"It's nothing to me. I'm done with him."

"'If the court knows itself, which it think it do,'" said Dr. Lavendar, chuckling, "you're just beginning with him."

"I'd rather have him decent, if that's what you mean. But I despise him."

"I don't," said Dr. Lavendar. "I tell you, John, we're poor, limited critters, you and I. We felt that no good could possibly come out of Nazareth. I must confess that when I got you to send him that money I was thinking more of the benefit to you than any effect it might have on him. I thought he didn't amount to two cents. To my shame I say it. But I was blind as a bat; the Lord had sent him a great experience--_Mary's death_. Well, it was like a clap of thunder on a dark night; the lightning showed up a whole landscape I didn't know.

There was honesty; and there was perseverance; and there was love, mind you, most of all. Love! I tell you, Johnny, only the Lord knows what is lying in the darkness of human nature. In fact," said Dr. Lavendar, reflectively, "as I get older there is nothing more constantly astonishing to me than the goodness of the Bad;--unless it is the badness of the Good. But that's not so pleasant. No, sir; I don't despise Mr. Keen."

Nor did he despise Algy when the note had to be extended still again, although again Algy was ready not only with the interest, but with $37.50 of the princ.i.p.al.

VI

As Algernon struggled along with Rosebloom and cheap cigars and bright red and green perfumed soaps, the debt was lessened and lessened; and the back of the note was almost covered with extensions, yet only $317 had been paid off. In spite of himself John Gordon grew interested; he would not have admitted it for the world, but he wanted to hear about Dr. Lavendar's annual visits to Mercer; and Dr. Lavendar used to drive out to smoke a pipe with him and tell him what Algy had said and done.

One day--it was seven years after the note had been drawn--a clear, heartless winter day, with a cold, high wind that made the old minister look so blue that John Gordon mixed a gla.s.s of whiskey-and-water and made him drink it before they began to talk--that day Mr. Gordon went so far as to ask a question about Algy. "Has he given you anything more for your complexion, Edward?" he said, with a faint grin.

"He gave me a smelling-bottle this time. I handed it over to Mary, and told her not to let me get a sniff of it; and she said, 'Sakes! it's beautiful!' But I'll tell you something he said, Johnny: he said that his debt to you was a millstone round his neck. And yet the truth is, it's a life-buoy!"

John Gordon looked at the soiled, crumpled paper, with its dates of extensions, and smiled grimly. "Well, I won't deprive him of his life-buoy."

"The store is doing pretty well," Dr. Lavendar went on--and stopped, because Alex entered.

"Whose store is doing pretty well," he asked, civilly enough--for Alex.

"Algernon Keen's," said Dr. Lavendar.

Alex's face changed; he looked from one to the other of the old men by the fire, and he saw his father's hand open and close nervously. But he restrained himself until their visitor had gone. He even went out into the sharp, bright wind and unhitched Dr. Lavendar's little blind horse Goliath, backing the buggy close to the steps and helping the old man in with what politeness he could muster. Then he hurried back into the library to his father.

"I should like to know, sir," he said, standing up with his back to the fire, his legs, in their big, mud-stained top-boots, wide apart, his hands under his coat-tails--"I should like to know, sir, why Dr.

Lavendar sees fit to refer to a subject which is most offensive to us?"

He fixed his motionless, pale eyes on his father, shrinking back in the winged chair.

"I don't know--I don't know," said John Gordon. Then, suddenly, he put out his hand and caught at the crumpled note on the table beside him and put it in his pocket. Instantly suspicion flamed into Alex's eyes.

His face turned dully red, almost purple. He made a step forward as though to interpose and grasp at the paper, restrained himself, and said, with laborious politeness:

"If that is a note, sir--I thought I saw indors.e.m.e.nts of interest--sha'n't I put it into the safe for you?"

"I won't trouble you, Alex."

Alex stood silent; then suddenly he struck the table with his fist: "My G.o.d! I believe you've been lending money to that--to that--"

Mr. Gordon began to shake very much.

"Did Dr. Lavendar presume to ask you to lend money to--to--"

Mr. Gordon pa.s.sed his hand over his lips; then he said, faintly, "No; he didn't."

Alex, like a boat brought suddenly up into the wind, stammered uncertainly. "Oh; I--I--thought--" And then suspicion broke out again. "Has the creature asked you for a loan?"

"No," Mr. Gordon said.

And Alex gaped at him, silenced. Yet he was certain that that strip of paper had some connection with Algernon Keen. "I beg your pardon," he said; "I thought for an instant that you were d.i.c.kering with the man who seduced your daughter. I am sure I beg your pardon for the thought," he ended, with elaborate and ironical courtesy, for his father's obvious agitation a.s.sured him that he was right. "I only felt that if it was his note, it must be kept carefully--carefully." He smiled in a deadly way he had, and opened and shut his hand as though he would close it on the hilt of a knife. "But, of course, I was mistaken. You would press it if you had his note--although 'sue a beggar.' And, besides, if we had got as far as lending him money, we would be asking him to dinner next."

Mr. Gordon cringed.

"So I beg your pardon," Alex ended, sardonically.

"Very well--very well," his father said; and got up and began to potter about among his books, as much as to say that the subject was ended.

"It _is_ a note," Alex said to himself, and smiled.... So far the creature had gone scot-free. In these days of lawfully accepted dishonor revenge is not talked about. But perhaps it would come to his hand. Not the revenge of the instincts--not the shedding of blood, man fashion; but the revenge of inflicting misery. Not much of a revenge, of course, but the best that he could get. And so he smiled to himself....

He said no more at the time; but months later his father realized that the incident was not forgotten when Alex said, suddenly, sneering: "So your son-in-law is prospering in his business? I saw his establishment to-day in Mercer. If he owes you any money he will be able to pay cash. I congratulate you, sir."

Old Mr. Gordon made no reply. He was very feeble that autumn. w.i.l.l.y King told Alex that another attack of bronchitis would be the end. "He can't stand it," said Dr. King. "I'd take him South, Alex, if I were you."

Alex did not like to leave his mill in Upper Chester, but, as he told w.i.l.l.y, he was a good son, and always did his duty to his father. "I play dominoes with him every night," he said;--so he would take the old man South, though to go and come would keep him from business almost a week.

It was then that John Gordon told Dr. Lavendar that Alex suspected him of lending money to Mr. Keen. "And if I die," he said, "Alex will squeeze the poor devil--he'll squeeze him till he ruins him. I--I suppose I'm a great fool, but I almost thought maybe, sometime, I'd destroy that note, Edward?"

Dr. Lavendar chuckled: "I knew you'd come to it, Johnny; but--" he stopped and ruminated. "You've come to it; so that's all right. But do you know--I don't believe he can do without it quite yet awhile."

"Poor devil!" John Gordon said again, kindly. "Well, I'll let him gnaw on it awhile longer. I suppose he'll want another extension?"

"Probably," said Dr. Lavendar. "He is just holding his own this year; he will be able to pay the interest, he told me, but not very much more."

Extension was necessary, as Dr. Lavendar had foreseen; and when he wrote to Mr. Gordon about it the old man replied in obvious fear of his son. The note was in his safe, he said; Edward knew where it was; it was in the j.a.panned box. "But I don't care to ask Alex to get it," he explained. "He doesn't know of its existence; so I'll give you power of attorney to see to it. You'd better just have Ezra Barkley put it in shape for you, because it will be necessary to go up to the house and open the safe to get it and put it back again. Alex is never at home until late in the afternoon, but Rachel is there and will let you in. You'll find some very good Monongahela in the chimney closet."

Then he added the combinations of the locks on the safe and the j.a.panned box.

"Stick that in, Ezra, will you, about going up to the house?" Dr.

Lavendar said.

And Ezra stuck it in solemnly, and then held his pen between his teeth and blotted his paper. "It is estimated," he observed, through his shut teeth, "that the amount of ink used in the United States of America, in signatures to wills, since the year when the independence of the colonies was declared, would be sufficient in bulk to float a--"

"Well, Ezra," said Dr. Lavendar, chuckling, "this paper seems rather liberal. Suppose I take some cash out of the safe to repair the roof of the vestry? It leaks like a sieve."

"Your construction of liberality is at fault, sir," Mr. Ezra corrected him, gently; "this paper defines just exactly what you may do, up to the moment when the princ.i.p.al reclaims the paper--or dies."

"Well, I hope he won't reclaim it, or die, either, till he gets an affair we are both interested in patched up," Dr. Lavendar said; then he listened politely while Mr. Ezra told him how many times the word "ink" occurred in Holy Writ.

Dr. Lavendar went away with his power of attorney in his pocket. And when he sent it to John Gordon to sign, he seemed to take it for granted that he and Mr. Gordon were equally interested in the development and well-being of Mary's husband. He said in his letter such things as, "You'll make a man of him yet;" and, "Your patience has given the best elements in him time to come out." Dr. Lavendar had a perfectly unreasonable way of imputing good motives to people; the consequence was he was not very much astonished when they displayed goodness. He was not astonished when, some two months later, another letter came from old Mr. Gordon, saying that on the whole he thought the note had better not run any longer. "I am going to forgive him his debt," Mary's father wrote, in a feeble scrawl; "and I'll be obliged to you if you will go up to my house and get that note and send it to me.

I'm pretty shaky on my pins, and I don't want to run risks, so I wish you'd tear the signature out and burn it before you mail the note.

I'll send it along to Mr. Keen. I mean to write to him and tell him I think he is honest, anyway. The fact is, I half respect the poor fellow. It's been a long winter, and I can't say I'm much better.

w.i.l.l.y King doesn't know everything. These doctors are too confoundedly ready to send a man away from home. I should have been just as well off in Old Chester. _Be sure and destroy that signature_."

Dr. Lavendar read this letter joyfully, but without surprise. "I'm glad he didn't take my advice and let it go on any longer," he said to himself; "I guess I'U risk the effect on Algy now."