It endured, in fact, scarcely a fortnight. It lapsed at the close of a
dull October day--a day that was within one of the first anniversary
of his marriage. Let the means by which he was detected be asked
no more than the means through which he transgressed. The delicate
mechanism of a bank's accounts responds sensitively to the slightest
and most ingenious variation; and it may be, too, that some one in
this particular bank was watching for the slip and was waiting for the
chance to expose and punish it.
The smoky dusk of the short afternoon was falling outside, while
within, under the illumination made by a single electric light, a
mother, in the same room where one of Brainard's daughters had plead
for the other, was now pleading with him for her son.
No taint had ever fallen before on any of her family or connections.
She was crushed and dazed at the thought that anything like this had
happened, could have happened, had had the slightest need of happening.
And she was dumfounded that all explanation fell upon heedless ears,
and that all offers of restitution encountered such, stubborn,
brutish, and determined opposition.
"We have lands," she cried, with the tears coursing down her anxious
face. "We can make this good, twice and three times over. What more can
you want?"
But Brainard _did_ want something more. He wanted the ruin of her son.
"A bank can't deal in real estate," he said doggedly.
He sent a malevolent glance across the table on whose far edge Ogden's
bowed head was resting. Beside Ogden stood Fairchild; there was a look
of sympathetic distress upon his kindly face.
"It is true," he said, in a low and quiet tone, "that it is not
allowable for us to make a loan upon real property; but it would not be
amiss for us to take it in payment of this--this--"
"Theft!" cried Brainard loudly. Ogden winced and shuddered; his mother
sank into a chair with a low moan.
"Look here, Fairchild," the old man went on, holding up his forefinger
with an offensively masterful effect of caution, "it will pay you to go
pretty slow just about here. This"--he wagged his head contemptuously
towards the bowed: head of the culprit--"was _your_ man. You took his
letters; you put him in here. Just stop and think of that!"
Fairchild bit his lip.
"And the other man, before him, was yours. Don't forget that, either."
His face showed a cruel and malignant grin.
Fairchild flushed, and lowered his eyes to the floor in silence. Ogden
half raised his head to look at him; what could these words mean? He
looked at his mother, too; she was lying back with her face in her
hands.
The young man's own dace was mapped with the lines of a worry that
goads one on to desperation, and it was painted with the blended hue
that comes from shame and anxiety and fear and the exhausting struggles
carried on through long and sleepless nights. It was hard to face these
other faces; it was hard to face even the light of day, thick and
dulling though it might be. His head drooped again to the friendly dusk
of the table-top before him.
"By Heaven," Brainard went on, "not another man comes into this bank
except under a guarantee; and he'll pay the premium for it if he don't
stay more than a week. You might think, in a small bank like this,
that some kind of eye could be kept on things; but it seems not. It's
pick and steal, all the time; first one, then another. No sooner is
young Pratt rooted out than this fellow comes up. One steady string of
flea-bites--I can't stand it; I won't stand it. Do you think I am going
to have Shayne and Cutter and all the rest of 'em go around and tell
how Brainard's always got somebody else's hand in his pants pocket and
never finds it out? Not very much. I do find it out and I'm going to
punish it. You needn't ask me to hold off--it's no use. There's a law
for this, and that law is going to take its course."
His white hair stood up in a stiff shock over his forehead, and the
gray gristle sprouting on his lip moved up and down forbiddingly as the
lip itself worked over the broken row of his teeth. The red veins in
his nose showed more redly yet, and his fists were clenched at the ends
of his down-hung arms with the straightened tension of an inexorable
will.
"My poor boy! My poor boy!" his mother cried. She came over to him and
bowed her head on his.
Fairchild looked at Brainard--a look that called for all his
self-control and fortitude. "This is too hard," he said. "There was
provocation for him, and there are means to make everything good."
"See here, Fairchild," cried the enraged old man, "you have got to keep
out of this, if you want to stay friends with me. We've pulled together
a good while, but we shall pull apart after five seconds more of this.
That young man there has fooled along with us a little too far. He has
had his fun, and now he shall pay for it. He shall; by God, I say he
shall!"
His voice rose to a harsh and strident cry, and his great fist fell
with a ponderous thud on the table before him.
A second later another hand was heard--on the other side of the door.
It was faint, but it was audible. It had been preparing for five long
and hesitating minutes. To the heart that guided this hand the five
seemed five-and-twenty.
Fairchild moved swiftly towards the door and laid his hand upon the
knob to prevent any intrusion.
The knock was repeated. He opened the door to a narrow crack. Then he
opened it wider.
Abbie Brainard stood on the threshold.
She stepped in swiftly and softly. She shut the door behind her quickly
and then leaned her back against its shining panels.
Her face was pale; her bosom was heaving; but her gray eyes gave out
the strong and steady light of courage and resolution.
Ogden saw her. He locked his jaws, and took a firm hold on the two arms
of his chair, and raised himself and stood erect before her. Had not
she herself, on this very spot, once done the same for him? However it
might be, or might have been, with others, here, at least, was one who
should not see him humbled.
There was no salutation of any kind on either side. She saw him, but
seemed to be looking beyond him rather than at him; and in his eyes she
stood there with the remote inaccessibility of some distant snow-peak.
Her father turned towards her.
"Abbie! You here? What do you want? What do you mean by coming in like
this? Go out again!"
She looked at him with a cool and quiet inflexibility. But her voice
was low and trembling as she said,
"I shall stay."
"You can't; you mustn't. You don't want to mix up in this business--you
don't understand."
He laid one hand on her arm, and with the other he reached out towards
the door-knob.
She withdrew her arm from the hold of his fingers.
"I understand," she said, immovably.
He drew back. "You do? Well, stay then, if you will, and understand
better. Learn what kind of a man he really is."
He thrust out his arm towards Ogden, with a cruel and contemptuous
smile.
"He came here with letters," he began. "We gave him a chance. Nobody
really knew what he was--"
Ogden stood there straight before him. He ground his teeth together to
keep his face composed; behind him his nails dug into the palms of his
hands, as he held himself back from springing forward and fastening
them around the throat of Abbie Brainard's father. There was a ringing
in his ears, and through it there sounded faintly the fine tones of
Fairchild, speaking to Mary Brainard:
"Nobody really knows who he is, or who his people are, or where he is
from ... a town full to overflowing with single young men ... from
everywhere. They are taken on faith. Most of them are all right, no
doubt; but others--"
He was now one of the "others"; his "people," whom no one had known,
were to be known now, after years of probity, as the relatives of a--
"Nobody really knew who he was," Brainard repeated; "but he was taken
right in and given a good place. Hasn't he ever wondered why? Is it
so easy to go into a new town, and get a good job in a bank the very
first thing? Wasn't there any other men to jump at the chance of a
position half as good--ain't the city full of 'em? Wasn't there any of
'em in the bank itself who was waiting for the place themselves--and
had a right to it, too? Why was there a vacant place to fill, anyhow?
Because, a week before, another man had done just what this man has
done. He was your man, Fairchild, too. And why did this one here come
stepping in ahead of all the old ones? You fixed it, Fairchild; you
liked his looks and his talk, you said. Another bad guess for you."
Fairchild studied the carpet with abashed eyes, as were he himself the
culprit.
"Yes," Brainard continued, "he was put in a good place and he was
pushed right along. Hasn't he ever guessed why? Does a new man come
into an office like this, and get as far along inside of a year as he
has, without there being any reason for it 2 I'll tell him the reason
for it. I did it because my girl here--"
"Father!" cried Abbie, with face aflame. "No! No!"
"You say you understand," he said, turning towards her. "Now, let
_him_ understand, too. I advanced him to this position," he went on
shamelessly, "because my girl here asked me to."
"No, father! No!" the poor child cried. She threw her shamefaced head
on Mrs. Ogden's bosom. She had never seen her before, but under such
circumstances the only place for a woman's face was on another woman's
breast.
"Yes, you did, too--ask me," he went on, with increased hardihood. "Or
just the same as asked--I knew what you meant, well enough. And I said
to myself I'd do it. One girl went wrong," he continued, with a choking
in his throat, "and I wanted to do what I could to--I wanted Abbie
to do different; I wasn't going to have her carried off by another
infernal scoundrel."
Ogden flushed and paled and sank down into his chair. His head dropped
into his hands; there was no possibility of his holding it up before
anything like this.
"And so I helped him on. I said, 'If I do the right thing by him, he
will do the right thing by--her; he will act like a man.' I _did_ do
the right thing by him--and what then? He had been hanging around all
the spring--taking walks and sitting out in front and borrowing books.
But the moment I put him on his legs what did he do?"
He was addressing the young man's mother now, whose tear-stained
face showed over Abbie's black hat, and whose poor old hand was laid
tenderly on Abbie's shoulder. It was plain to every one now that the
question was not one of money. Ogden saw clearly enough at last why he
had suffered wreck when so many others had ridden the waves. Pratt had
filched and had escaped. McDowell had plundered right and left and had
never been brought down. Brainard himself had piled up a scandalous
fortune and yet had contrived to evade the law. But none of them had
come athwart the mortified rage of a father--a father who had humbled
his inborn savageness and pride for a daughter's sake and had humbled
himself in vain.
[Illustration: Stop!' cried Ogden.]
Ogden glanced across towards Abbie. She rested on his mother's shoulder
as once, almost, and in this very room, she had rested on his. He knew
why she had come; he recognized her devotion and her bravery. She had
overlooked his pitiful palterings; she had forgiven the final slight to
which they had led; she had imperilled her modesty and mortified her
self-love' by coming here that she might save him from her father's
vengeance.
Her father looked at her now and took a softer tone.
"She's the best girl there ever was in the world," he declared,
with a choking voice and a moistened glimmer in his eyes; "and the
smartest--she knows how to do everything; she's the only real comfort
I've ever had. She would be a credit to any man, I don't care who.
And what does he pass her over for? For another," he went on, with a
recrudescence of his insane and primitive jealousy, "who can't care for
her house, who couldn't be a mother to his child, who has ruined him by
her extravagance--"
"Stop!" cried Ogden. He rose and approached Brainard. There was a
threatening glitter in his eyes, and convulsive twitches played among
his fingers.
"Yes, stop, for Heaven's sake," said Fairchild, laying an expostulatory
hand on the old man's arm. "Stop," he murmured again; "his wife is
dying."
Abbie rushed between Ogden and her father. "George! George!" she cried.
"Don't! Be patient!"
"What if his wife _is_ dying?" called out the infuriated old wretch.
"Is that any reason for lying down when he has slighted my daughter and
robbed me!"
"For shame, father! For shame!" She hid her face in her hands, and her
tears gushed through them.
Ogden paused, stung and quivering. His hands dropped; his fingers
relaxed. His wife was dying! Nobody had told him that before, and he
had never dared to tell it to himself. But it was true, and he knew it.
Abbie rose again and confronted her father. The tears were still in her
eyes and a wide blush suffused her cheeks.
"Father, you shall not punish him. He may have done wrong, but there
was reason for it. And any wrong he _has_ done can be set right."
Ogden's eyes were bedimmed, but through the moisture he seemed to
see again the sight that closed the evening of his one-day wedding
journey towards the north; again he stood on the bridge, and the sun
set over one lake while the moon rose over the other. Only now, with
Abbie Brainard's blushes before his body's eye and his wife's pale face
before his mind's eye, a confusion came alike over his thought and his
vision; it was now the sun rising on him at the moment that the pallid
moon was going down. He looked at her and she looked at him, and in the
eyes of both there was read the confession of a great mistake. Then her
eyes drooped for shame and his for disloyalty, and neither one was able
to look into the other's face again.
"Do you defend _him_?" her father cried. "Can you forgive _her_? I
can't do either. No quarter; don't ask it, Abbie. He has chosen his
course--he is responsible for his acts. And he shall answer for them,
as any other man must who crosses me."
He flung open the door and passed out. Fairchild stood anxiously over
the chair in which Abbie lay back panting for breath. Ogden pressed her
hand and turned towards his mother.
"Come, let us go," he said, and the two passed out into the great
vestibule of the Clifton. He signalled the elevator.
"Wait for me here, mother--five minutes;" he spoke in a voice which
she hardly recognized as his. "Twelfth," she heard him say to the boy
inside.
"Twelfth!" she gasped. "Twelfth? It's Eugene!"
She tried to stop him; her fingers merely caught in the grille-work
that shut off the empty shaft.
Why do we go mad? Why do we kill ourselves? Why is there more
insanity and more self-murder to-day than ever before? It is because,
under existing conditions, the relief that comes from action is so
largely shut off. How has humanity contrived to endure so well the
countless ills of countless ages? Because society has been, in general,
loose-knit, so that each unit in it has had room for some individual
play. What so increases and intensifies the agonies of to-day? The fact
that society has a closer and denser texture than ever before; its
finespun meshes bind us and strangle us. Indignation ferments without
vent; injury awaits with a wearing impatience the slow and formal
infliction of a corporate punishment; self-consciousness paralyzes the
quick 'and free action that is the surest and sometimes the only relief.
McDowell was in his office alone. A single light was burning in the
room, and nothing remained but the drawing down of a desk-top and the
quenching of the light before locking the door from the outside and
calling the day's work over. He looked up as Ogden entered.
"Oh, it's you. I haven't seen you for some time past." He used the
dubious intonation that marks a half-smothered enmity.
"Yes, it's I. And you won't see me for some time to come. You see me
this once."
He stood with his hand on the back of a chair. He made no motion
to seat himself, but he was unmistakably planted there to remain.
McDowell therefore resumed his own accustomed chair beside his desk.
"Well, what is it?" he asked.
He scrutinized Ogden with an undisguised curiosity. The young man's
voice sounded strange in his ears; his face had an expression which
made it almost the face of an acquaintance now first met.
"I have come to square with you," began Ogden, slowly. He passed an
unconscious hand along the varnished back of the chair; it was a chair
in yellow oak, whose frame was light but strong, and whose seat was of
cane.
"We _are_ square," said McDowell, curtly. "You have your deeds for
that ground--all put into the settlement at a fair value. I have paid
your interest as it came due, and shall go on doing so. The principal
the same. I'm all right; what is it _you_ want? Try the courts, if you
think you can reach me."
"I shall reach you."
"I wonder how?"
Ogden lifted his hand from the chair to his forehead, across which he
passed it once or twice. McDowell gave him an amused smile.
"You have robbed me," Ogden said; "you have disgraced me; you have
brought me to the edge of ruin. You took advantage of my trust, my
inexperience, my strangeness to the city. You have stripped us all,
and you have used my sister for a shield. You knew we would stand
everything for her, and we _have_ stood everything. You have acted like
a sneak and a coward."
McDowell's eyes dropped to his desk. But no flush mounted to his face;
that would have been a physical and a moral impossibility. He looked up
again after a moment.
"You will reach me? I wonder how?"
Ogden, for the first time in his life, passed completely out of
himself. There fell away from him all the fetters that shackle the
super-civilized man who is habitually conscious of his civilization.
"Like this."
He seized the chair, raised it over McDowell's head, and went out,
leaving the man crushed and bleeding on the floor.