The elder man inclined his head. “For the last time,” he answered calmly, “yes. Vaughan or yourself? The choice is yours.”
Jack Carleton stood suddenly erect, throwing back his head, almost with the gesture of a fighter on guard. “Then I tell you this,” he cried, “you’re crowding me too far. I’ve done the best I could; I’ve thought of others long enough; I’ll think of myself now. There’s a limit to what a man’s got to stand. I’ve been an awful fool, I know. I’ve wasted most of my life, so far; lost my money; lost the chance to marry the girl I loved. But for the last three years, I’ve got no apologies to make. I’ve tried with every bit that’s in me; I had my fight all but won. I made good out West there; made good with myself; with my prospects; with the girl I meant to marry—and then this damnable business had to come. And I tell you, Henry, I won’t quit now. You’ve got the best of me before; perhaps you will again; but I’ll take my chance. I’m willing to back Right against Wrong, and I give you fair warning now that I’m going to fight. You haven’t beaten me yet.”
He swung short around upon his heel, without waiting for a reply. The door crashed to behind him, and Henry Carleton was left alone in the room.
CHAPTER XVII
IN THE BALANCE
“I trust in God,—the right shall be the right
And other than the wrong, while he endures.”
Browning.
Henry Carleton leaned back contentedly in his office chair. The afternoon was drawing to a close; another good day’s work was done; the pathway of the future lay bright before him. Money? He had his fill of it. Except as the trophy, the stakes in the game, for which, coolly and half-disdainfully, it still suited him to play, he had come scarcely to value it at all. Fame? That, too, had come to him. His reputation, first made in the city, had spread later throughout the state, and now, thanks to that long and well-laid net of carefully adjusted wires, was to become national as well. Member-elect of the United States senate! It was enough. Fame—and power—and patronage—more glory to add to that of the long line of ancestors whose dignified faces looked down at him from the walls of the gallery at The Birches. He had done well; he knew it; and was content. Nor was he an old man yet. A glorious prospect lay before him still, filled with pleasures—of many kinds. Only this one matter to be adjusted now, and whichever way fate tipped the scales, he could not lose. How pleasant it was to look back over all his struggles with Jack! How pleasant to know, with the lifelong enmity between them, that in every encounter, he had decisively outwitted and got the better of his nephew! And now—either Jack must suffer, or if Vaughan’s silence could not be bought, Jack’s scruples must somehow be overcome. The latter, of course, everything considered, would be the better way. For Jack—much as he hated him—was a Carleton, and Jack’s fate, in a way, was bound up with his own. And Vaughan was a nobody, a mere scribbler, of no use to the world. He must be silenced—somehow. Yet there was danger too. In spite of himself, the matter troubled him.