe it belongs to me and my sister now that he is dead.”

“I rather think I do know something about it. I don’t know who would if I don’t. I was there a great deal when I was a little girl. Eli Crosby was my half brother, twenty years old when I was born. I am sixty-five; he’d be eighty-five if living. We are a long-lived race,” was Mrs. Pledger’s reply.

She was warming to the subject, and Alex. tried to follow her as she told rapidly that Amos Marsh, who lived near the farm, spent half his time there,—he and Mr. Crosby were such fast friends and both such good men,—not an enemy in the world. Then she told how surprised people were when her brother sold his farm to Mr. Marsh, who went there at once to live, and how shocked was the whole community when, not long after the sale, Mr. Crosby was killed on the railroad.

“Mr. Marsh lived on alone,” she said, “and naturally he grew a little queer,—used to talk to himself, and the neighbors said he was off. He talked a good deal to my brother, Mr. Crosby, when nobody was near him, and they say he did this till he died. At last he rented the place and went to Denver, and we saw no more of him till two years ago, when he spent a few days in New York and stopped with us. He was straight enough then in his mind, but kept talking about the time he lived on the farm. He asked about your family, of which he’d kept track, but we couldn’t tell him much, being we are in different spheres,—you in the smart set and we just plain folks, living in the house we bought when we was married. We was quite up town then compared to what we be now, but I’ve never cared to change. I like it here; folks know me, and I know folks. There is Miss Walker next door, has lived here just as long as we have, and Miss Brown the other side. Joel was first in a bank, then he was _the_ bank, then he got into Wall Street, was lucky always, till we are forehanded enough and could live up town in a brown stone if we wanted to. But, land sake, I’m happier here. Everybody knows us, or leastwise Joel. He frequently lends money on good security, you know.”

“Yes,” Alex. interposed, not caring to hear more of her family history, and anxious to ask an important question. “Yes, but about Uncle Amos, who lived on the farm. Wasn’t he a good man?”

“One of the best the Lord ever made. No one ever said a word against him,” was the hearty response, which lifted a load from Alex.’s mind.

There was no wrong of any account he was to right. It was all a fancy of a morbid old man, who, from living alone, had dwelt upon and magnified some trivial circumstance, making a mountain of a mole hill. If he ever found a wrong he should right it, of course, but he should not hunt for or advertise it, and he was glad, for he hated trouble and didn’t know how to right wrongs, and he now began to think of the _girl_, and wonder how he could manage to see her.

Suddenly from the basement below there came a faint odor of something burning, and stepping to the door, Mrs. Pledger called:

“Sherry, Sherry, won’t you go down to the kitchen and shove back the chicken stew? It is bilin’ over.”

“Yes, auntie,” came in a clear, young voice, and Alex. heard the swish of a gown on the stairs and through the hall down to the basement.

He did not sit where he could see the girl, but he arose as if to go, and, stepping near the door, waited for her to come back. But she didn’t come back, and as Mrs. Pledger, too, arose, as if expecting him to go, he left the house, forgetting to inquire for any Crosbys who might be living and would be her relatives and friends of Amos Marsh.

“Well, no matter,” he thought. “They have nothing to do with it. I’ve found that Uncle Amos was a good man, who never could have done anything really wrong, and I’ve learned that her name is ‘Sherry.’ Pretty, but odd for a girl. I wish I could have seen her.”

If Alex. had looked back in time he might have seen a girl’s face close against the window of the dining-room, where Sherry was trying to get a glimpse of him, while Mrs. Pledger was saying: “A very nice mannered young man, but I don’t see why under the sun and moon he was so anxious to know if we ever knew Amos Marsh, and if he was a good man. Good indeed! The Lord never made a better!”