His strongest impulse after the last interview was to take Miss Claxton at her word and make no further move in the matter—at least, not now and on her account. Ultimately he must find out if his wife was in any plot to conceal a criminal, and if so, put a stop to her connivance. At present he had certainly no desire to make such action on his wife's part public, or break Bertha's heart by filling the air with a public scandal in which her sister's name would be linked with a lover who was a common charlatan and brutal criminal. If for this man's sake Hermione had left her father's death unavenged and ruined her sister's life, Bertha's wrath and sorrow might well be a thing to dread, and such knowledge a disaster that might well crush her. The mulatto might work to bring truth to light; he must work alone.
But at this point Durgan again shifted his ground of suspicion; for he still believed in Hermione Claxton's singular purity of mind and gentleness of disposition, and in his wife's callousness and shrewd selfishness. Was it possible that Beardsley had some mysterious power over both women such as a magician or modern hypnotist is said to use? But then, was not such influence in such a man too strange to be possible, too like a cheap novel to be true? A terrible thought struck cold at Durgan's heart; the man, as he knew him, was more likely to be a cat's-paw than the mover in any momentous deed. The surprise of ascertaining that his wife had had some connection with the Claxtons forced him to realize how little he knew about her life, how totally ignorant he was as to any cause she might have to hate Mr. and Mrs. Claxton. His heart failed him.
He drew in his breath in quick terror, trying to persuade himself that he could not have arrived at the bottom of a secret over which Alden had brooded so long in vain.
"Well, I understand that your visit to Hilyard was most satisfactory. You are assured of your good Adam's safety; and I find the mulatto sent a message to our friends that he would not drag their name into the business. So far so good. Do you suppose that the money and advice he expects to receive are all in the air, or how?" Alden, dandified and chirpy, his little gray beard wagging in the morning sunlight, was standing on the mountain road. There was a sharpness as of autumn in the sunshine, which made the New Yorker fresh. Durgan, who had taken to his pick and spade very early that morning, already warm, dirty, and tired, looked like some grim demiurge. Called from his work to this colloquy, he was not in good humor.
"These fellows are always boasting," continued Alden. "The peculiarity in this case is that he would not take the cost of his own defence from us."
"And I offered him what I had in my pocket. He would not look at it," said Durgan, dully.
"Odd."
"Do you think so?"
"Well, of course, when a flimsy, tawdry creature of that sort refuses a bird in the hand, one wonders what he sees in the bush, especially when, as in this case, the bird in the hand could hardly prevent his robbing the bush also."
"I reckon it's beyond me," said Durgan, stupidly. Alden's simile reminded him afresh of the hole in the forked tree, which had not ceased to haunt his mind.