The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
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 stayed 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. 'H'm. 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 what is left 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 knelt 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 and 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 honour, 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. 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.”