The Common Lot

by Robert Herrick

Thus the man of the world, the perfectly cynical lawyer, had his way, which was, on the whole, the least troublesome way for all concerned, and avoided scandal. He was the calm one of the men involved: it was his business to make arrangements with human weakness and frailty and "to avoid scandal." That at all costs!

He made his cousin no long reproaches.

"We've nipped your claws, young man," he admonished him.

He was disappointed in Jackson. Privately he considered him a dunderheaded ass, who had weakly given himself as a tool to the contractor. In his dealings with men, he had known many rascals, more than the public was aware were rascals, and he respected some of them. But they were the men, who, once having committed themselves to devious ways, used other men as their tools. For little, foolish rascals, who got befogged and "lost their nerve," he had only contempt.

"How's your wife?" he asked bruskly. "That was a dirty blow she got here the other day—straight between the eyes. I never thought she'd come in here that afternoon."

"Helen has gone East with the boys and her mother,—to that place in Vermont. She hasn't been feeling well lately, and she needs the rest."

"Oh, um, I see," the lawyer commented, comprehending quite well what this journey meant. He was a little surprised that Helen should desert her husband at this crisis. In his philosophy it was the part of a woman who had character to "back her husband," no matter what he might do, so long as he was faithful to his marriage oath. Jackson had been a fool, like so many men; there was trouble in the air, and she had run away. He would not have thought it of her.

Hart swallowed his humiliation before his cousin. He was much relieved at the outcome of the affair; it released him from further responsibility for the school, which had become hateful to him. He was chiefly concerned, now, lest the difficulty with the trustees should become known and hurt his reputation, especially lest the men in his office, to whom he was an autocrat and a genius, should suspect something. He began at once to push the work on the last details for the hotel, with the hope of forcing Graves to deliver another block of the "stock," which he argued was due him for his commission.

Now that the matter had been quietly adjusted without scandal, he was inclined to feel more aggrieved than ever over his wife's departure. "She might have waited to see how it turned out," he repeated to himself, obstinately refusing her the right to judge himself except where his acts affected her publicly. For some time he kept up with acquaintances the fiction of Helen's "visit in the East"; he even took a room at the Shoreham Club for the hunting season. But he soon fancied that the people at the club were cool to him; fewer engagements came his way; no one referred to the great building, which had given him so much reputation; the men he had known best seemed embarrassed when he joined them,—men, too, who would not have winked an eye at a "big coup." The women soon ceased to ask about Helen; it was getting abroad that there was "something wrong with the Jackson Harts." For it had leaked, more or less, as such matters always will leak. One man drops a word to his neighbor, and the neighbor's wife pieces that to something she has heard or surmised.

So before the season was over Hart gave up his room at the club, where his raw self-consciousness was too often bruised. Then, finding his empty house in the city insupportable, he went to live with his mother in his uncle's old home. There was a lull in building at this time, due to the high prices of materials, but fortunately he could keep himself busy with the hotel and a large country house in the centre of the state, which often made an excuse for him to get away from the city.