A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill
Queerington's. At the end of the first week he realized that he had made
a mistake, and confided the fact to Noah Wicker.
Noah, having successfully worked through the law course at the
university, was now, by the persistent efforts of Miss Lady, occupying a
dark corner of Mr. Gooch's outer office. Here, with feet hooked under
a rung of a stool, and fingers grasping his pompadour, he doggedly
wrestled with the cases he heard in court, laboriously puzzling out
obscure points by the aid of the Statute and the Code.
Donald soon fell into the habit of discussing his approaching trial
with him, at such times as Mr. Gooch was absent. He found Noah's calm,
impersonal point of view a relief after the skeptical, disapproving
attitude of the older attorney.
During these days Donald spent as little time as possible at Angora
Heights. The family skeletons that had always lurked in the Sequin
closets, seemed to revel in their commodious new quarters. It is a
melancholy fact that the more closets one acquires, the more skeletons
there are to occupy them!
Mrs. Sequin's existence, if restless in town, was trebly so in the
country. Between catching trains and receiving and speeding guests,
engaging and dismissing servants, and agonizing over the non-essentials,
she dwelt in the vortex of a whirlwind that disturbed everything in its
wake.
Between her and Margery the gulf was widening. Having declared her
independence, the girl went further, and entered a training class in
the kindergarten, an act which caused a rupture that threatened to be
serious, until the head of the family for once asserted his authority,
and unexpectedly sided with his daughter.
Basil Sequin during these days had little time to bestow upon family
matters. He rose at six o'clock, drank three cups of black coffee,
devoured the newspapers, and was on the way to the office before his
gardener was out of bed. Before and after banking hours he had committee
meetings, and special appointments, snatching a few minutes for luncheon
at the nearest restaurant.
Donald had had but one chance to talk with him since his return, and
that was one evening when he was summoned to his den. He found him
pacing restlessly up and down the room, his hands thrust deep in his
pockets.
“You've decided to stand the trial, I hear?” Mr. Sequin asked abruptly.
“Yes, I had to get the matter cleared up. It is all so idiotic, my being
indicted! I don't anticipate any trouble.”
“You can't tell,” said Mr. Sequin, “but I didn't send for you to discuss
the trial. It's business I want to talk about. Do you know how much
stock you own in the People's Bank?”
“No, I can't say that I do exactly.”
“Well, it's time you were finding out. How would you like to take charge
of your own affairs from now on?”
Donald looked at him in undisguised surprise. Heretofore the only time
that money matters had been discussed between them was when he had been
guilty of some extra extravagance. This sudden change of tactics on the
part of his brother-in-law was disconcerting.
“Why, I shouldn't like it at all, unless it would relieve you,” he said.
“It isn't that. One bother more or less doesn't matter. The point is,
I want you to act for yourself. The result of this trial is by no means
certain; you may need considerable ready money before you get through
with it. Why don't you sell your bank stock, and make some better paying
investments on your own hook?”
“Why, I thought the bank stock--” began Donald, but Mr. Sequin wheeled
upon him impatiently.
“Do you want my advice or not?”
“Of course I want it.”
“Very well. Listen to me. Almost every dollar you have is tied up in the
People's Bank. Go down to-morrow morning to a broker, Gilson's the best
man, tell him that you must have a big sum of money at once. In order to
get it you are willing to sacrifice every share of your People's stock.
Tell him not to put it on the market, but to sell it in small blocks
to different people, and not to stick at the price. Make him understand
that it has to do with your trial, and caution him particularly not to
let me know of the transaction.”
“But I don't understand,” said Donald, watching with troubled eyes
the stooped figure that continued to pace up and down the room like an
animal in a cage.
“I didn't offer to explain. I offered to advise,” Mr. Sequin snarled.
“There are complications that couldn't be made clear to you in a month!
I'll ask you not to refer to this matter again to me or to any one else.
I have a lot of papers to look over now, so I'll say good night.”
Donald rose from where he had been sitting at the table.
“Of course you know what is best,” he said irresolutely. “And I know
I've got no business shifting my responsibilities on you. By the way,
can't I help you with some of this stuff? You look about done for
to-night.”
“Done for?” Mr. Sequin smiled ironically, and ran his fingers through
his scant gray hair. “Why, Don, I'd change places with any old corpse
to-night, just for a chance to lie down in a quiet corner and stop
thinking! No, there's nothing you can do. There's nothing anybody can
do. Good night; close the door as you go out, and leave word downstairs
if I am called over the 'phone to say I am not here.”
All things considered it is small wonder that Donald passed as little
time as possible at Angora Heights. The time he was not occupied with
his trial hung heavy on his hands. Distrustful of his friends, sensitive
to criticism, and dreading the humiliating ordeal to come, he spent one
of the most wretched months of his life. He tried to write, but fancy
fled before the glare of the actual. The only place where he found
temporary peace was under the roof of the grim-looking house in College
Street.
From the first Doctor Queerington had championed his cause, and urged
upon him his hospitality. To be sure the Doctor's hospitality usually
began and ended with his welcome, after which he would take himself off
to the study, and leave his guest to the care of the family.
At such times Miss Lady invariably went with him. In fact, Donald had
never seen her alone since the night of his arrival, and the very
fact that she seldom remained down-stairs in the evenings, made his
conscience lighter about lingering in her vicinity.
Mrs. Ivy was the first to comment on his frequent visits. She confided
to Mrs. Sequin that she was afraid he was getting interested in Connie
Queerington, and that somebody ought to tell him that Connie had been in
love with dear Gerald for years and years. An impartial observer might
have expressed a less confident opinion concerning the object of Miss
Connie's affections.
Noah Wicker, for instance, while not exactly an impartial observer, had
arrived at quite a different conclusion.
“You watch the way she looks at Don,” he said darkly to Miss Lady on one
occasion.
Miss Lady laughed, “Oh! Connie's like the Last Duchess, she likes
whate'er she looks on, and her looks go everywhere.”
“Yes, but this is different. Has she ever said anything to you about
him?”
“Mercy, yes, Connie talks to be about all the boys.”
“Does she talk about me?” Noah's eyes were as wistful as a dog's.
For a second Miss Lady hesitated, then she compromised with truth and
said, “yes.” She did not add that Connie was particularly voluble on the
subject of his hair, and the creak of his boots and his apparent genius
for ubiquity.
“Do you know what I'd do if I were you, Noah?” she said. “I'd have me a
new suit of clothes made.”
“Why, these are new!”
“Yes, I know, but they don't fit. And get some shoes that don't creak,
and--and you won't mind my telling you, Noah? Pompadours went out of
style six years ago.”
Noah gloomily shook his head. “It's not my clothes. It's not clothes
that make Don Morley. By the way, aren't you two friends, any more?”
Miss Lady faced the question unflinchingly. “Yes, we are friends. Is he
going to win out?”
“With Miss Connie?”
“No, you foolish boy. In his trial.”
“I don't know.”
“What will happen if he loses?”
“The case will be appealed.”
“And if he loses in the Court of Appeals?”
“It's up to Gooch to see that he doesn't lose. I only wish I was as
certain of a few other things as I am of Donald Morley's innocence!”
One afternoon, a few days before the trial, Donald after oscillating
between the hotel and his club and finding each equally intolerable,
jumped on the car and went out to the Queeringtons. It was a cold, raw
day, with a fine mist filling the air, and even the dull formality of
the drab parlor seemed a relief from the gloom without.
Miss Lady started up from the piano as he entered, but Connie pulled her
back:
“You shan't run off and leave us, shall she, Cousin Don? She was just
going to play for Mr. Wicker to sing. Did you know he could sing?”
“Oh, yes. Wick's the Original Warbler. Do you remember our serenades on
the Cane Run Road, Wick?”
“Yes,” said Noah glumly.
“I forgot that you and Mr. Wicker used to know each other,” Connie said
curiously. “Why the Cane Run Road runs by Thornwood, doesn't it?”
“Yes,” said Don calmly, seizing the conversation and shoving it out
of shoal water. “Go ahead, Wick, and sing something; we'll join in the
chorus.”
But when the time for the chorus came Donald had forgotten his promise.
He was leaning back in a corner of the sofa, his hand shading his eyes,
watching Miss Lady, and wondering what trick of fate had driven her to
marry John Jay Queerington. There was no man in the world whose moral
worth he admired more, but Miss Lady seemed as out of place in his life
as a darting, quivering humming-bird in a museum of natural history. He
noticed the faint shadows about her eyes, and the wistful droop of her
lips. If he could only set her free! A mad desire seized him to see her
once more joyously on the wing with all her old buoyancy and daring. And
yet she had walked open eyed into her cage, and he had yet to see the
tiniest flutter of her wings against the bars.
On that first night of his home-coming surely he had read a welcome in
her eyes! But never since by word or gesture had he reason to think that
she remembered. She was gracious and elusive, and she talked to him as
she talked to Decker and Gerald Ivy, only she looked at them when she
talked, and she never even looked at him.
Yet she _had_ cared! He had only to recall the flashing revelation of
her eyes that night in the garden to know for one transcendent moment,
at least, she was his. It was the look that had sustained his faith in
her through all those weary months of silence, making him cling to the
belief, until he heard the truth from her own lips, that she had failed
to get his letter. It was the remembrance of that look and what it had
promised that rushed upon him now as he watched her.
All the reckless impulse of his boyhood, the long years of unrestraint,
surged over him, urging him on to wake in her some answer to his fierce,
insistent demand. She should remember the way he had loved her, she
should know the way he loved her now. If there was any heart left in her
she must respond in some way to his imperative need.
But her eyes kept steadily on the key-board, and her fingers
unfalteringly followed the notes. Could he have known how the tears
burned under her lashes, and how cold her fingers were on the keys;
could he have guessed how she sat there under his steady gaze, with
tense muscles and quivering nerves, calculating the minutes that must
elapse before Noah's interminable verses would end, and she could
escape, he might have had compassion on her.
“Sing, Cousin Don!” demanded Connie; “you are leaving it all to Mr.
Wicker and me, while you sit there looking exactly as if you had lost
your last friend.”