The Breaking Point - Page 268/275

"How about the business? People coming to their senses?"

"Not very fast," Dick admitted. "Of course it's a little soon."

After dinner at the Wheelers', when Walter Wheeler had gone to a vestry

meeting, Bassett delivered himself to Margaret of a highly indignant

harangue on the situation in general.

"That's how I see it," he finished. "He's done a fine thing. A finer

thing by a damned sight than I'd do, or any of this town. He's given up

money enough to pay the national debt--or nearly. If he'd come back

with it, as Judson Clark, they wouldn't have cared a hang for the past.

They'd have licked his boots. It makes me sick."

He turned on her.

"You too, I think, Mrs. Wheeler. I'm not attacking you on that score;

it's human nature. But it's the truth."

"Perhaps. I don't know."

"They'll drive him to doing it yet. He came back to make a place for

himself again, like a man. Not what he had, but what he was. But they'll

drive him away, mark my words."

Later on, but more gently, he introduced the subject of Elizabeth.

"You can't get away from this, Mrs. Wheeler. So long as she stands off,

and you behind her, the town is going to take her side. She doesn't know

it, but that's how it stands. It all hangs on her. If he wasn't the man

he is, I'd say his salvation hangs on her. I don't mean she ought to

take him back; it's too late for that, if she's engaged. But a little

friendliness and kindness wouldn't do any harm. You too. Do you ever

have him here?"

"How can I, as things are?"

"Well, be friendly, anyhow," he argued. "That's not asking much. I

suppose he'd cut my throat if he knew, but I'm a straight-to-the-mark

sort of person, and I know this: what this house does the town will do."

"I'll talk to Mr. Wheeler. I don't know. I'll say this, Mr. Bassett.

I won't make her unhappy. She has borne a great deal, and sometimes I

think her life is spoiled. She is very different."

"If she is suffering, isn't it possible she cares for him?"

But Margaret did not think so. She was so very calm. She was so calm

that sometimes it was alarming.

"He gave her a ring, and the other day I found it, tossed into a drawer

full of odds and ends. I haven't seen it lately; she may have sent it

back."