WITH HAPPY RESULTS
Dan’l and Dunk and the yaller dog
Were owners and crew of the Pollywog,
A hand-line smack that cuffed the seas, ’tween ’Tinicus
Head and Point Quahaug.
Dunk owned half and Dan owned half, and the yaller
dog was also “joint”;
They fished and ate
And swapped their bait,
And allus agreed on every point.
—“Ballads of the Banks.”
It did not surprise the people of Palermo when the word passed that Judge Collamore Willard had decided to retire from business.
His callers had noticed his failing strength through the winter months, his unsteady gait, the tremulous wavering of his hands when he scrabbled among the papers on his table. They ascribed all this to the infirmities of age. Gossip that he had lost money, or that there was some basis for the sensational charges flung at him by Hiram Look, fell upon barren soil of belief in Palermo. Local confidence in the Willard fortunes and Willard integrity was too strong to be weakened thus.
Old men, spinsters and widows came straggling in, after persistent drumming at them by the Squire, to receive the sums due them. The process of settlements covered many days, and the lawyer had need of all his patience.
For old folks, even when the money was in their hands, stood by the Judge’s table and begged him to take it back.
“Banks is failin’ and thieves is stealin’,” was their lament. “There ain’t nobody ever done so well by us as you, Judge. It won’t bother you none to take care of just this little. We won’t say nothin’ about your havin’ it.”
At times like these the Judge turned a wistful gaze on the lawyer, and with something of appeal in his eyes. But he met; always the shake of the head and the tightening of the lips.
“You can’t afford to take a single chance, Judge,” the Squire had told him at the beginning of the business. “You must not owe one man a dollar. Your books and your papers will be your own, then. And they must be burned. Evidence of this sort must not haunt your last days or your family after you are gone. Forgive me for having made the conditions that I have, but it is the only way out for all of us.”
Those in town who were at first surprised that Squire Look had been accepted as the Judge’s man of business found ready explanation in the public quarrel of the Look brothers, and the fact that the Squire was better qualified than any one else in Palermo to manage the affairs of an old man whose grip on them had slipped.
Outsiders saw only the relations of client and lawyer.
Even such an insider as the Squire himself had been seeing not much else during the weeks that had elapsed since the town meeting.
For on the first day of the many on which he came to Judge Willard’s office he had met Sylvena, and she had such a new, strange, even disquieting light in her eyes that he had blurted something that gave her final and complete proof that he understood his musty law books better than he did a woman’s heart.
“Sylvie,” he said, “I have been ashamed of myself ever since. I had no right to take advantage just because you asked a favour of me that a friend ought to be ready and willing to grant. I’m an old brute, and I know it. You asked me to help your father, and I reached out across your heart and your needs and grabbed as a robber grabs at a pocketbook. I’m ashamed of it. I ought to know that that isn’t the way to win a woman, but I reckon I don’t know much of anything outside of my law. No, don’t try to forgive me! I’ve got the old grip on myself again. You needn’t worry!”
And she, with her heart stirring ever since that day when for the first time a true man’s earnest, eager, imperious love had claimed her—she who had come to him again yearning for a confirmation even, sweeter, bit her lips when he whirled and left her, gazed after him with eyes that filled, and then—well, then she stamped her foot and muttered something that it would have astonished the Squire to hear.
He did not see her on every visit. But sometimes she was on the porch, and when the weather grew warmer she was often busy with her shrubs on the lawn.
The constant reserve on his part appeared to be contriteness for having once presumed in a trying moment.
Her reserve was something that developed into an air that closely resembled irritability, and he couldn’t understand it in the least. It made him draw a little more closely into his shell. He thought that perhaps memory of his fault stirred hotly within her when she saw him—perhaps as the memory of that kiss burned even now on his lips.
Therefore matters of the Squire’s heart were in fully as bad a way as matters of the Judge’s pocket.
With the true status of her father’s position, financially and morally, Sylvena was mercifully unacquainted, for when she had fearfully questioned him he had as fearfully paltered and denied.
The old dog Eli was the only one who was really cheered by the visits of Phineas Look to the Willard place.
At first he had sat on the door-step of the office, meditatively gazing out across the Cove.
Then one day he remarked a very pretty lady who was surveying him from the window of the house, and was apparently motioning to him. But as Eli had never found that pretty ladies were at any time much interested in fuzzy old dogs, he reckoned he must be mistaken about the beckoning. However, he gently wagged his tail in order to be on the safe side of agreeability. Then he looked away with some embarrassment.
“Well, if that isn’t like master, like dog, may I be blessed,” stated the lady in the window to herself with much decision.
She came to the door, opened it a bit, and called through the crack with impatient tone:
“Here, you old fool, come in here and get a bite to eat. I’d like to speak out in just that same way to some one else,” she added.
Eli promptly detected something like hostility in the voice and stopped wagging his tail. He hunched down his head and dropped his ears.
The lady surveyed him with disfavour.
“I suppose if I get down on my knees and put out both hands and smile and say, ‘Doggie, doggie, dear, good doggie, come here!’ why, then doggie will condescend to come. But I won’t do it!”
She closed the door with an emphatic slam that made Eli jump, and went back to the window.
But something in the mien of the old dog, who sat wistfully eyeing the closed door, touched her heart.
“I’m blaming him for something he don’t know—something he don’t understand,” she murmured at last, pity in her eyes. She went to the door and opened it wide. Then she stooped forward and wriggled her fingers coaxingly as she said:
“You nice old fellow, come here.”
He hesitated.
She pursed her lips and invited him with crisp little noises that sounded like kisses. She must have realised the suggestiveness of these sounds, for she suddenly blushed furiously and began to call to the dog softly and winningly.
He came, his shaggy ears cocked up with expectancy, his tail expressing his most genial appreciation of the invitation.
That was Eli’s first visit to the Willard kitchen in company with the pretty lady.
If he’d had a tongue that could speak, instead of merely loll in thankful gusto after his repasts in that kitchen, he could have told Squire Phin of a pretty lady with red cheeks and a touch of gray at her temples who often snuggled her face close to his tousled ears and spoke in a tone sometimes that amazed him mightily, and who one day rose in haste, drove some tears from her eyes, and said with the determination of a woman who has searched and found:
“You’d better come along, too, Eli, for it’s business that concerns that master of yours!”
And she started from the kitchen straight for her father’s office, the old dog waddling at her heels.
Five minutes before that Squire Phin had pushed his elbows into the papers on the big table, leaned forward with clasped fingers, and said:
“We’ve got now, Judge, where we can see the way clear. I have turned into money for you everything except this house and contents. The mortgage on it has been paid.”
The Judge began a stammering inquiry, but the lawyer checked him.
“I’ve got to tell you the truth about it, Judge. I advanced the money myself to do it. About three thousand dollars are due you from men who will pay some time but can’t now without being hard put to it to raise the money. I’ll take those accounts and advance the cash. We have paid every cent you owe and squared with every depositor.”
The lawyer stared at the old man in silence for a time.
“I’ll be frank and say that in order to bring about this settlement I have put in every cent of money I have saved, all that Hiram paid me, and have used certain fees I have received lately from several large cases. But I am the only creditor you have. I want you to sign these notes, running to me, for that will be business. But I want to say to you, Judge, that I shall not press for payment, nor shall I say one word to any living soul that you owe me a cent or are not solvent. There is a residue banked and subject to your order sufficient for you to continue your usual way of living. Wait a moment until I have finished! I have asked you to lie to Sylvena, to contradict some truths that I blurted to her in my folly. It was a big thing to ask of a father, but you owe me for lying publicly on your behalf. I fear that both of us are sad liars! If you by word or look or action ever let your daughter know that you have lost your fortune I will withdraw my promise to you and put you to the wall. And that threat is the truth, so help me God!”
The old Judge licked his trembling lips and took the notes that the Squire handed him for signature.
“You needn’t feel under any obligation to me, Judge Willard,” went on the lawyer. “I’ll square myself somehow, sometime. We’ll consider it straight business.”
“But I know it isn’t straight business,” replied the Judge brokenly. “I know that you have done for me what no other man of my whole acquaintance would have done. I may guess at part of your reason for it, Phineas. But that reason doesn’t absolve me from the obligation I am under to you. I’m too broken now to plan or promise. I am an old man—too old to start anew. But I don’t believe that God will take me out of this world until I have in some way shown you that I appreciate all you have done for me and can prove to you that I am sorry for the past. I mean that with all the sincerity of an old man that will be judged Above for his deeds on earth sooner than you, Phineas!”
The eyes of both men were moist, and in a moment of impulsiveness the Squire reached across the table and took the Judge’s hand. But when a visitor’s touch rattled the outside latch of the door a flash of the old Look family feeling caused him to suddenly twitch away. He felt, with a certain shame, that he did not want any one to catch him shaking the hand of Collamore Willard.
It was the Judge’s daughter.
She held the door open until Eli had entered, too, with the apologetic demeanour of one who knew certain things and was therefore apprehensive.
“Father,” she said, her eyes brilliant, her cheeks flushed, but glorious in all her aspect, with the poise of a woman who has fully resolved and therefore dares, “will I be interrupting you and Phineas too much if I take a moment of your time?”
“I—I think our business is about finished,” said the Judge, falteringly. He put his hand over the notes that he had just signed.
“I have come here,” she went on, “because it is a matter that both of you should listen to at the same time. It is simply this, father: Phineas Look has spoken his love for me and has shown his love for me. As we all know that he is a man whose word is sacred, I take it for granted that he is still of the same mind. There have been troubles between our families in which I have had no share, but which at your request I respected in some measure. I have allowed you to make other promises for me without my sanction, for you are my father and it has been the custom in the Willard family to honour parents and gainsay them in little.
“I have now decided that it is cowardice instead of loyalty that has swayed me—for if I were truly loyal to your wishes I would not be loving with all my heart and soul the man you have forbidden me to love. The Willards have not been cowards. I know I am disobeying you, father. But my mind is made up. It will be no use for you to make it harder for us both by cruel words. That portion of property that was to have been mine I surrender willingly to Kleber. My husband does not want my fortune.”
The face of the old man contracted with a sudden grimace of shame and pain. Squire Phin, who had been staring at her, his palms outspread on the table to prop himself, pushed some papers over the notes spread before the Judge and trembled in every muscle.
She flashed a sudden look that was half-indignation into his burning eyes.
“Have I not been unwomanly enough without your making me coax you and wheedle you to me, as I have had to woo your old dog?” she demanded, stamping her foot. And then seeing that he swayed dizzily at the table, confounded by the situation, she came close, reached across over the scattered papers and patted his broad hand.
“Now what have you got to say to me, Phineas?” she whispered. “I know you can talk, for I have listened to you with my heart in my mouth.”
But even while the Judge was scrambling up from his chair with stammering words on his lips, even as the Squire seized the white hand that fluttered above his own, another visitor entered the office.
This visitor—and a very obstreperous visitor it was—threw his hat upon the table, squared his elbows and glared at the three in turn.
It was Captain Kleber Willard of the Lycurgus Webb. His dark seaman’s face was streaked with purple blotches, his eyes were bloodshot and sullen, and it was apparent that passion and liquor had combined to give Captain Willard an unamiable temper. His gaze first singled the Squire with an especially furious squint of hatred, but his father spoke to him and he whirled on the Judge.
“Why didn’t you do as you agreed?” he shouted. “Me to Buenos Ayres and back, off earnin’ a dollar, where I couldn’t protect myself, and you promisin’ to keep that deal covered! Why didn’t you do it, I say?”
The old man turned a pitiful glance on his daughter and attempted to quiet the angry man with words spoken close to his ear, but the Captain twisted away from him.
“It’s time the whole of this family knows what the others are about,” he raged. “I ain’t doin’ anything that I’m ashamed of. The rest of ye see to it that you ain’t, either. I tell ye I won’t keep still. Sylvene Willard is old enough to know bus’ness, or she can leave the room. If some that I can see here had any instincts of a gentleman they’d get out, too, when a family is talkin’ its bus’ness. I tell you, father, you’ve got to explain to me how you let me get dropped for ten thousand. You didn’t send Bradish the margins as you agreed. You dropped him, too. It’s no use for you to hush-a-bye me. I know you did it.
“The Webb wasn’t a half a day in New York when Bradish came down to show me the documents. It was there in black and white. You backed out and dumped us. You dumped Bradish. He hasn’t got the price of a meal. I tell you I won’t shut up! If you had gone in on that last deal that Bradish told you about we’d have cleaned up a fortune. We depended on you, the both of us, to furnish the money. You didn’t do it. You sent King up there and then backed out on him. There isn’t any other explanation for it—you backed out on him. It only needed money and you didn’t send it.”
He stamped around the room, picked up his hat, threw it down again and went on with his bitter complaints.
Squire Phin stood leaning against the edge of the table, very grave, and kept his silence. But there were two deep wrinkles between his eyes, and the lids narrowed slowly. On his own account the blatant, brutal bursting in of this man at the greatest, the sweetest, holiest moment of his life had shocked and angered him. The words that he wanted to speak to her were choking in his throat. On their account the presence of the man, his selfish stormings and threats and complaints, exasperated him in his pity for the trembling old man, and the sister, who was at her brother’s side as he tramped about the room, pleading with him to be silent and to explain to her.
At last Captain Willard plumped himself down in the chair that his father had vacated and thumped his hard fist on the table.
“The sum total is, father, you’ve got to settle with me,” he shouted. “You promised to protect me and you didn’t. It’s up to you to make good.”
He had from time to time been casting angry glances at the lawyer.
“If you’ve got any bus’ness here, Mr. Lawyer Look,” he said insolently, “I wish you’d ’tend to it and get out. My father and I don’t want audiences when we talk over family matters, and we don’t usually have audiences, either.”
Squire Phin understood the dumb appeal in the eyes of the Judge. This unruly son had hold of one end of his secret and was tugging away vigorously. The father realised that the son had the right to demand certain explanations. But revelations made to this explosive person could not be kept away from the daughter. And over the Judge’s head swung the threat of the grim lawyer, sealed with its oath.
With instant pity for the old man’s agony of apprehension, the Squire acted. He stepped into the affairs of the Willard family with the happy consciousness that now he had a right to be there.
“Captain Kleber,” he said, “I have been retained by your father as his legal adviser. I have been that for some time. You may discuss family affairs with him at your leisure and in whatever privacy you wish. On account of the state of Judge Willard’s health he has left all his business affairs to me. The matter that you have mentioned is one of business. You will please come to my office with me, now.”
He dwelt on the last word significantly. He took his hat from the table and went and stood by the door.
When the lawyer had begun to speak the Captain hooked himself forward in his chair, his fingers clutching air, his face working with rage.
“It was the only thing that King Bradish told me that I didn’t believe,” he shouted. “One of the Look family hired as a lawyer by my father? I swore it wasn’t so! If it is so, damme if I don’t make you all sick here in this place. If it is so——”
“It certainly is so, Captain,” broke in the Squire, stepping back into the room. “You will kindly refrain from making any more comments on the matter. Come to my office with me.”
“Comments!” shouted the seaman. “Comments! I ain’t got language enough to make comments! Old Dan’l Webster in his palmiest days couldn’t talk fast enough to express it. I’ll bet a thousand to one I know what the trouble is with you, father. I’ll bet it’s just as King said it was. That skin lawyer has got next to you and robbed you—he and his brother, the two of ’em! There’s a good reason for your not havin’ money to protect your own son if the Look family has got their claws in here. Do you hear me, Sylvene? A thousand to one the dogs have ruined this family! Why didn’t you send the old man to the lunatic asylum before you let him ram us underground this way?”
In his fury he had been clutching up the papers on the table and throwing them about. Now he suddenly bent forward with goggling eyes, his hands on the arms of the chair, and stared long at some slips of paper that he had uncovered.
He picked them up one after the other, his hands trembling so violently that the sheets crackled.
“Four notes runnin’ to Phineas Look and signed by Collamore Willard!” he yelled. “Four notes and each for five thousand dollars. Four notes! Look at ’em!”
He staggered up and thrust them under the astonished gaze of Sylvena, but with one stride the Squire was there and ripped them from his grasp.
“He has robbed us, Sylvene! He’s robbed us,” the Captain went on, mouthing like a madman. “He’s got all our money and put us in debt to him beside. The thief! The land pirate!”
He was making for the lawyer with his fists upraised, but Squire Phin struck them down and forced the furious man back into his chair. He held him there, glowering down on him with a menace that would have quelled a wild beast.
“Go ahead, Phin Look,” whimpered the Captain; “put on another scar to match the one your brother made!”
“I propose you shall listen to reason, Kleber,” Squire Phin fairly hissed, “even if I have to hold you by the throat while I give you the truth. I tell you again to come to my office, and if I fail to satisfy you, then the law is open to you.”
The seaman sank back in his chair limply and the lawyer left him. But as he turned to Sylvena with a look of infinite pity on his face, Captain Willard leaped up.
“Don’t you see now that he has done father and us out of every dollar, Sylvene?” he wailed. “Don’t you believe me when I say——”
But she came forward hastily and put both her hands into the Squire’s, looked up at him trustfully and said:
“I believe in my—my—husband, that is to be, and that is the first and the surest duty of a good wife!” The Squire put his arm about her, bent down and kissed her, a happy sob in his throat choking back the words he wanted to say.
The son stared at them a moment, his jaw dropping, whirled on his father with a curse, and then clacking his fists together in impotent rage, rushed out of the office with a bang of the door that made the little building shiver.
With his one free hand the Squire put the crumpled notes to his teeth and began quietly to tear at them.
He caught her looking at him with wistful inquiry in which there was absolute trust.
“I don’t know my Bible as well as I do the revised statutes, Sylvie,” he said, smiling at her, “but I believe there is a passage somewhere that states that a good wife is better than much fine gold, yea, more precious than rubies and all beautiful gems. Now with the thorough understanding that the Bible is right, let us sit down and have a little family conference about some things that a wife should know.” He brushed from her hair and shoulders the bits of torn paper, drew her on his knee and began to talk. The old Judge sat opposite, gazing mistily out of the window in the direction his son had taken.
For the first and the last time in his life Squire Phin did not tell the whole truth to the woman he loved.
But the sad, though unclouded resignation in the eyes of the woman, and the dumb gratitude on the face of the old man opposite when he had finished, made his lie a holy one.