CHAPTER NINE
A fire in the air-tight stove in the corner had taken the early morningchill from the room and been permitted to burn out, now that the morningsun came in warm through the dusty windows, but the room was still closeand cloudy with wood smoke. At a battered, roll-topped desk in thesunniest window Mr. Theodore Burr was struggling with the eccentricitiesof an ancient Remington, and looking superior to it and to all hissurroundings, but the Judge was nowhere to be seen.
Mr. Burr was a very large, very pink young man, with blond hair whichwould have looked too good to be true on a woman, and near-set,green-blue eyes which managed to look vacant and aggressive at the sametime. He was wearing a turquoise-blue tie which accentuated theireffectiveness, and he occupied himself ostentatiously with the Remingtonfor quite three minutes before he turned his most vacant and aggressivelook upon his client.
"Well, Donovan?" he said.
Mr. Burr's manner was as patronizing as Mr. Ward's with thefriendliness left out, but his client was not chilled by it.
"Theodore, where's the Judge?" he asked.
"Mr. Burr." The pink young man turned two shades pinker as he made thecorrection. "The Judge is engaged."
"I don't believe it."
Mr. Burr laughed unpleasantly and held up his hand. From the other sideof a door labelled private--misleadingly, for the Judge's littlesanctum, where half the town had the privilege of crowding in andtipping back chairs and smoking, was the nearest approach to a clubroomthat the town afforded, now that the Hiawatha Club was no more--muffledvoices were faintly audible.
"You can talk to me," said Mr. Burr.
"I can, and I can go away and come back when he's not engaged. He saidhe'd see me."
"He's changed his mind. He don't want to see you. I know all about yourcase."
"You've learned a lot in six months."
"Talk like that won't get you anything, Donovan, here or anywhere else,"remarked Mr. Burr, reasonably, if somewhat offensively. Admitting it,his client dropped into one of the Judge's big office chairs, and satthere, fingering his cap as he talked, and looking suddenly beaten andtired.
"You're right, Theodore. Well, what's all this you know about my case?"
"Mike Brady sends you here begging when he's ashamed to come himself.It's hard on you, Neil."
"My uncle's too busy to come. Is that all you know?"
"I know what you want to-day, and you can't have it."
"What do I want?"
Mr. Burr's manner had become alarmingly official, but his clientcontinued to smile at him, and to fold and unfold his cap methodically.
"An extension of time on your uncle's mortgage. The principal is due thefirst of next month. You've kept the Judge waiting twice for theinterest, the security is insufficient, the bank holds a first mortgageon the house, and for fourteen months your uncle has made no payment tothe Judge whatever."
"Don't rub it in, Theodore."
"This is no laughing matter. Business is business," stated the juniorpartner importantly.
"More like charity, with the Judge, but Uncle isn't holding him up formuch this time. Uncle's getting on his feet. The Judge never expectedhim to, and I didn't, but the automobiles help. Maggie served tea beforeshe went to Ward's, and he's going on with it. His luck has turned.He's got the money to pay this year's interest and half the backinterest that's due, but he wants to keep it and put it intorepairs--the roof wants shingling, and if we could fix up the storeroomfor a place to serve tea and ice-cream we could double trade. Then, nextyear----"
"We've heard too much about next year, Donovan."
"Don't get tragic, Theodore. This is a new proposition. I'll go intofigures with the Judge and prove it to him--don't want to waste them onyou. But he won't be sending good money after bad this time, like he'sdone too many times. I'm as glad for him as I am for Uncle."
"It can't be done."
"Nonsense, Theodore. I won't wait to see the Judge now, but you tellhim----"
"It don't make any difference what I tell him. The Judge has made up hismind, and he won't change it. You can take it from me as well as him.You won't get another dollar of his money, and you won't get anothermonth's extension of time. We're done with you."
"I almost believe you mean that, Theodore."
"As I said, the house is insufficient security, but for the sake of thedignity of the firm we must protect ourselves----"
"I believe you mean it, and the Judge gave you authority to say it."
"We must go through the form of protecting ourselves and----"
His client laughed. "You don't mean the Judge wants to take over thehouse. That's 'Way Down East stuff. If money's tight with him, we'll paythe interest and manage some way, though I don't see how. But the housewould be no good to him if he took it, and he wouldn't take it if itwas. I know the Judge. Don't let your imagination get away with you,Theodore."
"I'm sorry for you, Donovan."
"You think he's going to take it?"
"I know he is."
"You mean that," his client decided slowly, "and you've got the Judge'sauthority for it, too."
"Take it quietly. It's the best way," urged the junior partnerhelpfully.
"I understand that's your motto, Theodore," said his client, andproceeded to take his advice, sitting quite still in the Judge's bigchair, and fixing a clear-seeing but unappreciative gaze upon theimmaculate folds of Mr. Burr's turquoise-blue tie. He took the advicetoo literally. The silence grew oppressive and sinister, and as if hefound it so, Mr. Burr broke into a monologue, disjointed, but made upof irreproachable sentiments.
"This is hard on your uncle, Neil, and it's hard on you, but it may bethe best thing in the end. He's been hiding behind you too long. Abusiness that can't stand on its own feet deserves to fail. He can startnew and start clean. The Judge has been a good friend to you----"
"Don't explain him to me. You don't own him, whoever else does,"interrupted the Judge's protege softly.
"What do you mean? If you don't think you're getting a square deal, sayso."
"Do you want me to weep on your shoulder, Theodore?"
"The Judge is your friend, and," Mr. Burr added handsomely, "I'm yourfriend, too."
His client arose briskly, as if encouraged by this. "Theodore, you don'twant to tell me what's back of your turning me down?" he asked. "No, Ithought not. Well----"
"I'm your friend," repeated Mr. Burr, generously if irrelevantly, andthis time without effect. His client had crossed the room withoutanother glance at him, and had his hand on the knob of the Judge'soffice door. His manner still had the composure which Mr. Burr hadadvocated, but his face was very pale, ominously pale, and his browneyes were changed and bright, dangerously bright. To imaginative eyeslike Mr. Burr's he must have looked suddenly taller.
Mr. Burr was facing an unmistakable crisis, with no time to wonder howlong it had been forming, or why. He hurried after the boy and caughthim fiercely if ineffectively by the arm.
"You can't go in there," stated Mr. Burr arbitrarily, all logicdeserting him. "You can't. You don't know----"
"Oh, I'm not going to knife the Judge," his client explained kindly."I'm only going to find out what's back of this."
"Take it quietly," was the ill-chosen sentiment which suggested itselfto Mr. Burr. Neil Donovan swung round angrily, and paused to reply toit, with fires which the somewhat negative though offensive personalityof the pink young man could never have kindled alight in his brown eyes.
"Quietly? There's been too much of that in this town. I'm sick of it.The only friend I've got who hasn't got one foot in the gutter goes backon me for no reason at all, the first time I ask a favour of him thatdon't amount to picking his pockets. The only big man in this rottentown who's halfway straight since Everard turned the town rotten beginsto act like he wasn't straight. What's back of it? I'm going to know.Get out of my way, Theodore."
"You don't know who's in there."
"I don't care. I'm going to know." Disposing of th
e hovering and anxiousintervention of Mr. Burr, and throwing the door open, he slammed it inthe pink young man's perturbed face, and stepped alone out of thesunshine into the Judge's dim little inner office.
The Judge's friendly littered little room was not so inviting in workinghours as it was in the hospitable hours of late afternoon. It was like awoman seen in evening dress by daylight. But the boy who had invaded itso hotly unmasked no conspiracy here. The men at the table near the onewindow, with a pile of official but entirely innocent looking papersbetween them, had every right to be there. They were the Judge andColonel Everard.
The great man looked quite undisturbed by the boy's invasion, glancingup at him indifferently from the papers that he was turning over withhis finely moulded, delicately used hands; he even looked mildly amused,but the boy turned to him first instinctively, and not to the Judge, whowas peering at him with troubled and kindly eyes over the top of hisglasses.
"I've got to speak to the Judge. I'm sorry."
He stammered out his half-apology awkwardly enough, but the smoulderingfires were still alight in his brown eyes, tragic fires of cowed andrebellious youth. The great man regarded him indifferently for a minuteand then turned rather ostentatiously to his papers again.
"Judge, I've got to speak to you alone."
"You can't just now, son."
"I've got to."
"Why?"
The Judge's kind, drawling voice was not quite as usual, and his blue,near-sighted eyes were not; they were wistful and deprecating, andrather tired, a beaten man's eyes, eyes with an irresistible appeal tothe race that is vowed to lost causes, this boy's race. The boy steppedinstinctively closer.
"I don't blame you, sir, but I've got to understand this and know what'sbehind it."
"Better go home before you say anything you'll be sorry for, Neil."
"Why did you go back on me?"
"You're taking a sentimental attitude about a business matter. It'snatural enough that you should. I'm sorry for you, son."
"Why----"
The Judge drew himself up a shade straighter in his chair, and met theboy's insistent challenge with sudden dignity, kindly but judicial,peculiarly his own, but his flashes of it were not very frequent now.
"Neil," he said deliberately, "I've got nothing to say to you alone.I've got nothing to say to you at all that Mr. Burr hasn't said. Is thatquite clear to you?"
It was entirely clear. The Judge had left no room for uncertainty orargument, and the boy did not attempt to argue or even to answer. Hestood looking uncertainly down at the Judge, as if for the moment hecould not see anything in the room quite distinctly, the Judge's face,with its near-sighted blue eyes and red-gold beard and thinning hair, orColonel Everard's clear-cut profile.
"Better go," said the Judge gently.
"I'd better go," the boy repeated mechanically, but he did not move.
Colonel Everard put down his papers deliberately, and favoured him witha glance, amused and surprised, as if he had not expected to find himstill in the room, and was prepared to forget at once that he was there;a disconcerting sort of glance, but the boy's brown eyes met itgallantly, and cleared as they looked. They grew bright and defiantagain, with a little laugh in the depths of them. The ghost of a laugh,too, lurked in the boy's low voice somewhere.
"You're right, Judge. I'll go. I'm wasting my time here," he said,"asking you who's back of what you've done to me--when I know. I won'task you again, but I'll ask you, I'll ask you both, who's back ofeverything that's crooked or wrong in this town? Little or big, he'sback of it all; straight back of it, or well back of it, hiding his faceand pulling the wires. He's to blame for it all, for he's made the townwhat it is.
"He's got his hand on the neck of the town, and got hold of it tighter,gradual, so nobody saw it and knocked it off; tighter and tighter,squeezing the life out. He never made a gift to the town with one handthat he didn't take it back with the other. What the town gets withouthim giving it, he won't let it keep. The whole town's got his stamp onit, grafting and lying and putting up a front. The whole town's afraidof him. The Judge here, that's the best man in town, don't dare call hissoul his own. Me, I'm afraid of him, too, and the only reason I darestand up and say to his face what's said behind his back is because I'vegot nothing to lose. It's him, there----"
"Don't, son," muttered the Judge tardily, unregarded, but ColonelEverard listened courteously, with a faint, amused smile growing ratherstiff on his thin lips.
"Him, that's too good to speak to me or look at me, sitting theregrinning, and reading fine print, making out not to care, he's back ofit all--him, Everard."
The two men, who had heard him out, did not interrupt him now. It wasonly a passionate jumble of boyish words they had listened to, butbehind it, vibrating in his tense voice, was something bigger than hecould frame words to express, something that commanded silence; painforcing its way into speech, long repression broken at last. The dignityof it was about him still, though his brown eyes flashed no moredefiance, and he was only a shabby and hopeless boy walking uncertainlyto the office door, and fumbling with the handle.
"I'll go out this way," he said. "I've had enough of Theodore. And I'vehad enough of this place. I'll say good morning, gentlemen."
In a prosaic and too often unsatisfactory world, which is not the stage,no curtain drops to relieve you of the embarrassment of thinking what tosay next after a record speech; you have to step out of the limelight,and walk somewhere else. Neil Donovan, emerging from the ancientbuilding which contained Judge Saxon's office into Post-office Squareafter a brief interval of struggling successfully for self-control in adusty corridor little suited to such struggles, and not even ensuringthe privacy which is wrongly believed to be necessary for them, had onemore appointment to keep. He was late for it already. He glanced at thetown clock and started off hurriedly to keep it.
Back of Court-house Hill another street, starting parallel to CourtStreet, rapidly loses its sense of direction and its original characterof a business street, wavers to right and left, past a scatter ofdiscouraged looking houses, and finally slants off in the generaldirection of the woods at the edge of the town, and the abortive,sparsely wooded hill known to generations of picnickers--not the eliteof the town, but humbler, more rowdy picnickers--as Mountain Rock.
The street never reaches it, but loses itself in a grubby tangle ofsmaller streets, thickly set with small houses, densely and untidilypopulated, the section known at first derisively and later in good faithas Paddy Lane. Through the intricate geography of this quarter ColonelEverard's only openly declared enemy might have been seen making a hastyand expert way ten minutes later; quickly and directly as it permittedhim to, he approached the base of the hill.
Disregarding more public and usual ways of ascent, he struck straightacross a stubbly field that lay behind a row of peculiarly forlorn andtumbledown houses into a path so narrow that it was hard to see untilyou were actually looking down it, between the twin birches that markedthe entrance. He followed it to the base of the cliff itself. The beltof stunted birches and dusty-looking alders that skirted the cliff wasbroken by an occasional scraggly pine. The boy stopped under one ofthem, leaned against the decaying trunk, produced a letter, and read it.
It was only a pencilled scrawl of a letter, on the roughest of copypaper, and so crumpled that he must have been quite familiar with it,but he read it intently.
"Neil," it ran, "I'll meet you Saturday, on top of Mountain Rock, same time and place. I shan't see you till then. I don't want to. You frightened me last night. I don't like you lately. Be nice to me Saturday. JUDITH."
Only a pencilled scrawl, but he knew every word of it by heart, and ofthe burst of excited speech in the Judge's office nothing remained inhis mind but the general impression that he had made a fool of himselfthere. Perhaps he was too familiar with Judith's letter, for the stinghe had found there at first was gone from the words. He looked at themdully.
"I can't stand muc
h more," he said aloud.
He said it lifelessly, and with no defiance in his eyes, stating only awearisome fact. He had seen the Colonel's face through a kind of redmist in the Judge's office, and felt reckless and strong. He did notfeel like a hero now. He was tired.
He would hardly have cared just now if you had told him that back inJudge Saxon's office two men who had not moved from their chairs sincehe left them, and who would not move until several vital points weresettled, were discussing something he would not have believed themcapable of discussing at such length and with so much feeling--thefortunes of the Donovan family.
He did not care just now for the little sights and sounds of spring thatwere all around him, the cluster of arbutus leaves at his feet, thefaint, nestling bird noises, sweeter than song, and the stir and rustleof tiny, unclassified sounds that were signs of the pulse of springbeating everywhere, of change and growth going on whether human beingsperceived or denied it.
"I can't stand any more," said the boy.
Up the cliff to his right, strewn with pine needles that were brown-goldin the sun, a steep and tiny trail led the way to the top of the hilland his rendezvous. Now the boy crushed Judith's letter into his pocket,turned to the trail with a sigh, and began to climb.
The Wishing Moon Page 9
