COPELAND’S UNKNOWN BENEFACTOR
Eaton tore March from his office calendar, crumpled it in his hand, and
glanced out of the window as though expecting to see April’s heralds
dancing over the roofs below. It was nearing five o’clock and his big
desk was swept clear of the day’s encumbrances. He paced the floor
slowly, his gaze ranging the walls with their ranks of file-cases. A
particular box in the “C” section seemed to exert a spell upon him. He
glanced at it several times, then opened a drawer in his desk, peered
in, and absently closed it. He was waiting for Copeland, and as usual,
when he expected a visitor, was planning the interview to its minutest
details.
Since the reorganization of the Copeland-Farley Company he had
been seeing much of Copeland. The winter had wrought changes in
Billy--changes that at first provoked cynical comment from persons
who had no faith in his reformation. But people were now beginning to
say that they always knew Billy had the right stuff in him. Even the
fact--which was pretty generally known--that Billy had narrowly escaped
disaster didn’t matter particularly. Such fellows were always lucky. If
the decision in the Kinney patent case hadn’t come just when it did,
he would have been down and out; but it _had_ come. Yes; he was a lucky
devil.
Eaton was breathing easier now, as days passed and Copeland seemed to
have settled into a sober and industrious routine. He was even giving
time to broadening the scope and effectiveness of the Bigger Business
Club, and had accepted a place on the municipal reform committee of
the Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Jeremiah A. Amidon pointed to his boss
with pride. Jerry had risen to the dignity of a standing invitation to
Sunday evening tea at Mrs. Copeland’s and was the proudest and happiest
of Jerries.
Three slight snarls of a desk buzzer, marked, to the attentive ear,
by an interval between the second and third, spelled Copeland in the
office code. Eaton raised his arm and pressed a button attached to a
swinging cord over his desk. By this system acceptable visitors could
be announced by the girl in the reception room and disposed of at long
range. If Eaton didn’t want to be bothered, he made no response. This
was only one of his many devices for safeguarding his time. When he
was studying a case, he ignored the presence of his most remunerative
clients on the theory that they were unlikely to have anything of
importance to impart. It was a fair assumption that before he undertook
any case he extracted from the client’s head and stored in a file-box
all the information of which that particular client was possessed.
Clients resented this treatment, but as Eaton was admittedly the best
patent lawyer in three States, they were obliged to humor him.
Copeland entered with a quick, springy step. Jerry had persuaded him to
spend an hour three times a week at Gaylord’s, and as a result Copeland
was in prime condition. He nodded to Eaton and sat down in the chair
the lawyer pushed toward him.
“The state of your desk fills me with envy; I never get mine as clean
as that. If I turn my back, somebody throws something on it.”
“Oh, my system has its disadvantages; strangers coming in think I
haven’t any business. You wanted to speak about those notes?”
“Yes; they’re due to-morrow and I’m ready to take them up. Our
merchandise bills are cleaned up, and my personal obligations are all
taken care of. Our credit’s A 1. The White River National is taking
good care of us and they’re not as fussy as the Western was.”
“The Western isn’t a bank,” remarked Eaton; “it’s a pawnshop with
a third-degree attachment. About the notes,” he continued, tipping
himself back in his chair and crossing his slender legs, “you don’t
have to pay them to-morrow. They can be carried longer--indefinitely.
It’s just as you say, however. It might be best to accept an extension
of three or six months.”
“No, thanks! I’ve got the money to pay, and you may be dead sure it’s
a comfortable feeling to know I’ve got it! I hope I’ll never have to
sweat as I did for a year or two.” He frowned, and slapped his gloves
together. “Look here, Eaton, you’re the hardest man to thank I ever
saw, but for God’s sake, don’t ever think I don’t appreciate all you’ve
done for me! You saved me--hauled me out when I was going down for the
last time! I don’t know why you did it; there was no reason why you or
anybody else should have done it.”
“It’s not I you have to thank; it’s an enlightened judiciary that
upheld Kinney’s patents on Ivory Cement machinery.”
“There may be something in that,” Copeland admitted, “but there are
other things I want to speak of. I insist on speaking of all of them.
In picking up that Reynolds stock as you did--”
“Please stick to facts! It was our blithe gazelle Amidon who did that.
I honestly didn’t know it was in existence till he came to me about it.
Thank Jerry!”
“Thank him! I’m going to fire him if he doesn’t quit working me so
hard,” laughed Copeland. “But you backed him, and advanced him the
money. The way that boy strolled in with that certificate just as
Eichberg was jamming me into a corner is the last thing I’ll think of
when I die.”
“Strong sense of the dramatic, that Jerry!” observed Eaton musingly.
“Great loss to the stage, his devotion to commerce.”
“He can sell goods, and he knows how to hypnotize other fellows into
doing it. I’m giving him all the rope he wants. He’s the smartest
youngster on the street, and I’m proud of him. There’s more than that;
I’m going to tell you, because you’ve been mighty good to me and I want
you to know just how desperate I was last November. I want you to know
how near bottom I’d gone. Eaton, I tried to burn the store the night
before the Western notes came due--and I’d have done it--I’d have done
it if Jerry hadn’t stopped me!--God!” he groaned. His frame shook with
repulsion and abhorrence and he turned his head to avoid Eaton’s eyes.
“It’s a good thing, Copeland,” said the lawyer quietly, “that we’re
not allowed to be as bad as we want to be in this world. No man is
ever that! That, for a lack of a better word, is my religion. Let’s go
back to the notes. You say you prefer to pay them; but that’s wholly
optional. It had occurred to me that you might want to keep the money
in the business, and if you do it’s yours, quite indefinitely.”
Copeland shook his head and drew out a check.
“I made a big clean-up on my Cement stock and now that I’m out of it
I’m never going to monkey on the outside again. Here you are, with
interest!”
Eaton read the check, mentally verified the interest and opened the top
drawer of his desk.
“There are four notes of twenty-five thousand each,” he remarked,
as he bent over his desk and wrote “Paid” across the four slips of
paper. “They were made to me--you remember? As I told you at the
time, I wasn’t making the advance myself, and I deserve no thanks for
negotiating the loan--none whatever. You’re entitled to the canceled
notes, of course; but perhaps you’ll be satisfied to let me destroy
them here in your presence. The reason for that is that I endorsed the
notes to the person who made the advance, to protect your creditor in
case of my death. That person is very anxious not to be known in the
matter.”
“I think I ought to know,” Copeland replied. “A debt like that can’t
just be passed over. I’d be more comfortable if I knew.”
“Perhaps--” began Eaton.
Copeland shook his head and put out his hand.
Eaton bent a quick, penetrating glance upon him, then gave him the
notes. Copeland’s face went white as he read the endorsements.
“Fanny!” he gasped chokingly. He bent forward and grasped Eaton’s arm.
“This is a trick; a ghastly joke! She never would have done it; no
human being would have done this after--after--”
“No human being--no!” replied Eaton, swinging round in his chair so
that he did not face Copeland for a moment.
Copeland’s hand shook as he looked again at the endorsements.
“But, Eaton, you had no right to do it! You knew I wouldn’t have taken
her help--not--after--”
“No, I knew you wouldn’t. And she knew you wouldn’t. That, of course,
is why she did it in the way she did.”
The intentness of Copeland’s thought showed in his face; he continued
to turn over the notes in his shaking hands.
“But you will tell her how beyond any thanks this is--beyond anything
I can do or say!” He bent his head and went on brokenly. “It would be
cruel, Eaton, if it weren’t so kind, so generous, so merciful!”
“I think you have done enough already to show your appreciation,”
replied Eaton. “I’ll say to you that you’ve done what she expected--and
what, to be frank about it, I did not expect. At least, I wasn’t very
sanguine. You’d gone pretty far--farther than men go and come back
again. You’ve proved your mettle. If you go on as you are, you are
safe. And I’m glad--happier about it than I’ve been about anything in a
mighty long time.”
“I can’t understand it. I was worse than ever you imagine. I treated
her as a man doesn’t treat his dog!”
“Yes,” Eaton acquiesced, “it was all that.”
“And you can see how it leaves me,” Copeland moaned, crumpling the
notes in his hand,--“with a debt these things don’t express; a debt
that can’t be discharged!”
“There’s something you can do, Copeland, if you will. She hasn’t asked
it; I have no reason to think it has even occurred to her. It’s my own
idea--absolutely--I want you to be sure of that. It strikes me as being
only decent, only just.”
“Yes, yes!” Copeland eagerly assented.
“I’m going to speak plainly, Copeland. It’s about Manning. You let
the impression get abroad that your wife had given you cause to doubt
her loyalty. Yes; I know all about it. Manning was your friend,
not hers. The injury was not only to her; it was to that man, too.
Your use of him, to cast suspicion on the woman you had sworn to
shield and protect, was infamous, dastardly! Manning, I have reason
to believe,”--his eyes ranged the file-cases,--“is a gentleman, a
high-minded fellow, who admired your wife only as any friend might be
expected to admire her; but you used him--made him an excuse to hide
your own infamy. You hadn’t the courage to bring him into court; you
merely let some of your new-found friends whisper insinuations that
were more damning than a direct charge of infidelity. Manning cut your
acquaintance, I believe, when he found what you had done. You owe him
an apology, at least. And if you want to act the part of a man, you
will go to Mrs. Copeland and tell her the truth.”
Eaton’s feelings had for once got the better of him; several times his
voice betrayed deep emotion. He turned toward his desk as the buzzer
sounded a cryptic message. He telegraphed a reply, and a moment later
the sound of steps in the corridor was followed by the closing of a
door.
“I will do it--I will do it,” said Copeland. “As I began to get my
bearings again, that thing troubled me; it has been in my mind to speak
to you about it. God knows, I want to make reparation for all the evil
I’ve done. I was a brute, a coarse beast. And you’re right that Manning
is a gentleman, and a mighty fine fellow--he never was anything else!
I’ll go to him and be glad to do it. But to see Fanny--that is not so
easy! You can understand that, Eaton. I must have time to think it
over.”
“I think it best for you to see Mrs. Copeland first,” replied Eaton,
“then Manning.”
Copeland, pondering with knit brows, nodded a reluctant acquiescence.
“Well, I will do as you say; but what if she’d refuse to see me? It’s
going to be mighty hard,” he pleaded.
“It’s conceivable that she’d refuse, of course. She never meant for you
to know of her help, and I’ve broken faith in telling you; but I’ll
take the responsibility of sending you to see her. And I made this
other suggestion--about Manning--with a feeling that sooner or later it
would occur to you. I’m glad you’ve met me in this spirit. It confirms
my impression of you--it satisfies me that I was right in assuming that
once you got back in the straight road you would keep to it.”
“I’m not going to disappoint you, Eaton. I don’t intend to be pointed
to as a failure in this community. The mistakes I’ve made have been
bad ones--the very worst! God knows, I’m humble enough when I think
of Fanny. It was like her to want to save me. That’s what makes it so
hard--that it was like her to do it!”
“Yes,” said Eaton gravely; “it was like her.”
He took his overcoat from a closet and drew it on, mused a moment,
apparently absorbed in contemplation of the interior of his hat.
“Mrs. Copeland is here, waiting to see me. She came a moment ago and is
in the next room. She had no idea, of course, that you were likely to
be here--rest assured of that. My business with her is not so important
as yours. Come!”
Copeland, startled, irresolute, followed him to the door of a smaller
room used for consultations. Eaton opened it and stepped back.
“I shall be dining at the club later, if you care to see me,” he said,
and vanished.