The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
“There's always something which can be done when a man is in trouble.
You are Morgan Bristol's son. I was in school with your father. He went
West and settled. Is he alive?”
“I think so.”
“How is it that you don't know?”
Mr. Converse settled himself into the tone and pose of the
cross-examiner.
“I have been a vagrant, hiding myself in the highways and byways of this
country, for a long time.”
“What happened to drive you out like that?”
“Right there, Mr. Converse, is where I must halt. It is a family matter.
I cannot go into it.”
“Look here, Thornton, you are in trouble. If you are in trouble, so is
your father. He has lost a boy! You can tell me now what it's all about,
or I'll drop my affairs and go and hunt up Morgan Bristol and ask him
about it. You may just as well save me all that time and trouble. You're
a lawyer, yourself--I know it.”
“Yes.”
“And you're a good one and know our code when it comes to secrets. I am
not asking you to expose a family skeleton--I'm demanding that you treat
me as your attorney and trust to my discretion. You are in trouble and
need a helper, and, by gad! you have got to take me into this thing.”
Thornton Bristol set his elbows on his knees and clutched his shaking
fingers into his hair.
“I have been meaning to keep it all to myself, sir,” he stammered.
“Quite likely. You have done mighty well at it, I should judge. But you
know that any man who acts as his own lawyer usually does a mighty poor
job. He lacks perspective.”
Bristol did not reply.
“I have been studying you a little since I have known you,” the lawyer
went on. “You are a very strange mixture, my boy. I much fear that in
some things in this life you are too quixotic in your views. We had a
case here in town--a man named Andrew Kilgour--”
“I have heard about that man, sir.”
“Thornton, from what glimpses I have had of your nature, I'm going to
tell you here and now that you are covering somebody else's fault. You
are no coward. You would face your own delinquency just as bravely as
you came here and faced me to-night. Now, what did your father do?”
“Speculated with trust funds of estates.”
“Old story, eh? Too bad, Morgan. I liked you when you were young.”
“But I want you to understand it,” cried the son. “It is hard for me to
talk about it, sir, but it isn't exactly the old story. My father was
too indulgent where I was concerned. He tried to do more for me than he
could afford. He didn't tell me the truth about his affairs--I supposed
he was a rich man. I always had everything that money could furnish.
When he found that I was interested in the law he sent me to schools at
home and abroad and ordered me to take my time and go to the bottom of
all.”
“Well, I reckon you did,” stated Converse. “If ever I saw a chap with
the true legal mind you have it, polished and pointed. You came into
this state and saw a solution for a problem which has blocked us for
twenty-five years. It's good law! And we will have a legislature that
will pass it. But when did you find out that your father had taken other
folks' money?”
“I came home and insisted on going to work in the office. Then he told
me. The settlement was due and had been called for. He was obliged to
tell me. And he tried to convince me that he had not taken the money for
my sake. He was willing to appear in my eyes a thief without excuse. But
I knew. I had selfishly accepted it all without thought--and only half
grateful. Young men are thoughtless, sir.”
“Your father seems to have been quixotic after his own fashion,
Thornton. I think I remember some of his traits when he was in school.
But as old Hard-Times Brewster used to say, 'We are all poor, queer
critters and some be queerer than the others!' So you were a little
queerer than your father, eh, and tried to square matters by a worse
piece of folly?”
“It may have been folly. Perhaps it was. But I did not stop to argue or
reason. That money had been spent on me. I accepted the blame. I said
nothing to my father. I wrote letters to the persons who had lost. I
told them that I had taken the money as my father's agent--without his
knowledge. I said I had deceived him as well as them. And then, so
that I might not perjure myself on the witness-stand or have the truth
gimleted out of me by lawyers, I put on rags and hid myself among the
thousands who trudge the highways and ride the trusses of freight-cars.
And no one has come to me and put heavy hand on my shoulder and said, 'I
want you!' But some one will come if I remain here. I am going to hide
myself again.”
“I say it has all been a piece of folly,” insisted Converse. “Dear
folly! Yes, almost noble folly! But it must end, my boy. I suppose
your father is back there toiling to repay those men from whom he took
money.”
“I suppose so, Mr. Converse. But he has not been disgraced in the eyes
of the public.”
“There's where your noble folly has made its mistake. You have doubled
his grief, Thornton. Just sit there a moment and ponder. You will
understand what I mean.”
“I have understood--I have pondered--but I have not had the courage to
go back. At least, they could not say to him that his son was in prison.
He has escaped that grief.”
“And has endured a heavier one, my boy. I'm afraid you're a poor
counselor in your own affairs.” He came across the room to Bristol and
slapped the bowed shoulder. “Now you have found a better one. I have
taken your case.”
The young man looked up into the kindly features of his adviser and was
only half convinced.
“Don't you realize how easy it will be for you to make money from
this time on? You don't? Well, let me tell you. As soon as you can be
admitted to the bar in this state I'm going to make you my law partner.
Hold on! I'm doing you no especial favor--I'm putting into my office a
man who had the legal acumen to devise a plan to break the unholy clutch
of plunderers who have had this state by the throat for a quarter of a
century. I'm simply grabbing you before somebody else gets you. I expect
to be governor of this state, and I want my law business looked after
by a man who is able to keep up the reputation of the firm. But first of
all, my boy, you and I are going back to your home. I think you'll find
me a fairly good lawyer in straightening out tangles. I'll know just how
to talk to those folks out there. And then you're coming back here with
me and face this state as yourself and help me fight the legislation
we want put through to enactment--and be damned to 'em!” He put his arm
about the young man's shoulders and drew him to his feet. “It has been
a hard day for you, my boy. There are some hard things ahead of you. You
must go to bed. The morning will bring comfort and good counsel.”
But when Bristol started toward the door Converse restrained him gently
and led him toward the stairs which led up from the big vestibule.
“You're home, my boy--right here--you're home here from this time on!
This is your other home until your father needs you more than I do.
I have been pretty lonely in this house for a good many years without
realizing just what was the matter with me.”
“After all, you have only my word for what I am and what I have done,”
expostulated Bristol.
“Oh no, I have the evidence of my eyes and ears and my own common
sense.”
Bristol pressed the hand stretched forth to him.
“I'm not going to talk to you any more to-night,” stated the host,
when they were on the upper landing. “It will all seem different in the
morning. It's going to be all right after this, Thornton. I'm sorry I
haven't a wife. A woman understands how to listen to troubles better
than a man. Is your mother alive?”
“No, Mr. Converse.”
“I might have known that. You would not have allowed a mother to
suffer--your folly would never have gone so far. You would have been
home long before this. Ah, well, my boy, some woman will know how to
comfort you some day for all you have endured. Good night!”
The young man knew that Zelie Dionne had been right in what she said; he
did not require the added opinion of the state's most eminent lawyer.
XXXII
THE DEBT
Colonel Symonds Dodd sat at his desk in the First National block and
clutched helplessly at the dragging ends of events. He failed to get
firm hold on anything and irefully informed Judge Warren that the whole
situation was a “damnation nightmare.”
“Well,” affirmed the judge, who had been pricked in his legal pride
by his master's tongue, “the Consolidated has eaten some pretty hearty
meals. It's no wonder it is having bad dreams right now.”
“You're squatting down like an old rooster in a dust-heap,” raged
the colonel, too angry to be choice in his language. “You, a
twenty-five-thousand-dollar lawyer, come in here to me and say that you
can't block the confiscatory scheme of a bounder--a nobody--a black-leg
stranger in this state!”
“I'll carry on the fight if you order me to do so,” said the corporation
lawyer. “That's my business. We can lobby in the next legislature. We
can fight the laws that Archer Converse's legislature is bound to
pass, for they're after us, Colonel Dodd. We can carry the thing to
the highest tribunal--and then we can fight the appraisals on every
water-plant in the state, but--”
“Well, but what?”
“One by one they'll pry loose every finger we have got hooked on to our
proposition. I have submitted that water-district plan to the acid test,
Colonel. It was my duty to do it. A lawyer must keep cool while his
bosses curse and disparage. I have the opinions of the law departments
of three leading colleges on the scheme. They all say that such a
plan, if properly safeguarded by constitutional law, will get by every
blockade we can erect. Now if you want to spend money I'll help you
spend all you care to appropriate,” concluded the judge, grimly.
“We'll fight,” was the dictum of the master.
“Then I take it that you have definitely decided to give up your
political control, Colonel! A certain amount of popularity is needed to
cinch any man in politics. You're going to be the most unpopular man in
this state if you start in to fight every town and city simply for the
purpose of piling up costs and clubbing them away from their own as long
as you have the muscle to do it.”
“I don't care about politics--politics has gone to the devil in this
state already. They'll get tired of chasing fox-fires through a swamp
following after such lah-de-dahs as Arch Converse, and will come back
and be good. I'll wait for 'em to come back. But in the mean time I'm
going to have the courts say whether our property can be confiscated.
I'll take a few pelts while they're trying it on!”
Judge Warren bowed stiffly and retired from the interview.
Day after day passed and Colonel Dodd was more than ever convinced that
the nightmare was continuing. Politicians agreed with him--all of them
with amazement, many of them with wrath.
Because the Honorable Archer Converse and the man who had called himself
Walker Farr had dropped completely out of sight, leaving no explanation
of any sort.
“They didn't even tell _me_,” confessed Daniel Breed, “and I'm their
chief fugler, and here's the November election right plunk on top of
us--and even the Apostle Paul would have to do at least four weeks of
spry campaigning in this state to be sure of being elected if a state
committee was getting ready to lay down on him like ours seems to be
doing. I'm jogafferbasted. I can't express myself no other way.”
Mr. Breed, in moments of especial anxiety and despondency when he
reviewed the situation, darkly hinted that the grand jury ought to look
into the thing. The Consolidated had done about everything up to date
except assassinate and abduct, he averred, and everybody knew Colonel