IT was two days after this that Judge Hollis came into Caleb’s little
office and found him at work in his shirt sleeves. The table and desk
were covered with papers and open telegrams. The judge eyed the place
critically. Order showed in the neat pigeonholes and the rows of packed
shelves.
“In two years you’ll have me beat,” remarked the judge, “then I’ll take
down my shingle.”
Caleb smiled wearily. “You forget that this only shows how far
behindhand I am,” he replied; “you were never on trial for your life,
Judge.”
The old man shook his head. “No,” he said, “and I was never the most
conspicuous figure in the State. Caleb, you’ve been threatened?”
“Some letters, yes,” the younger man admitted, without emotion, “from
cranks, I fancy.”
“No,” said the judge flatly, “there’s feeling. Some of these ignorant
people have got a notion that your campaign against Eaton, your attack
on his company, destroyed his credit and drove him to the wall. They’ve
got the idea that he’d have saved himself, and their investments, if
you’d let him be. They’re wild about it; money loss goes to the quick,
when a man can’t pay for his bacon he wants a scapegoat. The better
sort know it’s not your doing, and, I’ll say it for ’em, the newspapers
have been decent, but there’s feeling, Caleb; you’d better go armed.”
Caleb laughed. “Judge, I was bred a Quaker. I only used my pistol here
in self-defense; I never went out with one in my pocket in my life.”
The judge rubbed his chin. “You’d better now,” he remarked shortly.
Caleb leaned back in his chair and looked out of the window
thoughtfully. “I wonder what my father would have said to his son
carrying weapons?” he reflected, amused.
“Good deal better than to get a hole in you,” the judge retorted; “you
know how to use it!”
Trench colored. “My blood was up, Judge,” he said, “a mob’s a cowardly
thing; I never felt such disgust in my life.”
“Humph!” ejaculated the judge eloquently.
Caleb smiled involuntarily. “I don’t think there’s any danger,” he said
pleasantly.
“Of course not!” snapped the judge. “Trench, why don’t you clear up
this talk about that kid in yonder? Cheyney knows who the father is;
make him tell. By the Lord Harry,” he added, thumping the table with
his fist, “I wanted it out in court.”
Caleb Trench turned slightly away, his face inscrutable. “Judge,” he
said, “I wouldn’t stir a finger. I took in the kid just as I took in
the dog. Let them talk.”
The judge stared at him angrily, uncomprehendingly. “I reckon you’re a
crank,” he said; “you’re worse than David Royall.”
“How is the colonel to-day?” Caleb asked, to change the subject; he
knew, for he had asked Dr. Cheyney over the telephone.
“He’s better,” retorted the judge shortly; “you’re not, and you’ll be
worse if you don’t watch out. There are snakes in the grass.”
Caleb smiled. “Judge,” he said, “if I listened to any one in the world
I would to you; I’m not ungrateful.”
“Nonsense!” retorted the judge, and jammed his hat down harder than
usual.
At the door he stopped and waved his cane aggressively. “I’ve warned
you,” he said harshly, “and if you were not an idiot, sir, you’d make
Cheyney speak. It’s some dratted crank of his about his professional
honor!”
“How about a lawyer’s, Judge?” asked Caleb, amused.
“Humph!” grunted the old man, and went out and slammed the door.
Later that afternoon business took Caleb up to Cresset’s Corners to see
Aaron Todd. He had been twice to Broad Acres to inquire for Colonel
Royall without seeing Diana; he had refrained from asking for her. Dr.
Cheyney had told him that she would not leave her father, and he knew
that, as yet, he could scarcely express all he felt about the ordeal
of her testimony. He had forborne to account for that time to spare
her the publicity of the witness-stand, and his very silence only
made her evidence more significant. To see her and thank her without
saying all that was in his heart was no easy matter. He had driven
back his love for her, and battled against it, denied it a right to
exist, because he knew that she regarded him as an inferior. But now,
by her own act, when she acknowledged him as her friend and defended
him at the cost of a hundred uncharitable rumors, it seemed that he
might have misunderstood her natural pride of birth and affluence for
a repugnance to his poverty. When their eyes met in the court-room
with that inevitable shock of mutual feeling that leaves a startled
certainty behind it, he had felt almost sure that she loved him. But
since then he had plunged back again into his old doubts, arguing
that her testimony had been merely a matter of duty, and that his own
feeling had deceived him into imagining that her heart was likewise
touched. He had no right to suppose that her evidence was otherwise
than involuntary, the exact rendering of the truth to save a man’s
life. If he went further and believed that she loved him, he was
overstepping the bounds of probability. Love is an involuntary passion,
says an honored moralist: we cannot help it, but we can starve it
out. And Caleb had set himself to starve it out but it may be said
that he found the battle an unequal one. He was like a man who had
walked persistently, and of his own choice, in a sullen fog, and saw
suddenly, through a vast rent in the mist, the golden sunshine of
another day. The fog of his doubts and his unbelief had lifted on that
afternoon in court, only to settle down again in denser gloom.
Meanwhile, the tumult of battle went on. He was once more leading the
anti-Eaton forces, leading them triumphantly now, and crash after crash
in financial circles told of the complete collapse of that bubble
which had been called the Eaton Investment Company. There is no keener
incentive to anger than money loss, as Judge Hollis said; there were
many who cried out against Caleb as the instigator of an investigation
which had culminated in almost universal ruin in the county. The wave
of popularity that had swept around him at the hour of his acquittal
was receding, and leaving him beached on the sands of public criticism.
None of these things, however, greatly troubled the man himself; he
pursued his course with the same determination with which he had begun
it. He had foreseen unpopularity and met it with unshaken purpose. What
immediately concerned him was his plain duty, and his experience at
the time of his arrest and trial had inspired him with a pessimistic
unbelief in the clamorous plaudits of the masses. For, in a day, he
had dropped from the height of the popularity of his Cresset speech to
the degradation of a despised and suspected prisoner. Like all those
who have tasted the vicissitudes of life, they had no longer the same
terrors for him. He was stronger in his position now than ever, his
reputation was already growing beyond the borders of the State, but he
was less popular in doing an unwelcome duty than he had been as the
exponent of the new theories of investigation. A vivid recollection
of all that had passed in the last few weeks stirred his mind as he
walked up the trail to Broad Acres. Shot, who had become devoted to
Sammy, had followed him only a little way and then returned to his new
playmate, so Caleb was alone. He had avoided the road and ascended the
trail, because the woodland solitudes left his mind free to his own
meditations, and the bleak and russet aspect of the woods, the naked
trees and the brown leaves underfoot, in some delicate and subtle
manner, harmonized with his sober mood. The keen blue of the river
below him and the purple of the distant hills rested his eyes. He swung
on, his long easy stride carrying him fast, and in a few moments he
saw Kingdom-Come leaning on the fence at the side of the Broad Acres
vegetable garden. The negro was stripping the leaves off a cauliflower
and gazing curiously at Caleb Trench.
“How’s the colonel?” Caleb asked, stopping a moment, and his glance
wandered toward the old house where even the jingo tree had dropped its
last golden leaves upon the grass.
“He’s bettah, suh,” said Kingdom, “so de doctah says. I’se not so sure;
seems mighty po’ly ter me, Mistah Trench.”
Caleb remembered that a negro never admits perfect health and felt
reassured. “Say to the colonel that I would be glad to be of any
service to him,” he said, and wanted to add Diana’s name but restrained
the impulse.
“I sho will, Mistah Trench,” said Kingdom. “Cool day, suh, gwine ter be
cold, too; de moon dun hangs ter de north.”
“I suppose that’s an infallible sign,” smiled Trench, as he turned away.
“Fo’ de Lawd, ain’t yo’ nebber heerd dat?” Kingdom patted the
cauliflower affectionately, having squared off the remaining green
petals. “De moon hung north means cold, suh, an’ south et means hot,
jest ez sho’ ez yo’ gets er disappintment ef yo hangs annything on er
doah knob.”
“I’ll try to remember both signs,” said Caleb good-naturedly.
“Miss Diana’s up in de woods,” volunteered the negro, with that
innocence which sits so naturally on a black face.
Caleb made no reply this time. He walked on, choosing the road, nor did
he look again toward the house. He had the unpleasant consciousness
that the negro had read him as easily as he himself read more profound
riddles in the exact sciences.
He passed the last confines of Broad Acres and turned, involuntarily,
into the trail which led him to the spot where he had stood months
before with Diana and told her that he loved her. Afterwards he
had wondered at himself, that his pride had not revolted at the
confession, yet he had never altogether repented of it. There had been
some comfort in telling her the truth, the naked truth. He recalled the
look in her eyes in the court-room! He put that thought steadily away
and walked rapidly on. Another turn would show him the long glimpse of
Paradise Ridge. Before him the trail ascended under sweeping hemlock
boughs, beside him the brush rose breast high. Once he thought he heard
a crackle of twigs and turned sharply, but there was no one in sight.
Then, looking ahead, he saw Diana Royall.
She was coming down the path alone, and the sunset sky behind her
darkened the outlines of her tall young figure until it was silhouetted
against the sky. He noticed that her dress was gray and that her large
black hat framed the fair oval of her face. As she drew nearer he
was aware of the gravity and sweetness of her expression. As yet the
distance was too great for speech and he did not hurry his step; there
was, perhaps, more joy in the thought of this meeting than in its
accomplishment. But he saw nothing but this picture, the mellow sky
behind it, the hemlock boughs above.
Then, quite suddenly, he felt a stinging shock and heard a loud report,
as he reeled and fell back into darkness, the vision going out as
though a great black sponge had effaced life itself.
Diana rushed to him; she had seen more than he, but no warning of hers
would have reached him in time, and now she did not think of herself,
or of any possible danger. She dropped on her knees beside him and
bent down to look into his face. His eyes were closed; she could not
tell if he breathed, and even while she looked she saw a dark red
stain on the breast of his coat. She uttered a low cry, and tried to
raise his head on her arm. She realized at last the power that his
very presence exerted, the influence that he had had over her from the
very first, that had made her yield again and again to a sense of his
mastery. She loved him. She no longer tried to deny it to herself, and
she felt that it was to her shame that no accusation against him could
shake her in her devotion. Whatever he had been she loved him; whatever
his faults, in her eyes there must be, there would be, an extenuation;
whatever his sins she could forgive them! Class prejudice counted for
nothing; she was his, and nothing in the world mattered to her in that
one blind moment of agony for his life.
“Oh, God,” she prayed softly, “spare me this!”
She was in despair, his head lay heavy on her arm, his blood stained
her hands, and she was alone. The wind stirred and a dead leaf
fluttered down. How still it was! To leave him and run for help seemed
her only resource, but to leave him! She could not do it! She thought
him dead, but not a tear came to her dry eyes; she looked down at his
white face and marked the lines of trouble and anxiety, the resolution
of the locked mouth and jaw. Did he breathe? “Oh, God!” she prayed
again.
She remembered, too, that it was here that he had told her so abruptly
that he loved her. She, too, remembered that moment in the court-room,
and a dry sob of anguish shook her from head to foot. She bent down
suddenly and kissed him, but she could not shed a tear.
Then, in the stillness, she heard wheels, and laying him gently down,
she ran through the underbrush and reached the road just below the
fork. It was Dr. Cheyney’s old buggy, and she cried to him that Caleb
Trench was shot and lying wounded in the trail. The old man got down
and followed her without a word, his lips set. They came up the trail
and found Trench lying as she had left him; he did not seem to breathe.
Dr. Cheyney knelt down and made a brief examination, then he looked
for something to stop the bleeding. Diana gave him a long light scarf
she had worn around her throat; she was quick and deft in her touch
and worked steadily to help the doctor; she had mastered herself. The
old man fumbling over Caleb drew out a bit of blood-stained paper and
glanced at it. Then he went on with his task.
“Is he living?” Diana murmured at last.
“I reckon I wouldn’t do this if he wasn’t,” snapped the doctor. Then he
rose from his knees. “You get into the buggy, Diana, and drive down to
the house for help; telephone to the hospital, we’ll want a stretcher.”
“He’s coming to our house,” said Diana.
Dr. Cheyney gave her a grim look. “All right,” he said, “but a
stretcher and two men. I wonder who in hell did this?” he added
fiercely.
Diana had risen from her knees. “Zeb Bartlett,” she said. “I saw him
too late to cry a warning.”
Dr. Cheyney’s face changed sharply. He handed the paper he had taken
from Trench to Diana. “I reckon that’s yours--now run!” he commanded.
It seemed hours to Diana before she got help there. In reality it was
twenty minutes. The negroes improvised a stretcher and carried Caleb
solemnly down the hill and across the long lawns. Diana had gone ahead
to prepare the great west room for him, and when they brought him in,
still unconscious, the white bed was ready and the long table for
the operation, and she had telephoned for another surgeon from the
hospital. At eight o’clock that night they had found the bullet and
removed it, and there was a fighting chance for life.
Diana, who had waited on the stairs to know the worst, said nothing.
In her own room she had looked at the blood-stained paper which Dr.
Cheyney had so strangely given her. Across it was written her own name
in her bold handwriting. She looked at it strangely, and then with a
stinging sense of shame; it was the receipt for six cents with which
she had mocked him long ago. And he had carried it all this time! Diana
laid her head down on her arms and burst into tears.