Arriving at the poor-house, Mr. Belcher gave the reins to his servant, and, with a sharp rap upon the door with the butt of his whip, summoned to the latch the red-faced and stuffy keeper. What passed between them, Phipps did not hear, although he tried very hard to do so. At the close of a half hour's buzzing conversation, Tom Buffum took the bundle from the wagon, and pitched it into his doorway. Then, with the basket on his arm, he and Mr. Belcher made their way across the street to the dormitories and cells occupied by the paupers of both sexes and all ages and conditions. Even the hard-hearted proprietor saw that which wounded his blunted sensibilities; but he looked on with a bland face, and witnessed the greedy consumption of the stale dainties of his own table.
It was by accident that he was led out by a side passage, and there he caught glimpses of the cells to which Miss Butterworth had alluded, and inhaled an atmosphere which sickened him to paleness, and brought to his lips the exclamation: "For God's sake let's get out of this."
"Ay! ay!" came tremblingly from behind the bars of a cell, "let's get out of this."
Mr. Belcher pushed toward the light, but not so quickly that a pair of eyes, glaring from the straw, failed to recognize him.
"Robert Belcher! Oh, for God's sake! Robert Belcher!"
It was a call of wild distress—a whine, a howl, an objurgation, all combined. It was repeated as long as he could hear it. It sounded in his ears as he descended the hill. It came again and again to him as he was seated at his comfortable breakfast. It rang in the chambers of his consciousness for hours, and only a firm and despotic will expelled it at last. He knew the voice, and he never wished to hear it again.
What he had seen that morning, and what he had done, where he had been, and why he had gone, were secrets to which his wife and children were not admitted. The relations between himself and his wife were not new in the world. He wished to retain her respect, so he never revealed to her his iniquities. She wished as far as possible to respect him, so she never made uncomfortable inquiries. He was bountiful to her. He had been bountiful to many others. She clothed and informed all his acts of beneficence with the motives which became them. If she was ever shocked by his vulgarity, he never knew it by any word of hers, in disapproval. If she had suspicions, she did not betray them. Her children were trained to respect their father, and among them she found the satisfactions of her life. He had long ceased to be her companion. As an associate, friend, lover, she had given him up, and, burying in her heart all her griefs and all her loneliness, had determined to make the best of her life, and to bring her children to believe that their father was a man of honor, of whom they had no reason to be ashamed. If she was proud, hers was an amiable pride, and to Mr. Belcher's credit let it be said that he respected her as much as he wished her to honor him.
For an hour after breakfast, Mr. Belcher was occupied in his library, with his agent, in the transaction of his daily business. Then, just as the church bell rang its preliminary summons for the assembling of the town-meeting, Phipps came to the door again with the rakish grays and the rakish wagon, and Mr. Belcher drove down the steep hill into the village, exchanging pleasant words with the farmers whom he encountered on the way, and stopping at various shops, to speak with those upon whom he depended for voting through whatever public schemes he found it desirable to favor.
The old town-hall was thronged for half-an-hour before the time designated in the warrant. Finally, the bell ceased to ring, at the exact moment when Mr. Belcher drove to the door and ascended the steps. There was a buzz all over the house when he entered, and he was surrounded at once.
"Have it just as you want it," shaking his head ostentatiously and motioning them away, "don't mind anything about me. I'm a passenger," he said aloud, and with a laugh, as the meeting was called to order and the warrant read, and a nomination for moderator demanded.
"Peter Vernol," shouted a dozen voices in unison.
Peter Vernol had represented the district in the Legislature, and was supposed to be familiar with parliamentary usage. He was one of Mr. Belcher's men, of course—as truly owned and controlled by him as Phipps himself.
Peter Vernol became moderator by acclamation. He was a young man, and, ascending the platform very red in the face, and looking out upon the assembled voters of Sevenoaks, he asked with a trembling voice:
"What is the further pleasure of the meeting?"
"I move you," said Mr. Belcher, rising, and throwing open his overcoat, "that the Rev. Solomon Snow, whom I am exceedingly glad to see present, open our deliberations with prayer."
The moderator, forgetting apparently that the motion had not been put, thereupon invited the reverend gentleman to the platform, from which, when his service had been completed, he with dignity retired—but with the painful consciousness that in some way Mr. Belcher had become aware of the philanthropic task he had undertaken. He knew he was beaten, at the very threshold of his enterprise—that his conversations of the morning among his neighbors had been reported, and that Paul Benedict and his fellow-sufferers would be none the better for him.
The business connected with the various articles of the warrant was transacted without notable discussion or difference. Mr. Belcher's ticket for town officers, which he took pains to show to those around him, was unanimously adopted. When it came to the question of schools, Mr. Belcher indulged in a few flights of oratory. He thought it impossible for a town like Sevenoaks to spend too much money for schools. He felt himself indebted to the public school for all that he was, and all that he had won. The glory of America, in his view—its pre-eminence above all the exhausted and decayed civilizations of the Old World—was to be found in popular education. It was the distinguishing feature of our new and abounding national life. Drop it, falter, recede, and the darkness that now hangs over England, and the thick darkness that envelops the degenerating hordes of the Continent, would settle down upon fair America, and blot her out forever from the list of the earth's teeming nations. He would pay good wages to teachers. He would improve school-houses, and he would do it as a matter of economy. It was, in his view, the only safeguard against the encroachments of a destructive pauperism. "We are soon," said Mr. Belcher, "to consider whether we will take any steps for the improvement of the condition of the poor, now supported at the public charge. Here is our first step. Let us endow our children with such a degree of intelligence that pauperism shall be impossible. In this thing I go hand in hand with the clergy. On many points I do not agree with them, but on this matter of popular education, I will do them the honor to say that they have uniformly been in advance of the rest of us. I join hands with them here to-day, and, as any advance in our rate of taxation for schools will bear more heavily upon me than upon any other citizen—I do not say it boastingly, gentlemen—I pledge myself to support and stand by it."
Mr. Belcher's speech, delivered with majestic swellings of his broad chest, the ostentatious removal of his overcoat, and brilliant passages of oratorical action, but most imperfectly summarized in this report, was received with cheers. Mr. Snow himself feebly joined in the approval, although he knew it was intended to disarm him. His strength, his resolution, his courage, ebbed away with sickening rapidity; and he was not reassured by a glance toward the door, where he saw, sitting quite alone, Miss Butterworth herself, who had come in for the purpose partly of strengthening him, and partly of informing herself concerning the progress of a reform which had taken such strong hold upon her sympathies.
At length the article in the warrant which most interested that good lady was taken up, and Mr. Snow rose to speak upon it. He spoke of the reports he had heard concerning the bad treatment that the paupers, and especially those who were hopelessly insane, had received in the alms-house, enlarged upon the duties of humanity and Christianity, and expressed the conviction that the enlightened people of Sevenoaks should spend more money for the comfort of the unfortunate whom Heaven had thrown upon their charge, and particularly that they should institute a more searching and competent inspection of their pauper establishment.
As he took his seat, all eyes were turned upon