"That's true enough," I assented gloomily.
Slocum advised me to leave the city for a while, because should the Nationalist charges be investigated by the Grand Jury, it might be awkward for me. But I refused to leave the city: no matter what happened, I was not the man to run and hide. The Democratic papers made all they could out of the affair, and then after the election it died away. Garretson was reëlected, and that was a kind of vindication for him.
But the insiders in the city knew that something had been wrong, and, as Slocum said, the scandal connected with quashing that injunction followed us for many years. It was of less importance to me than to Slocum; for the men with whom I dealt were used to stories like mine. They believed what they had a mind to, and did business. But for Slocum it was more serious.
The worst of it for me was at home. Sarah brooded over the newspaper talk until she was morbid, refusing to go almost anywhere she would be likely to meet people she knew. The Bible classes had been given up, and, naturally enough, we never went back to Mr. Hardman's church, nor returned to our old church. Sarah and I talked about it once or twice, but we got nowhere.
"I should think you would care for the children!" she would cry, persisting in considering me as a criminal.
"You'll see that it won't make the smallest difference to any one a year hence, if you'll only hold up your head!"
"Well, I don't understand business, but May thinks it pretty bad, I know, because she doesn't come to the house any more when you are at home."
"She has no reason to act that way. And I don't mean to have you or May or any other woman holding me up with your notions of what's right and wrong, just because the newspapers make a lot of talk."
That ended the matter between us; but for a long time Sarah avoided our old friends, and the house was unusually quiet.
What troubled me more than the racket in Chicago was the way that Dround and Farson and a few other of our backers might take the story. The Drounds were in Egypt, but they would hear the news quickly enough. Mr. Dround was the president of our corporation, and the most influential single stockholder. With his ideas, he might become a nuisance, or draw out altogether, which would be awkward in the present condition of the company.