At home the Richardses had to endure congratulations and compliments
until midnight. Then they were left to themselves. They looked a little
sad, and they sat silent and thinking. Finally Mary sighed and said:
“Do you think we are to blame, Edward--_much_ to blame?” and her eyes
wandered to the accusing triplet of big bank-notes lying on the table,
where the congratulators had been gloating over them and reverently
fingering them. Edward did not answer at once; then he brought out a
sigh and said, hesitatingly:
“We--we couldn’t help it, Mary. It--well it was ordered. _All_ things
are.”
Mary glanced up and looked at him steadily, but he didn’t return the
look. Presently she said:
“I thought congratulations and praises always tasted good. But--it
seems to me, now--Edward?”
“Well?”
“Are you going to stay in the bank?”
“N--no.”
“Resign?”
“In the morning--by note.”
“It does seem best.”
Richards bowed his head in his hands and muttered:
“Before I was not afraid to let oceans of people’s money pour through
my hands, but--Mary, I am so tired, so tired--”
“We will go to bed.”
At nine in the morning the stranger called for the sack and took it to
the hotel in a cab. At ten Harkness had a talk with him privately. The
stranger asked for and got five cheques on a metropolitan bank--drawn
to “Bearer,”--four for $1,500 each, and one for $34,000. He put one of
the former in his pocket-book, and the remainder, representing $38,500,
he put in an envelope, and with these he added a note which he wrote
after Harkness was gone. At eleven he called at the Richards’ house
and knocked. Mrs. Richards peeped through the shutters, then went and
received the envelope, and the stranger disappeared without a word. She
came back flushed and a little unsteady on her legs, and gasped out:
“I am sure I recognised him! Last night it seemed to me that maybe I
had seen him somewhere before.”
“He is the man that brought the sack here?”
“I am almost sure of it.”
“Then he is the ostensible Stephenson too, and sold every important
citizen in this town with his bogus secret. Now if he has sent cheques
instead of money, we are sold too, after we thought we had escaped. I
was beginning to feel fairly comfortable once more, after my night’s
rest, but the look of that envelope makes me sick. It isn’t fat enough;
$8,500 in even the largest bank-notes makes more bulk than that.”
“Edward, why do you object to cheques?”
“Cheques signed by Stephenson! I am resigned to take the $8,500 if it
could come in bank-notes--for it does seem that it was so ordered,
Mary--but I have never had much courage, and I have not the pluck to
try to market a cheque signed with that disastrous name. It would be a
trap. That man tried to catch me; we escaped somehow or other; and now
he is trying a new way. If it is cheques--”
“Oh, Edward, it is _too_ bad!” And she held up the cheques and began to
cry.
“Put them in the fire! quick! we mustn’t be tempted. It is a trick
to make the world laugh at _us_, along with the rest, and--Give them
to _me_, since you can’t do it!” He snatched them and tried to hold
his grip till he could get to the stove; but he was human, he was a
cashier, and he stopped a moment to make sure of the signature. Then he
came near to fainting.
“Fan me, Mary, fan me! They are the same as gold!”
“Oh, how lovely, Edward! Why?”
“Signed by Harkness. What can the mystery of that be, Mary?”
“Edward, do you think--”
“Look here--look at this! Fifteen--fifteen--fifteen--thirty-four.
Thirty-eight thousand five hundred! Mary, the sack isn’t worth twelve
dollars, and Harkness--apparently--has paid about par for it.”
“And does it all come to us, do you think--instead of the ten thousand?”
“Why, it looks like it. And the cheques are made to ‘Bearer,’ too.”
“Is that good, Edward? What is it for?”
“A hint to collect them at some distant bank, I reckon. Perhaps
Harkness doesn’t want the matter known. What is that--a note?”
“Yes. It was with the cheques.”
It was in the “Stephenson” handwriting, but there was no signature. It
said:
“I am a disappointed man. Your honesty is beyond the reach of
temptation. I had a different idea about it, but I wronged you in
that, and I beg pardon, and do it sincerely. I honour you--and that
is sincere too. This town is not worthy to kiss the hem of your
garment. Dear sir, I made a square bet with myself that there were
nineteen debauchable men in your self-righteous community. I have
lost. Take the whole pot, you are entitled to it.”
Richards drew a deep sigh, and said:
“It seems written with fire--it burns so. Mary--I am miserable again.”
“I, too. Ah, dear, I wish--”
“To think, Mary--he _believes_ in me.”
“Oh, don’t, Edward--I can’t bear it.”
“If those beautiful words were deserved, Mary--and God knows I believed I
deserved them once--I think I could give the forty thousand dollars for
them. And I would put that paper away, as representing more than gold
and jewels, and keep it always. But now--We could not live in the shadow
of its accusing presence, Mary.”
He put it in the fire.
A messenger arrived and delivered an envelope. Richards took from it a
note and read it; it was from Burgess:
“You saved me, in a difficult time. I saved you last night. It was
at cost of a lie, but I made the sacrifice freely, and out of a
grateful heart. None in this village knows so well as I know how
brave and good and noble you are. At bottom you cannot respect me,
knowing as you do of that matter of which I am accused, and by the
general voice condemned; but I beg that you will at least believe that
I am a grateful man; it will help me to bear my burden. [Signed]
‘BURGESS.’”
“Saved, once more. And on such terms!” He put the note in the fire.
“I--I wish I were dead, Mary, I wish I were out of it all!”
“Oh, these are bitter, bitter days, Edward. The stabs, through their
very generosity, are so deep--and they come so fast!”
Three days before the election each of two thousand voters suddenly
found himself in possession of a prized memento--one of the renowned
bogus double-eagles. Around one of its faces was stamped these words:
“THE REMARK I MADE TO THE POOR STRANGER WAS--” Around the other face
was stamped these: “GO, AND REFORM. [SIGNED] PINKERTON.” Thus the
entire remaining refuse of the renowned joke was emptied upon a single
head, and with calamitous effect. It revived the recent vast laugh and
concentrated it upon Pinkerton; and Harkness’s election was a walk-over.
Within twenty-four hours after the Richardses had received their
cheques their consciences were quieting down, discouraged; the old
couple were learning to reconcile themselves to the sin which they had
committed. But they were to learn, now, that a sin takes on new and
real terrors when there seems a chance that it is going to be found
out. This gives it a fresh and most substantial and important aspect.
At church the morning sermon was of the usual pattern; it was the same
old things said in the same old way; they had heard them a thousand
times and found them innocuous, next to meaningless, and easy to sleep
under; but now it was different: the sermon seemed to bristle with
accusations; it seemed aimed straight and specially at people who were
concealing deadly sins. After church they got away from the mob of
congratulators as soon as they could, and hurried homeward, chilled to
the bone at they did not know what--vague, shadowy, indefinite fears.
And by chance they caught a glimpse of Mr. Burgess as he turned a
corner. He paid no attention to their nod of recognition! He hadn’t
seen it; but they did not know that. What could his conduct mean?
It might mean--it might--mean--oh, a dozen dreadful things. Was it
possible that he knew that Richards could have cleared him of guilt in
that bygone time, and had been silently waiting for a chance to even
up accounts? At home, in their distress they got to imagining that
their servant might have been in the next room listening when Richards
revealed the secret to his wife that he knew of Burgess’s innocence;
next Richards began to imagine that he had heard the swish of a gown
in there at that time; next, he was sure he _had_ heard it. They would
call Sarah in, on a pretext, and watch her face; if she had been
betraying them to Mr. Burgess, it would show in her manner. They asked
her some questions--questions which were so random and incoherent and
seemingly purposeless that the girl felt sure that the old people’s
minds had been affected by their sudden good fortune; the sharp and
watchful gaze which they bent upon her frightened her, and that
completed the business. She blushed, she became nervous and confused,
and to the old people these were plain signs of guilt--guilt of some
fearful sort or other--without doubt she was a spy and a traitor.
When they were alone again they began to piece many unrelated things
together and get horrible results out of the combination. When things
had got about to the worst Richards was delivered of a sudden gasp and
his wife asked:
“Oh, what is it?--what is it?”
“The note--Burgess’s note! Its language was sarcastic, I see it now.”
He quoted: “‘At bottom you cannot respect me, _knowing_, as you do,
of _that matter of_ which I am accused’--oh, it is perfectly plain,
now, God help me! He knows that I know! You see the ingenuity of the
phrasing. It was a trap--and like a fool, I walked into it. And Mary--!”
“Oh, it is dreadful--I know what you are going to say--he didn’t return
your transcript of the pretended test-remark.”
“No--kept it to destroy us with. Mary, he has exposed us to some
already. I know it--I know it well. I saw it in a dozen faces after
church. Ah, he wouldn’t answer our nod of recognition--he knew what he
had been doing!”
In the night the doctor was called. The news went around in the
morning that the old couple were rather seriously ill--prostrated by
the exhausting excitement growing out of their great windfall, the
congratulations, and the late hours, the doctor said. The town was
sincerely distressed; for these old people were about all it had left
to be proud of, now.
Two days later the news was worse. The old couple were delirious, and
were doing strange things. By witness of the nurses, Richards had
exhibited cheques--for $8,500? No--for an amazing sum--$38,500! What
could be the explanation of this gigantic piece of luck?
The following day the nurses had more news--and wonderful. They had
concluded to hide the cheques, lest harm come to them; but when they
searched they were gone from under the patient’s pillow--vanished away.
The patient said:
“Let the pillow alone; what do you want?”
“We thought it best that the cheques--”
“You will never see them again--they are destroyed. They came from
Satan. I saw the hell-brand on them, and I knew they were sent to
betray me to sin.” Then he fell to gabbling strange and dreadful things
which were not clearly understandable, and which the doctor admonished
them to keep to themselves.
Richards was right; the cheques were never seen again.
A nurse must have talked in her sleep, for within two days the
forbidden gabblings were the property of the town; and they were of
a surprising sort. They seemed to indicate that Richards had been a
claimant for the sack himself, and that Burgess had concealed that fact
and then maliciously betrayed it.
Burgess was taxed with this and stoutly denied it. And he said it was
not fair to attach weight to the chatter of a sick old man who was out
of his mind. Still, suspicion was in the air, and there was much talk.
After a day or two it was reported that Mrs. Richards’s delirious
deliveries were getting to be duplicates of her husband’s. Suspicion
flamed up into conviction, now, and the town’s pride in the purity of
its one undiscredited important citizen began to dim down and flicker
toward extinction.
Six days passed, then came more news. The old couple were dying.
Richards’s mind cleared in his latest hour, and he sent for Burgess.
Burgess said:
“Let the room be cleared. I think he wishes to say something in
privacy.”
“No!” said Richards; “I want witnesses. I want you all to hear
my confession, so that I may die a man, and not a dog. I was
clean--artificially--like the rest; and like the rest I fell when
temptation came. I signed a lie, and claimed the miserable sack. Mr.
Burgess remembered that I had done him a service, and in gratitude (and
ignorance) he suppressed my claim and saved me. You know the thing that
was charged against Burgess years ago. My testimony, and mine alone,
could have cleared him, and I was a coward and left him to suffer
disgrace--”
“No--no--Mr. Richards, you--”
“My servant betrayed my secret to him--”
“No one has betrayed anything to me--”
--“And then he did a natural and justifiable thing; he repented of
the saving kindness which he had done me, and he _exposed_ me--as I
deserved--”
“Never!--I make oath--”
“Out of my heart I forgive him.”
Burgess’s impassioned protestations fell upon deaf ears; the dying man
passed away without knowing that once more he had done poor Burgess a
wrong. The old wife died that night.
The last of the sacred Nineteen had fallen a prey to the fiendish
sack; the town was stripped of the last rag of its ancient glory. Its
mourning was not showy, but it was deep.
By act of the Legislature--upon prayer and petition--Hadleyburg was
allowed to change its name to (never mind what--I will not give it
away), and leave one word out of the motto that for many generations
had graced the town’s official seal.
It is an honest town once more, and the man will have to rise early
that catches it napping again.