FOSTER TOWNSEND chose this time to dispense with Varunas’s services and society on his drive to Ostable. He piloted the span himself, along the rutted stretches of yellow sand, between villages and over the white-surfaced roads of oyster and clamshell leading through the thickly settled portions of the villages themselves. And in Denboro and South Denboro and East Ostable and Ostable his progress was, as always, noticed and commented upon. Leading citizens bowed politely and called good mornings and the proletariat turned to stare and look after him. He acknowledged the bows and salutes with a careless wave of the hand and the stares he ignored. The universal attention was no novelty. Its absence would have been. He was the great man of his county and reverend recognition of that fact was his due.
Only in Denboro, the town adjacent to Harniss, was there a reminder that his supremacy was questioned. As the span trotted proudly along its main road he looked up to the top of the little hill behind the Methodist church and saw a rambling white house rising behind a high screen of lilac bushes and shadowed by wind-twisted silver-leaf poplars. He frowned as he looked, for in that house dwelt the two most disturbing factors in his life at present, Elisha Cook, his one-time partner, and Bob Griffin, whom he had begun to consider quite as much of a nuisance as his grandfather. The frown changed to a grim smile, however, as he reflected that one nuisance, at least, was to be abated. Esther would soon be beyond Griffin’s reach. Absence, so the proverb declared, made the heart grow fonder, but it was his firm conviction, based upon years of experience, that if the absence was long enough it was much more likely to cure a heartache than to augment it, especially when the patient was as young as his niece. That was a good suggestion of Reliance Clark’s, that of sending Esther away. He probably would have thought of it himself sooner or later, but her suggestion had been timely and had prevented what might have been dangerous delay. He was grateful to Reliance and he must stop in at the Clark cottage soon and tell her so. He had not called on her for nearly a month.
His prophecy of a long wait at the lawyer’s office was, for once, proven false. When he entered the rooms in the building opposite the courthouse he found the whole battery of legal talent already there and awaiting him. Not only both members of the Ostable firm, but the two Boston consultants and a specialist in Supreme Court procedures as well. A talented and tremendously expensive outfit it was. A less self-assured man than Foster Townsend might have felt overawed by this assemblage of big brains and bigger bills. Not he, however. He acknowledged their deferential greetings with curt pleasantness and proceeded to take charge of the meeting and dominate it.
It was neither a protracted session nor one too cheerful. Trial in Washington of the famous lawsuit had been finally set sometime in the late winter or early spring. He grumbled at that, but apparently no earlier date could be arranged.
“Good Lord!” he growled. “If I had handled my ship the way you lawyers handle your business I never would have brought her into port more than twice in a lifetime. Well, there is this to be said, anyhow: This is the last lap. When we win this time we win.”
There was a general and smiling nod of agreement. One of the two Boston attorneys, a white-haired and dignified aristocrat, voiced the feeling.
“Yes, Captain Townsend,” he said, “if we win our case before the Supreme Court the other side can have no appeal. That will be final.”
One word of this statement stirred his resentment.
“If we win!” he snapped. “We are going to win, aren’t we? What do you mean by ‘if’?”
The Boston man smiled. “There is always an ‘if’ in any case, Captain Townsend,” he explained. “If there had been none in this one the Cook people would not have gained their appeal and we should not have to go to Washington.”
Townsend brushed this aside with an impatient hand.
“Never mind that,” he said. “What I want to hear you say is that you know you are going to win this case for me. You are going to win it, aren’t you?”
“We hope to, certainly.”
He leaned back in his chair. “You’ve got to,” he declared, striking the table with his palm. “If you don’t— By the Almighty you’ve got to!”
They assured him that they expected to win, that they felt scarcely a doubt of winning. Nevertheless, when the consultation ended, he was left with the consciousness that there was a doubt in their minds, even though it might be a faint one. He had been made to feel that same consciousness at other meetings since the granting of the Cook appeal. Suppose that doubt should be justified? Suppose the suit was, after all, decided against him!
In spite of his dogged courage and belief in his own destiny a cold shiver passed through his body. For a moment he saw a picture of himself, beaten, humiliated—yes, even impoverished. But he would not consider such a thing, he would not admit the possibility of it. He was Foster Townsend, and Foster Townsend had never been beaten yet.
He rose from his seat with a laugh. “You law fellows are worse croakers than a bunch of bullfrogs in a pond,” he declared. “Stop your croaking and supposing and shove this thing through.... Well, I guess that’s all you want of me this morning, isn’t it, gentlemen?”
The Boston attorney—his name was Wolcott—seemed to hesitate. He twirled his gold-rimmed eyeglasses at the end of their black silk cord.
“We were wondering—” he began. “Well, Captain Townsend, to speak frankly—”
“Humph! Do you lawyers ever speak that way?”
“Why, occasionally, when we think it necessary. We were wondering if, should any new points develop which were—ahem—shall we say antagonistic to our side of the case, if you would wish us to consider—well, a compromise.”
He glanced at them. They were all regarding him earnestly; one or two, it seemed, almost anxiously.
“Compromise!” he repeated, with incredulous scorn. “Compromise? Make some sort of deal, a half-way trade, with Elisha Cook’s crew? Is that what you mean? When they get one red cent from me they’ll have to take it by main strength. Compromise be hanged! You fight, do you hear? Fight—and lick ’em!”
It was half past eleven when he left the room. He had planned to dine at the Ostable House, and drive home afterward, but dinner would not be ready until twelve. He walked over to the hotel and, because idling and thinking were not cheerful or amusing just then, he decided to fill in the half hour by writing his reply to Seymour Covell’s letter. He did write it, expressing some doubt as to his ability to find a satisfactory position for his friend’s son immediately, but extending a hearty invitation to the latter to visit him at Harniss. He did not, however, follow Esther’s suggestion that that visit be delayed until after her European trip had begun. He saw no reason for such delay. Let the young fellow come at once, if he wanted to. What difference did it make when he came?
“Send the boy along,” he wrote. “The sooner the better. And tell him for me that he can stay as long as he likes. There’s room enough, goodness knows. And the longer he stays the better chance I shall have to look him over and decide what sort of job he will fit into, when he gets ready to take it. Why don’t you come, yourself? A month or so down here in the sand will blow some of that Chicago soot out of your head. I always told you this was the healthiest place on God’s earth. You come and I’ll prove it.”
After dinner, as he brought the span abreast the Ostable post office, he pulled the horses to a halt and handed the letter to a citizen who was standing on the platform.
“Here, mail that for me, will you?” he said. The citizen received the letter as he might have received a commission from the governor.
“Yes, sir; yes, indeed, Cap’n Townsend,” he replied, with unction.
“Much obliged. And mail it right away. Don’t put it in your pocket and forget it.”
“Forget it! I wouldn’t forget it for nothin’. No, sir!”
“Well, it is more than nothing, so I don’t want it forgotten.”
He waited until he saw the letter deposited in the mail slot in the post-office door. Then he clucked to the span and drove on.
It was not yet four o’clock when he reached Harniss. It occurred to him that Esther would not be at home when he got there; she would have gone to that Welfare Society meeting, or whatever it was. He did not feel inclined to sit alone in the library and think; memories of that confounded Boston attorney’s “if” were still too clear to make thinking pleasant. They angered him. What was the matter with the crowd over there in Ostable? What had become of all the assured complacency with which they had greeted him at similar consultations of but a year ago? Losing their grit, were they? Letting appeals and delays and all that sort of legal drivel get on their nerves? The case was as surely his now as it was then. Flock of old hens! With what delight would he, when the long-drawn-out mess was ended and the decision his, pay them off and send them packing. Bah!
He shook his head to drive away these symptoms of what he would have called the “doldrums,” looked up and saw that he was nearly opposite the Clark cottage. He would drop in on Reliance now, this minute. She was always a first-class antidote for doldrums.
He hitched the span to the gnawed post before the post office and walked around the buildings to the door of the millinery shop. Reliance was in the shop, making tucks in a yard of ribbon.
“Hello, there!” he hailed, striding in and closing the door behind him. “Well, how are things in the hat line? Thought I’d stop and see if you could make Varunas a sunbonnet. He’s getting to be more of an old woman every day he lives.”
Reliance looked up and smiled. “Hello, Foster,” she said. “You’re a stranger. It’s been a long while since you honored us this way. I hope a lot of folks saw you come in. It will be good for business. Sit down, won’t you?”
He had not waited for the invitation. He sat in the chair usually occupied by Miss Makepeace, which squeaked a protest, and tossed his hat upon the top of the sewing machine.
“All alone?” he queried. “Where’s your first mate?”
“Abbie? Oh, she’s at home with a cold. She has been barkin’ and sneezin’ around here for three days, so I told her to stay at home and sneeze it through with a hot brick at her feet and a linseed poultice on her chest. She’ll be over it pretty soon. How are you?”
“All right. Where’s the town superintendent?”
“Who?... Oh, I suppose you mean Millard. He is out, too. He won’t be back for an hour.”
“How do you know he won’t?”
“Because he ought to be back now. Well, Foster, how do you like the prospect of being alone again in that big house of yours? Be a harder pull than ever for you, won’t it?”
“You bet!... But, say,” leaning back in the chair and thrusting his hands into his pockets, “how did you know I was going to be alone? Isn’t there such a thing as privacy in this town?”
“Not much. I should think you would have learned that by this time. There, there! don’t get mad. I don’t believe it is generally known yet. Esther told me herself, but she told me not to tell. She said you asked her not to talk about it much yet.”
“Um-hum. Yes, I did. However, she can talk about it now as much as she wants to. She will be sailing in ten days or so. I only wish I was booked for the same ship.”
Reliance held up the ribbon, measured the latest tuck and then folded another.
“I was a little surprised when she said you wasn’t,” she observed. “The lawsuit is keepin’ you here, she told me.”
“Yes, blast the thing! There, don’t talk about that. I’ve just come from a lawyers’ meeting and I have had enough for the present.... Yes, Esther is going across the water. She’ll stay there, too—until I figure it is good judgment to bring her home.”
Miss Clark looked up, then down. She nodded.
“I see,” she said. “You had to come to it, after all, didn’t you. I suppose likely I was the one who put the idea in your head, so I ought to take the responsibility.”
“No, you needn’t. I’ll take it myself. I should have thought of some such thing, sooner or later, without your help. But I’m much obliged for the reminder, just the same.”
Again she looked up.
“Too much company up your way, wasn’t there?” she suggested.
“Too darned much, of the kind. That young Griffin has got as much cheek as his whole family together. And that doesn’t mean a little bit.... Humph! I’m a long sea mile from being sure that I ought to have let him come there in the first place. You were responsible for that, too, Reliance. Remember?”
“Of course I remember. But you must remember that I told you unless he and Esther were different from most any young couple I ever heard of they would find ways to see each other anyhow, and it might be best to let them meet where you were within hailin’ distance. I think I was right—even yet.”
“What do you mean by ‘even yet’?”
“Nothing. Nothing now, at any rate. Foster, how far has this affair of theirs gone? Are they—well, do you think they are any more than just good friends?”
“Eh,” sharply. “Any more? Now why do you ask that. If I thought—”
“Ssh! What do you think?... Careful of that chair! That’s Abbie’s pet rocker.”
He had thrown himself back in it with a violence which threatened wreck and ruin.
“How should I know what to think?” he growled, moodily. “He comes three times a week and stays till eleven o’clock. And they sit alone in the sitting-room and talk, talk, talk about— Oh, I don’t know what they talk about! The price of quahaugs, maybe.”
“Maybe.” She glanced at him and smiled. “You go away and leave them there together, then, do you, Foster?” she said. “Well, that is pretty nice of you, I must say. And, perhaps, kind of hard to do, too.”
He stirred uneasily and scowled. “Did you think I was likely to hang around and listen at the keyhole?” he demanded.
“Not the least little bit. I know you.... Well, let me ask you a plain question. Suppose she and Bob Griffin did get to be something more than friends; what would you do then?”
His big body straightened. “Do!” he repeated. “If you mean what would I do if she proposed to marry that scamp. I’ll tell you without any if, and, or but. I’ve told you before. I wouldn’t let her do it.”
“She might do it without your lettin’.”
“Then, by the Almighty, she could do without me, too. If she left my house to marry him she should stay out and never come back.... But she wouldn’t. She isn’t that kind.... Here! what the devil are you shaking your head about?”
“Oh—well, I was just thinkin’.”
“Stop thinking, then! Don’t be a fool, Reliance! Why, that girl has told me fifty times that she thinks as much of me as if I was her own father. She talks about how kind I’ve been to her and how she never can pay me back and all that. Do you suppose that is all lies? Do you think she’d throw me over for that—that Cook calf? Don’t be a fool, I tell you. Look here! What is this all about? Do you want her to marry him?”
A slow shake of the head prefaced Reliance’s answer. And that answer was gravely spoken.
“No, Foster,” she said. “I don’t.”
“Of course you don’t, unless you are a fool. And, if every fool in creation wanted it, she shouldn’t do it.”
Reliance paid no attention to this declaration. She had dropped the ribbon in her lap and now she spoke earnestly and deliberately.
“No, Foster,” she repeated. “I don’t want her to marry Bob Griffin. He seems to be a fine young man and a good one, but the reason why I don’t want that marriage isn’t on account of what he is, but who he is. This whole matter has worried me a lot. It worries me now. I can’t see anything but trouble ahead for everybody if it goes on.”
“Humph! You don’t need a spyglass to see that. Well, it isn’t going on. It will stop inside of two weeks. Once get the Atlantic Ocean between them and it will stay between them until they both forget—until she does, anyhow. He can remember until he is gray-headed if he likes, it won’t do him any good.”
She had picked up her sewing again, but now she looked up from it with, or so he thought, an odd expression. Since the beginning of their conversation he had been conscious of something unusual in her manner. Now there was a peculiar questioning scrutiny in her look; she seemed to be wondering, to be not quite sure—almost as if she were expecting him to say something, he could not imagine what.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” he demanded, irritably. “What is it?”
She did not reply to his question, but asked one of her own, one quite irrelevant and trivial, so far as he could see.
“Have you heard any news lately?” she inquired.
“Oh, any news about—well, about any one we know?”
“No.... See here, what do you mean? Have you heard something?”
Again she did not answer. “Foster,” she said, sewing steadily, “I don’t want you to get the idea from what I just told you about my feelin’s that I think Esther’s marryin’ Bob Griffin would be the very worst thing that could happen.... Wait! let me finish. I don’t think it would be a wise thing, considerin’ the way you and Mr. Cook hate each other and the way you both would be likely to act if those young folks took the bit in their teeth and decided to marry, anyhow. And if Esther and he can forget I should say it was best they did, best for all hands. But if they care enough for each other so that they can’t forget and will be miserable and sorry all their days, then I honestly believe they should go through with it. After all, they are young, they have got their lives to live. It is for them, and nobody else, to really decide how they shall live ’em. That is the way I feel and I guess you ought to know it.”
He rose from the rocker. He was angry, so angry that he could scarcely trust himself to speak.
“Yes,” he growled, with savage sarcasm, “you are right in that. Mighty well right! I guess it is high time I knew it. So you have been putting her up to—”
“Stop! I haven’t put her up to anything. She and I have hardly mentioned Bob Griffin’s name for a month. If she had asked me what I thought about it I should have told her what I just told you, that the less she saw of him the better. And when she told me you were sendin’ her abroad I knew why you were doin’ it and I was glad. It, or somethin’ like it, was what I hoped you would do. In fact, you just now hinted that I was the one who put doin’ it into your head. Don’t make silly speeches that you know ain’t true, Foster Townsend.”
This appeal to common sense and justice had some effect. He took a stride or two up and down the room and when he spoke his tone was a trifle less fierce although just as determined.
“You have said enough, anyhow,” he declared. “Now you hear me say this: She isn’t going to marry that cub. She isn’t. If taking her to Paris and keeping him out of her sight doesn’t cure her then I’ll try something that will. I’ll—by the Lord Almighty, if worst comes to worst I’ll—I’ll kill him before I let one of his gang take her away from me.”
She laughed a little. “Killin’ him would be a fine way to keep her with you, wouldn’t it?” she observed. “If you will only behave like a sensible man, and talk like one, I’ll tell you something else, something you will know soon but that perhaps you’d better know now.”
He was paying no attention. Now he turned to her, his face drawn with emotion and his voice shaking.
“Reliance,” he cried, “you don’t know—by the Lord, you don’t know what that girl has come to be to me. I—I love her as much as I did—as I did Bella, my own wife, when she was living. I swear I believe that’s so. She’ll marry somebody some day; I am reconciled to that—or I try to be. It’s natural. It is what is bound to happen. But I’ll have something to say about who her husband shall be. I know men and it’s got to be a mighty fine man who can satisfy me he’s the right husband for her. A good-for-nothing who wastes his time painting chromos—a boy without any business sense—”
“How do you know he hasn’t got any business sense?”
“Would he be a picture painter if he had? And a Cook! Good Lord! think of it! a Cook!... There! What’s the use talking to you? You are a sentimental old maid and all that counts with you is the mush you read in the fool books you get out of the library. If you loved that girl the way I do—”
She had risen now and she broke in upon him sharply.
“I do,” she vowed. “I love her as much as you do and more, perhaps. She lived with me years longer than she has with you and I love her as much as you ever dreamed of doin’. Yes, and a whole lot more unselfishly—that I know, too.”
“But, Reliance, to give her up to—”
“Oh, be still! I gave her up to you, didn’t I? Do you think that wasn’t a wrench?”
He could not deny it, for he knew it to be true. He shrugged and picked up his hat.
“Good-by,” he said.
She called his name.
“Foster—wait!” she ordered. “Now I am goin’ to tell you somethin’ it is plain you haven’t heard. I wonder Esther hasn’t told you. She must know it. Probably she will tell you soon, she certainly ought to. There was a man here this mornin’ from Denboro. His name is Pratt, he peddles fish, probably you know him. Well, he told me he heard last night at the Denboro post office that Bob Griffin was plannin’ to go to Paris to study paintin’. His grandfather had said he might and he was leavin’ almost right away, inside of three weeks, anyhow.... Perhaps you see what that is likely to mean, so far as keepin’ him and Esther apart is concerned.”
He stared at her incredulously; he could not credit the story.
“Bosh!” he snorted. “I don’t believe it. It’s all a lie. They’ve got it mixed up. Somebody has heard that Esther is going, and of course some of them know he has been coming to the house, and so they’ve pieced together a gaff tops’l out of two rags and a rope’s end, same as they generally do.”
“No. That is what I thought at first, but it isn’t that. Pratt heard about it again from the Cooks’ hired girl and she heard Bob and his grandfather talkin’ it over at the dinner table. It is true, he is goin’. And of course it is perfectly plain why he is goin’.... Now, Foster, what will you do about it?”
He did not answer immediately. He stood before her, his florid face growing steadily redder. Then he struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand.
“That is why she was so full of good humor this morning,” he muttered. “He told her last night and— That was it!... Good-by.”
“Wait! Wait, Foster! What are you goin’ to do?”
“Do! I don’t know yet, but you can bet your life something will be done.”
“Oh, Foster, you must be awfully careful. If you aren’t—”
“Careful! I tell you one thing I’ll be mighty careful of. I’ll be careful to call off this Paris business. That is over and done with, so far as she is concerned. She stays here with me. As for him—well, I’ll attend to him.”
“But, Foster, you must take care what you do. If you’ll only listen to me—”
He was at the door.
“No!” he shouted. “I’ve listened too long already. Listen to you! Why, it was you that put me up to sending her away. Humph! And a fine mess that has got us all into, hasn’t it! No! From now on, I’m handlin’ this affair myself and I don’t want any orders or advice from anybody. You keep your hands off the reins. We’ll see who wins this case. The rascal!”
She followed him to the step and stood looking after him, but he did not look back. She saw him climb to the carriage seat, crack the whip over the backs of the span—the horses were astonished and indignant, for they were not used to such treatment—and move rapidly off up the road. Then she went back to her sewing, but her mind was not upon her work; she foresaw nothing ahead but trouble, trouble for those in the world for; whose happiness she cared most.