John sat with his arms folded, sunk into his greatcoat, and watched the gray landscape through the snow that was falling fast. The events of the night seemed like a hideous dream. It was an inconceivable thing that within a few hours so dire a calamity could have fallen. The very nearness of the city to which they were bound added to the unreality of all that had happened. But there the dark burden lay; and the snow fell upon the gray earth and whitened it, as if to cleanse and remake it and blot out its dolor and dread. The others left Saxton alone; he was nearer than they; but late in the afternoon, as they approached the city, Captain Wheelock came in and touched him on the shoulder; Bishop Delafield wished to see him. John rose, giving Wheelock his place, and went back to where the old man sat staring out at the snow. He beckoned Saxton to sit down by him.
"Where's Wheaton?" the bishop asked.
John looked at him and at the other men who sat in silence about the car. He went to one of them and repeated the bishop's question, but was told that Wheaton was not on the train. He had been at the station and had come aboard the car with the rest; but he must have returned to the station and been left. John remembered the passing of the west-bound express, and went back and told the bishop that Wheaton had not come with them. The old man shook his head and turned again to the window and the flying panorama of the snowy landscape. John sat by him, and neither spoke until the train's speed diminished at a crossing on the outskirts of Clarkson. Then suddenly, hot at heart and with tears of sorrow and rage in his eyes, Saxton said, so that only the bishop could hear:
"He's a damned coward!"
The Bishop of Clarkson stared steadily out upon the snow with troubled eyes.
CHAPTER XXXVII "A PECULIAR BRICK"
It was Fenton who most nearly voiced the public sorrow at the death of Warrick Raridan. His address at the memorial meeting of the Clarkson Bar Association surprised the community, which knew Fenton only as a corporation lawyer who rarely made speeches, even to juries. Fenton put into words the general appraisement of Warry Raridan—his social grace and charm, his wit and variety. People who hardly knew that Raridan had been a lawyer were surprised that the leader of the Clarkson bar dwelt upon his instinctive grasp of legal questions, "the thoroughness of his research and the clarity and force with which he presented legal propositions." Raridan was a lawyer with an imagination, Fenton said, thus seizing what had been considered a weakness of character and making it count as an element of strength. Fenton was not given to careless praise, and what he said of Raridan had much to do with formulating the opinion that was to pass into Clarkson history. The last few months of Warry's life had won him this eulogy—the work which he had done for Evelyn. Fenton had learned to know him well after the appointment of Saxton as receiver. He had thrown a number of important questions to Warry to investigate, and he had been amazed at his young lieutenant's capacity and industry. He did not know that a woman had been the inspiration of this work; he thought that it proceeded from Saxton's influence and the pleasure Warry found in labor that brought him near his friend.
It was not alone Warry's death, but the sharp, tragic manner of it, so wretchedly inconsonant with his life, that grieved and shocked the community. But this too had its compensations; for many read into his life now a recklessness and daring which it had lacked. They spoke of him as though he had been a young soldier who had fallen at the first skirmish, without having been tried in battle; all spoke of his promise and mourned that his life had been harvested before he had finished sowing. On every hand his good deeds were recounted; many unknown witnesses rose to tell of acts of generosity and kindness which would never have been disclosed in his lifetime. Those who had really known him no longer lamented his erratic habits. They now magnified his talents; and his whimsical, fanciful ways they attributed to genius.