Kennedy Square

CHAPTER XVII

There was no one at home when Harry returned except Todd, who, having kept his position outside the dining-room door during the heated encounter, had missed nothing of the interview. What had puzzled the darky—astounded him really—was that no pistol-shot had followed his master's denouncement and defiance of the Lord of Moorlands. What had puzzled him still more was hearing these same antagonists ten minutes later passing the time o' day, St. George bowing low and the colonel touching his hat as he passed out and down to where Matthew and his horses were waiting.

It was not surprising, therefore, that Todd's recital to Harry came in a more or less disjointed and disconnected form.

“You say, Todd,” he exclaimed in astonishment, “that my father was here!” Our young hero was convinced that the visit did not concern himself, as he was no longer an object of interest to any one at home except his mother and Alec.

“Dat he was, sah, an' b'ilin' mad. Dey bofe was, on'y Marse George lay low an' de colonel purty nigh rid ober de top ob de fence. Fust Marse George sass him an' den de colonel sass him back. Purty soon Marse George say he gwinter speak his min'—and he call de colonel a brute an' den de colonel riz up an' say Marse George was a beggar and a puttin' on airs when he didn't hab 'nough money to buy hisse'f a 'tater; an' den Marse George r'ared and pitched—Oh I tell ye he ken be mighty sof' and persimmony when he's tame—and he's mos' allers dat way—but when his dander's up, and it suttinly riz to-day, he kin make de fur fly. Dat's de time you wanter git outer de way or you'll git hurted.”

“Who did you say was the beggar?” It was all Greek to Harry.

“Why, Marse George was—he was de one what was gwine hongry. De colonel 'lowed dat de bank was busted an'—”

“What bank?”

“Why de 'Tapsco—whar Marse George keep his money. Ain't you see me comin' from dar mos' ebery day?”

“But it hasn't failed, has it?” He was still wondering what the quarrel was about.

“Wall, I dunno, but I reckon sumpin's de matter, for no sooner did de colonel git on his horse and ride away dan Marse George go git his hat and coat hisse'f and make tracks th'ou' de park by de short cut—and you know he neber do dat 'cept when he's in a hurry, and den in 'bout a ha'f hour he come back ag'in lookin' like he'd seed de yahoo, only he was mad plump th'ou'; den he hollered for me quick like, and sont me down underneaf yere to Mr. Pawson to know was he in, and he was, and I done tol' him, and he's dar now. He ain't neber done sont me down dar 'cept once sence I been yere, and dat was de day dat Gadgem man come snuffin' roun'. Trouble comin'.”

Harry had now begun to take in the situation. It was evidently a matter of some moment or Pawson would not have been consulted.

“I'll go down myself, Todd,” he said with sudden resolve.

“Better lem'me tell him you're yere, Marse Harry.”

“No, I'll go now,” and he turned on his heel and descended the front steps.

On the street side of the house, level with the bricks, was a door opening into a low-ceiled, shabbily furnished room, where in the old days General Dorsey Temple, as has been said, shared his toddies with his cronies. There he found St. George seated at a long table piled high with law books and papers—the top covered with a green baize cloth embroidered with mice holes and decorated with ink stains. Beside him was a thin, light-haired, young man, with a long, flexible neck and abnormally high forehead, over-doming a shrewd but not unkindly face. The two were poring over a collection of papers.

The young lawyer rose to his feet, a sickly, deferential smile playing along his straight lips. Young aristocrats of Harry's blood and breeding did not often darken Pawson's door, and he was extremely anxious that his guest should in some way be made aware of his appreciation of that fact. St. George did not move, nor did he take any other notice of the boy's appearance than to fasten his eyes upon him for a moment in recognition of his presence.

But Harry could not wait.

“Todd has just told me, Uncle George, that”—he caught the grave expression on Temple's face—“Why!—Uncle George—there isn't anything the matter, is there? It isn't true that the—”

St. George raised his head: “What isn't true, Harry?”

“That the Patapsco Bank is in trouble?”

“No, I don't think so. The bank, so far as I know, is all right; it's the depositors who are in trouble,” and one of his quaint smiles lighted up his face.

“Broken!—failed!” cried Harry, still in doubt as to the extent of the catastrophe, but wishing to be sympathetic and proportionably astounded as any well-bred young man should be when his best friend was unhappy.

“I'm afraid it is, Harry—in fact I know it is—bankrupt in character as well as in balances—a bad-smelling, nasty mess, to tell you the truth. That's not only my own opinion, but the opinion of every man whom I have seen, and there was quite an angry mob when I reached the teller's window this morning. That is your own opinion also, is it not, Mr. Pawson?—your legal summing up, I mean.”

The young attorney stretched out his spare colorless hands; opened wide his long, double-jointed fingers; pressed their ten little cushions together, and see-sawing the bunch in front of his concave waistcoat, answered in his best professional voice:

“As to being bankrupt of funds I should say there was no doubt of that being their condition; as to any criminal intent or practices—that, of course, gentlemen”—and he shrugged his shoulders in a non-committal, non-actionable way—“is not for me to decide.”

“But you think it will be months, and perhaps years, before the depositors get a penny of their money—do you not?” persisted St. George.

Again Pawson performed the sleight-of-hand trick, and again he was non-committal—a second shrug alone expressing his views, the performance ending by his pushing a wooden chair in the direction of Harry, who was still on his feet.

Harry settled himself on its edge and fixed his eyes on his uncle. St. George again became absorbed in the several papers, Pawson once more assisting him, the visitor having now been duly provided for.

This raking of ashes in the hope of finding something of value unscorched was not a pleasant task for the young lawyer. He had, years before, conceived the greatest admiration for his landlord and was never tired of telling his associates of how kind and considerate St. George had always been, and of his patience in the earlier days of his lease, Mr. Temple often refusing the rent until he was quite ready to pay it. He took a certain pride, too, in living under the same roof, so to speak, with one universally known as a gentleman of the old school, whose birth, education, and habits made him the standard among his fellows—a man without pretence or sham, living a simple and wholesome life; with dogs, guns, priceless Madeira and Port, as well as unlimited clothes of various patterns adapted to every conceivable service and function—to say nothing of his being part of the best society that Kennedy Square could afford.

Even to bow to his distinguished landlord as he was descending his front steps was in itself one of his greatest pleasures. That he might not miss it, he would peer from behind his office shutters until the shapely legs of his patron could be seen between the twisted iron railing. Then appearing suddenly and with assumed surprise, he would lift his hat with so great a flourish that his long, thin arms and body were jerked into semaphore angles, his face meanwhile beaming with ill-concealed delight.

Should any one of St. George's personal friends accompany him—men like Kennedy, or General Hardisty, or some well-known man from the Eastern Shore—one of the Dennises, or Joyneses, or Irvings—the pleasure was intensified, the incident being of great professional advantage. “I have just met old General Hardisty,” he would say—“he was at our house,” the knowing ones passing a wink around, and the uninitiated having all the greater respect and, therefore, all the greater confidence in that rising young firm of “Pawson & Pawson, Attorneys and Counsellors at Law—Wills drawn and Estates looked after.”

That this rarest of gentlemen, of all men in the world, should be made the victim of a group of schemers who had really tricked him of almost all that was left of his patrimony, and he a member of his own profession, was to Pawson one of the great sorrows of his life. That he himself had unwittingly helped in its culmination made it all the keener. Only a few weeks had passed since that eventful day when St. George had sent Todd down to arrange for an interview, an event which was followed almost immediately by that gentleman in person. He remembered his delight at the honor conferred upon him; he recalled how he had spent the whole of that and the next day in the attempt to negotiate the mortgage on the old home at a reasonable rate of interest; he recalled, too, how he could have lowered the rate had St. George allowed him more time. “No, pay it and get rid of them!” St. George had said, the “them” being part of the very accounts over which the two were poring. And his patron had showed the same impatience when it came to placing the money in the bank. Although his own lips were sealed professionally by reason of the interests of another client, he had begged St. George, almost to the verge of interference, not to give it to the Patapsco, until he had been silenced with: “Have them put it to my credit, sir. I have known every member of that bank for years.”

All these things were, of course, unknown to Harry, the ultimate beneficiary. Who had filled the bucket, and how and why, were unimportant facts to him. That it was full, and ready for his use, brought with it the same sense of pleasure he would have felt on a hot day at Moorlands when he had gone to the old well, drawn up the ice-cold water, and, plunging in the sweet-smelling gourd, had drank to his heart's content.

This was what wells were made for; and so were fathers, and big, generous men like his Uncle George, who had dozens of friends ready to cram money into his pocket for him to hand over to whoever wanted it and without a moment's hesitation—just as Slater had handed him the money he needed when Gilbert wanted it in a hurry.

Nor could it be expected that Harry, even with the examination of St. George's accounts with the Patapsco and other institutions going on under his very eyes, understood fully just what a bank failure really meant. Half a dozen banks, he remembered, had gone to smash some few years before, sending his father to town one morning at daylight, where he stayed for a week, but no change, so far as he could recall, had happened because of it at Moorlands. Indeed, his father had bought a new coach for his mother the very next week, out of what he had “saved from the wreck,” so he had told her.

It was not until the hurried overhauling of a mass of papers beneath his uncle's hand, and the subsequent finding of a certain stray sheet by Pawson, that the boy was aroused to a sense of the gravity of the situation. And even then his interest did not become acute until, the missing document identified, St. George had turned to Pawson and, pointing to an item halfway down the column, had said in a lowered tone, as if fearing to be overheard:

“You have the receipts, have you not, for everything on this list?—Slater's account too, and Hampson's?”

“They are in the file beside you, sir.”

“Well, that's a comfort, anyhow.”

“And the balance”—here he examined a small book which lay open beside him—“amounting to”—he paused—“is of course locked up in their vaults?”

Harry had craned his head in instant attention. His quickened ears had caught two familiar names. It was Slater who had loaned him the five hundred dollars which he gave to Gilbert, which his father had commended him for borrowing; and it was Hampson who had sold him the wretched horse that had stumbled and broken his leg and had afterwards to be shot.

“Slater, did you say, Uncle George—and Hampson? Aren't they my old accounts?”

“Quite right, Mr. Rutter—quite right, sir.” St. George tried to stop him with a frown, but Pawson's face was turned towards Harry and he failed to get the signal. “Quite right, and quite lucky; they were both important items in Mr. Gadgem's list, and both checks passed through the bank and were paid before the smash came.”

The tones of Pawson's voice, the twisting together of his bony hands in a sort of satisfied contentment, and the weary look on his uncle's face were the opening of so many windows in the boy's brain. At the same instant one of those creepy chills common to a man when some hitherto undiscovered vista of impending disaster widens out before him, started at the base of Harry's spine, crept up his shoulder-blades, shivered along his arms, and lost itself in his benumbed fingers. This was followed by a lump in his throat that nearly strangled him. He left his chair and touched Pawson on the shoulder.

“Does this mean, Mr. Pawson—this money being locked up in the bank vaults and not coming out for months—and may be never—does it mean that Mr. Temple—well, that Uncle George—won't have enough money to live on?” There was an anxious, vibrant tone in Harry's voice that aroused St. George to a sense of the boy's share in the calamity and the privations he must suffer because of it. Pawson hesitated and was about to belittle the gravity of the situation when St. George stopped him.

“Yes—tell him—tell him everything, I have no secrets from Mr. Rutter. Stop!—I'll tell him. It means, Harry”—and a brave smile played about his lips—“that we will have to live on hog and hominy, may be, or pretty nigh it—certainly for a while—not bad, old fellow, when you get accustomed to it. Aunt Jemima makes very good hominy and—”

He stopped; the brave smile had faded from his face.

“By Jove!—that's something I didn't think of!—What will I do with the dear old woman—It would break her heart—and Todd?”

Here was indeed something on which he had not counted! For him to forego the luxuries that enriched his daily life was easy—he had often in his hunting trips lived for weeks on sweet potato and a handful of cornmeal, and slept on the bare ground with only a blanket over him, but that his servants should be reduced to similar privations suggested possibilities which appalled him. For the first time since the cruel announcement fell from Rutter's lips the real situation, with all that it meant to his own future and those dependent upon him, stared him in the face.

He looked up and caught Harry's anxious eyes scanning his own. His old-time, unruffled spirit came to his assistance.

“No, son!” he cried in his cheeriest voice, springing to his feet—“no, we won't worry. It will all come out right—we'll buckle down to it together, you and I. Don't take it too much to heart—we'll get on somehow.”

But the boy was not reassured; in fact, he had become more anxious than ever. Not only did the chill continue, but the lump in his throat grew larger every minute.

“But, Uncle George—you told me you borrowed the money to pay those bills my father sent me. And will you now have to pay that back as well?” He did not ask of whom he had borrowed it, nor on what security, nor would either Pawson or his uncle have told him, that being a confidential matter.

“Well, that depends, Harry; but we won't have to pay it right away, which is one comfort. And then again, I can go back to the law. I have yet to make my maiden speech before a jury, but I can do it. Think of it!—everybody in tears, the judge mopping his eyes—court-room breathless. Oh, you just wait until your old uncle gets on his feet before a bench and jury. Come along, old fellow—let us go up into the house.” Then in a serious tone—his back to Harry—“Pawson, please bring the full accounts with you in the morning, and now let me thank you for your courtesy. You have been extremely civil, sir, and I appreciate it most highly.”

When they had reached the front walk and were about to climb the immaculate steps, St. George, still determined to divert the boy's thoughts from his own financial straits, said with a laugh:

“Todd told you, of course, about your father paying me a visit this morning, did he not?”

“Oh, yes!—a most extraordinary account. You must have enjoyed it,” replied Harry, trying to fall into his uncle's mood, his heart growing heavier every moment. “What did he want?”

One of St. George's heat-lightning smiles played over his face: “He wanted two things. He first wanted you, and then he wanted a receipt for a month's board—YOUR board, remember! He went away without either.”

A new perspective suddenly opened up in Harry's mind; one that had a gleam of sunshine athwart it.

“But, Uncle George!” he burst out—“don't forget that my father owes you all the money you paid for me! That, of course, will eventually come back to you.” This came in a tone of great relief, as if the money was already in his hand.

St. George's face hardened: “None of it will come back to me,” he rejoined in a positive tone. “He doesn't owe me one single penny and he never will. That money he owes to you. Whatever you may happen to owe me can wait until you are able to pay it. And now while I am talking about it, there is another thing your father owes you, and that is an humble apology, and that he will pay one of these days in tears and agony. You are neither a beggar nor a cringing dog, and you never will be so long as I can help it!” He stopped, rested his hand on the boy's shoulder, and with a quiver in his voice added:

“Your hand, my son. Short commons after this, may be, but we will make the fight together.”

When the two passed through the front door and stepped into the dining-room they found it filled with gentlemen—friends who had heard of the crash and who had come either to extend their sympathy or offer their bank accounts. They had heard of the catastrophe at the club and had instantly left their seats and walked across the park in a body.

To one and all St. George gave a warm pressure of the hand and a bright smile. Had he been the master of ceremonies at a state reception he could not have been more self-possessed or more gallant; his troubles were for himself, never for his guests.

“All in a lifetime—but I am not worrying. The Patapsco pulled out once before and it may again. My only regret is that I cannot, at least for a time, have as many of you as I would wish under my mahogany. But don't let us borrow any trouble; certainly not to-day. Todd, get some glasses and bring me that bottle of Madeira—the one there on the sideboard!” Here he took the precious fluid from Todd's hand and holding high the crusted bottle said with a dry smile—one his friends knew when his irony was aroused: “That wine, gentlemen, saw the light at a time when a man locked his money in an iron box to keep outside thieves from stealing it; to-day he locks his money in a bank's vault and locks the thieves in with it. Extraordinary, is it not, how we gentlemen trust each other? Here, Todd, draw the cork!... Slowly.... Now hand me the bottle—yes—Clayton, that's the same wine that you and Kennedy liked so much the night we had Mr. Poe with us. It is really about all there is left of my father's Black Warrior of 1810. I thought it was all gone, but Todd found two more the other day, one of which I sent to Kennedy. This is the other. Kennedy writes me he is keeping his until we can drink it together. Is everybody's glass full? Then my old toast if you will permit me: 'Here's to love and laughter, and every true friend of my true friend my own!'”

Before the groups had dispersed Harry had the facts in his possession—principally from Judge Pancoast, who gave him a full account of the bank's collapse, some papers having been handed up to him on the bench that morning. Summed up, his uncle was practically ruined—and he, Harry, was the cause of it—the innocent cause, perhaps, but the cause all the same: but for his father's cruelty and his own debts St. George would never have mortgaged his home. That an additional sum—his uncle's entire deposit—had been swallowed up in the crash was but part of the same misfortune. Poe's lines were true, then—never so true as now:

“Some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster Followed fast and followed faster...”

This, then, was ever after to be his place in life—to bring misery wherever he went.

He caught up his hat and walked through the park beside the judge, hoping for some further details of his uncle's present plight and future condition, but the only thing his Honor added to what he already knew was his wonderment over the fact that St. George, having no immediate use for the money except to pay his bills, should have raised so large a sum on a mortgage instead of borrowing it from his friends. It was here that Harry's heart gave a bound:—no one, then, but his uncle, Pawson, and himself knew that he alone was responsible for the catastrophe! That his father should have learned of his share in it did not enter the boy's head.

Todd answered his knock on his return, and in reply to his inquiry informed him that he must not sit up, as “Marse George” had left word that he would be detained until late at a meeting of the creditors of the bank.

And so the unhappy lad, his supper over, sought his bed and, as had occurred more than once before, spent the earlier hours of the night gazing at the ceiling and wondering what would become of him.