Chapter XXI Up the Stairs and Down Again
When Bodney went into the hall he found the Judge walking up and down, waiting for breakfast. His brow was troubled and dark, for Howard had just announced his determination to leave on the following day. He had acknowledged to himself that there was nothing left to hope for, and yet he had continued to hope that it all might be, as Florence believed, a vision, a nightmare, to be relieved by a sudden start. He knew that it was unreasonable thus to hope, but hope was born before reason, and will exist after reason has died of old age. As Bodney approached the old man stood with his hand pressed against his forehead. Bodney’s heart smote him, but his fear was stronger than his remorse. The piece of paper, still in his hand, seemed to burn his palm, as poker money had burned in his pocket; and he felt that he was but a pin hidden under a carpet and that Goyle could find him and thrust him back into obedience. The Judge noticed the grip with which he held the slip of paper. “What have you there, George?” he asked.
“A—a—thing cut out of a newspaper.” He opened his hand and the Judge looked at the slip of paper.
“But why did you grip it that way?” He took the cutting, smoothed it out, and, putting on his glasses, read it. “Ah,” he said, handing it back, “that fellow. I have seen him in my sleep—last night. Tell him not to come here again.”
“It has been some time since he was here.”
“Don’t apologize for him. Tell him that he must not enter this house again.”
William came out and saw the Judge hand the cutting to Bodney. “Is it possible, John, that you believe in that nonsense, too?”
“I don’t believe in anything,” said the Judge.
“That’s putting it rather strong,” replied William. “That is to say, that when I tell you I elected Governors and Senators, you don’t believe it.” Bodney passed on, leaving the brothers walking up and down the hall, shoulder to shoulder.
“Did I say that I didn’t believe you? What difference does it make anyway?”
“What difference does any man’s record make? If a man isn’t proud of his record, what should he be proud of? You are proud of your decisions—they go to make up your record. I elected Governors, and—”
“Why didn’t you elect yourself?”
“That’s a nice way to come back at a man—your own brother. Haven’t you heard me say that there is something higher than a desire for office? Hah, haven’t you heard me say that?”
“Yes, there is something higher—the roof of the board of trade.”
“John, that is an unfair thrust at my speculations. But, sir, at one time I could have closed out for millions. Do you understand, for millions.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Now, just listen to that. Reproaches me for not being a money grabber, for not joining the robbers to crush the weaklings. I have suffered a good deal at your hands lately, but I didn’t expect that stab. It wounds me here.” He halted, and placed his hand on his breast. But he went in to breakfast and ate with the appetite of a man who, if wounded, must have marvelously recovered; he joked with Agnes about the preacher; he told her that it would be her duty to take care of his numerous slippers, presented by women. “And when you have a pound party at your house I will contribute a—”
“Senator,” said Howard.
“Oh, so you have broken out, have you? I thought you were too deep in the study of French literature to pay any attention to such trifles. And you have got on a reddish necktie. You’ll be an anarchist the first thing you know.”
“He is going away, William,” said Mrs. Elbridge, and the Judge did not look up. The sadness of her voice stirred William to repentance. “Going away? I don’t see how we can get along without him. He and I joke, but we understand each other, don’t we, Howard?”
“Perfectly, Uncle William; and when I open my ranch out West, you may look on it as your home.”
“Thank you, my boy; but I don’t care to go out there again. I was once a power there, but the country is now overrun with a lesser breed, and I am afraid that I might not get along with them. I want men, such as there used to be. Man will soon be a thing of the past. The scorcher is running over him—and I want to say right here, that if one of those fellows ever runs over me, he’ll get a bullet just about the size of a—a—about the size of that.” He held up his thumb and measured off the missile intended for the scorcher. “You hear what I say. Why, confound ’em, if they see a man, a real man, they bow their necks and make at him, but if one of them ever runs into me, the coroner will have a job.”
Howard and Bodney went down town together and opened the office, as usual, for clients who did not come, and who, if they had come, would have shaken their heads and gone away.
“Howard,” said Bodney, “I told you that I was financially ruined.”
“Yes, I remember, but afterward you said that everything was all right, that your fit had passed. Has it come again?”
“It didn’t go away. A sort of drunkenness made it appear so. The fact is, I am in need of ten dollars, to pay a man I owe. He keeps harassing me.”
“I need every cent I’ve got, old man, but here’s ten.”
Bodney took the bank note and went out. The poker microbe was not so easily to be exterminated. It had suggested to Bodney that the only way to replace the money taken from the Judge’s safe was to play poker. And, why not play? He might win—he had won once, and what the cards had done they would do again. He remembered the courtesies that had been shown him at the club, the congratulation of the man at the desk when he won and the sympathy when he lost. “Couldn’t make ’em stick, eh? When a man gets the hands beaten you do, he’s got to lose his money. There’s nothing to it. But you’ll get ’em yet—you play as good game as any of them.” A man of sense could see that it was a losing game from the start, no matter how honestly conducted. And Bodney, going to the club before business put on its cheerful countenance, had seen them counting the swallowings of the ever hungry box, the rake-off, the unsatisfied maw. A fairly active game would average for the house at least eight dollars an hour, so that in the end every man must be a loser. He knew all this as the others knew it, but the microbe squirmed and made him itch.
He walked toward the Wexton Club, not in a rush, for he was still fighting. Speculation urged him to play one more time, and to realize during the game that it was the last. The hunger for play was surely dying; then, why kill it? why not let it die of its own accord? Then came the memory of nights of distress, the nervous sweat of anxiety in the street, scanning faces, looking for money. He turned aside, went into a hotel and sat down. Two men were talking of a defaulter. “Yes, sir,” said one of them, “everybody had confidence in him—the firm trusted him implicitly; but he embezzled and must go up for it.” He mentioned the embezzler’s name, and Bodney recognized it as that of a gentlemanly young fellow well known at the Wexton. He had come under an assumed name, but had thrown off this weak disguise, to indorse a check. So the players, who gossip among themselves, knew his real name, but addressed him as Jones. Bodney continued to listen. “I understand,” said one of the men, “that the place where he went is a regular robbers’ den.” Bodney knew better than this; he knew that in the fairness, the courtesy, the good nature of the place lay its greatest danger. Men swore, it was true; cursed their luck and called upon a neighbor to testify to the fact that he had never seen such hands beaten; but for the most part, the atmosphere was genial, the talk bright and with a crispness rarely found in society. He resented this misrepresentation, and was even on the point of speaking when the men walked off. Soon afterward he went out, though not in the direction of the club; he circled round and round, like a deer, charmed by a snake; but after a time he saw the stairway, dusty and grim, rise before him. In the hall above, just as he was about to ring the bell, he thought of his short resources, only one ten dollar note, and he took out the crumpled paper and held it in his hand for a moment and looked at it, not to find the ten dollars, but the newspaper cutting. He started as if stung, stepped back and stood with his hand resting on the balustrade. The door opened and a man came out. Bodney spoke to him, and he halted. It was the offensive fellow with the white scar.
“How did you come out?”
The man opened both hands and raised them. He was not drunk now. He was sober and desperate. “They have ruined me,” he said; “ruined me, and I don’t know what in the name of God to do. I’ll never play again as long as I live—I’d swear it on all the bibles in the world. Are you going to play?”
“I was thinking about it.”
“I could have quit big winner. Say, have you got enough to stake me?” His eyes brightened, but the light went out when Bodney shook his head. “I’ve got just ten dollars.”
“Then you won’t last as long as a feather in hell.” He went down the stairs, and Bodney continued to stand there, fighting against himself, with the newspaper cutting still in his hand. Suddenly, with his teeth set and both hands clenched, he ran down the stairs. At the door opening out upon the street he met the master of the game. “Won’t you come back and eat with us?”
“No, I am in a hurry.”
The master of the game was astonished. The idea of a poker player being in a hurry to get away from the game was almost new to him—and it was new to Bodney. But he hastened on, not daring to look back lest he might find some new temptation beckoning him to return. Passing beyond the circle wherein the lodestone seemed to draw the hardest, he felt, upon looking back, that he had escaped and was beyond pursuit. It was now eleven o’clock, and the victory must have been won at about ten minutes to eleven. He had cause to remember this afterward, on the following day, when he believed that the cause of this sudden strength had been revealed to him.
Howard was in the office when Bodney returned. “Well, did you pay your persistent creditor?”
“There was none. Here is your money; I don’t need it now.”
“But you will, so you’d better keep it.”
“That’s a fact, and I don’t know how soon.”
“But you say there was none.”
“None. I’ll explain sometime, but I can’t now.”
Howard did not pursue the subject further, for his mind was on his own affairs. He had settled upon taking his departure the next morning, and now he looked about the old room with a feeling of sadness. He had consulted another physician who knew his father well, and had been informed that the old man might improve rapidly in the absence of his son. This made the young man wince, but he had told the doctor that his father seemed to have an especial antipathy to him. “It is one of the freaks peculiar to diseased minds to turn upon one who has been nearest,” said the physician. Howard had repeated this to his mother, and frequently she remarked it as a discovery of her own.
That evening when the young men went home there was a great hub-hub in the hall. William had just come in, covered with dust and was blowing like a hippopotamus. “If I live, I’ll kill him; mind what I tell you.”
“What’s the trouble?” Howard asked. William had been knocked down by a scorcher.