WHITE ROSES IN A LAW-OFFICE
As upon a world canopied with storm, hung with mourning purple and habited in black, did Mr.Flitcroft turn his morning face at eight o'clock antemeridian Monday, as he hied himself to his daily duty at the Washington National Bank.Yet more than the merely funereal gloomed out from the hillocky area of his countenance.Was there not, i'faith, a glow, a Vesuvian shimmer, beneath the murk of that darkling eye?
Was here one, think you, to turn the other cheek?
Little has he learned of Norbert Flitcroft who conceives that this fiery spirit was easily to be quenched! Look upon the jowl of him, and let him who dares maintain that people--even the very Pikes themselves--were to grind beneath their brougham wheels a prostrate Norbert and ride on scatheless!
In this his own metaphor is nearly touched "Iguess not! They don't run over ME! Martin Pike better look out how he tries it!"So Mother Nature at her kindly tasks, good Norbert, uses for her unguent our own perfect inconsistency: and often when we are stabbed deep in the breast she distracts us by thin scratches in other parts, that in the itch of these we may forget the greater hurt till it be healed.Thus, the remembrance of last night, when you undisguisedly ran from the wrath of a Pike, with a pretty girl looking on (to say nothing of the acrid Arp, who will fling the legend on a thousand winds), might well agonize you now, as, in less hasty moments and at a safe distance, you brood upon the piteous figure you cut.On the contrary, behold: you see no blood crimsoning the edges of the horrid gash in your panoply of self-esteem: you but smart and scratch the scratches, forgetting your wound in the hot itch for vengeance.It is an itch which will last (for in such matters your temper shall be steadfast), and let the great Goliath in the mean time beware of you! You ran, last night.You ran--of course you ran.Why not? You ran to fight another day!
A bank clerk sometimes has opportunities.
The stricken fat one could not understand how it came about that he had blurted out the damning confession that he had visited Beaver Beach.
When he tried to solve the puzzle, his mind refused the strain, became foggy and the terrors of his position acute.Was he, like Joe Louden, to endure the ban of Canaan, and like him stand excommunicate beyond the pale because of Martin Pike's displeasure? For Norbert saw with perfect clearness to-day what the Judge had done for Joe.
Now that he stood in danger of a fate identical, this came home to him.How many others, he wondered, would do as Mamie had done and write notes such as he had received by the hand of Sam Warden, late last night?
"DEAR SIR." (This from Mamie, who, in the Canaanitish way, had been wont to address him as "Norb"!)--"My father wishes me to state that after your remark yesterday afternoon on the steps which was overheard by my mother who happened to be standing in the hall behind you and your BEHAVIOR to himself later on--he considers it impossible to allow you to call any more or to speak to any member of his household.
"Yours respectfully, "MAMIE PIKE."
Erasures and restorations bore witness to a considerable doubt in Mamie's mind concerning "Yours respectfully," but she had finally let it stand, evidently convinced that the plain signature, without preface, savored of an intimacy denied by the context.
"`DEAR SIR'!" repeated Norbert, between set teeth."`IMPOSSIBLE TO ALLOW YOU TO CALL any more'!"These and other terms of his dismissal recurred to him during the morning, and ever and anon he looked up from his desk, his lips moving to the tune of those horrid phrases, and stared out at the street.
Basilisk glaring this, with no Christian softness in it, not even when it fell upon his own grandfather, sitting among the sages within easy eye-shot from the big window at Norbert's elbow.However, Colonel Flitcroft was not disturbed by the gaze of his descendant, being, in fact, quite unaware of it.The aged men were having a busy morning.
The conclave was not what it had been.[See Arp and all his works.] There had come, as the years went by, a few recruits; but faces were missing:
the two Tabors had gone, and Uncle Joe Davey could no longer lay claim to the patriarchship; he had laid it down with a half-sigh and gone his way.
Eskew himself was now the oldest of the conscript fathers, the Colonel and Squire Buckalew pressing him closely, with Peter Bradbury no great time behind.
To-day they did not plant their feet upon the brass rail inside the hotel windows, but courted the genial weather out-doors, and, as their summer custom was, tilted back their chairs in the shade of the western wall of the building.
"And who could of dreamed," Mr.Bradbury was saying, with a side-glance of expectancy at Eskew, "that Jonas Tabor would ever turn out to have a niece like that!"Mr.Arp ceased to fan himself with his wide straw hat and said grimly:
