“Murder, though it have no tongue, will speakWith most miraculous organ.”Shakespeare.
“Murder, though it have no tongue, will speakWith most miraculous organ.”
Shakespeare.
Henry Carleton and his daughter sat in the library at The Birches, Carleton writing at the long table, Rose, with easy chair drawn up in front of the fire, busied with her embroidery. Presently Henry Carleton laid aside his pen, and rising, walked over to the bookcase; where he found the volume and verified the quotation which he sought; then, with a smile of satisfaction, he walked back to the table again, and for an instant stood there, glancing down contentedly at the orderly arrangement of papers and documents now completed and laid aside, awaiting the morrow.
The expression of his face was serene and benevolent. His very attitude—even, indeed,something about the atmosphere of the room itself—breathed of the man at peace with himself and with the world. And such a man, at the moment, in very truth Henry Carleton was, and with every reason therefor besides. The routine of his well-ordered day was drawing to a close. From the dinner table he had gone direct to his evening paper—from the paper to his desk. The little white heap of envelopes that stood ready for the morrow’s mailing bore witness to his labors there. The big check book at their side was closed—modestly and becomingly closed—but if the observer’s eye had been able to penetrate the cover, and for a moment to look at the stubs within, his admiration for Henry Carleton could but have been increased by what he would there have seen. One check, made payable to the Cripples’ Home, was for five hundred dollars; there were a half dozen more, payable to other charities, for a hundred each; there was one for twenty-five drawn to the order of a poor veteran in Eversley village. Surely witnesses better than these no man could well desire. What wonder that Henry Carleton was content.
And now, with business out of the way, with his household and his private affairs all in order, this man of so many talents and virtues had turned to his pet avocation—literature—and was forging busily ahead on his scholarly essay,Character Drawing in the Early English Novel. Glancing over what he had written, at once he spoke aloud, half to his daughter, half—the most important half—to himself. This thinking aloud over his literary work was a favorite method with him. He liked to get Rose’s ideas and criticisms—sometimes, to his surprise, they appeared upon reflection to contain much of good sense—and apart from this, he believed that it was in this way he could pass the fairest and the most searching judgment upon his labors. And after all, the question of benefit apart, the sound of his own voice was in nowise distasteful to him. Nor could he well be blamed. It was a pleasant voice and well-modulated, and through its medium he liked to think around his subject, to get the swing and cadence of each varying phrase, before at length he cameto make his last “fair copy,” and thus to transmit his ideas to paper in final form.
“‘Sir Charles Grandison,’ Rose,” he read, “‘is beyond question most skilfully drawn, with all the author’s great command of those quiet little strokes and touches, one superimposed on the other, which at last give us the portrait of the man, standing forth from the canvas in all the seeming reality of flesh and blood.’ How does that strike you, Rose?”
The girl wrinkled her pretty forehead “Well, father,” she answered, a little dubiously, “for one thing, I don’t know that I think it’s quite true. I always thought Sir Charles was a terrible prig; horribly self-satisfied and altogether too much taken up with marveling at his own virtues. I don’t believe, you know, that a man like Sir Charles ever could assume for any one ‘the seeming reality of flesh and blood.’ ‘The seeming reality of a lay figure,’ I think, would be about the nearest phrase one could properly use.”
Henry Carleton hastened to dissent. “No, no,my dear,” he returned, “you’re quite wrong. Sir Charles wasn’t perfect. Richardson was far too clever to fall into that error. Sir Charles had his faults, and the author in his concluding note takes special pains to draw attention to them. He had his faults, but then his virtues so far outweighed them that they sank into insignificance. Then there was Lovelace, whose faults were so pronounced, and who had such a lack of any redeeming virtues, that he is at once to be condemned as a character thoroughly immoral, serviceable ethically only to point the awful example of talents misspent and energies abused. And midway between the two is Mr. B., who also had his failings, but who finally atoned for them by his condescension in marrying Pamela. The trio, I think, point the way to the author’s whole philosophy of life. We have our faults, even the best of us. We can’t help them. But on the other hand, by constant endeavor, we can do so much good that in the end we counterbalance the evil we do, and so to speak obliterate it altogether. Very good, I think, andvery sound. An interesting title for a little essay,The Balance, don’t you think so, Rose?”
The girl looked doubtful. “Why, no,” she answered, “to tell the truth, I don’t. I should think that was a pretty dangerous doctrine. Good and evil—debit and credit. I should think it was a very grave question whether any amount of good could ever really balance one conscious evil act. Take Mr. B., whom you’ve just quoted, for example. I could never, in reading that book, think of him as anything but a great, hulking, overbearing, arrogant animal, and the shameful way in which he treated poor Sally Goodwin is a case right in point—that was something no man could ever atone for, even by a series of the finest deeds in the world. No, father, I think, if I were you, I shouldn’t try to justify a theory like that. I’m afraid it isn’t sound.”
Henry Carleton frowned. “Nonsense,” he cried, for him a little irritably, “it’s perfectly sound. I could give you a hundred examples. ‘Take him for all in all,’ as Shakespeare phrases it;that’s what I mean. Some evil has to be done with the good, unless we’re going back to pillories and hermitages, to keep ourselves unspotted from the world. And in these days common sense forbids that. Your view is entirely unreasonable, Rose.”
The girl seemed somewhat surprised at his unusual heat. With a little laugh she rolled up her embroidery, quitted the easy chair, and coming over to him, kissed him obediently on the cheek. “Well, don’t mind me, father,” she said affectionately, “if you don’t want my foolish ideas, you shouldn’t ask for them. One thing’s sure; if your theory is right, you can do about anything you want to now. Rob a bank—or commit any dreadful crime you choose. Your balance must be so large you couldn’t overdraw it if you tried.”
Carleton laughed. “Well, perhaps that is rather areductio ad absurdum,” he answered. “In any event, I don’t think I’ll experiment in the way you mention. You’re not going up-stairs already, are you, Rose?”
She nodded. “Yes, if you don’t mind,” she replied, “I’m a little tired this evening. Good night.Don’t work too hard over your writing now. You never rest. I never saw such a man.”
Left alone, Carleton returned to his essay, but not with the concentration he had before displayed. A sudden restlessness seemed to have come over him. Once or twice he ceased his work to consult his watch, and finally stopped, rose hastily, and walked over to the window, where he stood gazing aimlessly put into the night; then, with a sigh, turned slowly, almost, one would have said, reluctantly, again to his task.
For perhaps five minutes he kept manfully at work. Then once again his attention seemed to wander; slowly and still more slowly moved the unwilling pen, and finally, with a sudden impatient gesture, he laid it down, flung himself back in his chair, and sat there motionless, yet not with the air of one who has comfortably finished the task he has in hand, but rather as if debating within himself, between two possible courses of action, which one at last to choose.
If such, indeed, was the case, the decision was not to lie with him. There came a knock at thedoor. “Come in,” he said quickly, and the butler, Helmar’s friend of old, a little thinner, a little grayer, a little more imperturbable than ever, entered softly, approaching close to his master’s elbow before he delivered himself of his message. “Mr. Vaughan, sir,” he announced with slow deliberation, “in the reception-room. He wishes to know, sir, if without inconvenience to yourself you could give him a few moments.”
Henry Carleton looked a little surprised, perhaps also a little annoyed. “To seeme,” he said, “you’re sure, Burton, that it wasn’t Miss Rose he asked for?”
The butler’s manner was one verging on gentle reproof. Within his domain he did not allow himself the luxury of making mistakes. “Quite sure, sir,” he answered. His tone, though respectful, did not admit of further questioning upon the point. Henry Carleton sighed, and appeared to rouse himself. “Why, of course,” he said, “tell him I’ll be down at once; or no,” he added, “please, Burton, tell him to come up here instead.”
The butler, inclining his head, withdrew. Then,a moment or two later, the sound of ascending footsteps, and Vaughan entered the room. At once something in his appearance struck Henry Carleton as far out of the ordinary. “Why, my dear boy,” he cried, “you look worried to death. What’s gone wrong? No more bad news from the book?”
Vaughan silently shook his head. He was indeed looking miserably, and when he took a chair, he sat bolt upright on its edge, leaning forward nervously when he spoke. “No,” he said, “it’s worse than that, Mr. Carleton; a whole lot worse. It’s something that’s been troubling me for a long time now, until finally I’ve made up my mind that the only thing for me to do is to come straight to you with it, and tell you the whole story. And that’s why I’m here.”
At once Carleton shoved books and papers aside, as if the better to prepare himself for proper attention to Vaughan’s words. He looked at his visitor with an air of friendly concern. “Anything that I can do—” he murmured. “You know, of course, that you may count on me. Anything in my power—”
Vaughan nodded abruptly. “Thank you,” he said hastily and a little grimly, “it’s not a favor that I’ve come for. I’m going to do you a bad turn, I’m afraid. Going to do everybody a bad turn, as far as that goes. But it can’t be helped. I’ve got to go ahead, and that’s all there is to it.”
Henry Carleton eyed him narrowly, but without speaking, and Vaughan, looking up, as if eager to have his task over, with sudden resolve, began. “It’s about Satterlee,” he said, “you remember how things happened out here that night, of course. I guess we all do. Jack went up-stairs to bed, you remember, and you and Cummings went off to play billiards. I was on the piazza with Rose, and stayed there until you came down to tell her that it was getting late. Then, after she went up-stairs, you told me that you were going for a short walk, and I said I believed I’d go to my room. Well, I didn’t. I don’t know why. I started to go in, and then—the night was so fine; I had so much that was pleasant to think about—somehow I couldn’t stand the idea of going into the house, and instead I took a stroll around the grounds.”
He stopped for a moment. Henry Carleton, gazing intently at him, gave no sign from his expression that he was experiencing any emotion beyond that of the keenest interest and attention. Only his eyes, in the shadow, had lost their customary benevolent expression, narrowing until their look was keen, alert; the look of a man put quickly on his guard. And as Vaughan still kept silence, it chanced that Carleton was the first again to speak. “Well,” he queried impatiently, “and what then?”
Vaughan drew a quick breath. “This,” he cried hastily, almost recklessly, “this. I walked down toward Satterlee’s cottage, and I saw what happened there. Satterlee didn’t fall from any rock. He was murdered. And I saw it all.”
Henry Carleton did not start. There was no cry of surprise, no single word, even. Only, as Vaughan had finished, on a sudden his eyes dilated strangely; his lips parted a trifle; for a moment, without breathing, without animation, it seemed as if the man’s whole being hung poised motionless, suspended. So great the surprise, so great theshock, that one, not knowing, might almost have believed himself to be looking upon the man who had done the deed. “Murdered?” he at last repeated dully, “You saw it? Murdered?”—there was a moment’s silence, and then, all at once seeming to recover himself, he leaned forward in his chair. “By whom?” he cried sharply, with just a note of menace in his tone, “By whom?”
On Vaughan’s part there was no further hesitation. He had gone too far for that. Yet his face was drawn and distorted with pain as in a tone so low that Carleton could scarcely hear, he uttered the single word, “Jack.”
And this time the added shock was too great. Henry Carleton started visibly, the most intense emotion showing in every line of his face. “Jack?” he gasped, “Jack?”
In silence Vaughan bowed his head, hardly able to look on the anguish which his words had caused. “Jack,” he muttered again, under his breath.
Henry Carleton started visibly.Henry Carleton started visibly.—Page292
There was a silence, tense, pregnant. Once Vaughan, slowly raising his head, had started to speak, and Henry Carleton had instantly lifted ahand to enjoin silence. “Wait a minute!” he commanded. Evidently he was striving to recollect. Then presently he spoke again. “Nonsense,” he cried, “I remember perfectly now. That was the night that Jack said he felt tired; he went to his room early to smoke a pipe, and then turn in. Jack murder Satterlee! Why, nonsense, man! You’re dreaming. You’re not in your right mind. Jack and Satterlee were always good friends, and Mrs. Satterlee, too. No, no. Jack to murder any one is nonsensical enough; but Jack to murder Satterlee—impossible—simply impossible!”
Stubbornly Vaughan shook his head. “I wish to God it were,” he answered, with deep feeling. “It sounds wild enough, I know, but it’s true, for all that. Every word. And one thing you’ve just said—” he hesitated, and stopped, then unwillingly enough continued, “one thing, I’m afraid, goes a long ways toward explaining, and that is that Jack was such good friends with Mrs. Satterlee. I’m afraid that was the beginning of everything.”
Carleton’s face was pale, and his voice, when he spoke, was hoarse with emotion. “God, Vaughan,”he said, “this is terrible,” and then, with a quick return to his former manner, “no, no, I can’t believe it yet. Tell me what you saw. Not what you imagined or conjectured. Just what you saw—actually saw with your own eyes.”
“There isn’t very much to tell,” Vaughan answered. “I just happened to walk that way, for no reason whatsoever. Just by chance; I might have gone any other way as well. And finally I came out on the top of a little hill—no, not a hill exactly; more like a cliff—and from there I could see across to Satterlee’s house. And while I stood there, I saw a man—Satterlee—come across the drive, and up the back way, and go in. Then, in a minute, I heard a noise up-stairs, and some one cry out; and then, a minute after that, Jack rushed out of the house, with Satterlee after him—and suddenly Satterlee took to running queer and wide and in a circle, with his head all held pitched to one side—ah, it was ghastly to see him—and then he came straight for the rock where I was standing, and all at once his legs seemed to go out from under him, and he sprawled right out on the gravelon his face, and lay there. I turned faint for a minute, I think, and the next thing I recall was looking down again, and there was Jack trying to lift Satterlee up, and when he scratched a match his hands were all over blood, and Satterlee’s face—oh, I’ve dreamed it all fifty times since—he was dead then, I suppose. His head hung limp, I remember, and then—it was cowardly, of course, and all that, but the whole thing was so unexpected—so like a damnable kind of a nightmare, somehow—and Jack, you know—why, it was too much for me. I just turned, and made off, and never stopped till I’d got back safe into my room again. And that’s all.”
Henry Carleton sat silent, engrossed in thought. Almost he seemed to be oblivious of Vaughan’s presence. “It couldn’t be,” he muttered, at last, as though incredulous still, “it couldn’t be. Jack!” he paused, only to repeat the name again. Then he shook his head. “Never,” he said with decision, “he would have told everything. You saw wrong, Arthur. You didn’t see Jack.”
Something in the older man’s attitude of continueddisbelief seemed to have the effect of nettling Vaughan. “How many times,” he said, with a note of irritation in his tone, “must I repeat it? I tell you Iknow. Can’t a man trust his own eyes? ItwasJack. There’s no room for doubt at all. Don’t you suppose—” his voice rose with the strain of all that he had been through—“don’t you suppose that I’d have jumped at any chance to clear him? Don’t you suppose that if there’d been the faintest shadow of a doubt in his favor, I’d have stretched it to the breaking point to see him go free. No, there’s no question. It was Jack. Why he did it, or how he did it, you can conjecture, if you wish, but one thing is plain. Murder Tom Satterlee he did.”
His tone rang true. At last, in spite of himself, Carleton appeared unwillingly to be convinced. Again he pondered. “Then he perjured himself at the inquest?” he said quickly at last.
Vaughan nodded. “He perjured himself at the inquest,” he assented.
“And you?” asked Carleton, again, “you perjured yourself too?”
“I perjured myself too,” Vaughan answered. “There were plenty of other reasons, of course; reasons that you can imagine. It wasn’t just a case of Jack alone. There was a lot else to think of besides. We talked it over as well as we could—Jack and I. We thought of you. We thought of Rose—and of me. We thought of the Carleton name. The disgrace of it all. We only had a quarter of an hour, at the most—and we lied, deliberately and consciously lied.”
He looked up, instantly amazed at the look on Carleton’s face, for Carleton was gazing at him as if he could scarcely believe his ears—as if this piece of news, for some reason, came as something more unexpected than all the rest. “You talked it over with Jack?” he said, “talked it over with Jack, and Jack thought of me—and the family name. Upon my word, Arthur, I believe one of us is mad.”
Vaughan stared at him, uncomprehending. “I don’t see why you say that,” he returned. “What was there more natural? Or do you mean Jack wasn’t sincere when he put that forward as a reason?I’ve thought of that, but I don’t believe it now. Just think how we should feel if instead of sitting here and theorizing about it, we knew that the facts were really public property. Do you wonder that we stopped to consider everything? Do you wonder that we decided as we did? But we were wrong—all wrong—I knew it, really, all the time. To tell what I saw—that was the only honest thing to do. I lied, and now I’m going to try to make amends. I’m going to tell the truth, no matter what comes. It’s the only way.”
Impatiently Henry Carleton shook his head. “I don’t agree with you, in the least,” he said quickly. “I think you decided rightly. I should have done the same. And right or wrong, you’ve made your choice. Why alter it now? It would make the scandal of the day.”
“I know it,” Vaughan desperately assented, “I know it will. But anything’s better than having things go on as they are now. I can’t look people in the face. I’ve been miserable. I thought I knew what it was to be badly off before, but poverty, and bad luck, and failure—what are they,anyway? What do they amount to? Nothing. But a thing like this on your conscience. Why, a man’s better dead. He can’t live with it, day and night. Hecan’t; that’s all. I know. He’s got to tell, or go crazy; it isn’t to be endured.”
Without making answer, Henry Carleton rose, and walked over to the window, standing precisely as he had stood before Vaughan’s coming, gazing out into the blackness of the night. Then he turned. “Wait here,” he said peremptorily. “I’ve got to get to the bottom of this, or you won’t be the one to lose your senses. Wait here. I’ll be back in half an hour, at the very latest.”
Sudden conjecture dawned in Vaughan’s eyes. “You’re going—” he began, and then paused.
Henry Carleton completed the sentence for him. “I’m going to see Mrs. Satterlee,” he answered. “I refuse to credit your story, Arthur, or what you say Jack admits, unless she corroborates your tale of what happened that night. It all depends on her.”
He turned to leave the room, then paused a moment, and again turned to Vaughan. “Have youtold Jack,” he asked, “just what you propose to do?”
Vaughan shook his head. “I haven’t seen Jack,” he answered, “since the morning after it happened. To tell the truth, I’ve taken pains not to see him. I couldn’t bear to. The whole thing got on my nerves. It seemed to change him so. And about this part of it, I haven’t seen him, either. I couldn’t. To go to a man, and read him his death-warrant. I couldn’t. I thought I’d come to you.”
Carleton nodded. “I think you’ve done wisely,” he said, “if this can all be true, I must see Jack myself first. It becomes a family matter then. Well, I must go. Wait here for me, please. I won’t be long.”
For perhaps twenty minutes Vaughan sat alone in the library, his mind, after the long strain of all he had undergone, singularly torpid. Mechanically he found himself counting the squares on a rug near the table; three rows of six—three rows of five—eighteen, fifteen, thirty-three. Over and over again he did this until at last he pulled himselfup short with a start. And then he heard footsteps ascending; and Henry Carleton hastily reëntered the room, his face stern and set. For an instant, as Vaughan rose, the two men stood confronting each other. “Well?” Vaughan asked, though reading the answer to his question in the other’s eyes.
Carleton nodded. In the lamplight his face looked ten years older. He spoke but two words. “It’s true,” he said.
“Reputation, reputation, reputation!”Shakespeare.
“Reputation, reputation, reputation!”
Shakespeare.
It was long past closing time at Henry Carleton’s. Every one, from the oldest clerk to the smallest office boy, had long since gone home. For three hours, almost, the two men had had the office to themselves. A long, bitter battle of words it had been, all the stored-up brood of evil passions, hatred and envy, anger and fear, as with the bursting of some festering sore, had surged, foul and horrible, into the clear light of the open day.
Henry Carleton sat at his desk, but not in his usual attitude of calm composure, leaning back in his chair, the acknowledged lord and master of his little world, envied by all men who came to see him, to buy or sell, bargain and haggle, plot and plan. This Henry Carleton was a strangely different man.Wearily enough he leaned forward in his chair, his head propped on one hand, while in the other the pencil which ordinarily never moved but to some purpose, to jot down some pregnant list of facts or figures, now moved over the blank surface of the paper in little aimless scrawls and circles; fit index, perhaps, to its owner’s strange confusion of brain—a man for once troubled, wavering and irresolute, well-nigh, at times, despairing, yet still seeking feverishly the solution of the puzzle, making desperate hunt for the missing key.
Facing him sat Jack Carleton, astride of one of the office chairs, his hands grasping its back, his eyes never leaving the other’s face. His whole expression—the twitching mouth, the deep-set gleam in his troubled eyes, the unconsciously wrinkled brow—all seemed to bear witness to some storm of passion that had passed over him, and even in the comparative calm which had followed, had still left its traces behind. One might have hazarded that the man who sat there staring into Henry Carleton’s face was a man actuated by two feelings, one new, one old; one a fear, deep and deadly, theother a resentment so fierce and bitter, that unrestrained by time and place, it would have loosed him, like a bulldog, at the other’s throat.
Without looking up, Henry Carleton again began the argument, his tone an odd mixture, half threatening, half conciliatory, as one who, knowing that it lies within his power to effect his ends by force, yet for some reason strives first to gain them by gentler means. “Jack,” he said, “we have to find a way out somehow. And I want to play fair with you—I want even to be more than fair—”
Jack Carleton cut him short with a laugh so utterly devoid of mirth, so full of the bitterest malice, that a curse would have struck more pleasantly upon the ear. “Oh, yes,” he mocked, “of course you do. You want to be fair.” He paused a moment; then, with a naked, unrestrained, deliberate passion horrible to witness, he protruded his head with a gesture almost bestial, his tone lowered so that the words came sibilantly from between his teeth. “You damned sneak,” he said, “why, in the name of God, can’t you act like a man? Talk like a man? All these dirty, canting phrases of yours;they’ve grown on you now so you can’t drop ’em if you wanted to. You’ve stifled all the real man that was ever in you—and to start with that was precious little. You’re a money making machine; money distributing, too, if that’s any comfort to you;youcredit to the Carleton name. You’ve sneaked and schemed your way so long that you do it from habit now; and a devil of a fine result you’ve got this time. You want to be fair. Fair! Oh, my God!” he laughed again.
Henry Carleton lifted a face flushed suddenly with angry crimson. “Stop it, Jack,” he commanded, and then, through force of long discipline, with a sigh he slowly shook his head, and let his clenched hands relax. “What’s the use?” he said, with infinite patience, “what’s the use now, of all times? Hear me out, Jack. I know that you hate me. And I know why. I’ve been a successful man, and you’ve been a failure, but our chances were the same. You could have done as well as I. Only you chose to use your energies in a different way. That’s all been your fault, not mine. And now this thing’s come up. You’ve had a surpriseto-day. You’ve found things very different from what you expected. But what is my attitude all the while? Am I trying to press my advantage as I could? That’s the last thing I want to do. You think I hate you, Jack. Can’t you see that I don’t? If I did, would I be talking as I’m talking now? Would I talk with you at all, even? Would I above all sit here and take your insults—your abuse? Not for an instant. You sit there, alive and free—and yet a dead man, Jack. Think of it! Dead already. Dead as if you sat this instant in the electric chair. And what am I saying?—the man that you think hates you. What am I urging and advising all this time, when I could see you going in the prison door, never to come out again alive? I’m showing you how to get out of the whole thing scot-free; giving you every chance; and you won’t listen to me.”
Jack Carleton had heard him out in silence, indeed, but without further emotion, without any change of the hard, set look on his face. “Oh, you’re damned generous,” he sneered, as the other paused, “and you’re doing it all out of love forme. It’s awfully sudden, this affection, isn’t it? It’s been a long time coming.” He laughed with a jarring offensiveness, as if, strangely enough, he was deliberately trying to incense, instead of to placate, the man of whose good will he stood so sorely in need.
Again Henry Carleton’s face grew dark, as if at last his irritation had got the upper hand. “For Heaven’s sake, Jack,” he cried, “don’t be a child, just for the pleasure of trying to annoy me. I say again, I’m being fair with you. I say again, more than fair. And if you want to exercise your irony on me by implying that I’m not actuated by any love for you, I’ll say frankly that this is too complicated an affair for any one person’s claims to be paramount in trying to settle it. I’m considering every one interested; I’m weighing all the chances for everybody concerned; you and I, and Rose, and Vaughan, and Mrs. Satterlee—we’re all involved, and I say again, looking at everything from all possible points of view, it’s for our interest, Jack—for yours and mine—to stand together, whatever happens. There’s nothing I want more, whetheryou believe it or not, than to see you get out of the whole thing clear. And don’t—” he raised his hand as Jack started to speak—“don’t go running off on any abstract theory of what’s right and what isn’t. It’s no use. It’s waste of time. We’ve got to look at this matter as it is—not as perhaps it ought to be. It’s intensely practical for us, Jack, and so let’s look at it that way.”
His words seemed effectual, as far as any further protest from Jack Carleton was concerned. For a moment he sat silent, and then, with an air of resignation, mingled with a certain indifference, “Very well,” he said, “look at it in that way, if you choose, for all of me. How does that help? The whole thing’s as mixed as before; you can’t solve it satisfactorily, try as you may.”
Henry Carleton, well pleased, drew a quiet breath of satisfaction. So much, indeed, seemed to him a signal gain. Little by little—that was Henry Carleton’s way. “Good,” he said shortly, and then, “but it can be solved, Jack, for all that. Not with perfect satisfaction to everybody, perhaps; but it can be solved.”
He spoke with such an air of assurance that Jack Carleton glanced at him quickly, as if seeking some underlying significance in his words. Henry Carleton’s face, however, was devoid of anything of enlightenment, and his eyes were looking idly across the room. “Yes,” he repeated, “still satisfactorily, in the main, I think. It’s a pure question of logic, Jack. Let’s start with the assumption that if it can be avoided, you’re not eager to die.”
Jack Carleton’s eyebrows were raised half grimly, half ruefully. Something of a kind of hysterical humor seemed to him to exist in the idea of asking a man with such seriousness whether or not he was eager to die. “Yes,” he returned, “you can assume that. That’s a good point to start with.”
There was something in his tone, despite the solemnity of the discussion, that made Henry Carleton force a sickly smile, which faded almost before it had come. “And second,” he said, “you’ll keep quiet as long as any one else will.”
Jack nodded again. “Certainly,” he said, perhaps with more of bitterness in his tone.
Henry Carleton leaned forward, looking him now straight in the eye, and speaking with the most intense earnestness. “Then take the parties involved in their turn,” he cried, “if you stick to that, no harm can come from you. No harm will come from me, in any event. And Rose, of course, doesn’t know. Of the other two, Mrs. Satterlee—” he paused an instant, then continued, a little hastily, as it seemed. “Perhaps there’s no further need of going into that. As we know, she is safe, and if not, there are certain precautions—no, we may dismiss that entirely, I think. And that—” the pause was longer this time, “that leaves the man who’s been foolish enough to raise all this trouble to start with. That leaves your friend, and my prospective son-in-law,—one man to be reckoned with—Arthur Vaughan.”
This time there was no mistaking the gathering menace in his tone. But Jack Carleton seemed not to choose to understand his words. “Well?” he asked.
Henry Carleton frowned. “Well,” he snapped, “isn’t it perfectly plain? Vaughan wants something,of course. He’s got us where he wants us now. Of course I knew, for a man who, as a rule, is so pliable, that when he turned stubborn about this, it was a plain case of hold-up. So that’s what we’ve got to do. Square him, in any way he wants. He’s your friend. Sound him; see what he’s after. Whatever it is, if I can give it to him, and I guess I can, of course I will. Go ahead and see him right away. We’ve got to fix him quickly, whatever else we do.”
Jack Carleton shook his head in vigorous dissent. “You’re miles wide of the mark. That isn’t Vaughan at all. He’s not that kind. Arthur’s a visionary, almost. He’d never have kept quiet as long as he has if I hadn’t practically gone on my knees to him. No, this is principle with him. You’re altogether mistaken. You can’t stop him that way in a thousand years.”
Henry Carleton sighed. “I don’t believe it,” he said stubbornly. “I don’t want to believe it, but you ought to know him better than I. And if it’s so—I want to be fair with him—more than fair—” at the familiar phrase Jack Carleton smileda grim little smile—“but we’re in a bad box, Jack; a terribly bad box; and we’ve got to pull out of it somehow. Make him the squarest offer you can—anything in reason he wants—and if he doesn’t see fit to accept—”
Jack Carleton sprang to his feet. “No, no,” he cried, “that won’t do. I won’t see anything happen to Vaughan. I’ll go to him; tell him he’s mistaken; tell him he mustn’t speak; tell him—”
Henry Carleton cut him short. “No use, Jack,” he said curtly. “I’ve thought of all that. It wouldn’t do any good. In the first place, Vaughan has this crazy idea about duty, and about Satterlee’s blood crying out to him from the ground, and all that nonsense; you know how a nervous man can get worked up over a thing; and he’s bound to speak anyway. And in the second place, he wouldn’t believe you. You can hardly blame him, either. All the evidence together; the affair you had with that woman, your stopping at the cottage that evening,—no, no, it won’t do. You might as well save your breath.”
There was a pause. Jack at last nodded grudgingly.“Well, then,” he cried. “I’ll let it go the other way. Let him go to the district attorney, if he chooses. Let him tell his story, and let them arrest me, and get me into court. Let him tell it over again there, for everybody to hear, and you can tell your story, and Jeanne Satterlee hers. And then, by God, I’ll tell mine, and if there’s such a thing as justice—”
Again Henry Carleton broke in upon him. “Nonsense, Jack,” he said, “law isn’t justice. You know that as well as I do. You wouldn’t have a chance. It’s open and shut against you. And don’t go up in the air about Vaughan; I didn’t mean to be melodramatic. We won’t need to go to extremes. We can think up some way of keeping his mouth shut. You can buy him off, I still maintain. And if you can’t, we can still get at him somehow. It isn’t hard. I’ll be frank with you, Jack. I’ll lay my cards on the table. It would mean death for you, but the scandal would hurt me, at the same time. And above all, the Carleton name, Jack. Think of your father. Think—”
Jack sprang to his feet. “Stop!” he cried. “Itisn’t for you to talk of my father, and the Carleton name. Those words don’t belong in your mouth, Henry. And as for Vaughan, he’s doing what he thinks is right. And anything you do to him, reacts on Rose—on your own daughter. And that’s impossible. No, Henry, I tell you again, you can’t work it out that way. Whatever else you please, but I won’t see harm come to Arthur Vaughan.”
Henry Carleton, unmoved, shrugged his shoulders. “Asyouplease,” he answered evenly. “You have your choice, Jack; there’s only one other way.”
Jack looked him full in the face. “For the last time,” he said, “you tell me that this is true. You’ll go ahead, and do as you say?”
The elder man inclined his head. “For the last time,” he answered calmly, “yes. Vaughan or yourself? The choice is yours.”
Jack Carleton stood suddenly erect, throwing back his head, almost with the gesture of a fighter on guard. “Then I tell you this,” he cried, “you’re crowding me too far. I’ve done the best I could; I’ve thought of others long enough; I’ll think of myself now. There’s a limit to what a man’s gotto stand. I’ve been an awful fool, I know. I’ve wasted most of my life, so far; lost my money; lost the chance to marry the girl I loved. But for the last three years, I’ve got no apologies to make. I’ve tried with every bit that’s in me; I had my fight all but won. I made good out West there; made good with myself; with my prospects; with the girl I meant to marry—and then this damnable business had to come. And I tell you, Henry, I won’t quit now. You’ve got the best of me before; perhaps you will again; but I’ll take my chance. I’m willing to back Right against Wrong, and I give you fair warning now that I’m going to fight. You haven’t beaten me yet.”
He swung short around upon his heel, without waiting for a reply. The door crashed to behind him, and Henry Carleton was left alone in the room.
“I trust in God,—the right shall be the rightAnd other than the wrong, while he endures.”Browning.
“I trust in God,—the right shall be the rightAnd other than the wrong, while he endures.”
Browning.
Henry Carleton leaned back contentedly in his office chair. The afternoon was drawing to a close; another good day’s work was done; the pathway of the future lay bright before him. Money? He had his fill of it. Except as the trophy, the stakes in the game, for which, coolly and half-disdainfully, it still suited him to play, he had come scarcely to value it at all. Fame? That, too, had come to him. His reputation, first made in the city, had spread later throughout the state, and now, thanks to that long and well-laid net of carefully adjusted wires, was to become national as well. Member-elect of the United States senate! It was enough. Fame—and power—andpatronage—more glory to add to that of the long line of ancestors whose dignified faces looked down at him from the walls of the gallery at The Birches. He had done well; he knew it; and was content. Nor was he an old man yet. A glorious prospect lay before him still, filled with pleasures—of many kinds. Only this one matter to be adjusted now, and whichever way fate tipped the scales, he could not lose. How pleasant it was to look back over all his struggles with Jack! How pleasant to know, with the lifelong enmity between them, that in every encounter, he had decisively outwitted and got the better of his nephew! And now—either Jack must suffer, or if Vaughan’s silence could not be bought, Jack’s scruples must somehow be overcome. The latter, of course, everything considered, would be the better way. For Jack—much as he hated him—was a Carleton, and Jack’s fate, in a way, was bound up with his own. And Vaughan was a nobody, a mere scribbler, of no use to the world. He must be silenced—somehow. Yet there was danger too. In spite of himself, the matter troubled him.
As he sat, thus musing, his clerk appeared at his elbow. “A young lady to see you, sir,” he announced, “Miss Graham, from Eversley. I showed her into the private office.”
Carleton nodded. “All right,” he answered briefly. “Tell her I’ll see her at once,” and a moment or so later he was bowing deferentially over the girl’s outstretched hand. “I’m delighted to see you back, Miss Graham,” he said cordially, “if I thought a trip abroad would do me the good it’s done you, I’d start to-morrow. You’re looking splendidly. And what may I do for you? Is this a business call?”
The girl shook her head. “No, Mr. Carleton,” she returned, “it’s not; and I should apologize, I know, for coming to see you at your office. Yet I didn’t want to go to The Birches either. I wanted to ask—I want to see you, Mr. Carleton—about Jack.”
She paused, and as he waited, she did not at once continue, but sat with her eyes fixed on the ground, as if embarrassed, and uncertain how to proceed. So that presently he broke the silence.“And what about Jack?” he asked lightly, though his watchful gaze was upon her face, “I rather thought that you and Jack could settle your own affairs. But if you can’t—”
She glanced up quickly. “Oh, don’t joke, Mr. Carleton, please,” she said, “you wouldn’t, if you knew how anxious I am. I can’t seem to understand it at all. You know what good friends Jack and I always were; we were more than that; you know what I mean. And then—something happened. That was when Jack went West. And I was so glad when I heard how well he’d done—how well, I mean, in every way—and when he came back, everything would have been all right again. I had written him—and he’d written me. We had everything arranged. He was to meet the steamer in New York. And then—when we got in, he wasn’t there. Only a message at the hotel that he’d been called away on business, and would see me soon. And that was a week ago; and I haven’t seen him, or even heard from him, since then. I’ve asked all his friends. Franz Helmar doesn’t know anything about him. Neither does Rose. Andwhen I asked Arthur Vaughan, he acted as if he knew something, but didn’t want to tell me what it was. So I’ve come to you, Mr. Carleton. If there’s something about Jack that I don’t know, and that I ought to know, I want you to tell me.”
Henry Carleton sat listening to her, as she talked, his face expressionless, yet keenly attentive, all the while. And as she ended, he hesitated, before replying, as if struggling with some inward temptation which finally, in spite of himself, overcame him. At length he spoke. “My dear Miss Graham,” he said, “I am so many years older than you, that I’m going to ask you to let me give you a piece of advice. I have felt uneasy—very uneasy—for a long time, concerning Jack’s attentions to you. Not, of course, that one could blame him—” the girl ignored the somewhat mechanical smile which accompanied the words words—“but the man who aspires to win your hand, Miss Graham, should be of a type very different from my nephew. I’m not talking at random; I know whereof I speak; and as a friend, I want to tell you that it would be better for you to forget all aboutJack—not to try to find out anything concerning him—but to dismiss him entirely from your mind. And I don’t think—” he added significantly, “that you will find yourself troubled by him any more.”
The girl’s expression was one of bewilderment. “Troubled by him,” she repeated. “Jacktroubleme. You don’t understand, Mr. Carleton. I haven’t made myself clear. I’m as fond of Jack as he is of me. I’ve promised to be his wife. And all I’m asking now is what has happened to keep him away from me. There’s some mystery about it, and I want to know what it is.”
Henry Carleton gave a little apologetic cough. “Really, my dear Miss Graham,” he said, “you make this very hard for me. I was trying to intimate, without putting things too plainly—I thought you would understand—you know that Jack’s character is none of the strongest; you know his weaknesses as well as I do. You don’t want me to go on, Miss Graham, I know. Why should I pain you? Let us leave things as they are.”
At last the girl seemed to comprehend, yet she did not take his words without protest. “Jackisn’t weak,” she cried indignantly, “you’ve no right to say that, Mr. Carleton. If you knew all that he’s conquered—all that he’s overcome—you’d know that he’s strong, not weak. And please don’t hint or insinuate about him; this is too serious for that. If you’ve something to say against him, say it. Don’t half say it, and then stop. It’s neither fair to him, nor to me.”
Henry Carleton raised his eyebrows. “As you will,” he responded evenly, “I only sought to spare you, Miss Graham. But if you want me to tell you, I suppose you know as well as any one that before Jack went away, he’d made himself conspicuous by going around in public with the girl who later married my chauffeur, Satterlee. There was nothing improper, I believe, about it all; simply a bit of boyish folly and bravado; nothing worse. But on Jack’s return—I don’t know, of course, what his life in the West has been; I suppose that perhaps one might hazard a guess—he fell in with this woman again, and this time—I’m speaking plainly, Miss Graham, because you’ve asked me to—this time their relations have passed the boundsof decency. He visits her openly. And that, I suppose, is the reason that he keeps away from you.”
A little red spot flamed in the girl’s cheeks. “It’s not true!” she cried, “I don’t believe it—not a word. I know Jack too well. No man could have written me the letters he has—it’s a lie; a lie!” Face and figure alike were tense and rigid with emotion.
Henry Carleton’s eyes gleamed, yet when he spoke, his tone was calm. “My dear Miss Graham,” he said, “pardon me for suggesting it, but isn’t your conduct rather extraordinary. You come here, in my office hours, knowing that I am a busy man—a man of varied interests—you come here, on your private affairs, which surely have no special interest for me—and then, upon my giving you all the assistance in my power, you inform me that I lie. Really, Miss Graham—”
The girl rose quickly, yet her expression seemed to show little of contrition. “I beg your pardon, if I was rude,” she said, “you are quite right toremind me that I am taking up your time. I will go at once.”
She did not give him her hand in parting, nor did he stir from where he stood, as she walked toward the door of the office. Before she reached it, he spoke again. “If you care,” he said smoothly, “to hear the rest—”
She turned upon him. “I do not,” she said, “I care to hear nothing more. And you say, upon your honor, that what you’ve told me is true?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “You’re very hard to convince,” he said. “I don’t blame you. It’s not a pleasant thing to hear. But it is true. He’s not away on business. He goes there constantly. In fact, if you care to see him, I dare say you would find him there now.”
The words struck home. For an instant the girl stood gazing at him, as if she would have spoken; then quickly turned, and left the room.
A chance shaft sometimes cleaves to the very center of the mark. At the hour and minutewhen Marjory Graham was leaving Henry Carleton’s office, Jack Carleton sat with Jeanne Satterlee in the parlor of the little cottage at Eversley. His face was pale and drawn, and he was talking tensely, earnestly, evidently striving, with all the power within him, to convince and persuade with his words. The woman sat with her eyes averted, as if she listened half against her will. Three years of life had wrought their change. She was beautiful—beyond all question—more beautiful than ever; and yet a nameless something had crept into her face—hardly to be detected, even—a certain look of restlessness—of discontent—a vague change for the worse.
“And so, Jeanne,” Carleton concluded, “that’s all I ask. I say nothing about that panic in the stock market—I say nothing about the property. You know, and I know, what he did, and how he did it; I got it all out of that sneak, Cummings; but all that’s past and done with now. Even if I wanted to make the scandal, I’m not sure that he’s answerable legally; he’s a wonderfully clever man. And I say nothing about poor Vaughan, and his book.You know, and I know, how he worked that with Cummings, but once more, that’s done with now. And Vaughan’s come into his own, at last. But about the other thing, that’s different, Jeanne. You must speak. You can’t say that you won’t, where it’s life and death. You must do it, Jeanne; I’ve a right to make my fight; youmust.”
There was a pause. And then the woman spoke. “I can’t, Jack,” she parried, “I promised. I wouldn’t dare—”
He interrupted her. “Promised!” he echoed. “What’s a promise wrung out of one by force? Nothing. You can’t mean you’d let that stop you, Jeanne.”
She looked up at him, with appeal in her glance. “Jack,” she said desperately, “I’ll tell you the truth. I’m afraid. Afraid he’d kill me. You’re a man; you’re strong, and could fight. You don’t know how a woman dreads anything like that. He said that night he’d kill me, if I told. And I promised—I promised, Jack.”
Carleton gave an impatient sigh. “Nonsense, Jeanne,” he said sharply, “he wouldn’t dare.He only threatened, to frighten you. You—of all people. And can’t you see? He couldn’t afford to, if he would. Where’s his hold on me, then? Tell him, Jeanne, what you’re going to do, and then go away, if you’re frightened; go somewhere where you’ll be safe. Go straight to Marjory Graham, why don’t you, and stay with her.”
“Yes,” she flamed, “go to Marjory Graham! That’s just like a man. You don’t think of me, Jack, at all. Tell her everything! That’s such an easy thing to say. You don’t think of the shame—the disgrace—”
Carleton rose, and walking across the room, laid a hand upon her shoulder, looking down into her face, as he answered her. “Jeanne,” he said, wearily, “we’ve been over this so many times that there’s no use in saying anything more. Only this. I’m not asking you to do this for me, or for Marjory, or for Arthur, or for Rose, though if you do it, you’ll be doing it for all four of us at once. That isn’t the point. A man gets to thinking pretty hard when he’s in a fix like mine, and his own life dwindles down to something that doesn’t count formuch, after all. But I tell you this, Jeanne, and you can call it preaching, and laugh at it, if you choose, but it’s so: there’s only one thing in the world worth doing, after all, and that’s to try to keep as near to what’s right and fair as we can. People can disagree about lots of things—you can criticize my life, and I can criticize yours—but some things are so plain that there’s no chance to differ about what’s right and what’s wrong. And the trouble we’re in now is one of them. You ought to tell Arthur Vaughan. You ought to tell Marjory. And then your part is done. You can leave the rest to fate. But to keep silence now, because of a promise that was forced from you—it isn’t square—it’s upsetting the belief that every one ought to have: that in the end the right’s a better thing than the wrong. And, Jeanne, I tell you this once more. If you won’t do what you ought to do; if you still keep silence; I tell you this: I won’t see harm come to Arthur Vaughan. I won’t see Rose’s life spoiled. There’s one thing I could do, and that’s to put myself out of the way, and stop everything; but that would be cowardly, Isuppose. No, I’ll make my fight, but you know as well as I do, that it’s a losing one. My life is in your hands, Jeanne, and I’ve a right to ask you to do what’s fair. I’ve tried, for three years now, as hard as a man could try. I’ll never be anything famous in the world—I know that—but I’ve a right to want to bring some credit to my father’s name, even if it’s only by living an honest life, to marry, and to pass the name down to some one that can do better with it than I’ve done. That’s all, Jeanne. And there are only two days left. That’s as long as Vaughan will wait. So you’ve got to make up your mind quick. Think it over, Jeanne, and for every one’s sake, be fair.”
She rose from her chair, shaking off his hand. “I’m afraid, Jack;” she said once more, “I’m afraid.”
Carleton’s hand fumbled in his pocket; then, finding what he sought, he handed it to the girl. The light flickered upon the polished barrel. “You could use it?” he asked. The girl nodded. “Then you’ve no reason to fear him,” he said. “Tell him, Jeanne, when he comes to-morrow night,and then you go straight to Marjory’s, and tell her too.”
She looked up quickly, as if seeking to make one last plea. “You ask too much, Jack,” she cried. “If I had my life over—but I haven’t. I’ve lived out all that was ever good in me; there’s only one kind of life left for me now. And he’s been good to me—given me everything. And think of all I lose. All the life I’d see down there. All the money. All the good times. You’re not a woman, Jack. You don’t understand. Think of the fun—”
Once more he laid his hand upon her shoulder. “Is it worth it, Jeanne?” he said.