The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
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 INCORRUPTIBLE--destined to live in
dictionaries for ever! 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 neighbouring 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 reverie.
At this stage--or at about this stage--a saying like this was dropped
at bedtime--with a sigh, usually--by the head of each of the nineteen
principal households:
“Ah, what COULD have been the remark that Goodson made?”
And straightway--with a shudder--came this, from the man's wife:
“Oh, DON'T! What horrible thing are you mulling in your mind? Put it
away from you, for God's sake!”
But that question was wrung from those men again the next night--and got
the same retort. But weaker.
And the third night the men uttered the question yet again--with
anguish, and absently. This time--and the following night--the wives
fidgeted feebly, and tried to say something. But didn't.
And the night after that they found their tongues and
responded--longingly:
“Oh, if we COULD only guess!”
Halliday's comments grew daily more and more sparklingly disagreeable
and disparaging. He went diligently about, laughing at the town,
individually and in mass. But his laugh was the only one left in the
village: it fell upon a hollow and mournful vacancy and emptiness. Not
even a smile was findable anywhere. Halliday carried a cigar-box around
on a tripod, playing that it was a camera, and halted all passers and
aimed the thing and said “Ready!--now look pleasant, please,” but
not even this capital joke could surprise the dreary faces into any
softening.
So three weeks passed--one week was left. It was Saturday evening after
supper. Instead of the aforetime Saturday-evening flutter and bustle and
shopping and larking, the streets were empty and desolate. Richards and
his old wife sat apart in their little parlour--miserable and thinking.
This was become their evening habit now: the life-long habit which had
preceded it, of reading, knitting, and contented chat, or receiving or
paying neighbourly calls, was dead and gone and forgotten, ages ago--two
or three weeks ago; nobody talked now, nobody read, nobody visited--the
whole village sat at home, sighing, worrying, silent. Trying to guess
out that remark.
The postman left a letter. Richards glanced listlessly at the
superscription and the post-mark--unfamiliar, both--and tossed the
letter on the table and resumed his might-have-beens and his hopeless
dull miseries where he had left them off. Two or three hours later
his wife got wearily up and was going away to bed without a
good-night--custom now--but she stopped near the letter and eyed it
awhile with a dead interest, then broke it open, and began to skim it
over. Richards, sitting there with his chair tilted back against the
wall and his chin between his knees, heard something fall. It was his
wife. He sprang to her side, but she cried out:
“Leave me alone, I am too happy. Read the letter--read it!”
He did. He devoured it, his brain reeling. The letter was from a distant
State, and it said:
“I am a stranger to you, but no matter: I have something to tell. I
have just arrived home from Mexico, and learned about that episode. Of
course you do not know who made that remark, but I know, and I am the
only person living who does know. It was GOODSON. I knew him well, many
years ago. I passed through your village that very night, and was his
guest till the midnight train came along. I overheard him make that
remark to the stranger in the dark--it was in Hale Alley. He and I
talked of it the rest of the way home, and while smoking in his house.
He mentioned many of your villagers in the course of his talk--most of
them in a very uncomplimentary way, but two or three favourably: among
these latter yourself. I say 'favourably'--nothing stronger. I remember
his saying he did not actually LIKE any person in the town--not one; but
that you--I THINK he said you--am almost sure--had done him a very great
service once, possibly without knowing the full value of it, and he
wished he had a fortune, he would leave it to you when he died, and a
curse apiece for the rest of the citizens. Now, then, if it was you that
did him that service, you are his legitimate heir, and entitled to the
sack of gold. I know that I can trust to your honour and honesty, for in
a citizen of Hadleyburg these virtues are an unfailing inheritance, and
so I am going to reveal to you the remark, well satisfied that if you
are not the right man you will seek and find the right one and see that
poor Goodson's debt of gratitude for the service referred to is paid.
This is the remark 'YOU ARE FAR FROM BEING A BAD MAN: GO, AND REFORM.'
“HOWARD L. STEPHENSON.”
“Oh, Edward, the money is ours, and I am so grateful, OH, so
grateful,--kiss me, dear, it's for ever since we kissed--and we needed
it so--the money--and now you are free of Pinkerton and his bank, and
nobody's slave any more; it seems to me I could fly for joy.”
It was a happy half-hour that the couple spent there on the settee
caressing each other; it was the old days come again--days that had
begun with their courtship and lasted without a break till the stranger
brought the deadly money. By-and-by the wife said:
“Oh, Edward, how lucky it was you did him that grand service, poor
Goodson! I never liked him, but I love him now. And it was fine and
beautiful of you never to mention it or brag about it.” Then, with a
touch of reproach, “But you ought to have told ME, Edward, you ought to
have told your wife, you know.”
“Well, I--er--well, Mary, you see--”
“Now stop hemming and hawing, and tell me about it, Edward. I always
loved you, and now I'm proud of you. Everybody believes there was
only one good generous soul in this village, and now it turns out that
you--Edward, why don't you tell me?”
“Well--er--er--Why, Mary, I can't!”
“You CAN'T? WHY can't you?”
“You see, he--well, he--he made me promise I wouldn't.”
The wife looked him over, and said, very slowly:
“Made--you--promise? Edward, what do you tell me that for?”
“Mary, do you think I would lie?”
She was troubled and silent for a moment, then she laid her hand within
his and said:
“No... no. We have wandered far enough from our bearings--God spare us
that! In all your life you have never uttered a lie. But now--now that
the foundations of things seem to be crumbling from under us, we--we--”
She lost her voice for a moment, then said, brokenly, “Lead us not into
temptation... I think you made the promise, Edward. Let it rest so. Let
us keep away from that ground. Now--that is all gone by; let us be happy
again; it is no time for clouds.”
Edward found it something of an effort to comply, for his mind kept
wandering--trying to remember what the service was that he had done
Goodson.
The couple lay awake the most of the night, Mary happy and busy, Edward
busy, but not so happy. Mary was planning what she would do with the
money. Edward was trying to recall that service. At first his conscience
was sore on account of the lie he had told Mary--if it was a lie. After
much reflection--suppose it WAS a lie? What then? Was it such a great
matter? Aren't we always ACTING lies? Then why not tell them? Look at
Mary--look what she had done. While he was hurrying off on his honest