Harry Temple sat in his office the next morning with his feet upon the
table and his wooden armed chair tilted back against the wall.
He had letters to write, a number of them, that should go out with the
afternoon coach, to reach the night packet. There were at least three men
he ought to go and see at once if he would do the best for his employers,
and the office he sat in was by no means in the best of order. But his
feet were elevated comfortably on the table and he was deep in the pages
of a story of the French Court, its loves and hates and intrigues.
It was therefore with annoyance that he looked up at the opening of the
office door.
But the frown changed to apprehension, as he saw who was his visitor. He
brought the chair legs suddenly to the floor and his own legs followed
them swiftly. David Spafford was not a man before whom another would sit
with his feet on a table, even to transact business.
There was a look of startled enquiry on Harry Temple’s face. For an
instant his self-complacency was shaken. He hesitated, wondering what tack
to take. Perhaps after all his alarm was unnecessary. Marcia likely had
been too frightened to tell of what had occurred. He noticed the broad
shoulder, the lean, active body, the keen eye, and the grave poise of his
visitor, and thought he would hardly care to fight a duel with that man.
It was natural for him to think at once of a duel on account of the French
court life from which his mind had just emerged. A flash of wonder passed
through his mind whether it would be swords or pistols, and then he set
himself to face the other man.
David Spafford stood for a full minute and looked into the face of the man
he had come to shame. He looked at him with a calm eye and brow, but with
a growing contempt that did not need words to express it. Harry Temple
felt the color rise in his cheek, and his soul quaked for an instant. Then
his habitual conceit arose and he tried to parry with his eye that keen
piercing gaze of the other. It must have lasted a full minute, though it
seemed to Mr. Temple it was five at the least. He made an attempt to offer
his visitor a chair, but it was not noticed. David Spafford looked his man
through and through, and knew him for exactly what he was. At last he
spoke, quietly, in a tone that was too courteous to be contemptuous, but
it humiliated the listener more even than contempt:
“It would be well for you to leave town at once.”
That was all. The listener felt that it was a command. His wrath arose
hotly, and beat itself against the calm exterior of his visitor’s gaze in
a look that was brazen enough to have faced a whole town of accusers.
Harry Temple could look innocent and handsome when he chose.
“I do not understand you, sir!” he said. “That is a most extraordinary
statement!”
“It would be well for you to leave town at once.”
This time the command was imperative. Harry’s eyes blazed.
“Why?” He asked it with that impertinent tilt to his chin which usually
angered his opponent in any argument. Once he could break that steady,
iron, self-control he felt he would have the best of things. He could
easily persuade David Spafford that everything was all right if he could
get him off his guard and make him angry. An angry man could do little but
bluster.
“You understand very well,” replied David, his voice still, steady and his
gaze not swerving.
“Indeed! Well, this is most extraordinary,” said Harry, losing control of
himself again. “Of what do you accuse me, may I enquire?”
“Of nothing that your own heart does not accuse you,” said David. And
somehow there was more than human indignation in the gaze now: there was
pity, a sense of shame for another soul who could lower himself to do
unseemly things. Before that look the blood crept into Harry’s cheek
again. An uncomfortable sensation entirely new was stealing over him. A
sense of sin—no, not that exactly,—a sense that he had made a mistake,
perhaps. He never was very hard upon himself even when the evidence was
clear against him. It angered him to feel humiliated. What a fuss to make
about a little thing! What a tiresome old cad to care about a little
flirtation with his wife! He wished he had let the pretty baby alone
entirely. She was of no finer stuff than many another who had accepted his
advances with pleasure. He stiffened his neck and replied with much
haughtiness:
“My heart accuses me of nothing, sir. I assure you I consider your words
an insult! I demand satisfaction for your insulting language, sir!” Harry
Temple had never fought a duel, and had never been present when others
fought, but that was the language in which a challenge was usually
delivered in French novels.
“It is not a matter for discussion!” said David Spafford, utterly ignoring
the other’s blustering words. “I am fully informed as to all that occurred
yesterday afternoon, and I tell you once more, it would be well for you to
leave town at once. I have nothing further to say.”
David turned and walked toward the door, and Harry stood, ignored, angry,
crestfallen, and watched him until he reached the door.
“You would better ask your informant further of her part in the matter!”
he hissed, suddenly, an open sneer in his voice and a covert implication
of deep meaning.
David turned, his face flashing with righteous indignation. The man who
was withered by the scorn of that glance wished heartily that he had not
uttered the false sentence. He felt the smallness of his own soul, during
the instant of silence in which his visitor stood looking at him.
Then David spoke deliberately:
“I knew you were a knave,” said he, “but I did not suppose you were also a
coward. A man who is not a coward will not try to put the blame upon a
woman, especially upon an innocent one. You, sir, will leave town this
evening. Any business further than you can settle between this and that I
will see properly attended to. I warn you, sir, it will be unwise for you
to remain longer than till the evening coach.”
Perfectly courteous were David’s tones, keen command was in his eye and
determination in every line of his face. Harry could not recover himself
to reply, could not master his frenzy of anger and humiliation to face the
righteous look of his accuser. Before he realized it, David was gone.
He stood by the window and watched him go down the street with rapid, firm
tread and upright bearing. Every line in that erect form spoke of
determination. The conviction grew within him that the last words of his
visitor were true, and that it would be wise for him to leave town. He
rebelled at the idea. He did not wish to leave, for business matters were
in such shape, or rather in such chaos, that it would be extremely awkward
for him to meet his employers and explain his desertion at that time.
Moreover there were several homes in the town open to him whenever he
chose, where were many attractions. It was a lazy pleasant life he had
been leading here, fully trusted, and wholly disloyal to the trust,
troubled by no uneasy overseers, not even his own conscience, dined and
smiled upon with lovely languishing eyes. He did not care to go, even
though he had decried the town as dull and monotonous.
But, on the other hand, things had occurred—not the unfortunate little
mistake of yesterday, of course, but others, more serious things—that he
would hardly care to have brought to the light of day, especially through
the keen sarcastic columns of David Spafford’s paper. He had seen other
sinners brought to a bloodless retribution in those columns by dauntless
weapons of sarcasm and wit which in David Spafford’s hands could be made
to do valiant work. He did not care to be humiliated in that way. He could
not brazen it out. He was convinced that the man meant what he said, and
from what he knew of his influence he felt that he would leave no stone
unturned till he had made the place too hot to hold him. Only Harry Temple
himself knew how easy that would be to do, for no one else knew how many
“mistakes” (?) Harry had made, and he, unfortunately for himself, did not
know how many of them were not known, by any who could harm him.
He stood a long time clinking some sixpences and shillings together in his
pocket, and scowling down the street after David had disappeared from
sight.
“Blame that little pink-cheeked, baby-eyed fool!” he said at last, turning
on his heel with a sigh. “I might have known she was too goody-goody. Such
people ought to die young before they grow up to make fools of other
people. Bah! Think of a wife like that with no spirit of her own. A baby!
Merely a baby!”
Nevertheless, in his secret heart, he knew he honored Marcia and felt a
true shame that she had looked into his tarnished soul.
Then he looked round about upon his papers that represented a whole week’s
hard work and maybe more before they were cleared away, and reflected how
much easier after all it would be to get up a good excuse and go away,
leaving all this to some poor drudge who should be sent here in his place.
He looked around again and his eyes lighted upon his book. He remembered
the exciting crisis in which he had left the heroine and down he sat to
his story again. At least there was nothing demanding attention this
moment. He need not decide what he would do. If he went there were few
preparations to make. He would toss some things into his carpet-bag and
pretend to have been summoned to see a sick and dying relative, a
long-lost brother or something. It would be easy to invent one when the
time came. Then he could leave directions for the rest of his things to be
packed if he did not return, and get rid of the trouble of it all. As for
the letters, if he was going what use to bother with them? Let them wait
till his successor should come. It mattered little to him whether his
employers suffered for his negligence or not so long as he finished his
story. Besides, it would not do to let that cad think he had frightened
him. He would pretend he was not going, at least during his hours of
grace. So he picked up his book and went on reading.
At noon he sauntered back to his boarding house as usual for his dinner,
having professed an unusually busy morning to those who came in to the
office on business and made appointments with them for the next day. This
had brought him much satisfaction as the morning wore away and he was left
free to his book, and so before dinner he had come to within a very few
pages of the end.
After a leisurely dinner he sauntered back to the office again, rejoicing
in the fact that circumstances had so arranged themselves that he had
passed David Spafford in front of the newspaper office and given him a
most elaborate and friendly bow in the presence of four or five
bystanders. David’s look in return had meant volumes, and decided Harry
Temple to do as he had been ordered, not, of course, because he had been
ordered to do so, but because it would be an easier thing to do. In fact
he made up his mind that he was weary of this part of the country. He went
back to his book.
About the middle of the afternoon he finished the last pages. He rose up
with alacrity then and began to think what he should do. He glanced around
the room, sought out a few papers, took some daguerreotypes of girls from
a drawer of his desk, gave a farewell glance around the dismal little room
that had seen so much shirking for the past few months, and then went out
and locked the door.
He paused at the corner. Which way should he go? He did not care to go
back to the office, for his book was done, and he scarcely needed to go to
his room at his boarding place yet either, for the afternoon was but half
over and he wished his departure to appear to be entirely unpremeditated.
A daring thought came into his head. He would walk past David Spafford’s
house. He would let Marcia see him if possible. He would show them that he
was not afraid in the least. He even meditated going in and explaining to
Marcia that she had made a great mistake, that he had been merely admiring
her, and that there was no harm in anything he had said or done yesterday,
that he was exceedingly grieved and mortified that she should have
mistaken his meaning for an insult, and so on and so on. He knew well how
to make such honeyed talk when he chose, but the audacity of the thing was
a trifle too much for even his bold nature, so he satisfied himself by
strolling in a leisurely manner by the house.
When he was directly opposite to it he raised his eyes casually and bowed
and smiled with his most graceful air. True, he did not see any one, for
Marcia had caught sight of him as she was coming out upon the stoop and
had fled into her own room with the door buttoned, she was watching unseen
from behind the folds of her curtain, but he made the bow as complete as
though a whole family had been greeting him from the windows. Marcia, poor
child, thought he must see her, and she felt frozen to the spot, and
stared wildly through the little fold of her curtain with trembling hands
and weak knees till he was passed. Well pleased at himself the young man
walked on, knowing that at least three prominent citizens had seen him bow
and smile, and that they would be witnesses, against anything David might
say to the contrary, that he was on friendly terms with Mrs. Spafford.
Hannah Heath was sitting on the front stoop with her knitting. She often
sat there dressed daintily of an afternoon. Her hands were white and
looked well against the blue yarn she was knitting. Besides there was
something domestic and sentimental in a stocking. It gave a cosy, homey,
air to a woman, Hannah considered. So she sat and knitted and smiled at
whomsoever passed by, luring many in to sit and talk with her, so that the
stockings never grew rapidly, but always kept at about the same stage. If
it had been Miranda, Grandmother Heath would have made some sharp remarks
about the length of time it took to finish that blue stocking, but as it
was Hannah it was all right.
Hannah sat upon the stoop and knitted as Harry Temple came by. Now, Hannah
was not so great a favorite with Harry as Harry was with Hannah. She was
of the kind who was conquered too easily, and he did not consider it worth
his while to waste time upon her simperings usually. But this afternoon
was different. He had nowhere to go for a little while, and Hannah’s
appearance on the stoop was opportune and gave him an idea. He would
lounge there with her. Perchance fortune would favor him again and David
Spafford would pass by and see him. There would be one more opportunity to
stare insolently at him and defy him, before he bent his neck to obey.
David had given him the day in which to do what he would, and he would
make no move until the time was over and the coach he had named departed,
but he knew that then he would bring down retribution. In just what form
that retribution would come he was not quite certain, but he knew it would
be severe.
So when Hannah smiled upon him, Harry Temple stepped daintily across the
mud in the road, and came and sat down beside her. He toyed with her
knitting, caught one of her plump white hands, the one on the side away
from the street, and held it, while Hannah pretended not to notice, and
drooped her long eyelashes in a telling way. Hannah knew how. She had been
at it a good many years.
So he sat, toward five o’clock, when David came by, and bowed gravely to
Hannah, but seemed not to see Harry. Harry let his eyes follow the tall
figure in an insolent stare.
“What a dough-faced cad that man is!” he said lazily, “no wonder his
little pink-cheeked wife seeks other society. Handsome baby, though, isn’t
she?”
Hannah pricked up her ears. Her loss of David was too recent not to cause
her extreme jealousy of his pretty young wife. Already she fairly hated
her. Her upbringing in the atmosphere of Grandmother Heath’s sarcastic,
ill-natured gossip had prepared her to be quick to see meaning in any
insinuation.
She looked at him keenly, archly for a moment, then replied with drooping
gaze and coquettish manner:
“You should not blame any one for enjoying your company.”
Hannah stole sly glances to see how he took this, but Harry was an old
hand and proof against such scrutiny. He only shrugged his shoulder
carelessly, as though he dropped all blame like a garment that he had no
need for.
“And what’s the matter with David?” asked Hannah, watching David as he
mounted his own steps, and thinking how often she had watched that tall
form go down the street, and thought of him as destined to belong to her.
The mortification that he had chosen some one else was not yet forgotten.
It amounted almost to a desire for revenge.
Harry lingered longer than he intended. Hannah begged him to remain to
supper, but he declined, and when she pressed him to do so he looked
troubled and said he was expecting a letter and must hurry back to see if
it came in the afternoon coach. He told her that a dear friend, a beloved
cousin, was lying very ill, and he might be summoned at any moment to his
bedside, and Hannah said some comforting little things in a caressing
voice, and hoped he would find the letter saying the cousin was better.
Then he hurried away.
It was easy at his boarding house to say he had been called away, and he
rushed up to his room and threw some necessaries into his carpet-bag,
scattering things around the room and helping out the impression that he
was called away in a great hurry. When he was ready he looked at his
watch. It was growing late. The evening coach left in half an hour. He
knew its route well. It started at the village inn, and went down the old
turnpike, stopping here and there to pick up passengers. There was always
a convocation when it started. Perhaps David Spafford would be there and
witness his obedience to the command given him. He set his lips and made
up his mind to escape that at least. He would cheat his adversary of that
satisfaction.
It would involve a sacrifice. He would have to go without his supper, and
he could smell the frying bacon coming up the stairs. But it would help
the illusion and he could perhaps get something on the way when the coach
stopped to change horses.
He rushed downstairs and told his landlady that he must start at once, as
he must see a man before the coach went, and she, poor lady, had no chance
to suggest that he leave her a little deposit on the sum of his board
which he already owed her. There was perhaps some method in his hurry for
that reason also. It always bothered him to pay his bills, he had so many
other ways of spending his money.
So he hurried away and caught a ride in a farm wagon going toward the
Cross Roads. When it turned off he walked a little way until another wagon
came along; finally crossed several fields at a breathless pace and caught
the coach just as it was leaving the Cross Roads, which was the last
stopping place anywhere near the village. He climbed up beside the driver,
still in a breathless condition, and detailed to him how he had received
word, just before the coach started, by a messenger who came
across-country on horseback, that his cousin was dying.
After he had answered the driver’s minutest questions, he sat back and
reflected upon his course with satisfaction. He was off, and he had not
been seen nor questioned by a single citizen, and by to-morrow night his
story as he had told it to the driver would be fully known and circulated
through the place he had just left. The stage driver was one of the best
means of advertisement. It was well to give him full particulars.
The driver after he had satisfied his curiosity about the young man by his
side, and his reasons for leaving town so hastily, began to wax eloquent
upon the one theme which now occupied his spare moments and his fluent
tongue, the subject of a projected railroad. Whether some of the
sentiments he uttered were his own, or whether he had but borrowed from
others, they were at least uttered with force and apparent conviction, and
many a traveller sat and listened as they were retailed and viewed the
subject from the standpoint of the loud-mouthed coachman.
A little later Tony Weller, called by some one “the best beloved of all
coachmen,” uttered much the same sentiments in the following words:
“I consider that the railroad is unconstitutional and an invader o’
privileges. As to the comfort, as an old coachman I may say it,—vere’s the
comfort o’ sittin’ in a harm-chair a lookin’ at brick walls, and heaps o’
mud, never comin’ to a public ’ouse, never seein’ a glass o’ ale, never
goin’ through a pike, never meetin’ a change o’ no kind (hosses or
otherwise), but always comin’ to a place, ven you comes to vun at all, the
werry picter o’ the last.
“As to the honor an’ dignity o’ travellin’ vere can that be without a
coachman, and vat’s the rail, to sich coachmen as is sometimes forced to
go by it, but an outrage and an hinsult? As to the ingen, a nasty,
wheezin’, gaspin’, puffin’, bustin’ monster always out o’ breath, with a
shiny green and gold back like an onpleasant beetle; as to the ingen as is
always a pourin’ out red ’ot coals at night an’ black smoke in the day,
the sensiblest thing it does, in my opinion, is ven there’s somethin’ in
the vay, it sets up that ’ere frightful scream vich seems to say, ‘Now
’ere’s two ’undred an’ forty passengers in the werry greatest extremity o’
danger, an’ ’ere’s their two ’undred an’ forty screams in vun!’”
But such sentiments as these troubled Harry Temple not one whit. He cared
not whether the present century had a railroad or whether it travelled by
foot. He would not lift a white finger to help it along or hinder. As the
talk went on he was considering how and where he might get his supper.