“It’s like Wade,” he was saying. “I’m sorry, derned if I hain’t.”
Marley scarcely heard him. He was looking ahead. How many years—
“He hadn’t ought to of done it,” Carman was going on; “no, sir, he hadn’t ought.”
How many years, Marley was thinking, would they have to wait now? Would Lavinia be lost with all the rest? Ought he to ask her to wait any longer? But Carman kept on:
“I’ve got all my arrangements made now, you see.”
He swept his arm about the office where the few clerks were bending over the big records in which they were copying the pleadings they could not understand. Marley did not see; he saw nothing but the ruin of all his hopes. It was still in there; the atmosphere held the musty odor of a public office; the clock ticked; once a stamping machine clicked sharply as a clerk marked a filing date on some document. And then a great disgust overwhelmed him, a disgust with himself for being so fatuous, so credulous. He had taken so much for granted, he had acted as a child, not as a man, and he felt a hatred for himself, he felt almost like striking himself.
“I guess I’ve been a fool,” he said suddenly, rising from his chair.
“No, you haven’t neither,” said Carman, “but Wade Powell has; he had no business—”
Marley did not wait to hear Carman finish his sentence. Shame and mortification were the final aspects of his defeat; he put on his hat, drew it down over his eyes and stalked away. Carman looked at him as he disappeared through the lofty door. The pupil of his right eye widened as he looked, and when Glenn had passed from his sight he turned to his desk, and began to rearrange the tools to which he was so unaccustomed.