There was Shelley Bryant’s father, a fine, straight-backed old gentleman with beard as white as the plumage of a dove. His son was a small, red-faced, sandy-haired, pale-eyed chap with spaces between his big front teeth. He traded in horses, and sometimes made as much as fifteen dollars on a Saturday. His magnitude of glory and manly dignity as compared to his father’s was about that of a tin pan to the sun.
When Alice refused Shelley, the old general–he had won the title in war, unlike Colonel Price–went to the colonel and laid the matter off with a good deal of emphasis and flourishing of his knotted black stick. If a woman demanded blood, said the general, where could she aspire above Shelley? And beyond blood, what was there to be considered when it came to marrying and breeding up a race of men?
Champion that he was of blood and lineage, Colonel Price was nettled by the old gentleman’s presumptuous urging of his unlikely son’s cause.
“I am of the opinion, sir,” Colonel Price replied, with a good bit of hauteur and heat, “that my daughter always has given, and always will give, the preference to brains!”
General Bryant had not spoken to the colonel for two months after that, and his son Shelley had proved his superiority by going off to Kansas City and taking a job reading gas-meters.
Colonel Price went to the mantel and filled his pipe from the tobacco-jar. He sat smoking for a little while, his paper on his knee.
“The lad’s in deeper trouble, I’m afraid, than he understands,” said he at last, as if continuing his reflections aloud, “and it may take a bigger heave to pull him out than any of us think right now.”
“Oh, I hope not,” said Alice, looking across at him suddenly, her eyes wide open with concern. “I understood that this was just a preliminary proceeding, a sort of formality 208 to conform to the legal requirements, and that he would be released when they brought him up before Judge Maxwell. At least, that was the impression that he gave me of the case himself.”
“Joe is an unsophisticated and honest lad,” said the colonel. “There is something in the case that he refused to disclose or discuss before the coroner’s jury, they say. I don’t know what it is, but it’s in relation to the quarrel between him and Isom Chase which preceded the tragedy. He seems to raise a point of honor on it, or something. I heard them say this afternoon that it was nothing but the fear that it would disclose his motive for the crime. They say he was making off with old Chase’s money, but I don’t believe that.”
“They’re wrong if they think that,” said she, shaking her head seriously, “he’d never do a thing like that.”