“Very well,” began Marshall, really glad to be able thus to kill time until Fair arrived. “His grandfather got it into his head that he was bound in honor to extricate his publishers—he was an author, you know—from their financial difficulties, although it was clearly proved in court that they had only their own speculative folly to thank for their failure. Well, poor old Fair lost his all and even mortgaged the Norfolk estates. In spite of his solicitors, he pressed forward eagerly to ruin, and died perfectly happy in the knowledge that he had lived up to his ideal. Mad—stark mad!”
“By Jove, it sounds like Fair all over again!” exclaimed Allyne.
“Yes,” went on the old lawyer, warming to his favorite work of decrying idealism of every sort. “Yes, gentlemen, and our Mr. Fair’s father was no better than his grandfather. He spent the first half of his life in freeing the estates from their heavy encumbrances—and the second half in throwing away all that he had accumulated in the first. His specialty was young geniuses—any kind of young genius, musical, literary, artistic. Any chap who could not get an editor to print his stuff could count on Fair bringing out an édition de luxe at his own expense. And any young woman had but to get her mother to tell him with tears in her eyes that she had wonderful musical promise and away she would go to Germany to be educated—of course at Fair’s expense. You probably know that he died in lodgings in Mile End, where he had removed in order to live among those whom he, poor old dreamer, imagined would appreciate his sympathy. He left our Mr. Fair nothing but the estates heavily mortgaged again.”
“And Maxwell is a chip of the old block,” commented Travers when the solicitor stopped. “But Mr. Marshall, he has done more than either his father or grandfather in the way of self-effacement. His life is one long tragedy for an idea. That is bad enough. But now he proposes actually to destroy himself for it. Unless we can prevent it, he will die.”
“Good heavens,” cried Marshall, unable to treat the terrible intensity on Travers’s face with his customary calmness. “It’s not quite so bad as that. What, in the name of reason, is the man about now?”
“Listen,” said Travers, glad to have at last roused the stoical man of law from his leathery, noncommittal expression, “Fair declares that he has committed a crime which will send him to the gallows— Why, what ails you?”
Travers stopped and stared at the lawyer, who was strangely delighted by his last few words. Marshall’s acute mind had evidently been scouting.
“Nothing,” replied Marshall, regaining his quiet manner; “I was thinking of a similar case that once came to my notice. Go on.”
“There is no evidence against him, and yet the wretched victim of his own high-flown notions is determined to go ahead to destruction. For God’s sake, sir, help us to prevent this, even by placing him in a madhouse.” Travers saw that his words touched the old man, but that professional caution and habitual reserve were restraining him from avowing his purpose, whatever it might be.
This angered Allyne, who broke in with the sneering comment: “The law keeps no end of rascals from getting their richly deserved medicine. I think it’s a jolly beastly outrage if it can’t prevent an innocent man from hanging himself.”