第10章

Wondering, fearful, undecided what to do, the old coloured man stood motionless in the gloomy strip of hallway, and waited developments.

The vault, with its big iron door, was opposite him.Inside that was the safe, holding the papers of value, the gold and currency of the bank.On the floor of the vault was, perhaps, eighteen thousand dollars in silver.

The president took his key from his pocket, opened the vault and went inside, nearly closing the door behind him.Uncle Bushrod saw, through the narrow aperture, the flicker of a candle.In a minute or two--it seemed an hour to the watcher--Mr.Robert came out, bringing with him a large hand-satchel, handling it in a careful but hurried manner, as if fearful that he might be observed.With one hand he closed and locked the vault door.

With a reluctant theory forming itself beneath his wool, Uncle Bushrod waited and watched, shaking in his concealing shadow.

Mr.Robert set the satchel softly upon a desk, and turned his coat collar up about his neck and ears.He was dressed in a rough suit of gray, as if for travelling.He glanced with frowning intentness at the big office clock above the burning gas-jet, and then looked lingeringly about the bank--lingeringly and fondly, Uncle Bushrod thought, as one who bids farewell to dear and familiar scenes.

Now he caught up his burden again and moved promptly and softly out of the bank by the way he had come locking the front door behind him.

For a minute or longer Uncle Bushrod was as stone in his tracks.Had that midnight rifler of safes and vaults been any other on earth than the man he was, the old retainer would have rushed upon him and struck to save the Weymouth property.But now the watcher's soul was tortured by the poignant dread of something worse than mere robbery.He was seized by an accusing terror that said the Weymouth name and the Weymouth honour were about to be lost.Marse Robert robbing the bank!

What else could it mean? The hour of the night, the stealthy visit to the vault, the satchel brought forth and with expedition and silence, the prowler's rough dress, his solicitous reading of the clock, and noiseless departure--what else could it mean?

And then to the turmoil of Uncle Bushrod's thoughts came the corroborating recollection of preceding events--Mr.Robert's increasing intemperance and consequent many moods of royal high spirits and stern tempers; the casual talk he had heard in the bank of the decrease in business and difficulty in collecting loans.What else could it all mean but that Mr.Robert Weymouth was an absconder--was about to fly with the bank's remaining funds, leaving Mr.William, Miss Letty, little Nab, Guy, and Uncle Bushrod to bear the disgrace?

During one minute Uncle Bushrod considered these things, and then he awoke to sudden determination and action.

"Lawd! Lawd!" he moaned aloud, as he hobbled hastily toward the side door."Sech a come-off after all dese here years of big doin's and fine doin's.Scan'lous sights upon de yearth when de Weymouth fambly done turn out robbers and 'bezzlers! Time for Uncle Bushrod to clean out somebody's chicken-coop and eben matters up.Oh, Lawd! Marse Robert, you ain't gwine do dat.'N Miss Letty an' dem chillun so proud and talkin' 'Weymouth, Weymouth,' all de time! I'm gwine to stop you ef I can.'Spec you shoot Mr.Nigger's head off ef he fool wid you, but I'm gwine stop you ef I can."

Uncle Bushrod, aided by his hickory stick, impeded by his rheumatism, hurried down the street toward the railroad station, where the two lines touching Weymouthville met.As he had expected and feared, he saw there Mr.Robert, standing in the shadow of the building, waiting for the train.He held the satchel in his hand.

When Uncle Bushrod came within twenty yards of the bank president, standing like a huge, gray ghost by the station wall, sudden perturbation seized him.The rashness and audacity of the thing he had come to do struck him fully.He would have been happy could he have turned and fled from the possibilities of the famous Weymouth wrath.

But again he saw, in his fancy, the white reproachful face of Miss Letty, and the distressed looks of Nan and Guy, should he fail in his duty and they question him as to his stewardship.

Braced by the thought, he approached in a straight line, clearing his throat and pounding with his stick so that he might be early recognized.Thus he might avoid the likely danger of too suddenly surprising the sometimes hasty Mr.Robert.

"Is that you, Bushrod?" called the clamant, clear voice of the gray ghost.

"Yes, suh, Marse Robert."

"What the devil are you doing out at this time of night?"

For the first time in his life, Uncle Bushrod told Marse Robert a falsehood.He could not repress it.He would have to circumlocute a little.His nerve was not equal to a direct attack.

"I done been down, suh, to see ol' Aunt M'ria Patterson.She taken sick in de night, and I kyar'ed her a bottle of M'lindy's medercine.

Yes, suh."

"Humph!" said Robert."You better get home out of the night air.It's damp.You'll hardly be worth killing to-morrow on account of your rheumatism.Think it'll be a clear day, Bushrod?"

"I 'low it will, suh.De sun sot red las' night."

Mr.Robert lit a cigar in the shadow, and the smoke looked like his gray ghost expanding and escaping into the night air.Somehow, Uncle Bushrod could barely force his reluctant tongue to the dreadful subject.He stood, awkward, shambling, with his feet upon the gravel and fumbling with his stick.But then, afar off--three miles away, at the Jimtown switch--he heard the faint whistle of the coming train, the one that was to transport the Weymouth name into the regions of dishonour and shame.All fear left him.He took off his hat and faced the chief of the clan he served, the great, royal, kind, lofty, terrible Weymouth--he bearded him there at the brink of the awful thing that was about to happen.