“As I say, they told her at the hospital that she was dying. So she asked for a lawyer and they got one—a young fellow named Dean that’s lately opened up an office. And he came and she made her will and it was signed in the presence of witnesses and will be offered for probate without delay. Trust some of our friends of the opposition to attend promptly to that detail. And, Bracken—take it steady, man—Bracken, she left every last miserable cent of that foul, tainted one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to you.”
“What!” The cry issued from Bracken’s throat in a gulping shriek.
“I’m saying she left it all to you. I’ve just seen the will. So has Dorgan. I sent for him as soon as the word reached me about half an hour ago and we went together and read the infernal thing. It says—I can almost quote it verbatim—that she’s leaving it to you because for thirty-six years you’ve been her best friend and really her only friend and her one disinterested adviser. And furthermore because—with almost her dying breath she said it—because you were solely instrumental in helping her to save and preserve her earnings.... God, but that’s been hard! Now then, Dorgan, it’s your turn to speak.”
So Dorgan spoke, but briefly. Five minutes later, from the door on the point of departure, he was repeating with patience, in almost the soothing parental tone one might use to an ailing and unreasonable child, what already he had said at least twice over to that stricken figure slumped in the swivel chair at the big flat desk.
“Sure,” he was saying, “I’ll believe you, and Griffin here, he’ll believe you—ain’t he just promised you he would?—and there’s maybe five or six others’ll believe you—but who else is goin’ to take your word against what it says in black and white on that paper? And her lookin’ into the open grave when she told ’em to set it down? Nope, Bracken, you’re through, and it’s only a mercy to you that I’m comin’ here to be the first one to tell you you are. You can explain till you’re black in the face and you can refuse to touch that dough till the end of time, or you can give it to charity—if you’re lucky enough to find a charity that’ll take it—but, Bracken, it’s been hung around your neck like a grindstone and it was a dead woman’s hands that hung it there and it makes you altogether too heavy a load for any political organization to carry—you see that yourself, don’t you? And so, Bracken, you’re through!”
But to Bracken’s ears now the words came dimly, meaning little. Where he was huddled, he foresaw as with an eye for prophecy things coming to pass much as they truly did come to pass. He saw his wife—how well he knew that lukewarm lady who was not lukewarm in her animosities nor yet in her suspicions!—saw her closing a door of enduring contempt forever between them; he saw the breaking off of his daughter’s engagement to that young Scopes, who was the third bearer of an honored name, and his daughter despising him as the cause for her humiliation and her wrecked happiness; he saw himself thrown out of his church, thrown out of his bank, thrown out of all those pleasant concerns in which he had joyed and from which he had rendered the sweet savors of achievement and of creation. He saw himself being cut, being ignored, by those who had been glad to kowtow before him for his favor, being elbowed aside as though he were a thing unclean and leprous.
He heard, not Dorgan passing a compassionate but relentless sentence on him and his dearest of all hopes, but rather he seemed to hear the scornful laughter of unregenerate elderly libertines, rejoicing at the downfall of an offending brother exposed at his secret sins; and he seemed to hear derisive voices speaking—“Walking so straight up he reared backwards, and all the time—” “Well, well, well, the church is certainly the place for a hypocrite to hide himself in, ain’t it?” “Acting like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, but now just look at him!” “His life was an open book till they found out where the dark pages were stuck together, he, he, he!” Thus and so he heard the scoffing voices speaking. He heard aright too, and as his head went down into his hands, he tasted in anticipation a draft too bitter for human strength to bear.
Griffin was another who did not hear the third repetition of Dorgan’s judgment. He had gone on ahead like a man anxious to quit a noisome sick-room and to one of the assistant cashiers in the outer office he was saying: “I advise you to get your chief to go home and lie down awhile. It might also be a good idea to call up his family doctor and get him to drop over here right away. From the looks of him, Mr. Bracken’s not a well man. He’s had a shock—a profound shock. His nerves might give way, I’d say, any minute. I’m afraid he’s in for a very, very hard time!”