The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg | Page 9

ever! And the minor and unimportant
citizens and their wives went around acting in much the same way.
Everybody ran to the bank to see the gold-sack; and before noon
grieved and envious crowds began to flock in from Brixton and all
neighbouring towns; and that afternoon and next day reporters began to
arrive from everywhere to verify the sack and its history and write the
whole thing up anew, and make dashing free- hand pictures of the sack,
and of Richards's house, and the bank, and the Presbyterian church, and
the Baptist church, and the public square, and the town-hall where the
test would be applied and the money delivered; and damnable portraits
of the Richardses, and Pinkerton the banker, and Cox, and the foreman,
and Reverend Burgess, and the postmaster--and even of Jack Halliday,
who was the loafing, good-natured, no-account, irreverent fisherman,
hunter, boys' friend, stray-dogs' friend, typical "Sam Lawson" of the
town. The little mean, smirking, oily Pinkerton showed the sack to all
comers, and rubbed his sleek palms together pleasantly, and enlarged
upon the town's fine old reputation for honesty and upon this wonderful
endorsement of it, and hoped and believed that the example would now
spread far and wide over the American world, and be epoch- making in
the matter of moral regeneration. And so on, and so on.
By the end of a week things had quieted down again; the wild
intoxication of pride and joy had sobered to a soft, sweet, silent
delight--a sort of deep, nameless, unutterable content. All faces bore a
look of peaceful, holy happiness.
Then a change came. It was a gradual change; so gradual that its
beginnings were hardly noticed; maybe were not noticed at all, except
by Jack Halliday, who always noticed everything; and always made fun
of it, too, no matter what it was. He began to throw out chaffing
remarks about people not looking quite so happy as they did a day or
two ago; and next he claimed that the new aspect was deepening to
positive sadness; next, that it was taking on a sick look; and finally he
said that everybody was become so moody, thoughtful, and
absent-minded that he could rob the meanest man in town of a cent out
of the bottom of his breeches pocket and not disturb his reverie.
At this stage--or at about this stage--a saying like this was dropped at
bedtime--with a sigh, usually--by the head of each of the nineteen
principal households:

"Ah, what COULD have been the remark that Goodson made?"
And straightway--with a shudder--came this, from the man's wife:
"Oh, DON'T! What horrible thing are you mulling in your mind? Put it
away from you, for God's sake!"
But that question was wrung from those men again the next night--and
got the same retort. But weaker.
And the third night the men uttered the question yet again--with
anguish, and absently. This time--and the following night--the wives
fidgeted feebly, and tried to say something. But didn't.
And the night after that they found their tongues and responded--
longingly:
"Oh, if we COULD only guess!"
Halliday's comments grew daily more and more sparklingly
disagreeable and disparaging. He went diligently about, laughing at the
town, individually and in mass. But his laugh was the only one left in
the village: it fell upon a hollow and mournful vacancy and emptiness.
Not even a smile was findable anywhere. Halliday carried a cigar-box
around on a tripod, playing that it was a camera, and halted all passers
and aimed the thing and said "Ready! --now look pleasant, please," but
not even this capital joke could surprise the dreary faces into any
softening.
So three weeks passed--one week was left. It was Saturday evening
after supper. Instead of the aforetime Saturday-evening flutter and
bustle and shopping and larking, the streets were empty and desolate.
Richards and his old wife sat apart in their little parlour--miserable and
thinking. This was become their evening habit now: the life-long habit
which had preceded it, of reading, knitting, and contented chat, or
receiving or paying neighbourly calls, was dead and gone and forgotten,
ages ago--two or three weeks ago; nobody talked now, nobody read,
nobody visited--the whole village sat at home, sighing, worrying, silent.
Trying to guess out that remark.
The postman left a letter. Richards glanced listlessly at the
superscription and the post-mark--unfamiliar, both--and tossed the
letter on the table and resumed his might-have-beens and his hopeless
dull miseries where he had left them off. Two or three hours later his
wife got wearily up and was going away to bed without a
good-night--custom now--but she stopped near the letter and eyed it

awhile with a dead interest, then broke it open, and began to skim it
over. Richards, sitting there with his chair tilted