"That's what I want to tell you, Hathaway, and how I, and I alone, am responsible for it. When the bank was in difficulty and I made up my mind to guard the Trust with my own personal and private capital, I knew that there might be some comment on my action. It was a delicate matter to show any preference or exclusion at such a moment, and I took two or three of my brother directors whom Ithought I could trust into my confidence. I told them the whole story, and how the Trust was sacred. I made a mistake, sir,"continued Pendleton sardonically, "a grave mistake. I did not take into account that even in three years civilization and religion had gained ground here. There was a hound there--a blank Judas in the Trust. Well; he didn't see it. I think he talked Scripture and morality. He said something about the wages of sin being infamous, and only worthy of confiscation. He talked about the sins of the father being visited upon the children, and justly. I stopped him.
Well! Do you know what's the matter with my ankle? Look!" He stopped and, with some difficulty and invincible gravity, throwing aside his dressing-gown, turned down his stocking, and exposed to Paul's gaze the healed cicatrix of an old bullet-wound. "Troubled me damnably near a year. Where I hit HIM--hasn't troubled him at all since!
"I think," continued the colonel, falling back upon the pillow with an air of relief, "that he told others--of his own kidney, sir,--though it was a secret among gentlemen. But they have preferred to be silent now--than AFTERWARDS. They know that I'm ready. But Ican't keep this up long; some time, you know, they're bound to improve in practice and hit higher up! As far as I'm concerned,"he added, with a grim glance around the faded walls and threadbare furniture, "it don't mind; but mine isn't the mouth to be stopped."He paused, and then abruptly, yet with a sudden and pathetic dropping of his dominant note, said: "Hathaway, you're young, and Hammersley liked you--what's to be done? I thought of passing over my tools to you. You can shoot, and I hear you HAVE. But the h--l of it is that if you dropped a man or two people would ask WHY, and want to know what it was about; while, when I do, nobody here thinks it anything but MY WAY! I don't mean that it would hurt you with the crowd to wipe out one or two of these hounds during the canvass, but the trouble is that they belong to YOUR PARTY, and,"he added grimly, "that wouldn't help your career.""But," said Paul, ignoring the sarcasm, are you not magnifying the effect of a disclosure? The girl is an heiress, excellently brought up. Who will bother about the antecedents of the mother, who has disappeared, whom she never knew, and who is legally dead to her?""In my day, sir, no one who knew the circumstances," returned the colonel, quickly. "But we are living in a blessed era of Christian retribution and civilized propriety, and I believe there are a lot of men and women about who have no other way of showing their own virtue than by showing up another's vice. We're in a reaction of reform. It's the old drunkards who are always more clamorous for total abstinence than the moderately temperate. I tell you, Hathaway, there couldn't be an unluckier moment for our secret coming out.""But she will be of age soon."
"In two months."
"And sure to marry."
"Marry!" repeated Pendleton, with grim irony. "Would YOU marry her?""That's another question," said the young man, promptly, "and one of individual taste; but it does not affect my general belief that she could easily find a husband as good and better.""Suppose she found one BEFORE the secret is out. Ought he be told?""Certainly."
"And that would imply telling HER?"
"Yes," said Paul, but not so promptly. "And you consider THATfulfilling the promise of the Trust--the pledges exchanged with that woman?" continued Pendleton, with glittering eyes and a return to his own dominant tone.
"My dear colonel," said Paul, somewhat less positively, but still smiling, "you have made a romantic, almost impossible compact with Mrs. Howard that, you yourself are now obliged to admit, circumstances may prevent your carrying out substantially. You forget, also, that you have just told me that you have already broken your pledge--under circumstances, it is true, that do you honor--and that now your desperate attempts to retrieve it have failed. Now, I really see nothing wrong in your telling to a presumptive well-wisher of the girl what you have told to her enemy."There was a dead silence. The prostrate man uttered a slight groan, as if in pain, and drew up his leg to change his position.
After a pause, he said, in a restrained voice, "I differ from you, Mr. Hathaway; but enough of this for the present. I have something else to say. It will be necessary for one of us to go at once to Santa Clara and see Miss Yerba Buena.""Good heavens!" said Paul, quickly. "Do you call her THAT?""Certainly, sir. You gave her the name. Have you forgotten?""I only suggested it," returned Paul, hopelessly; "but no matter--go on."
"I cannot go there, as you see," continued Pendleton, with a weary gesture towards his crippled ankle; "and I should particularly like you to see her before we make the joint disposition of her affairs with the Mayor, two months hence. I have some papers you can show her, and I have already written a letter introducing you to the Lady Superior at the convent, and to her. You have never seen her?""No," said Paul. "But of course you have?""Not for three years."
Paul's eyes evidently expressed some wonder, for a moment after the colonel added, "I believe, Hathaway, I am looked upon as a queer survival of a rather lawless and improper past. At least, I have thought it better not socially to compromise her by my presence.
The Mayor goes there--at the examinations and exercises, I believe, sir; they make a sort of reception for him--with a--a--banquet--lemonade and speeches."