"Yes, I think it probable," Joe smiled sorrowfully.
"About YOU, I mean." He had time to fear that her look admitted
confusion before she proceeded: "He said he had never seen anything so
fine as your coming down those steps. Ah, he was right! But it was
harder for me to watch you, I think, than for you to do it, Joe. I was
so horribly afraid--and the crowd between us--if we could have got near
you--but we couldn't--we--"
She faltered, and pressed her hand close upon her eyes.
"We?" asked Joe, slowly. "You mean you and Mr. Ladew?"
"Yes, he was there; but I mean"--her voice ran into a little laugh with
a beatific quaver in it--"I mean Colonel Flitcroft and Mr. Bradbury and
Mr. Buckalew, too--we were hemmed in together when Mr. Ladew found
us--and, oh, Joe, when that cowardly rush started toward you, those
three--I've heard wonderful things in Paris and Naples, cabmen
quarrelling and disappointed beggars--but never anything like them
to-day--"
"You mean they were profane?"
"Oh, magnificently--and with such inventiveness! All three begged my
pardon afterwards. I didn't grant it--I blessed them!"
"Did they beg Mr. Ladew's pardon?"
"Ah, Joe!" she reproached him. "He isn't a prig. And he's had to
fight some things that you of all men ought to understand. He's only
been here a few months, but he told me that Judge Pike has been against
him from the start. It seems that Mr. Ladew is too liberal in his
views. And he told me that if it were not for Judge Pike's losing
influence in the church on account of the Beaver Beach story, the Judge
would probably have been able to force him to resign; but now he will
stay."
"He wishes to stay, doesn't he?"
"Very much, I think. And, Joe," she continued, thoughtfully, "I want
you to do something for me. I want you to go to church with me next
Sunday."
"To hear Mr. Ladew?"
"Yes. I wouldn't ask except for that."
"Very well," he consented, with averted eyes. "I'll go."
Her face was radiant with the smile she gave him. "It will make me
very happy," she said.
He bent his head and fumbled over some papers he had taken from his
pocket. "Will you listen to these memoranda? We have a great deal to
go over before eight o'clock."
Judge Pike stood for a long while where Joe had left him, staring out
at the street, apparently. Really he saw nothing. Undoubtedly an image
of blurring foliage, cast-iron, cement, and turf, with sunshine smeared
over all, flickered upon the retinas of his eyes; but the brain did not
accept the picture from the optic nerve. Martin Pike was busy with
other visions. Joe Louden had followed him back to his hidden deeds
and had read them aloud to him as Gabriel would read them on
Judgment-day. Perhaps THIS was the Judgment-day.
Pike had taken charge of Roger Tabor's affairs because the commissions
as agent were not too inconsiderable to be neglected. To make the task
simpler, he had sold, as time went on, the various properties of the
estate, gradually converting all of them into cash. Then, the
opportunity offering, he bought a stock which paid excellent dividends,
had it transferred in blank, because if it should prove to Roger's
advantage to sell it, his agent could do so without any formal delays
between Paris and Canaan. At least, that is what the Judge had told
himself at the time, though it may be that some lurking whisperer in
his soul had hinted that it might be well to preserve the great amount
of cash in hand, and Roger's stock was practically that. Then came the
evil days. Laboriously, he had built up a name for conservatism which
most of the town accepted, but secretly he had always been a gambler:
Wall Street was his goal; to adventure there, as one of the great
single-eyed Cyclopean man-eaters, his fond ambition; and he had
conceived the distillery trust as a means to attain it; but the
structure tumbled about his ears; other edifices of his crumbled at the
same time; he found himself beset, his solvency endangered, and there
was the Tabor stock, quite as good as gold; Roger had just died, and it
was enough to save him.--Save? That was a strange way to be
remembering it to-day, when Fate grinned at him out of a dreadful mask
contorted like the face of Norbert Flitcroft.
Martin Pike knew himself for a fool. What chance had he, though he
destroyed the check a thousand times over, to escape the records by
which the coil of modern trade duplicates and quadruplicates each slip
of scribbled paper? What chance had he against the memories of men?
Would the man of whom he had bought, forget that the check was signed
by Roger's agent? Had the bank-clerk forgotten? Thrice fool, Martin
Pike, to dream that in a town like Canaan, Norbert or any of his kind
could touch an order for so great a sum and forget it! But Martin Pike
had not dreamed that; had dreamed nothing. When failure confronted him
his mind refused to consider anything but his vital need at the time,
and he had supplied that need. And now he grew busy with the future:
he saw first the civil suit for restitution, pressed with the ferocity
and cunning of one who intended to satisfy a grudge of years; then,
perhaps, a criminal prosecution.... But he would fight it! Did they
think that such a man was to be overthrown by a breath of air? By a
girl, a bank-clerk, and a shyster lawyer? They would find their case
difficult to prove in court. He did not believe they COULD prove it.
They would be discredited for the attempt upon him and he would win
clear; these Beaver Beach scandals would die of inertia presently;
there would be a lucky trick in wheat, and Martin Pike would be Martin
Pike once more; reinstated, dictator of church, politics, business; all
those things which were the breath of his life restored. He would show
this pitiful pack what manner of man they hounded! Norbert
Flitcroft....
The Judge put his big hand up to his eyes and rubbed them. Curious
mechanisms the eyes.... That deer in line with the vision--not a zebra?
A zebra after all these years? And yet ... curious, indeed, the eyes!
... a zebra.... Who ever heard of a deer with stripes? The big hand
rose from the eyes and ran through the hair which he had always worn
rather long. It would seem strange to have it cut very short.... Did
they use clippers, perhaps? ...
He started suddenly and realized that his next-door neighbor had passed
along the sidewalk with head averted, pretending not to see him. A few
weeks ago the man would not have missed the chance of looking in to
bow--with proper deference, too! Did he know? He could not know THIS!
It must be the Beaver Beach scandal. It must be. It could not be
THIS--not yet! But it MIGHT be. How many knew? Louden, Norbert,
Ariel--who else? And again the deer took on the strange zebra look.
The Judge walked slowly down to the gate; spoke to the man he had
employed in Sam Warden's place, a Scotchman who had begun to refresh
the lawn with a garden hose; bowed affably in response to the
salutation of the elder Louden, who was passing, bound homeward from
the factory, and returned to the house with thoughtful steps. In the
hall he encountered his wife; stopped to speak with her upon various
household matters; then entered the library, which was his workroom.
He locked the door; tried it, and shook the handle. After satisfying
himself of its security, he pulled down the window-shades carefully,
and, lighting a gas drop-lamp upon his desk, began to fumble with
various documents, which he took from a small safe near by. But his
hands were not steady; he dropped the papers, scattering them over the
floor, and had great difficulty in picking them up. He perspired
heavily: whatever he touched became damp, and he continually mopped his
forehead with his sleeve. After a time he gave up the attempt to sort
the packets of papers; sank into a chair despairingly, leaving most of
them in disorder. A light tap sounded on the door.
"Martin, it's supper-time."
With a great effort he made shift to answer: "Yes, I know. You and
Mamie go ahead. I'm too busy to-night. I don't want anything."
A moment before, he had been a pitiful figure, face distraught, hands
incoherent, the whole body incoordinate, but if eyes might have rested
upon him as he answered his wife they would have seen a strange thing;
he sat, apparently steady and collected, his expression cool, his body
quiet, poised exactly to the quality of his reply, for the same strange
reason that a young girl smiles archly and coquettes to a telephone.
"But, Martin, you oughtn't to work so hard. You'll break down--"
"No fear of that," he replied, cheerfully. "You can leave something on
the sideboard for me."
After another fluttering remonstrance, she went away, and the room was
silent again. His arms rested upon the desk, and his head slowly sank
between his elbows. When he lifted it again the clock on the
mantel-piece had tinkled once. It was half-past seven. He took a
sheet of note-paper from a box before him and began to write, but when
he had finished the words, "My dear wife and Mamie," his fingers shook
so violently that he could go no further. He placed his left hand over
the back of his right to steady it, but found the device unavailing:
the pen left mere zigzags on the page, and he dropped it.
He opened a lower drawer of the desk and took out of it a pistol; rose,
went to the door, tried it once more, and again was satisfied of his
seclusion. Then he took the weapon in both hands, the handle against
his fingers, one thumb against the trigger, and, shaking with nausea,
lifted it to the level of his eyes. His will betrayed him; he could
not contract his thumb upon the trigger, and, with a convulsive shiver,
he dropped the revolver upon the desk.
He locked the door of the room behind him, crept down the stairs and
out of the front-door. He walked shamblingly, when he reached the
street, keeping close to the fences as he went on, now and then
touching the pickets with his hands like a feeble old man.
He had always been prompt; it was one of the things of which he had
been proud: in all his life he had never failed to keep a business
engagement precisely upon the appointed time, and the Court-house bell
clanged eight when Sam Warden opened the door for his old employer
to-night.
The two young people looked up gravely from the script-laden table
before them as Martin Pike came into the strong lamplight out of the
dimness of the hall, where only a taper burned. He shambled a few limp
steps into the room and came to a halt. Big as he was, his clothes
hung upon him loosely, like coverlets upon a collapsed bed; and he
seemed but a distorted image of himself, as if (save for the dull and
reddened eyes) he had been made of yellowish wax and had been left too
long in the sun. Abject, hopeless, his attitude a confession of ruin
and shame, he stood before his judges in such wretchedness that, in
comparison, the figure of Happy Fear, facing the court-room through his
darkest hour, was one to be envied.
"Well," he said, brokenly, "what are you going to do?"
Joe Louden looked at him with great intentness for several moments.
Then he rose and came forward. "Sit down, Judge," he said. "It's all
right. Don't worry."