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SATAN SANDERSON
* * * * *
Books by
HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES (Mrs. Post Wheeler)
A FURNACE OF EARTH
HEARTS COURAGEOUS
Illustrated by A. B. Wenzell
THE CASTAWAY
Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy
TALES FROM DICKENS
Illustrated by Reginald B. Birch
SATAN SANDERSON
Illustrated by A. B. Wenzell
* * * * *
[Illustration]
SATAN SANDERSON
by
HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES
Author of
The Castaway, Hearts Courageous, etc.
With Illustrations by A. B. Wenzell
Indianapolis
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Publishers
Copyright 1907
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
August
Press of
Braunworth & Co.
Bookbinders and Printers
Brooklyn, N. Y.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I AS A MAN SOWS 1
II DOCTOR MOREAU 15
III THE COMING OF A PRODIGAL 20
IV THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING 32
V THE BISHOP SPEAKS 47
VI WHAT CAME OF A WEDDING 50
VII OUT OF THE DARK 60
VIII "AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?" 68
IX AFTER A YEAR 75
X THE GAME 85
XI HALLELUJAH JONES TAKES A HAND 95
XII THE FALL OF THE CURTAIN 105
XIII THE CLOSED DOOR 108
XIV THE WOMAN WHO REMEMBERED 115
XV THE MAN WHO HAD FORGOTTEN 125
XVI THE AWAKENING 137
XVII AT THE TURN OF THE TRAIL 147
XVIII THE STRENGTH OF THE WEAK 155
XIX THE EVIL EYE 160
XX MRS. HALLORAN TELLS A STORY 167
XXI A VISIT AND A VIOLIN 171
XXII THE PASSING OF PRENDERGAST 179
XXIII A RACE WITH DEATH 187
XXIV ON SMOKY MOUNTAIN 198
XXV THE OPEN WINDOW 210
XXVI LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT 222
XXVII INTO THE GOLDEN SUNSET 229
XXVIII THE TENANTLESS HOUSE 238
XXIX THE CALL OF LOVE 250
XXX IN A FOREST OF ARDEN 259
XXXI THE REVELATION OF HALLELUJAH JONES 269
XXXII THE WHITE HORSE SKIN 277
XXXIII THE RENEGADE 282
XXXIV THE TEMPTATION 289
XXXV FELDER TAKES A CASE 302
XXXVI THE HAND AT THE DOOR 305
XXXVII THE PENITENT THIEF 311
XXXVIII A DAY FOR THE STATE 319
XXXIX THE UNSUMMONED WITNESS 331
XL FATE'S WAY 335
XLI FELDER WALKS WITH DOCTOR BRENT 339
XLII THE RECKONING 344
XLIII THE LITTLE GOLD CROSS 353
XLIV THE IMPOSTOR 360
XLV AN APPEAL TO CAESAR 369
XLVI FACE TO FACE 376
XLVII BETWEEN THE MILLSTONES 384
XLVIII THE VERDICT 390
XLIX THE CRIMSON DISK 395
L WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE 397
SATAN SANDERSON
CHAPTER I
AS A MAN SOWS
"_To my son Hugh, in return for the care and sorrow he has caused me all
the days of his life, for his dissolute career and his desertion, I do
give and bequeath the sum of one thousand dollars and the memory of his
misspent youth._"
It was very quiet in the wide, richly furnished library. The May night
was still, but a faint suspiration, heavy with the fragrance of jasmin
flowers, stirred the Venetian blind before the open window and rustled
the moon-silvered leaves of the aspens outside. As the incisive
professional pronouncement of the judge cut through the lamp-lighted
silence, the grim, furrowed face with its sunken eyes and gray military
mustaches on the pillow of the wheel-chair set more grimly; a girl
seated in the damask shadow of the fire-screen caught her breath; and
from across the polished table the Reverend Henry Sanderson turned his
handsome, clean-shaven face and looked at the old man.
A peevish misogynist the neighborhood labeled the latter, with the
parish chapel for hobby, and for thorn-in-the-flesh this only son Hugh,
a black sheep whose open breaches of decorum the town had borne as best
it might, till the tradition of his forebears took him off to an eastern
university. A reckless life there and three wastrel years abroad, had
sent him back to resume his peccadilloes on a larger scale, to quarrel
bitterly with his father, and to leave his home in anger. In what rough
business of life was Hugh now chewing the cud of his folly? Harry
Sanderson was wondering.
"Wait," came the querulous voice from the chair. "Write in 'graceless'
before the word 'desertion'."
"_For his dissolute career and his--graceless--desertion_," repeated the
lawyer, the parchment crackling under his pen.
The stubborn antagonism that was a part of David Stires' nature flared
under the bushy eyebrows. "As a man sows!" he said, a kind of bitter
jocularity in the tone. "That should be the text, if this sermon of mine
needed any, Sanderson! It won't have as large an audience as your
discourses draw, but it will be remembered by one of its hearers, at
least."
Judge Conwell glanced curiously at Harry Sanderson as he blotted the
emendation. He knew the liking of the cross-grained and taciturn old
invalid--St. James' richest parishioner--for this young man of
twenty-five who had come to the parish only two months before, fresh
from his theological studies, to fill a place temporarily vacant--and
had stayed by sheer force of personality. He wondered if, aside from
natural magnetic qualities, this liking had not been due first of all to
the curious resemblance between the young minister and the absent son
whom David Stires was disinheriting. For, as far as mold of feature
went, the young minister and the ne'er-do-well might have been twin
brothers; yet a totally different manner and coloring made this likeness
rather suggestive than striking.
No one, perhaps, had ever interested the community more than had Harry
Sanderson. He had entered upon his duties with the marks of youth, good
looks, self-possession and an ample income thick upon him, and had
brought with him a peculiar charm of manner and an apparent incapacity
for doing things in a hackneyed way. Convention sat lightly upon Harry
Sanderson. He recognized few precedents, either in the new methods and
millinery with which he had invested the service, or in his personal
habits. Instead of attending the meeting of St. Andrew's Guild, after
the constant custom of his predecessor, he was apt to be found playing
his violin (a passion with him) in the smart study that adjoined the
Gothic chapel where he shepherded his fashionable flock, or tramping
across the country with a briar pipe in his mouth and his brown spaniel
"Rummy" nosing at his heels. His athletic frame and clean-chiselled
features made him a rare figure for the reading-desk, as his violin
practice, the cut of his golf-flannels, the immaculate elegance of his
motor-car--even the white carnation he affected in his buttonhole--made
him for the younger men a goodly pattern of the cloth; and it had
speedily grown to be the fashion to hear the brilliant young minister,
to memorize his classical aphorisms or to look up his latest quotation
from Keats or Walter Pater. So that Harry Sanderson, whose innovations
had at first disturbed and ruffled the sensibilities of those who would
have preferred a fogy, in the end had drifted, apparently without
special effort, into a far wider popularity than that which bowed to the
whim of the old invalid in the white house in the aspens.
Something of all this was in the lawyer's mind as he paused--a
perfunctory pause--before he continued:
"_... I do give and bequeath the sum of one thousand dollars, and the
memory of his misspent youth._"
Harry Sanderson's eyes had wandered from the chair to the slim figure
of the girl who sat by the screen. This was Jessica Holme, the orphaned
daughter of a friend of the old man's early years, who had recently come
to the house in the aspens to fill the void left by Hugh's departure.
Harry could see the contour of throat and wrists, the wild-rose mesh of
the skin against the Romney-blue gown, the plenteous red-bronze hair
uncoiled and falling in a single braid, and the shadowy pathos of her
eyes. Clear hazel eyes they were, wide and full, but there was in them
no depth of expression--for Jessica Holme was blind. As the crisp
deliberate accent pointed the judicial period, as with a subterranean
echo of irrefutable condemnation, Harry saw her under lip indrawn, her
hands clasp tightly, then unclasp in her lap. Pliant, graceful hands, he
thought, which even blindness could not make maladroit. In the chapel
porch stood the figure of an angel which she had modelled solely by the
wonderful touch in the finger-tips.
"Go on," rasped the old man.
"_The residue of my estate, real and personal, I do give and bequeath to
my ward, Jessica Holme, to be and become--_"
He broke off suddenly, for the girl was kneeling by the chair, groping
for the restless hand that wandered on the afghan, and crying in a
strained, agitated voice: "No ... no ... you must not! Please, please! I
never could bear it!"
"Why not?" The old man's irritant query was belligerent. "Why not? What
is there for you to bear, I'd like to know!"
"He is your son!"
"In the eyes of the law, yes. But not otherwise!" His voice rose. "What
has he done to deserve anything from me? What has he had all his life
but kindness? And how has he repaid it? By being a waster and a
prodigal. By setting me in contempt, and finally by forsaking me in my
old age for his own paths of ribaldry."
The girl shook her head. "You don't know where he is now, or what he is
doing. Oh, he was wild and reckless, I have no doubt. But when he
quarrelled and left you, wasn't it perhaps because he was too
quick-tempered? And if he hasn't come back, isn't it perhaps because he
is too proud? Why, he wouldn't be your son if he weren't proud! No
matter how sorry he might be, it would make no difference then. I could
give him the money you had given me, but I couldn't change the fact.
You, his own father, would have disowned him, disinherited him, taken
away his birthright!"
"And richly he'd deserve it!" he snapped, his bent fingers plucking
angrily at the wool of the afghan. "He doesn't want a father or a home.
He wants his own way and a freedom that is license! I know him. You
don't; you never saw him."
"I never saw you either," she said, a little sadly.
"Come," he answered a shade more gently. "I didn't mean your eyes, my
dear! I mean that you never met him in your life. He had shaken off the
dust of his feet against this house before you came to brighten it,
Jessica. I've not forgiven him seven times; I've forgiven him seventy
times seven. But he doesn't want forgiveness. To him I am only 'the old
man' who refused to 'put up' longer for his fopperies and extravagances!
When he left this house six months ago, he declared he would never enter
it again. Very well--let him stay away! He shan't come back when I am in
my grave, to play ducks and drakes with the money he misuses! And I've
fixed it so that you won't be able to give it away either, Jessica. Give
me the pen," he said to the judge, "and, Sanderson, will you ring? We
shall need the butler to witness with you."
As Harry Sanderson rose to his feet the girl, still kneeling, turned
half about with a hopeless gesture. "Oh, won't you help me?" she said.
She spoke more to herself, it seemed, than to either of the men who
waited. Harry's face was in the shadow. The lawyer with careful
deliberation was putting a new pen into the holder.
"Sanderson," said the old man with bitter fierceness, lifting his hand,
"I dare say you think I am hard; but I tell you there has never been a
day since Hugh was born when I wouldn't have laid down my life for him!
You are so like! When I look at you, I seem to see him as he might have
been but for his own wayward choice! If he were only as like you in
other things as he is in feature! You are nearly the same age; you went
to the same college, I believe; you have had the same advantages and the
same temptations. Yet you, an orphan, come out a divinity student, and
Hugh--my son!--comes out a roisterer with gambling debts, a member of
the 'fast set,' one of a dissolute fraternity known as 'The Saints,'
whose very existence, no doubt, was a shame to the institution!"
Harry Sanderson turned slowly to the light. A strange panorama in that
moment had flashed through his brain--kaleidoscopic pictures of an
earlier reckless era when he had not been known as the "Reverend Henry
Sanderson." An odd, sensitive flush burned his forehead. The hand he had
outstretched to the bell-cord dropped to his side, and he said, with
painful steadiness:
"I think I ought to say that I was the founder, and at the time you
speak of, the Abbot of The Saints."
The pen rattled against the mahogany, as the man of law leaned back to
regard the speaker with a stare of surprise whetted with a keen edge of
satiric amusement. The old man sat silent, and the girl crouched by the
chair with parted lips. The look in Harry's face was not now that of the
decorative young churchman of the Sabbath surplice. It held a keen
electric sense of the sharp contrasts of life, touched with a wakeful
pain of conscience.
"I was in the same year with Hugh," Harry went on. "We sowed our wild
oats together--a tidy crop, I fancy, for us both. That page of my life
is pasted down. I speak of it now because it would be cowardly not to. I
have not seen Hugh since college closed four years ago. But then I was
all you have called him--a waster and a prodigal. And I was more; for
while others followed, I led. At college I was known as 'Satan
Sanderson'."
He stopped. The old man cleared his throat, but did not speak. He was
looking at Harry fixedly. In the pause the girl found his gnarled hand
and laid her cheek against it. Harry leaned an elbow upon the
mantelpiece as he continued, in a low voice:
"Colleges are not moral strait-jackets. Men have there to cast about,
try themselves and find their bearings. They are in hand-touch with
temptation, and out of earshot of the warnings of experience. The mental
and moral machine lacks a governor. Slips of the cog then may or may not
count seriously to character in the end. They sometimes signify only a
phase. They may be mere idiosyncrasy. I have thought that it stood in
this case," he added with the glimmer of a smile, "with Satan Sanderson;
he seems to me from this focus to be quite another individual from the
present rector of St. James."
"It is only the Hugh of the present that I am dealing with," interposed
the old man. For David Stires was just and he was feeling a grim respect
for Harry's honesty.
Harry acknowledged the brusque kindliness of the tone with a little
motion of the hand. As he spoke he had been feeling his way through a
maze of contradictory impulses. For a moment he had been back in that
old irresponsible time; the Hugh he had known then had sprung to his
mind's eye--an imitative idler, with a certain grace and brilliancy of
manner that made him hail-fellow-well-met, but withal shallow, foppish
and incorrigible, a cheap and shabby imitator of the outward manner, not
the inner graces, of good-fellowship. Yet Hugh had been one of his own
"fast set"; they had called him "Satan's shadow," a tribute to the
actual resemblance as well as to the palpable imitation he affected.
Harry shivered a little. The situation seemed, in antic irony, to be
reversing itself. It was as if not alone Hugh, but he, Harry Sanderson,
in the person of that past of his, was now brought to bar for judgment
in that room. For the instant he forgot how utterly characterless Hugh
had shown himself of old, how devoid of all desire for rehabilitation
his present reputation in the town argued him. At that moment it seemed
as if in saving Hugh from this condemnation, he was pleading for himself
as he had been--for the further chance which he, but for circumstances,
perhaps, had needed, too. His mind, working swiftly, told him that no
appeal to mere sentiment would suffice--he must touch another note. As
he paused, his eyes wandered to an oil portrait on the wall, and
suddenly he saw his way.
"You," he said, "have lived a life of just and balanced action. It is
bred in the bone. You hate all loose conduct, and rightly. You hate it
most in Hugh for the simple reason that he is your son. The very
relation makes it more impossible to countenance. He should be like
you--of temperate and prudent habit. But did you and he start on equal
terms? Your grandfather was a Standish; your ancestry was undiluted
Puritan. Did Hugh have all your fund of resistance?"
The old man's gaze for the first time left Harry's face. It lifted for
an instant to the portrait at which Harry had glanced--a picture of
Hugh's dark gipsy-like mother, painted in the month of her marriage, and
the year of her death--and in that instant the stern lines about the
mouth relaxed a little. Harry had laid his finger on the deepest cord of
feeling in the old man's gruff nature. The glow that had smoldered in
the cavernous eyes faded and a troubled cloud came to belie their former
wrath.
"'As a man sows,' you say, and you deny him another seeding and it may
be a better harvest. You shut the door;--and if you shut it, it may not
swing open again! With me it was the turning of a long lane. Hugh
perhaps has not turned--yet." A breath of that past life had swept anew
over Harry, the old shuddering recoil again had rushed upon him. It gave
his voice a curious energy as he ended: "And I have seen how far a man
may go and yet--come back!"
There was a pause. The judge had an inspiration. He folded the
parchment, and rose.
"Perhaps it would be as well," he said in a matter-of-fact way, "if the
signing be left open for the present. Last testaments, whatever their
provisions, are more or less serious matters, and in your case,"--he
nodded toward the occupant of the chair--"there is not the element of
necessitous haste. Of course," he added tentatively, "I am at your
service at any time."
He rose as he spoke, and laid the document on the table.
For a moment David Stires sat in silence. Then he said, with a glint of
the old ironic fire: "You should have been a special pleader, Sanderson.
There's no client too bad for them to make out a case for! Well ... well
... we won't sign to-night. I will read it over again when I am more
equal to it."
His visitors made their adieux, and as the door closed upon them, the
girl came to the wheel-chair and wistfully drew the parchment from his
hands.
"You're a good girl, Jessica," he said, "too good to a rascal you've
never known. But there--go to your room, child. I can ring for Blake
when I want anything."
For long the old man sat alone, musing in his chair, his eyes on the
painted portrait on the wall. The image there was just as young and fair
and joyous as though yesterday she had stood in bridal white beside
him, instead of so long ago--so long ago! His lips moved. "In return
for the care and sorrow," he muttered, "all the days of his life!"
At length he sighed and took up a magazine. He was thinking of Harry
Sanderson.
"How like!" he said aloud. "So Sanderson sowed his wild oats, too!...
When he stood there, with the light on his face--when he talked--I--I
could almost have thought it was Hugh!"
[Illustration]