Delphi complete works of.., p.209
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells, page 209
XIV.
HELEN hurried home, and ran up to her room. She had thought she wanted to hide; but now she found that she wanted to walk, to run, to fly, to get into the open air again, to escape from herself some-how. She was frantic with the nervous access of which, now that Lord Rainford was gone, she had fallen the prey. She was pulling on her gloves, as she rushed down-stairs, and she almost ran over the servant, who was coming up with a card in her hand. She stopped short, and the girl gave her the card.
“For me!” she cried in wild exasperation. “I can’t see anybody! Say that I’m going out. I can’t see any one!”
A little old gentleman, with his overcoat on, and his hat in his hand, who must have overheard her, came out of the reception-room, and stood between the foot of the stairs and the street-door.
“I wish to see you, Miss Harkness, on very important business.”
“I can’t see you now. I can’t see any one! I don’t know you, sir! Why do you come to me?” she demanded indignantly, and quivering with impatience.
“My name is Everton. I bought your father’s house when it was sold last fall at auction, and I came to see you in regard to some circumstances connected with that purchase.”
“I don’t know anything about the circumstances,” cried Helen. “You must wait till Captain Butler gets home.”
“I was sure,” said Mr. Everton, with insinuation that arrested her in spite of herself, “that you knew nothing of the circumstances, and from what I knew of your father, I felt certain that his daughter would like to know of them.”
“Please tell me what you mean,” said Helen, and with a glance at the gaping servant-girl she pushed open the reception-room door. Mr. Everton politely refused to enter first, and he softly closed the door when they were both within.
“It is simply this, Miss Harkness,” said Mr. Everton, who had a small, hard neatness of speech, curiously corresponding to his small, hard neatness of person. “I have reason to believe — in fact, I have evidence — that I was the victim of a fraud on the part of the auctioneer; and that I was induced to outbid, by five or six thousand dollars, bids that were cried by the auctioneer, but that had never been made at all.”
“I don’t understand,” faltered Helen.
Mr. Everton explained, but she shook her head.
“This is all a mystery to me. Why don’t you wait till Captain Butler returns? Why do you come to me?” She suddenly added: “Or, no! I am glad you came to me. I can’t suffer any doubt to rest in your mind for an instant: if you have been wronged, that’s quite enough. Thank you for coming.” She rose with a splendour which seemed to increase her stature, and diminish Mr. Everton’s. “I was just going out, and if you will come with me I will go at once to Mr. Hibbard’s office with you. He has charge of my affairs in Captain Butler’s absence. If there has been any mistake, I am sure that he will have it corrected immediately.”
She started out with Mr. Everton at her side, and swept haughtily on for several squares. Then she found herself trembling. “I wish you would call a carriage, please,” she said faintly.
When they arrived at Mr. Hibbard’s office, Mr. Everton allowed her to pay for the carriage he had shared with her. She could not quell her excitement when she entered the lawyer’s private room with him. “Mr. Hibbard,” she began, in a key which she knew sounded hysterical, and which she despised, but was helpless to control, “Mr. Everton thinks that he was cheated in the purchase of our house; and I wish you to hear his story, please, and if it is so, I wish him to be righted, no matter what it costs.”
“Sit down,” said the lawyer. He placed a chair for Helen, and allowed Mr. Everton to find one for himself, and then waited for him to begin. Mr. Everton was not embarrassed. He behaved like a man secure of his right, and told his story over again, straight-forwardly and clearly. Mr. Hibbard smiled so lightly and carelessly at the end, that Helen felt at once that it must be all rubbish, and that it would be perfectly easy for him to undeceive Mr. Everton.
“Why didn’t you come to me directly with this story, Mr. Everton?” asked the lawyer.
“I don’t know, Mr. Hibbard,” returned the old man keenly, “that I’m obliged to account to you for my motives. I don’t know but that I should have preferred to communicate with you through my lawyer, if it had not been for this young lady, who felt sure that you would see justice done.”
The lawyer smiled at an assertion which was evidently not made to weigh with him. “You ought to know by this time, Mr. Everton, that justice is an affair of the Courts, and that lawyers look after their clients’ interests.”
“I don’t want you to look after mine at the expense of justice, Mr. Hibbard,” said Helen nervously, pulling herself back to the point from which she had lapsed at Mr. Hibbard’s smile.
“We will try to do what is right,” said the lawyer, in a way that made her feel rather silly. “But we won’t do anything rashly because two romantic young people have decided that it is right without consulting any one else.”
If Mr. Hibbard expected Mr. Everton to enjoy this joke he was mistaken. “I am quite willing,” said the old gentleman grimly, “to leave the affair to the Courts.”
“If I hadn’t your word for that, Mr. Everton,” returned the lawyer briskly, “I should doubt your willingness to do anything of the kind.”
“Why?”
“Because you know as well as I do, that you have no case, that all your suspicions and impressions, and conjectures and hearsay, wouldn’t amount to that in Court.” The lawyer snapped his fingers. “You know very well that you went to Miss Harkness to fortify yourself at the expense of the weakness you hoped to find in her, and that you have done an irregular and ungentlemanly thing in annoying her with this matter. I am sorry to say it to so old a man as you. Did you expect to extort money from her? Probably you were surprised that she chose to consult me at all. — Miss Harkness, I advise you to go home, and think no more about this matter. There’s nothing of it!”
The lawyer rose, as if to end the interview, but Mr. Everton remained seated, looking through the papers of a long pocket-book he had taken from his coat, and unfolded upon his knee, and Helen remained seated too, fascinated by the old man’s quiet self-possession.
“I have something here to show you,” he said tranquilly, offering the lawyer the paper which he had found. “And I wish you to understand,” he added, “that I am not here to be instructed as to the conduct of a gentleman, or to account for my conduct in any way. I prefer that you should not attempt to account for my possession of this paper; and if you ask me any questions in regard to it, I shall not answer them. It is sufficient for you to consider whether it is worth while for you to go into Court against it. I was willing, and am still so, to spare the scandal attending such an affair in Court, but I am determined to have the sum out of which I have been defrauded.”
The lawyer was reading the paper without apparent attention to what Mr. Everton was saying, but when he had gone through the paper again, he turned to Helen, and said reluctantly, “Miss Harkness, it’s my duty to tell you what this paper is: it’s a confession from the auctioneer that he did invent a series of bids by which he ran the price of the house up from thirty to thirty-five thousand dollars. I haven’t the slightest idea that the case, if brought into Court, would be decided in Mr. Everton’s favour on any such evidence as this; in fact, I think it would not be easy to bring the case into Court at all. But Mr. Everton hasn’t obtained the paper for any such purpose. He has obtained it with a view of frightening you into the payment of a sum — I don’t know what figure he has fixed on in his mind — to keep the matter still. Now, I advise you not to pay anything to keep it still — not a cent.” He folded up the paper and handed it back to Mr. Everton, who put it into his pocket-book again.
“Will you let me see it, please?” said Helen gently. He gave her the paper, and she read it, and then restored it to him. After a while she said, “I am trying to think what papa would have done.
Wasn’t Captain Butler at the auction — wouldn’t he have suspected, if anything had gone wrong?”
“Yes, certainly,” said the lawyer.
“And if he had had any misgivings—”
“He would have come to me with them, and I should have told him not to pay the slightest attention to them,” said Mr. Hibbard promptly. “My dear Miss Harkness, the whole thing is preposterous. That fellow Mortimer is a scamp, but he isn’t such a scamp as he professes to be. If Mr. Everton will excuse my frankness, I will say that I believe this is purely a financial transaction between himself and Mortimer. The fellow had heard of Mr. Everton’s suspicions, and when he wanted money very badly, he went to him, and sold out — for a sum which Mr. Everton’s delicacy would prevent him from naming; but probably something handsome, though Mortimer has been going to the dogs lately, and he may have sold out cheap.”
Mr. Everton, having folded up his paper and put it back into his pocket-book, and restored that to his breast-pocket, rose, and buttoned his coat over it. “I’m sorry, Miss Harkness,” he said, “that you haven’t a better adviser. I can’t expect you to act independently of him, and that’s your misfortune. I knew your father, and he was a very honest man. Good-morning.”
“He was too honest,” cried the lawyer, “to make any difficulty about paying you your cut-throat usury.”
“My loan came at a time, Miss Harkness, when your father could get money nowhere else, and it saved him from bankruptcy. Good-afternoon.”
He took no notice of the lawyer in quitting the room, and when he was gone the latter broke out with, “I hope he will press this to an issue! I think I could give him something to think of if I could get a chance at him in open Court. The old scoundrel, to come to you with this thing! But he knew better than to come to me first. I wonder he dared to come at all! Miss Harkness, don’t be troubled about it; there’s nothing of it, I assure you; nothing that need give you a moment’s anxiety as to the result. You may be absolutely certain that this is the end of the whole affair; he would never dare to go into Court with that paper in the world. It was given to him, you may rest satisfied, for the sole purpose of extorting money from us privately, and with the agreement — which Mortimer would know how to make perfectly safe for himself — that it was never to be used in any public or legal way. Mr. Everton has made his attempt, and has failed; that’s all. You’ll hear no more of it.”
“Is it true,” asked Helen gently, and with an entire absence of the lawyer’s resentful excitement, “that he lent papa money when he could get it nowhere else?”
“In any ordinarily disastrous time your father could always have got money, Miss Harkness. But the time that Everton alluded to was one when it could be got only of usurers like himself. He made your father pay three or four times what any man with a Christian conscience would have asked for it.”
“And did it save papa from bankruptcy?”
“Everybody was in difficulties at that time; and—”
“Do you think,” pursued Helen, as if it were a branch of the same inquiry, “that he really supposes the auctioneer cheated?”
“Very likely he had his suspicions. He’s full of all sorts of suspicions. I daresay he suspects that you and I were in collusion in regard to this matter, and prepared for him if he should ever come upon such an errand.”
“Oh!” murmured Helen.
“Why should you worry yourself about it, Miss Harkness? As it was, he bought the house at a ruinously low figure, and it’s worth now a third more than he paid for it six months ago.”
“But you don’t think it is possible the auctioneer could have done such a thing?”
“Oh, possible — yes, but extremely improbable.”
“It makes me unhappy, very unhappy,” said Helen. “I can’t bear to have any doubt about it. It seems a kind of stain on papa’s memory.”
“Bless my soul, my dear young lady!” cried the lawyer, “what has it to do with your father’s memory?”
“Everything, if I don’t see the wrong righted.”
“But if there hasn’t been any wrong?”
“Ah, that’s the worst: we can’t find out. Mr. Hibbard, you never heard any one else express any misgivings about the sale?” The lawyer shifted a little in his chair, and betrayed a fleeting uneasiness, which he tried to hide with a laugh. Helen was instantly upon him: “Oh, who was it?”
“I haven’t admitted that it was anybody.”
“But it was! You must tell me!”
“There’s no reason why I shouldn’t. It was as innocent a person as yourself: it was Captain Butler!”
“Captain Butler!”
“And I can tell you, for your entire satisfaction, I hope, that he went to the auctioneer and laid his doubts before him, and the auctioneer solemnly assured him that the bids were all bona fide, just as he now solemnly assures Mr. Everton that they were fictitious. But Captain Butler was not so shrewd as Mr. Everton — he didn’t make the auctioneer put himself in writing.”
Helen pulled her veil over her face. “And is — is there no way of solving the doubt?” she made out to ask.
“There is no doubt to solve, in my mind,” said Mr. Hibbard. “I advised Captain Butler to dismiss the matter altogether, as I now advise you. I tell you that you’ve heard the last of Mr. Everton in this connection.”
Helen did not answer. But presently she said, “Mr. Hibbard, I was going to come to you for some money. I understood from Captain Butler that you had charge of what was left for me, and that I could get it of you whenever I wanted it.”
“Yes, certainly.”
“In such sums as I like?”
The lawyer laughed. “In any sums short of the amount of Mr. Everton’s claim.”
Helen was daunted to find herself unmasked; but she only put on the bolder front. “But if I wish to pay that claim?”
“Then I should intervene, and say the claim did not exist.’’
“But if the money is mine?” she urged.
“If you insisted upon taking up all your money, I should, as Captain Butler’s friend, and as the old friend of your father, refuse to let you have it, unless you explicitly promised me that you would not give it to Mr. Everton. For it would literally be giving it to him.”
“And if I said that you had no right to refuse it? If I told you that I was of age, and that I was determined to have it without conditions?”
“Then I should make bold to defy you at any risk till I had laid the whole matter before Captain Butler, and heard from him in reply. Now, my dear Miss Harkness,” said the lawyer, “I know just how you feel about this matter, and I want you to believe that if I thought it was just, I should not only be willing to have you pay Mr. Everton’s claim, but should urge you to pay it, even if it beggared you.”
“Would it — would it take all the money?” faltered Helen.
“Yes, all. But it isn’t to be thought of; the whole thing’s in the air; it’s preposterous.” The lawyer went carefully and judicially into the whole case, and clearly explained the points and principles to Helen, who listened silently, and to all appearance with conviction. At the end he asked cheerfully, as he prepared to write a cheque, “And now, how much money shall I let you have to-day?”
“None!” said Helen, “I couldn’t bear to touch it. I know that you feel as you say; and it seems as if you must be right. But if I spent a cent of that money I could never be happy again unless I knew absolutely that there was nothing in this claim.”
The lawyer smiled despairingly. “But you never can know absolutely!”
“Then I will never touch the money.”
“Really, really,” cried the lawyer, “this is too bad. Do you want me to give you this money to throw into the street? I honestly believe that the first man who picked it up there would have as much right to it as Mr. Everton.”
“Yes, but nobody knows” said Helen, rising. “I’m sorry to give you all this trouble, and take up your time; and I wish that I needn’t seem so obstinate and unreasonable; but indeed, indeed I can’t help it.”
“Confound the old rascal!” exclaimed Mr. Hibbard. “I wish I’d indulged myself in kicking him out of doors. Miss Harkness, I’ll inquire into this matter, and in the meantime I’ll write to Captain Butler. Do you think that I can do more?”
“No.”
“And now I shall be glad to give you any money on account.”
“I can’t take any,” said Helen; “it would be quite the same thing. I never could pay it back, and if it turned out that it belonged to him, I should be either a beggar or a thief.”
The lawyer gave a roar of expostulation. “But if you are out of money what will you do?”
“I have a little yet. Captain Butler supplied me with money before he went away, and I have still some of it left.” This was true. She had been using what she called Mr. Trufitt’s money, and she had a dollar and seventy-five cents left of the sum that Captain Butler had made her believe was hers.
The lawyer, on his part, forbore to explain that the money Captain Butler gave her must have been in anticipation of interest on the five thousand dollars he held for her. He only said, “But you will accept a loan from me?”
“No; I shouldn’t feel that I was making any sacrifice then.”
“But why, under heaven, should you make a sacrifice?” demanded the business man of the girl.
“I must — to feel true to myself,” she answered; and something like this absurdity she repeated in answer to all his prayers and reasons, and went away empty-handed at the end.
XV.
THAT evening Helen tapped at Miss Root’s door, and entered in response to the girl’s invitation to “Come in!” When she showed herself within, “Oh, excuse me!” cried Miss Root, in the reedy note which ladies make when they have pins in their mouths. She had her lap full of sewing, and she obviously could not get up. “I thought it was Bridget.”
