The Colonel's Dream Read online

  _Thirty-three_

  Fortune favoured Caxton in the matter of the note. Fetters was inClarendon the following morning. Caxton saw him passing, called himinto his office, and produced the note.

  "That's no good," said Fetters contemptuously. "It was outlawedyesterday. I suppose you allowed I'd forgotten it. On the contrary,I've a memorandum of it in my pocketbook, and I struck it off the listlast night. I always pay my lawful debts, when they're properlydemanded. If this note had been presented yesterday, I'd have paid it.To-day it's too late. It ain't a lawful debt."

  "Do you really mean to say, Mr. Fetters, that you have deliberatelyrobbed those poor women of this money all these years, and are notashamed of it, not even when you're found out, and that you are goingto take refuge behind the statute?"

  "Now, see here, Mr. Caxton," returned Fetters, without apparentemotion, "you want to be careful about the language you use. I mightsue you for slander. You're a young man, that hopes to have a futureand live in this county, where I expect to live and have law businessdone long after some of your present clients have moved away. I didn'towe the estate of John Treadwell one cent--you ought to be lawyerenough to know that. He owed me money, and paid me with a note. Icollected the note. I owed him money and paid it with a note. Whoeverheard of anybody's paying a note that wasn't presented?"

  "It's a poor argument, Mr. Fetters. You would have let those ladiesstarve to death before you would have come forward and paid thatdebt."

  "They've never asked me for charity, so I wasn't called on to offerit. And you know now, don't you, that if I'd paid the amount of thatnote, and then it had turned up afterward in somebody else's hands,I'd have had to pay it over again; now wouldn't I?"

  Caxton could not deny it. Fetters had robbed the Treadwell estate, buthis argument was unanswerable.

  "Yes," said Caxton, "I suppose you would."

  "I'm sorry for the women," said Fetters, "and I've stood ready to paythat note all these years, and it ain't my fault that it hasn't beenpresented. Now it's outlawed, and you couldn't expect a man to justgive away that much money. It ain't a lawful debt, and the law's goodenough for me."

  "You're awfully sorry for the ladies, aren't you?" said Caxton, withthinly veiled sarcasm.

  "I surely am; I'm honestly sorry for them."

  "And you'd pay the note if you had to, wouldn't you?" asked Caxton.

  "I surely would. As I say, I always pay my legal debts."

  "All right," said Caxton triumphantly, "then you'll pay this. I filedsuit against you yesterday, which takes the case out of the statute."

  Fetters concealed his discomfiture.

  "Well," he said, with quiet malignity, "I've nothing more to say tillI consult my lawyer. But I want to tell you one thing. You are ruininga fine career by standing in with this Colonel French. I hear his sonwas killed to-day. You can tell him I say it's a judgment on him; forI hold him responsible for my son's condition. He came down here andtried to demoralise the labour market. He put false notions in theniggers' heads. Then he got to meddling with my business, trying toget away a nigger whose time I had bought. He insulted my agentTurner, and came all the way down to Sycamore and tried to bully meinto letting the nigger loose, and of course I wouldn't be bullied.Afterwards, when I offered to let the nigger go, the colonel wouldn'thave it so. I shall always believe he bribed one of my men to get thenigger off, and then turned him loose to run amuck among the whitepeople and shoot my boy and my overseer. It was a low-downperformance, and unworthy of a gentleman. No really white man wouldtreat another white man so. You can tell him I say it's a judgmentthat's fallen on him to-day, and that it's not the last one, and thathe'll be sorrier yet that he didn't stay where he was, with hisnigger-lovin' notions, instead of comin' back down here to maketrouble for people that have grown up with the State and made it whatit is."

  Caxton, of course, did not deliver the message. To do so would havebeen worse taste than Fetters had displayed in sending it. Having gotthe best of the encounter, Caxton had no objection to letting hisdefeated antagonist discharge his venom against the absent colonel,who would never know of it, and who was already breasting the waves ofa sorrow so deep and so strong as almost to overwhelm him. For he hadloved the boy; all his hopes had centred around this beautiful manchild, who had promised so much that was good. His own future had beenplanned with reference to him. Now he was dead, and the bereavedfather gave way to his grief.