LOUIE’S COURAGE
A week passed, and the town was full of rumors of every description.
That the assets could not begin to meet the liabilities was a certainty,
and the losers were furious. Mr. Grey was called a liar, a cheat, a
spendthrift and gambler, who had used the money of the poor to enrich
himself.
A little lull occurred when it was known that his house was for sale,
with his horses and carriage, his wife’s and Louie’s diamonds, the grand
piano, and Louie’s wheel, and that the proceeds were to go toward
liquidating the debts.
“That’s fair, and they or’to pay me first,” Godfrey Sheldon said, when
he heard of it. “All them gimcracks without the house, will bring more’n
two thousand dollars, the sum I have in the bank now. Fool that I didn’t
take it all out. I’ll go at once and see ’em.”
Harnessing his horse, he drove to the Greys’ residence and asked to see
Mr. Grey. It was Louie who met him and told him her father was ill, and
saw no one but Mr. Blake and the doctor.
“Then I’ll see your mother,” Mr. Sheldon said.
“She is ill, too,” was Louie’s reply.
“Well, who in thunder can I see?” was the next question, roughly spoken.
“Me!” Louie answered, with quiet dignity. “What can I do for you?”
“Pay me my two thousand dollars,” was the rude reply, which brought the
hot blood to Louie’s face; but she answered calmly:
“I wish we might, but it is impossible at present.”
“Why impossible? I hear your house, with its fixin’s, is for sale. Is
that so?” Mr. Sheldon asked.
“Yes, that is so.”
“And they belong to your mother, or you?”
“Yes, to mother.”
“Horses, and carriages, and all?”
“Yes.”
“And the pianner, and wheel, and diamonds?”
“Yes—the piano and wheel were mine, and are already sold, the diamonds
are in Boston, to be disposed of.”
“Jess so. I call that honest on your part. They all or’to fetch a nice
sum, and don’t you think that, as the biggest creditor, I or’to be paid
out of it? I do.”
It seemed to Mr. Sheldon that Louie grew two inches in height as she
replied:
“The money will belong to mother and me, to do with as we please, and we
shall pay the small depositors first—the poor people, who worked hard
for their money, and cannot afford to lose it. What is left will go in
with the assets, and you will have your share.”
“Heavens and earth! Do you think I can afford to lose two thousand
dollars? No, sir!” Mr. Sheldon exclaimed, beginning to get angry.
“Assets! There won’t be any, if the truth is told; the way you’ve
lived—four servants, and two bath-rooms, with porcelain tubs. I s’pose
you keep ’em still—the hired help, I mean.”
“I don’t know that you have any business to ask me that question,” Louie
said, with a gleam in her eyes which warned the rude man that he was
going too far.
“Mebby I hain’t,” he replied, “but when a man has lost two thousand
dollars, he don’t feel very fine, I tell you. Look a here, girl,” he
continued, as Louie showed signs of leaving him, “I want them horses and
carriage. Name a fair price, and I’ll take ’em, turnin’ it toward my
debt, and mebby I’ll take the house if the figger ain’t too high.”
Louie shook her head. “The poor men and women must be paid first. I have
already paid some with my piano and wheel money,” she said.
Finding that he could not move her, and must take his chance with the
rest, Mr. Sheldon left the house in a very angry state of mind. When
Judge White slighted him he had taken his revenge by withdrawing his
money from the bank and creating a panic. Now he had no money to
withdraw. It was gone—lost—and he had no redress, unless he took it on
Grey himself.
“And he deserves it,” he said, as he drove into the village. “He or’to
be made to tell what he did with the money, and then sent to prison.
I’ll do my best to get him there, too.”
It did not take long for Mr. Sheldon to bring others beside himself into
his state of mind. Something should be done to Grey, who was probably
shamming sickness to keep out of sight. They’d call a meeting, anyway,
and decide what to do.
The meeting was called for the next night, and, as it was not kept
secret, the news reached Louie in the morning, brought by Nancy Sharp,
who, having espoused the cause of the Greys, was taking the place of the
cook, who had left, and kept them posted with whatever was being said or
done in town, thinking it a kindness to do so. On this occasion her
report was, of course, exaggerated. There was to be a meeting of the
creditors in the village hall that night at half-past eight, she said,
and they were going to decide when to arrest Mr. Grey and take him to
prison; probably it would be the next day, or two days later at the
farthest.
Lottie was white as death when she heard it. She had just come from her
father’s room, where, since the day of the failure, he had lain, with
his hands folded on his breast, his eyes closed, and seldom moving or
speaking, except to Louie and his wife, who had insisted upon being with
him, and was lying in the same room, almost as white and still as her
husband. The blow had struck her hard, for her love for and faith in her
husband had been great, and no suspicion whatever of his integrity had
ever entered her mind. Now, in the light of recent revelations, she had
begun to look backward, understanding some things which, in her
confiding and rather weak nature, she had scarcely thought of before.
Her love was the same for the erring man, but her faith in him was gone,
and when, with outstretched hands, he had said to her when they first
met, “Fanny! oh, Fanny, I am so sorry,” she had answered him, “Thomas,
how could you, when we trusted you so?” Then she had collapsed entirely
and gone into by hysterics, as she had done when she first heard the
news. Now, however, she was more calm, and stayed in the room with him,
while Louie ministered to them both.
On this morning, as if something had told him what was in the air, or
else because he was delirious, her father had roused a little and said
to her:
“Don’t let them, Louie. I shan’t last long, and it will do no good. It
will not bring back their money.”
Louie had returned from her interview with Nancy, and her face grew
whiter as she asked:
“Do what, father?”
“Oh-h, I don’t know. I think I was dreaming of prison and that they were
taking me there; but you will save me,” he moaned.
“Yes, father,” she said, kissing his pallid face. “I will save you. But
how?” she asked herself, while a thought of Herbert crossed her mind.
He had been there every day, or, rather, evening—for, like Nicodemus, he
chose the night for his visits, and it seemed to her that every time he
came he appeared more and more under constraint. Still, he was very
kind, and had said to her more than once:
“I am so sorry; and I wish I could help you. Command me if I can.”
Remembering this, there came into Louie’s mind the thought: “He can help
me. They will listen to him.”
She did not expect him till evening, and then it might be too late. She
could not go for him, but she could telephone, and she did, first to the
house, and then to the bank, from which the judge’s voice, asking, “Who
are you?” came back so loud that it made her start.
“Louie Grey,” was the response.
“What do you want?”
“I want Herbert.”
“The devil you do!” the judge said, in an aside; then, through the
‘phone, “He is in the street. What shall I tell him?”
“Please say that I want to see him at once. I am in great trouble,”
Louie answered, frankly and fearlessly, with no thought of the storm she
was provoking.
Taking his son into the rear office when he came in, the judge said to
him:
“Don’t you call it pretty brassy for a girl to send word to a young man
that she wants to see him at once?”
“What do you mean?” Herbert asked, with a thought of Louie.
“I mean that Grey girl has ‘phoned that she wants you at once. That
looks as if she had a claim, or thinks she has; and, by the Lord Harry,
if that is so, you are no son of mine. I’ve told you that a dozen times,
and I mean it, too. You must choose between me and that Grey girl.”
He did not ask direct questions, and Herbert was glad, for he could not
tell a square lie, and he dared not acknowledge his engagement. So he
listened in silence until his father paused a moment, and then replied:
“It is hardly worth your while to expend so much breath on me. I know
enough to study my own interest. But if Louie has sent for me, it
certainly would be very unmanly in me not to go to her. Remember what
she did for us.”
“I do remember, and if I didn’t it has been thrown in my face often
enough; but that is no reason why she should be my daughter-in-law, and
I tell you I won’t have it. No, sir; I won’t have it; and if you’ve got
entangled with the daughter of a gambler and a thief, and maybe a
State-prison bird, get disentangled, for I tell you I won’t have it!”
the judge answered, angrily, going from the room and leaving Herbert
alone.
It was very indiscreet in Louie to telephone, but he must go to her, he
thought, and he was soon at the house, asking why she had sent for him,
and why she was looking so terrified.
She was white as marble, and trembling like a leaf, for Nancy Sharp had
come with more news of the excitement in town, and of Godfrey Sheldon’s
threat to leave no stone unturned till Grey was punished.
“Oh, Herbert,” she said, bursting into tears and leaning her head on his
arm, “have you heard they are to meet to-night to talk about arresting
father?”
Herbert said he had heard something of the kind, but did not think it
was true.
“It is true,” Louie cried, in a tremor of distress, “and you must stop
it!”
“I stop it! How?” Herbert asked, and Louie replied:
“Go to the meeting, and plead for him. Tell them how sorry and broken he
is. Tell them it will all be paid in time, if I live. I can do it, and I
will. Tell them everything we have will be sold, if they will only leave
father alone. You will do this for me?”
She was looking at him now, with the tears running down her cheeks, and
her lips quivering with the pain it gave her to ask this of her lover,
whose hesitancy she saw before he spoke. If she had asked him to walk
through a fire he could have done it more readily than to attend the
meeting of angry citizens and plead for Mr. Grey. It would be too
marked, and life would be intolerable with his father when he heard it,
as he was sure to.
This he tried to explain, and Louie understood him, and knew she must
stand alone. There was no one to help her, and in her eyes, dry now, and
very bright, there was a look, which Herbert would never forget, and in
coming years he would give much if he could recall the words which had
brought it there.
“Father will be wanting me, and I must go to him,” she said, when he
tried to detain her while he explained, further why it would be of no
use for him to do her bidding. “I shall only be one against many, and I
am sorry to say some of the creditors have lost their good sense with
their money, and they would only laugh at me if I told them _you_ would
pay the debts. How can you do it?”
“I know,” was Louie’s reply, as she drew away from him.
He did not try to caress her. She would not have permitted it had he
tried. In her mind there was fast forming the idea that he was a weak
reed to lean upon—that her idol was falling from its pedestal, and there
was a constraint in her voice and manner as she bade him good-by and
went to her father, who was growing delirious and talking of stocks, and
prison, and a dead face with a bullet in the brain. This she did not
understand, unless it referred to his thought to kill himself. The
prison she understood, and tried to soothe and quiet him by saying he
would never go there—that she would save him from it. How she could do
it she scarcely knew. There seemed to be but one way. She must face that
night session alone, and beg them to spare her father. It was a terrible
ordeal, and she shrank from it with inexpressible dread, for she must do
it, and her resolution was kept up by the news Nancy Sharp brought her
at intervals during the day of the arrangements making for the session
and the intensity of feeling among the people as the sense of their
losses grew upon them.
“Don’t tell me any more, or I shall go crazy, and I need all my wits
about me,” Louie cried at last when Nancy came late in the afternoon
with more harassing details of what was being done in town.
“I done my best to shet ’em up,” Nancy said, “but land’s sake, ’tain’t
no use. They are jest ravin’. But I’d like to see ’em try to take your
father, sick as he is. They’d walk over my body fust, and I told ’em so,
but they jest laughed in my face, and that sneak of a Sheldon said it
was all very well for me, a preferred creditor, to feel that way, but if
I’d lost all he had I’d talk out of ‘tother side of my mouth. The hound!
He’s settin’ ’em on.”
Nancy was doing her duty religiously, and had been in two or three
fights with boys and innumerable quarrels with others in her zeal to
defend the Greys. And Louie knew it, and while she felt grateful for the
old woman’s kindness, she grew sick at heart and more and more nervous
as she thought of what she must do, and wondered how she could face a
set of men as excited and determined as Nancy represented them to be.
She had known them all as friends, and to meet them now as enemies was
hard to do, but she must do it.
As the sun went down a heavy rain began to fall, and the night closed in
dark and stormy, with gusts of wind which shook the house and bent the
trees and shrubs in the yard, breaking some of the smaller limbs and
scattering the leaves in showers. It was a wild night for any woman to
be out, and much less for a young girl like Louie. Her wheel was sold,
and, though the horses were still in the stable, she dared not take them
out, for Nancy Sharp had brought her rumors of stones and eggs laid up
for the carriage, should it appear in the street. She must walk and go
alone, for the one servant who had not left them must stay with her
father and mother, and she would not take Nancy with her.
Nancy had said the meeting was to be at half-past eight, and at
quarter-past she started in her waterproof cloak, the hood of which was
drawn over her head the better to shield her from the rain, and from
observation, too, as she did not care to be recognized by any she
chanced to meet.
There was little danger of her meeting anyone, for few were abroad that
night except the men who had the appointment at the village hall, and no
one noticed the slight figure moving rapidly through the street and
keeping as much as possible in the shadow until the hall was reached.
There was a light shining from the windows and streaming down upon the
walk where Louie stood for a moment, trying to gather courage for the
trial.
“God help me, and give me strength and success,” she said, and then
ascended the stairs to the upper hall, which was dimly lighted by a
defective gas jet.
In a little recess, where he was unobserved, a young man was standing,
or, rather, sitting, on a dry-goods box, motionless as a statue, and
with a curse in his heart for his own cowardice. He had been there a
long time, watching the men as they came up, now half resolving to join
them and do Louie’s bidding, and now held back by the fear of his
father, with whom there had been a second interview stormier than any
which had preceded it. At lunch the judge, who seemed unusually
irritable, had said to him:
“Did you go to see that Grey girl?”
“Yes, sir; I did,” was Herbert’s answer, and his father continued:
“More fool you! What did she want?”
He hesitated a moment and then replied, “She thought, perhaps, I could
do something to quiet the men who are to meet to-night to take steps
with regard to her father.”
For a moment the judge could not speak. His anger was so great that it
brought on a fit of coughing, and the big gulp of claret he had taken
was thrown out upon the napkin tucked under his chin.
“Strike me on the back, can’t you! and not sit staring at me while I
choke to death,” he gasped.
Herbert struck him on the back with so good effect that the paroxysm was
soon passed, and after two or three sneezes, he began:
“Great Peter! Why did you hit me so hard. You nearly broke my spine.
Mad, I s’pose, because I asked you about the Grey girl—a pretty kind of
modest piece, too, I must say, to think you’d appear as her advocate. I
like that! Yes, I do! Did you tell her you’d go? If you did and do go,
I’ve told you what’s what, and I mean it, too. Asked you to plead for
that wretch, who deserves State’s prison—if ever a feller did!”
“So do a great many who are not there,” Herbert answered, adding, “I did
not tell her I’d go. It would do no good, but it would be different with
you. They would listen to you if you advised them not to arrest Mr.
Grey. They would have to take him on a stretcher, he is so ill. I wish
you’d go, I know Fred Lansing would if he were here.”
Herbert was growing courageous as he talked, with a thought of Louie’s
face as it had looked at him an hour before. Something had brought Fred
Lansing to his mind with a wish that he were there. Fred would not
hesitate to brave the whole town, and, knowing the esteem in which he
was held by his father, Herbert had used his name as an argument. But
Fred was promptly consigned to perdition, and Herbert was sent after him
in very emphatic language, and the interview was closed by Herbert’s
leaving the table. He had intended going to Worcester that afternoon to
attend a concert in the evening, but he gave that up and went instead
into the town, dropping into three or four places of business,
ostensibly to look at something, or make some little purchase, but
really to hear if anything was said of the expected investigation. Only
once was allusion made to it or the failure, and then a dry-goods
merchant asked if he had heard there was to be a meeting of Mr. Grey’s
creditors that night?
“Yes,” he replied, “and I am sorry, and hope they will decide not to
molest him. It can do no good, and I suppose you know he is very ill.
They would never attempt to touch him in his present state. Give him
time if he lives, and I dare say he will try to pay every thing he
owes.”
This was quite a speech for Herbert in Mr. Grey’s behalf, and after he
had made it he felt that he had done a good thing for Louie, especially
as the merchant to whom he was talking and who was not a heavy loser by
the failure, replied, “That’s so. Grey is a good sort, and I don’t
s’pose he has done worse than hundreds of bankers are doing all the
time. He had bad luck and was caught, that’s all the difference. I had
only fifty in the bank, and I’d rather lose that than see him dragged to
prison as a few hot-heads seem to want to do; but I guess they won’t.”
There was comfort in this. Others might feel like this man. Matters were
not so threatening as Louie feared. There might not be a meeting after
all, and if there were nothing rash would be done. His presence was not
needed, even if he were willing to go, and reasoning thus Herbert went
home in a comparatively quiet state of mind. When dinner was over he
started again for the main street of the town. If there was to be a
meeting he would like to know it and see who attended it himself unseen.
He accordingly took his post in the dark alcove and watched to see who
came, wondering that there were so many and fearing a little for the
result. He heard Louie’s step as she came up the stairs, but did not
suspect who it was until as she stopped under the gas jet to shake the
water from her dripping cloak and push her damp hair from her forehead,
he saw her face, and nearly fell off the box in his surprise.
He knew why she was there, and his first impulse was to go to her and
stand by her and make her cause his own. Then, thinking that perhaps he
would go in later, and that she would produce a better effect at first
without him, he let her go alone, and felt himself growing cold and
dizzy, when the door opened and the light streamed for a moment out into
the hall, showing him several men inside, with Louie in their midst;
then the door was closed, and he was in darkness again.