Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches Page 25

  “But stop—stop—don’t leave me here alone with it, Edward!”

  But he was gone. For only a little while, however. Not far from his own house he met the editor-proprietor of the paper, and gave him the document, and said, “Here is a good thing for you, Cox—put it in.”

  “It may be too late, Mr. Richards, but I’ll see.”

  At home again he and his wife sat down to talk the charming mystery over; they were in no condition for sleep. The first question was, Who could the citizen have been who gave the stranger the twenty dollars? It seemed a simple one; both answered it in the same breath—

  “Barclay Goodson.”

  “Yes,” said Richards, “he could have done it, and it would have been like him, but there’s not another in the town.”

  “Everybody will grant that, Edward—grant it privately, anyway. For six months, now, the village has been its own proper self once more—honest, narrow, self-righteous, and stingy.”

  “It is what he always called it, to the day of his death—said it right out publicly, too.”

  “Yes, and he was hated for it.”

  “Oh, of course; but he didn’t care. I reckon he was the best-hated man among us, except the Reverend Burgess.”

  “Well, Burgess deserves it—he will never get another congregation here. Mean as the town is, it knows how to estimate him. Edward, doesn’t it seem odd that the stranger should appoint Burgess to deliver the money?”

  “Well, yes—it does. That is—that is—”

  “Why so much that-is-ing? Would you select him?”

  “Mary, maybe the stranger knows him better than this village does.”

  “Much that would help Burgess!”

  The husband seemed perplexed for an answer; the wife kept a steady eye upon him, and waited. Finally Richards said, with the hesitancy of one who is making a statement which is likely to encounter doubt,

  “Mary, Burgess is not a bad man.”

  His wife was certainly surprised.

  “Nonsense!” she exclaimed.

  “He is not a bad man. I know. The whole of his unpopularity had its foundation in that one thing—the thing that made so much noise.”

  “That ‘one thing,’ indeed! As if that ‘one thing’ wasn’t enough, all by itself.”

  “Plenty. Plenty. Only he wasn’t guilty of it.”

  “How you talk! Not guilty of it! Everybody knows he was guilty.”

  “Mary, I give you my word—he was innocent.”

  “I can’t believe it, and I don’t. How do you know?”

  “It is a confession. I am ashamed, but I will make it. I was the only man who knew he was innocent. I could have saved him, and—and—well, you know how the town was wrought up—I hadn’t the pluck to do it. It would have turned everybody against me. I felt mean, ever so mean; but I didn’t dare; I hadn’t the manliness to face that.”

  Mary looked troubled, and for a while was silent. Then she said, stammeringly:

  “I—I don’t think it would have done for you to—to—One mustn’t—er—public opinion—one has to be so careful—so—” It was a difficult road, and she got mired; but after a little she got started again. “It was a great pity, but—Why, we couldn’t afford it, Edward—we couldn’t indeed. Oh, I wouldn’t have had you do it for anything!”

  “It would have lost us the good-will of so many people, Mary; and then—and then—”

  “What troubles me now is, what he thinks of us, Edward.”

  “He? He doesn’t suspect that I could have saved him.”

  “Oh,” exclaimed the wife, in a tone of relief, “I am glad of that. As long as he doesn’t know that you could have saved him, he—he—well, that makes it a great deal better. Why, I might have known he didn’t know, because he is always trying to be friendly with us, as little encouragement as we give him. More than once people have twitted me with it. There’s the Wilsons, and the Wilcoxes, and the Harknesses, they take a mean pleasure in saying, ‘Your friend Burgess,’ because they know it pesters me. I wish he wouldn’t persist in liking us so; I can’t think why he keeps it up.”

  “I can explain it. It’s another confession. When the thing was new and hot, and the town made a plan to ride him on a rail, my conscience hurt me so that I couldn’t stand it, and I went privately and gave him notice, and he got out of the town and staid out till it was safe to come back.”

  “Edward! If the town had found it out—”

  “Don’t! It scares me yet, to think of it. I repented of it the minute it was done; and I was even afraid to tell you, lest your face might betray it to somebody. I didn’t sleep any that night, for worrying. But after a few days I saw that no one was going to suspect me, and after that I got to feeling glad I did it. And I feel glad yet, Mary—glad through and through.”

  “So do I, now, for it would have been a dreadful way to treat him. Yes, I’m glad; for really you did owe him that, you know. But, Edward, suppose it should come out yet, some day!”

  “It won’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because everybody thinks it was Goodson.”

  “Of course they would!”

  “Certainly. And of course he didn’t care. They persuaded poor old Sawlsberry to go and charge it on him, and he went blustering over there and did it. Goodson looked him over, like as if he was hunting for a place on him that he could despise the most, then he says, ‘So you are the Committee of Inquiry, are you?’ Sawlsberry said that was about what he was. ‘Hm. Do they require particulars, or do you reckon a kind of a general answer will do?’ ‘If they require particulars, I will come back, Mr. Goodson; I will take the general answer first.’ ‘Very well, then, tell them to go to hell—I reckon that’s general enough. And I’ll give you some advice, Sawlsberry: when you come back for the particulars, fetch a basket to carry the relics of yourself home in.’ ”

  “Just like Goodson; it’s got all the marks. He had only one vanity; he thought he could give advice better than any other person.”

  “It settled the business, and saved us, Mary. The subject was dropped.”

  “Bless you, I’m not doubting that.”

  Then they took up the gold-sack mystery again, with strong interest. Soon the conversation began to suffer breaks—interruptions caused by absorbed thinkings. The breaks grew more and more frequent. At last Richards lost himself wholly in thought. He sat long, gazing vacantly at the floor, and by-and-by he began to punctuate his thoughts with little nervous movements of his hands that seemed to indicate vexation. Meantime his wife too had relapsed into a thoughtful silence, and her movements were beginning to show a troubled discomfort. Finally Richards got up and strode aimlessly about the room, ploughing his hands through his hair, much as a somnambulist might do who was having a bad dream. Then he seemed to arrive at a definite purpose; and without a word he put on his hat and passed quickly out of the house. His wife sat brooding, with a drawn face, and did not seem to be aware that she was alone. Now and then she murmured, “Lead us not into t.... but—but—we are so poor, so poor! ... Lead us not into.... Ah, who would be hurt by it?—and no one would ever know.... Lead us....” The voice died out in mumblings. After a little she glanced up and muttered in a half-frightened, half-glad way—

  “He is gone! But, oh dear, he may be too late—too late.... Maybe not—maybe there is still time.” She rose and stood thinking, nervously clasping and unclasping her hands. A slight shudder shook her frame, and she said, out of a dry throat, “God forgive me—it’s awful to think such things—but.... Lord, how we are made—how strangely we are made!”

  She turned the light low, and slipped stealthily over and kneeled down by the sack and felt of its ridgy sides with her hands, and fondled them lovingly; and there was a gloating light in her poor old eyes. She fell into fits of absence; and came half out of them at times to mutter, “If we had only waited!—oh, if we had only waited a little, and not been in such a hurry!”

  Meantime Cox had gone home from his office an
d told his wife all about the strange thing that had happened, and they had talked it over eagerly, and guessed that the late Goodson was the only man in the town who could have helped a suffering stranger with so noble a sum as twenty dollars. Then there was a pause, and the two became thoughtful and silent. And by-and-by nervous and fidgety. At last the wife said, as if to herself,

  “Nobody knows this secret but the Richardses ... and us ... nobody.”

  The husband came out of his thinkings with a slight start, and gazed wistfully at his wife, whose face was become very pale; then he hesitatingly rose, and glanced furtively at his hat, then at his wife—a sort of mute inquiry. Mrs. Cox swallowed once or twice, with her hand at her throat, then in place of speech she nodded her head. In a moment she was alone, and mumbling to herself.

  And now Richards and Cox were hurrying through the deserted streets, from opposite directions. They met, panting, at the foot of the printing-office stairs; by the night-light there they read each other’s face. Cox whispered,

  “Nobody knows about this but us?”

  The whispered answer was,

  “Not a soul—on honor, not a soul!”

  “If it isn’t too late to—”

  The men were starting up stairs; at this moment they were overtaken by a boy, and Cox asked,

  “Is that you, Johnny?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You needn’t ship the early mail—nor any mail; wait till I tell you.”

  “It’s already gone, sir.”

  “Gone?” It had the sound of an unspeakable disappointment in it.

  “Yes, sir. Time-table for Brixton and all the towns beyond changed to-day, sir—had to get the papers in twenty minutes earlier than common. I had to rush; if I had been two minutes later—”

  The men turned and walked slowly away, not waiting to hear the rest. Neither of them spoke during ten minutes; then Cox said, in a vexed tone,

  “What possessed you to be in such a hurry, I can’t make out.”

  The answer was humble enough:

  “I see it now, but somehow I never thought, you know, until it was too late. But the next time—”

  “Next time be hanged! It won’t come in a thousand years.”

  Then the friends separated without a good-night, and dragged themselves home with the gait of mortally stricken men. At their homes their wives sprang up with an eager “Well?”—then saw the answer with their eyes and sank down sorrowing, without waiting for it to come in words. In both houses a discussion followed of a heated sort—a new thing; there had been discussions before, but not heated ones, not ungentle ones. The discussions to-night were a sort of seeming plagiarisms of each other. Mrs. Richards said,

  “If you had only waited, Edward—if you had only stopped to think; but no, you must run straight to the printing-office and spread it all over the world.”

  “It said publish it.”

  “That is nothing; it also said do it privately, if you liked. There, now—is that true, or not?”

  “Why, yes—yes, it is true; but when I thought what a stir it would make, and what a compliment it was to Hadleyburg that a stranger should trust it so—”

  “Oh, certainly, I know all that; but if you had only stopped to think, you would have seen that you couldn’t find the right man, because he is in his grave, and hasn’t left chick nor child nor relation behind him; and as long as the money went to somebody that awfully needed it, and nobody would be hurt by it, and—and—”

  She broke down, crying. Her husband tried to think of some comforting thing to say, and presently came out with this:

  “But after all, Mary, it must be for the best—it must be; we know that. And we must remember that it was so ordered—”

  “Ordered! Oh, everything’s ordered, when a person has to find some way out when he has been stupid. Just the same, it was ordered that the money should come to us in this special way, and it was you that must take it on yourself to go meddling with the designs of Providence—and who gave you the right. It was wicked, that is what it was—just blasphemous presumption, and no more becoming to a meek and humble professor of—”

  “But, Mary, you know how we have been trained all our lives long, like the whole village, till it is absolutely second nature to us to stop not a single moment to think when there’s an honest thing to be done—”

  “Oh, I know it, I know it—it’s been one everlasting training and training and training in honesty—honesty shielded, from the very cradle, against every possible temptation, and so it’s artificial honesty, and weak as water when temptation comes, as we have seen this night. God knows I never had shade nor shadow of a doubt of my petrified and indestructible honesty until now—and now, under the very first big and real temptation, I—Edward, it is my belief that this town’s honesty is as rotten as mine is; as rotten as yours is. It is a mean town, a hard, stingy town, and hasn’t a virtue in the world but this honesty it is so celebrated for and so conceited about; and so help me, I do believe that if ever the day comes that its honesty falls under great temptation, its grand reputation will go to ruin like a house of cards. There, now, I’ve made confession, and I feel better; I am a humbug, and I’ve been one all my life, without knowing it. Let no man call me honest again—I will not have it.”

  “I—Well, Mary, I feel a good deal as you do; I certainly do. It seems strange, too, so strange. I never could have believed it—never.”

  A long silence followed; both were sunk in thought. At last the wife looked up and said,

  “I know what you are thinking, Edward.”

  Richards had the embarrassed look of a person who is caught.

  “I am ashamed to confess it, Mary, but—”

  “It’s no matter, Edward, I was thinking the same question myself.”

  “I hope so. State it.”

  “You were thinking, if a body could only guess out what the remark was that Goodson made to the stranger.”

  “It’s perfectly true. I feel guilty and ashamed. And you?”

  “I’m past it. Let us make a pallet here; we’ve got to stand watch till the bank vault opens in the morning and admits the sack.... Oh, dear, oh, dear—if we hadn’t made the mistake!”

  The pallet was made, and Mary said:

  “The open sesame—what could it have been? I do wonder what that remark could have been? But come; we will get to bed now.”

  “And sleep?”

  “No; think.”

  “Yes, think.”

  By this time the Coxes too had completed their spat and their reconciliation, and were turning in—to think, to think, and toss, and fret, and worry over what the remark could possibly have been which Goodson made to the stranded derelict: that golden remark; that remark worth forty thousand dollars, cash.

  The reason that the village telegraph-office was open later than usual that night was this: The foreman of Cox’s paper was the local representative of the Associated Press. One might say its honorary representative, for it wasn’t four times a year that he could furnish thirty words that would be accepted. But this time it was different. His despatch stating what he had caught got an instant answer:

  “Send the whole thing-all the details—twelve hundred words. ”

  A colossal order! The foreman filled the bill; and he was the proudest man in the State. By breakfast-time the next morning the name of Hadleyburg the Incorruptible was on every lip in America, from Montreal to the Gulf, from the glaciers of Alaska to the orange-groves of Florida; and millions and millions of people were discussing the stranger and his money-sack, and wondering if the right man would be found, and hoping some more news about the matter would come soon—right away.

  II

  Hadleyburg village woke up world-celebrated-astonished-happy—vain. Vain beyond imagination. Its nineteen principal citizens and their wives went about shaking hands with each other, and beaming, and smiling, and congratulating, and saying this thing adds a new word to the dictionary—Hadleyburg, synonym for in
corruptible—destined to live in dictionaries forever! And the minor and unimportant citizens and their wives went around acting in much the same way. Everybody ran to the bank to see the gold-sack; and before noon grieved and envious crowds began to flock in from Brixton and all neighboring towns; and that afternoon and next day reporters began to arrive from everywhere to verify the sack and its history and write the whole thing up anew, and make dashing free-hand pictures of the sack, and of Richards’s house, and the bank, and the Presbyterian church, and the Baptist church, and the public square, and the town-hall where the test would be applied and the money delivered; and damnable portraits of the Richardses, and Pinkerton the banker, and Cox, and the foreman, and Reverend Burgess, and the postmaster—and even of Jack Halliday, who was the loafing, good-natured, no-account, irreverent fisherman, hunter, boys’ friend, stray-dogs’ friend, typical “Sam Lawson” of the town. The little mean, smirking, oily Pinkerton showed the sack to all comers, and rubbed his sleek palms together pleasantly, and enlarged upon the town’s fine old reputation for honesty and upon this wonderful endorsement of it, and hoped and believed that the example would now spread far and wide over the American world, and be epoch-making in the matter of moral regeneration. And so on, and so on.

  By the end of a week things had quieted down again; the wild intoxication of pride and joy had sobered to a soft, sweet, silent delight—a sort of deep, nameless, unutterable content. All faces bore a look of peaceful, holy happiness.

  Then a change came. It was a gradual change: so gradual that its beginnings were hardly noticed; maybe were not noticed at all, except by Jack Halliday, who always noticed everything; and always made fun of it, too, no matter what it was. He began to throw out chaffing remarks about people not looking quite so happy as they did a day or two ago; and next he claimed that the new aspect was deepening to positive sadness; next, that it was taking on a sick look; and finally he said that everybody was become so moody, thoughtful, and absent-minded that he could rob the meanest man in town of a cent out of the bottom of his breeches pocket and not disturb his revery.