She did not pause until she reached the candle-lighted table in the garret and knelt before it, with her face against her mother’s little book, and sobbed as though her heart would break.
CHAPTER IV
MR. MERRIAM MAKES SUGGESTIONS
The law offices of Knight, Kittredge and Carr were tucked away in the rear of an old building that stood at the apex of a triangle formed by Jefferson Street and Commonwealth Avenue. The firm had been tenants of the same rooms for so many years that any outward sign of their occupancy had ceased to be necessary. There was, to be sure, a battered tin sign at the entrance, but its inscription could be read only by persons who remembered it from bygone days. The woodwork in the series of low rooms occupied by the firm had once been white, but it was now yellow, as though from years of intimacy with dusty file-boxes and law sheep. The library, the quaintest and quietest place in town, was marked by a pleasing twilight of antiquity. Across the hall the private rooms of the several partners were distinguished by their domestic atmosphere, to which the locust-trees that brushed the windows and the grained wooden mantels contributed.
Knight and Kittredge had been prominent in state politics during and immediately following the Civil War. They were dead now, but Carr, who had left politics to his partners, survived, and he had changed nothing in the offices. The private rooms of the dead members of the firm were still as they had been, though Morris Leighton, the chief clerk, and the students who always overran the place now made use of them. Knight, Kittredge and Carr had been considered invincible in the old days; and Carr was still the best lawyer in the state, and the one whose name was most frequently subscribed to the appearance docket of the Federal Court. There were other lawyers who said that he was not what he had been; but they were not the sort whose opinion creates public sentiment or affects the ruling of courts. For though Michael Carr was a mild little man, with a soft voice and brown eyes that might have been the pride of any girl, he was a formidable antagonist. The students in the office affectionately referred to him among themselves as “A. D.,” which, being interpreted, meant Annotated Digest—a delicate reference to the fact that Michael Carr was able to cite cases from memory, by title and page, in nearly every series of decisions that was worth anything.
In the old days it had been the custom of the members of the firm of Knight, Kittredge and Carr to assemble every morning at eight o’clock in the library for a brief discussion of the news of the day, or for a review of the work that lay before them. The young men who were fortunate enough to be tolerated in the offices had always enjoyed these discussions immensely, for Governor Kittredge and Senator Knight had known men and manners as well as the law; and Michael Carr knew Plato and the Greek and Latin poets as he knew the way home.
These morning conferences were still continued in Morris Leighton’s day, though Knight and Kittredge had long been gone. It might be a topic from the day’s news that received attention, or some new book—Michael Carr was a persistent novel reader—or it might be even a bit of social gossip that was discussed. Mr. Carr was a man of deliberate habits, and when he set apart this half-hour for a talk with his young men, as he called them, it made no difference that the president of a great railway cooled his heels in the outer office while the Latin poets were discussed in the library, or that other dignified Caucasians waited while negro suffrage was debated. Mr. Carr did not like being crowded. He knew how to crowd other people when there was need; but it pleased him sometimes to make other people wait.
Ezra Dameron was waiting for him this morning, for it was the first of October; and on the first of every month Ezra Dameron went to the offices of Knight, Kittredge and Carr to discuss his personal affairs. He was of an economical turn, and he made it a point to combine as many questions as possible in a single consultation. His relations with the offices were of long standing and dated back to a day when Knight, Kittredge and Carr were a new firm and Ezra Dameron was a young merchant whom people respected, and whose prospects in life were bright. There had been a time when he was pointed to as a handsome man; but that was very long ago, and he was not an attractive object now, as he moved restlessly about Michael Carr’s private room. He carried a packet of papers in one hand and he walked now and then to a window, whose panes were small and old-fashioned, and looked out upon the locust-trees in the little court. He was clean-shaven, as always. His beak-like nose had given him in his youth an air of imperiousness that was now lacking; it combined with his thin lips and restless gray eyes to give an impression of cruelty. From one pocket of his overcoat the handle of the hammer protruded; and the other bulged with the accompanying nails. There were people who held that his inoffensive carpentry was an affectation, and that he practised it merely to enhance his reputation for penuriousness, a reputation which, the same people said, he greatly enjoyed.
While Ezra Dameron waited for Michael Carr, Rodney Merriam was walking slowly from his house in Seminary Square down High Street to Jefferson, swinging his stick, and gravely returning the salutations of friends and acquaintances. In Mariona, where men of leisure are suspicious characters, it was easy to take Rodney Merriam’s peculiarities far too seriously. When he was at home he lived quietly, as became a gentleman, and those who tried to find something theatrical in his course of life were doomed to disappointment. He was, perhaps, amused to know that his fellow townsmen puzzled over him a good deal and convinced themselves that he was a strange and difficult man,—but that, after all, he was a Merriam, and what could one expect! He usually knew what he was about, however, and when he started for a place he reached it without trouble. Thus he came presently to the offices of Knight, Kittredge and Carr. He stepped into the reception-room and found it empty. The door into the library was closed but he could hear Carr’s voice; and he knew that the lawyer was holding one of those morning talks with his clerks and students that Morris Leighton had often described. He looked about with interest and then crossed the hall. The doors of the three private offices were closed, but he turned the knob of the one marked in small black letters “Mr. Carr,” and went in.
Ezra Dameron was still looking out of the window when the door was flung open. He supposed Carr had come, and having been gazing out into the sunny court, his sight did not accommodate itself at once to the dim light of the little room.
“Ah, Mr. Carr—” he began.