Part 60 (2/2)

He wrote the notes and gave them into Dudley's hands. ”If they don't get in to-morrow's issue, they must wait over till election day. It's a pity this is Sat.u.r.day--but you'll have them in, I dare say.”

”Yes; I'll take them down,” said Dudley. He descended in the elevator, walking rapidly when he reached the pavement. Diggs's parting words came back to him and he repeated them as he went. Tomorrow's was the last paper before election day. If the speech were reported in the morning issue and Burr's friends made no denial, there would be, as far as the country voters were concerned, a silence of two days. The contest was not yet decided, this he knew--it would be a close one, and a straw's weight might turn the scales of public favour. Rann realised this too, for he did not fling slime at men for nothing--there was a serious purpose underneath the last act of his play. He was doing it for the sake of those Democrats whose const.i.tuents were divided against themselves, and he was trusting to himself to hold the votes that came his way when the cloud should have pa.s.sed from Burr again. It was all so evident that Dudley held his breath for one brief instant. The whole scheme lay bare before him--he had but to drop these letters into the nearest box, and Rann's purpose would be fulfilled. In the howl of reprobation that followed the hounding of Burr his own hour would come.

And granted that the governor was cleared before the meeting of the caucus--well, men are easier to keep than to win--and he might not be cleared after all.

A clock near at hand struck the hour. He raised his head and saw the ”Standard” office across the street--and the temptation pa.s.sed as swiftly as it had come. The instinct of generations was stronger than the appeal of the moment--he might sin a great sin, but he could never commit a meanness.

With sudden energy he crossed the street and ran up the stairs.

V

Again he was returning to Kingsborough. The familiar landscape rushed by him on either side--green meadow and russet woodland, gray swamp and dwarfed brown hill, unploughed common and sun-ripened field of corn. It was like the remembered features of a friend, when the change that startles the unaccustomed eye seems to exist less in the well-known face than in the image we have carried in our thoughts.

It was all there as it had been in his youth--the same and yet not the same. The old fields were tilled, the old lands ran waste in broomsedge, but he himself had left his boyhood far behind--it was his own vision that was altered, not the face of nature. The commons were not so wide as he had thought them, the hills not so high, the hollows not so deep--even the blue horizon had drawn a closer circle.

A man on his way to the water-cooler stopped abruptly at his side.

”Well, I declar, if 'tain't the governor!”

Nicholas looked up, and recognising Jerry Pollard, shook his outstretched hand. ”When did you leave Kingsborough?” he inquired.

”Oh, I jest ran up this morning to lay in a stock of winter goods.

Trade's thriving this year, and you have to hustle if you want to keep up with the tastes of yo' customers. Times have changed since I had you in my sto'.”

”I dare say. I am glad to hear that you are doing well. Was the judge taken ill before you left Kingsborough?”

”The judge? Is he sick? I ain't heard nothin' 'bout it. It wa'n't more'n a week ago that I told him he was lookin' as young as he did befo' the war. It ain't often a man can keep his youth like that but his Caesar is just such another. Caesar was an old man as far back as I remember, and, bless you, he's spryer than I am this minute. He'll live to be a hundred and die of an accident.”

”That's good,” said the governor with rising interest. ”Kingsborough's a fine place to grow old in. Did you bring any news up with you?”

”Well, I reckon not. Things were pretty lively down there last night, but they'd quieted down this morning. They brought a man over from Hagersville, you know, and befo' I shut up sto' last evening Jim Brown came to town, talkin' mighty big 'bout stringin' up the fellow. Jim always did talk, though, so n.o.body thought much of it. He likes to get his mouth in, but he's right particular 'bout his hand. The sheriff said he warn't lookin' for trouble.”

”I'm glad it's over,” said the governor. The train was nearing Kingsborough, and as it stopped he rose and followed Jerry Pollard to the station.

There was no one he knew in sight, and, with his bag in his hand, he walked rapidly to the judge's house. His anxiety had caused him to quicken his pace, but when he had opened the gate and ascended the steps he hesitated before entering the hall, and his breath came shortly. Until that instant he had not realised the strength of the tie that bound him to the judge.

The hall was dim and cool, as it had been that May afternoon when his feet had left tracks of dust on the s.h.i.+ning floor. Straight ahead he saw the garden, lying graceless and deserted, with the unkemptness of extreme old age. A sharp breeze blew from door to door, and the dried gra.s.ses on the wall stirred with a sound like that of the wind among a bed of rushes.

He mounted the stairs slowly, the weight of his tread creaking the polished wood. Before the threshold of the judge's room again he hesitated, his hand upraised. The house was so still that it seemed to be untenanted, and he s.h.i.+vered suddenly, as if the wind that rustled the dried gra.s.ses were a ghostly footstep. Then, as he glanced back down the wide old stairway, his own childhood looked up, at him--an alien figure, half frightened by the silence.

As he stood there the door opened noiselessly, and the doctor came out, peering with shortsighted eyes over his lowered gla.s.ses. When he ran against Nicholas he coughed uncertainly and drew back. ”Well, well, if it isn't the governor!” he said. ”We have been looking for Tom--but our friend the judge is better--much better. I tell him he'll live yet to see us buried.”

A load pa.s.sed suddenly from Nicholas's mind. The ravaged face of the old doctor--with its wrinkled forehead and its almost invisible eyes--became at once the mask of a good angel. He grasped the outstretched hand and crossed the threshold.

The judge was lying among the pillows of his bed, his eyes closed, his great head motionless. There was a bowl of yellow chrysanthemums on a table beside him, and near it Mrs. Burwell was measuring dark drops into a winegla.s.s. She looked up with a smile of welcome that cast a cheerful light about the room. Her smile and the colour of the chrysanthemums were in Nicholas's eyes as he went to the bed and laid his hand upon the still fingers that clasped the counterpane.

The judge looked at him with a wavering recognition. ”Ah, it is you, Tom,” he said, and there was a yearning in his voice that fell like a gulf between him and the man who was not his son. At the moment it came to Nicholas with a great bitterness that his share of the judge's heart was the share of an outsider--the crumbs that fall to the beggar that waits beside the gate. When the soul has entered the depths and looks back again it is the face of its own kindred that it craves--the responsive throbbing of its own blood in another's veins. This was Tom's place, not his.

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