The Return of John Smith

by Herbert Quick

 

The
RETURN OF JOHN SMITH

By Herbert Quick

HIS name was John Smith, but he was not otherwise unworthy of notice. Out of her vast, tempestuous experience Blanche Slattery admitted this as she swept into the offices and looked down at the boy, noting the curl in his hair which speaks of the hidden vein of vanity, the wide blue eyes which told of a stratum of mysticism, the unsubdued brawn of hand and wrist which reminded her more of harvests than of field-meets, the mouth closely shut in purposeful attention to one Mr. Thompson's “Commentaries on the Law of Corporations.”

He thought her the stenographer and kept his eyes on the page. She laid a card on his desk—a card at which he looked with some attention before rising to meet her eyes with his own, which dilated in a sort of horror, as she thought. Her cheek actually burned as she turned aside with the crisp statement of her business.

“I want to see Judge Thornton,” she said.

Without a word John Smith pushed a button and listened at a telephone. The judge took his time as usual, and John gazed at the Slattery person with the receiver pressed against his ear. She was powdered and painted; the full corsage of her dress glittered with passementerie; in her form the latest fad was exaggerated into a reminiscence of medieval torturing-devices. Through the enamel of her skin dark crescents showed under her great black eyes, the whites of which were mottled here and there with specks of red. The once sweet lips had lost their softness of curve with their vermeil tincture and had fallen into hard repose.

John knew her profession and how she dominated her world of saddest hilarity—a world which through all mutations of time and institutions persists as on that day when Samson went to Gaza. He felt that there emanated from her a sort of authority like a sinister manifestation of the atmosphere surrounding men of power and sway—as though by dark and devious ways this soul, too, had carved out a realm in which it darkly reigned. She wondered, when he spoke, whether the softness in his voice were for her or whether it were a thing of habit.

“Judge Thornton is sorry that he cannot see you this morning,” he said. “Between ten and eleven to-morrow if it is convenient for you——"

“All right,” she said. “I'll be here at half-past ten. Good morning!”

The perfume of her presence, the rustling of her departure, the husky depth of her voice haunting his memory, the vast vistas through which the mind of the country boy fared forth venturesomely, impelled by the new contacts of this town in which he had undertaken to scale the citadel of professional success—all these militated against the sober enticements of the law of corporations; and when Judge Thornton entered unheard, John Smith started as though detected in some offense.

“The law,” said the judge, launching the hoary quotation, “is a jealous mistress.”

John Smith blushed, but saw no lodgment for a denial where there was no accusation. He had been allowing his thoughts to go wool-gathering; but now he began questioning the judge on the doctrine of the rights of minority stockholders. The judge condescended to a five-minute lecture which would have been costly had it been given for a client before the court. In the midst of the talk there bustled in a young man—a boy, in fact, who accosted the lawyer familiarly.

“Just a minute, judge. About that mass-meeting Tuesday—I'm Johnson of the News, you know. Will you speak?”

“I don't think the readers of the News are lying awake about it,” answered the judge, looking at the boy amusedly. “But my present intentions go no further than to attend the meeting.”

“What about the movement for cheaper gas?” asked the reporter. “Will the meeting start anything?”

“The meeting,” said the judge, “will be a law unto itself.”

“Sure,” replied Johnson of the News. “But a word from you as to the extortions of the gas company——"

“Will be addressed to the meeting—if I have any,” said the judge. “I——”

“Oh, all right!” interrupted the boy. “That's what I wanted! Good-by!”

John Smith's amazement at the boy's self-possession and ready, impudent effrontery, passed away in a visualization of Judge Thornton's big, strong figure at the meeting, fulminating against oppression—the oppression of to-day—as did Patrick Henry and James Otis against the wrongs of their times. Now, as of old, thought John Smith, the lawyer is a public officer, charged with public duties, alert to do battle with any tyrant or robber. He flushed with pleasure at this conception of the greatness of the profession.

“As a science,” said the judge, as though in answer to John's thought, “it's the greatest field of the intellect. It's the practise that's laborious and full of compromises.”

“Yes,” said John Smith, lamenting the interrupted lecture on the rights of minority stockholders. Judge Thornton had donned his coat and his hat.

“I'm off for the day. Good day to you—oh, I almost forgot. Do you want to hear a paper on 'King Lear' to-night? Nellie thought you might. Poor paper—but you'll meet people, and that's a part of the game.”

“Oh, yes!” cried John. “I'd be glad to!”

“Come to the house about eight,” said ae Judge, “and go with Nellie and me.”

“Ah, this was living! Why, at home he knew scarcely a person who had read more of Shakespeare than the quarrel scene in the fifth reader. Surely it was good fortune that had made his father and Judge Thornton playmates in boyhood. And to go with Nellie Thornton, too!

“Paint out that sign!” he heard some one say. “And what goes in the place of it, sir?” asked the painter. “'Thornton & Smith,'” replied the judge's voice. “My son-in-law, Mr. Smith, has been taken into the firm.”

The stenographer saw exaltation in his face as he closed the safe, bade her good night and went home.

As he sat beside Nellie that evening, he remembered the colloquy between her father and the painter, and shuddered as he contemplated the possibility of thought-transference and of its ruinous potentialities. As a protection against telepathy he gave his whole attention to Judge Thornton's paper on “Lear.” The indescribable agony of the old king's frenzy, the whirling tempest of the tragedy in which he wandered to his doom clutched at the boy's heart. The wolfish Goneril and Regan, the sweet Cordelia, the bared gray head, the storm, the night—— By some occult warning John Smith knew that Nellie was not pleased with his absorption, and that the discussion had begun.

“This treatment is so original,” said the lady president. “Everybody must be full of questions. Now let us have a perfectly free discussion—don't wait to be called upon, please!”

To John Smith the lady president seemed enthusiasm personified; yet only a few people arose, and these merely said how much they had enjoyed the paper. John Smith could see himself on his feet pouring forth comment and exposition, but he sat close, hoping that no adverse fate might direct the lady president's attention to him. The discussion was dragging; one could tell that from the increasing bubbliness of the' lady president's enthusiasm as she strove conscientiously to fulfil her task of imposing culture upon society.

“I'm sure there must be something more,” she said. “Perhaps the most precious pearl of thought of the evening awaits just one more dive. Mrs. Brunson, can you not——”

“I always feel presumptuous,” said Mrs. Brunson, hoarsening her voice to the pitch she always adopted in public speaking, “when I differ from other commentators. But I also feel that the true critic must put himself in the place of the character under examination. Isn't there a good deal of justification for Goneril and Regan? I do not see, personally, how Lear could be supposed to need all those hundred knights, with their drinking and roistering and dogs and—and all that. I believe Lear's fate was of his own making, and——”

John Smith, the unsophisticated, was startled. The unutterable fate of “the old, kind king”—could this Olympian circle hold such treason?

No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall—I will do such things—
What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep;
No, I'll not weep:
I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I'll weep. O, fool, I shall go mad!

The fiery denunciation rang in the boy's ears in answer to the words of this modern woman with her silks and plumes, standing here in a church and, in spite of the softening things of her heritage, 'sympathizing with these fierce sisters! Others arose and agreed with her. One read the words of Regan:

O, sir, you are old;
Nature in you stands on the very verge
Of her confine: you should be ruled and led
By some discretion that discerns: your state
Better than you yourself.

These, was the comment, were the really sane words regarding Lear.

“Oh, well!” said Judge Thornton as John broke his fast and the abstinence of a lifetime in the parlor, upon the cakes and wine served by Nellie. “It didn't surprise me a bit. Mrs. Brunson thinks she'd do as Goneril and Regan did with their father—and she would. She'd avoid the little peccadilloes with Edmund and so remain technically virtuous—the best people are the worst, in some things, John; never forget that. It will be useful to remember it. And the worst are so nearly as good as the best—come into the office when that Slattery person comes in the morning, and. you'll see what I mean. I'll give you some papers to draw for her.”

The Slattery person swept into the private office with a rustle of stiffest silks, reminding the youth of the corn-husks at home in shucking-time, leaving behind her a whiff of all the Orient. John Smith walked into her presence palpitating as at the approach to something terrible and daunting and mystically fateful to such as himself—as a sailor might draw warily near the black magnetic rocks, which, approached too closely, would draw the very nails from his ship and dissolve his craft in the billows. When Judge Thornton remarked by way of left-handed introduction that Mr. Smith would draw the papers, the woman paid John no attention other than to bow and look straight before her. The youth felt conscious of the same shuddering admiration for her that he might have felt for some gaudy, bright-eyed serpent.

“It's a simple matter, I guess,” she said. “I want to make over some property so Abner Gibbs of Bloomington will get fifty dollars sure every month as long as he lives.”

“Not so very simple,” said the judge, “but quite possible. But why don't you remit it to him yourself?”

“I want to cinch it while I've the money. You see, it's this way. In—in my—business”—she looked into John Smith's girlish eyes and hesitated—“everything is uncertain. It's a feast or a famine. A wave of reform may strike the town to-morrow, and the lid goes on. The protection you pay for may be taken from you next week. You've no rights. You ain't human. So I fix the fifty a month for the old man while I can, see?”

“Gibbs—Gibbs!” said the judge. “Relation of yours?”

“In a way. Does it make any difference?”

“It goes to the consideration,” said the lawyer. “Love and affection, you know.”

“Well,” said the Slattery person, “his son was my solid man—my side-partner—my husband. The last thing he said when he got his was, 'Blanche, old girl, take care of dad. You know his weakness. Don't let him starve!' And I ain't going to!”

“His weakness?” queried the judge. “What did he mean?”

“Drink,” said the Slattery person. “It's in the blood. But he can't last long—and he's Jim's father!”

She looked out of the window and dabbed with a lace handkerchief at her bright eyes, which she dared not wipe for fear of ruin to the appliqué complexion. Suddenly she had, to the mind of the susceptible John Smith, become a woman, with a woman's weakness and yearning over the departed Jim—of the blackness of whose life John had no means of taking the measure. He felt all at once that this person had shown feelings so like those he would have expected from his mother that it startled him.

“Oh, we're all alike!” said the judge when she had gone. “These things are worth the lawyer's study. Human nature—human nature! We must get above it and study it! Just ponder on the contradictions in the bases of life involved in this Slattery person and Mrs. Brunson's feeling toward Lear. Here's a woman, that no one at the circle last night would touch with anything shorter than a ten-foot pole or lighter than a club, who is actually carrying out toward a drunkard in Bloomington a policy of love and humanity that would be beyond Mrs. Brunson. She'd say: 'Let him behave the way I say, and I'll take him in!' Any of us moral folks would do the same, too. No knights and roistering for us! Quite a study—eh, John?”

John sat silent, far afloat from his moorings. The judge was too deep, too ethically acute for him. Perhaps by long association he, John Smith, might grow in moral height and mental grasp, so as to——

“I don't know,” said Judge Thornton, “which is the worse—sale of the body, or barter of the soul. I don't mean that the body can be sold without the soul going with it, though Epictetus seems a case in point in favor of the separable-transaction theory; but if it can, sale of the soul would seem the more ruinous. I——

Judge Thornton was interrupted by the opening of the office door and the entrance of a brisk, capable-looking, vandyke-bearded man who carried a cane and bore himself with an ease that seemed somehow at war with something of restraint—the ease on the surface, the embarrassment underneath, like a dead swell coming in against the breeze. There was a triumphant gleam in Judge Thornton's eyes, filmed at once with self-possession and inscrutable calm. “Come in, Mr. Avery,” he said.

“Just a word with you,” said Mr. Avery, “in——”

“Certainly said the judge. “Right in here, Mr. Avery.”

Mr. Avery passed into the private office. Judge Thornton remained for a word with John Smith.

“This is the vice-president of the gas company,” he said. “Don't mention his call and don't allow me to be disturbed.”

John Smith was triumphant. The very might of Thornton's ability and power had brought the gas company to their knees! This crucial stage of the gas fight thrust entirely out of his mind the deep moral and ethical consideration of the relations of the Slattery person to the discussion of “Lear.” The law, as of old, was a great profession. Would any of the Boone County folks be able to believe that he, John Smith, was so near the heart of big things as to sit here while Judge Thornton won this great bloodless victory for the people?

Mr. Avery came out cordially smiling upon Judge Thornton, who looked triumphant, pleased, uplifted. For a man who had just been throttled, Mr. Avery looked in rather good form.

“I'll send all the papers over to you, judge,” he said. “And I'm mighty glad we've got together. It ought to have been done before; but you know how it is when you leave things to subordinates.”

“Oh, well,” said the judge. “Of course I'm very glad; but the subordinates may have done the right thing. Maxwell & Wilson are good men, but local conditions may——”

They went out into the anteroom, and John Smith heard them go away together. He felt disquieted. The appearances were so different from what he had expected. Not that it was in the least degree his affair, but——

The newsboy threw in the evening paper. John Smith looked at once for the account of the gas fight.

The anti-ordinance forces make no secret of their regret that Judge Thornton has seen fit to withdraw his promise to address the mass-meeting on Tuesday. Late this afternoon he told a News representative that he should not attend, and that in his opinion a study of the gas question will convince any business man that the illuminant cannot be delivered at the meter at anything short of the rate now paid here. This is regarded by some as a reversal of Judge Thornton's position; but, as a matter of fact, in all his public utterances the judge has suspended judgment on the merits of the question. The outlook for a successful movement cannot be regarded as bright to-day.

John Smith was looking at the paper as though it were some published blasphemy, some unspeakable profanation of all things good and holy, when Judge Thornton returned, whistling like a man at peace with the world and himself. The judge went into his private office and came out with a thin slip of paper folded in the palm of one smooth, strong hand.

“Too bad you're not a full-fledged lawyer, John, instead of a beginner. I could use you a good deal. My practise is getting more extensive. I've just been retained as the general counsel of the gas company. Oh, all you have to do is to wait and make yourself indispensable! You'll be getting plums like that one of these days. It's a great game! Good night.”

Good night, indeed! There was no thunder and lightning like that on the heath when Lear went mad; but, to a boy whose world had suddenly tumbled into pieces, the snow which drove softly against his cheek and slithered hissingly along the asphalt was a natural feature to dwell in his memory forever. He wandered out through the area of high buildings, past the residences, to where the snow rattled on the corn-husks that reminded him of the Slattery person's silks. He had confused visions of Mrs. Brunson, dressed in Judge Thornton's decent high hat, flaunting gaudy garments and painting her face for indescribable drinking-bouts. He came back past the Thornton home, where he paused in the gray dawn and looked at one lace-curtained window to murmur “Good-by.” At the door of the office-building where his days had been spent since his coming to town, he went in from force of habit and pushed the button for the elevator. No sound rewarded the effort, and he pushed again impatiently. Then he laughed as he noted the elevator-cages about him, all shut down, all empty like cells from which the lunatic occupants had escaped. A woman who had begun scrubbing the marble steps looked at him curiously as the mirthless laugh sounded through the empty building.

John Smith climbed flight after flight, opened the door which would never have “Thornton & Smith” on it, sat down at his desk and wrote:

Dear Father: I am quite well. Everything looks favorable for my studies. Judge Thornton says he wants to do all he can for me, and I think he does; but I guess I am not cut out for a lawyer. It isn't quite what I thought it was. If you are still willing to send me to the State college and give me that agricultural course, I believe I'll go. There's something about the farm that's always there; and you know it's there. I'll be home as soon as I can pack up. Your loving son, ⁠ John Smith.