Leroy Scott

“ CHAPTER VIII THE EDITOR OF THE EXPRESS Katherine stumbled down into the dusty, quivering heat of the Square. She was still awed and dumfounded by her discovery; she could not as yet realize its full significance and whither it would lead; but her mind was a ferment of thoughts that were unfinished and questions that did not await reply.
How had a man once so splendid come to sell his soul for money or ambition? What would Westville think and do, Westville who worshipped him, if it but knew the truth? ”

“ Nelly’s pace had slowed into a walk, and even then the gale at times almost swept the poor horse staggering from the road. The rain drove down in ever denser sheets. The occasional flashes of lightning served only to emphasize the blackness. So dense was it, it seemed a solid. The world could not seem blacker to a toad in the heart of a stone. The instants of crackling fire showed Katherine the river, below her in the valley, leaping, surging, almost out of its banks—the trees, writhing and wrestling, here and there one jaggedly discrowned. ”

“ Blake!” she whispered, in an awed and terrified tone. She continued to stare into his eyes. “Mr. Blake!” she repeated.
She felt a tensing of his body, as of a man who seeks to master himself with a mighty effort. He tried to smile, though his greenish pallor did not leave him.
“It is my turn,” he said, “to ask what is the matter with you, Katherine.”
“Mr. Blake!” She loosed her hold upon his arm, and shrank away.
He rose.
“What is the matter?” he repeated. “You seem upset. I suppose it is the nervous strain of to-morrow’s trial.” ”

“ At length, when the Court House clock droned the hour of five through the hot, burnt-out air, Bruce washed his hands and brawny fore-arms at the old iron sink in the rear of the reporter’s room, put on his coat, and strode up Main Street. But instead of following his habit and turning off into Station Avenue, where was situated the house in which he and Old Hosie ate and slept and had their quarrels, he continued his way and turned into an avenue beyond—on his face the flush of defiant firmness of the bold man who finds himself doing the exact thing he had sworn that he would never do. ”

“ The weeks dragged heavily on—hot and dusty after the first of July, and so dry that out in the country the caked earth was a fine network of zigzagging fissures, and the farmers, gazing despondently upon their shrivelling corn, watched with vain hope for a rescuing cloud to darken the clear, hard, brilliant heavens. At length the summer burned to its close; the opening day of the September term of court was close at hand. But still the case stood just as on the day Katherine had stepped so joyously from the Limited. The evidence of Sherman was unshaken. The charges of Bruce had no answer. ”

“ For a space Katherine stood alone, gazing down upon Blake’s bowed and silent figure. Now that it was all over, now that his allies had all deserted him, to see this man whom she had known as so proud, so strong, so admired, with such a boundless future—who had once been her own ideal of a great man—who had once declared himself her lover—to see this man now brought so low, stirred in her a strange emotion, in which there was something of pity, something of sympathy, and a tugging remembrance of the love he long ago had offered. ”

“ CHAPTER VI THE LADY LAWYER When old Hosie had withdrawn with his expectorative plunder, Katherine sat down at the desk and gazed thoughtfully out of her window, taking in the tarnished dome of the Court House that rose lustreless above the elm tops and the heavy-boned farmhorses that stood about the iron hitch-racks of the Square, stamping and switching their tails in dozing warfare against the flies. ”

“ Blake was close upon forty, with a dark, strong, handsome face, penetrating but pleasant eyes, and black hair slightly marked with gray. He was well dressed but not too well dressed, as became a public man whose following was largely of the country. His person gave an immediate impression of a polished but not over-polished gentleman—of a man who in acquiring a large grace of manner, has lost nothing of virility and bigness and purpose.
“It seems quite natural,” Katherine began, smiling, and trying to speak lightly, “that each time I come home it is to congratulate you upon some new honour.” ”

“ In the background Miss Sherman stood looking on, white, tense, dry-eyed.
Doctor Sherman turned slowly, fearfully, toward the bed.
“But, Elsie,” he whispered in a dry, lost voice. “It’s all bad—but that’s the worst of all. When she knows, she never can forgive me!”
Katherine laid a hand upon his shoulder.
“If you think that, then you don’t know Elsie. She will be pained, but she loves you with all her soul; she would forgive you anything so long as you loved her, and she would follow you through every misery to the ends of the world.” ”

“ Really, Katherine, it’s quite absurd for you to talk about it. There is no financial necessity whatever for you to work.”
“You mean, then, that I should not work because, in you, I have enough to live upon?”
“Of course!”
“Do you know any man, any real man I mean,” she returned quickly, “who stops work in the vigour of his prime merely because he has enough money to live upon? Would you give up your work to-morrow if some one were willing to support you?”
“Now, don’t be ridiculous, Katherine! That’s quite a different question. I’m a man, you know.” ”

“ A hand gripped the cloth over his breast. “Why, when I came to Westville I was on fire to serve God with all my heart and never a compromise! On fire to preach the new gospel that the way to make people better is to make this an easier world for people to be better in!”
That passion-shaken figure was not a pleasant thing to look upon. Blake turned his eyes back to the glistening river and the sun, and steeled himself. ”

“ They did so, and Kennedy regarded Bruce with a solemn, weighty stare. He was a lank, lantern-jawed, frock-coated gentleman of thirty-five, with an upward rolling forelock and an Adam’s-apple that throbbed in his throat like a petrified pulse. He was climbing the political ladder, and he was carefully schooling himself into that dignity and poise and appearance of importance which should distinguish the deportment of the public man. ”

“ I was certain that, now that love had entered your life, your deeper woman’s instincts would assert themselves and you would naturally desire to withdraw from the case. In fact, I was certain that your wish to practise law, your ambition for a career outside the home, would sink into insignificance—and that you would have no desire other than to become a true woman of the home, where I want my wife to be, where she belongs. ”

“ At such a time wild beasts, with hostility born in their blood, draw close together. It was a storm to resolve, as it were, all complex shades of human feeling into their elementary colours—when fear and hate and love stand starkly forth, unqualified, unblended. Without being aware that she was observing, Katherine sensed that Bruce’s agitation was mounting with the storm. ”

“ Blake shook hands with Doctor Sherman, dismissed his chauffeur, and took the wheel. They spun out of the city and down into the River Road—the favourite drive with Westville folk—which followed the stream in broad sweeping curves and ran through arcades of thick-bodied, bowing willows and sycamores [Pg 149] lofty and severe, their foliage now a drought-crisped brown. After half an hour the car turned through a stone gateway into a grove of beech and elm and sycamore. At a comfortable distance apart were perhaps a dozen houses whose outer walls were slabs of trees with the bark still on. ”

“ CHAPTER XVI THROUGH THE STORM Bowed low to shield herself against the ever fiercer buffets of the storm, Katherine gave Nelly free rein to pick her own way at her own pace through the blackness. The rain volleyed into her pitilessly, the wind sought furiously to wrest her from the saddle, the lightning cracked open the heavens into ever more fiery chasms, and the thunder rattled and rolled and reverberated as though a thousand battles were waging in the valley. ”

“ You are trying to get a confession out of him, in advance of the trial, as a big feature for your terrible paper!”
She moved a pace nearer him. All the suppressed anger, all the hidden anguish, of the last three months burst up volcanically.
“Oh! oh!” she cried breathlessly. “I never dreamt till I met you that a man could be so low, so heartless, as to hound an old man as you have hounded my father—and all for the sake of a yellow newspaper sensation. But he’s a safe man for you to attack. Yes, he’s safe—old, unpopular, helpless!”
Bruce’s heavy brows lowered. ”

“ He seemed to stand out in the mid-current of hostile opinion and by main strength hurl it back into its former course. The man’s efforts were nothing less than herculean. He was a bigger man, a more powerful man, than Westville had ever dreamed; and his spirited battle against such apparently hopeless odds had a compelling fascination. Despite her defiantly critical attitude, Katherine was profoundly impressed; and she heard it whispered about that, notwithstanding Blake’s great popularity, his party’s certainty of success was becoming very much disturbed. ”

“ The story, in its elements, was a commonplace to Katherine; in her work with the Municipal League she had every few days met with just such a tale as this. But that which is a commonplace when strangers are involved, becomes a tragedy when loved ones are its actors. So, as she read the old, old story, Katherine trembled as with mortal pain.
But sickening as was the story in itself, it was made even more agonizing to her by the manner of the Express’s telling. Bruce’s typewriter had never been more impassioned. ”

“ Without cessation Katherine kept eyes and mind on Blake. She searched out and pondered over the thousand possible details and ramifications his conspiracy might have. No human plan was a perfect plan. By patiently watching and studying every point there was a chance that she might discover one detail, one slip, one oversight, that would give her the key to the case.
One of the thousand possibilities was that he had an active partner in his scheme. Since no such partner was visible in the open, it was likely that his associate was a man with whom Blake wished to have seemingly no relations. ”

“ Blake he could do at that time, Katherine hurried him away to Elsie Sherman. He replaced the very willing Doctor Woods, who knew little about typhoid, and assumed charge of Elsie with all his unerring mastery of what to do. He gave her his very best skill, and he hovered about her with all the concern that the illness of his own child might have evoked, for she had been a warm favourite with him and the charges of her husband had in no degree lessened his regard. Whatever science and care and love could do for her, it all was certain to be done. ”

“ Her steady voice grew more accusing. “What does your conscience say to you? And what do you think the people will say to you, to the great public-spirited Mr. Blake, when they learn that you, prompted by the desire for money and power, have tried to rob the city and have stricken hundreds with sickness?”
His yellowish face contorted most horribly, but he did not answer.
“I see that your conscience has been asking you those same questions,” Katherine pursued. “It is something, at least, that your conscience is not dead. Those are not pleasant questions to have asked one, are they?” ”

“ Breakfast finished, Katherine despotically led her father up to his laboratory. A little later she set out for downtown, looking very fresh in a blue summer dress that had the rare qualities of simplicity and grace. Her colour was perhaps a little warmer than was usual, but she walked along beneath the maples with tranquil mien, seemingly unconscious of some people she passed, giving others a clear, direct glance, smiling and speaking to friends and acquaintances in her most easy manner. ”

“ Blake was in the capital and would not return till the following day on the one forty-five. It occurred to Katherine to advise with old Hosie Hollingsworth, for during the long summer her blind, childish shrinking had changed to warm liking of the dry old lawyer; and she had discovered, too, that the heresies it had been his delight to utter a generation before—and on which he still prided himself—were now a part of the belief of many an orthodox divine.
But she decided against conferring with Old Hosie. Her adviser and leader must be a man more actively in the current of modern affairs. ”

“ She smiled sweetly, apologetically.
“You forget only one day has passed since the trial. You can hardly expect a woman’s mind to lay new plans as quickly as a man’s.”
Bruce looked at her sharply, as though there might be irony in this; but her face was without guile. She glanced at her watch.
“Pardon me,” he said, noticing this action and standing up. “You have your hat on; you were going out?”
“Yes. And I’m afraid I must ask you to excuse me.” She gave him her hand. “I hope you don’t mind my saying it, but if I were you I’d keep all the eyes I’ve got on Mr. Peck.” ”

“ Bruce’s face tightened, and the flat of his hand came down upon his desk.
“When you start a fight, the way to win is to keep on fighting. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
Blind Charlie started forward in his chair.
“See here,” he began, authoritatively. But in an instant his voice softened. “You’ll be making a big mistake if you do that. Better trust to my older head in this. I want to win as much as you do, you know.”
“I admit you may be right,” said Bruce doggedly. “But I’m going to fight right straight ahead.” ”

“ CHAPTER XXII THE LAST STAND The next morning Katherine, incited by the desperate need of action, was so bold as to request Mr. Manning to meet her at Old Hosie’s. She was fortunate enough to get into the office without being observed. The old lawyer, in preparation for the conference, had drawn his wrinkled, once green shade as far down as he dared without giving cause for suspicion, and before the window had placed a high-backed chair and thrown upon it a greenish, blackish, brownish veteran of a fall overcoat—thus balking any glances that might rove lazily upward to his office. ”

“ In the early days of the epidemic Katherine heard one morning that Elsie Sherman had just been stricken. She had seen little of Elsie during the last few weeks; the strain of their relation was too great to permit the old pleasure in one another’s company; but at this news she hastened to Elsie’s bedside. Her arrival was a God-send to the worn and hurried Doctor Woods, who had just been called in. She telegraphed to Indianapolis for a nurse; she telegraphed to a sister of Doctor Sherman to come; and she herself undertook the care of Elsie until the nurse should arrive. ”