HOW MR. HARLEY FOUND HIMSELF A FORGER
In the economy of the Harleys, the gray mare was the better horse, at
least the gray mare thought so. Mrs. Hanway-Harley put no faith in Mr.
Harley. He was an acquiescent if not an obedient husband, and, rather
than bicker, would submit to be moderately henpecked. When the
henpecking was carried to excess, Mr. Harley did not peck back; he
clapped on his hat, bolted for the door, and escaped. These measures,
while effective in so far that they carried Mr. Harley beyond the
immediate range of Mrs. Hanway-Harley's guns, left that wife and mother
with a depleted opinion of Mr. Harley. She could not respect one who
failed to give her battle, being offered proper provocation; and in that
Mrs. Hanway-Harley was one with all the world. To fight is now and then
an obligation.
Thinking thus lightly of Mr. Harley, and remembering, too, that Dorothy
could coil him round her finger, quell him with a tear, Mrs.
Hanway-Harley did not take him into her confidence as to those love
proffers of Storri, and Dorothy's rebellion. What would have been the
good? Mr. Harley's advice was nothing, while his countenance, as far as
it went, would be given to Dorothy the disobedient. Also, he would go to
Senator Hanway with the tangle. Such a course might bring her brother
actively upon the field; and Mrs. Hanway-Harley had gleaned enough from
her talk with Senator Hanway to know that, should he assume a part, it
would not be in support of her interest. These considerations came and
went in Mrs. Hanway-Harley's mind, with the result that she decided to
say nothing to Mr. Harley.
Dorothy, for argument of modesty and a girl's reserve, emulated her
mother's example of silence. For one thing, she felt herself in no
danger. As against the demands of Mrs. Hanway-Harley, Dorothy, thus far,
had held the high ground. Moreover, she was confident of final victory.
No one could compel her either to receive Storri's addresses or cease to
think of Richard. Dorothy added to this the knowledge that, should she
draw Mr. Harley into her troubles by even so much as a word of their
existence, Mrs. Hanway-Harley might be relied upon from that moment to
charge him with being the author of every disappointment she underwent.
Thus it came to pass that, as Mr. Harley complacently sat down to dinner
that particular New Year's evening, he had not been given a murmur of
those loves and hates and commands and defiances and promises and
intermediations which made busy the closing days of the recent year for
Dorothy, Richard, Bess, Storri, and Mrs. Hanway-Harley. Mr. Harley
possessed an excellent appetite that New Year's evening; it might have
been diminished of edge had his ignorance been less.
Mrs. Hanway-Harley looked for Storri to drop in, but since the promise
of his coming was known only to herself--she did not care to furnish the
news of it to Dorothy the rebellious--the failure of that nobleman to
appear bred no general dismay. The dinner went soberly forward, and Mr.
Harley especially derived great benefit therefrom.
Mr. Harley had just finished his final glass of wine, and was saying
something fictional about a gentleman at the Arlington upon whom he
ought to call, and what a bore calling upon the fictional gentleman
would be, when Storri's note came into his hands. He glanced it over,
and then seized upon it as the very thing to furnish a look of integrity
to his story of the mythical one. He gave the note a petulant slap with
the back of his fingers, and remarked:
"I declare! Here he is writing me to come at once."
Mr. Harley got into his hat and coat, and then got into the street,
observing as he did so that he feared the business in hand might keep
him far into the morning.
The guilty truth was this: Mr. Harley concealed a private purpose to
play cards with a select circle of statesmen who owned a taste to begin
the year with draw poker at Chamberlin's. However, there existed in the
destinies of Mr. Harley not the faintest call for all this elaboration
of deceit. Mrs. Hanway-Harley would not have uttered a whisper of
objection had he openly declared for an absence of a fortnight, with the
design of playing poker, nothing but poker, every moment of the time.
But it is the vain fancy of some men to believe themselves and their
company those things most longed for at home, when the precise converse
of such condition of longing is the one which exists, and this fancy was
among the weaknesses of Mr. Harley. Besides, he revered the truth so
much that, like his Sunday coat, he employed it only on rare occasions,
and when advantage could be arrived at in no other way. Truth was a
pearl, and Mr. Harley felt strongly against casting it before the swine
of every common occurrence, when mendacity would do as well or better.
Wherefore, and to keep his hand in, Mr. Harley invariably romanced in
whatever he vouchsafed of himself or his habits to Mrs. Hanway-Harley.
Nor was this so unjust as at a first blink it might seem. If Mr. Harley
misled Mrs. Hanway-Harley as to his personal movements, she in return
told him nothing at all of her own, the result, to wit, total darkness,
being the same for both. However, they were perfectly satisfied, rightly
esteeming the situation one wherein, if ignorance were not bliss, at
least it was folly to be wise.
The winter evening, still, not cold, was clear and crisp, with the snow
squeaking cheerfully under foot, and Mr. Harley waddled on his way
towards Storri's door in that blandness of mood which comes to one whose
wine and dinner and stomach are in comfortable accord. Waddled is the
word; for with his short legs, and that profundity of belt proper to
gentlemen who have reached the thither side of middle age, and given
years to good eating and drinking, Mr. Harley had long since ceased to
walk.
Mr. Harley was not surprised by the urgent character of Storri's
summons. Doubtless, the business related to Credit Magellan, and what
steps in Wall Street and the Senate were being taken for a conquest of
Northern Consolidated. Affairs in those theaters of commercial effort
were as they should be. Things were moving slowly, they must of
necessity move slowly, and Storri had grown impatient. The Russian's
warmth was expected; Mr. Harley had read him long since like a primer
book. Storri was excitable, volatile, full of fever and impulse, prone
to go off at tangents. In some stress of nerves he had sent for Mr.
Harley to urge expedition or ask for explanations. The thing had chanced
before. Mr. Harley would cool him into calmness with a dozen words.
Storri's poise restored, Mr. Harley would seek those speculative
statesmen, lusting for draw-poker. He should be with them by ten
o'clock--a ripe hour for cards. Mr. Harley would oppose poker in its
usual form and argue for table-stakes--five thousand dollars a corner.
Two of the speculative statesmen were not worth five thousand dollars.
So much the better; in case he were fortunate, Mr. Harley would accept
their paper. The last was to be preferred to money. Mr. Harley had many
irons of legislation in the congressional fires; a statesman's note of
hand should operate to pave the way when his influence and his vote were
to be asked for. Should Mr. Harley lose at poker, his losses would be
charged against that railroad and those coal companies whose interests
about Congress it was Mr. Harley's mission to conserve. There was no
doubt of the propriety of such charges; they belonged in any account
which was intended to register the cost of legislation. If you but stop
and think, you must see the truth of the above. Thus cantered the
cogitations of Mr. Harley until, fetching up at his journey's end, he
sent in his card to Storri.
At Mr. Harley's appearance, Storri's arm-tossing and raving ended
abruptly. He became oily and purringly suave, and bid Mr. Harley light a
cigar which he tendered. A cat will play with a mouse before coming to
the final kill; and there was a broad streak of the feline in Storri.
Now that his victim was within spring, he would play with him as
preliminary to the supreme joy of that last lethal crunch.
Following the usual salutations, Mr. Harley sat in peace and favor with
himself, waiting for Storri to begin. He would let Storri vent his
excitement, blow off steam, as Mr. Harley expressed it; and then he
would go about those calmative steps of explanation and assurance
suggested of the case.
Storri strode up and down, eying Mr. Harley with a mixed expression of
cruelty and triumph which, had Mr. Harley caught the picture of it,
might have made him feel uneasy. However, Mr. Harley was not looking at
Storri. He was thinking on ending the interview as quickly and
conveniently as he might, and hurrying posthaste to those speculative
ones.
"Why did I bring you here to-night?" asked Storri at last.
"Northern Consolidated, I suppose," said Mr. Harley, looking up.
Storri laughed, and a white flash of his teeth showed in a tigerish way.
"Come!" cried Storri, smiting his hands in a kind of rapture of cruelty;
"I will not, what you call it, beat about the bush. It is not Credit
Magellan; it is not Northern Consolidated; no, it is not business at
all. What! shall Storri be forever at some grind of business? Shall he
never pause for love? My Czar would tell you another tale. Listen, my
friend. I have done you the honor--I, Storri, a Russian nobleman, have
done you the honor to adore your daughter."
Mr. Harley gaped and stared; he could not have been more impressed had
the statue of Liberty which topped the Capitol dome stepped down for a
stroll in the Capitol grounds. And yet he was not shocked; if Dorothy
had decided on Storri for her husband, well and good; he was too
indulgent a father to quarrel with her.
"I have spoken to Mrs. Hanway-Harley of my passion," continued Storri,
still pacing to and fro. "She is so charming as to encourage it."
"Why, then," broke in Mr. Harley, in evident relief, "you have gone the
right way about the matter. If my wife favors you, assuredly you may
count upon my consent."
"Bah!" returned Storri, snapping his fingers. "Mrs. Hanway-Harley
consents; you consent; I am flattered! The fastidious Miss Dorothy,
however, refuses my love--puts it aside! Storri is not the man! On my
soul! Storri is declined by a little American who draws her blood from
peasants!" and Storri threw his hands palm upward, expressing
self-contempt in view of the insult thus put upon him.
"Does my daughter decline your love?"
"It is not that." Storri could not for his vanity's sake, even after he
himself had used them, accept those terms. "Her heart has--what shall we
say?--a tenant. Your daughter has gone among her own kind with her love.
It is that fellow Storms--it is he whom your daughter's taste prefers."
"Dorothy loves Mr. Storms," said Mr. Harley, speaking slowly, as men
will on the receipt of surprising news. "And she does not love you."
After a thoughtful pause, Mr. Harley concluded: "It is a subject about
which I should hesitate to counsel my daughter."
"I do not ask you to counsel her; you shall compel her."
"Why, sir!" exclaimed Mr. Harley, starting up and growing apoplectic
with anger, "do you imagine that I'll force my child into your arms? If
you were that Czar whom you are so fond of quoting, I would not do it!"
This came off in a great burst, and Mr. Harley in his turn began to pace
the floor. The two passed and repassed each other as they walked up and
down, Mr. Harley puffing and swelling, Storri surveying him with leering
superiority.
"Sit down!" cried Storri suddenly, after a minute spent in marching and
countermarching. "I will show you that you are in my hand."
Storri had become calm and business-like; his new manner mystified Mr.
Harley and worked upon him. He dropped into the chair to which Storri
motioned him. From his pocket, Storri took out those French shares.
"Do you see where you forged my name?" said he. "Can you tell me the
punishment for forgery?"
"Forgery!" panted Mr. Harley, in a whirl of rage and wonder. "Did you
not tell me to write your name? Was it not to sustain your deal in
sugar?"
"Come--you Harley--you John Harley," returned Storri, his cruelty
beginning to bubble into exultation, "how small a thing you are when
opposed to Storri! See, now; it begins when you sacrifice for me those
seven thousand dollars. It was then I set a trap for you--you, the
cunning Mr. Harley! It was so simple; I need only give you a chance to
forge my name and you forge it. From that moment you have had but the
one alternative. You must follow my commands, or you must take the
common course of criminals, and go to prison. And now--you Harley--you
John Harley--you, who pride yourself for your respectability, for your
place in the world, for your illustrious relative Senator Hanway--hear
me: You are to be my slave--my dog to fetch and carry. You are to do my
will; or I swear by my Czar and by the heart in the breast of my Czar
that I'll drag you before the world as a felon."
Storri delivered this menace with a ruthless energy that sent it home
like a javelin. It struck the color from the ruddy countenance of Mr.
Harley, and left him white as linen three times bleached.
"Yes," went on the vindictive Storri in an exultant crow, "did you
little people believe you were to laugh at Storri and pass unpunished?
Did you think to insult him and escape his vengeance? Bah! the
super-fine Dorothy is to spurn Storri for a varlet like this Storms! She
is to laugh at Storri's love, and tell how she refused a nobleman!
Excellent; we shall see her laugh when her father--Mr. Harley--Mr. John
Harley--the great Mr. John Harley--brother-by-law of the still greater
Senator Hanway--stands in the dock as a forger. Will not our Dorothy
laugh? John Harley, forger; why not!"
Mr. Harley sat ghastly and still, while Storri rambled on for the mere
pleasure of torture. He did not leave Mr. Harley a hope wherewith to
prop himself. The deal in sugar had been in Mr. Harley's sole name--an
individual deal. There was not the flourish of a pen to prove Storri's
interest. Storri would even show how, for that very sugar stock, in that
very market, he was dealing the other way, selling ten thousand shares.
"But you paid your half of the losses in the deal in my name." Mr.
Harley's voice, commonly rich and full, was huskily dry. "That, when I
show it, will prove your interest."
"And how are you to show it?" cried Storri. "I paid in money; I did not
give you a check. There's not an exculpatory scrap at bank or broker's
in your defense. You make a deal; you are crowded for margins; you have
my French shares in your pocket as my agent in another transaction; you
offer them; the broker will not accept, they do not have my signature;
you are back in five minutes with a forgery, and obtain the money you
require. The thing is complete; I tell you, Harley--Mr. John Harley--you
are trapped. There is no escape; I have my knee on your neck."
Mr. Harley, still white, was beginning to regain his mental feet. He saw
the apparent hold that Storri had upon him. It was enough. To be merely
charged as a forger--to be apprehended as a criminal, would be ruin,
utter ruin, even if the affair were there to end. It would mean the
downfall of Senator Hanway's hopes of a White House. The simple
arrest--it would go like wildfire throughout the press--meant
destruction for Senator Hanway, for Dorothy, for Mrs. Hanway-Harley, for
all.
White and stricken, Mr. Harley pondered these questions, while Storri
watched him. Storri himself did not care to push for extremes. In his
vain egotism, which was like a madness, he would not have scrupled to
brand Mr. Harley as a forger had he been defied. But such a step was not
what Storri aimed at. It was his own possession of Dorothy rather than a
vengeance upon Mr. Harley that he sought to compass. Therefore, as
Storri made plain his power and threatened its exercise, he considered
Mr. Harley with the narrow intentness of a lynx. He was striving to
measure the other's resistance. He noted the horror of Mr. Harley at the
term forger; he observed Mr. Harley's growing sense of helplessness as
he, Storri, set forth how Mr. Harley lay in the toils. Now, when Mr.
Harley was prostrate beneath the harrow of every alarm, Storri, sure of
success, went off on an easier tack--that is, easier for Mr. Harley.
"But why do we lose our self-control?" cried Storri, voice and manner
changed from black to white, clouds to sunshine; "we are men, not angry
children! See, now, I want nothing a gentleman of honor might not grant.
I love your daughter--good! a Russian nobleman loves your daughter! Is
that disgrace? You approve; your wife approves! The daughter is young;
she must be wooed before she is won. What then: Is Storri to despair?
The lady would put Storri's love to the test. She says: 'You must court
me before you shall wed me. You are not to have me without a struggle,
lest you think me of small worth.' The lady has pride; the lady has
discretion; the lady sets a value upon herself. Why should she not? It
compels me, Storri, to appreciate her charms still more and more. There;
I have painted the state of affairs. I have now but two requests; I will
not call those requests commands," and Storri rustled the French shares
suggestively. "No, I am to call them requests. Can you not exercise a
paternal authority to have your daughter receive my respectful visits?
Also, can you not exercise it to put an end, absolutely an end, to her
interviews with this Mr. Storms?"
"How can I compel her?"
"You must do it!" roared Storri, his anger taking renewed edge. "You
must, you shall! What! am I to be thwarted, affronted, undone by a girl?
Two things I demand: she is to see me; and she is not to see that
Storms. Do I ask much? It is little for a child to pay for a father's
safety; little for a man to pay for his own. What forger or what
forger's daughter has made such terms? Bah!"
The insult scarcely roused Mr. Harley; he was stunned, his face was
clammy with sweat. It was like a dream of horror! Look where he would,
there showed but the one door of escape. Storri was to see Dorothy;
Dorothy was not to see Richard!
After all, it did not present unbearable conditions. Moreover, time
would bring about its shifts. In a week, in a month, in six months, Mr.
Harley might have Storri helpless as Storri now had him. It was a case
for delay; Mr. Harley must have breathing space.
"That is all you require?" said Mr. Harley, his voice the same dry,
husky croak. "You are to see my daughter? and Mr. Storms is not to see
her?"
"Do that, and I will answer for the balance!" cried Storri. "Do that,
and she will love me--she will be my wife!"
"And no more talk of--of forgeries?"
"My dear Mr. Harley!" exclaimed Storri, "I am a gentleman--a Russian
gentleman. I ask you, in candor, does a gentleman arrest his wife's
father on a charge of forgery? Come; let us have confidence in one
another. We are friends, are we not?--we, who are to be in closer
alliance when your daughter becomes my Countess wife. Bah! who shall
talk of forgeries then?"
The evening was still young--nine o'clock--when Mr. Harley found himself
again in the street, bending his slow step homeward. He was wholly
adrift now from any thought of those speculative ones at Chamberlin's.
What Storri had said engrossed him miserably. He entertained no doubt
but what Storri would carry into execution those threats of arrest,
should his desires concerning Dorothy meet with opposition. The fear of
his own disgrace appalled Mr. Harley. He did not lack for courage, but
his interview with Storri had buried him beneath a spell of terror.
It was peculiarly a condition to frighten Mr. Harley to the core. He was
proud in a coarse way of the fortune he had gathered. He had based
himself on his position as a business, not to say a legislative, force,
and used it to patronize, not always delicately, those among his fellows
who had not climbed so high. In exacting what was a money due, he had
ever proceeded with but little scruple. He had measured his right by
measuring his strength, and had not failed to take his pound of flesh.
In brief, Mr. Harley, possessing, like many another fat gentleman, those
numerous porcine traits of brutal selfishness and a lack of sentiment or
sympathy, had considered always his own interests, following them though
they took him roughshod over another's dearest hopes. For which good
reasons Mr. Harley had foes, and knew it; there would be no absence of
rejoicing over his downfall.
But what could Mr. Harley offer for defense? What, beyond mere
compliance with Storri's wishes, might avert those calamities that
seemed swinging in the air above him? He considered everything, and
devised nothing; he was like a man without eyes or as one shut in by
night. In his desperation, a flighty thought of taking Storri's life
appealed to him for one murderous moment. It was only for a moment, and
then he thrust it aside with a shudder; not from any morality, but his
instant common sense showed how insane it would be as a method of
escape, and with that he shrunk back from it as from a precipice. And
yet there was to be no standing still; he must push on in some
direction.
Mr. Harley, being himself a business soul, did not omit to consider how
far Storri might be held at bay by showing him the certain destruction
of Credit Magellan, should he persist to the bitter length of forgery
charges and open war. Mr. Harley might be disgraced, destroyed; but what
then? Storri's plans would assuredly be trampled flat; millions, about
to come into his hands, would be swept away.
These, as arguments to be addressed to Storri, no sooner entered the
mind of Mr. Harley than he dismissed them as offering no solution of his
perils. He had felt, rather than seen, the barbarism of Storri beneath
the tissue of what that nobleman would have styled his elegant
refinement. Storri was a coward, and therefore Storri was malignant; he
had shown, as he went promising disgrace to Mr. Harley, that petulance
of evil which is remarked in savages and cruel children. Storri was
dominated of a passion for revenge; under sway of that passion no chance
of money-loss would stay him; he would sacrifice all and begin his
schemes anew before he would deny himself those vainglorious triumphs
upon which he had set his heart. He hated Richard; he hungered for
Dorothy; and Mr. Harley knew how he would go to every extravagant extent
in feeding those two sentiments.
Mr. Harley sighed dismally as he reviewed these conclusions; he could do
nothing, and must serve, or seem to serve, the villain humor of Storri.
What were those two demands? Storri must meet Dorothy; and Richard must
not. There was no help; Mr. Harley, in his present stress, would see
Dorothy and beg her co-operation. He could not tell the whole story; but
he would say that he was borne upon by trouble, and ask her to acquiesce
in Storri's conditions. He would promise that those conditions were not
to live forever.
Deciding thus, Mr. Harley went forward on his homeward course; he must
see Dorothy without delay, for he would be upon the rack until the
painful conference was over. The night was chill as New Year's nights
have a right to be, and yet Mr. Harley was fain to mop his forehead as
though it were the Dog days. As he neared his own door, his reluctant
pace became as slow as sick men find the flight of time.
There had come no one to the Harley house this New Year's evening to
engage the polite attentions of Mrs. Hanway-Harley, and that lady, being
armored to the teeth, in the name of comfort had retired to her own
apartments with a purpose to unloose what buttons and remove what pins
and untie what strings stood between her and a great bodily relief.
Dorothy was of neither the size nor the years at which women torture
themselves, and, having no quarrel with her buttons and pins and
strings, sat alone in the library. She was deep in a novel that reeled
with ardent love, and had fallen to despising the lover because he did
not resemble Richard.
It was in the library that Mr. Harley came seeking Dorothy. When he
found her, he stood stock-still, unable to speak one word of all that
tide of talk which would be necessary to bring before her his dangerous
perplexities and the one manner of their possible relief.
Dorothy at his step looked up, pleased to have him home so early. She
was about to say as much, but at sight of him the words perished on her
tongue. It was as though her heart were touched with ice. Mr. Harley's
countenance had been of that quasi claret hue called rubicund. It was
now turned gray and pasty, and his cheeks, as firmly round as those of a
trumpeter, were pouched and fallen as with the palsy of age. He looked
ten years worse than when he went forth two hours before.
Dorothy sprang up in alarm; she feared that he was ill.
"Let me call mamma!" she cried; "let me call Uncle Pat! You are sick."
"No; call nobody!" said Mr. Harley feebly, and speaking with difficulty.
"I'm not ill; I'll be right in a moment." Then he had Dorothy back into
her chair, gazing upon her the while in a stricken way, as though she
were hangman or headsman, and he before her for execution. Mr. Harley
was held between terror of Storri and shame for what he must say to
Dorothy. Wondering what fearful blow had fallen upon them, Dorothy sat
facing her father the color of death.
"Tell me, papa," she whispered, with a terror in her tones, "tell me
what has happened."
Despair brought a sickly calmness to Mr. Harley; he cleared his mind
with a struggle and controlled himself to speak. He would say all at
once, and leave the rest with Dorothy.
"Dorothy," he began, the iron effort he was making being plainly
apparent, "Dorothy, I have had a talk with that scoundrel without a
conscience, Count Storri. I do not pretend that I come willingly to you
from him. I tell you, however, that I am fearfully within that villain's
power, and cannot help myself. No, I've done no crime; but none the less
he has it in his hands to cover me with disgrace--destroy me, and every
sign of me, from the midst of respectable men. It would avail nothing
should I show you how he spread a snare for my feet, and how blindly I
walked into it. I can only say again that he has me helpless, hand and
foot; I am his to make or break in all that a man of honor or station
holds dearest. He can cover me with infamy at will; he can unloose upon
me an avalanche of disgrace, and with the one blow crush us all. I keep
back nothing, exaggerate nothing, I merely lay bare to you what is. Once
the stroke falls, I shall never again hold up my head. Indeed, I shall
not live to see it fall, for when I know it is inevitable I shall take
my own life."
Mr. Harley paused a moment to recall his coolness, while Dorothy, her
little hands crushed between her knees, sat panting like a spent hare.
"I have given you my precise position," continued Mr. Harley, with a
sort of hopelessness. "I shall now tell you the conditions upon which my
safety depends. They rest with you; I stand or fall as you decide."
Dorothy tried to speak, but her voice died on her lips. "If you receive
Count Storri, not as a lover, but as an acquaintance, or, if you will, a
friend; and if you have no further meeting--that is, for a month--or
perhaps two--or at the most three--have no further interviews, I
say"--Mr. Harley blundered a trifle as he saw Dorothy's face whitening
with the sorrows he was laying upon her--"have no further interviews
with Mr. Storms, I am saved. Forgive me--forgive your father who has so
failed of his duty that, instead of protecting you, he comes to you for
protection. There is no more: You have my fortune, my good repute, my
life in your charge. If you meet Count Storri in friendship, if you
refuse Mr. Storms, I am secure. Should you fail of either, then, by
heart and soul! I think it is my end!"