The Just and the Unjust by Vaughan Kester

V >> Vaughan Kester >> The Just and the Unjust

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

Mr. Shrimplin paused for breath. The recollection of his splendid
publicity was dazzling. He imagined the morrow with its possibility of
social triumph; he went as far as to feel that Mrs. Shrimplin now had a
certain sneaking respect for him.

"Did you see tracks in the snow?" demanded Custer.

"No, I didn't see nothing," declared Mr. Shrimplin.

"You seen young John North."

It was Mrs. Shrimplin who spoke.

"Well, yes, I seen young John North--I said I seen him!"

CHAPTER SIX

PUTTING ON THE SCREWS

A score of men and boys followed the undertaker's wagon to the small
frame cottage that had been Archibald McBride's home for half a century,
and a group of these assembled about the gate as the wagon drew up
before it. Along the quiet street, windows were raised and doors were
opened. It was perhaps the first time, as it was to be the last, that
Archibald McBride's neighbors took note of his home-coming.

His keys had been found and intrusted to one of the policemen who
accompanied the undertaker and his men; now, as the wagon came to a
stand, this officer sprang to the ground, and pushing open the gate went
quickly up the path to the front door. There in the shelter of the porch
he paused to light a lantern, then he tried key after key until he found
the one that fitted the lock; he opened the door and entered the house,
the undertaker following him. A second officer stationed himself at the
door and kept back the crowd. Their preparations were soon made and the
two men reappeared on the porch.

"It's all right," the undertaker said, and four men raised the stretcher
again and carried the old merchant into the house.

At this juncture Colonel Harbison, followed by his nephew and Gilmore,
made his way through the crowd before the door. Gilmore, even, gave an
involuntary shudder as they entered the small hall lighted by the single
lantern, while the colonel could have wished himself anywhere else; he
had come from a sense of duty; he had known McBride as well as any one
in Mount Hope had known him, and it had seemed a lack of respect to the
dead man to leave him to the care of the merely curious; but he was
painfully conscious of the still presence in the parlor; he felt that
they were unwelcome intruders in the home of that austere old man, who
had made no friends, who had no intimates, but had lived according to
his choice, solitary and alone. The colonel and Watt Harbison followed
the gambler into what had been the old merchant's sitting-room. There
were two lamps on the chimneypiece, both of which Gilmore lighted.

"That's a whole lot better," he said.

"Anything more we can do, gentlemen?" asked the undertaker, coming into
the room.

"Nothing, thank you," answered the colonel in a tone of abstraction, and
he felt a sense of relief when the officials had gone their way into the
night, leaving him and his two companions to their vigil.

Now for the first time they had leisure and opportunity to look about
them. It was a poor enough place, all things considered; the furniture
was dingy with age and neglect, for Archibald McBride had kept no
servant; a worn and faded carpet covered the floor; there was an
engraving of Washington Crossing the Delaware and a few old-fashioned
woodcuts on the wall; at one side of the room was a desk, opposite it a
rusted sheet-iron stove in which Watt Harbison was already starting a
fire; there was a scant assortment of uncomfortable chairs, a table,
with one leg bandaged, and near the desk an old mahogany davenport.

"This wouldn't have suited you, eh, Colonel?" said Gilmore at last.

"He could hardly be said to live here, he merely came here to sleep,"
answered the colonel.

"No, he couldn't have cared for anything but the one thing," said
Gilmore. "Were you ever here before, Colonel?" he added.

"Never."

"I don't suppose half a dozen people in the town were ever inside his
door until to-night," said Watt Harbison, speaking for the first time.

Gilmore turned to look at the colonel's nephew as if he had only that
moment become aware of his presence. What he saw did not impress him
greatly, for young Watt, save for an unusually large head, was much like
other young men of his class. His speech was soft, his face beardless
and his gray eyes gazed steadily but without curiosity on, what was for
him, an uncliented world. For the eighteen months that he had been an
"attorney and counselor at law" the detail of office rent had been taken
care of by the colonel.

"Sort of makes the game he played seem rotten poor sport," commented
Gilmore, replying to the nephew but looking at the uncle.

The colonel was silent.

"Rotten poor sport!" repeated Gilmore.

"Who'll come in for his property?" asked Watt Harbison.

"Oh, some one will claim that," said Gilmore. "They were saying down at
the store, that once, years ago, a brother of his turned up, here, but
McBride got rid of him."

"Suppose we have a look around before we settle ourselves for the
night," suggested Watt Harbison.

"Will you join us, Colonel?" asked the gambler.

But the colonel shook his head. Gilmore took up one of the lamps as he
spoke and opened a door that led into what had evidently once been a
dining-room, but it was now only partly furnished; back of this was a
kitchen, and beyond the kitchen a woodshed. Returning to the front of
the house, they mounted to the floor above. Here had been the old
merchant's bedroom; adjoining it were two smaller rooms, one of which
had been used as a place of storage for trunks and boxes and broken bits
of furniture; the other room was empty.

"We may as well go back down-stairs," said the gambler, halting, lamp
in hand, in the center of the empty room.

Harbison nodded, and leading the way to the floor below, they rejoined
the colonel in the sitting-room, where they made themselves as
comfortable as possible.

The colonel and his nephew talked in subdued tones, principally of the
murdered man; they had no desire to exclude their companion from the
conversation, but Gilmore displayed no interest in what was said. He sat
at the colonel's elbow, preoccupied and thoughtful, smoking cigar after
cigar. Presently the colonel and his nephew lapsed into silence. Their
silence seemed to rouse Gilmore to what was passing about him. He
glanced at the elder Harbison.

"You look tired, Colonel," he said. "Why don't you stretch out on that
lounge yonder and take a nap?"

"I think I shall, Andy, if you and Watt don't mind." And the colonel
quitted his chair.

"Better put your coat over you," advised the gambler.

He watched the colonel as he made himself comfortable on the lounge,
then he lighted a fresh cigar, tilted his chair against the wall and
with head thrown back studied the ceiling. Watt Harbison made one or two
tentative attempts at conversation, to which Gilmore briefly responded,
then the young fellow also became thoughtful. He fell to watching the
gambler's strong profile which the lamp silhouetted against the opposite
wall; then drowsiness completely overcame him and he slept in his chair
with his head fallen forward on his breast.

Gilmore, alert and sleepless, smoked on; he was thinking of Evelyn
Langham. After his interview with her husband that afternoon he had gone
to his own apartment. His bedroom adjoined North's parlor and through
the flimsy lath and plaster partition he had distinctly heard a woman's
voice. The sound of that voice and the suspicion it instantly begot
added to his furious hatred of North, for he had long suspected that
something more than friendship existed between Marshall Langham's wife
and Marshall Langham's friend.

"Damn him!" thought the gambler. "I'll fix him yet!" And he puffed at
his cigar viciously.

He had made sure that North's mysterious visitor was Evelyn Langham, for
when she left the building he himself had followed her. Out of the dregs
of his nature this foolish mad passion of his had arisen to torture him;
he had never spoken with Langham's wife, probably she knew him by sight,
nothing more; but still his game, the waiting game he had been forced to
play, was working itself out better than he had even hoped! At last he
had Marshall Langham where he wanted him, where he could make him feel
his power. Langham would not be able to raise the money required to
cover up those forgeries, and on the basis of silence he would make his
bargain with the lawyer.

Gilmore pondered this problem for the better part of an hour,
considering it from every conceivable angle; then suddenly the
expression of his face changed, he forgot for the moment his ambitions
and his desires, his hatred and his love; he thought he heard the click
of the old-fashioned latch on the front gate. He remembered that it
could be raised only with difficulty. Next he heard the sound of
footsteps approaching the house. They seemed to come haltingly down the
narrow brick path which the wind had swept clear of snow.

Mr. Gilmore was blessed with a steadiness of nerve known to but few men,
yet the hour and the occasion had their influence with him. He stood
erect: now the steps which had paused for a moment seemed to recede; it
was as if the intruder, whoever he might be, had come almost to the
front door and had then, for some inexplicable reason, gone back to the
street. Gilmore even imagined him as standing there with his hand on the
latch of the gate. He was tempted to rouse his two companions, but he
did not, and then, as he still stood with his senses tense, he heard the
steps again approach the front door. With a glance in the direction of
the colonel and his nephew to assure himself that they still slept,
Gilmore rather shamefacedly slipped his right hand under the tails of
his coat, tiptoed into the hall and paused there close by the parlor
door. The steps outside continued, he heard the porch floor give under
a weight, and then some one rapped softly on the door.

Gilmore waited an instant; the rap was repeated; he stepped to the door,
shot the bolt and opened it. The storm had passed; it was now cold and
clear, a brilliant, starlit, winter's night. He saw the man on the porch
clearly as he stood there with the world in white at his back. Gilmore
instantly recognized him, and his hand came from under the tails of his
coat; he closed the door softly.

"What sort of a joke is this, Marsh?" he demanded in a whisper.

"Joke?" repeated the lawyer in a thick husky voice, as he took an
uncertain step toward the gambler.

"Your coming here at this hour; if it isn't a joke, what is it?"

Gilmore saw that his face was flushed with drink while his eyes shone
with a light he had never seen in them before. He must have been abroad
in the storm for some time, for the snow had lodged in the rim of his
hat and his shoulders were still white with it; now and again a paroxysm
of shivering seized him.

"Whisky chill," thought the gambler. "Come in, Marsh!" he said, but
Langham seemed to draw back instinctively.

"No, I guess not, Andy!" and a sickly pallor overspread his face.

"What's the matter with you?" demanded Gilmore.

"I want to see you," said the other. "I can't go home yet." He swayed
heavily. "I need to talk to you on a matter of business. Come on
out--come on off of here;" and he led the way down the porch steps.
"Whom have you in there with you?" he questioned when he had drawn
Gilmore a little way along the path.

"The colonel and Watt Harbison."

"No one else?"

"No."

"Do they know I'm here?"

"I guess not, they were asleep two minutes ago."

"That's good. I don't want to see them, I want to see you."

"Wouldn't it keep, Marsh?" asked Gilmore.

"No, sir, it wouldn't keep; I want to tell you just what I think of you,
you damn--"

"Oh, that will keep, Marsh, any time will do for that; anyway, you have
told me something like that already! When you sober up--"

"Do you think I'm drunk?"

"I don't think anything about it."

"Well, maybe I am, I have been under a strain. But I'm not too drunk to
attend to business; I am never too drunk for that. I wish to say I have
the money--"

His lips twitched, and Gilmore, watching him furtively, saw that he was
again shivering.

"You got what, Marsh?" demanded Gilmore in a whisper.

"The money, the money I owe you!"

"Oh, I see!" He fell back a step and stared at Langham; there was
apprehension dawning in his eyes. "Where did you get it?" he asked.

But Langham shook his head.

"That's my business; it's enough for you to get your money."

"Well, you were quick about it," said Gilmore, and he rested his hand on
the lawyer's arm.

Langham moved a step aside.

"You threatened me," he said resentfully, but with drunken dignity. "You
were going to smash me; I wish to say that now you can smash and be
damned! I have the money--"

"Oh, come, Marsh! Don't you feel cut up about that; I didn't mean to
make you mad; you mustn't hold that against me!"

"You come to my office to-morrow and get your money," said Langham,
still with dignity. "I've been under a great strain getting that money,
and now I'm done with you--"

Gilmore laughed.

"What are you laughing at?"

"You, you fool! But you aren't done with me; we'll be closer friends
than ever after this. Just now you are too funny for me to take
seriously. You go home and sleep off this drunk; that's my advice to
you! I'd give a good deal to know where you have been and what sort of
a fool you have been making of yourself since I saw you last!" added
Gilmore.

"Don't you worry about me; I'm all right. What I want to say is, lend me
your keys; I can't go home this way--lend me your keys and I'll go to
your rooms and sleep it off."

"All right, Marsh; think you can get there?"

"Of course; I'm all right."

"And you'll go there if I give you my keys--you'll go nowhere else?"

"Of course I won't, Andy!"

"You won't stop to talk with any one?"

"Who'll I find to talk with at this time of the night?" laughed the
drunken man derisively. "It's three o'clock! Say, Andy, who'll I find to
talk to?"

"By God, I hope no one, you fool!" muttered Gilmore.

"Well, give me the keys, Andy. I'll go along and get to bed, and I want
you to forget this conversation--"

"Oh, I'll forget it all right, Marsh--but you won't after you come to
your senses!" he added under his breath.

"Give me the keys--thanks. Good night, Andy! I'll see you in the
morning."

He reeled uncertainly down the path, cursing his treacherous footing as
he went. At the gate he paused and waved an unsteady farewell to the
gambler, who stood on the porch staring after him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE BEAUTY OF ELIZABETH

His interview with Evelyn Langham left North with a sense of moral
nausea, yet he felt he had somehow failed in his comprehension of her,
that she had not meant him to understand her as he had; that, after all,
perhaps the significance he had given to her words was of his own
imagining.

He waited in his room until she should have time to be well on her way
home, then hurried down-stairs. He was to dine at the Herberts' at seven
o'clock, and as their place was but scant two miles from town, he
determined to walk. He crossed the Square, only stopping to speak with
the little lamplighter, and twenty minutes later Mount Hope, in the cold
breath of the storm, had dwindled to a huddle of faint ghostly lights on
the hillside and in the valley.

The Herbert home, a showy country-place in a region of farms, merited a
name; but no one except Mrs. Herbert, who in the first flush of
possession determined so to dignify it, had ever made use of the name
she had chosen after much deliberation. General Herbert himself called
it simply the farm, while to the neighbors and the dwellers in Mount
Hope it was known as the general's place, which perhaps sufficiently
distinguished it; for its owner was still always spoken of as the
general, though since the war he had been governor of his state.

Rather less than half a century before, Daniel Herbert, then a country
urchin tending cattle on the hillside where now stood his turreted stone
mansion, had decided that some day when he should be rich he would
return and buy that hillside and the great reach of flat river-bottom
that lay adjacent to it, and there build his home. His worldly goods at
the time of this decision consisted of a pair of jeans trousers, a
hickory shirt, and a battered straw hat. For years he had forgotten his
boyish ambition. He had made his way in the world; he had won success in
his profession, the law; he had won even greater distinction as a
soldier in the Civil War; he had been a national figure in politics, and
he had been governor of his state. And then had come the country-bred
man's hunger for the soil. He had remembered that hillside where as a
boy he had tended his father's herds.

He was not a rich man, but he had married a rich woman, and it was her
money that bought the many acres and built the many-turreted mansion.
Wishing, perhaps, to mark the impermanency of the life there and to give
it a purely holiday aspect, Mrs. Herbert had christened the place Idle
Hour; but the governor, beyond occasional participation in local
politics, never again resumed those activities by which he had so
distinguished himself. He wore top-boots and rode about the farm on an
old gray horse, while his intimates were the neighboring farmers, with
whom he talked crops and politics by the hour.

In pained surprise Mrs. Herbert, a woman of great ambition, had endured
five years of this kind of life; with unspeakable bitterness of spirit
she had seen the once potent name of Daniel Herbert disappear from the
newspapers, and then she had died.

On her death the general became a rich and, in a way, a free man, for
now he could, without the silent protest of his wife, recover the
neglected lore of wood and field, and practise forgotten arts that had
in his boyhood come under the elastic head of chores. Elizabeth, his
daughter, had never shared her mother's ambitions. Perhaps because she
had always had it she cared nothing for society. She was well content to
ride about the farm with her father, whom she greatly admired, and at
whose eccentricities she only smiled.

In this agreeable comradeship with his daughter, General Herbert had
lived through the period of his bereavement with very tolerable comfort.
He had rendered the dead the dead's due of regretful tenderness; but
Elizabeth never asked him when he was going to make his reentry into
politics; and she never reproached him with having wasted the very best
years of his life in trying to make four hundred acres of
scientifically farmed land show a profit, a feat he had not yet
accomplished.

Quitting the highway, North turned in at two stone pillars that marked
the entrance to Idle Hour and walked rapidly up the maple-lined driveway
to the great arched vestibule that gave to the house the appearance of a
Norman-French chateau.

Answering the summons of the bell, a maid ushered him into the long
drawing-room, and into the presence of the general and his daughter. The
former received North with a perceptible shade of reserve. He knew more
about the young man than he would have cared to tell his daughter, since
he believed it would be better for her to make her own discoveries where
North was concerned. He had not opposed his frequent visits to Idle
Hour, for he felt that if Elizabeth was interested in the young fellow
opposition would only strengthen it. Glancing at North as he greeted
Elizabeth, the general admitted that whatever he might be, he was
presentable, indeed good-looking, handsome. Why hadn't he done something
other than make a mess of his life! He wondered, too, wishing to be
quite fair, if North had not been the subject of a good deal of
unmerited censure, if, after all, his idleness had not been the worst
thing about him. He hoped this might be true. Still he regretted that
Elizabeth should have allowed their boy and girl friendship--they had
known each other always--to grow into a closer intimacy.

In the minds of these two men there was absolute accord on one point.
Either would have said that Elizabeth Herbert's beauty was a supreme
endowment, and more nearly perfect than the beauty of any other woman.
She was slender, not tall, but poised and graceful with a distinction of
bearing that added to her inches. Her hair was burnished copper and her
coloring the tint of warm ivory with the sunlight showing through. North
gazed at her as though he would store in his memory the vision of her
loveliness. Then they walked out to the dining-room.

The dinner was rather a somber feast. North felt the restraint of the
general's presence; he sensed his disfavor; and with added bitterness he
realized that this was his last night in Mount Hope, that the morrow
would find him speeding on his way West. He had given up everything for
nothing, and now that a purpose, a hope, a great love had come to him,
he must go from this place, the town of his birth, where he had become a
bankrupt in both purse and reputation.

It was a relief when they returned to the drawing-room. There the
general excused himself, and North and Elizabeth were left alone. She
seated herself before the open fire of blazing hickory logs, whose
light, and that of the shaded lamps, filled the long room with a soft
radiance. She had never seemed so desirable to North as now when he was
about to leave her. He stood silent, leaning against the corner of the
chimneypiece, looking down on all her springlike radiance. Usually he
was neither preoccupied nor silent, but to-night he was both. The
thought that he was seeing her for the last time--Ah, this was the price
of all his folly! At length he spoke.

"I came to-night to say good-by, Elizabeth!"

She glanced up, startled.

"To say good-by?" she repeated.

He nodded gloomily.

"Do you mean that you are going to leave Mount Hope?" she asked slowly.

"Yes, to-night maybe."

Her glance no longer met his, but he was conscious that she had lost
something of her serenity.

"Are you sorry, Elizabeth?" he ventured.

To pass mutely out of her life had suddenly seemed an impossibility, and
his tenderness and yearning trembled in his voice. She answered
obliquely, by asking:

"Must you go?"

"I want to get away from Mount Hope. I want to leave it all,--all but
you, dear!" he said. "You haven't answered me, Elizabeth; will you
care?"

"I am sorry," she said slowly, and the light in her gray-blue eyes
darkened.

She heard the sigh that wasted itself on his lips.

"I am glad you can say that,--I wish you would look up!" he said
wistfully.

"Are you going to-night?" she questioned.

"Yes, but I am coming back. I shan't find that you have forgotten me
when I come, shall I, Elizabeth?"

She looked up quickly into his troubled face, and it was not the warm
firelight that brought the rich color in a sudden flame to her cheeks.

"I shall not forget you."

There was a determined gentleness in her speech and manner that gave him
courage.

"I haven't any right to talk to you in this way; I know I haven't,
but--Oh, I want you, Elizabeth!" And all at once he was on his knees
beside her, his arms about her. "Don't forget me, dear! I love you, I
Love you--I want you--Oh, I want you for my wife!"

The girl looked into the passionate face upturned to hers, and then her
head drooped. And so they remained long; his dark head resting in her
arms; her fair face against it.

"Why do you go, John?" she asked at length, out of the rich content of
their silence.

"I haven't any choice, dear heart; there isn't any place for me here. I
have thought it all over, and I know I am doing the wise thing,--I am
quite sure of this! I shall write you of everything that concerns me!"
he added hastily, as he heard the tread of the general's slippered feet
in the hall.

North released her hands as the general entered the room. Elizabeth sank
back in her chair. Her father glanced sharply at them, and North turned
toward him frankly.

"I am leaving on the midnight train, General, and I must say good-by; I
have to get a few things together for my trip!"

General Herbert glanced again at Elizabeth, but her face was averted and
he learned nothing from its expression.

"So you are going away! Well, North, I hope you will have a pleasant
trip,--better let me send you into town?"

And he reached for the bell-rope. North shook his head.

"I'll walk, thank you," he said briefly.

In silence he turned to Elizabeth and held out his hand. For an instant
she rested hers in it, a cold little hand that trembled; their eyes met
in a brief glance of perfect understanding, and then North turned from
her. The general followed him into the hall.

"It's stopped snowing, and you will have clear starlight for your walk
home,--the wind's gone down, too!" he said, as he opened the hall door.

"Don't come any farther, General Herbert!" said North.

But the general followed him into the stone arched vestibule.

"It's a fine night for your walk,--but you're quite sure you don't want
to be driven into town?"

"No, no,--good night." And North held out his hand.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20