THERE surely is a lot in this conscious-virtue notion! I had plenty of
the quality next morning.
Things seemed brighter. I felt like myself once more. It was
inconceivable that the horrible misunderstanding between Celene Kingsley
and myself could continue very long; I was ready to make confession as
to my temporary lunacy in the city, and my new optimism encouraged me
to believe that she would find excuse for me. At any rate, I was soon
assured that whatever she had learned from that detective, whoever he
was, she had kept it to herself. From that reticence I drew excellent
augury that she was not out to ruin me. If she had opened her mouth
about my past I would have known it the moment I stepped out on the
street in Levant. But every person I met ducked polite salute, and I
met many persons because the village was full on account; of the town
meeting.
At ten o’clock the town hall was crowded and in a short time the
cut-and-dried preliminaries were over.
My uncle was with his associates on the platform, and the stare he gave
me when he caught my eyes was so demoniac that I was careful not to look
his way again for some time.
There was evidence of strained anticipation everywhere in the gathering.
I heard voters whispering that Deck Sidney proposed to spring something.
But nobody, according to what I could hear, presumed to put in words
what they guessed.
My uncle was mashing his personal batteries, I saw.
An unemotional lawyer explained the purpose of the meeting, and then
the moderator called on Judge Kingsley, as town treasurer, to give the
financial standing of the town.
Uncle Deck fairly bored the judge with his gaze when the old man
walked to the platform and I was as intent with my scrutiny, for I
was wondering how Kingsley would get through with it. He was white and
somewhat shaky, but he was the same old cold proposition when he faced
the voters.
“I hope you will pardon a word on a personal matter,” he said, as he
unfolded his papers; “but I have returned from a business trip and find
serious illness in my family. I have been keeping watch at the bedside
of my dear wife and my thoughts are not clear enough to enable me to
make the little address I had contemplated for to-day. I will only say
that the movement to clear the town of its debt is very praiseworthy
and my report will show that the thing may be done with a little extra
effort. Our only considerable indebtedness consists of town bonds
amounting to eight thousand dollars and current items as follows.” Then
he went on to give the list of unpaid town orders, of which only a few
were extant. “I see here representatives of the bondholders,” he
added, “who will check my figures if such assurance is required by any
voter--and probably most of the parties who hold town orders are in the
meeting. I hope the town orders will be presented for payment at once so
that there may be no floating indebtedness.” He folded up his papers.
My uncle got up and stamped down his trousers legs.
“Now, you voters,” he called, “ask your questions!”
But not a voice was raised.
“I’m no lawyer and I’m making no threats,” my uncle went on. “But after
the way this meeting has been advertised, and after the call that
has been made, I reckon that the men who have been holding out claims
against this town and who haven’t presented them will be left to whistle
for their money. I propose to have action taken that will outlaw those
claims.”
Judge Kingsley turned slowly on my uncle and stood as stiff as a stake.
“To what claims do you refer, Selectman Sidney? Do you question the
accuracy of my report?”
“Come out of your holes, you old woodchucks!” shouted Uncle Deck,
looking past the judge at the voters. Men scowled at him and grumbled.
The judge walked toward the First Selectman and shook his papers.
“You must talk to me, sir! I am the treasurer of this town and have been
for a good many years. Here before the voters I demand that you specify
claims.”
“I’ll specify, then! How about the town notes that are out with your
name on them?”
A murmur ran through the assemblage.
“Just one moment, sir! Weigh your words,” warned the judge. “You are
attacking my financial reputation; there is a law for slanderers and
I have many witnesses here. Do you say there is one single town note
extant with my name on it?”
“I say there are a lot of ’em!”
This time many voters raised voices of protest and there were hisses.
“That’s the thanks a straight man gets for trying to protect his town
against a thief, eh?” raged my uncle, his ready temper bursting loose.
“If the judge don’t collect fifty thousand dollars damages for this,
then I’m no guesser,” declared Dodovah Vose, who sat beside me.
Uncle Deck tramped to the edge of the platform and with wagging finger
selected a man in the throng; the man was Farmer Bailey.
“Bailey, you hold a town note with Kingsley’s name on it! You know you
do! Are you going to sit there and see it canceled as no good by the
vote of this town?”
Bailey rose slowly and everybody listened in deep silence.
“I hold no note of any kind with Judge Kingsley’s name on it.”
“Yah-h-h! You have told me that before. But you don’t dare to stand here
in town meeting and say it under oath.”
“Send down that Bible on the stand and I’ll take oath and kiss the
Book,” offered Bailey. There was applause and the judge quieted it by
raising his hand.
“I will pay double for any note with my name on it as treasurer, and I
will turn the money over to the town as a gift,” he said.
I despised him when he made that bluff, though of course he had to do
it. Really, in spite of his devilish temper and his spirit of revenge
my uncle was twice the man Judge Kingsley was in that moment. I wasn’t
trying to figure out the righteousness of the thing on either side; the
judge was fighting for his very life, as well as his standing, and my
uncle, though he was working for the good of the town according to his
lights, was satisfying his old grudge--the real passion of his life.
A voter rose and bellowed until he secured silence; they were giving the
judge an ovation.
“I want to put in a word here, fellow-townsmen! Money has been borrowed
on town notes. A certain eminent man you all know tried to borrow
from me and said I could escape taxation. And now he is backed by the
liars--”
“And barked at by the liars, too,” yelled another man.
“I stand up here for Selectman Sidney, who has given his time and effort
to help this town out of the clutches--”
They howled him down. But by this time the defenders of my uncle were
howling, too.
“This meeting is going to break up in a free fight if a stop isn’t put
to this jawing,” said Dodovah Vose. He jumped up on the settee and made
himself heard. “I move we adjourn!”
The apprehensive moderator put the motion, the judge’s friends carried
it, and the meeting was dissolved.
My uncle leaped off the platform and came raging at me through the
crowd.
“It’s you--you damnation imp of Gehenna! Racing and chasing over this
town yesterday! I had a line on you. Saving that old whelp from what was
coming to him!” He put his hands over his head and wriggled his fingers.
“God! I don’t know what you have done--you got that money by robbing
a bank, probably. But you have done it--you have jumped up and down on
your family! You have got to answer to me!”
Men pushed away in panic and left us in a ring. But I had no notion of
entertaining the old goggle-eyes of Levant by fisticuffs with my uncle.
I folded my arms.
“According to your reckoning, Uncle Deck, I have owed you something for
a long time. I want to stand square with you! Go ahead and collect!”
He did not seem to understand at once.
“Go ahead and beat me up! I won’t raise a finger.” Yes, I would have
taken the beating--I knew inside of me that I did owe my uncle something
of the sort.
“Not by a dam-site, he sha’n’t beat you up,” declared Dodovah Vose. “I
saved you from him once,” he said, careless of revelations, “and I’ll
save you again.”
So, after waiting a minute and enduring my uncle’s tongue instead of his
fists, I went away with Landlord Vose.
I was not in the mood for any further paltering or palavering in regard
to my personal and private standing with the Kingsley family. I had a
collection to make and I proposed to go and make it. I ought to
have known better than to force the issue at that time. But youth is
headstrong, the sense of my injuries was hot, and I felt that if ever
the judge might be willing to show his gratitude that would be the time.
He was crossing the square on his way home and I left Mr. Vose and
hurried after. I caught up with him at the front door.
“I want to come in and have a word with you and with your daughter,” I
told him.
“Impossible,” he said, curtly. “I’m afraid my wife is at death’s door.
And my daughter--she is very bitter!”
“I propose to have you explain enough so that she will not be bitter,
sir. It’s my due. You know what kind of a service I have rendered. I
have made an enemy of my uncle--ruined all my prospects to help you.
There are things you can tell your daughter to--”
“How does my daughter enter into any affairs between you and myself? You
must let me alone in my sorrow. Later I will pay you for your services.
I am grateful. If I were not in such distress I would explain how
grateful I am. I will pray that I may be spared till I can pay back to
you what I owe.”
“Good Cæsar! I don’t want your money, Judge Kingsley. I’ll work and earn
more to help you out of your difficulties. I only ask you to be a man
and make your daughter understand--”
“My daughter again! You don’t presume--”
“I do presume, sir. She was kind to me until this horrible
misunderstanding came up. I expect you to tell her that I am your best
friend. It’s my right!”
I’ll never forget the look he gave me. I’ll wager a good bit that
the idea of such enormity on my part never came into his Kingsley
consciousness till that moment. Even then he did not seem to be just
sure that he understood.
“I don’t expect anything definite from you or her, Judge Kingsley, until
I have made good in the world. But I do look to you to give me a square
deal. That’s only what you owe to me, man to man.”
“I owe you money and I will pay it. There is no other sort of bargain
between us.”
He stepped into his house and shut the door in my face.
In that damnable situation I was minded to follow him and have it out,
even if I were obliged to expose him. However, if death were hovering
over that house it was a sanctuary I could not invade. But bitter
thoughts raged in me when I turned away; I only asked to be set right
with Celene.
I understand that this part of my confession will elicit little sympathy
for me from the casual reader who takes the comfortable view that the
world is full of girls and if one does not swing low enough on the bough
there’s always another within reach. But mine was the exceptional
case where the first love had become an obsession and all my spirit of
persistency was flaming in me. I have not figured out as yet whether the
troubles into which my general persistency in all matters has slammed
me overbalance the fruits it has brought to me--but I reckon, after all,
I’ll have to take my hat off to my persistency. If I had been a quitter
I would not have played the biggest game in my life--and I’m coming to
that right soon.
Once more circumstances were forcing me, though I needed mighty little
forcing, to leave Levant at that juncture in my affairs.
“Damn ’em!” I blazed out to Dodovah Vose when I stamped into the
tavern, “I’ve got to show ’em! I’ll show ’em I can make good.”
He blinked at me.
“But you have shown ’em already,” he said. He thought, of course, that
I was speaking about the general public in Levant. “And if I was in your
place I wouldn’t give a dam what your uncle says to you.”
Less than two hours later Landlord Vose revised that advice. He rushed
up to my room where I was sorting some papers, having resolved to travel
light when I did go.
“Get under--get under, young Sidney,” he gasped.
“Under what?”
“I reckon I mean get out. It’s your uncle Deck! Bailey and some other
of them yawp-mouths in this place have been twitting and tormenting him
and dropping hints, and he’s worse than a sore-eared bulldog after a
scruffing. He’s coming with a double-barreled shot-gun. He is! He’s
drunk, son, and there’s no dealing with him. He lays it all to you!”
“I won’t run.”
“But he isn’t responsible, son. To say nothing of what will happen to
you, it means that he’ll go to State prison. You’re sane and sober and
you ought to be willing to save him from himself.”
Right then Mr. Vose said something which appealed to me. I had stepped
outside my family--I had conspired against my uncle--I had blocked
his dearest ambition, iniquitous though it was. By hanging around and
allowing him to take pot-shots at me I would be aggravating his
troubles and bringing more serious afflictions upon him. A dead nephew,
shot-riddled, would be a damning exhibit A in his trial for murder!
I picked up my few belongings and escaped from the back door of the
tavern, hid in a cross-road till Dodovah Vose’s stableman came with a
hitch, and I caught a train at a station down the line; hustling out of
my native town on the run, by dint of practice, was getting to be one of
the best performances in my list of tricks.
I counted my money when I was on my way to the city. I had not been
keeping any strict account between the judge and myself; from the common
stock I had been paying expenses and spending as loose as peas in order
to hasten our journey back East. I found around two hundred and fifty
dollars in my pockets, and I reflected, with a sort of grim zest in the
humor of the thing, that I could fairly claim most of this money as my
own--the tainted cash from my poker profits.
I went straight to Jodrey Vose when I arrived in the metropolis and he
looked neither surprised nor overjoyed.
“Where have you been?” he inquired.
“Oh, sort of loafing around up-country--killing time!”
He squinted at me sourly.
“I can’t say that you’re doing any great credit to my training, young
Sidney!”
“You are right, Captain Vose, but I’m turning over a new leaf and I’m
out to make good. I am hoping that I can do something in the case of
Anson C. Doughty so that I can get back into the diving business and
keep on the job hereafter.”
“Then you’ll go back to diving and keep out from under plug-hats, will
you?”
“Yes, sir!”
He looked at me for a long time and then he pulled out a letter.
“This here,” he said, tapping it, “is something more about that _Golden
Gate_ treasure. There’s a new crowd on the rampage about it. From
somebody in the old crowd they have got hold of my name. I came nigh
trying it on once, as I have told you. But it’s a gamble; I am old and
I don’t want it. You are young and there’s nothing as yet for you on
the Atlantic coast, and you might grab in on this. They want an Eastern
diver because the divers out there are tied up with the big concerns and
can’t be depended on to keep their mouths shut--so this letter says.”
“Probably it’s a pretty uncertain proposition, sir.”
“Well, you don’t expect to fall into anything very certain, do you, a
diver blacklisted from Kittery to the Keys?” he demanded, tartly.
“No, sir.”
“I know nothing about these people, their plans, or anything. But I’ll
do this for you, if you want me to. I’ll wire this party and tell him I
am sending you on. After you are started you can post him from some
place as to when you’ll arrive. Better give him a wire from time to time
to keep his interest up. How’s your wallet?”
“I think it’s all right, sir.”
“If you’re lying to me that’s your own lookout. Haven’t sold your
diving-dress, have you?”
“I have it safe in storage, sir.”
“Well, I’m glad you kept remembering that you’re a diver--and the best
one I ever turned out!” That was the first word of high praise he had
given me. He got up and shook my hand. “Now go dive, son, and after you
raise that four million from the wreck of the Golden Gate come back and
tell me all about it.”
I did not linger in the city; there were too many possibilities in the
way of Dawlins and Doughtys.
Two hours later I was headed across the continent with my diving-dress
in its canvas bag and the address of one Captain Rask Holstrom written
in my note-book. I was pretty dizzy with the haste of it all and felt
like the human shuttle between oceans--but I possessed considerable more
serenity than I did when I began that lunatic lope with Judge Kingsley.