Small wonder, therefore, that Madame le Claire sat wild-eyed and excited, and flew fearfully to Judge Blodgett and the professor, when Mr. Brassfield went free, with Alderson at heel. And all the time, as the crew of a ship carry on the routine of drill while the torpedo is speeding for her hull, these social amenities went on all unconscious of the explosion now imminent.
XV
THE TURPITUDE OF BRASSFIELD
Man to black Misfortune beckons
When upon himself he reckons,
Marshals Faith among his assets,
Blinks his nature's many facets.
This dull gem is an ascetic,
Bloodless, pulseless, apathetic:
Shift the light—a trifling matter—
Fra Anselmo turns a satyr!
—The Kaleidoscope.
Airily, Mr. Brassfield preceded his clerk down the stairway, and out into the street. There, something in the air—the balm of advancing spring; a faint chill, the Parthian shot of retreating winter; some psychic apprehension of the rising sap; the slight northing of the sun; or some subconscious clutch at knowledge of minute alterations in the landscape—apprised Mr. Brassfield's strangely circumscribed mind of the maladjustment with time resulting from the reign of Amidon. But however bewildered Florian's mentality might become at such things, it was different with Brassfield. The plane of consciousness in which he had so long moved, with a memory running back five years and there ending in a blank wall of nescience, had made him cunning and shifty—necessarily so. The struggle for existence had had its inevitable effect—the faculty paralyzed had been compensated for by the development of others. So he was not at all at a loss now, when this little hiatus in time struck on his mind in the form of a suspicion. He turned to Alderson with a smile.
"Do you remember what date this is, my boy?" he inquired.
Alderson named the date. Brassfield nodded, as if he were pleased to find Alderson correct in his exercises.
"Of course you know what we've arranged for to-day, don't you?" he went on.
"The deferred annual meeting of the Construction Company?" asked Alderson. "If that's it, it's all attended to. I took the proxies to Mr. Smith yesterday."