It is a depressing law of life that worries invariably hunt in packs. If it were just a matter of one yelping little annoyance that barked at your heels, you could frighten it away with a laugh; but when a ravenous horde gets on your trail with the grim determination of running you to earth, it is quite a different matter.
Donald Morley, pacing the terrace at Angora Heights on a certain dark night in March, felt the breath of the pursuing pack close upon him. The failure to win his case had been a serious blow not only to his pride, but to his faith in his fellow man. He had gone into the trial with the assured confidence of an innocent man who is still young enough to rely absolutely upon the justice of the law. In spite of the array of damaging evidence presented by the prosecuting attorney, and the opinionated egotism of Mr. Gooch which rendered him unpopular with judge and jury, Donald's victory was almost assured, when the rumor of the People's Bank failure swept the court room. In the instant wave of suspicion that rose against Basil Sequin, Donald's cause was lost. Half the men on the jury were directly, or indirectly, involved. The case was summarily disposed of and the smaller matter swallowed up in the larger.
Humiliated and chagrined as Donald was over his own position, he was equally concerned about the bank. The papers were full of disturbing innuendoes; people avoided speaking of it in his presence; distrust and suspicion lurked around the corners.
Donald paused at the end of the terrace and looked up at the dark massive pile of masonry above him. In every leering gargoyle and carved coping, he read the ruin of some humble home.
At the first hint of impending trouble, Mrs. Sequin had taken Margery and fled to Europe, leaving Mr. Sequin fighting with his back to the wall to meet the difficulties into which her extravagance had plunged him. “I have no fear for Basil,” she assured her friends on leaving. “He'll straighten things out. Of course he'll be talked about, clever people always are, and the directors have been rather nasty. But he'll control the situation yet, you'll see.”
And Mrs. Sequin's confidence was being justified. Basil Sequin was controlling the situation. He had emerged from the ruin with his finances less affected than his reputation.
Each time that Donald turned at the end of the long terrace, his eyes involuntarily sought a light that gleamed far below through the bare trunks of the trees. It was the light from Thornwood that once more threw its familiar beams across the Cane Run Road and up the gentle slope of Billy-goat Hill. He rested his arms on the balustrade and stood looking out into the night. There was a softness in the air, a smell of upturned earth, a faint whispering among the newly budded treetops that hinted of things about to be revealed.
Suddenly there was a strange fluttering in the air above him, a tremulous, expectant thrill. Looking up he saw a flock of birds, wheeling and circling above him, making ready to light. Night after night they had traveled, over forests and across dark rivers, valiantly beating their frail wings against the gale, one purpose urging them on, straight as an arrow through the silent air,—the longing to find their old haunts under the friendly shelter of the Hill, and there to keep their love trysts in the place called home.
Donald's throat contracted sharply. Never in those tumultuous days in Japan, nor in those desperate ones in Singapore had he wanted Miss Lady as he wanted her now. It was not her youth or her beauty that he was thinking of; it was the firm confident clasp of her hand, the unfaltering courage of her eyes, her words, “I do believe in you, Don, with all my heart and soul.” He was like a starving man who must have bread even if it belongs to another. Before he knew it he was plunging down the footpath to the road.
Connie would be his excuse, although he had been rather conscience-stricken about Connie of late. She had developed a taste for exploring that beguiling land of Flirtation where the boundary lines have never been defined, and dangers are known to lurk beyond the borders. As an old and experienced adventurer he felt that he had already accompanied her too far.
As he reached Thornwood's big colonial gateway, he found some one alighting from a buggy.
“Hello, Wick!” he said. “Wait, I'll open it for you. I thought you were staying in town!” Noah removed a pair of unmistakably new tan gloves and opened the gate for himself.
“I am staying in town,” he said distantly “Are you coming in here?”
“Yes, I think I will drop in for a little while, unless you have an engagement?”
Noah's pause was even longer than usual. “No,” he drawled presently. “I can't say I have. Will you get in?”
Donald could not suppress a smile as he got in beside him, and noticed the grandeur of his toilet.
“You are getting awfully dressy these days, old chap. Who's the girl?”
“You know who it is.”
“You surely don't mean Connie Queerington! Now, Wick, you want to go slow and not trifle with that girl. The first thing you know she will be falling in love with you.”,
Noah's lip stiffened. “If you would leave her alone perhaps she might.”
“What am I doing?”
“The same thing you've always done. Going with a girl just long enough to spoil her for every other fellow, then going off and forgetting all about her.”
Donald looked in amazement at the angry face beside him.
“What in thunder do you mean by that, Wick?”
“What I say. I guess it hasn't been so long ago that we've both forgotten another instance.”
“See here, Wick,” said Donald, his anger rising, “you'd better drop this. You don't know what you are talking about.”
“I know you spoiled my chances once and you are not going to spoil them again. You've got to leave Miss Connie alone. You've got to promise me—”
“I promise you nothing.”
They had reached the hitching block and Donald got out of the buggy and, not waiting for his companion, went up the walk to the house. The peace of the old place wrapped him round like the folds of a warm garment He forgot Noah, and the pursuing troubles; he forgot everything except that Thornwood, with all its memories and traditions, was for the present his, held in sacred trust until that time when he could give it back to the one who loved it best.
“Why, it's Cousin Don!” cried Connie who had heard the wheels and come to investigate. “I never was so glad to see anybody in my life. I thought it was Mr. Wicker!”
“Cheer up! He's hitching his horse at the block now.”
“How tiresome! I thought we left him in town yesterday. I don't believe you are a bit glad to have us for a neighbor. Why didn't you come over last night? I haven't seen you for four days!”
“You haven't missed anything, Connie. I've been down and out.”
“Everybody has! It's too stupid for words. Since the trial and the bank failure I haven't been able to get a smile out of anybody! I hope the Turtle won't be grumpy.”
“Who is the Turtle?”
“Mr. Wicker. Hat calls him that, because he never lets go 'til it thunders. Aren't you coming in the parlor?”
“No, I'll give Wick the field to-night. I want to see your Father on business.”
“That sounds interesting!” said Connie audaciously. “You might have spoken to me first!”
The Doctor was preparing to go up to bed when Donald entered the sitting-room, but he put down his candle and greeted him warmly.
“A phenix rising from his ashes!” he said. “I am glad to see that you have survived the trials of the past ten days. It is very kind of you to come over in the midst of your trouble to welcome us to our new quarters. You are not going to leave us, my dear?” this to Miss Lady who had risen at Donald's entrance.
“I was going to get your beef-tea.”
“Oh, to be sure. I can't begin to tell you, Donald, how much I regret the decision in your case. How did it happen?”
Donald, whose hungry eyes were devouring every familiar detail of the homely fire-lit room, shrugged his shoulders. “Eleven jury-men were for acquittal, I am told, and the twelfth, a fellow named Jock Hibben talked them over.”
“Jock Hibben? I know the man. A radical Socialist who has been giving us some trouble at the university. Quite an orator, I believe, but a fanatic. You have made a motion for a new trial?”
“It has been refused.”
“Indeed! And you appeal it, of course?”
“Yes.”
“The decision is bound to be reversed,” the Doctor assured him, “and the second trial will go in your favor. I have never doubted the ultimate outcome. What is that scratching noise?”
Miss Lady, who was just entering, paused to listen, then she suddenly set the cup she carried on the table, and flung open the door.
A long, shaggy, disheveled dog, with small, sad eyes, and a stub of a tail, hurled himself upon her, and began rapturously to lick her hands.
“It's Mike,” she cried joyously, sitting on the floor and gathering her muddy visitor into her arms. “I knew he'd find out we were home. Oh! you blessed, blessed dog!”
Mike, unable to restrain his transports, made a mad tour of the room, upsetting the stack of manuscript that the Doctor had neatly arranged on a stand beside him. On his second round he discovered the visitor whom he sniffed with increasing excitement.
Donald raised a forefinger, and tapped his knee. In an instant Mike remembered. Lifting his fore-paws, and dropping his head upon them, he answered the call to prayer.
Two pairs of eyes met involuntarily, and the owners smiled.
“Do put him out, my dear,” urged the Doctor, who had stooped to pick up the scattered sheets of his manuscript. “This is the last volume of my series, Donald. You remember I was collecting data for it when you were at the university. I had expected to publish it this spring, but it will have to be postponed now.”
Donald winced. “On account of the bank failure, I suppose?”
“Well, yes. Basil advises a curtailment of all expenditure for the present. However, it may be just as well to publish in the fall. That will give me three more months on the revision.”
“I hope you were not seriously involved, Doctor?”
“No, no, I imagine not,” said the Doctor vaguely as he made a marginal correction on one of the sheets. “Basil and I have been so much occupied that we have scarcely had a chance to discuss the matter. He said I might possibly lose something, but that he would protect my interests. I trust you are not one of the losers?”
“No,” Donald said shortly, “I lost nothing.” Then after a pause during which he stared at the floor, he looked up. “Doctor, I want to consult you about something. Your standards of right and wrong seem to me a bit surer than most people's. I'm in trouble and I want your advice.”
He was looking at the Doctor as he spoke, but he was acutely conscious of the slender figure that stood with her back to them before the open fire.
“You see,” he said, plunging into his subject, “a week before the bank failed I found that I might need a lot of ready money before I got through with the trial. So I sold all my People's Bank stock.”
“That was fortunate.”
“But, Doctor! Don't you see? At the time I sold the shares they weren't worth the paper they were printed on!”
“But you were ignorant of this.”
“Of course; but does that alter the fact that I took money for stock that was worthless?”
The Doctor rubbed his hands together thoughtfully. For once he was not prepared to give an immediate answer to a question concerning a moral issue.
“On the spur of the moment I should advise you to refund the money, but I do not know if such advice is wise. The fact is, neither you nor I are sufficiently versed in financial matters to know what is customary in such cases. What does your brother-in-law advise?”
“I have had no conversation with him since the bank failed. He stays in town nearly every night, and you can imagine what his days are.”
“Well, I should put the matter before him, explain my scruples, and then act unquestioningly on his advice. It has been my rule in life, when my own judgment did not suffice, to consult the highest available authority upon that given subject and abide by it. Basil Sequin, in spite of this unfortunate failure, is undoubtedly our ablest financier. I can only bid you do as I have done; leave everything entirely to him.”
“I shouldn't!” cried Miss Lady, wheeling about with a return of her old, childlike, impetuous manner; “I shouldn't leave it to anybody. I'd buy back the stock, every share of it. I wouldn't keep money for which I'd given nothing! You ought to see Miss Ferney Foster! She bought bank stock only last week; gave all the money she'd made on her pickles for ten years, and when she found the bank had failed, she went out of her head. I've been there to-day and she didn't know me.”
“Who sold her the stock?”
“A broker named Gilson.”
“It was my stock,” Donald cried “Of course she's got to be paid back! And all the rest of them. I'll buy back every share of it, if it takes my last dollar!”
“Will it take all you have?” Miss Lady scanned his face anxiously.
“Yes, and more. I made an investment with some of the money before I knew the bank was in trouble; then there's the double liability law. It wouldn't matter so much if it weren't for the trial.”
“Your sister, of course, will be ready to help you. Or has she, too, lost?”
“No,” said Donald, his lips tightening, “she hasn't lost. She's had no stock in the bank for a year. But I shan't call upon her.”
“Because she opposed your course so violently? Oh, I see. A point of honor on which I quite agree with you. But you are not going under, Donald. We will see to that. I am not a wealthy man, as you know. There have been times recently when the future looked very dark. But this little lady has steered us into calmer waters. If you should, in the course of the next few months, be in need of a reasonable sum, I am happy to say we will be in a position to accommodate you.”
Donald gripped his hand. “I shan't call on you, Doctor. But once I'm through with this accursed trial, I'll try to justify your belief in me.”
The tall clock in the hall gave a preliminary wheeze, then hiccoughed nine times violently. The Doctor carefully arranged his voluminous papers in a shabby, brown portfolio, and rose with an effort.
“You will excuse me now if I bid you good night? My physician has become rather arbitrary in regulating my hours. Keep up your courage, my boy; that courage that 'scorns to bend to mean devices for a sordid end.' I admire the course you have taken, I admire you. Good night to you both.”
They watched him go, with his tall, stooped figure, and his fine, serious eyes that saw life only through the stultifying medium of books. Then they looked at each other.
“I'll call Connie,” Miss Lady said, moving to the door.
“Just a minute, please.”
She came back reluctantly, and stood with her hands clasped on the back of a chair, breathing quickly.
“Do you remember,” Donald asked, standing in front of her and speaking in a low, tense voice, “the last time we stood in this room, and the promises I made you? Well, I've kept them. I've fought like the devil,—You don't know what it means, you can't know. But I've kept them. Now I want to tell you that I've got to break over. You are right about the bank-stock money. It's not mine. I'll pay it back to-morrow. But more money has to come from somewhere to carry on the trial. There's only one chance I can think of. I've got to enter Lickety Split for the Derby.”
“No, you haven't! There are other ways. You must go to work.”
“Work!” he broke out fiercely. “Haven't I been trying to get a position ever since I came home? Who wants to tie up to me until this cursed case is decided? I have been trying to write, but my things come back faster than I can send them out. What am I good for? A game at billiards,sixtymiles an hour in a motor car, a lark with any idler that happens in the club. Bah! I'm sick of having people patronize me because I am not in the game, because I've never earned a penny, except by gambling, in my life!”
“But that's all behind you, Don! You've got the rest of your life to live differently. When the case is decided—”
“Yes, and suppose it goes against me? It did before, it may again. Talk about justice and truth! I've failed to find them. I've had enough of this glorious thing called life; I'm ready to quit.”
“You can't quit, Don!” She said it softly, with the firelight flushing her eager, solicitous face. “Don't you suppose we all want to quit sometimes? We've just got to take a fresh grip on our courage and fight it out. I'm in trouble myself, to-night, Don. Will you help me?”
His eyes flew to hers as he half knelt on the chair before her.
“I've sold Thornwood,” she went on, her lips trembling. “I can hardly speak of it, even yet. I feel like a traitor to Daddy, to all the Carseys who ever lived here, to myself! You know what the place means to me. I believe I should die if I ever saw any one else living here! I don't know who bought it, I don't want to know. All I know is that I've been perfectly wretched every hour since I signed the paper, until just now when the Doctor offered to lend you the money. Oh! Don, if I thought selling Thornwood meant that we could help clear your name, there'd never be another instant of regret! You'll let us help you?”
He put up his hand as if to ward off a blow: “Don't,” he said harshly. “I can't take your help. I can't even take your friendship, or the Doctor's. Don't you see that I'm going through hell? Don't you know that I love you?”
The color left her face, and her eyes wavered a moment, then steadied.
“You must never say that again, Don! You must try not to think of it. I'll forgive you because I want you to forgive me for something. You know the letter you sent me from San Francisco? I burned it, unopened, right there where you are standing now. It was a cowardly thing to do, even though I thought you were in the wrong. If I had known the truth I never would have kept silent all those months. It was a great wrong I did you, Don; can you forgive me?”
He studied her face, as if he would by sheer intensity probe those luminous eyes that said everything and nothing. At last his head dropped.
“I was a fool ever to think you cared,” he said brokenly; “I knew I wasn't good enough for you. I knew it from the first, but I tried. Shall I keep on trying for your sake?”
“No, Don, not for mine. For your own, and for the sake of the girl you'll some day make your wife. But I want you to remember that I shall feel responsible for whatever happens to you. If you give up the fight and go back to the old life, I shall know it was because I failed you; if you succeed, as I believe you will, I shall be happy always in knowing that I had a little part in it. Shall we say good night?”
{Illustration: “It was a great wrong I did you Don, can you forgive me?"}
He took the hand she offered him and one of those silences followed which once having passed between a man and woman, is remembered above all spoken words, a silence in which all barriers fall away, and soul speaks to soul. It was like a great harmony quivering with beautiful things unsaid.
He left her standing in the firelight, her eyes shining strangely in her otherwise passive face. He closed the door resolutely on the light and warmth of the homelike, cheery room, and passing out to the road, miserably turned his steps toward the empty grandeur of the big house whose turreted and gabled roof broke the sky-line at the top of the Hill.
In two of the gloomiest and dirtiest little rooms in the dirtiest and gloomiest of little streets that dangle at loose ends from the courthouse yard, Mr. Gooch had his office. It was a small dark place that suggested nothing so much as an overflowing scrap-basket. Papers littered the table, and spilled out of every pigeon-hole of the old secretary; papers lay in stacks along the book-shelves, and bulged from fat envelopes on the mantel-shelf. Over and above and under all lay the undisturbed dust of months.
In the corner which was reduced to perpetual twilight by the proximity of the jail wall adjoining, Noah Wicker sat on his high stool, and by the assistance of a solitary swinging light, excavated lumps of legal lore from the mines of wisdom about him. To one who had not seen Noah since his first days of attorneyship, he presented an unfamiliar appearance. His feet, still hooked awkwardly under the rung of the stool, were shod in patent leather shoes of a style so pronounced that they rendered him slightly pigeon-toed. His clothes were of the most approved cut, and his hosiery reflected the hue of his tie.
His hair, only, was reminiscent of the country youth who had emerged from the law school a short time before, in store clothes and creaking boots. A front lock that has been assiduously urged to stand up for many years, is not inclined to sit down at the first whim of its owner. It has reached an age of independence, and is inclined to insist upon its rights.
Noah, alone in the office one spring day, surreptitiously took from his desk a small object, which he held in the palm of his broad hand, and studied minutely. When the rays from the swinging electric happened to strike it, it sent spots of light dancing on the grimy ceiling. For Noah was becoming anxious about his pompadour and could not refrain from examining it at frequent intervals. Every expedient had been resorted to from surgery to soap, but the stubbly blond lock defied him. It seemed the last barrier that rose between him and cosmopolitan life.
A light step on the stairs sent the mirror into the desk, and brought a look of absorbed concentration to his expansive brow.
“Is Mr. Gooch here?” asked Connie Queerington, thrusting a plumed hat into his range of vision.
Noah disengaged himself from the stool and came forward eagerly, but paused when he found that she was not alone.
“Come on in, Gerald,” she said hospitably. “You know Mr. Wicker, don't you? At any rate he knows you. I've told him reams about you, haven't I, Mr. Wicker?”
Noah bowed gravely, and after bringing forward chairs, retired to his desk, in a state of outward calm and inward wrath.
Gerald Ivy daintily dusted the chair with his handkerchief, and sat down, nursing one silk-clad ankle across his knee, in order not to expose more of his garments than was necessary to the grime of Mr. Gooch's abode.
“What a nuisance he isn't here!” said Connie. “I could leave Father's message but I left word for Hat to meet me here. What time do you have to go, Gerald?”
“Four o'clock,” said Gerald, then glancing at the clock, “it's only three-thirty now.”
“The clock is slow,” announced Noah unexpectedly from his corner.
Gerald leisurely removed his gloves. “What does half an hour matter when I can spend it with you? I was just going to meet Mater at the jail where she has been pinning rosebuds on repentant bosoms. Come, tell me all about yourself!” He leaned forward with elbows on his knees, and hands clasped, dropping his voice to a confidential tone, and bringing the whole battery of his glances to play upon her.
“Why should I?” asked Connie archly. “You haven't been near me since I went to the country.”
“What was the use? You couldn't expect me to compete with a hero, who is making such a grandstand play as Morley. Giving himself up for an act he says he didn't commit, refunding money when he doesn't have to, going to work as a scrub reporter when he has lived like a lord all his life! I don't see how the theatrical managers have overlooked him! He is the stuff matinee idols are made of. He's turned the heads of half the girls in town!”
“He's turned mine all right,” said Connie complacently. “I'm crazy about him. And he isn't doing all those things for effect either. He is not that kind. Is he, Mr. Wicker?”
Noah, thus suddenly appealed to, was compelled to answer truthfully that he was not. But he did so with a protesting jerk of the elbow, that sent an ink-bottle flying to the floor.
Gerald took advantage of the mishap to get Connie over to the window.
“It's beastly lonesome without you,” he whispered. “When are you coming home?”
“Heaven knows!” said Connie, putting her hands behind her for safe-keeping. “Now that somebody else has rented the College Street house, and Miss Lady has sold Thornwood, I don't know what's to become of us.”
“Don't you miss me a little bit?” asked Gerald, playing with the silver purse on her wrist.
“Of course I do, silly. Is my hat on straight? I wish I had a mirror.”
Noah kneeling on the floor, mopping up the ink, reached toward the desk, and then paused.
“I'll be your mirror!” said Gerald, presenting his eyes in a way that only a very near-sighted person could have taken advantage of.
“City Hall clock's striking four,” said Noah grimly.
But Noah's desire to have Connie to himself was not to be gratified. No sooner had Gerald gone, than Hattie arrived, very slim and angular, and carrying a prodigious stack of school-books.
“What was the sense of my meeting you here?” she demanded of Connie, wasting no time on amenities. “You've made me miss the four-two train, and come out of my way. What did you want with me?”
“I wanted to use your mileage book, dear,” said Connie sweetly. “How long do you suppose it will be, Mr. Wicker, before Mr. Gooch comes in?”
“Any minute now,” said Noah, smoothing down his hair with an inky finger. “I—I think the clock is a little fast.” Then as Connie laughed, he jerked up the top of his desk and disappeared behind it.
“Stuffy old place!” said Connie, wandering about the room. “If Mr. Gooch wasn't so stingy he'd have it cleaned up.”
“I wouldn't call a man stingy who had given a library to the law school,” Hattie objected.
“Yes, and he's spent the rest of his life saving every penny to pay himself back for it. He has eaten fifty-two suppers a year at our house for ten years, that's five hundred and twenty suppers, and he's never even treated us to a chocolate sundae!”
“I don't think it's stingy to be economical,” Hattie said with her most superior air.
Noah, who was facing the open door, suddenly began making strange gestures, and violent appeals for silence, but the girls were off on an old argument and did not see him.
“Besides,” Connie was saying conclusively, “he cheats at cards; you know he does.”
“Only at solitaire. I don't see any reason why he shouldn't cheat himself if he wants to. He's all right, even if he is queer, and I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk about him the way you do!”
“How do you do, Harriet?” said Mr. Gooch dryly, entering from the outer room and not glancing at Connie. “A message from your father?”
Connie slipped the note into Hattie's hand and took refuge with Noah behind the desk top.
“Did he hear?” she whispered hysterically. Then not waiting for a reply she pounced upon an object in the desk. “Is that a mirror?”
Noah shamefacedly produced it.
“Hold it for me,” she commanded. “Not so far off. Like that!”
Standing there behind the desk holding his little mirror for her to powder her nose seemed to Noah the apotheosis of romance.
“Too much?” she asked, tilting her face for inspection. “And is my hat right? I want to look my best, because you know Imaymeet Donald Morley on the steps.”
She was evidently not disappointed, for Noah, standing at the window waiting to catch the last flutter of her feather as she passed up the street, had to wait five agonizing minutes, at the end of which Don spoke to him from the door.
“Hello, Wick. Is Mr. Gooch here?”
“He was a minute ago.”
“Is he coming back?”
“I don't know, I'm sure.”
Noah made the answers in a tone that discouraged further conversation, and Donald after a sharp glance at him, shrugged his shoulders and picked up a book. He had not long to wait before Mr. Gooch returned.
“I've been telephoning all over town for you,” said the lawyer testily. “Is this rumor true that you have bought back your bank stock?”
“It is. It was the only honest thing I could do.”
“Not at all,” complained Mr. Gooch, who became passionately attached to the contrary opinion the moment he ascertained yours. “It was a most quixotic, a most reckless course to take. I suppose you know of the double liability?”
“Yes, I know,” Donald flung out impatiently.
“You are singularly fortunate, Mr. Morley, to be able to indulge these magnanimous whims. Your resources I presume—”
“My resources consist in a piece of real estate and a couple of race horses. That's about all that's left.”
“The real estate?” Mr. Gooch looked encouraged. “City property?”
“No, it's a farm.”
“Where?”
“On the Cane Run Road.”
Noah's head appeared above the desk for the first time during the conversation and he looked surprised, as if he had made a discovery.
“Adjoining your sister's property, I judge?” continued Mr. Gooch. “That's good, very good. It ought to bring about—?”
“It's not for sale,” said Donald shortly.
Mr. Gooch, who had emerged to the rim of his shell, promptly went in again.
“You see, Mr. Gooch,” said Donald, leaning forward and speaking earnestly, “when you took this case I had no need to think of the financial end of it. I wanted to get the affair straight, and I didn't care a hang what it would cost. Since then things have changed. I think it's only fair to tell you that after I sell my horses and settle things up, there won't be more than a thousand dollars left. Will that cover your fee?”
Mr. Gooch was visibly offended. “It is not my custom, sir, to name a sum in advance. There's a great deal of work on this case, of a very annoying nature. We might try to come under the amount stipulated, and in a pinch of course you could sell the real estate.”
“No,” said Donald, “I shall not sell it. And I've got to know to-day what your terms will be. I've got work with theHerald-Postas temporary correspondent at the Capitol. I'm going up there to-morrow, and will probably stay on until my case is called. I'd like to have your definite answer at once.”
“Well, I didn't want the case in the beginning,” said Mr. Gooch. “It's the sort of thing I don't care for. I might be able to finish it for a thousand dollars, but I don't know that I'd care to commit myself.”
“Very well,” said Donald, rising with spirit. “That means that I'll have to get another lawyer.”
“You'll be making a mistake,” said Mr. Gooch, twisting his small features into a hard knot, and watching Donald closely. “It's a great risk to change lawyers in the middle of a case. There's a great deal at stake. You oughtn't to stand back on a question of money at a critical time like this.”
“Good Lord, man! I'm not standing back on a question of money! I'd put up all I had if it was a million. Do you suppose I would have taken a job in Frankfort for ten dollars a week if I had any money?”
“But you still hold property!”
“I do, Mr. Gooch, and for reasons you could never understand I shall continue to hold it. Good day.”
“Stop a minute!” Noah Wicker unfolded himself in sections, and got to his feet.
“Suppose you let me take your case.”
Donald and Mr. Gooch looked at him with equal amazement.
“I haven't had much experience,” Noah went on slowly and grimly. “I didn't even know a reputable lawyer could throw a case over in the middle when a client lost his money. I've got a lot to learn. But I do know this case from end to end, and I know you, Don Morley. If I can't clear you with or without money, I'd better give up the practice of law right here and now. Do you think you'd be willing to trust me?”
Donald hesitated for a moment, glancing from Noah's honest, homely face to Mr. Gooch's sneering one, then he jumped to a decision.
“It's a go, Wick! And the fee—”
Noah extended a hand, the breadth of whose palm has already been commented upon.
“The fee be damned,” he drawled.
Donald Morley packed his few belongings and went on his small mission for theHerald-Postwith a determination worthy of a larger cause. The remuneration was less than he had been in the habit of paying his stable boy, but failure to secure a position, together with a depleted bank account, had chastened his spirit, and he was ready to grasp at anything that would give him a chance to justify the belief of his friends.
When he first arrived at the sleepy little town where the state transacted its business, he took two rooms at the hotel. Later he moved to a boarding-house, and by the end of the third week he was in a small, bare room in an office building, eating his breakfasts at the depot, his luncheons at a restaurant, and his dinners at the hotel. For in his determination to square himself with the world he had managed to dispose of nearly all he had, excepting a thousand dollars which he had secretly deposited to Noah's account.
At first poverty was a somewhat diverting novelty; it served to keep his mind off those pursuing terrors that had filled his horizon. For the first time in life he was economizing for a purpose. But to make the usual expenditure of a day extend over a week requires forethought and judgment, neither of which qualities Donald possessed. He had counted on augmenting the small sum received from theHerald-Postby writing feature articles for other papers, but his efforts had met with small success. In vain he arranged his article after the exact plan laid down by Cropsie Decker. He clipped, pasted and pinned, looked up statistics, verified statements and ruthlessly weeded out every little vagrant fancy that dared intrude on the solemn company of facts. But his efforts when finished bore the same relation to Cropsie's that a pile of bricks does to a house.
Only once had he set Cropsie and his lapboard literature aside, and followed his own impulse. It was after his first call at the Queeringtons', when the Doctor had advised him to choose a congenial theme and let his fancy have full rein. A word of encouragement was all he needed to begin a series of tales that had burned for utterance ever since he left India. They were the adventures related to him by his Mohammedan bearer, Khalil Samad, who had sat on his heels many a night before the young sahib's fire, and spun yarns of marvelous variety. Donald had only to close his eyes to see the keen, subtle face surmounted by its huge white turban, and to hear the torrent of picturesque broken English that poured from the lips of one of the few Mohammedans in India who could curse the various natives in their own vernacular from the Khyber Pass to Trichinopoli.
But the story of Khalil's adventures having been launched into unknown waters, had not yet been heard from, and Donald patiently returned to his feature articles, holding himself down to the actual and being bored as only a person with a creative imagination can be bored by the naked, unadorned truth.
His one consolation these days was in the fact that Miss Lady would not have to give up Thornwood. Through an agent he had leased the place to the Queeringtons for the next two years at an absurdly low sum, and the thought of her in the midst of her beloved surroundings went far to reconcile him to the meagerness of his own.
His dingy little room boasted only an iron bed and washstand, the rest of the floor space being principally occupied by his imposing brass-bound steamer-trunk covered with foreign labels. On the dusty shelf over the washstand stood an incongruous array of silver-mounted, monogramed toilet articles; around the wall ran a dado of shoes, while from the gas-pipe depended a heavy bunch of neckties. The chief inconvenience in being poor, Donald had decided, was in not knowing what to do with one's things.
It was not only his things, however, that he found difficulty in disposing of. For a given number of hours a day a man can hold himself down to the task of sitting at a small deal table, covering yellow tablets with words that will probably never be read, but after too long a stretch nature is apt to rebel. At such times Donald raged like a pent lion. His mind involuntarily flew to the possibility of this confinement being but a foretaste of the other that waited for him should the rehearing not be granted. From the beginning he had refused to consider the possibility of conviction; he was innocent, he would be cleared. But as the days dragged on, a shadow began to dog his steps and to sit on the foot of his bed by night, grinning at him through bars of iron.
Had there been a friend to whom he could turn during these days he might have been spared some of the hours of anguish he endured, but his pride was cut to the quick, and he shrank from seeing any one who knew him or his family. Cropsie Decker could have helped him, but Cropsie was in Mexico. To Noah Wicker he had ceased to be an individual, he had become a client, a first client, and personalities were swamped in abstractions. The only place where he could have found sympathy and understanding was at Thornwood, the hospitable door of which he had resolutely closed with his own hand. If he thought the depths of loneliness had been sounded out there in the Orient, he had now to learn that it is only in one's own country, among one's own people, that the plummet strikes bottom.
The day before the case was to be presented Noah came up from the city, and once again they went over every tiresome, familiar detail. By the time evening arrived Donald was in a state of black dejection. Half a dozen sleepless nights, and the return of several articles did not tend to brighten the situation, and when Noah accepted an invitation from the Judge to dine with him, Donald felt that he had been abandoned to his fate.
Twilight was closing in, the kind that has no beginning and no end, a damp, gray saturating twilight that smothers the soul in a fog of gloom and relaxes all the moral fibers. Donald went to his small window and looked out. The street below was deserted, save for an occasional shabby surrey, splashing through the mud on its way to the station. At long intervals an umbrella bobbed past, and once a drove of cattle lumbered by, driven by a boy astride a mule. Donald jerked down the shade savagely, and lit the single gas-jet.
In a magazine which he picked up was a graphic article on child labor in the mines, giving pictures of ragged, emaciated children who spent their lives underground, breathing foul air and becoming dwarfed in body and soul. He flung the book from him and dropped his head upon his arms. Life seemed a great, inexorable machine, setting at naught human aspiration, human endeavor. What was the good of fighting it? What was the sense in believing in a divine order, in such infernal chaos?
Unable to stand his own company any longer, he seized his hat and started for the hotel. He was in a reckless, hopeless mood, ready to take diversion wherever he found it, and as is usual in such cases, diversion met him half way.
The little hotel office was in a spasm of activity, bells were ringing, doors slamming, and guests arriving. The group of loiterers who usually sat facing the fire, criticizing the daily proceedings of the legislature, now stood in a semicircle with their backs to it, watching the new arrivals.
“It's a theatrical company,” explained one of the voluble crowd to Donald; “the liveliest lay-out we've had for moons. That's the star talking to the fellow in the checked suit. Some winner, isn't she?”
The object of this remark, having just told a story that elicited a round of laughter, turned carelessly and swept the room with a brilliant, experienced glance. The searchlight passed the porter and bell boys, the obsequious clerk at the desk, the semicircle of admirers at the fire, and came to an audacious pause when it reached Donald Morley.
He was lighting a cigarette at the moment, and presented an appearance of colossal indifference to all stars, terrestrial and celestial. But when he had tossed the match into the open grate, he nonchalantly sauntered to the desk and glanced at the register.
There was the dashing signature, the ink still wet on the flourish,
“La Florine.”
It was Cropsie Decker's old flame, “The Serpent of the Nile,” whom he had last seen poised on the cork of a champagne bottle on a poster on Billy-goat Hill! Without looking up he was aware that the same mischievous eyes which had peeped through the black-gloved fingers on the poster, were watching him now with the liveliest interest. They followed him across the room, they laughed at him over the shoulder of the man in the checked suit, they flung a challenge at his feet, and dared him pick it up.
Donald watched her with increasing fascination. It was good just to be near anything so careless, and gay, and irresponsible. He, too, had once poised tiptoe on the perilous edge of things, and laughed defiance in the face of Fate. Why shouldn't he do it again? A man about to be hanged is given a last good dinner, why shouldn't he humor himself to one more good time before the die was cast on the morrow?
It would only be necessary to present his card and mention Cropsie Decker, and the rest would be easy. He had just about enough money to pay for a theater ticket, and a cozy little supper afterward. But what about flowers?
He thrust his hand eagerly into his pocket on an investigating tour. As he did so his ringers encountered a small, hard object which he drew forth and looked at curiously. It was the dried hip of a wild rose, that had been transferred from pocket to pocket since the day it dared to bloom before its time, in a cranny of the stone wall that circled the garden at Thornwood. The touch of it brought back an old barrel hammock under the lilacs, and the glowing eyes of a girl, lifted to his with a look of trusting innocence.
Without another glance at “The Serpent of the Nile,” he turned up his coat collar, pulled his hat over his eyes and plunged out into the wet, dismal street. For hours he tramped, neither knowing nor caring where he went. He was fighting the hardest fight a man is called on to fight, the fight against himself with no reward in view.
When he got back to his room, spent and disheveled at nine o'clock, he found two letters under his door. One, a black-bordered envelope addressed in Connie's familiar scrawl, he thrust into his pocket, smiling in spite of himself at the memory of Miss Lady's bargain stationery. The other, a long, bulky envelope, bearing the device of a well-known magazine, caused him to sit limply down on his steamer-trunk and gaze at it miserably.
His cherished story had come back at last! The possibility of its being accepted had been the one hope he had clung to during many a desperate hour. In it he had, for the first time, dared to say the things he felt, to venture boldly into the land of romance which hitherto he had cautiously skirted. Dozens of other similar tales were teeming in his brain, only waiting to know the fate of this one. And it had come back! It was the best he had to offer, and his best was not good enough! He looked at the shabby, dog-eared sheet, and the folded enclosure that doubtless set forth the editor's smug regrets, then with an impatient gesture he flung the envelope and its contents into the scrap-basket, cursing himself and his conceit in thinking he could write, and editors and their conceit in thinking they could judge.
The folded enclosure, meanwhile, that had been in the manuscript elected to disprove the total depravity of inanimate things, and instead of falling face downward, fell face upward on the very top of the heap. Thus it was that Donald Morley, charging desperately about his limited quarters, suddenly spied a word that made him snatch up the sheet of paper and rush to the light.
The editor, it appeared, had read the story with genuine pleasure. Khalil Samad was an entirely new creation, presented with an originality and humor altogether delightful. The one fault of the story was its brevity. Of course, the magazine would accept it as it was, but the opinion of the office was to the effect that if the author had material for other stories of a similar nature it was a pity for him not to elaborate it into a book. A novel with Khalil Samad for a hero, if written with the same charm as this first story, would be an undoubted success. This was merely a suggestion, of course, and might not fall in with Mr. Morley's other literary plans. In any case the editor congratulated him upon the originality of his story and would look forward to publishing it in one form or the other.
Donald read the note through twice before he mastered its contents, then he drew a prodigious breath. Other stories of a similar nature? Why, he knew dozens of them! Khalil Samad had been his sole companion for two months, and Khalil's chief occupation had been talking about himself and his escapades. Donald knew the main incidents of his dramatic career from the time he had been stolen by a Bengali bandit and sold into matrimony at the age of ten, to the day he had salaamed a tearful farewell from the dock at Bombay.
Yes, most certainly, the writing of the noveldidfall in with Mr. Morley's literary plans. But what about his other plans? He caught himself up suddenly. How did he know what twenty-four hours might bring forth? What if, through some terrible error, he was not granted a new hearing? But Noah Wicker was confident. He had discovered a point in the former trial which was technically inadmissible. A witness had been permitted to make a statement over Mr. Gooch's objection, and Noah had succeeded in finding a previous decision that made him believe a reversal was practically certain.
Somehow since his story was accepted, Donald found it much easier to share Noah's confidence. Waves of returning courage swept over him. Perhaps after all, he was going to be able to do something worth while in the world! He would work like a Trojan, he would begin to-night.
He seized pen and paper, but the desire to share his good news prompted him to write letters rather than fiction. He wanted to tell Miss Lady, he wanted to tell the Doctor. He wanted to paralyze Cropsie Decker! Then he thought of Noah, and ramming the editor's note in his pocket, he went plunging down the steps and across to the hotel.
Noah had gone to bed, but he was unceremoniously routed out.
“Read that!” shouted Don, thrusting his hand in his pocket and pulling out an envelope.
“It isn't opened,” said Noah, yawning; then recognizing Connie Queerington's handwriting he suddenly woke up.
“Hang it! That's the wrong one,” said Donald, diving for the other note. “Here it is! Behold a budding author, Wick! I've written some stuff they say is worth while. They want more!”
Noah read the note, then returned it calmly.
“It's encouraging, I congratulate you,” he observed laconically.
Donald's face clouded, then cleared and he stepped forward impulsively:
“See here, Wick,” he said, “you think I'm poaching on your preserves. I'm not. That's the first letter I have had from Connie for weeks. I haven't written her a line since I left home, but she likes to keep me on the string. She just plays with Ivy and me to keep her hand in. Don't you mind either one of us. Stick to it and win.”
“Oh, I'm sticking to it all right,” said Noah doggedly, “but I don't seem to stand much chance with the rest of you.”
“Nonsense, man! Think of your head-piece! The Lord started you out with more brains than most of us end with. The Judge said this morning that you knew more common law than any young lawyer he could think of.”
“Yes, but knowledge of common law won't win this suit. She'll never look at me, Donald, except as a last resort. She thinks I am a heavy, awkward hayseed, and I reckon she's about right.”
He towered there in his blue pajamas two sizes too small for him, his hair on end, and his large hands grasping the chair back. “I don't know the game,” he went on helplessly. “You fellows take the trick while I am making up my mind what to play. She's too much for me. You are all too much for me, but I shan't throw down my hand, not yet.”
Donald got up from the foot of the bed where he had been sitting, and took Noah by the shoulders.
“You've been working like a dog on my case, old fellow. Suppose you let me take charge of yours?”
“How do you mean?”
“You say you don't know the rules of the game. I know them backwards and forwards and upside down. You let me play this hand for you with Connie Queerington, and you stand to win.”
“But—but you?”
“Heavens, man! Do you suppose if it were anything to me I'd have forgotten to read her letter all this time? No, I am through with that sort of thing.” He turned his head abruptly and his face darkened. “There never was but one race for me, that was worth the running and I got left at the post.”
“Perhaps Miss Connie—”
“Likes me? Of course she does. And I like her tremendously. That's how I am going to help you. Leave it to me, Wick. Let me write her all the letters I want to. Let me tell her about the stir you are making up here, about the Judge cottoning to you, and the Governor asking you to dinner. In short, let me dramatize you, Wick; I'll write her a play in five acts with you for the hero. All you have to do is to ease up on your letters and keep out of her sight for a month or so. Tell her that as long as you can't be anything more to her you will be a good friend. Connie hates a man to be a friend! She wants him to be either an acquaintance or a lover. You have gotten out of the first class, and she will never let you alone until she gets you back into the third.”
Noah rubbed his massive and bewildered brow. “It's too complicated for me,” he said; “I guess I'll have to accept your services.”
That night Donald worked until the small hours, eagerly blocking out the chapters of his new book. So absorbed was he that it was not until he straightened his tired back, and started to make ready for bed that he remembered that he had not yet read Connie's letter.
It was a blotted and incoherent scrawl.
“Dear Cousin Don,” he read, “I don't see how I am ever going to write, for my eyes are almost out from crying, but Miss Lady simplycan'tdo everything, and somebody has to tell the relatives. Hattie ought to help me, but she thinks she has to write to her intimate friends first, and she's got about a dozen. You know how hateful she is.
“Well, he was taken worse last week, Father, I mean. I can't go into the details for I have told them over to so many people now that I'm about crazy, and every time I go over them I almost cry myself to death. He didn't know any of us all last night or this morning, except once he called for Miss Lady and patted her cheek. At the end he seemed to get stronger and opened his eyes and asked for his manuscript. It was the most pitiful thing you ever saw at the last, to see him trying to turn over the sheets, with his poor eyes staring out at the wall, not knowing any of us. You'll see about the funeral in the morning's paper. I don't see how we are ever going through with it.
“Your loving cousin,
“P. S. Please tell Mr. Wicker—I'd rather die than write another letter.”