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Page 68
Then James arose to the occasion. He faced them all and smiled coolly.
"Yes," he replied; "you mean about Doctor Gordon?"
There was a murmur of assent.
James read the article from beginning to end. "I suppose it is news to
you," he said, when he had finished. He looked at them all with a
superior air. He looked older and more manly than when he had first come
in their midst. He _was_ older and more manly, and he was superior. The
men recognized it, not sullenly nor defiantly, but with the
unquestioning attitude of the New Jerseyman when he is really below the
scale in birth and education. Still their faces all expressed malicious
cunning and cruel curiosity, which they hesitated to put into words.
They knew that Elliot was to marry Gordon's niece; they were overawed by
both men, but they were afraid of Gordon.
Still Jim Goodman found courage of his meanness and smallness and spoke.
"It seems a strange thing," he said, "that Doctor Gordon should hev came
and went here for years, and all of us thinkin' his wife were his sister
when she were not."
"Well, what of it?" asked James.
The men stared at one another.
"What of it?" repeated James. "I don't suppose there is anything
criminal in a man's calling his wife by his sister's name. Doctor Gordon
has a sister named Ewing."
Again the men stared at one another, and Jim Goodman was the only one
who had the miserable courage to speak. "S'pose him an' her were
married," he said, in a thin voice like the squeal of a fox.
"Which of you wants to be knocked down can make a statement to the
contrary," thundered James. "Is that what you make of it?"
Goodman shuffled from one foot to the other. Men nudged shoulders,
Goodman spoke. "Nobody never knows what is true or ain't true in them
newspapers," he observed, and there was a note of alarm in his voice.
"I did not read a thing in the whole column which even implied such a
thing as you intimated," James said hotly. "Don't put it off on the
newspapers!"
Then another man spoke, a farmer, tall, dry, lank, and impervious. He
was a man about whom were ill-reports. His wife had died some years
before, and he had a housekeeper, a florid, blonde creature, dressed
with dingy showiness, of whom people spoke with covert laughs. "All we
want to know is why Doctor Gordon has never said that her was his wife,
and not his sister," he said in a defiant nasal voice.
The malignant Jim Goodman saw his chance. He jumped upon it like a
spider. "That's so," he said. "Why didn't he say she was his
housekeeper?" There was a shout of coarse laughter. The farmer gave a
hateful look at Goodman and puffed at a rank pipe.
James was furious, but he saw the necessity of a statement of some kind,
and his wits leaped to action. "Well," he said, "suppose there was a
question of money."
The crowd pressed closer and gaped.
"Money!" said Goodman.
"Yes, money," pursued James recklessly. "Did you never hear of people
being opposed to marriages, rich people I mean, and threatening to
disinherit a woman if she married the man they did not pick out for
her?"
"Was that it?" asked Goodman.
"I am not saying that it was or was not. I am not going to discuss
Doctor Gordon's secrets with you. It's none of your business, and none
of my business. All I am saying is this, suppose there had been a girl
years ago with a very rich bachelor brother. Suppose the brother had
been jilted by a girl, and hated the whole lot of women like poison, and
had no idea of getting married himself, and his sister would be his only
heiress, and he had set his foot down that she should not marry Doc--the
man she had set her heart upon. Suppose he went to--well, the South Sea
Islands, for the rest of his life, to get out of sight and sound of
women like the one who had jilted him, told his sister before he went
that if she married the man she wanted he would make a will and leave
his money away from her, build an hospital or a library or something,
suppose she hit upon the plan of marrying the man she wanted, and
keeping it quiet."
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