A MAN AND A WOMAN
The girl whose gaze had for that instant found Harry Sevier's across
the crowded court room left the place with her mind in a conflict of
feeling. She was nonplussed. She had entered for that last hour
sharing intuitively the general belief that the prisoner would be
acquitted: a belief, founded like that of the rest, upon her knowledge
of his counsel. She had seen no straining for the spectacular in what
some had been wont to call "Harry Sevier's pyrotechnics," and on past
occasions on which she had heard him address a jury she had fallen
wholly under the spell of that peculiar magnetism that swayed all
alike. Aside from his continuous success in a calling with which her
whole life had been associated--her father, Judge Beverly Allen, was
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and his father had been Chancellor
before him--with his brilliant way, his undenied leadership among his
fellows, he had been to her a dominant personality. She had not lacked
the masculine homage of a dozen others of their set, but Harry Sevier
had always been the imminent figure in her thought, and it had needed
no spoken word or promise between them to link her imagination wholly
to a future in which he reigned supreme. So that his failure to-day
had affected her strongly.
On the dusky court house steps she stopped to exchange greetings with a
group who chatted there. They were full of the puzzle of Sevier's
failure, or laughingly rueful at their own discomfiture, and she
stopped but a moment before a negro coachman tucked her into a
carriage. As he climbed lumberingly to his seat and gathered up the
reins, a heavy, assured figure approached the curb. Cameron Craig was
big and broad and in his strong and arrogant face lines of conflict had
early etched themselves. He shook hands with her with a smile.
"I didn't know you were in town," she said, with a trace of aloofness.
"I'm here for only a day or two," he answered. "I had to talk a little
politics with my attorney, Mr. Treadwell. It's his busy day, it seems,
and as the mountain couldn't come to Mahomet, Mahomet came to the
mountain. So here I am at the halls of justice. It's been an
entertaining afternoon--the trial, I mean--but upon my word, I thought
at first I had strayed into a convention of the Daughters of the
Confederacy."
She smiled, but it came with difficulty. "Oh, court has become a
social dissipation with us. It competes now with auction-bridge and
the fox-trot."
"You tempt me to steal a purse or two," he said. "I love to hold the
centre of the stage. The only thing I've been charged with stealing so
far is an election, but one never knows to what heights he may rise.
If I pick your pocket will you come to my trial?"
"If it were _my_ pocket, I'd have to, wouldn't I?"
He bowed smilingly and turned away, as the coachman flicked the tossing
manes with the tip of his whip. Looking over her shoulder, while the
horses whirled her away, Echo saw his big frame swinging up the steps
into the emptying building, every move expressive of virile strength
and conscious power.
These were traits Cameron Craig had acquired through direct
inheritance. His father had come penniless, to a small town in the
adjoining state where, with calm assurance and without unnecessary
delay, he had married the neighbourhood's prettiest girl and pre-empted
a worn-out iron deposit with a tumble-down furnace, relic of a series
of disgusted British owners. With the same certainty of judgment he
had uncovered the lost ore, developed the property till it paid a
miraculous dividend, and died. He had been a man of one idea--the
"Works"--and had known and cared for nothing else. The son, however,
with his father's force and will, had inherited, with less praiseworthy
traits, a further ambition. The young Cameron Craig's first free act
after his schooling ended was to dispose of the iron plant and to throw
his money and his brain together into a group which now stood back of
the great Public Services Corporation that held in control the vested
interests of two states, exclusive of the railroads. At thirty he was
a personality that loomed large in organised politics, and might be
depended on to loom steadily larger to the end of the chapter.
As he entered the old building now he was thinking of the face of the
girl he had just left, with its brilliant beauty and flashing youth.
"Why not?" he said to himself. "She has birth and breeding, but I can
match them with things the world counts as high. I've never failed yet
to get what I wanted--if I wanted it enough!" His thoughts recurred to
the trial and to Harry Sevier. "Curious that nobody seemed to guess
what the matter was--none but me. But I know what that look back of
his eyes meant. The young fool! To have that gift--every thing right
in his hand--and then to throw it away. For that's what it will come
to, sure as fate, in the end!"
A hand fell upon his shoulder. It was Lawrence Treadwell, the
attorney, and he followed the latter into a private room and sat down.
"Have you got the new committee list?" he asked, without preamble.
For answer the other took a closely written paper from his pocket and
handed it over. "Senator Colby sent it down by his secretary this
morning."
Craig drew his chair to the table and began to make pencilled changes
and corrections, his hand moving swiftly and unhesitatingly. "There,"
he said, returning it. "That will be better. Let the senator have it
back to-morrow." He sat a moment silent, his strong white fingers
drumming on the table. "By the way, is this young Sevier likely to
take a hand in the next campaign?"
"I don't know," replied the other. "I've always expected him to burst
into politics some day. He has a curious hold on people--a wonderful
magnetism. To-day's is the first jury case I've ever known him to
lose. He as well as let it go by default. How he came to handle it so
beats me!"
Craig might have enlightened him, but he did not.
"I've concluded we don't want him," he said. "He's uneven: the trial
to-day proved that. Besides, he's too high-chinned--we can't depend on
his type to obey orders. We are coming to a big fight and we want the
docks clear. No overtures to him. We must cut out every man whose
absolute footing we can't count on till the day of judgment."
The attorney lit a cigar and regarded its blue haze thoughtfully before
he answered. "All right," he agreed. "I should have picked him for
good material. But you're the doctor."
Meanwhile the carriage was whirling Echo Allen over the darkening
asphalt. The tired night lay still, watching under dusky lids, the
moon, a great blown magnolia, floating in the limpid sky. As the
horses pounded on, the coachman's voice broke in upon her revery:
"Reck'n Marse Harry done got dat man clar, Miss Echo, lak he allus do?"
She drew her furs closer about her throat with a little gesture as
though dismissing a baffling problem. "No, 'Lige; not this time."
"Sho' now!" he exclaimed, looking back with his thick, blue-black lips
framed to a whistle. "Muss-a been pow'ful guilty ef _he_ couldn't git
him off. Ah reck'n dem yuthah lawyahs 'cluded dey wanter tek Marse
Harry down--he done put it ovah _dem_ so off'n--en dey jes' tek dat
'cused man, en fool eroun', en fool eroun', tell dey done _prove_ it on
him!"
But 'Lige's sage reflection upon the situation brought no smile to Echo
Allen's face.
At length the horses came to a great double-gate, lighted with heavy
wrought-iron lamps, opening on a curving drive, into which they turned,
to swing panting up to a wide-porched mansion set in a grove of oaks
and acacias. This was "Midfields," the home of the Allens for four
generations and of the Beverlys before them. Its wide wings and
columned front spoke of old colony days, as did its name of a time when
rolling acres of tobacco instead of suburban streets surrounded it.
Twilight was drifting thickly over it now, and the box-hedged garden,
with its plenteous rose-shrubs and wild sun-dial, was purpled with
shadow.
Echo jumped down without assistance and ran into the hall, throwing off
her hat and coat and pausing before a glass to pat into place the
rebellious whorls of her springing, gold-brown hair before she entered
the dimly-lighted library.
It was a wide, pleasant room, with tradition and gentle birth in every
line of its furnishing. The table held an old China lamp of gilt and
_lapis-lazuli_ blue, and the simple, colonial book-cases were of
rich-veined mahogany which held the same shimmering, tawny lights as
Echo's hair and had leaded-glass doors in key with the silver,
glass-prismed candle-sticks on the mantel-piece. A huge old English
screen of painted leather stood at one side. On the dull green walls
were framed steel engravings of the ancestral home of the Allens in
Dorsetshire and of that sturdy ancestor, in lace and peruke, whose
rugged signature is on the Declaration. The place had but one modern
touch--a splendid portrait of Echo herself that hung between two great
windows--the canvas whose photograph at that moment lay face-down in
Harry Sevier's inner office.
In the room sat her father, the Judge, perusing a magazine. He was a
pale, placid man, straight and grey as a silver-birch, with ivory,
distinguished features that suggested an old daguerreotype and seemed
to call for a silk-velvet waistcoat and a stock. He tossed the
magazine aside as she came to him and stooping, in a swift birdlike way
she had, dropped a kiss on the top of his billowy, grey hair.
"There you are," she chided, "ruining your poor eyes with fine print in
this wretched light!"
She turned the reading-lamp higher and drew the curtains. As she
pulled the heavy folds together they swept from its place a heavy brass
bowl filled with Marechal Niel roses, and it fell with a crash onto a
frail Italian desk of dark rosewood quaintly inlaid with designs in
lighter colour, which sat in a corner.
She sprang to catch it with a cry. "I'm as bad as Uncle Nelson!" she
exclaimed. "How lucky it didn't spill!" She set the bowl back and
passed a hand along the polished desk-top, frowning. "It has made a
terrific dent in the poor old thing!" she said, remorsefully. "It must
have jarred it frightfully. I'm so sorry!" She looked at her father,
who had half risen at her cry. "You were always fond of the little old
desk, though you never used it. I used to love it when I was a child.
It was so mysterious, with its tiny cubby-holes and carvings. Some one
told me once that such foreign desks always had secret drawers and I
used to spend hours trying to find one. Where did it come from? Did
it belong to grandfather?"
"No. It was willed to me many years ago by--a friend. It was when you
were a baby."
"How curious," she said, "for a man to choose a piece of furniture like
that! Why, it's as feminine as a toilet-table!" She came and perched
one small toe on the fender, as he asked: "Where's Nancy!"
"I haven't seen her since luncheon. She was going to tea at Cora
Spottiswoode's."
"Her father has written me she must come home at the end of the week,"
said the Judge. "He says if she doesn't he'll start an action against
somebody for kidnapping--says nobody can fix his coffee just right but
her."
She smiled. The two families were life-long friends and since their
boarding-school days she and Nancy Langham had exchanged annual visits.
"I'll tell her," she said. "I wish she could stay longer, though it's
lonely for her father, no doubt. I love to have her here. She's--fond
of Chilly, and I've been hoping it--might have an influence over him."
The Judge sighed. The name of Chisholm Allen, Echo's twin-brother, was
a synonym in the city for debonair devil-may-care. With the likeliness
that kept him popular even among those staid members of society who did
not countenance his peccadillos, he combined a negligence and
dissipation that from his boyhood had made him a thorn-in-the-flesh to
his father.
"Yes," he said, "she's fond of him. That's why I think she shouldn't
stay too long."
There was silence for a moment. Then he said in a lighter tone, "I
wonder how Sevier's case came out. It was expected to finish to-day,
wasn't it?"
"Oh," she answered, "he lost. The jury found against him. I was there
for an hour, just at the end."
He made an exclamation of surprise, and stole a quick glance at her,
but she had bent down to straighten a shoe-buckle and he could not see
her face. "Ah well," he said, "it won't do him any harm to get a
set-back now and then. Perhaps he needs it. Were there many there?"
"Half the world," she answered. "I saw Cameron Craig."
"So he is in town, eh? I must send a note to the hotel and ask him to
luncheon to-morrow."
She was silent and he said quizzically. "Come, my dear, you mustn't be
such a chin-tilted patrician. 'Other times, other manners.' Craig has
his place, and it's not a low one, either."
She made a move of impatience. "He's a member of the best clubs in his
own city, and all that, I know. He belongs there. But here it is
different. We are not beholden to him. Why should we go out of our
way to treat him like one of us? He isn't, really. He may be a
University man and he may have travelled all over the world. Yes, and
I'll admit he has manners--_a_ manner, if you like--too. But there's
something that keeps him an outsider just the same. Besides, people
tell unpleasant tales about him."
Her father cleared his throat. Gossip had been prolific in tales of
Craig as regarded the fairer--and frailer--sex. He had heard the
stories--unsavoury ones, such as inevitably cling to men, whatever
their business or social standing, who acquire the whispered reputation
of the voluptuary. He had himself, however, a singular reserve of
judgment, coupled with an impatient intolerance of scandal. Men to him
were as he found them, till the event proved otherwise.
"I know what you mean," he said judicially. "He hasn't our traditions
and standards. That's true. He's not born to them. But this is an
uncharitable world, my dear, and half the tattle one hears is apt to be
sheer envy. He is a person of importance. He has a good deal of
influence, as well as money, and is affiliated with men with whom a
large part of my earlier life was associated."
She hardly heard his closing words: "Influence and money!" she
repeated, with a little shrug. "Why need we bother about them! The
Judiciary, thank heaven! has nothing to do with political influence,
and as for money, I should hate to think that what we have came, like
his, from the United Distilleries!"
"Echo!" The name fell sharply behind them.
Both turned--the Judge a little self-consciously--to where his wife
stood in the doorway. She was already dressed for dinner and her dark
corsage set off her white neck and beautifully rounded shoulders--a
cool, statuesque woman, of unfailing poise and manner, with her grey
hair perfectly disposed above a complexion whose tinting was the
despair of many a younger matron. Instinctively the girl's hand had
crept into the Judge's arm, and insensibly the two had drawn a shade
nearer together.
Mrs. Allen stood looking at them a moment, faintly smiling, before she
said deliberately, "That is a ridiculous way of talking. Please let me
remind you that your father was the Trust's counsel for many years, and
until he went on the Bench."
"Oh, I forgot--" she began, distressed. "I only meant--"
"There, there!" the Judge said, frowning. "People feel differently
about those things. You have a perfect right to think in that way, if
you choose."
"I couldn't think anything _you_ did was wrong," she cried
passionately. "And, anyway, giving a company legal advice is very far
from being in its business. _Every one_ has to have lawyers, of
course. They defend even criminals."
He smiled quizzically at her argument. "Well," he countered, "I'm
respectable in my old age, at any rate." He had pressed a bell as he
spoke and to the grizzled negro who now entered he said, "Nelson, has
your Marse Chilly come in yet? If he has I'd like to see him."
The old man shook his head. "Marse Chilly done tellyfoam he won' be
home fo' dinnah, suh."
The Judge pulled his chin, palpably annoyed, but quick to his resentful
mood, Echo laid her hand caressingly on his arm.
"Never mind, dear," she said coaxingly. "Don't fret about Chilly."
Mrs. Allen's voice interposed. "Chilly sent me the message an hour
ago," she said, with an accent that seemed finally to dismiss the
topic. "I think you would better dress now, Echo. Nancy has been in
some time, and dinner's at seven-thirty."