THE NOTE

Margaret Deland

I

Of course everybody in Old Chester knew that there was something queer about Mary Gordon’s marriage—not the mere fact of the man, queer as he was; for, to Old Chester’s ideas, he was very queer…. A “travelling-man,” to begin with—and the Gordons had a line of scholars and professional men behind them—a drummer, if you please. In theory, Old Chester was religiously democratic; it plumed itself upon its Christian humility, and every Sunday it publicly acknowledged that Old Chesterians were like the rest of humanity to the extent of being miserable sinners. But, all the same, that Mary Gordon should marry a “person” of that sort—

“Dear me!” said Old Chester.

However, travelling-men may be worthy; they need not necessarily use perfumery or put pomade upon their shiny, curly, black hair. But Mr. Algernon Keen was obviously not worthy, and he was saturated with perfumery, and his black, curly hair was sleek with oil. Furthermore, he was very handsome: his lips were weak and pouting and red; his eyes liquid and beautiful; his plump cheeks slightly pink. One may believe that such physical characteristics do not imply moral qualities; but only youth has such a belief. When one has lived a little while in the world, one comes to know that a human soul prisoned in such pretty flesh is piteously hampered. Yet Mary Gordon, meeting this poor creature by chance, fell deeply in love with him. Of course such falling in love was queer—it was inexplainable; for Mary was a nice girl—not, of course, of the caliber of some Old Chester girls; she had not the mind of Alice Gray nor the conscience of Sally Smith; but she was a quiet, biddable, good child—at least so far as anybody knew. But nobody knew much about her. In the first place, the Gordons lived just far enough out of Old Chester to miss its neighborliness. Mary was not often seen in town, and in her own home her brother Alex’s loud personality crushed her into a colorless silence. Her father did not crush her—he merely did not notice her; but he was fond of her—at least he had the habit of indifferent affection. She always came into the library to say good-night to him; and he, sitting by the fire in a big, winged chair, a purple silk handkerchief spread over his white locks, to keep off possible draughts, would turn his cheek up to her mechanically; but the soft touch of her lips never made him lift his eyes from his book. She never kissed Alex good-night; she was openly afraid of him. Alex was rude to her and made her wait on him, throwing her a curt “thank you” once in a while, generally coupled with some sarcastic reference to her slowness or stupidity—for, indeed, the child was both slow and stupid. Perhaps, had she been loved— But no one can tell now how that would have been. At any rate, there was a pathetic explanation of loneliness to account for the fact that she was drawn to this Algernon Keen, who had nothing to recommend him except a cheap and easy kindliness that cost him no effort and was bestowed on everybody.

Of course the two men, her father and brother, refused to consider Keen as Mary’s suitor at all. Alex nearly had a fit over it; in his rage and mortification he took all Old Chester into his confidence. He went to the Tavern—this was the day after Mary had, trembling and crying, told her little love affair to her father and begged his consent—Alex went to the Tavern and ordered the snickering, perfumed youth out of town.

“Well, I guess not,” said Algy. “This town doesn’t belong to you, does it?”

Alex stammered with passion: “If—if you dare to address Miss Gordon again, I’ll—I’ll—I’ll horsewhip you,” he said, his pale eyes bulging from his crimsoning face.

“I guess Mary has a right to let me talk to her if she wants to; this is a free country,” the other blustered. And Alex, loudly, on the Tavern steps, cursed him for a skunk, a— Well, Old Chester was never able to quote Alex. He came to his senses after this dreadful exhibition of himself, and was horribly mortified. But post-mortification cannot undo the deed, and before night everybody in Old Chester knew that Mary Gordon had fallen in love with—”the person who brings samples to Tommy Dove’s apothecary shop.”

Old Chester was truly sorry for Mary; “for,” as Mrs. Barkley said, “love’s love, whether it’s suitable or not; and Mary has such a lonely life, poor child! Well, it will take time for her to get over it.”

It seemed to take a good deal of time. That winter she grew pale and was often ill. The poor little thing seemed to creep into her shell to brood over her blighted hopes. Once she was downright sick for a week, and Mr. Gordon sent for William King. Willy said at first that Mary had something on her mind (which certainly Mary’s family did not need to be told).

“I believe she’s thinking about that scoundrel yet,” said Alex. “But she has just got to understand that we’ll never allow it, Willy. You may as well make that clear to her, and let her get over her moping.”

William King looked thoughtful and said he would call again.

However, any of us Old Chester girls could have enlightened the doctor. “Mary was pining away for her lover;” that was all there was to it. But the lover never appeared, being engaged in offering samples of pomade and perfumery to apothecary stores in other regions. And then, suddenly, the queer thing happened….

The Globe announced: “Married—by Dr. Lavendar, Mary Gordon to Algernon Keen”—and the date, which was the night before.

“What!” said Old Chester at the breakfast-table, and gaped out of its windows to see Mary, crying very much, get into the stage, not at her father’s house, but at the Tavern door, if you please, and drive away with the Person. What did it mean? “Was Alex at home? Did he consent?” demanded Old Chester; for Alex had been away from home for a week. By noon it was decided that Alex had consented; for it came out that he had returned to Old Chester the previous afternoon, and with him, shrinking into the corner of the stage, was Mr. Algy Keen.

“Get out,” Alex said to him when the stage drew up at the Gordon house. The man got out, shambling and stumbling, with a furtive look over his shoulder, for Alex Gordon walked behind him to the front door, his right hand gripped upon his walking-stick, his left clinched at his side.

“He kep’ just behind the feller,” the stage-driver told Van Horn at the Tavern afterwards—”just behind him, like as if he was afraid the feller’d run away from him. But the feller, he stopped right at the steps, and he turned around, and he says, ‘Mind you,’ he says (mad as a hatter)—’mind you,’ he says, ‘I’m not brought, I’ve come’;—whatever that means,” the stage-driver ruminated.

So much Old Chester knew the day after Mary Gordon’s wedding. And it naturally sought to know a little more.

“I suppose her father feels it very much?” ventured Mrs. Barkley to Dr. Lavendar.

“Any man feels the marriage of his only girl,” said Dr. Lavendar, briefly. And Mrs. Barkley held her tongue. But Mrs. Drayton, who was just then anxious about her soul and found it necessary to consult Dr. Lavendar as to the unpardonable sin—Mrs. Drayton was not so easily squelched. “My Jean says that the Gordon’s Rachel told her that Alex brought the man into the house by the ear, and then sent her for you, running, and—”

“She didn’t bring me into the house by the ear,” said Dr. Lavendar.

“But why, do you suppose, was it all so sudden?” said Mrs. Drayton; “it almost looks—”

“How do you know it was sudden?” said Dr. Lavendar.

“Well, my Jean said—”

“It may have been sudden to Jean,” said the old man; “possibly Mary had not taken Jean into her confidence. Some folks don’t confide in servants, you know.”

But Mrs. Drayton was proof against so delicate a thrust. “Well, I only hope she won’t repent at her leisure;—if there’s nothing but haste to repent of. If there’s anything else—”

“I’ll say good-day, Mrs. Drayton,” interrupted Dr. Lavendar; “and as for your question about the unpardonable sin, ma’am, why, just be ready to forgive other folks and you needn’t be afraid of the unpardonable sin for yourself.”

He took his hat and stick and went thumping down-stairs. In the hall he met William King going up to see the invalid, and said, with a gasp: “Willy, my boy, a good, honest murderer is easier to deal with than some milder kinds of wrong-doing.”

“Dr. Lavendar,” said William, “I’d rather have a patient with small-pox than treat some lighter ills that I could name.”

As for Mrs. Drayton, she told her daughter that Dr. Lavendar was very unspiritual, and did not understand the distress of a sensitive temperament. “Even the slightest error fills me with remorse,” said Mrs. Drayton. “Dear me! I should think Mary Gordon would know what remorse is—for, of course, there is only one thing to think.”

 

II

Old Chester thought the one thing. No evasions of Dr. Lavendar’s, no miserable silence on the part of the disgraced father and the infuriated brother, could banish that one thought. But nothing definite was known. “Although,” as everybody said to everybody else, “of course, Dr. Lavendar knows the whole thing, and probably Willy King does, too.” If they did, they kept their knowledge to themselves. But Dr. Lavendar went often to the Gordon house that winter. “They’re pretty lonely, those two men,” he told Willy once—perhaps six months afterwards.

“Would either of them have softened if the baby had lived, do you think, sir?” William said. And Dr. Lavendar shook his head.

“Perhaps her father might. But Alex will never forgive her, I’m afraid.”

And Alex never did forgive her—not even when she died, as, happily, she did six or seven years later. She died; and life closed over the miserable little tragedy as water closes, rippling, over some poor, broken thing flung into its depths.

“Thank God!” Alex said, when he heard she was gone.

“You may thank God for her,” Dr. Lavendar said, turning upon him sternly, “but ask mercy for yourself, because this door of opportunity is shut upon you forever.”

Dr. Lavendar had brought them the news. They did not ask how it had come to him; it was enough to hear it. The two men, Mary’s father and brother, listened while he told them, briefly: “She died yesterday. The funeral will be to-morrow, at twelve.”

“Thank God!” Alex said, hoarsely, and lifted his hand and cursed the man who had dishonored them.

And Dr. Lavendar turned upon him in solemn anger. “Your opportunity is gone—so far as she is concerned. There yet remains, however, the poor, foolish sinner whom she loved—”

“Damn him!” said Alex.

“—and who loved her.”

Old Mr. Gordon dropped his face in his hands and groaned.

“Who loved her,” Dr. Lavendar repeated.

“For that, at least, he cannot be indifferent to us, whatever he has made us suffer.”

Neither of his listeners spoke. It was growing dark in the long room, walled to the ceiling with books and lighted only by a fire sputtering in the grate. Mr. Gordon, sitting in his big, winged chair close to the hearth, said, after a long pause: “You said—to-morrow, Edward? Where?”

“In Mercer. I shall go up on the morning stage.”

Again the silence fell. Alex got up and walked to the window and looked out. “Why didn’t you bring Danny in, Dr. Lavendar?” he said, carelessly; “the little brute will freeze out there in your buggy. I’ll call him in.” He turned to leave the room, and then stopped.

“Alexander, sit down,” said Dr. Lavendar.

Alex sat down with involuntary quickness; then he threw his legs out in front of him and thrust his hands down into his pockets. “Dr. Lavendar, this is our affair. I’m obliged to you for your kind intentions; but this is our affair. You’ve told your news, and we have listened respectfully—if I should say gladly you might be shocked. So I only say respectfully. But you have spoken; we have listened. That is all there is to it. The thing is finished. The book is closed. I say thank God! I don’t know what my father says. If he takes my advice, for I’ve been a good son to him; I never gave him any cause to be ashamed;—if he takes my advice, he’ll forget the whole affair. That’s what I mean to do. The book is closed. I shall never think of it again.” He got up and walked about with affectation of vast indifference.

“Alex, you will probably never think of anything else,” Dr. Lavendar said, half pitifully; and then, sternly, again: “I can’t make you accept the opportunity that still is open to you; but I will point it out to you: Come up to Mercer to-morrow with your father and me.”

“Mercer!” the younger man cried out, furiously; “you mean to see her buried? To dance on her grave and pull the man out and spit in his face and—” He stopped, his face suddenly purpling, his light eyes staring and rolling; then he stumbled and jerked himself together, and lurched forward into a chair, breathing loudly. The two old men, trembling with horror, ran to him. “Oh, Edward,” John Gordon said—”oh, Edward, why did you rouse him? He can’t speak of it, he can’t think of it. Alex—there!—we’ll say no more about it.”

Alex stared at them with glassy eyes, in silence; his father kept bemoaning himself and imploring his old friend to say no more. “You won’t speak of it again, Edward? He goes out of his head with rage. Promise me not to speak of it any more.”

“No, John; no,” Dr. Lavendar said, sadly; and as Alex’s eyes cleared into bewildered consciousness, the old minister stood a little aside while the father helped the son to his feet and led him away. When he came back, shuffling feebly down the long, darkening room, Dr. Lavendar was still sitting by the fire. “He’s quiet now; I—I think he’s ashamed. I hope so. But he won’t come out of his room.”

Dr. Lavendar nodded.

John Gordon spread his purple handkerchief over his white locks, with shaking hands, and then sat down, tumbling back in his chair in a forlorn heap. “Edward,” he said, feebly, “tell me about it. It was on Thursday? Had she been sick long?” Then, in a low voice, “She—didn’t lack for comforts?”

“No; I think not. The man was as tender with her as—as you might have been. She was sick—I mean in bed—two weeks. She had been ailing for a long time; you remember I spoke to you about it about a month ago. And again last week.”

“You—saw her?”

“Yes.”

“More than once?”

“Oh, many times,” Dr. Lavendar said, simply; “many times, of course.”

John Gordon put out his hand; Dr. Lavendar shook it silently. Then suddenly the old man broke out, in weak, complaining anger: “He wouldn’t let me write to her. I would have sent her some money. He wouldn’t hear of it. He was awful, Edward. I—I didn’t dare.”

Dr. Lavendar was silent. It had grown so dark that he could not see the father’s face. Suddenly, from behind the leafless trees at the foot of the garden, a smouldering yellow glow of sunset broke across the gloom of the room, and touched the purple cowl and the veined hands covering the aged face. Dr. Lavendar sighed.

“What can I do, Edward? I can’t go to-morrow. You see I can’t.”

“Yes, you can, John.”

“He would die; he’d have another attack. His heart is bad, Edward.”

“Oh, I’m afraid it is, I’m afraid it is. But John, you do your duty. Never mind Alex’s heart. That isn’t your affair.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly go—not possibly,” the father protested, nervously.

The glow died out. The room grew dusk and then dark. Mr. Gordon got up and reached to the mantel-shelf for a spill. “Mary used to make the spills for me,” he said, vaguely. “Now our Rachel does it, and she doesn’t half bend the end over.” He lighted the spill, the little flame flickering upon his poor old face peering out from under his purple handkerchief. “Oh, Alex ought not to be so hard. I would go with you to-morrow, Edward, but I can’t, you know. I can’t.” Then, with a shaking hand, he took off the ground-glass globe and lighted the tall lamp that stood among a litter of papers on the library-table. “You see how it is, Edward, don’t you? I can’t possibly go.”

“You will be sorry if you don’t, John.”

“I’ll be sorry anyhow,” he burst out. “I’m always sorry. I’ve been sorry all my life. My children are my sorrow.”

 

III

Algy Keen, his face swollen with crying, his black hair limp and uncurled, sat on the edge of the bed in the back room of a dingy Mercer lodging-house. The windows had been left open after Mary had been taken away, so that the room was cold; and there were still two chairs facing each other,—a certain distance apart. The room was in dreary order, and there was the scent of flowers in the chill air. The bed was tumbled, for the forlorn man had dropped down upon it to rest. But he was too tired to rest, and was sitting up again, dangling his stockinged feet on the shabby carpet and talking to Dr. Lavendar. He snuffled, and his poor, weak lips shook, and he rubbed the back of his trembling hand across his nose. Algy had had broken nights for a fortnight, and the last three days and nights of Mary’s life he had almost no sleep at all; these two days when she lay dead in their bare room he had slept and wept and slept again; and now, when he and Dr. Lavendar had come back from the funeral, he sat on the edge of the bed and whimpered with weakness and grief.

“Well, sir, she was a good girl,” he said. “I don’t care what anybody says, she was a good girl. I ain’t saying that things was just right, to begin with. But that wasn’t Mary’s fault. No; she was a good girl. And her folks treated her bad. They’d always treated her mean bad. My goodness! if they’d ‘a’ let me come to see her respectable, as you would any of your lady friends, ‘stead of skulkin’ ‘round—… I can’t stand the smell of those flowers,” he broke out, in a high, crying voice; “I left them all out there at the cemetery, and I smell them here—I smell them here,” he moaned, trembling.

“I like to smell them,” Dr. Lavendar said. “They mean the old friendship for Mary. Mrs. King sent them. She’s our doctor’s wife in Old Chester. She always liked Mary.”

“I don’t see how she could help it,” Algy said, his face crumpling with tears. “Well, she was a good girl. And she was a good wife, sir, too. I tell you, you never saw a better wife. I used to come home tired, and there’d be my slippers out for me. Yes, sir; she never missed it. And she was always pleasant, too; you mayn’t call just being pleasant, religion, but I—”

“I do,” Dr. Lavendar interposed.

“Well, so do I,” Algy said, his face lightening a little. “I call it a better religion than her folks showed. Well, now, sir, I loved Mary”—he stopped and cried, openly—”I loved her (I didn’t need that hell-hound of a brother to come after me)—yes, I was just as fond of her; and yet there was times when I come home at night—not—not quite—well, maybe a little—you know?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Lavendar.

“But, my God, sir, Mary was pleasant. It isn’t every woman that would be pleasant then, is it?”

“No, it isn’t, Algy.”

“Course, next day she’d tell me I done wrong. (She never told me so at the time—Mary had sense.) And I always said: ‘Well, yes, Mary, that’s so. And I’ll never do it again.’ But she was pleasant. Course I don’t mean she was lively. She used to remember—well, that we’d made a mistake. You know? And she used to kind a brood on it. She talked to you considerably about it, I guess. She said you comforted her. She said you said that maybe her—her mistake had brought her to be kind o’ more religious—saved her, as you might say.”

“I said that she had come to know her Saviour through His forgiveness.”

“I don’t think Mary needed any forgiveness,” the poor husband said, with tearful resentment; “I think her folks needed it.”

“I’m sorry for them,” Dr. Lavendar said. “They have got to remember that they might have been kinder. That’s a hard thing to have to remember.”

The young man nodded. “I hope they’ll remember it, hard!”

“They will,” said Dr. Lavendar, sighing.

“I spent my last cent on Mary,” Algernon rambled on. “I got her a good coffin—a stylish coffin. The plate was solid silver. The man wanted me to take a plated one. I says ‘no,’ I says; ‘I don’t get plated things for my wife if it takes my last cent.’ Well, it just about took it. But I don’t care. Her people threw her off, and I did for her. I spent my last cent.”

“You took her from them in the first place, Algernon,” the old minister said. “Don’t forget that you sinned.”

“Well, you said she was forgiven,” the other broke out, angrily. “I guess God’s more easy than some people.”

“He is.”

“Well, then,” Algy said, resentfully; “what’s the use of talking?”

Dr. Lavendar was silent.

“I don’t begrudge a cent I spent on her,” Algy went on. “I had laid by $1140 to set up a place of my own here in Mercer. At least, it wasn’t me; I’m not one to save much; it was Mary did it. But these last eight months have taken it all, ‘cause I ‘ain’t done hardly any work; couldn’t be away from her on the road, you know; so we had to live on that money. I could ‘a’ got a cheaper coffin; but I wouldn’t. As for the doctor, I got the best in town. I don’t believe in economizing on your wife. And I paid him. I paid him $204 yesterday morning, though it seems high, considering he didn’t cure her. But I wasn’t going to let Mary get buried owing the doctor. And I paid for the coffin. ‘Spot cash,’ I says to the man, ‘make it spot cash, and name your figure.’ He took off $17. Well, how much do you suppose I’ve got left now, Dr. Lavendar, out of $1140? Just $23, sir. I don’t care; I don’t begrudge Mary a cent. I thought the coffin looked handsome, didn’t you?—Oh, I wish somebody had ‘a’ moved those chairs when we were gone!” he cried, his voice shrill and breaking.

Dr. Lavendar got up and pushed one of the chairs back against the wall and brought the other to Algy’s side. The young man laid his hand on it and began to cry.

 

IV

“No, I suppose you don’t care to hear about it, John. But I want to tell you; so I guess you’ll listen to please me?”

John Gordon said nothing.

“It isn’t a long story,” Dr. Lavendar said, and told him briefly of the funeral. When he ended there was silence. Then, “John,” Dr. Lavendar said.

“Yes, Edward.”

“The man is in need.”

“What’s that to me?” the other burst out.

“Much,” said Dr. Lavendar; “it gives you a chance.”

“You mean a chance to give him some money?” said the other. “Good God! To pay the scoundrel for what he did to us? Edward, you don’t understand human nature.”

“He spent his last cent making Mary comfortable, John. She told me so herself.”

“I will never give that—creature one penny of my clean money.”

Dr. Lavendar said nothing.

The older man bent forward, shivering, and stirred the fire. The coal broke into sputtering fragments and the flames roared up into the soot. “Alex would never listen to giving him any money.”

“Don’t ask him to listen to it. Haven’t you got your own check-book?”

“Let him rot. That’s what Alex says.”

“I don’t believe it’s what you say, John, because he was good to Mary;—and you were not.”

Mr. Gordon groaned.

“Well, I won’t give him anything; I’ll lend it, possibly.”

Dr. Lavendar frowned and got up.

Mr. Gordon put out a trembling, detaining hand.

“Edward, you don’t understand…. How much do you want for him?”

“He had saved about $1200 to go into some business. It’s all gone.”

“Well, I won’t give it to him,” the other repeated, with feeble sharpness; “I’ll lend it—to please you.”

“I’m sorry you haven’t a better motive.”

John Gordon got up and went over to his library-table and fumbled about in one of the drawers for his check-book. “I’m a fool,” he said, fretfully; “I don’t know but what I’m worse. Lending money to— But you say he was good to her? Poor Mary! Oh!” he ended, half to himself, “I don’t know why Alex is so hard.” Then he took his quill and began to scrawl his check. “I’d rather see him starve,” he said.

“No, you wouldn’t,” Dr. Lavendar said, calmly.

“Well, there! Take it! Get a receipt.”

“Johnny, think better of it.”

“You needn’t take it if you don’t want to,” the other said, sullenly.

Dr. Lavendar took it, and John Gordon called after him,

“You won’t tell Alex?”

Dr. Lavendar shook his head and sighed. As he drove home he said to himself that a loan was better than nothing. “But, Danny, my boy,” he added, “what a chance he had! Well, he’ll take it yet—he’ll take it yet. The trouble with me, Daniel, is, I’m in too much of a hurry to make folks good. I must reform.”

Danny blinked a grave agreement, and Dr. Lavendar, dropping his shortcomings joyfully from his mind, began to sing to himself:

“Oh! what has caused this great commotion—motion—motion

Our country through?”

When, however, a day or two later, Dr. Lavendar went up to Mercer to take the check to Algernon Keen, he found to his astonishment that it was not so easy to secure to his old friend even the smaller and meaner opportunity of lending, much less giving.

At first, Algernon looked at him open-mouthed. “Him—offering to lend money to—?” His astonishment robbed him of words. Then into his poor, shallow face came the first keen touch of shame. But instantly he was ashamed of his shame,—ashamed, like so many of us strange human creatures, of the stirring of God within him. He didn’t want their dirty money, he said. They thought themselves so good, they couldn’t stomach Mary. Well, then, they were too good for him to touch their money. His voice shook with angry grief. His bitterness was genuine, even though he used it to hide that first regenerative pang of shame. No; Dr. Lavendar could take their money back to them. “I spent my last cent, just about, on Mary,” he said; “and I didn’t begrudge it, either.”

“I’m sure you didn’t begrudge it.”

Algy’s weak mouth shook and his eyes filled; he turned away and stared out of the window. “He better have offered to lend her some money than me,” he said. “I bet he’s glad she’s dead.”

(Dr. Lavendar thought of Alex.) “He wants to help you now for her sake,” he said.

“I don’t want his money,” the younger man insisted, brokenly; “he let her die.”

“I think that it would please her to have you take it.”

“I don’t want to be under obligations to those people,” Algernon said, doggedly.

“If Mr. Gordon has your note, it’s business.”

Algy hesitated. “I suppose he thinks I’d never pay it back?”

“If he takes your note, it looks as if he expected to be repaid.”

“It’s treating me white, I’ll say that,” Algernon said. And again his face reddened slowly to his forehead and he would not meet Dr. Lavendar’s eye. “But I don’t want their favors,” he cried, threateningly.

“It’s business, if you give your note,” Dr. Lavendar repeated. “Come, Algernon, let her father do something for her sake. And as for you—it’s a chance to play the man; don’t you see that?”

Algy caught his breath. “Damn!—if I borrowed his money I’d pay it—I’d pay it, if it took the blood out of me.”

“I will make your feeling clear to him,” Dr. Lavendar said. “Let’s make out the note now, Algy.”

The old man got up and hunted about for pen and paper. “Here’s a prescription blank,” he said; “that will do.” An ink-bottle stood on the narrow mantel-shelf, a rusty pen corroding in its thickening depths; but Dr. Lavendar, in a very small, shaky old hand, managed to scrawl that “Algernon Keen, for value received, promised to pay to John Gordon—”

—”in a year,” Algy broke in; “I ain’t going to have it run but a year—and put in the interest, sir. I’ll have no favors from ‘em. I’ll pay interest; I’ll pay six per cent.—like anybody else would.”

—”and interest on same,” Dr. Lavendar added. “Now, you sign here, Algy. There! that will please Mary.”

“Oh, my!” said Algernon, his poor, red-rimmed eyes filling—”oh, my! my! what will I do without her?”

 

V

The next day Dr. Lavendar carried the note back to old John Gordon, who took it, his mouth tightening, and glanced at it in silence. Then he shuffled over to a safe in the corner of his library and pulled out a japanned tin box. Dr. Lavendar watched him fumble with the combination lock, holding the box up to catch the light, and shaking it a little until the lid clicked open. “He’ll never pay it,” John Gordon said.

“He’ll try to,” Dr. Lavendar said; “but it’s doubtful, of course. He’s a sickly fellow, and he hasn’t much gumption. But if there’s any good in him, your trusting him will bring it out.”

“There isn’t any good in him,” the other said, violently.

And that was the last they said about it; for the time Algernon Keen dropped out of their lives.

He set up his little store in Mercer, and struggled along, advertising his samples of perfumery and pomade upon his own person; trying to drink a little less, for Mary’s sake; whimpering with loneliness and sick-headache in his grimy room in the hotel where Mary had died; and never forgetting for a day that promise to pay on the back of the prescription paper in John Gordon’s possession. But when the year came round, on the 2d of December, he had not a cent in hand to meet his obligation. And that was why Dr. Lavendar heard of him again. Would the doctor—this on perfumed paper, ruled, and with gilt edges—would the doctor “ask him if he would extend?” Algernon could pay the interest now; but that was all he could do. He wasn’t in very good shape, he said. He’d been in the hospital for a month, and had had to hire a salesman. “I guess he cheated me; he was a kind of fancy talker, and got me to let him buy some stock; he got off his slice, I bet.” That was the reason, Algy said, that he could not make any payment on the principal. But he was going to introduce a new article for the lips (no harmful drugs in it), called Rosebloom—first-class thing; and he expected he’d do first rate with it. And in another year he’d surely pay that note. It hung over him, he said, like a ton. “I guess he don’t want it paid any more than I want to pay it,” Algy ended, simply.

Of course Dr. Lavendar asked for an extension, and got it, though John Gordon’s lip curled. “I never expected to hear from him or his note again,” he said. “Probably his honesty won’t last over another year.”

Dr. Lavendar went up to Mercer to see Algy, and they talked things over in the store between the calls of two customers. Algy’s hair was sleek and curly as before, for business is business; but he looked draggled and forlorn; his color had gone and he was thinner, and there were lines on his forehead, and his bright, hazel eyes, kind and shallow as those of some friendly animal, had come into their human birthright of worry. “It’s this note that takes the spunk out of me,” he said. “If I could only get it paid! Then I’d hire a house and have the shop in front. I’ve thought some I’d get married, too. It’s hard on your digestion living in one of these here cheap hotels. But I can’t get over thinking of Mary. I don’t seem to relish other ladies. I suppose they’re all right; but Mary was so pleasant.” And his eyes reddened. “And, anyway, it would cost more to keep a wife, and I don’t propose to spend money that way. He’s treated me white, I’ll say that for him; and I propose to show him—Dr. Lavendar, I haven’t drunk too much only three times in the last year—honest, I haven’t. I thought you’d think that would please Mary?”

“I’m sure it does,” said Dr. Lavendar.

“I suppose you think,” the drummer said, sheepishly, “that it was pretty darned foolish to drop three times?”

“I think pretty soon it won’t be even three times,” Dr. Lavendar declared; “but it’s hard work; I know it is.”

Algernon looked at him eagerly. “You know how it is yourself, maybe?”

“Well, I never happened to want to take too much,” Dr. Lavendar said, gently; “if I had, it would have been hard, I’m sure.”

“Well, you bet,” Algy told him, knowingly. Then they talked the business over, and Dr. Lavendar clapped Algy on the shoulder and said he believed he’d have that house and shop yet. “Rosebloom may be a gold-mine,” said Dr. Lavendar. Then he gave Algy some advice about the window display, and suggested a little gas-jet on the counter where gentlemen might light their cigars; and he told Algy what brand he smoked himself, and recommended it, in spite of its price. Algy smacked his thigh at that, and said Dr. Lavendar had the making of a smart business man in him. Indeed, Algy felt so cheered that he opened his show-case and displayed a box of his new cosmetic.

“Look here, doctor,” he said, earnestly; “I’ll give you a box. Yes—yes! I will. I’d just as lief as not. You maybe wouldn’t want to use it yourself; gentlemen don’t, often. But give it to one of your lady friends. Do, now, doctor. It don’t cost me much of anything—and I’m sure you’ve been kind to me.”

And Dr. Lavendar accepted the lip-salve, and thanked Algy warmly; then he said that the picture on the lid of the tight-waisted lady was very striking.

“That’s so!” cried Algy. “She’s a beauty. She makes me think of Mary.”

Algernon had presented Dr. Lavendar with a cigar, and the old minister was smoking it in great comfort, his feet on the base of a rusty, melon-shaped iron stove; Algy was leaning back against the counter, his elbows on the show-case behind him. “Dr. Lavendar,” he said, looking at the toe of his boot, “I—got something on my mind.”

“Well, off with it, quick as you can.”

“I’ve been thinking about the Day of Judgment.”

“Ho!” said Dr. Lavendar.

“Well, sir, I get to thinking: if everybody’s sins are to be read out loud before all the world—standing up, rows and rows and rows of ‘em. Can’t see the end of ‘em—so many. I kind a’ hate to think that Mary might hear—things about me.”

“Well, Keen,” said Dr. Lavendar, slowly, “I don’t believe it will be that way.” He hesitated a little. After all, it is a risk to take away even a false belief, unless you can put a true one in its place.

Algy stopped looking at the toe of his boot. “What!” said he.

“Now just look at it,” said Dr. Lavendar. “Who would be the better for that kind of publicity? Good people wouldn’t like it; it would pain them. You say yourself that Mary wouldn’t like to hear that you did wrong three times.”

“No; she wouldn’t,” Algernon said.

“Wicked people might enjoy it,” Dr. Lavendar ruminated, “but—”

—”but God don’t cater to the wicked?” Algy finished, quickly.

“That’s just it,” said Dr. Lavendar. “He doesn’t. But I tell you what it is, Algy, it is painful enough to just have your Saviour tell you your sins when you’re sitting all alone—or, maybe, lying awake in the dark; that’s a dreadful time to hear them. It’s worse than having rows of people listening.”

Algernon nodded. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, sighing.

The birth of a soul is a painful process. But when he went away Dr. Lavendar’s eyes were full of hope.

And he grew more hopeful when, as the next year came round and Algernon again asked for extension, he was able to carry back, not only the note and the interest to John Gordon, but a payment of $24. What that $24 meant of self-denial and perseverance Dr. Lavendar knew almost as well as Algy himself.

“I don’t know whether you meant it, John,” he said, as the old man took the note and locked it up in the japanned box—”I don’t know that it was your intention, but I believe the responsibility of debt is going to make a man of Mary’s husband.”

“Debt doesn’t generally work that way,” Mr. Gordon said.

“No; it doesn’t. But He maketh the wrath of man to praise Him, once in a while, Johnny.”

“It’s nothing to me. I’m done with him.”

“’If the court knows itself, which it think it do,’” said Dr. Lavendar, chuckling, “you’re just beginning with him.”

“I’d rather have him decent, if that’s what you mean. But I despise him.”

“I don’t,” said Dr. Lavendar. “I tell you, John, we’re poor, limited critters, you and I. We felt that no good could possibly come out of Nazareth. I must confess that when I got you to send him that money I was thinking more of the benefit to you than any effect it might have on him. I thought he didn’t amount to two cents. To my shame I say it. But I was blind as a bat; the Lord had sent him a great experience—Mary’s death. Well, it was like a clap of thunder on a dark night; the lightning showed up a whole landscape I didn’t know. There was honesty; and there was perseverance; and there was love, mind you, most of all. Love! I tell you, Johnny, only the Lord knows what is lying in the darkness of human nature. In fact,” said Dr. Lavendar, reflectively, “as I get older there is nothing more constantly astonishing to me than the goodness of the Bad;—unless it is the badness of the Good. But that’s not so pleasant. No, sir; I don’t despise Mr. Keen.”

Nor did he despise Algy when the note had to be extended still again, although again Algy was ready not only with the interest, but with $37.50 of the principal.

 

VI

As Algernon struggled along with Rosebloom and cheap cigars and bright red and green perfumed soaps, the debt was lessened and lessened; and the back of the note was almost covered with extensions, yet only $317 had been paid off. In spite of himself John Gordon grew interested; he would not have admitted it for the world, but he wanted to hear about Dr. Lavendar’s annual visits to Mercer; and Dr. Lavendar used to drive out to smoke a pipe with him and tell him what Algy had said and done. One day—it was seven years after the note had been drawn—a clear, heartless winter day, with a cold, high wind that made the old minister look so blue that John Gordon mixed a glass of whiskey-and-water and made him drink it before they began to talk—that day Mr. Gordon went so far as to ask a question about Algy. “Has he given you anything more for your complexion, Edward?” he said, with a faint grin.

“He gave me a smelling-bottle this time. I handed it over to Mary, and told her not to let me get a sniff of it; and she said, ‘Sakes! it’s beautiful!’ But I’ll tell you something he said, Johnny: he said that his debt to you was a millstone round his neck. And yet the truth is, it’s a life-buoy!”

John Gordon looked at the soiled, crumpled paper, with its dates of extensions, and smiled grimly. “Well, I won’t deprive him of his life-buoy.”

“The store is doing pretty well,” Dr. Lavendar went on—and stopped, because Alex entered.

“Whose store is doing pretty well,” he asked, civilly enough—for Alex.

“Algernon Keen’s,” said Dr. Lavendar.

Alex’s face changed; he looked from one to the other of the old men by the fire, and he saw his father’s hand open and close nervously. But he restrained himself until their visitor had gone. He even went out into the sharp, bright wind and unhitched Dr. Lavendar’s little blind horse Goliath, backing the buggy close to the steps and helping the old man in with what politeness he could muster. Then he hurried back into the library to his father.

“I should like to know, sir,” he said, standing up with his back to the fire, his legs, in their big, mud-stained top-boots, wide apart, his hands under his coat-tails—”I should like to know, sir, why Dr. Lavendar sees fit to refer to a subject which is most offensive to us?” He fixed his motionless, pale eyes on his father, shrinking back in the winged chair.

“I don’t know—I don’t know,” said John Gordon. Then, suddenly, he put out his hand and caught at the crumpled note on the table beside him and put it in his pocket. Instantly suspicion flamed into Alex’s eyes. His face turned dully red, almost purple. He made a step forward as though to interpose and grasp at the paper, restrained himself, and said, with laborious politeness:

“If that is a note, sir—I thought I saw indorsements of interest—sha’n’t I put it into the safe for you?”

“I won’t trouble you, Alex.”

Alex stood silent; then suddenly he struck the table with his fist: “My God! I believe you’ve been lending money to that—to that—”

Mr. Gordon began to shake very much.

“Did Dr. Lavendar presume to ask you to lend money to—to—”

Mr. Gordon passed his hand over his lips; then he said, faintly, “No; he didn’t.”

Alex, like a boat brought suddenly up into the wind, stammered uncertainly. “Oh; I—I—thought—” And then suspicion broke out again. “Has the creature asked you for a loan?”

“No,” Mr. Gordon said.

And Alex gaped at him, silenced. Yet he was certain that that strip of paper had some connection with Algernon Keen. “I beg your pardon,” he said; “I thought for an instant that you were dickering with the man who seduced your daughter. I am sure I beg your pardon for the thought,” he ended, with elaborate and ironical courtesy, for his father’s obvious agitation assured him that he was right. “I only felt that if it was his note, it must be kept carefully—carefully.” He smiled in a deadly way he had, and opened and shut his hand as though he would close it on the hilt of a knife. “But, of course, I was mistaken. You would press it if you had his note—although ‘sue a beggar.’ And, besides, if we had got as far as lending him money, we would be asking him to dinner next.”

Mr. Gordon cringed.

“So I beg your pardon,” Alex ended, sardonically.

“Very well—very well,” his father said; and got up and began to potter about among his books, as much as to say that the subject was ended.

“It is a note,” Alex said to himself, and smiled…. So far the creature had gone scot-free. In these days of lawfully accepted dishonor revenge is not talked about. But perhaps it would come to his hand. Not the revenge of the instincts—not the shedding of blood, man fashion; but the revenge of inflicting misery. Not much of a revenge, of course, but the best that he could get. And so he smiled to himself….

He said no more at the time; but months later his father realized that the incident was not forgotten when Alex said, suddenly, sneering: “So your son-in-law is prospering in his business? I saw his establishment to-day in Mercer. If he owes you any money he will be able to pay cash. I congratulate you, sir.”

Old Mr. Gordon made no reply. He was very feeble that autumn. Willy King told Alex that another attack of bronchitis would be the end. “He can’t stand it,” said Dr. King. “I’d take him South, Alex, if I were you.”

Alex did not like to leave his mill in Upper Chester, but, as he told Willy, he was a good son, and always did his duty to his father. “I play dominoes with him every night,” he said;—so he would take the old man South, though to go and come would keep him from business almost a week.

It was then that John Gordon told Dr. Lavendar that Alex suspected him of lending money to Mr. Keen. “And if I die,” he said, “Alex will squeeze the poor devil—he’ll squeeze him till he ruins him. I—I suppose I’m a great fool, but I almost thought maybe, sometime, I’d destroy that note, Edward?”

Dr. Lavendar chuckled: “I knew you’d come to it, Johnny; but—” he stopped and ruminated. “You’ve come to it; so that’s all right. But do you know—I don’t believe he can do without it quite yet awhile.”

“Poor devil!” John Gordon said again, kindly. “Well, I’ll let him gnaw on it awhile longer. I suppose he’ll want another extension?”

“Probably,” said Dr. Lavendar. “He is just holding his own this year; he will be able to pay the interest, he told me, but not very much more.”

Extension was necessary, as Dr. Lavendar had foreseen; and when he wrote to Mr. Gordon about it the old man replied in obvious fear of his son. The note was in his safe, he said; Edward knew where it was; it was in the japanned box. “But I don’t care to ask Alex to get it,” he explained. “He doesn’t know of its existence; so I’ll give you power of attorney to see to it. You’d better just have Ezra Barkley put it in shape for you, because it will be necessary to go up to the house and open the safe to get it and put it back again. Alex is never at home until late in the afternoon, but Rachel is there and will let you in. You’ll find some very good Monongahela in the chimney closet.” Then he added the combinations of the locks on the safe and the japanned box.

“Stick that in, Ezra, will you, about going up to the house?” Dr. Lavendar said.

And Ezra stuck it in solemnly, and then held his pen between his teeth and blotted his paper. “It is estimated,” he observed, through his shut teeth, “that the amount of ink used in the United States of America, in signatures to wills, since the year when the independence of the colonies was declared, would be sufficient in bulk to float a—”

“Well, Ezra,” said Dr. Lavendar, chuckling, “this paper seems rather liberal. Suppose I take some cash out of the safe to repair the roof of the vestry? It leaks like a sieve.”

“Your construction of liberality is at fault, sir,” Mr. Ezra corrected him, gently; “this paper defines just exactly what you may do, up to the moment when the principal reclaims the paper—or dies.”

“Well, I hope he won’t reclaim it, or die, either, till he gets an affair we are both interested in patched up,” Dr. Lavendar said; then he listened politely while Mr. Ezra told him how many times the word “ink” occurred in Holy Writ.

Dr. Lavendar went away with his power of attorney in his pocket. And when he sent it to John Gordon to sign, he seemed to take it for granted that he and Mr. Gordon were equally interested in the development and well-being of Mary’s husband. He said in his letter such things as, “You’ll make a man of him yet;” and, “Your patience has given the best elements in him time to come out.” Dr. Lavendar had a perfectly unreasonable way of imputing good motives to people; the consequence was he was not very much astonished when they displayed goodness. He was not astonished when, some two months later, another letter came from old Mr. Gordon, saying that on the whole he thought the note had better not run any longer. “I am going to forgive him his debt,” Mary’s father wrote, in a feeble scrawl; “and I’ll be obliged to you if you will go up to my house and get that note and send it to me. I’m pretty shaky on my pins, and I don’t want to run risks, so I wish you’d tear the signature out and burn it before you mail the note. I’ll send it along to Mr. Keen. I mean to write to him and tell him I think he is honest, anyway. The fact is, I half respect the poor fellow. It’s been a long winter, and I can’t say I’m much better. Willy King doesn’t know everything. These doctors are too confoundedly ready to send a man away from home. I should have been just as well off in Old Chester. Be sure and destroy that signature.”

Dr. Lavendar read this letter joyfully, but without surprise. “I’m glad he didn’t take my advice and let it go on any longer,” he said to himself; “I guess I’ll risk the effect on Algy now.”

Then he wondered if there would be any danger of meeting Alex if he went up to the house right after dinner. “I can’t manage it this morning,” he said to himself. “I’ve got to go and see Mrs. Drayton. Well, I wish the Lord would see fit to cure her—or something.”

So he went plodding out into a still, gray February day, and called on Mrs. Drayton, and stopped at the post-office to hear the news, and then went home to his dinner. “Ye’re not going out again?” his Mary cried, in shrill remonstrance, when in the afternoon she saw him muffle himself up for the drive out into the country; “it’s beginning to snow!”

“I am,” said Dr. Lavendar; “and see you have a good supper for me when I get back.” He got into his buggy, buttoning the apron up in front of him, for it was a wet snow. He had on a shabby old fur cap, which he pulled well down over his forehead, furrowed by other people’s sins and troubles; but his eyes peered from under it as bright and happy as a squirrel’s.

His little blind horse pulled slowly and comfortably up the hill, stopping to get his breath on a shaky bridge over a run. In the silence of the snow Dr. Lavendar did not hear the stage coming down the hill until it was almost on the bridge; then he had to pull over to let it pass. As he did so the single passenger inside rapped on the window, and then opened it and thrust his head out, calling to the driver to stop.

“Dr. Lavendar! you have heard, I suppose? Very sad. A great shock. Of course I’m going on at once to bring the body back. It is difficult to get off at this season, but a son has a sacred duty.” Alex’s pale eyes were bulging from his red, excited face.

“What news?” Dr. Lavendar said. “You don’t mean—Alex! John isn’t—your father isn’t—”

“My father is dead,” Alex said, with ponderous solemnity. “It is a great grief, of course; but I trust I shall be properly resigned. His age rendered such an event not altogether unexpected.”

Dr. Lavendar could not speak; but as the stage-driver began to gather up his reins from the steaming backs of his horses, he said, brokenly: “Wait—wait. Tell me about it, Alex; your father and I have been friends all our lives.” Alex told him briefly: He had just had a despatch; his father had died that morning; he had been less well for a fortnight. “I had a letter from him this morning,” Alex said, “in which he referred to his health—”

“So had I—so had I.”

“I cannot get back with the body for six days—three to go, three to come,” Alex said, “but I will be obliged if you will arrange for the obsequies next Thursday.”

“Yes, yes. I will make any arrangements for you,” Dr. Lavendar said. He took out his big red silk pocket-handkerchief and blew his nose with a trembling flourish. “We were boys together; your father was the big boy, you know; I was the youngster. But we were great friends. Alex, I am afraid my own grief has made me forgetful of yours; but you have had a loss, my boy—a great loss.”

“Very much so—very much so,” Alex agreed, with a proper sigh, and pulled up the window of the stage, then lowered it abruptly: “Oh, Dr. Lavendar, are you going on as far up as—as my house?”

“As your house?” Dr. Lavendar repeated. “Oh—oh yes; I didn’t understand. Yes, I am.”

“Would it inconvenience you,” Alex said, “to stop there? I am going to ask Mr. Ezra Barkley to come up at once and put seals on various things. I am the sole executor, as well as the heir, of course; but I sha’n’t be able to attend to things for a week; and the forms of law must be observed. If you could be on hand when Barkley is there—not that I do not trust him.”

Dr. Lavendar stared at him blankly; for an intelligent man, Alex was sometimes a great fool. But he only nodded gravely, and said he would stop at the house and wait for Mr. Ezra; Alex signed to the driver, and the stage went rolling noiselessly on into the storm. When, at the foot of the hill, Alex glanced back through the little oblong of bubbly glass in the leather curtain of the coach, he saw Dr. Lavendar’s buggy standing motionless where he had passed it on the bridge; then the snow hid it.

Under the bridge the creek ran swiftly between edges of ice that here and there had caught a dipping branch and held it prisoner, or had spread in agate curves—snow white, clear black, faint white again—around a stone in mid-stream. On the black current, silent except for a murmurous rush of bubbles under the ice, the snowflakes melted instantly, myriads of them—hurrying, hurrying, hurrying; then, as they touched the water, gone. Dr. Lavendar, in the buggy, sat looking down at them:

“In an instant—in the twinkling of an eye, we shall be changed.” …

“He was my oldest friend.” (“Was”: with what an awful promptitude the mind adjusts itself to “he was”!) Yet as he sat there, peering out over the top of the apron and making, heavily, those plans familiar to every clergyman, Dr. Lavendar did not really believe that the plans were for Johnny. The snow fell with noiseless steadiness; the top of the buggy was white; thimbles of down heaped themselves on the hubs, tumbling off when the horse moved restlessly a step forward or backed a little and stamped. Suddenly Goliath shook himself, for the snow was cold upon his shaggy back, and the harness clattered and the shafts rattled. Dr. Lavendar drew a long breath. “G’on!” he said. And Goliath went on with evident relief. He knew the road well, and turned in at the Gordon gateway, as a matter of course. When he stopped at the front steps, the door opened and Rachel stood there, her eyes red.

“Sam will take him round to the stable, sir,” she said, as Sam shambled out from the back of the house to stand at Goliath’s head. “Oh, my! sir; I suppose you’ve heard?”

“Yes, Rachel; I’ve heard,” the old man said, unbuttoning the apron and climbing out. Rachel took his hand and wept audibly. “I knew he’d never come back; he was marked for death. I’ve lived here eighteen years, and I always said it was a privilege to work for a gentleman like him.”

“Yes—yes,” he said, kindly. He was plainly agitated, and Rachel saw that he was trembling.

“Course you feel it, sir, being about of an age,” she said, sympathetically. “Dr. Lavendar, sir, won’t you have a glass of something?” With the hospitality of an old servant, she would have opened the little closet in the chimney-breast, but he checked her.

“Not yet; not now, Rachel. Leave me here awhile by myself, my girl. I’ll come out to the kitchen and see you before I go. When Mr. Barkley comes, ask him to step into the library.”

“Yes, sir,” Rachel said, obediently; and went away sniffling and sighing.

Dr. Lavendar stood looking about him at the emptiness of the room: the winged chair, with the purple silk handkerchief hanging over the back; the table heaped with books; the fire drowsing in the grate; the old safe in the corner by the window. Outside, the snow drove past, blotting the landscape. Ezra would probably arrive within a half-hour; he had better get the note before he came. Then there need be no explanations.

When Mr. Ezra came in he found the old minister sitting by the fire, quite calm again, and even cheerful. “Yes,” he said, in answer to the lawyer’s very genteel expressions of sympathy—”yes, I’ll miss him. We were boys together. He used to call me Bantam. I hadn’t thought of it for years.”

“Nicknames,” said Mr. Ezra, “were used by the ancients as long ago as 300 B.C.”

“Well, I’m not as ancient as 300 B.C.,” said Dr. Lavendar, “but I called him Storkey; I can’t imagine why, for he was only an inch and a half taller; he always said it was two inches, but it wasn’t. It was an inch and a half.”

“We are here,” said Mr. Ezra, pulling off his gloves and coughing politely, “for indeed a solemn and an affecting task. It is my duty, sir, to seal the effects of the deceased, so that they may be delivered, intact, to the executor.”

Dr. Lavendar nodded.

“In all my professional career I have never happened to be called upon for this especial duty. It is quite unusual. But Alex seemed to think it necessary. Alex is a good son.”

“So he says,” said Dr. Lavendar.

“Are you aware, sir,” proceeded Mr. Ezra, producing from his bag the paraphernalia of his office, “that such is the incredible celerity of bees (belonging to the Hymenoptera) that they can within twenty-four hours manufacture four thousand cells in the comb? This interesting fact is suggested by the use of wax for sealing.”

Dr. Lavendar watched him in a silence so deep that he hardly heard the harmless stream of statistics; but at last he was moved to say, with his kind, old smile, “How can you know so many things, Ezra?”

“In my profession,” Mr. Ezra explained, “it is necessary to keep the mind up to the greatest agility; I, therefore, exercise it frequently in matters of memory.” He lit a candle and held his wax sputtering in the flame. “I recall,” he said, “with painful interest, that at one of our recent meetings I had the honor of drawing the power of attorney for you, from the deceased.”

“So you did,” said Dr. Lavendar.

“Did you ever reflect,” said Mr. Barkley, “that should that power be used after the death of the donor, to carry out a wish of said donor, expressed an hour, nay, a moment, before the instant of dissolution—such act would be an offence in the eye of the law?”

“I’ve always thought the law ought to put on spectacles, Ezra,” said Dr. Lavendar; “it has mighty poor eyesight once in a while.”

Mr. Barkley was shocked. “The law, Lavendar, is the deepest expression of the human sense of justice!”

“But, Ezra,” Dr. Lavendar said, suddenly attentive, “that is very interesting. I remember you referred to the lapsing of the power of attorney when you made out that paper for me; but I didn’t quite understand. Do you mean that carrying out, now, directions given before the death of my old friend would be against the law? Suppose he had asked me—last week, perhaps, to destroy—well, say that old account-book there on the table, couldn’t I do it to-day?”

“Dr. Lavendar, you do not, I fear, apprehend the majesty of the law! Why,” said Mr. Ezra, standing up, very straight and solemn, “such a deed—”

“But suppose I didn’t want—suppose Johnny didn’t want, for reasons of his own, to have anybody—say, even his executor—see that account-book; suppose it might be put to some bad purpose—used to injure some third person (of course that is an absurd supposition, but it will do for an illustration); if he had asked me last week to destroy it, do you mean to say, Ezra, I couldn’t destroy it to-day?—just because he happened to die this morning!”

“My dear sir,” said Mr. Ezra, “such conduct on your part would be perilously near a criminal offence.”

Dr. Lavendar whistled. “Well, Ezra, I won’t destroy it.”

“I hope not, sir—I hope not, indeed,” cried Mr. Ezra.

Dr. Lavendar laughed; he had the impulse to turn round and wink at Johnny, to take him into the joke. But it was only for an instant, and his face fell quickly into puzzled lines.

“A moment’s reflection,” Mr. Ezra continued, “will convince you, Dr. Lavendar, that the aforesaid account-book is now the property, not of the deceased, but of the estate. Its destruction would be the destruction of property belonging to the heirs. Furthermore, your belief that the herein before mentioned account-book might be put to an improper use, for the injury of a third person—such belief would no more justify you in destroying it than would your belief in its unfairness towards said third person justify you in destroying a will.”

Dr. Lavendar thrust out his lower lip and stared at him, frowning. “Yes,” he said, slowly—”yes; I see. I did not quite understand. But I see.”

Mr. Ezra solemnly began to pour forth a stream of statistics; he referred to the case of Buckley vs. Grant, and even mentioned chapter and page of Purdon’s Digest where Dr. Lavendar could find further enlightenment. Dr. Lavendar may have listened, but he made no comment; he sat staring silently at the old purple handkerchief on the top of John’s chair.

When Mr. Ezra had finished his work and his statistics, the two men shook hands; then Dr. Lavendar said good-bye to Rachel and climbed into his buggy, buttoning the apron high up in front of him; the lawyer mounted his horse, and they plodded off into the snow, single file. But Dr. Lavendar’s eyes, under his old fur cap, had lost their squirrel-like brightness….

So Algy’s note belonged to the estate; and the estate belonged to Alex; and Alex was the executor. And upon Alex Gordon his father’s intentions in regard to Algy’s note would make no more impression than the flakes of snow on running water. A vision of Alex’s mean and cruel mouth, his hard, light eyes, motionless as a snake’s in his purpling face, made Dr. Lavendar wince. The note—the poor, shabby, worn note,—that stood for the best there was in Algy, that stood for perseverance and honesty and courage; the note, which had weighed so heavily that he had had to stand up in his pitiful best manhood to bear it: the note that John had meant to “forgive”—Alex would use to humiliate and torture and destroy. Under the pressure which he would bring to bear that note would be poor Algy’s financial, and perhaps his moral, ruin. “And if I had not objected, John would have cancelled it,” Dr. Lavendar thought, frowning and blinking under his fur cap. He saw the smoking flax quenched, the bruised reed broken; he saw Algy turning venomously upon his enemy—for he knew him well enough to know that his code of defence would not include any conventional delicacy; he saw the new and hardly won integrity crumbling under the assault of Alex’s legal wickedness. Dr. Lavendar groaned to himself. Alex could, lawfully, murder Algernon Keen’s soul.

When Mary saw the old minister come into the house she was much displeased. “There, now, look at him,” she scolded; “white as a sheet. What did I tell you? I’ll bet ye he won’t eat them corn dodgers, and I never made ‘em finer.”

It must be admitted that Mary was right. Dr. Lavendar did not eat much supper. He went shuffling back to his study, Danny slinking at his heels; but for once he did not notice his little, grizzled friend. When he got into his flowered cashmere dressing-gown and put on his slippers and stirred his fire, he sat a long time with his pipe in his hand, forgetting to light it. When he did light it, it went out, unnoticed. Once Danny tried to scramble into his chair, but, receiving no encouragement, curled up on the rug. The fire burned low and smouldered into ashes; just one sullen, red coal blinked in a corner of the grate; Dr. Lavendar watched this red spot fixedly for a long time. Indeed, it was well on towards twelve before he suddenly reached over for the bellows and a couple of sticks, and, bending down, stirred and blew until the sticks caught and the cinders began to sparkle under the ashes. This disturbed Danny, who sat up, displeased and yawning. But when at last the flames broke out, sputtering and snapping, and caught a piece of paper—a shabby, creased piece of paper covered with dates—caught it, ran over it, curling it into brittle blackness, and then whirled it, a flimsy, crumbling ghost, up the chimney, Dr. Lavendar’s face shone with a light that was not only from the fire.

“Ha, Danny, you scoundrel,” he said, cheerfully, “I guess you are particeps criminis!”

Then he went over to his study-table and rooted about for a thin, shabby, blue book, over which he pored for some time, stopping once or twice to make some calculations on the back of an envelope, then turning to the book again. He covered the envelope with his small, neat figuring, and turned it over to begin on the other side—and started: “Johnny’s letter!” he said. But when the calculations were made, the rest was easy enough: first, his check-book and his pen. (At the check he looked with some pride. “Daniel,” he said, “look at that, sir. You never saw so much money in your life; and neither did I—over my own signature.”) Next, a letter to Alex Gordon:

“MY DEAR ALEXANDER,—I owe your father’s estate to the amount of the enclosed check. No papers exist in regard to it, as the matter was between ourselves. I will ask you for a receipt. Yours truly,

“EDWARD LAVENDAR.”