J. G. Holland

“ Harry stopped, as if frozen to the spot in mortal terror.
"Come along," said Thede Balfour, tugging at his hand, "you'll be late at school."
Poor Harry could no more have walked than he could have flown. Mr. Belcher saw the impression he had made upon him, and became soft and insinuating in his manner.
"I'm glad to see you, my boy," said Mr. Belcher. "Come into the house, and see the children. They all remember you, and they are all homesick. They'll be glad to look at anything from Sevenoaks." ”

“ Belcher? Am I a partner of yours? If I am, perhaps you will be kind enough to tell me—business-like enough to tell me—why you wish me to worm secrets out of this boy."
It was Mr. Belcher's turn to color.
"No, I will not. I trust no woman with my affairs. I keep my own councils."
"Then do your own business," snappishly.
"Mrs. Dillingham, you and I are friends—destined, I trust, to be better friends—closer friends—than we have ever been. This boy is of no consequence to you, and you cannot afford to sacrifice a man who can serve you more than you seem to know, for him." ”

“ Mr. Belcher pushed toward the light, but not so quickly that a pair of eyes, glaring from the straw, failed to recognize him.
"Robert Belcher! Oh, for God's sake! Robert Belcher!"
It was a call of wild distress—a whine, a howl, an objurgation, all combined. It was repeated as long as he could hear it. It sounded in his ears as he descended the hill. It came again and again to him as he was seated at his comfortable breakfast. It rang in the chambers of his consciousness for hours, and only a firm and despotic will expelled it at last. He knew the voice, and he never wished to hear it again. ”

“ Jim pauses as if about to make some further remark, thinks better of it, and then, putting his big arm around his little wife, leads her off, up stairs.
The lights of the great house go out one after another, the cataracts sing the inmates to sleep, the summer moon witches with the mist, the great, sweet heaven bends over the dreaming town, and there we leave our friends at rest, to take up the burden of their lives again upon the happy morrow, beyond our feeble following, but still under the loving eye and guiding hand to which we confidently and gratefully commit them. ”

“ Benedict's eyes are full of tears. He does not turn, however, to Mr. Balfour, for help. The consciousness of power, and, more than this, the consciousness of universal sympathy, give him self-possession and the power of expression.
"Mr. Yates," says Mr. Benedict, "when you call me master, you give me pain. When you speak of me as your brother, and the brother of all those whom you represent, you pay me the most grateful compliment that I have ever received. It is impossible for me to regard myself as anything but the creature and the instrument of a loving Providence. ”

“ Even if Benedict and his innocent boy had been murdered, murder was not the only foul deed that had been committed on the hill. The poor-house itself was an embodied crime against humanity and against Christianity, for which the town of Sevenoaks at large was responsible, though it had been covered from their sight by Mr. Belcher and the keeper. It would have taken but a spark to kindle a conflagration. Such was the excitement that only a leader was needed to bring the tumult of a violent mob around the heads of the proprietor and his protégé. ”

“ Belcher bowed and smiled.
"I suppose, Mr. Belcher," said Mr. Balfour, "that it seems very strange to you that the plaintiff should have forgotten his signature."
"Not at all, sir. On the contrary, I regard it as the most natural thing in the world. I should suppose that a man who had lost his mind once would naturally lose his memory of many things."
"That certainly seems reasonable, but how is it that he does not recognize it, even if he does not remember the writing of it?"
"I don't know; a man's signature changes with changing habits, I suppose," responded the witness. ”

“ Millions of dollars were in the pockets of men who were ready to purchase. Seedy, crazy, visionary fellows were working as middle-men, to talk up schemes, and win their bread, with as much more as they could lay their hands on. The very air was charged with the contagion of speculation, and men seemed ready to believe anything and do anything. It appeared, indeed, as if a man had only to buy, to double his money in a day; and half the insane multitude believed it.
Mr. Belcher kept himself quiet, and defended himself from the influences around him by adopting and holding his scoffing mood. ”

“ Belcher's effigy standing upon the ground, surrounded by fagots ready to be lighted, they yelled: "Light him up, boys!" and stood to witness the sham auto-da-fé with a crowd of village urchins dancing around it.
Of course, Mr. Belcher had calculated upon indignation and anger, and rejoiced in their impotence. He knew that those who had lost so much would not care to risk more in a suit at law, and that his property at Sevenoaks was so identified with the life of the town—that so many were dependent upon its preservation for their daily bread—that they would not be fool-hardy enough to burn it. ”

“ Belcher urged her to get the little Sevenoaks pauper into her confidence, and to ascertain whether his father were still living. She did not doubt that his fear of a man so poor and powerless as the child's father must be, was based in conscious knavery; and to be put to the use of deceiving a lad whose smile of affectionate admiration was one of the sweetest visions of her daily life, disgusted and angered her. ”

“ Snow, emphatically.
"Amen, again!" responded Miss Butterworth.
"Mrs. Snow! my dear! You forget that you are a Christian pastor's wife, and that there is a stranger present."
"No, that is just what I don't forget," said Mrs. Snow. "I see a Christian pastor afraid of a man of the world, who cares no more about Christianity than he does about a pair of old shoes, and who patronizes it for the sake of shutting its mouth against him. It makes me angry, and makes me wish I were a man; and you ought to go to that meeting to-morrow, as a Christian pastor, and put down this shame and wickedness. ”

“ She knew that no one loved her for anything good that she possessed, and knew that her own heart was barren of love for others. She felt that a little child who would call her "mother," clinging to her hand, or nestling in her bosom, could redeem her to her better self; and how could she help thinking of the true men who, with their hearts in their fresh, manly hands, had prayed for her love in the dawn of her young beauty, and been spurned from her presence—men now in the honorable walks of life with their little ones around them? ”

“ Sevenoaks was happy. The sun of prosperity had dawned upon the people, and the favored few who supposed that they were the only ones to whom the good fortune had come, were surprised to find themselves a great multitude. The dividend was the talk of the town. Those who had invested a portion of their small means invested more, and those whose good angel had spared them from the sacrifice yielded to the glittering temptation, and joined their lot with their rejoicing neighbors. Mr. Belcher walked or drove among them, and rubbed his hands over their good fortune. ”

“ Rising from his chair, and approaching his mirror, as if he had been whipped, he stood a full minute regarding his disgraced and speechless image. "Are you Robert Belcher, Esquire, of Sevenoaks?" he inquired, at length. "Are you the person who has been insulted by a woman? Look at me, sir! Turn not away! Have you any constitutional objections to telling me how you feel? Are you, sir, the proprietor of this house? Are you the owner of yonder mill? Are you the distinguished person who carries Sevenoaks in his pocket? How are the mighty fallen! ”

“ Having done a good thing, she turned her ear away from the suggestions of her good angel, and, in turning away, encountered the suggestions of worldliness from the other side, which came back to her with their old music. She came out of the church as one comes out of a theater, where for hours he has sat absorbed in the fictitious passion of a play, to the grateful rush and roar of Broadway, the flashing of the lights, and the shouting of the voices of the real world.
Mr. Belcher called that evening, and she was glad to see him. ”

“ He was afraid of offending Robert Belcher, for not only did his church need repairing, but his salary was in arrears, and the wolf that had chased so many up the long hill to what was popularly known as Tom Buffum's Boarding House he had heard many a night, while his family was sleeping, howling with menace in the distance.
Mrs. Snow rebelled, in every part of her nature, against the power which had cowed her reverend companion. There is nothing that so goads a spirited woman to madness as the realization that any man controls her husband. ”

“ Not Sevenoaks alone, but the whole country was open to any scheme which connected them with the profits of these great discoveries, and when the excitement at Sevenoaks passed away at last, and men regained their senses, in the loss of their money, they had the company of a multitude of ruined sympathizers throughout the length and breadth of the land. Not only the simple and the impressible yielded to the wave of speculation that swept the country, but the shrewdest business men formed its crest, and were thrown high and dry beyond all others, in the common wreck, when it reached the shore. ”

“ Belcher left the room, and soon returned with a glass and a bottle of brandy. Setting them upon the table, he took the key from the outside of the door, inserted it upon the inside, turned it, and then withdrew it, and put it in his pocket. Yates rose and watched him, his face pale, and his heart thumping at his side like a tilt-hammer.
"Sam Yates," said Mr. Belcher, "you are getting altogether too virtuous. Nothing will cure you but a good, old-fashioned drunk. Dip in, now, and take your fill. You can lie here all night if you wish to." ”

“ This one fact remains good in Sevenoaks, and the world over. The man who holds the financial power and the social throne of a town, makes that town, in a good degree, what he is. If he is virtuous, noble, unselfish, good, the elements beneath him shape themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to his character. Vice shrinks into disgrace, or flies to more congenial haunts. The greed for gold which grasps and over-reaches, becomes ashamed, or changes to neighborly helpfulness. The discontent that springs up in the shadow of an unprincipled and boastful worldly success, dies ”

“ Mr. Balfour, a lawyer of faultless character and undoubted courage, held his secret. He could not bend him or buy him. He was the one man in all the world whom he was afraid of. He was the one man in New York who knew whether Benedict was alive or not. He had Benedict's heir in his house, and he knew that by him the law would lay its hand on him and his possessions. He only wondered that the action was delayed. Why was it delayed? Was he, Mr. Belcher, ready for it? ”

“ Balfour. "I am not one who regards Robert Belcher as a good-natured man and a useful citizen, and I, for one—to use your own phrase—want to kill him. He has preyed upon the public for ten years, and I owe a duty not only to my client but to society I understand how good a bargain I could make with him at this point, but I will make no bargain with him. He is an unmitigated scoundrel, and he will only go out of this Court to be arrested for crime; and I do not expect to drop him until I drop him into a Penitentiary, where he can reflect upon his forgeries at leisure." ”

“ The stronger the patient grew, the more willing he became to shut out the past, which, as memory sometimes—nay, too often—recalled it, was an unbroken history of trial, disappointment, grief, despair, and dreams of great darkness.
There was one man whom he could never think of without a shudder, and with that man his possible outside life was inseparably associated. Mr. Belcher had always been able, by his command of money and his coarse and despotic will, to compel him into any course or transaction that he desired. ”

“ Belcher's residence had a library; all gentlemen have libraries. Mr. Belcher's did not contain many books, but it contained a great deal of room for them. Here he spent his evenings, kept his papers in a huge safe built into the wall, smoked, looked down on the twinkling village and his huge mill, counted his gains and constructed his schemes. Of Mrs. Belcher and the little Belchers, he saw but little. He fed and dressed them well, as he did his horses. All gentlemen feed and dress their dependents well. He was proud of his family as he saw them riding in their carriage. ”

“ Belcher parted with her, he went back leisurely to his great house, more discontented with his wife than he had ever been. To find such beauty, such helpfulness, such sympathy, charity, forbearance, and sensitiveness, all combined in one woman, and that woman kind and confidential toward him, brought back to him the days of his youth, in the excitement of a sentiment which he had supposed was lost beyond recall. ”

“ His wife had faded out of the world, his life had been a fatal struggle with the grossest selfishness, he had come out of the shadows into a new life, and in that life's simple conditions, cared for by Jim's strong arms, and upheld by his manly and cheerful companionship, he intended to build safely the structure of his health, and to erect on the foundation of a useful experience a better life. ”

“ The nestling cottages, the busy shops, the fresh-looking spires, the distant woods, the more distant mountain, the old Seven Oaks upon the Western plateau and the beautiful residence behind them, are the same to-day that they were when we first looked upon them; but a new life and a new influence inform them all. Nature holds her unvarying frame, but the life upon the canvas is what we paint from year to year. ”

“ Balfour knocked at his door, and was admitted. Sam Yates followed, and both looked Jim over and pronounced him perfect. Even these familiar friends felt the power of dress, and treated Jim in a way to which he had been unaccustomed. The stalwart figure, developed in every muscle, and becomingly draped, was well calculated to excite their admiration. The refractory hair which had given its possessor so much trouble, simply made his head impressive and picturesque. There was a man before them—humane, brave, bright, original. All he wanted was culture. ”

“ Pauperism is ungrateful. Pauperism is naturally filthy. Pauperism is noisy. It consists of humanity in its most repulsive forms, and if we have among us a man who can—who can—stand it, let us stand by him." [Tremendous cheers.]
Mr. Belcher paused until the wave of applause had subsided, and then went on:
"An open-hand, free competition: this has been my policy, in a business of whose prosperity you are the best judges. I say an open-hand and free competition in everything. How shall we dispose of our poor? ”

“ What in God's name has Paul Benedict done, that he should be treated in this way? There are a dozen there just like him, or worse. Is it a crime to lose one's reason? I wish you could spend one night in Paul Benedict's room."
"Thank you. I prefer my present quarters."
"Yes, you look around on your present quarters, as you call 'em, and think you'll always have 'em. You won't. Mark my words; you won't. Some time you'll overreach yourself, and cheat yourself out of 'em. See if you don't."
"It takes a smart man to cheat himself, Miss Butterworth," responded Mr. Belcher, rubbing his hands. ”

“ Belcher had had a satisfactory interview with Mr. Snow, and on the morning of the flight of Benedict he drove in the carriage with his family up to the door of that gentleman's church, and gratified the congregation and its reverend head by walking up the broad aisle, and, with his richly dressed flock, taking his old seat.
As he looked around upon the humbler parishioners, he seemed to say, by his patronizing smile: "Mr. Snow and the great proprietor are at peace. Make yourselves easy, and enjoy your sunshine while it lasts." ”