As Algernon struggled along with Rosebloom and cheap cigars and bright
red and green perfumed soaps, the debt was lessened and lessened; and
the back of the note was almost covered with extensions, yet only $317
had been paid off. In spite of himself John Gordon grew interested; he
would not have admitted it for the world, but he wanted to hear about
Dr. Lavendar's annual visits to Mercer; and Dr. Lavendar used to drive
out to smoke a pipe with him and tell him what Algy had said and done.
One day--it was seven years after the note had been drawn--a clear,
heartless winter day, with a cold, high wind that made the old minister
look so blue that John Gordon mixed a glass of whiskey-and-water and
made him drink it before they began to talk--that day Mr. Gordon went
so far as to ask a question about Algy. "Has he given you anything
more for your complexion, Edward?" he said, with a faint grin.
"He gave me a smelling-bottle this time. I handed it over to Mary, and
told her not to let me get a sniff of it; and she said, 'Sakes! it's
beautiful!' But I'll tell you something he said, Johnny: he said that
his debt to you was a millstone round his neck. And yet the truth is,
it's a life-buoy!"
John Gordon looked at the soiled, crumpled paper, with its dates of
extensions, and smiled grimly. "Well, I won't deprive him of his
life-buoy."
"The store is doing pretty well," Dr. Lavendar went on--and stopped,
because Alex entered.
"Whose store is doing pretty well," he asked, civilly enough--for Alex.
"Algernon Keen's," said Dr. Lavendar.
Alex's face changed; he looked from one to the other of the old men by
the fire, and he saw his father's hand open and close nervously. But
he restrained himself until their visitor had gone. He even went out
into the sharp, bright wind and unhitched Dr. Lavendar's little blind
horse Goliath, backing the buggy close to the steps and helping the old
man in with what politeness he could muster. Then he hurried back into
the library to his father.
"I should like to know, sir," he said, standing up with his back to the
fire, his legs, in their big, mud-stained top-boots, wide apart, his
hands under his coat-tails--"I should like to know, sir, why Dr.
Lavendar sees fit to refer to a subject which is most offensive to us?"
He fixed his motionless, pale eyes on his father, shrinking back in the
winged chair.
"I don't know--I don't know," said John Gordon. Then, suddenly, he put
out his hand and caught at the crumpled note on the table beside him
and put it in his pocket. Instantly suspicion flamed into Alex's eyes.
His face turned dully red, almost purple. He made a step forward as
though to interpose and grasp at the paper, restrained himself, and
said, with laborious politeness:
"If that is a note, sir--I thought I saw indorsements of
interest--sha'n't I put it into the safe for you?"
"I won't trouble you, Alex."
Alex stood silent; then suddenly he struck the table with his fist: "My
God! I believe you've been lending money to that--to that--"
Mr. Gordon began to shake very much.
"Did Dr. Lavendar presume to ask you to lend money to--to--"
Mr. Gordon passed his hand over his lips; then he said, faintly, "No;
he didn't."
Alex, like a boat brought suddenly up into the wind, stammered
uncertainly. "Oh; I--I--thought--" And then suspicion broke out
again. "Has the creature asked you for a loan?"
"No," Mr. Gordon said.
And Alex gaped at him, silenced. Yet he was certain that that strip of
paper had some connection with Algernon Keen. "I beg your pardon," he
said; "I thought for an instant that you were dickering with the man
who seduced your daughter. I am sure I beg your pardon for the
thought," he ended, with elaborate and ironical courtesy, for his
father's obvious agitation assured him that he was right. "I only felt
that if it was his note, it must be kept carefully--carefully." He
smiled in a deadly way he had, and opened and shut his hand as though
he would close it on the hilt of a knife. "But, of course, I was
mistaken. You would press it if you had his note--although 'sue a
beggar.' And, besides, if we had got as far as lending him money, we
would be asking him to dinner next."
Mr. Gordon cringed.
"So I beg your pardon," Alex ended, sardonically.
"Very well--very well," his father said; and got up and began to potter
about among his books, as much as to say that the subject was ended.
"It _is_ a note," Alex said to himself, and smiled.... So far the
creature had gone scot-free. In these days of lawfully accepted
dishonor revenge is not talked about. But perhaps it would come to his
hand. Not the revenge of the instincts--not the shedding of blood, man
fashion; but the revenge of inflicting misery. Not much of a revenge,
of course, but the best that he could get. And so he smiled to
himself....
He said no more at the time; but months later his father realized that
the incident was not forgotten when Alex said, suddenly, sneering: "So
your son-in-law is prospering in his business? I saw his establishment
to-day in Mercer. If he owes you any money he will be able to pay
cash. I congratulate you, sir."
Old Mr. Gordon made no reply. He was very feeble that autumn. Willy
King told Alex that another attack of bronchitis would be the end. "He
can't stand it," said Dr. King. "I'd take him South, Alex, if I were
you."
Alex did not like to leave his mill in Upper Chester, but, as he told
Willy, he was a good son, and always did his duty to his father. "I
play dominoes with him every night," he said;--so he would take the old
man South, though to go and come would keep him from business almost a
week.
It was then that John Gordon told Dr. Lavendar that Alex suspected him
of lending money to Mr. Keen. "And if I die," he said, "Alex will
squeeze the poor devil--he'll squeeze him till he ruins him. I--I
suppose I'm a great fool, but I almost thought maybe, sometime, I'd
destroy that note, Edward?"
Dr. Lavendar chuckled: "I knew you'd come to it, Johnny; but--" he
stopped and ruminated. "You've come to it; so that's all right. But
do you know--I don't believe he can do without it quite yet awhile."
"Poor devil!" John Gordon said again, kindly. "Well, I'll let him gnaw
on it awhile longer. I suppose he'll want another extension?"
"Probably," said Dr. Lavendar. "He is just holding his own this year;
he will be able to pay the interest, he told me, but not very much
more."
Extension was necessary, as Dr. Lavendar had foreseen; and when he
wrote to Mr. Gordon about it the old man replied in obvious fear of his
son. The note was in his safe, he said; Edward knew where it was; it
was in the japanned box. "But I don't care to ask Alex to get it," he
explained. "He doesn't know of its existence; so I'll give you power
of attorney to see to it. You'd better just have Ezra Barkley put it
in shape for you, because it will be necessary to go up to the house
and open the safe to get it and put it back again. Alex is never at
home until late in the afternoon, but Rachel is there and will let you
in. You'll find some very good Monongahela in the chimney closet."
Then he added the combinations of the locks on the safe and the
japanned box.
"Stick that in, Ezra, will you, about going up to the house?" Dr.
Lavendar said.
And Ezra stuck it in solemnly, and then held his pen between his teeth
and blotted his paper. "It is estimated," he observed, through his
shut teeth, "that the amount of ink used in the United States of
America, in signatures to wills, since the year when the independence
of the colonies was declared, would be sufficient in bulk to float a--"
"Well, Ezra," said Dr. Lavendar, chuckling, "this paper seems rather
liberal. Suppose I take some cash out of the safe to repair the roof
of the vestry? It leaks like a sieve."
"Your construction of liberality is at fault, sir," Mr. Ezra corrected
him, gently; "this paper defines just exactly what you may do, up to
the moment when the principal reclaims the paper--or dies."
"Well, I hope he won't reclaim it, or die, either, till he gets an
affair we are both interested in patched up," Dr. Lavendar said; then
he listened politely while Mr. Ezra told him how many times the word
"ink" occurred in Holy Writ.
Dr. Lavendar went away with his power of attorney in his pocket. And
when he sent it to John Gordon to sign, he seemed to take it for
granted that he and Mr. Gordon were equally interested in the
development and well-being of Mary's husband. He said in his letter
such things as, "You'll make a man of him yet;" and, "Your patience has
given the best elements in him time to come out." Dr. Lavendar had a
perfectly unreasonable way of imputing good motives to people; the
consequence was he was not very much astonished when they displayed
goodness. He was not astonished when, some two months later, another
letter came from old Mr. Gordon, saying that on the whole he thought
the note had better not run any longer. "I am going to forgive him his
debt," Mary's father wrote, in a feeble scrawl; "and I'll be obliged to
you if you will go up to my house and get that note and send it to me.
I'm pretty shaky on my pins, and I don't want to run risks, so I wish
you'd tear the signature out and burn it before you mail the note.
I'll send it along to Mr. Keen. I mean to write to him and tell him I
think he is honest, anyway. The fact is, I half respect the poor
fellow. It's been a long winter, and I can't say I'm much better.
Willy King doesn't know everything. These doctors are too confoundedly
ready to send a man away from home. I should have been just as well
off in Old Chester. _Be sure and destroy that signature_."
Dr. Lavendar read this letter joyfully, but without surprise. "I'm
glad he didn't take my advice and let it go on any longer," he said to
himself; "I guess I'll risk the effect on Algy now."
Then he wondered if there would be any danger of meeting Alex if he
went up to the house right after dinner. "I can't manage it this
morning," he said to himself. "I've got to go and see Mrs. Drayton.
Well, I wish the Lord would see fit to cure her--or something."
So he went plodding out into a still, gray February day, and called on
Mrs. Drayton, and stopped at the post-office to hear the news, and then
went home to his dinner. "Ye're not going out _again_?" his Mary
cried, in shrill remonstrance, when in the afternoon she saw him muffle
himself up for the drive out into the country; "it's beginning to snow!"
"I am," said Dr. Lavendar; "and see you have a good supper for me when
I get back." He got into his buggy, buttoning the apron up in front of
him, for it was a wet snow. He had on a shabby old fur cap, which he
pulled well down over his forehead, furrowed by other people's sins and
troubles; but his eyes peered from under it as bright and happy as a
squirrel's.
His little blind horse pulled slowly and comfortably up the hill,
stopping to get his breath on a shaky bridge over a run. In the
silence of the snow Dr. Lavendar did not hear the stage coming down the
hill until it was almost on the bridge; then he had to pull over to let
it pass. As he did so the single passenger inside rapped on the
window, and then opened it and thrust his head out, calling to the
driver to stop.
"Dr. Lavendar! you have heard, I suppose? Very sad. A great shock.
Of course I'm going on at once to bring the body back. It is difficult
to get off at this season, but a son has a sacred duty." Alex's pale
eyes were bulging from his red, excited face.
"What news?" Dr. Lavendar said. "You don't mean--Alex! John
isn't--your father isn't--"
"My father is dead," Alex said, with ponderous solemnity. "It is a
great grief, of course; but I trust I shall be properly resigned. His
age rendered such an event not altogether unexpected."
Dr. Lavendar could not speak; but as the stage-driver began to gather
up his reins from the steaming backs of his horses, he said, brokenly:
"Wait--wait. Tell me about it, Alex; your father and I have been
friends all our lives." Alex told him briefly: He had just had a
despatch; his father had died that morning; he had been less well for a
fortnight. "I had a letter from him this morning," Alex said, "in
which he referred to his health--"
"So had I--so had I."
"I cannot get back with the body for six days--three to go, three to
come," Alex said, "but I will be obliged if you will arrange for the
obsequies next Thursday."
"Yes, yes. I will make any arrangements for you," Dr. Lavendar said.
He took out his big red silk pocket-handkerchief and blew his nose with
a trembling flourish. "We were boys together; your father was the big
boy, you know; I was the youngster. But we were great friends. Alex,
I am afraid my own grief has made me forgetful of yours; but you have
had a loss, my boy--a great loss."
"Very much so--very much so," Alex agreed, with a proper sigh, and
pulled up the window of the stage, then lowered it abruptly: "Oh, Dr.
Lavendar, are you going on as far up as--as _my_ house?"
"As _your_ house?" Dr. Lavendar repeated. "Oh--oh yes; I didn't
understand. Yes, I am."
"Would it inconvenience you," Alex said, "to stop there? I am going to
ask Mr. Ezra Barkley to come up at once and put seals on various
things. I am the sole executor, as well as the heir, of course; but I
sha'n't be able to attend to things for a week; and the forms of law
must be observed. If you could be on hand when Barkley is there--not
that I do not trust him."
Dr. Lavendar stared at him blankly; for an intelligent man, Alex was
sometimes a great fool. But he only nodded gravely, and said he would
stop at the house and wait for Mr. Ezra; Alex signed to the driver, and
the stage went rolling noiselessly on into the storm. When, at the
foot of the hill, Alex glanced back through the little oblong of bubbly
glass in the leather curtain of the coach, he saw Dr. Lavendar's buggy
standing motionless where he had passed it on the bridge; then the snow
hid it.
Under the bridge the creek ran swiftly between edges of ice that here
and there had caught a dipping branch and held it prisoner, or had
spread in agate curves--snow white, clear black, faint white
again--around a stone in mid-stream. On the black current, silent
except for a murmurous rush of bubbles under the ice, the snowflakes
melted instantly, myriads of them--hurrying, hurrying, hurrying; then,
as they touched the water, gone. Dr. Lavendar, in the buggy, sat
looking down at them:
"_In an instant--in the twinkling of an eye, we shall be changed._" ...
"He was my oldest friend." ("Was": with what an awful promptitude the
mind adjusts itself to "he _was_"!) Yet as he sat there, peering out
over the top of the apron and making, heavily, those plans familiar to
every clergyman, Dr. Lavendar did not really believe that the plans
were for Johnny. The snow fell with noiseless steadiness; the top of
the buggy was white; thimbles of down heaped themselves on the hubs,
tumbling off when the horse moved restlessly a step forward or backed a
little and stamped. Suddenly Goliath shook himself, for the snow was
cold upon his shaggy back, and the harness clattered and the shafts
rattled. Dr. Lavendar drew a long breath. "G'on!" he said. And
Goliath went on with evident relief. He knew the road well, and turned
in at the Gordon gateway, as a matter of course. When he stopped at
the front steps, the door opened and Rachel stood there, her eyes red.
"Sam will take him round to the stable, sir," she said, as Sam shambled
out from the back of the house to stand at Goliath's head. "Oh, my!
sir; I suppose you've heard?"
"Yes, Rachel; I've heard," the old man said, unbuttoning the apron and
climbing out. Rachel took his hand and wept audibly. "I knew he'd
never come back; he was marked for death. I've lived here eighteen
years, and I always said it was a privilege to work for a gentleman
like him."
"Yes--yes," he said, kindly. He was plainly agitated, and Rachel saw
that he was trembling.
"Course you feel it, sir, being about of an age," she said,
sympathetically. "Dr. Lavendar, sir, won't you have a glass of
something?" With the hospitality of an old servant, she would have
opened the little closet in the chimney-breast, but he checked her.
"Not yet; not now, Rachel. Leave me here awhile by myself, my girl.
I'll come out to the kitchen and see you before I go. When Mr. Barkley
comes, ask him to step into the library."
"Yes, sir," Rachel said, obediently; and went away sniffling and
sighing.
Dr. Lavendar stood looking about him at the emptiness of the room: the
winged chair, with the purple silk handkerchief hanging over the back;
the table heaped with books; the fire drowsing in the grate; the old
safe in the corner by the window. Outside, the snow drove past,
blotting the landscape. Ezra would probably arrive within a half-hour;
he had better get the note before he came. Then there need be no
explanations.
When Mr. Ezra came in he found the old minister sitting by the fire,
quite calm again, and even cheerful. "Yes," he said, in answer to the
lawyer's very genteel expressions of sympathy--"yes, I'll miss him. We
were boys together. He used to call me Bantam. I hadn't thought of it
for years."
"Nicknames," said Mr. Ezra, "were used by the ancients as long ago as
300 B.C."
"Well, I'm not as ancient as 300 B.C.," said Dr. Lavendar, "but I
called him Storkey; I can't imagine why, for he was only an inch and a
half taller; he always said it was two inches, but it wasn't. It was
an inch and a half."
"We are here," said Mr. Ezra, pulling off his gloves and coughing
politely, "for indeed a solemn and an affecting task. It is my duty,
sir, to seal the effects of the deceased, so that they may be
delivered, intact, to the executor."
Dr. Lavendar nodded.
"In all my professional career I have never happened to be called upon
for this especial duty. It is quite unusual. But Alex seemed to think
it necessary. Alex is a good son."
"So he says," said Dr. Lavendar.
"Are you aware, sir," proceeded Mr. Ezra, producing from his bag the
paraphernalia of his office, "that such is the incredible celerity of
bees (belonging to the _Hymenoptera_) that they can within twenty-four
hours manufacture four thousand cells in the comb? This interesting
fact is suggested by the use of wax for sealing."
Dr. Lavendar watched him in a silence so deep that he hardly heard the
harmless stream of statistics; but at last he was moved to say, with
his kind, old smile, "How _can_ you know so many things, Ezra?"
"In my profession," Mr. Ezra explained, "it is necessary to keep the
mind up to the greatest agility; I, therefore, exercise it frequently
in matters of memory." He lit a candle and held his wax sputtering in
the flame. "I recall," he said, "with painful interest, that at one of
our recent meetings I had the honor of drawing the power of attorney
for you, from the deceased."
"So you did," said Dr. Lavendar.
"Did you ever reflect," said Mr. Barkley, "that should that power be
used after the death of the donor, to carry out a wish of said donor,
expressed an hour, nay, a moment, before the instant of
dissolution--such act would be an offence in the eye of the law?"
"I've always thought the law ought to put on spectacles, Ezra," said
Dr. Lavendar; "it has mighty poor eyesight once in a while."
Mr. Barkley was shocked. "The law, Lavendar, is the deepest expression
of the human sense of justice!"
"But, Ezra," Dr. Lavendar said, suddenly attentive, "that is very
interesting. I remember you referred to the lapsing of the power of
attorney when you made out that paper for me; but I didn't quite
understand. Do you mean that carrying out, now, directions given
before the death of my old friend would be against the law? Suppose he
had asked me--last week, perhaps, to destroy--well, say that old
account-book there on the table, couldn't I do it to-day?"
"Dr. Lavendar, you do not, I fear, apprehend the majesty of the law!
Why," said Mr. Ezra, standing up, very straight and solemn, "such a
deed--"
"But suppose I didn't want--suppose Johnny didn't want, for reasons of
his own, to have anybody--say, even his executor--see that
account-book; suppose it might be put to some bad purpose--used to
injure some third person (of course that is an absurd supposition, but
it will do for an illustration); if he had asked me last week to
destroy it, do you mean to say, Ezra, I couldn't destroy it
to-day?--just because he happened to die this morning!"
"My dear sir," said Mr. Ezra, "such conduct on your part would be
perilously near a criminal offence."