CHAPTER XXIV

That telegram was handed to Captain Ben by the depot master who was also the telegraph operator. He watched the expression on the captain’s face during the reading of the dispatch.

“Say,” he demanded, excitedly, “you don’t suppose that is so, do you, Cap’n?”

Snow was staring at the yellow slip. He breathed hard. Then he shook his head.

“Can’t be!” he declared. “No, no! It can’t be. How can it?”

“But that man says he’s just got the word right from Washin’ton. Good Lord! Why--”

“Sshh! There must be a mistake somewhere. How _can_ it be so? Here, don’t you tell anybody about this. Keep your mouth shut until we find out more, anyhow. If it is a mistake--and in spite of everything I believe it must be--you nor I don’t want to get ourselves into trouble by spreadin’ the news around. Wait! Don’t you tell a soul; do you hear?”

The depot master nodded. “I hear,” he observed. “You needn’t worry. I don’t shove my toe under Foster Townsend’s boot until I know what I’m doin’. I’ve seen too many toes jammed that way. I won’t say nothin’.... But, good heavens above, Cap’n Ben, suppose it _is_ true! Foster Townsend licked by Elisha Cook!... Aw, it _can’t_ be.”

All the way home the captain kept telling himself that very thing--it could not be. The Boston broker was a trustworthy man, one not likely to accept an unsubstantiated rumor, but nevertheless-- No, there was a mistake somewhere, there must be. Captain Ben, as usual when in trouble or perplexed, took council with his wife. He handed her the telegram.

“It can’t be so, can it, Mary?” he demanded. “You don’t believe it, do you?”

Mrs. Snow dazedly shook her head. “I declare I don’t know what to believe, Ben,” she said. “It doesn’t seem as if it _could_ be, but--but I suppose it might. Of course Elisha Cook and his lawyers must have thought they had a good chance or they wouldn’t have kept on fighting the way they have.”

Her husband nodded. “But for Foster--for Foster Townsend to be beat, to have anybody stop _him_ from having his own way, why--why, it doesn’t seem possible,” he vowed.

“I know; I know it doesn’t.... But, Ben, things haven’t been going as smooth with him lately. Seems almost as if he started to slide down hill away back last summer and has kept sliding. First, there was that accident to Mr. Covell and all the talk it stirred up.”

“I know, but he didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“It was around him and those in his house that the talk settled. There was something about that accident that has never been cleared up. Bob Griffin was mixed up in it and the next thing we knew he had run away with Esther. We all know what a blow that was to Captain Foster. He won’t talk about it, of course, but it was a terrible setback for him. And now, if this should be true--well, I know what will be said. People will say pride always goes before a fall; that is what they will say.”

Her husband snorted. “Say!” he repeated. “They will say enough. Dear, dear! I hope this won’t mean that Foster is going to be too hard hit, in a money way. Once--a good while ago, it was, the time when the news came that Cook had been granted his appeal to the Supreme Court--he said to me then: ‘Well, Ben,’ he says, ‘I’ve bet all but my Sunday shirt on this particular horse. Looks now as if I might have a chance to bet that.’ It was more than he ever said before or since, but it set me wondering. Tut, tut, tut!” gloomily. “If he should be hard hit and have to really come down in the world there will be a lot of mean little mud frogs hopping out of their holes to croak at him, won’t there. He hits right and left when he’s mad and he has left a good many sore heads up and down Ostable County. This will be their chance--if it is true.”

The evening papers confirmed the tidings brought by the telegram. Elisha Cook had won his suit and the amount of damages granted him was large indeed. Foster Townsend was a wealthy man, how wealthy no one knew save himself, but even a millionaire would find it hard to pay such a sum. The “mud frogs” emerged from their holes and croaked and the summary of their croakings was to the effect that chickens had come home to roost. “He’s been stampin’ all hands under foot for twenty years, now he’s stamped on, himself. Let’s see how he likes it.” The croakers foresaw ruin, utter and complete. Even the great man’s staunchest followers, members of what the hitherto crushed minority had referred to as “the Townsend gang,” were stunned to silence by the newspaper details of the Cook triumph. In Denboro, a certain section of it, there was rejoicing. “This neighborhood is on the map again,” crowed the Denborites. “We shan’t have to crawl on our knees through Harniss when we want our rights, in politics or anything else. It’s our turn now.”

From Provincetown to Wapatomac there was chatter of this kind. In political circles certain heads were raised and hopes, hitherto moribund, began to revive. The county boss had been beaten. His infallibility was a thing of the past. If beaten in one way, why not in others? The Honorable Mooney, now a Representative of his state in the halls of Congress at Washington, began to hear from other galled jades who, like himself, had winced beneath the Townsend whip.

And, at the end of the week, while the excitement was still boiling, the big mogul returned to his native town. Varunas and the span were at the station to meet him. Mr. Gifford’s was a broken spirit now. At first defiant and scornful, scoffing at the rumors of his employer’s defeat, as those rumors changed to certainties his attitude changed with them. Still outwardly lofty and calm, he met every taunt with sniffs of contemptuous pity. “It don’t mean nothin’,” he asserted. “You fellers are hollerin’ your heads off, but wait till the old man gets through with this business. Them Supreme Courters are goin’ to lose their jobs, some of ’em. Ye-ah, all right, you wait and see. There’s a law against bribery and corruption, ain’t there? The President of the United States ain’t had his say about this case yet. You hold on. You’ll be meek enough by and by. Huh!”

This to the world at large. But, at home, with his wife, it was different. Nabby was as downcast as he.

“I declare if I believed in spirits and warnin’s and them kind of things,” she sighed, “I’d have been more prepared for it. It started by his lettin’ that Bob Griffin into this house. I ought to have seen that there was a ‘sign’ in that. First a Cook begins to come here; then he gets poor Mr. Covell kicked out of the way by a horse; then he runs off with Esther. And now this! What does the Good Book say? ‘The way of the transgressor is hard,’ that’s what it says.”

Varunas pooh-poohed. “What’s that got to do with it?” he demanded. “Cap’n Foster never transgressed nothin’. ’Twas Griffin that was the transgressor and _his_ way is pretty soft, if you ask me. The good book says lots of things. It says somethin’ about heavin’ bread on the waters, if I recollect right. If you’d done that with this saleratus biscuit I’m tryin’ to eat just now ’twould have sunk, I’ll bet.”

Mr. Gifford, awaiting his employer at the station, was outwardly serene but inwardly fearful. Would the great man whom he worshiped, of whose majesty he had so often boasted, step from that train a broken, humiliated wreck? Would he slink away from the curious crowd there gathered to watch his homecoming?

He did not. The Gifford apprehensions along that line were groundless. Foster Townsend, when he crossed the platform to the dog-cart, was, to all appearances, quite unchanged. He acknowledged the bows and good-days with his usual careless condescension. He greeted Varunas with the accustomed gruff “Hello!” He even insisted upon taking the reins himself and driving the span along the main road to the gate of the mansion. The “mud frogs” were disappointed.

And disappointed they continued to be, for a while at least. Little by little tales of changes in the Townsend régime began to circulate. It was said that all the trotting horses were to be sold, that already several large tracts of land belonging to Townsend in various parts of the town had been put up for sale. Captain Snow, on a visit to Boston, learned from his broker, a close friend of the senior partner in a firm handling the Townsend stock transactions, that bonds and shares amounting to many thousands of dollars had been turned into money for their former owner. The second maid at the big house had been given a month’s notice. These were the stories, and there were many more. No one could vouch for their truth in entirety. Townsend disclosed nothing. His stops at the post office were less frequent. He remained at home in the evenings. Sometimes callers came and with them, even the most loyal of friends and satellites, he was no more confidential than ever concerning his private affairs. How badly he was hit and how greatly his circumstances would be reduced by the loss of the famous suit no one learned from him. From Denboro, of course, came more news. Elisha Cook was a rich man now, although it was said that his lawyers would get much more than half of the sum awarded by the Court. He was triumphant, vaingloriously so, but his health was poor and people believed he would live but a few years to enjoy his sudden rise to affluence.

In all Harniss there was but one person whose calls at the big house, it was noticed, were frequent and appeared to be welcome. That person was Reliance Clark. Her first visit was made the afternoon of the day following Townsend’s return from Washington. She came by the path across the fields and knocked at the kitchen door. Nabby, who answered the knock, was surprised to see her--surprised and not too cordial. In Nabby’s mind Reliance was associated with Esther’s desertion of her uncle and the humiliating elopement with the grandson of the loathed Elisha Cook. Mrs. Clifford, like many another female, old or young, in Harniss, had never quite forgotten the charming personality of young Mr. Covell. She had hinted and prophesied much, at sewing-circle or after prayer-meeting, concerning the match to be made between him and the Townsend niece. Since the night of the runaway marriage her lot, that of false prophet, had been unpleasant. The innuendoes and sly taunts from friends and acquaintances were hard to bear. Her husband had been particularly irritating on the subject. It was in Reliance’s sitting-room that the marriage had taken place and Nabby was convinced that she was largely responsible for the family disgrace. And now, with every tongue in the county clacking over the new thunderbolt which had struck the house of Townsend, for this woman to appear at its door, demanding to see its owner, was nothing short of brazen.

“Yes, he is in,” she admitted, reluctantly, “but I don’t believe he’ll want to see you. He don’t want to see anybody. I guess likely you’d better come some other time.”

She would have closed the door, but Reliance calmly pushed it open and entered the kitchen.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“He’s in the library, I suppose; at least he was there last time I looked. But he won’t want to see you, I tell you. Why, look at the folks--the kind of folks--that’s been here to-day. Cap’n Snow--and he wouldn’t see him. And Mr. Colton, the minister of his own church, and he wouldn’t even see him. Do you suppose likely if he turned _that_ kind of folks away he’ll want to see--well--anybody?... Why, where are you goin’? Didn’t you hear what I said?”

Reliance had heard but she paid no attention. She walked calmly from the kitchen to the dining room. Nabby, after a moment of petrified resentment, ran after her and reached the library first.

“Cap’n Foster,” she cried, breathlessly, “there’s somebody here to see you. It ain’t my fault. I told ’em you didn’t want to see anybody. I said those very words. They’d ought to have been enough, I should _think_.”

But Reliance had entered and now spoke for herself.

“Good afternoon, Foster,” she said. “You’ll see me for a minute or two, won’t you? I hope you will.”

Foster Townsend was sitting in the leather chair. When the housekeeper burst into the room he looked up with a frown. As he recognized his caller he slowly leaned back. It was the first time she had entered that house since Esther left it.

“Humph!” he observed. “It’s you, eh?” He was silent for an instant, then he turned to the perturbed Mrs. Gifford.

“All right, Nabby,” he said. “You can go.”

Nabby was expectantly awaiting orders to show the intruder to the door. Her cheeks, puffed with righteous indignation, collapsed like punctured balloons. “Wh--what?” she gasped.

“You can go. Shut the kitchen door after you. Go along.”

Nabby went, under protest, muttering all the way to the kitchen. Townsend thrust his hands into his trousers’ pockets. His face, as he raised it to meet Reliance’s look, was expressionless.

“Well?” he asked. Then, with a grim smile he added: “Come for a look at the remains, have you? Are you satisfied? Do I look natural?”

She took a step toward him and put out her hand impulsively. “Don’t, Foster,” she protested. “Don’t talk that way.”

“Why not?” still smiling. “All hands know I am dead. You must have heard them preaching my funeral sermon for a week.... Well, well,” with sudden impatience, “let’s make the ceremony as simple as possible. What is it you have come for? What do you want?”

“I don’t want anything. And I came--because--oh, I’ve been thinkin’ of you night and day ever since we all heard about it. And since yesterday, when Millard told he saw you at the depot, I--well, I have been thinkin’ of you more than ever, if that is possible. Of you, sittin’ here all alone in this great house.”

He shrugged. “Kindly omit flowers,” he said.

She sighed. “You make it hard for me, don’t you,” she said. “Well, I expected you would. May I sit down a minute?”

He hesitated. Then he took a hand from his pocket and motioned to the rocker at the other side of the table. “Sit down, if you want to,” he said.

She sat in the rocker. “I shan’t stay very long,” she began. “Foster, tell me: Is this _very_ bad? They are sayin’--oh, they are sayin’ all sorts of things. I read the papers, of course. It seems like a terrible lot of money. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I have heard so much. Is it--will this--”

He finished the sentence for her and in his own way.

“Will it put me in the poorhouse, you mean?” he suggested. “I presume likely some of my charitable friends are picking out my room there already. Well, no, it won’t do that--quite. They are going to be disappointed. I shall have something left.”

“Of course you will. Any sane person would know that, of course.”

“Humph! Would they? I don’t know why. But I shall--a little. At least so my lawyers seem to think.”

“Must you--must you really pay Elisha Cook all those thousands and thousands of dollars? Have you got to do it?”

He straightened.

“I’ll pay the last dollar,” he declared, sharply. “And it won’t be paid in notes dated fifty years after death or anything like that. It will be paid cash down, and just as soon as that cash can be raised. You can tell that to any prying busybody that asks you.”

She sighed again. “I can hardly believe you have lost that suit,” she said. “I--why, everybody took it for granted you would win. I don’t see how those Supreme Court folks could do such a thing.”

His lip curled. “I was a little surprised myself,” he admitted. “So were Cook and his gang, I rather guess.... And yet, maybe I ought to have expected it. Things have been going that way with me lately.... Well, is there anything else you want to say--or find out?”

She hesitated. “Why, yes, there is,” she said. “I hardly know how to say it, either. Foster, you’ll have to get rid of--to sell some of your property to pay this awful lot of money, won’t you? That is what they are sayin’ around town. Please don’t mind my askin’. It’s more my business than it sounds. I’ll tell you why in a minute.”

He crossed his knees. “I shall sell about everything before I get through, I suppose,” he replied.

“Not this house? You won’t have to give up this lovely house?”

“No. At least I don’t think so. I shall hang on to it till the last gun fires, anyhow.”

“Foster, you own the house I live in. If--this was what I really came to tell you--if you feel you ought to sell that house along with other things I don’t want you to let any thought of me stand in the way. Perhaps you wouldn’t anyway. I know you will never forgive me for--well, for that business of Esther’s marriage. I have thought about it seems to me every minute since it happened, and tried to look at it every way, and I can’t feel that I did wrong. In fact I am surer than ever that I did right. But you don’t feel so, I know. Well, that’s past and gone. Now about this house Millard and I live in, that I rent from you. If you have a good chance to sell for a good price, and you feel you ought to sell, then you must do it. I can find somewhere else to go just as well as not. Don’t you fret about that at all. Promise me you won’t.”

For the first time since she entered the room his manner changed. Hitherto he had been gruff, defiant, cynically aloof. Now, as she made this appeal, the frown faded from his brow. As she finished he turned his head away. She waited for him to speak, but he did not do so.

“You will sell if you think you ought to, won’t you, Foster?” she urged.

He cleared his throat. “There, there,” he muttered, hastily. “That’s all right, Reliance. I shan’t have to turn you out, I guess. Not yet a while, anyhow. Don’t be frightened about that.”

“I wasn’t frightened--not about myself at all. I just wanted to be sure.”

“Sshh! Sshh! Forget it.... What? Are you going? You don’t make long calls, do you? It has been a good while since you made any--up here.”

“It isn’t any farther from your house to mine than it is from mine to yours. You haven’t been droppin’ in on me very often. Oh, I don’t blame you. I suppose likely I should feel as you do if I were in your place. We are both of us pretty set in our ways.... Well, good-by.”

He rose. He crossed the room, turned back and spoke. What he said came as a tremendous surprise.

“What is the news from--over yonder?” he asked, gruffly.

“Over where? Why!... Do you mean from--from Esther?”

“Yes. I presume likely you get letters, don’t you?”

Reliance drew a long breath. “Why--why, yes, I do,” she stammered. “She writes me every week.”

“Humph! Well, if she can write she hasn’t starved to death yet, I take it. How is she getting along?”

“Why, very well, I should say. She lives in Paris and--and she seems to be very happy.”

“Um-hum. All right. Good-by.”

She turned to go. Then she hesitated.

“Foster,” she faltered, “I--”

“Well? What?”

She shook her head. “I was wonderin’ if I ought to say it,” she confessed. “I guess I will. Foster, in every letter she writes me she asks about you. She wants to know how you are and what you are doin’ and--and everything. And in every one of those letters she asks if I think you would care to have her write you. She wants to do it, Foster. Indeed and indeed she does! Shall I tell her you said she might?”

His answer was prompt.

“I never begged anybody to write me yet,” he growled, defiantly. “And I am not beginning now. You and she can understand that.”

“Yes--yes, of course I understand. I am awfully glad I came here this afternoon. I was almost afraid to, but I am glad I did. May I come again pretty soon?”

He looked at her intently. “Why do you want to come?” he asked. “I haven’t said that I have changed my mind about anything, have I?” Then, before she could reply, he added, brusquely, “Oh, well, come if you want to. I don’t know who would be liable to stop you. Far as I can see you generally do what you set out to.”

She was content with that, and more than content with his reference to Esther. That evening, after she had locked the post office, she wrote her niece a long letter. She told of the loss of the lawsuit. “Very likely you may have heard of it before you receive this, but I have just come from your uncle’s house and the sight of him, alone there, sitting in that library, with nobody to speak to, knowing as he does that everybody is talking about him, some of them crowing over him, facing the fact that he must give up about everything he’s got in the world--well, I never wanted to cry over a human creature more. I didn’t do it, of course. He would have pushed me outdoors if I had. I couldn’t scarcely tell him how sorry I felt. He is as proud as he ever was and he doesn’t ask sympathy of anybody. He needs it though. You know how sure he was of winning that suit. For Elisha Cook to beat him is the hardest blow that could have been struck. And not a word of complaint. The one thing he seemed to want me and everybody else to understand was that every dollar damages would be paid cash down.”

Then she wrote of his questions concerning Esther’s well being. “Write him, dearie,” she urged. “Write him and keep on writing, no matter whether he answers your letters or not. And, oh, if you can, try to comfort him. Make him see that you love him just as much as you ever