For some time there was no conversation in the sleigh. The horses sped evenly forward, with their heads well in the air, as if they too were excited by the unnatural glare in the sky ahead. Before long there was added to the hurried regular beating of their hoofs upon the hard-packed track another sound—the snoring of the ’squire on the seat behind.
There was a sense of melting in the air. Save where the intense glow of the conflagration lit up the sky with a fan-like spread of ruddy luminance—fierce orange at the central base, and then through an expanse of vermilion, rose, and cherry to deepening crimsons and dull reddish purples—the heavens hung black with snow-laden clouds. A pleasant, moist night-breeze came softly across the valley, bearing ever and again a solitary flake of snow. The effect of this mild wind was so grateful to Jessica’s face, now once more burning with an inner heat, that she gave no thought to a curious difficulty in breathing which was growing upon her.
“The scoundrels shall pay dear for this,” Reuben said to her, between set teeth, when there came a place in the road where the horses must be allowed to walk up hill.
“I’m sure I hope so,” she said, quite in his spirit.
The husky note in her voice caught his attention. “Are you sure you are bundled up warm enough?” he asked with solicitude, pulling the robe higher about her.
“Oh, yes. I’m not very well. I caught a heavy cold yesterday,” she answered. “But it will be nothing, if only we can get there in time.”
It struck her as strange when Reuben presently replied, putting the whip once more to the horses: “God only knows what can be done when I do get there!” It had seemed to her a matter of course that Tracy would be equal to any emergency—even an armed riot. There was something almost disheartening in this confession of self-doubt.
“But at any rate they shall pay for it to-morrow,” he broke out, angrily, a moment later. “Down to the last pennyweight we will have our pound of flesh! My girl,” he added, turning to look into her face, and speaking with deep earnestness, “I never knew what it was before to feel wholly merciless—absolutely without bowels of compassion. But I will not abate so much as the fraction of a hair with these villains. I swear that!”
By an odd contradiction, his words raised a vague spirit of compunction within her. “They feel very bitterly,” she ventured to suggest. “It is terrible to be turned out of work in the winter, and with families dependent on that work for bare existence. And then the bringing in of these strange workmen. I suppose that is what—”
Reuben interrupted her with an abrupt laugh. “I’m not thinking of them,” he said. “Poor foolish fellows, I don’t wish them any harm. I only pray God they haven’t done too much harm to themselves. No: it’s the swindling scoundrels who are responsible for the mischief—theyare the ones I’ll put the clamps onto to-morrow.”
The words conveyed no meaning to her, and she kept silent until he spoke further: “I don’t know whether he told you, but Gedney has brought me to-night the last links needed for a chain of proof which must send all three of these ruffians to State prison. I haven’t had time to examine the papers yet, but he says he’s got them in his pocket there—affidavits from the original inventor of certain machinery, about its original sale, and from others who were a party to it—which makes the whole fraud absolutely clear. I’ll go over them to-night, when we’ve seen this thing through”—pointing vaguely with his whip toward the reddened sky—“and if tomorrow I don’t lay all three of them by the heels, you can have my head for a foot-ball!”
“I don’t understand these things very well,” said Jessica. “Who is it you mean?” It was growing still harder for her to breathe, and sharp pain came in her breast now with almost every respiration. Her head ached, too, so violently that she cared very little indeed who it was that should go to prison tomorrow.
“There are three of them in the scheme,” said the lawyer; “as cold-blooded and deliberate a piece of robbery as ever was planned. First, there’s a New York man named Wendover—they call him a Judge—a smart, subtle, slippery scoundrel if ever there was one. Then there’s Schuyler Tenney—perhaps you know who he is—he’s a big hardware merchant here; and with him in the swindle was—Good heavens! Why, I never thought of it before!”
Reuben had stopped short in his surprise. He began whipping the horses now with a seeming air of exultation, and stole a momentary smile-lit glance toward his companion.
“It’s just occurred to me,” he said. “Curious—I hadn’t given it a thought. Why, my girl, it’s like a special providence. You, too, will have your full revenge—such revenge as you never dreamt of. The third man is Horace Boyce!”
A great wave of cold stupor engulfed the girl’s reason as she took in these words, and her head swam and roared as if in truth she had been plunged headlong into unknown depths of icy water.
When she came to the surface of consciousness again, the horses were still rhythmically racing along the hill-side road overlooking the village. The firelight in the sky had faded down now to a dull pinkish effect like the northern lights. Reuben was chewing an unlighted cigar, and the ’squire was steadily snoring behind them. It had begun to snow.
“You will send them all to prison—surely?” she was able to ask.
“As surely as God made little apples!” was the sententious response.
The girl was cowering under the buffalo-robe in an anguish of mind so terribly intense that her physical pains were all forgotten. Only her throbbing head seemed full of thick blood, and there was such an awful need that she should think clearly! She bit her lips in tortured silence, striving through a myriad of wandering, crowding ideas to lay hold upon something which should be of help.
They had begun to descend the hill—a steep, uneven road full of drifts, beyond which stretched a level mile of highway leading into the village itself—when suddenly a bold thought came to her, which on the instant had shot up, powerful and commanding, into a very tower of resolution. She laid her hand on Reuben’s arm.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll change into the back seat,” she said, in a voice which all her efforts could not keep from shaking. “I’m feeling very ill. It’ll be easier for me there.”
Reuben at once drew up the horses, and the girl, summoning all her strength, managed without his help to get around the side of the sleigh, and under the robe, into the rear seat. The ’squire was sunk in such a profound sleep that she had to push him bodily over into his own half of the space, and the discovery that this did not waken him filled her with so great a delight that all her strength and self-control seemed miraculously to have returned to her.
She had need of them both for the task which she had imposed upon herself, and which now, with infinite caution and trepidation, she set herself about. This was nothing less than to secure the papers which the old ’squire had brought from Cadmus, and which, from something she remembered his having said, must be in the inner pocket of one of his coats. Slowly and deftly she opened button after button of his overcoat, and gently pushed aside the cloth until her hand might have free passage to and from the pocket, where, after careful soundings, she had discovered a bundle of thick papers to be resting. Then whole minutes seemed to pass before, having taken off her glove, she was able to draw this packet out. Once during this operation Reuben half turned to speak to her, and her fright was very great. But she had had the presence of mind to draw the robe high about her, and answer collectedly, and he had palpably suspected nothing. As for Gedney, he never once stirred in his drunken sleep.
The larceny was complete, and Jessica had been able to wrap the old man up again, to button the parcel of papers under her own cloak, and to draw on and fasten her glove once more, before the panting horses had gained the outskirts of the village. She herself was breathing almost as heavily as the animals after their gallop, and, now that the deed was done, lay back wearily in her seat, with pain racking her every joint and muscle, and a sickening dread in her mind lest there should be neither strength nor courage forthcoming for what remained to do.
For a considerable distance down the street no person was visible from whom the eager Tracy could get news of what had happened. At last, however, when the sleigh was within a couple of blocks of what seemed in the distance to be a centre of interest, a man came along who shouted from the sidewalk, in response to Reuben’s questions, sundry leading facts of importance.
A fire had started—probably incendiary—in the basement of the office of the Minster furnaces, some hour or so ago, and had pretty well gutted the building. The firemen were still playing on the ruins. An immense crowd had witnessed the fire, and it was the drunkenest crowd he had ever seen in Thessaly. Where the money came from to buy so much drink, was what puzzled him. The crowd had pretty well cleared off now; some said they had gone up to the Minster house to give its occupants a “horning.” He himself had got his feet wet, and was afraid of the rheumatics if he stayed out any longer. Probably he would get them, as it was. Everybody said that the building was insured, and some folks hinted that the company had it set on fire themselves.
Reuben impatiently whipped up the jaded team at this, with a curt “Much obliged,” and drove at a spanking pace down the street to the scene of the conflagration. There was not much remaining to see. The outer walls of the office building were still gloomily erect, but within nothing was left but a glowing mass of embers about level with the ground. Some firemen were inside the yard, but more were congregated about the water-soaked space where the engine still noisily throbbed, and where hot coffee was being passed around to them. Here, too, there was a report that the crowd had gone up to the Minster house.
The horses tugged vehemently to drag the sleigh over the impedimenta of hose stretched along the street, and over the considerable area of bare stones where the snow had been melted by the heat or washed away by the streams from the hydrants. Then Reuben half rose in his seat to lash them into a last furious gallop, and, snorting with rebellion, they tore onward toward the seminary road.
At the corner, three doors from the home of the Minster ladies, Reuben deemed it prudent to draw up. There was evidently a considerable throng in the road in front of the house, and that still others were on the lawn within the gates was obvious from the confused murmur which came therefrom. Some boys were blowing spasmodically on fish-horns, and rough jeers and loud boisterous talk rose and fell throughout the dimly visible assemblage. The air had become thick with large wet snowflakes.
Reuben sprang from the sleigh, and, stepping backward, vigorously shook old Gedney into a state of semi-wakefulness.
“Hold these lines,” he said, “and wait here for me.—Or,” he turned to Jessica with the sudden thought, “would you rather he drove you home?”
The girl had been in a half-insensible condition of mind and body. At the question she roused herself and shook her head. “No: let me stay here,” she said, wearily.
But when Reuben, squaring his broad shoulders and shaking himself to free his muscles after the long ride, had disappeared with an energetic stride in the direction of the crowd, Jessica forced herself to sit upright, and then to rise to her feet.
“You’d better put the blankets on the horses, if he doesn’t come back right off,” she said to the ’squire.
“Where are you going?” Gedney asked, still stupid with sleep.
“I’ll walk up and down,” she answered, clambering with difficulty out of the sleigh. “I’m tired of sitting still.”
Once on the sidewalk, she grew suddenly faint, and grasped a fence-picket for support. The hand which she instinctively raised to her heart touched the hard surface of the packet of papers, and the thought which this inspired put new courage into her veins.
With bowed head and a hurried, faltering step, she turned her back upon the Minster house and stole off into the snowy darkness.
Even before he reached the gates of the carriage-drive opening upon the Minster lawn, Reuben Tracy encountered some men whom he knew, and gathered that the people in the street outside were in the main peaceful on-lookers, who did not understand very clearly what was going on, and disapproved of the proceedings as far as they comprehended them. There was a crowd inside the grounds, he was told, made up in part of men who were out of work, but composed still more largely, it seemed, of boys and young hoodlums generally, who were improving the pretext to indulge in horseplay. There was a report that some sort of deputation had gone up on the doorstep and rung the bell, with a view to making some remarks to the occupants of the house; but that they had failed to get any answer, and certainly the whole front of the residence was black as night.
Reuben easily obtained the consent of several of these citizens to follow him, and, as they went on, the number swelled to ten or a dozen. Doubtless many more could have been incorporated in the impromptu procession had it not been so hopelessly dark.
The lawyer led his friends through the gate, and began pushing his way up the gravelled path through the crowd. No special opposition was offered to his progress, for the air was so full of snow now that only those immediately affected knew anything about it. Although the path was fairly thronged, nobody seemed to have any idea why he was standing there. Those who spoke appeared in the main to regard the matter as a joke, the point of which was growing more and more obscure. Except for some sporadic horn-blowing and hooting nearer to the house, the activity of the assemblage was confined to a handful of boys, who mustered among them two or three kerosene oil torches treasured from the last Presidential campaign, and a grotesque jack-o’-lantem made of a pumpkin and elevated on a broom-stick. These urchins were running about among the little groups of bystanders, knocking off one another’s caps, shouting prodigiously, and having a good time.
As Reuben and those accompanying him approached the house, some of these lads raised the cry of “Here’s the coppers!” and the crowd at this seemed to close up with a simultaneous movement, while a murmur ran across its surface like the wind over a field of corn. This sound was one less of menace or even excitement than of gratification that at last something was going to happen.
One of the boys with a torch, in the true spirit of his generation, placed himself in front of Reuben and marched with mock gravity at the head of the advancing group. This, drolly enough, lent the movement a semblance of authority, or at least of significance, before which the men more readily than ever gave way. At this the other boys with the torches and jack-o’-lantem fell into line at the rear of Tracy’s immediate supporters, and they in turn were followed by the throng generally. Thus whimsically escorted, Reuben reached the front steps of the mansion.
A more compact and apparently homogeneous cluster of men stood here, some of them even on the steps, and dark and indistinct as everything was, Reuben leaped to the conclusion that these were the men at least visibly responsible for this strange gathering. Presumably they were taken by surprise at his appearance with such a following. At any rate, they, too, offered no concerted resistance, and he mounted to the platform of the steps without difficulty. Then he turned and whispered to a friend to have the boys with the torches also come up. This was a suggestion gladly obeyed, not least of all by the boy with the low-comedy pumpkin, whose illumination created a good-natured laugh.
Tracy stood now, bareheaded in the falling snow, facing the throng. The gathering of the lights about him indicated to everybody in the grounds that the aimless demonstration had finally assumed some kind of form. A general forward movement was the first result. Then there were admonitory shouts here and there, under the influence of which the horn-blowing gradually ceased, and Tracy’s name was passed from mouth to mouth until its mention took on almost the character of a personal cheer on the outskirts of the crowd. In answer to this two or three hostile interrogations or comments were bawled out, but the throng did not favor these, and so there fell a silence which invited Reuben to speak.
“My friends,” he began, and then stopped because he had not pitched his voice high enough, and a whole semicircle of cries of “louder!” rose from the darkness of the central lawn.
“He’s afraid of waking the fine ladies,” called out an anonymous voice.
“Shut up, Tracy, and let the pumpkin talk,” was another shout.
“Begorrah, it’s the pumpkin thatistalkin’ now!” cried a shrill third voice, and at this there was a ripple of laughter.
“My friends,” began Reuben, in a louder tone, this time without immediate interruption, “although I don’t know precisely why you have gathered here at so much discomfort to yourselves, I have some things to say to you which I think you will regard as important. I have not seen the persons who live in this house since Tuesday, but while I can easily understand that your coming here to-night might otherwise cause them some anxiety, I am sure that they, when they come to understand it, will be as glad as I am that youarehere, and that I am given this opportunity of speaking for them to you. If you had not taken this notion of coming here tonight, I should have, in a day or two, asked you to meet me somewhere else, in a more convenient place, to talk matters over.
“First of all let me tell you that the works are going to be opened promptly, certainly the furnaces, and unless I am very much mistaken about the law, the rolling mills too. I give you my word for that, as the legal representative of two of these women.”
“Yes; they’ll be opened with the Frenchmen!” came a swift answering shout.
“Or will you get Chinamen?” cried another, amid derisive laughter.
Reuben responded in his clearest tones: “No man who belongs to Thessaly shall be crowded out by a newcomer. I give you my word for that, too.”
Some scattered cheers broke out at this announcement, which promised for the instant to become general, and then were hushed down by the prevalent anxiety to hear more. In this momentary interval Reuben caught the sound of a window being cautiously raised immediately above the front door, and guessed with a little flutter of the heart who this new auditor might be.
“Secondly,” he went on, “you ought to be told the truth about the shutting down of the furnaces and the lockout. These women were not at all responsible for either action. I know of my own knowledge that both things caused them genuine grief, and that they were shocked beyond measure at the proposal to bring outside workmen into the town to undersell and drive away their own neighbors and fellow-townsmen. I want you to realize this, because otherwise you would do a wrong in your minds to these good women who belong to Thessaly, who are as fond of our village and its people as any other soul within its borders, and who, for their own sake as well as that of Stephen Minster’s memory, deserve respect and liking at your hands.
“I may tell you frankly that they were misled and deceived by agents, in whom, mistakenly enough, they trusted, into temporarily giving power to these unworthy men. The result was a series of steps which they deplored, but did not know how to stop. A few days ago I was called into the case to see what could be done toward undoing the mischief from which they, and you, and the townspeople generally, suffer. Since then I have been hard at work both in court and out of it, and I believe I can say with authority that the attempt to plunder the Minster estate and to impoverish you will be beaten all along the line.”
This time the outburst of cheering was spontaneous and prolonged. When it died away, some voice called out, “Three cheers for the ladies!” and these were given, too, not without laughter at the jack-o’-lantem boy, who waved his pumpkin vigorously.
“One word more,” called out Tracy, “and I hope you will take in good part what I am going to say. When I made my way up through the grounds, I was struck by the fact that nobody seemed to know just why he had come here. I gather now that word was passed around during the day that there would be a crowd here, and that something, nobody understood just what, would be done after they got here. I do not know who started the idea, or who circulated the word. It might be worth your while to find out. Meanwhile, don’t you agree with me that it is an unsatisfactory and uncivil way of going at the thing? This is a free country, but just because itisfree, we ought to feel the more bound to respect one another’s rights. There are countries in which, I dare say, if I were a citizen, or rather a subject, I might feel it my duty to head a mob or join a riot. But here there ought to be no mob; there should be no room for even thought of a riot. Our very strength lies in the idea that we are our own policemen—our own soldiery. I say this not because one in a hundred of you meant any special harm in coming here, but because the notion of coming itself was not American. Beware of men who suggest that kind of thing. Beware of men who preach the theory that because you are puddlers or moulders or firemen, therefore you are different from the rest of your fellow-citizens. I, for one, resent the idea that because I am a lawyer, and you, for example, are a blacksmith, therefore we belong to different classes. I wish with all my heart that everybody resented it, and that that abominable word ‘classes’ could be wiped out of the English language as it is spoken in America. That is all. I am glad if you feel easier in your minds than you did when you came. If you do, I guess there’s been no harm done by your coming which isn’t more than balanced by the good that has come out of it. Only next time, if you don’t mind, we’ll have our meeting somewhere else, where it will be easier to speak than it is in a snowstorm, and where we won’t keep our neighbors awake. And now good-night, everybody.”
Out of the satisfied and amiable murmur which spread through the crowd at this, there rose a sharp, querulous voice:
“Give us the names of the men who, you say,wereresponsible.”
“No, I can’t do that to-night. But if you read the next list of indictments found by the grand jury of Dearborn County, my word as a lawyer you’ll find them all there.”
The loudest cheer of the evening burst upon the air at this, and there was a sustained roar when Tracy’s name was shouted out above the tumult. Some few men crowded up to the steps to shake hands with him, and many others called out to him a personal “good-night.” The last of those to shake the accumulated snow from their collars and hats, and turn their steps homeward, noted that the whole front of the Minster house had suddenly become illuminated.
Thus Reuben’s simple and highly fortuitous conquest of what had been planned to be a mob was accomplished. It is remembered to this day as the best thing any man ever did single-handed in Thessaly, and it is always spoken of as the foundation of his present political eminence. But he himself would say now, upon reflection, that he succeeded because the better sense of his auditors, from the outset, wanted him to succeed, and because he was lucky enough to impress a very decent and bright-witted lot of men with the idea that he wasn’t a humbug.
At the moment he was in no mood to analyze his success. His hair was streaming with melted snow, his throat was painfully hoarse and sore, and the fatigue from speaking so loud, and the reaction from his great excitement, combined to make him feel a very weak brother indeed.
So utterly wearied was he that when the door of the now lighted hallway opened behind him, and Miss Kate herself, standing in front of the servant on the threshold, said: “We want you to come in, Mr. Tracy,” he turned mechanically and went in, thinking more of a drink of some sort and a chance to sit down beside her, than of all the possible results of his speech to the crowd.
The effect of warmth and welcome inside the mansion was grateful to all his senses. He parted with his hat and overcoat, took the glass of claret which was offered him, and allowed himself to be led into the drawing-room and given a seat, all in a happy daze, which was, in truth, so very happy, that he was dimly conscious of the beginnings of tears in his eyes. It seemed now that the strain upon his mind and heart—the anger, and fright, and terrible anxiety—had lasted for whole weary years. Trial by soul-torture was new to him, and this ordeal through which he had passed left him curiously flabby and tremulous.
He lay back in the easy-chair in an ecstasy of physical lassitude and mental content, surrendering himself to the delight of watching the beautiful girl before him, and of listening to the music of her voice. The liquid depths of brown eyes into which he looked, and the soft tones which wooed his hearing, produced upon him vaguely the sensation of shining white robes and celestial harps—an indefinitely glorious recompense for the travail that lay behind in the valley of the shadow of death.
Nothing was further from him than the temptation to break this bright spell by speech.
“We heard almost every word of what you said,” Kate was saying. “When you began we were in this room, crouched there by the window—that is, Ethel and I were, for mamma refused to even pretend to listen—and at first we thought it was one of the mob, and then Ethel recognized your voice. That almost annoyed me, for it seemed as ifIshould have been—-at least, equally quick to know it—that is, I mean, I’ve heard you speak so much more than she has. And then we both hurried up-stairs, and lifted the window—and oh! but we listened!
“And from the moment we knew it was you—that you were here—we felt perfectly safe. It doesn’t seem now that we were very much afraid, even before that, although probably we were. There was a lot of hooting, and that dreadful blowing on horns, and all that, and once somebody rang the door-bell; but, beyond throwing snowballs, nothing else was done. So I daresay they only wanted to scare us. Of course it was the fire that made us really nervous. We got that brave girl’s warning about the mob’s coming here just a little while before the sky began to redden with the blaze; and that sight, coming on the heels of her letter—”
“What girl? What letter?” asked Reuben.
“Here it is,” answered Kate, drawing a crumpled sheet of paper from her bosom, and reading aloud:
“Dear Miss Minster:
“I have just heard that a crowd of men are coming to your house to-night to do violent things. I am starting out to try and bring you help. Meanwhile, I send you my father, who will do whatever you tell him to do.
“Gratefully yours,
“Jessica Lawton.”
Reuben had risen abruptly to his feet before the signature was reached.
“I am ashamed of myself,” he said; “I’ve left her out there all this while. And she was ill, too! There was so much else that really she escaped my memory altogether.”
He had made his way out into the hall and taken up his hat and coat.
“You will come back, won’t you?” Kate asked. “There are so many things to talk over, with all of us. And—and bring her too, if—if she will come.”
With a sign of acquiescence and comprehension. Reuben darted down the steps and into the darkness. In a very few minutes he returned, disappointment written all over his face.
“She’s gone. Gedney, the man I left with the sleigh, says she went off as soon as I had got out of sight. I had offered to have him drive her home, but she refused. She’s a curiously independent girl.”
“I am very sorry,” said Kate. “But I will go over the first thing in the morning and thank her.”
“You don’t as yet know the half of what you have to thank her for,” put in the lawyer. “I don’t mean that it was so great a thing—my coming—but she drove all the way out to my mother’s farm to bring me here to-night, and fainted when she got there. She was really ill. If her father is still here, I think he’d better go at once to her place, and see about her.”
The suggestion seemed a good one, and was instantly acted upon. Ben Lawton had been in the kitchen, immensely proud of his position as the responsible garrison of a beleaguered house, and came out into the hallway now with a full stomach and a satisfied expression on his lank face.
He assented with readiness to Reuben’s idea, when it was explained to him.
“So she druv out to your mother’s place for you, did she?” he commented, admiringly. “That girl’s a genuwine chip of the old block. I mean,” he added, with an apologetic smile, “of the old, old block. I ain’t got so much git-up-and-git about me, that I know of, but her grandfather was a regular snorter!”
“We shall not forget how much we are obliged to you, Mr. Lawton,” said Kate, pleasantly, offering him her hand. “Be sure that you tell your daughter, too, how grateful we all are.”
Ben took the delicate hand thus amazingly extended to him, and shook it with formal awkwardness.
“I didn’t seem to do much,” he said, deprecatingly, “and perhaps I wouldn’t have amounted to much, neether, if it had a-come to fightin’ and gougin’ and wras’lin’ round generally. But you can bet your boots, ma’am, that I’d a-done what I could!”
With this chivalrous assurance Ben withdrew, and marched down the steps with a carriage more nearly erect than Thessaly had ever seen him assume before.
The heavy front door swung to, and Reuben realized, with a new rush of charmed emotion, that heaven had opened for him once more.
A servant came and whispered something to Miss Kate. The latter nodded, and then turned to Reuben with a smile full of light and softness.
“If you will give me your arm,” she said, in a delicious murmur, “we will go into the dining-room. My mother and sister are waiting for us there. We are not supper-people as a rule, but it seemed right to have one to-night.”
The scene which opened upon Reuben’s eyes was like a vista of fairyland. The dark panelled room, with its dim suggestions of gold frames and heavy curtains, and its background of palms and oleanders, contributed with the reticence of richness to the glowing splendor of the table in its centre. Here all light was concentrated—light which fell from beneath ruby shades at the summits of tall candles, and softened the dazzling whiteness of the linen, mellowed the burnished gleam of the silver plate, reflected itself in tender, prismatic hues from the facets of the cut-glass decanters. There were flowers here which gave forth still the blended fragrance of their hot-house home, and fragile, painted china, and all the nameless things of luxury which can make the breaking of bread a poem.
Reuben had seen something dimly resembling this in New York once or twice at semi-public dinners. The thought that this higher marvel was in his honor intoxicated his reason. The other thought—that conceivably his future might lie all in this flower-strewn, daintily lighted path—was too heady, too full of threatened delirium, to be even entertained. With an anxious hold upon himself, he felt his way forward to self-possession. It came sooner than he had imagined it would, and thereafter everything belonged to a dream of delight.
The ladies were all dressed more elaborately than he had observed them to be on any previous occasion, and, at the outset, there was something disconcerting in this. Speedily enough, though, there came the reflection that his clothes were those in which he had raced breathlessly from the farm, in which he had faced and won the crowd outside, and then, all at once, he was at perfect ease.
He told them—addressing his talk chiefly to Mrs. Minster, who sat at the head of the table, to his left—the story of Jessica’s ride, of her fainting on her arrival, and of the furious homeward drive. From this he drifted to the final proofs which had been procured at Cadmus—he had sent Gedney home with the horses, and was to see him early in the morning—and then to the steps toward a criminal prosecution which he would summarily take.
“So far as I can see, Mrs. Minster,” he concluded, when the servant had again left the room, “no real loss will result from this whole imbroglio. It may even show a net gain, when everything is cleared up; for your big loan must really give you control of the Thessaly Manufacturing Company, in law. These fellows staked their majority interest in that concern to win your whole property in the game. They have lost, and the proceeds must go to you. Of course, it is not entirely clear how the matter will shape itself; but my notion is that you will come out winner.”
Mrs. Minster smiled complacently. “My daughters thought that I knew nothing about business!” she said, with an air of easy triumph.
The daughters displayed great eagerness to leave this branch of the matter undiscussed.
“And will it really be necessary to prosecute these men?” asked Ethel, from Reuben’s right.
The lawyer realized, even before he spoke, that not a little of his bitterness had evaporated. “Men ought to be punished for such a crime as they committed,” he said. “If only as a duty to the public, they should be prosecuted.”
He was looking at Kate as he spoke, and in her glance, as their eyes met, he read something which prompted him hastily to add:
“Of course, I am in your hands in the matter. I have committed myself with the crowd outside to the statement that they should be punished. I was full, then, of angry feelings; and I still think that they ought to be punished. But it is really your question, not mine. And I may even tell you that there would probably be a considerable financial advantage in settling the thing with them, instead of taking it before the grand jury.”
“That is a consideration which we won’t discuss,” said Kate. “If my mind were clear as to the necessity of a prosecution, I would not alter the decision for any amount of money. But my sister and I have been talking a great deal about this matter, and we feel—You know that Mr. Boyce was, for a time, on quite a friendly footing in this house.”
“Yes; I know.” Reuben bowed his head gravely.
“Well, you yourself said that if one was prosecuted, they all must be.”
“No doubt. Wendover and Tenney were smart enough to put the credulous youngster in the very forefront of everything. Until these affidavits came to hand to-day, it would have been far easier to convict him than them.”
“Precisely,” urged Kate. “Credulous is just the word. He was weak, foolish, vain—whatever you like. They led him into the thing. But I don’t believe that at the outset, or, indeed, till very recently, he had any idea of being a party to a plan to plunder us. There are reasons,” the girl blushed a little, and hesitated, “to be frank, there are reasons for my thinking so.”
Reuben, noting the faint flush of embarrassment, catching the doubtful inflection of the words, felt that he comprehended everything, and mirrored that feeling in his glance.
“I quite follow you,” he said. “It is my notion that he was deceived, at the beginning.”
“Others deceived him, and still more he deceived himself,” responded Kate.
“And that is why,” put in Ethel, “we feel like asking you not to take the matter into the courts—I mean so as to put him in prison. It would be too dreadful to think of—to take a man who had dined at your house, and been boating with you, and had driven with you all over the Orange Mountains, picking wild-flowers for you and all that, and put him into prison, where he would have his hair shaved off, and tramp up and down on a treadmill. No; we mustn’t do that, Mr. Tracy.”
Kate added musingly: “He has lost so much, we can afford to be generous, can we not?”
Then Reuben felt that there could be no answer possible except “yes.” His heart pleaded with his brain for a lover’s interpretation of this speech; and his tongue, to evade the issue, framed some halting words about allowing him to go over the whole case to-morrow, and postponing a final decision until that had been done.
The consent of silence was accorded to this, and everybody at the table knew that there would be no prosecutions. Upon the instant the atmosphere grew lighter.
“And now for the real thing,” said Kate, gayly. “I am commissioned on behalf of the entire family to formally thank you for coming to our rescue tonight. Mamma did not hear your speech—she resolutely sat in the library, pretending to read, during the whole rumpus, and we were in such a hurry to get up-stairs that we didn’t tell her when you began—but she couldn’t help hearing the horns, and she is as much obliged to you as we are; and that is very, very, very much indeed!”
“Yes, indeed,” assented Mrs. Minster. “I don’t know where the police were, at all.”
“The police could have done next to nothing, if they had been here,” said Reuben. “The visit of the crowd was annoying enough, and discreditable in its way, but I don’t really imagine there was ever any actual danger. The men felt disagreeable about the closing of the works and the importation of the French Canadians, and I don’t blame them; but as a body they never had any idea of molesting you. My own notion is that the mob was organized by outsiders—by men who had an end to serve in frightening you—and that after the crowd got here it didn’t know what to do with itself. The truth is, that the mob isn’t an American institution. Its component parts are too civilized, too open to appeals to reason. As soon as I told these people the facts in the case, they were quite ready to go, and they even cheered for you before they went.”
“Ethel tells me that you promised them the furnaces should be opened promptly,” said the mother, with her calm, inquiring glance, which might mean sarcasm, anger, approval, or nothing at all.
Reuben answered resolutely: “Yes, Mrs. Minster, I did. And so they must be opened, on Monday. Let us be frank about the matter. It is my dearest wish that I should be able to act for you all in this whole business. But I have gone too far now, the interests involved are too great, to make a pause here possible. The very essence of the situation is that we should defy the trust, and throw upon it theonusof stopping us if it can. We have such a grip upon the men who led you into that trust, and who can influence the decisions of its directors, that they will not dare to show fight. The force of circumstances has made me the custodian of your interests quite as much as of your daughters’. I am very proud and happy that it is so. It is true that I have not your warrant for acting in your behalf; but if you will permit me to say so, that cannot now be allowed to make the slightest difference in my action.”
“Yes, mamma, you are to be rescued in spite of yourself,” said Ethel, merrily.
The young people were all smiling at one another, and to their considerable relief Mrs. Minster concluded to smile also.
Nobody attempted to analyze the mental processes by which she had been brought around. It was enough that she had come to accept the situation. The black shadow of discord, which had overhung the household so long, was gone, and mother and daughters joined in a sigh of grateful relief.
It must have been nearly midnight when Reuben rose finally to go. There had been so much to talk about, and time had flown so softly, buoyantly along, that the evening seemed to him only to have begun, and he felt that he fain would have had it go on forever. These delicious hours that were past had been one sweet sustained conspiracy to do him honor, to minister to his pleasure. No word or smile or deferential glance of attention had been wanting to make complete the homage with which the family had chosen to envelop him. The sense of tender domestic intimacy had surcharged the very air he breathed. It had not even been necessary to keep the ball of talk in motion: so well and truly did they know one another, that silences had come as natural rests—silences more eloquent than spoken words could be of mutual liking and trust. The outside world had shrunk to nothingness. Here within this charmed circle of softened light was home. All that the whole universe contained for him of beauty, of romance, of reverential desire, of happiness, here within touch it was centred. And it was all, all his!
The farewells that found their way into phrases left scarcely a mark upon his memory. There had been cordial, softly significant words of smiling leave-taking with Ethel and her mother, and then, divinely prompted by the spirit which ruled this blessed hour, they had gone away, and he stood alone in the hallway with the woman he worshipped. He held her hand in his, and there was no need for speech.
Slowly, devoutly, he bowed his head over this white hand, and pressed his lips upon it. There were tears in his eyes when he stood erect again, and through them he saw with dim rapture the marvel of an angel’s face, pale, yet glowing in the half light, lovely beyond all mortal dreams; and on this face there shone a smile, tender, languorous, trembling with the supreme ecstasy of a soul.
Were words spoken? Reuben could hardly have told as he walked away down the path to the street. “Bless you! bless you!” was what the song-birds carolled in his brain; but whether the music was an echo of what he had said, did not make itself clear.
He was scarcely conscious of the physical element of walking in his progress. Rather it seemed to him that his whole being was afloat in the ether, wafted forward by the halcyon winds of a beneficent destiny. Was there ever such unthinkable bliss before in all the vast span of the universe?
The snowfall had long since ceased, and the clouds were gone. The air was colder, and the broad sky was brilliant with the clear starlight of winter. To the lover’s eyes, the great planets were nearer, strangely nearer, than they had ever been before, and the undying fire with which they burned was the same that glowed in his own heart. His senses linked themselves to the grand procession of the skies. The triumphant onward glide of the earth itself within this colossal scheme of movement was apparent to him, and seemed but a part of his own resistless, glorified onward sweep. Oh, this—thiswas life!
At the same hour a heavy and lumpish man made his way homeward by a neighboring street, tramping with difficulty through the hardening snow which lay thick upon the walks. There was nothing buoyant in his stride, and he never once lifted his eyes to observe the luminous panorama spread overhead. With his hands plunged deep into his pockets, and his cane under his arm, he trudged moodily along, his shoulders rounded and his brows bent in a frown.
An acquaintance going in the other direction called out cheerily as he passed, “Hello, General! Pretty tough walking, isn’t it?” and had only an inarticulate grunt for an answer.
There were evil hints abroad in the village below, this night—stories of impending revelations of fraud, hints of coming prosecutions—and General Boyce had heard enough of these to grow sick at heart. That Horace had been deeply mixed up in something scoundrelly, seemed only too evident. Since this foolish, ungrateful boy had left the paternal roof, his father had surrendered himself more than ever to drink; but indulgence now, instead of the old brightening merriment of song and quip and pleasantly reminiscent camp-fire sparkle, seemed to swing him like a pendulum between the extremes of sullen wrath and almost tearful weakness. Something of both these moods weighted his mind to-night, and to their burden was added a crushingly gloomy apprehension that naked disgrace was coming as well. Precisely what it was, he knew not; but winks and nods and unnatural efforts to shift the conversation when he came in had been in the air about him all the evening. The very vagueness of the fear lent it fresh terror.
His own gate was reached at last, and he turned wearily into the path which encircled the small yard to reach the front door. He cursorily noted the existence of some partially obliterated footprints in the snow, and took it for granted that one of the servants had been out late.
He had begun fumbling in his pocket for the key, and had his foot on the lower step, before he discovered in the dim light something which gave even his martial nerves a start. The dark-clad figure of a woman, obviously well dressed, apparently young, lay before him, the head and arms bent under against his very door.
The General was a man of swift decision and ready resource. In an instant he had lifted the figure up out of the snow which half enveloped it, and sustained it in one arm, while with the other he sent the reverberating clamor of the door-bell pealing through the house. Then, unlocking the door, he bore his burden lightly into the hall, turned up the gas, and disposed the inanimate form on a chair.
He did not know the woman, but it was evident that she was very ill—perhaps dying.
When the servant came down, he bade her run with all possible haste for Dr. Lester, who lived only a block or so away.