The business of arranging Cowperwood’s sentence for Monday was soon disposed of through Shannon, who had no personal objection to any reasonable delay.
Steger next visited the county jail, close on to five o’clock, when it was already dark. Sheriff Jaspers came lolling out from his private library, where he had been engaged upon the work of cleaning his pipe.
“How are you, Mr. Steger?” he observed, smiling blandly. “How are you? Glad to see you. Won’t you sit down? I suppose you’re round here again on that Cowperwood matter. I just received word from the district attorney that he had lost his case.”
“That’s it, Sheriff,” replied Steger, ingratiatingly. “He asked me to step around and see what you wanted him to do in the matter. Judge Payderson has just fixed the sentence time for Monday morning at ten o’clock. I don’t suppose you’ll be much put out if he doesn’t show up here before Monday at eight o’clock, will you, or Sunday night, anyhow? He’s perfectly reliable, as you know.” Steger was sounding Jaspers out, politely trying to make the time of Cowperwood’s arrival a trivial matter in order to avoid paying the hundred dollars, if possible. But Jaspers was not to be so easily disposed of. His fat face lengthened considerably. How could Steger ask him such a favor and not even suggest the slightest form of remuneration?
“It’s ag’in’ the law, Mr. Steger, as you know,” he began, cautiously and complainingly. “I’d like to accommodate him, everything else being equal, but since that Albertson case three years ago we’ve had to run this office much more careful, and —”
“Oh, I know, Sheriff,” interrupted Steger, blandly, “but this isn’t an ordinary case in any way, as you can see for yourself. Mr. Cowperwood is a very important man, and he has a great many things to attend to. Now if it were only a mere matter of seventy-five or a hundred dollars to satisfy some court clerk with, or to pay a fine, it would be easy enough, but —” He paused and looked wisely away, and Mr. Jaspers’s face began to relax at once. The law against which it was ordinarily so hard to offend was not now so important. Steger saw that it was needless to introduce any additional arguments.
“It’s a very ticklish business, this, Mr. Steger,” put in the sheriff, yieldingly, and yet with a slight whimper in his voice. “If anything were to happen, it would cost me my place all right. I don’t like to do it under any circumstances, and I wouldn’t, only I happen to know both Mr. Cowperwood and Mr. Stener, and I like ’em both. I don’ think they got their rights in this matter, either. I don’t mind making an exception in this case if Mr. Cowperwood don’t go about too publicly. I wouldn’t want any of the men in the district attorney’s office to know this. I don’t suppose he’ll mind if I keep a deputy somewhere near all the time for looks’ sake. I have to, you know, really, under the law. He won’t bother him any. Just keep on guard like.” Jaspers looked at Mr. Steger very flatly and wisely — almost placatingly under the circumstances — and Steger nodded.
“Quite right, Sheriff, quite right. You’re quite right,” and he drew out his purse while the sheriff led the way very cautiously back into his library.
“I’d like to show you the line of law-books I’m fixing up for myself in here, Mr. Steger,” he observed, genially, but meanwhile closing his fingers gently on the small roll of ten-dollar bills Steger was handing him. “We have occasional use for books of that kind here, as you see. I thought it a good sort of thing to have them around.” He waved one arm comprehensively at the line of State reports, revised statutes, prison regulations, etc., the while he put the money in his pocket and Steger pretended to look.
“A good idea, I think, Sheriff. Very good, indeed. So you think if Mr. Cowperwood gets around here very early Monday morning, say eight or eight-thirty, that it will be all right?”
“I think so,” replied the sheriff, curiously nervous, but agreeable, anxious to please. “I don’t think that anything will come up that will make me want him earlier. If it does I’ll let you know, and you can produce him. I don’t think so, though, Mr. Steger; I think everything will be all right.” They were once more in the main hall now. “Glad to have seen you again, Mr. Steger — very glad,” he added. “Call again some day.”
Waving the sheriff a pleasant farewell, he hurried on his way to Cowperwood’s house.
You would not have thought, seeing Cowperwood mount the front steps of his handsome residence in his neat gray suit and well-cut overcoat on his return from his office that evening, that he was thinking that this might be his last night here. His air and walk indicated no weakening of spirit. He entered the hall, where an early lamp was aglow, and encountered “Wash” Sims, an old negro factotum, who was just coming up from the basement, carrying a bucket of coal for one of the fireplaces.
“Mahty cold out, dis evenin’, Mistah Coppahwood,” said Wash, to whom anything less than sixty degrees was very cold. His one regret was that Philadelphia was not located in North Carolina, from whence he came.
“’Tis sharp, Wash,” replied Cowperwood, absentmindedly. He was thinking for the moment of the house and how it had looked, as he came toward it west along Girard Avenue — what the neighbors were thinking of him, too, observing him from time to time out of their windows. It was clear and cold. The lamps in the reception-hall and sitting-room had been lit, for he had permitted no air of funereal gloom to settle down over this place since his troubles had begun. In the far west of the street a last tingling gleam of lavender and violet was showing over the cold white snow of the roadway. The house of gray-green stone, with its lighted windows, and cream-colored lace curtains, had looked especially attractive. He had thought for the moment of the pride he had taken in putting all this here, decorating and ornamenting it, and whether, ever, he could secure it for himself again. “Where is your mistress?” he added to Wash, when he bethought himself.
“In the sitting-room, Mr. Coppahwood, ah think.”
Cowperwood ascended the stairs, thinking curiously that Wash would soon be out of a job now, unless Mrs. Cowperwood, out of all the wreck of other things, chose to retain him, which was not likely. He entered the sitting-room, and there sat his wife by the oblong center-table, sewing a hook and eye on one of Lillian, second’s, petticoats. She looked up, at his step, with the peculiarly uncertain smile she used these days — indication of her pain, fear, suspicion — and inquired, “Well, what is new with you, Frank?” Her smile was something like a hat or belt or ornament which one puts on or off at will.
“Nothing in particular,” he replied, in his offhand way, “except that I understand I have lost that appeal of mine. Steger is coming here in a little while to let me know. I had a note from him, and I fancy it’s about that.”
He did not care to say squarely that he had lost. He knew that she was sufficiently distressed as it was, and he did not care to be too abrupt just now.
“You don’t say!” replied Lillian, with surprise and fright in her voice, and getting up.
She had been so used to a world where prisons were scarcely thought of, where things went on smoothly from day to day without any noticeable intrusion of such distressing things as courts, jails, and the like, that these last few months had driven her nearly mad. Cowperwood had so definitely insisted on her keeping in the background — he had told her so very little that she was all at sea anyhow in regard to the whole procedure. Nearly all that she had had in the way of intelligence had been fr............