“Yes—yes, of course I understand. I am awfully glad I came here this afternoon. I was almost afraid to, but I am glad I did. May I come again pretty soon?”
He looked at her intently. “Why do you want to come?” he asked. “I haven’t said that I have changed my mind about anything, have I?” Then, before she could reply, he added, brusquely, “Oh, well, come if you want to. I don’t know who would be liable to stop you. Far as I can see you generally do what you set out to.”
She was content with that, and more than content with his reference to Esther. That evening, after she had locked the post office, she wrote her niece a long letter. She told of the loss of the lawsuit. “Very likely you may have heard of it before you receive this, but I have just come from your uncle’s house and the sight of him, alone there, sitting in that library, with nobody to speak to, knowing as he does that everybody is talking about him, some of them crowing over him, facing the fact that he must give up about everything he’s got in the world—well, I never wanted to cry over a human creature more. I didn’t do it, of course. He would have pushed me outdoors if I had. I couldn’t scarcely tell him how sorry I felt. He is as proud as he ever was and he doesn’t ask sympathy of anybody. He needs it though. You know how sure he was of winning that suit. For Elisha Cook to beat him is the hardest blow that could have been struck. And not a word of complaint. The one thing he seemed to want me and everybody else to understand was that every dollar damages would be paid cash down.”
Then she wrote of his questions concerning Esther’s well being. “Write him, dearie,” she urged. “Write him and keep on writing, no matter whether he answers your letters or not. And, oh, if you can, try to comfort him. Make him see that you love him just as much as you ever did. That will help him now more than anything else in the world, I do believe. He is so all alone.”
The next time she visited the big house she took with her all of Esther’s letters, those written from Boston as well as the later arrivals from Paris. She said little about them.
“I brought ’em along,” she said, “thinkin’ you might like to look ’em over sometime. They are real interestin’. She writes a good letter and what she says about tryin’ to make herself understand amongst all those French people is very funny.”
He did not answer, nor did he refer to the letters in their conversation. He did not refuse them, however, so she left them on the table when she went away.
By the end of June rumors had changed to certainties. Harniss now knew something of the extent of the disaster which had befallen its great man. Knew it, rather than guessed or imagined it. The acres of pasture land and the square mile of wood lots belonging to Foster Townsend were his no longer. Some of the real estate had gone at private sale; a public auction disposed of much more. The trotters and all the racing paraphernalia were sent to Boston, to be sold by dealers there. The mare, Claribel, Varunas Gifford’s especial pride, was bought by Sam Baker; this was the bitterest blow for Varunas. The famous span was sold. Of all the Townsend stable there remained but one horse, and that a sober, middle-aged animal fit only for pulling a carriage. And of all the carriages were left but two, a buggy and a carryall. The Townsend mansion, shorn of its surrounding meadows and pine-sprinkled fields, was still owned and occupied by the man who built it, and the Clark cottage and the acre and a half upon which it stood were still his. For some reason he had refused to sell the cottage property. It seemed odd, for every one knew that he had been offered, and more than once, a good price for it. Its situation upon the main road and adjoining the post office made it desirable.
The big mogul was no longer big, so far as his possessions were concerned. His progress through his native town was not triumphal now. His closest friends still stood by him, but his influence among the majority was waning. For years unconquerable he had been beaten at last and badly beaten. Elisha Cook had beaten him, even young Griffin had got the better of him. No longer a millionaire, the richest man in the county, he was now estimated to be worth perhaps forty or fifty thousand dollars exclusive of the house he lived in and the Clark cottage. There were a half dozen wealthier men than that in Harniss alone. The old guard among the politicians still came to consult him, but there was a new and younger element gaining strength and influence and they did not consult him at all. The Honorable Alpheus Mooney was their leader now.
Foster Townsend was quite aware of his shrunken importance. Yet there was no change in his manner and attitude. His excursions to and from the stores and the post office were now, for the most part, made on foot, but his step was firm, his dress as carefully chosen, his silk hat as neatly brushed as in the days when that hat was revered by the masses as the crown upon the head of the potentate whom they feared and honored. And his speech was as brusque, his nod as off-hand, his manner of greeting his fellow-citizens, high and low, just as uncompromising and stand-offish as ever.