“Why should I worry about the probability of such a thing? As if it mattered.” But it is hard to tell what matters, though safe enough to say that in conduct it is best not to make trifles of trifles. For there is an amazing vitality in some trifles, and we know not which may abortively pass and which may become of momentous importance.
Yet, for two days Leonard hardly thought of Gilson and his drunken abuse; or if it entered his mind it was only as an annoying and commonplace event that he was in no way responsible for. He had not one fear that it could possibly have any serious effect upon his life. And as it happened the two days following Annette’s dinner party were exceedingly happy ones to Sappha and Leonard. One of them was spent with Madame Bloommaert in Nassau Street, and another with Annette at the Semple house. Then came Saturday, and Leonard went early in the afternoon to the Bowling Green. It was a very warm day, the parlour windows in Judge Bloommaert’s house were open, and Sappha was sitting in the sunshine happily indolent. She smiled a thousand welcomes as he entered, but did not move, for her lap was full of knotted embroidery silks, and Leonard seated himself at her side, and together they began to slowly unravel and sort the tangled skeins. So happy, so merry, were they! their hands touching, their heads touching, light laughter and loving whispers feeding their hearts with a full content.
When the judge came home Sappha and Leonard rose gaily to meet him, but they were both chilled by his manner, which was constrained and unfriendly. A sense of something unpleasant swept out of cognisance the innocent mirth that had pervaded the room; and in a moment its mental atmosphere was changed. It was embarrassing, because Leonard did not like to presume there was an offence--it might be only a passing mood, and the mood might be caused by something or by some person outside of their interference. So the suddenly checked lovers sat silent, or only made whispered remarks about the condition of the silks.
One of these remarks attracted the judge’s attention, and he turned to the apparently busy young man and said: “Sappha has given you a pretty tangle to straighten out--Leonard.” He spoke Leonard’s name with a hesitation that was almost like a withdrawal of the position that had been given him, and Leonard felt the reluctance keenly, yet he answered with much cheerfulness.
“Patience will win her way, sir--she does in every tangle. One by one the knots are being untied.”
“You might cut them,” said the judge.
“That would be wasteful and foolish, sir. No one would be the gainer, and no one would be satisfied. I will unravel them--with Sappha’s help.”
“Well, Leonard,”--this time the name was spoken a little more pleasantly--“well, Leonard, I can tell you there is an ugly tangle up the street for you either to cut, or to unravel. And I must say, I am astonished, not to say displeased, at your neglecting it for three days.”
“A tangle up the street, sir,--a tangle I have neglected!”
“You certainly have not forgotten your quarrel with Horace Gilson?”
“Oh, I had no quarrel with the fellow! How could I? He was drunk.”
“Not too drunk to tell you that you had only three months’ worth of patriotism; not too drunk to bid you buy a little dog-courage with your dirty dollars. Sir, you ought to have stopped such remarks as quickly as they were made--yes, sir, they ought to have been stopped peremptorily, whether they were drunk or sober remarks.”
“But, judge, you cannot talk to a drunken man--you cannot reason with a drunken man----”
“Well, then, you can knock him down. That is an argument even a drunken man will understand.”
“Father!” cried Sappha with indignation, as she stood with flashing eyes before him. “Father, to knock a drunken man down would be as bad as to knock an insane man down. In both cases it would be brutal.”
“When men make themselves into brutes it is just to treat them like brutes.”
“I never heard such nonsense! such cruel nonsense! I think Leonard did quite right to ignore the fellow.”
“You have no business, miss, to think anything about such subjects. Go to your mother.”
“Mother went to Nassau Street long ago.”
“I want her. Tell her to come home immediately. And I do not want you. It is necessary for me to speak to Leonard alone.”
“Very well. I shall go for mother.” But ere she left the room she took Leonard’s hands in hers and kissed him. There was a whispered word also, which the judge did not hear, but the girl’s act of sympathy was irritating enough. He drew his lips wide and tight, and as soon as Sappha closed the door he said:
“Now, sir, what are you going to do? Gilson has been vapouring from Dan to Beersheba about your--cowardice, and your want of patriotism; and Mr. Ogden told me that when he instanced your frequent generous loans to the city Gilson laughed and said you had made forty per cent. on them. ‘You and your father,’ he added, ‘were both canny Scots, and knew cleverly how to rub one dollar into two.’”
“Judge, my father----”
“Wait a little. Why have you not been in any of your usual resorts since Wednesday night? It does not look right--the rascal has had a clear field for all the scurrilous lies he chose to tell.”
“Sir, if I had known that the man was lying soberly about me, I would surely have given him openly the name he merits. But I did not dream that he would dare to say out of liquor what he said in liquor; for he is a quaking coward, and as fearful as a whipped child. Others are behind him in this bluster. Alas, my money has never brought me anything but envy and ill-will--no matter how heartily I give it! What would you advise me to do, sir?”
“Make the man hold his tongue.”
“How?”
The judge was silent a moment, then with a touch of scorn he answered: “There is the law. Sue him for slander. He is said to be worth twenty thousand dollars. Lay your damages at twenty thousand. Your friend, Mr. Burr, will defend your case very feelingly, no doubt.”
And with some anger Leonard answered: “That course is out of the question, sir.”
“Well, then, write a letter to the newspapers.”
“I do not propose to lend the fellow’s words so much importance.”
“Then give him his lies back generally, and particularly--give him them back on the street, and in the guard-room, or wherever you meet him--and make a point of meeting him, here, there, and everywhere.”
“That is what I propose to do. Then, sir, egged on by those whose cue he is now following, he will probably challenge me. Shall I accept his challenge?”
“I am not your conscience keeper, Leonard.”
“Put the question then, as a matter of social expediency.”
“If the social verdict is what you want, ask Achille St. Ange. He is a good authority.”
“Once more, sir. If I lift this foolish business to the moral plane, what do you say?”
“Zounds! Leonard, I have told you already that morally judging this question I hold the Decalogue as a finality!” And with these words the judge rose to his feet. It was evident he had no more to say on the subject, and Leonard bid him “good-afternoon” and left the house. There had been throughout the interview a want of sympathy in the judge’s manner that insinuated suspicion, or at least uncertainty, and Leonard was pained and offended by it. Judge Bloommaert had known him intimately, yet he had permitted the evil tongue of a stranger to influence his own experience. Angry tears rose unconsciously to his eyes, and he asked himself what did it profit a man to be truthful and generous, if any dastardly liar could smear and cancel the noblest record? He walked up the Bowling Green with a burning heart, but Sappha had whispered her promise to be near the statue; and he soon saw the flutter of her white gown as she came to meet him. They entered the enclosure and sat down on a bench facing that heroic representation of Washington, which, made of wood, shaped and coloured to imitate the rosiest glow of life, was the best artistic effort New York was capable of one hundred years ago.[3] But even if Sappha and Leonard had been conscious of its artistic defects, they cared little for them at that hour. Their own affairs were too urgent, too perilously near to trouble again. And though Sappha was full of sympathy and quite determined to uphold Leonard in all he had done and was going to do, yet she at once gave vent to her womanish fears in the essentially provoking query: “Oh, Leonard, why did you not show yourself in the city the last three days? You might have known people would say you were afraid of that dreadful man.”
“Dear Sappha!” he answered, “will you, too, oblige me to explain that my absence from my usual haunts the last three days was quite accidental; you wanted me to go to Nassau Street with you Thursday, and your grandmother kept us all day. You wanted me to go to the Semple house with you Friday, and Annette and Achille kept us all day. This morning my lawyer brought to the hotel a number of papers and accounts, and it was noon before we had reviewed them. Then we had a meal together, and afterwards I came to you. How could I imagine Gilson’s unmerited abuse of me? And it seems I had no friend or acquaintance willing to take the trouble to tell me how the man was slandering me behind my back--everything, and every one, was against me.”