Sevenoaks Part 31

He recognized her--knew her as the beautiful woman he had seen in the great house across the street before Mr. Belcher arrived in town.

Recognizing her as such, he kept the secret of his devotion to himself, for fear that it would be frowned upon by his good friends the Balfours.

Mr. Belcher, however, knew all about it, rejoiced in it, and counted upon it as a possible means in the accomplishment of his ends.

CHAPTER XVI.

WHICH GIVES AN ACCOUNT OF A VOLUNTARY AND AN INVOLUNTARY VISIT OF SAM YATES TO NUMBER NINE.

Mr. Belcher followed up the acquaintance which he had so happily made on New Year's Day with many of the leading operators of Wall street, during the remainder of the winter, and, by the careful and skillful manipulation of the minor stocks of the market, not only added to his wealth by sure and steady degrees, but built up a reputation for sagacity and boldness. He struck at them with a strong hand, and gradually became a recognized power on 'Change. He knew that he would not be invited into any combinations until he had demonstrated his ability to stand alone. He understood that he could not win a leading position in any of the great financial enterprises until he had shown that he had the skill to manage them. He was playing for two stakes--present profit and future power and glory; and he played with brave adroitness.

During the same winter the work at Number Nine went on according to contract. Mike Conlin found his second horse and the requisite sled, and, the river freezing solidly and continuously, he was enabled not only to draw the lumber to the river, but up to the very point where it was to be used, and where Jim and Mr. Benedict were hewing and framing their timber, and pursuing their trapping with unflinching industry.

Number Ten was transformed into a stable, where Mike kept his horses on the nights of his arrival. Two trips a week were all that he could accomplish, but the winter was so long, and he was so industrious, that before the ice broke up, everything for the construction of the house had been delivered, even to the bricks for the chimney, the lime for the plastering, and the last clapboard and s.h.i.+ngle. The planning, the chaffing, the merry stories of which Number Nine was the scene that winter, the grand, absorbing interest in the enterprise in which these three men were engaged, it would be pleasant to recount, but they may safely be left to the reader's imagination. What was Sam Yates doing?

He lived up to the letter of his instructions. Finding himself in the possession of an a.s.sured livelihood, respectably dressed and engaged in steady employment, his appet.i.te for drink loosened its cruel hold upon him, and he was once more in possession of himself. All the week long he was busy in visiting hospitals, alms-houses and lunatic asylums, and in examining their records and the mortuary records of the city. Sometimes he presented himself at the doors of public inst.i.tutions as a philanthropist, preparing by personal inspection for writing some book, or getting statistics, or establis.h.i.+ng an inst.i.tution on behalf of a public benefactor. Sometimes he went in the character of a lawyer, in search of a man who had fallen heir to a fortune. He had always a plausible story to tell, and found no difficulty in obtaining an entrance at all the doors to which his inquisition led him. He was treated everywhere so courteously that his self-respect was wonderfully nourished, and he began to feel as if it were possible for him to become a man again.

On every Sat.u.r.day night, according to Mr. Belcher's command, he made his appearance in the little bas.e.m.e.nt-room of the grand residence, where he was first presented to the reader. On these occasions he always brought a clean record of what he had done during the week, which he read to Mr.

Belcher, and then pa.s.sed into that gentleman's hands, to be filed away and preserved. On every visit, too, he was made to feel that he was a slave. As his self-respect rose from week to week, the coa.r.s.e and brutal treatment of the proprietor was increased. Mr. Belcher feared that the man was getting above his business, and that, as the time approached when he might need something very different from these harmless investigations, his instrument might become too fine for use.

Besides the ministry to his self-respect which his labors rendered, there was another influence upon Sam Yates that tended to confirm its effects. He had in his investigations come into intimate contact with the results of all forms of vice. Idiocy, insanity, poverty, moral debas.e.m.e.nt, disease in a thousand repulsive forms, all these had frightened and disgusted him. On the direct road to one of these terrible goals he had been traveling. He knew it, and, with a shudder many times repeated, felt it. He had been arrested in the downward road, and, G.o.d helping him, he would never resume it. He had witnessed brutal cruelties and neglect among officials that maddened him. The professional indifference of keepers and nurses towards those who, if vicious, were still unfortunate and helpless, offended and outraged all of manhood there was left in him.

One evening, early in the spring, he made his customary call upon Mr.

Belcher, bringing his usual report. He had completed the canva.s.s of the city and its environs, and had found no testimony to the death or recent presence of Mr. Benedict. He hoped that Mr. Belcher was done with him, for he saw that his brutal will was the greatest obstacle to his reform.

If he could get away from his master, he could begin life anew; for his professional brothers, who well remembered his better days, were ready to throw business into his hands, now that he had become himself again.

"I suppose this ends it," said Yates, as he read his report, and pa.s.sed it over into Mr. Belcher's hands.

"Oh, you do!"

"I do not see how I can be of further use to you."

"Oh, you don't!"

"I have certainly reason to be grateful for your a.s.sistance, but I have no desire to be a burden upon your hands. I think I can get a living now in my profession."

"Then we've found that we have a profession, have we? We've become highly respectable."

"I really don't see what occasion you have to taunt me. I have done my duty faithfully, and taken no more than my just pay for the labor I have performed."

"Sam Yates, I took you out of the gutter. Do you know that?"

"I do, sir."

"Did you ever hear of my doing such a thing as that before?"

"I never did."

"What do you suppose I did it for?"

"To serve yourself."

"You are right; and now let me tell you that I am not done with you yet, and I shall not be done with you until I have in my hands a certificate of the death of Paul Benedict, and an instrument drawn up in legal form, making over to me all his right, t.i.tle and interest in every patented invention of his which I am now using in my manufactures. Do you hear that?"

"I do."

"What have you to say to it? Are you going to live up to your pledge, or are you going to break with me?"

"If I could furnish such an instrument honorably, I would do it."

"Hm! I tell you, Sam Yates, this sort of thing won't do."

Then Mr. Belcher left the room, and soon returned with a gla.s.s and a bottle of brandy. Setting them upon the table, he took the key from the outside of the door, inserted it upon the inside, turned it, and then withdrew it, and put it in his pocket. Yates rose and watched him, his face pale, and his heart thumping at his side like a tilt-hammer.

"Sam Yates," said Mr. Belcher, "you are getting altogether too virtuous.

Nothing will cure you but a good, old-fas.h.i.+oned drunk. Dip in, now, and take your fill. You can lie here all night if you wish to."

Mr. Belcher drew the cork, and poured out a tumblerful of the choice old liquid. Its fragrance filled the little room. It reached the nostrils of the poor slave, who s.h.i.+vered as if an ague had smitten him.

He hesitated, advanced toward the table, retreated, looked at Mr.

Belcher, then at the brandy, then walked the room, then paused before Mr. Belcher, who had coolly watched the struggle from his chair. The victim of this pa.s.sion was in the supreme of torment. His old thirst was roused to fury. The good resolutions of the preceding weeks, the moral strength he had won, the motives that had come to life within him, the promise of a better future, sank away into blank nothingness. A patch of fire burned on either cheek. His eyes were bloodshot.

"Oh G.o.d! Oh G.o.d!" he exclaimed, and buried his face in his hands.

"Fudge!" said Mr. Belcher. "What do you make an a.s.s of yourself for?"

"If you'll take these things out of the room, and see that I drink nothing to-night, I'll do anything. They are h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation to me.

Don't you see? Have you no pity on me? Take them away!"

Mr. Belcher was surprised, but he had secured the promise he was after, and so he coolly rose and removed the offensive temptation.

Yates sat down as limp as if he had had a sunstroke. After sitting a long time in silence, he looked up, and begged for the privilege of sleeping in the house. He did not dare to trust himself in the street until sleep had calmed and strengthened him.

There was a lounge in the room, and, calling a servant, Mr. Belcher ordered blankets to be brought down. "You can sleep here to-night, and I will see you in the morning," said he, rising, and leaving him without even the common courtesy of a "good-night."

Poor Sam Yates had a very bad night indeed. He was humiliated by the proof of his weakness, and maddened by the outrage which had been attempted upon him and his good resolutions. In the morning, he met Mr.

Belcher, feeble and unrefreshed, and with seeming acquiescence received his directions for future work.

"I want you to take the road from here to Sevenoaks, stopping at every town on the way. You can be sure of this: he is not near Sevenoaks. The whole county, and in fact the adjoining counties, were all ransacked to find him. He cannot have found asylum there; so he must be either between here and Sevenoaks, or must have gone into the woods beyond.

There's a trapper there, one Jim Fenton. He may have come across him in the woods, alive or dead, and I want you to go to his camp and find out whether he knows anything. My impression is that he knew Benedict well, and that Benedict used to hunt with him. When you come back to me, after a faithful search, with the report that you can find nothing of him, or with the report of his death, we shall be ready for decisive operations.

Write me when you have anything to write, and if you find it necessary to spend money to secure any very desirable end, spend it."

Then Mr. Belcher put into the hands of his agent a roll of bank-notes, and armed him with a check that might be used in case of emergency, and sent him off.

It took Yates six long weeks to reach Sevenoaks. He labored daily with the same faithfulness that had characterized his operations in the city, and, reaching Sevenoaks, he found himself for a few days free from care, and at liberty to resume the acquaintance with his early home, where he and Robert Belcher had been boys together.

The people of Sevenoaks had long before heard of the fall of Sam Yates from his early rect.i.tude. They had once been proud of him, and when he left them for the city, they expected to hear great things of him. So when they learned that, after entering upon his profession with brilliant promise, he had ruined himself with drink, they bemoaned him for a while, and at last forgot him. His relatives never mentioned him, and when, well dressed, dignified, self-respectful, he appeared among them again, it was like receiving one from the dead. The rejoicing of his relatives, the cordiality of his old friends and companions, the reviving influences of the scenes of his boyhood, all tended to build up his self-respect, reinforce his strength, and fix his determinations for a new life.

Of course he did not make known his business, and of course he heard a thousand inquiries about Mr. Belcher, and listened to the stories of the proprietor's foul dealings with the people of his native town. His own relatives had been straitened or impoverished by the man's rascalities, and the fact was not calculated to strengthen his loyalty to his employer. He heard also the whole story of the connection of Mr. Belcher with Benedict's insanity, of the escape of the latter from the poor-house, and of the long and unsuccessful search that had been made for him.