7 Old Ties

When the autumn began I opened two law offices, one in Carlton and one in Louisville, which was only three hours away, choosing to divide myself thus, that I might have both a city and a country practice. I was able to obtain a partner in each place, and thus the work went on very well. Seth, more than ever devoted to me, became a sort of personal attendant and I found him useful, as in the service of Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul he had acquired a certain alertness of mind and a partial discernment that fitted him for various tasks. An able man he never would be, but now he could take care of himself. He spoke once or twice to me of a friend Johnson who had? been with him in the penitentiary, but who had disappeared completely and he lamented that he could not see him again.

“Maybe he’ll come back some day,” said Seth thoughtfully, after telling me about him.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

I did an immense amount of work that autumn, because, owing to my maturer years, and friends and family connections, I did not have to wait for business, after the unlucky fashion of most young lawyers, but had it ready for me at the start. I took criminal cases both in the city and the country. I know that this practice is usually frowned upon by lawyers of the higher class, but is it nobler to concern oneself over the fate of property, than it is over the fate of human beings?

I tried my first case in the Court House at Carlton, and I spoke in the presence of Uncle Paul, Aunt Jane and many of my old friends, one of the hardest tests that can be set for a man, but after the first tremors I was able to do my best.

When I was half through a woman came quietly in at the door and slipped quietly into a seat. It was Alicia and I had not known before that she was in Carlton. But I was glad that having come at all she had come in the middle of the speech instead of at its beginning, as then my fear and tremblings would have been much greater. Now I was already secure and I let my eye meet hers without quailing.

I finished, sat down, and in five minutes the jury returned a verdict of acquittal. Thus I won my first great triumph and I knew that my place with my own people was secure.

“You did a lot better than I expected, Harry,” said Uncle Paul, giving me a compliment which he meant, despite its doubtful sound.

When the crowd thinned away Alicia came forward and held out her hand which I took for a moment.

“I arrived from the city only two hours ago,” she said, “and learning that you were making your first speech here I came to hear you. I am glad that you won, Harry.”

I laughed a little and it was in some respects a laugh of relief. I have passed through few ordeals as severe as my first speech in the court room of my home town.

“I’m glad it’s over,” I said.

Then we walked down the Court House steps, across the square and out the street that led to her mother’s home on the fringe of the town. I do not know why I went with her; she had not asked me, nor had she invited me in any wordless way, but I suppose I drifted into it, the heart numbing the will. I had sworn more than once that I would keep away from her, that I would avoid the sight of her, but here I was, like a weak boy, again by her side.

“Will you come in and see my mother?” asked Alicia. “She asks of you—sometimes.”

We had reached the house of Mrs. Warren, her mother, a square, belligerent, red brick building, standing in the middle of a wide lawn.

“Yes,” I replied—I remembered suddenly that I had not seen Mrs. Warren in a long time and I could use the chance.

We went in together and Mrs. Warren met us in the hall. I had never wholly liked Alicia’s mother, and long before, when a boy I had been conscious that there was something hard and cold in her manner, and now when she received me I had the faint but unmistakable sense of a hostile presence. I saw her cast one quick, questioning glance at Alicia, a glance of disapproval, and then she received me in her formal manner. She was a tall woman, bigger boned than Alicia, and she spoke without our usual Kentucky manner of softening the syllables. The effect on me was always unpleasant. Daughters are not always like their mothers, either in looks, manner, temperament; nor in morals, and I use the word “morals” in its widest sense.

“Alicia went to hear you speak,” she said. “I suppose that you won your case.”

“Yes, in fine fashion,” said Alicia warmly.

I was grateful to Alicia for her quick response, as her mother’s manner indicated a belief or perhaps a wish that I had lost.

“Come into the parlor, Mr. Clarke,” said Mrs. Warren. All through my boyhood, like everybody else, she had called me “Harry,” but now she developed a curious habit of sometimes calling me “Mr. Clarke” and sometimes “Harry,” with the Mr. Clarke gradually obliterating the “Harry.”

We three went into the parlor, a somewhat stiff and angular apartment, but comfortable, a bright coal fire burning in the grate and forming a cheerful contrast to the gloom without. We sat down before the coals, and I saw that Mrs. Warren had no intention of leaving us. Well, who was I to blame her? She was doing exactly what a mother should do under the circumstances, yet I felt that there was little benevolence in her purpose, that she was far from being animated by goodness alone.

We talked casually of that unfailing topic, the weather, of the town gossip, and then a little of State politics.

“Mr. Grey is beginning to take a keen interest in State affairs,” said Mrs. Warren, “and Alicia is glad of it. She thinks he can be a great success there, and she approves warmly of all that he does.”

I glanced at Alicia. She said nothing, but that added color in her cheeks did not come from the reflection of the fire alone. I was amazed at the facility with which women—sometimes good women, too—will put things in the mouth of another person, which that person has never said, and which both know the other has never said. And they will do it deliberately in the presence of the other. Now Mrs. Warren expected me to believe what she said, and Alicia to acquiesce in it; the last happened, the first did not, but naturally I did not indicate my disbelief.

“Mr. Grey is a man of such strong will and convictions,” she continued in the thoughtful, meditative manner that would have carried conviction to one not armed with previous knowledge. “He can do great things when he sets his mind to it. When Alicia told me—what I had so little suspected—that she was going to marry him, I rejoiced at so wise a choice, and time has confirmed me in my opinion. It was a happy chance; young girls so often fail in their judgment in this the most important matter of their lives.”

I knew then, knew it with all the conviction of spoken and proved revelation that Alicia in her innocent and ignorant young girlhood had been bought and sold, bought by Grey, the man of a million dollars and sold by this horrible old woman who chattered on so hideously, who thought that she was warning and fooling me when I knew that every word she said was a lie. But according to her lights she was within her rights and I was certainly outside mine.

I did not stay long, as every consideration forbade my doing otherwise, and I made it an ordinary little call. When I rose to go Mrs. Warren was effusively polite and full of compliments. I knew that her conscience was at ease; she felt that she had thrust me from her door and from her daughter’s life and the bitterest part of it was my knowledge that she was right, at least in aim, if not in method. Alicia had little to say but her face resumed its wonted color, and I judged that she would accept the event in silence.

The course of business kept me in Louisville the larger part of that winter, and while I strove to avoid it circumstances compelled me to go two or three times to the Grey house. Once Jimmy Warfield took me, because I was afraid to arouse suspicion in his mind by continued refusal, when he urged me to go. It was a dance, a large affair with most of the conspicuous people in the city present, and I had not seen Alicia in a month. I thought that she was paler than usual, and that she looked weary, but her manner as she welcomed her guests was as gracious and dignified as ever. She gave her hand to me with the customary, official smile of a hostess, but if she held it more than the tenth part of a second longer than usual, it was merely because a tired and tried woman was looking around somewhere for mental support. It was involuntary with her and, moreover, after it was done she had no knowledge that it had been done. Grey himself received me. with an affectation of brusque cordiality.

A little while later I saw something that compelled my attention and which aroused in me emotions of the most mingled nature. One of the guests was Mrs. Pauline Harmon, a young woman born in the farther South, but the widow of a wealthy merchant of our city. She was a type of brunette beauty, rich, languorous and with a way of inviting your attention. She made a splendid appearance, I cannot deny, but to my taste the colors of her dress were just a bit too vivid, although in certain important regions there might have been a little more of it.

I saw Grey’s eye rove toward her, and I read there what he felt. He approached her bye and bye, and leaned over her with an air of admiration and intimacy. She looked up at him and her glance was liquid, seductive. It said plainly, “What a fine, splendid man you are, Mr. Grey, and how I like to see you!” A moment or two later she made some excuse for sending him away, and the little by-play between them was probably noticed by no one except myself. But from long seclusion and the forced turning of one’s thoughts inward come a certain keenness and penetration not obtained otherwise, and I read even more than their manner indicated.

“Poor Alicia!” And “Poor Alicia!” I repeated again. Her lot already bad as it could be, it seemed to me, bought and sold as she was, was in reality growing worse.

I drifted through the crowd, a word here a word there, a bow or a shake of the hand for an old friend and the same for a new one, but for my own purposes I kept one object in view. I was watching Grey and I took no shame for it. I saw him come back after a while to the beautiful Mrs. Harmon, beautiful with a fierce, lithe, pantherish beauty, that has in it nothing of the spiritual or intellectual, but which appeals to the physical senses only. The same understanding, intimate glance passed between them and I alone saw it.

In a crowd, even a drawing room crowd, it is easy to hide oneself or to pursue an object hidden from all the rest. I saw the two drift gradually away, pausing a little on the outskirts of the gathering and then pass by different roads into a dim hall. There were so many voices, so much shifting of the groups, like the shaking of colored tints of glass that they were not missed for the time, and I alone noticed. But I, standing by the wall in the hall, in the shadow of heavy curtains, saw them as they approached a well-sheltered alcove, a deep window seat. I saw them very close together and I saw their lips move as they whispered to each other words which neither had a right to say. They were a splendid pair of animals, I will admit, strong, young and handsome, and I will admit, too, my shame though it be, that I was not sorry to. see them stealing away together into the shadows. A great thought, a thought of deliverance, a thought of a way out was making a place for itself in my mind, and my heart was beating like that of an untrained youth.

They sat down in the window seat, and I saw Grey pull the curtains toward each other until they were almost hidden, and then I saw him lean forward. Now I was stricken by remorse that I who had intended to live a clean life should be playing the part of a spy, and, turning, I went back toward the drawing room. On its threshold I met Jimmy Warfield and as his eye fell upon me I felt that his glance was singularly keen and penetrating. But he did not ask me anything, instead he linked his arm in mine, and I felt the act to be that of a friend, of one who would be a friend through thick and through thin. Not for nothing were we of one blood, and one view.

“I also have seen,” said Warfield, presently, “and while you have seen for the first time I have seen many times.”

He offered no advice, he said nothing that might influence me in one direction or the other, but he loosed my arm, and went his way, leaving me to my own judgment or lack of it.

I stood on the edge of the crowd, the pulses in my head were beating hard and the obtrusive thought that I might find a way, after being cast out once, forced itself back into my mind. When I looked at Alicia the hatred that I felt for Grey was now mingled in full measure with contempt. How could he, even with his unlawful temper and unlawful mind, turn aside from one so pure as Alicia for that beautiful tiger-cat? And Alicia was the more beautiful of the two, it did not require my partial eyes to say so, more beautiful in a physical sense, while to her there was a soul and a spirit which the Harmon woman might recognize, but could never understand. Nor could Grey either. Perhaps it was but his nature when he turned from one who was so far above him to another on his own plane.

Jimmy Warfield and I left the house together an hour or two later. When we reached the street he said as if in a casual manner.

“I take it that you have said nothing to anybody.”

“No, Jimmy,” I replied. “I have not said anything.”

“I knew that you wouldn’t and couldn’t.”

We parted at the comer, and I went alone to the hotel.

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