# The Steadfast Heart/Chapter 29

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Titus Burke became a familiar figure on Rainbow’s streets. At first he had been a nine days’ wonder, but, strangely enough, there was no reaction against Angus—even when interest in his coming was at its height Rainbow seemed unable to look upon the man as Angus’s father. From the beginning it disassociated the two and did not hold Titus Burke against his son. Rather than reviving the town’s prejudice, it called forth its sympathy. Rainbow had been slow in making a place for Angus, but having taken him into its heart it would not displace him except for gravest cause. Rainbow was hidebound, stiff-necked in its virtues as well as in its shortcomings.
So Rainbow regarded Titus Burke as a sort of visitation, not as a flesh and blood individual; as a burden to be borne, a trial, in the scriptural sense….
Titus was not a pleasing individual even in his best moments; he was sullen, morose, whining, fault-finding. Also he was exceedingly ​unclean and it appeared to be his chief pleasure to humiliate his son by parading himself before Rainbow’s eyes. He harbored a snarling, snapping, vindictive hatred for his son—a resentment against the young man’s prosperity and decency. Publicly and privately he complained, accusing Angus of meannesses, harping constantly on the string that Angus was ashamed of him—and in the same breath boasting of his own iniquities…. His ingenuities were quite diabolical.
The resident of Rainbow who manifested the keenest interest in Titus Burke was none other than Jake Schwartz. Titus intrigued Jake and irritated him. He remembered well that meeting with Titus Burke years ago—in the presence of Lydia Canfield—when Titus had sought to drag away his son; and ever since that day, in odd moments, he had tried to fit the man into the proper slot in his memory. Jake was sure he had known Titus, sure he had worked with him, but when or where he could not recall. It ruffled Jake’s truculent disposition to be thus frustrated, and he went out of his way to observe Titus, to talk to him, to scrutinize him, to pry into him.
“I tell you,” he said to Bishwhang, “I’ve knowed that feller some’eres. You can’t fool me on faces….”
At last he intruded upon Titus’s moroseness, ​forcing his presence upon the creature belligerently. “Say, you,” he said, “I used to know you. The name of Burke don’t fit you no more’n a size eleven hat would…. Your name wa’n’t Burke then. What was it, eh? Remember me, do ye?”
Titus snarled, “Naw, I hain’t never seen ye before, and I don’t want to see ye ag’in.”
“Feller,” said Jake, “you’re goin’ to see me frequent, and some day, when I hain’t feelin’ cheerful, I’m a-goin’ to give ye a choice betwixt tellin’ who ye be and gittin’ your turkey’s neck twisted.”
It was now two months since Lydia Canfield had fled from Rainbow—and still Rainbow did not know where she had gone. Not even her most intimate friends had received a line from her…. Angus was no wiser. He had not lifted his hand to follow her, nor his voice to remonstrate with her. From that night he never mentioned her name.
The only visible change in him was a drawing into himself. He worked, worked, worked…. Though often invited, he declined all invitations, and from the day of Lydia’s departure Rainbow did not see him socially. It seemed as though she had taken with her in her baggage Angus’s gregariousness. His nature, which had been unfolding so rapidly in the sunshine of his ​rehabilitation, now closed tightly. He became a machine, emotionless, efficient…. That was all that remained. He had locked up his soul.
Early in the spring Henry G. Woodhouse took him into the firm as junior partner. Angus was grateful, showed his gratitude to the best of his constricted ability, but he could take no real pleasure in what would have been a tremendous joy to him a few months before…. It is not strange that his friends worried for him.
For a time he had avoided even Dave Wilkins, until he saw how that conduct hurt his friend. During those days he relied upon Bishwhang for companionship as he had done in the old days. The human side of him seemed to have relapsed a dozen years…. In those first days Bishwhang had been the stronger of the two; his love had watched over Angus, his clumsy hand had guided, his silence had comforted, and his solicitude had, perhaps, saved Angus…. During these hours Angus was building a wall of reserve behind which he was to hide, and not even Dave Wilkins was permitted to have a full view of what those walls contained.
He accepted his father’s presence and his father’s malice phlegmatically—perhaps wondering now and then at the man’s malicious vagaries…. One phase of his father’s conduct did puzzle him, and that was the man’s apparent ​fear of Henry G. Woodhouse. This Angus noticed first on an evening when Henry G. drove up to the door of the cottage Angus had taken to house himself and his father. Titus, sitting in the window, saw the approach of his son’s employer, and trembling, he sprang to his feet and rushed from the house, not to return until a late hour of the night…. Twice after this similar unaccountable conduct puzzled Angus. He decided it was merely some mental symptom of the man’s physical condition.
Titus’s cough persisted—during the winter seemed to grow worse and worse. “He hain’t got long to live,” Dr. Knipe informed Angus, “and a doggone good thing, I say.” Titus continued steadily to travel down the hill, and though he was still able to be about, it was not difficult to foretell that the end was approaching. Even Titus himself realized this—and his terror at the realization was a dreadful thing to live with. At this time he took to sitting much in an armchair on the sunny porch, and there it was Jake Schwartz’s habit to repair at frequent intervals.
Titus and Jake became friends of a sort. Titus looked forward to Jake’s visits with the anticipation of a malicious man who enjoys thwarting another’s desire. Jake came and came with a grim determination to have his curiosity satisfied.
​“I’m a-goin’ to figger it out yit,” Jake always said as he took his departure. “I’ll remember you ’fore I’m done.”
“You won’t,” declared Titus, “’cause you hain’t never seen me before.”
Jake cross-questioned Titus, but the man was close-mouthed and guarded, not without a certain malign shrewdness. Not a word could be had from him which related to his life before he had come to Rainbow with his wife and child. From that date he was willing to describe his vicissitudes and to boast of his accomplishments—but all that day before his coming was a shut book which he would not open.
Jake baited traps with the names of towns he had worked in, but Titus avoided the pitfalls until, one day, Jake mentioned inadvertently the name of Springfield, Massachusetts. Suddenly he slapped his thigh, “There’s where it was, feller,” he said to Titus. “I was workin’ as journeyman printer fer Ol’ Somers—twenty-seven, twenty-eight year ago—mebby more. You remember Ol’ Somers? There’s where it was! You was stickin’ type in that shop—and suthin’ else. What else had I ought to remember about ye?… And your name wa’n’t Burke… I know, you was always a-playin’ the races… I got you that fur, hain’t I, friend?”
“You lie…. You lie. I hain’t never been ​in Springfield,” snarled Titus, but Jake saw fear in his eyes.
“You was, and you was kind of dressy then, a reg’lar dude. Could talk like it, too…. Oh, I’m onto your track now, ol’ rooster, and I’ll git you perty soon.”
Next morning in the printing shop Jake was boasting of his success to Dave Wilkins. “Burke wa’n’t his name then,” said Jake. “Funny sort of first name it was, too. I remember it was a kind of a onusual one.”
“If you recall it,” said Dave, “bring it to me. Don’t mention it to anybody else. Angus has enough on his shoulders without having any new rascality of his father’s dug up out of the past.”
“Me!… Say, I wouldn’t mention nothin’ to nobody—not for money, not for cash money paid into my hand,” Jake declared, and then he stopped, open-mouthed. “Cash money…. Cash money…. Cash! That’s it, that’s what I been tryin’ to remember. Cash his name was. Cassius was his identical name.”
Cash! That name was vaguely familiar, irritatingly suggestive to Dave Wilkins. It carried a significance with it, but what? What did the name of Cash carry on its back? What ought he to connect with the classic name of Cæsar’s enemy?… Nor could Jake attach a family name to it. “Seems like we jest called him Cash ​mostly. Didn’t have much need fer last names in the shop.” But perhaps a week later he rushed upstairs to Dave Wilkins’s room and burst through the door. “I got it,” he shouted. “By Ginger! I got that off ’m my mind at last.” He scowled fiercely in his delight. “I got his doggone name. Hughes, that’s what it was. Cash Hughes.”
“Cash Hughes!” Dave swung around from his desk, leaped to his feet, and stood staring at Jake. “Did you say Cash Hughes?… Are you sure, Jake—sure?”
“Sure as preachin’.”
“But it can’t be—it can’t be,” said Dave. “Such things don’t happen…. Don’t mention this to a soul, Jake. Shut your teeth over it and clamp them…. Go away now, and let me think…. I’ve got to think.”
In an hour Dave was seated in Craig Browning’s office; his lean face was drawn, but his eyes were very bright, bright with unwonted excitement. “Craig,” he said, “Jake Schwartz has remembered what Titus Burke’s name used to be…. It was Cash Hughes!” Craig looked puzzled. “Yes…. What about it?”
“You don’t know?… That’s true, you moved here after it happened…. Craig, Cash Hughes was here twenty-eight years ago…. ​He is the man who ran away with Kate Woodhouse!”
“Kate Woodhouse!… Henry G.’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
The significance of the statement did not pierce to Craig’s consciousness for a moment; then he leaned forward, as tense as his friend, as filled with excitement.
“Then—then you think—”
“What else is there to think?… What brought them back to Rainbow…. What other boy would they have with them?… But the thing is to prove it, Craig—to prove it. We must prove it before we utter a word to anybody. There might be some mistake.”
“Yes…. Yes….”
“You’re in command,” said Dave.
“In that case,” said Craig, “we’ll pay a call on Titus Burke.” His voice was grim, determined. It boded unpleasantness for Titus should he prove obdurate.
Presently Craig said, “Dave, we mustn’t get our hearts set on this thing. On the face of it it looks to me to be difficult, if not impossible, to establish Angus as Henry G.’s grandson. Even if Titus admits he is Cassius Hughes and that Angus is Kate’s son, we are still far from proofs which would be acceptable in a court of ​law. Do you believe any court would credit Titus Burke’s unsupported statement—especially with the money involved that is involved here?”
Dave shrugged his shoulders.
“Again,” Craig went on, “why has Titus concealed the relationship all these years? Why, when she came here years ago did not Kate—if it was Kate—go to her father?”
“Reason is with you,” Dave said, “but my conviction is firm. I feel it in my bones….”
“There’s our man on the porch,” said Craig, “and if I’m any judge the time we have to work with him will be short. He won’t be here many days.”
Titus Burke, wrapped in a quilt, was sitting in an armchair in the sun. He eyed their approach speculatively, apprehensively, with narrowed, watery eyes; and as they turned in at the gate he drew back in his chair with a motion like that of a snapping-turtle withdrawing into its shell.
Craig was direct. “We won’t ask you to talk much, Burke,” he said, “but there are a few questions you must answer.”
Titus snarled. “Don’t go pesterin’ a man when he’s so sick he kin scarcely git his breath….”
“Your son has been good to you,” said Craig. “Have you no gratitude?”
​“He done no more ’n he was bound to—and he begrutched it—every mite of it. Ashamed of his ol’ daddy. Fine son, to be ashamed of his own pa.”
“Yes, you are his father, Burke. But who was his mother? What was her name?”
“None of your business.”
“Was your name Cassius Hughes?”
Titus strangled, coughed, clenched and unclenched his bony claws, and spat at them like a cat. “’Twa’n’t. Never heard of that name.”
“Was your wife’s name Kate Woodhouse?”
“Wife’s name was Burke,” he said with a leer.
“Is Angus Kate Woodhouse’s son?”
“He’s my son,” said Titus.
“Burke,” said Browning, “you’re going to die… to die, do you understand. Maybe to-night…. Aren’t you afraid to die?”
Burke croaked horribly, wriggled in his chair, and his eyes rolled back until the bleared whites became visible. It was terror, stark, awful terror—but he did not speak.
“Do you want to die,” Craig demanded inexorably, “without one decent act to stand upon?”
“I—don’t know nothin’ about—what you’re jawin’ about,” Titus said stubbornly. “Go ​’way…. Lemme be. I never heard of—sich folks…. Go ’way….”
They went, but they were to return before another dawn, for that afternoon Dr. Knipe declared that Titus could not live through the night…. Dave and Browning consulted with Alvin Trueman—and to the minister was delegated the task of a final effort to wring the truth from Burke’s stubborn, vindictive lips…. He it was who sat by Titus’s bedside as the useless, wasted, squalid life ebbed away….
“Titus,” he said, “I’ve something to tell you—something you will not wish to hear, but it must be told…. You have come to the end.”
Titus opened wide his eyes and stared at the minister—a hoarse, fearful whisper reached Trueman’s ears.
“No… ’tain’t so…. You’re lyin’ to me.”
“As God is above us, Titus, I am telling you the truth.”
Burke’s face twisted horribly—a grimace of that sort of terror which twists and wrings the soul. “Be I goin’ to—die—to-night?”… Gawd!… I dassent… I dassent….”
Trueman, sitting beside the bed, spoke to that vexed, unworthy soul, doing his duty as a man of God to soothe, to comfort, to soften—to bring Titus Burke’s heart to suppliant posture…. He sought to assuage a terror which was abject, ​obscene. He writhed, he cried out—but there was no comfort, no ear to which he could cry for mercy…. A word of Alvin’s caught his ear, “Make your peace with God….” To make peace he could understand; to make his peace with a human being—to come to an arrangement, an amicable settlement of differences…. But he was not going into the power of a God who hated him. Titus knew God hated him…. He pictured God in this first moment in years which he had given up to a consideration of Divinity, as a God capable of hatred and of revenge—of some awful, mysterious revenge far beyond the power of the most malignant mortal hands to visit upon him…. To make his peace with God—to reach a composition with this Being—to dicker—to save himself from tortures which he could only visualize as physical!…
“How… How?…” he gasped.
Alvin explained patiently, gently, the theory of his religion; the promise of repentance—the guarantee of repentance by the performance of a righteous act…. Titus did not wait for him to finish. To his fevered mind it seemed an opportunity was offered him to trade his secret with God for his release from torture…. “I’ll swap!… I’ll swap!” he cried. “I’l tell—fetch Wilkins. Fetch Browning.”
“But repentance—”
​Titus uttered an oath. “Quick!” he panted.
And so, on the lip of death, Titus Burke told his story, told the truth—and substantiated his words. Hidden away, carried with him for years with that curious persistence people exhibit in clinging to certain objects, certain reminders, was an old leathern wallet—and in the wallet were documents, marriage license, certificate, the birth certificate of Angus Burke…. There was a picture of Titus and Kate Woodhouse taken in the first flush of their elopement…. By confession and by documents Titus Burke established beyond peradventure that Angus Burke was the legitimate son of Kate Woodhouse, the grandson of Henry G.!…
Titus Burke died before daylight. He did not die at peace, with Christian fortitude. True, he had made his confession, had dickered with God, but in no spirit of abnegation, with no humbling of heart or prostration of soul…. What he had done had been by way of a bribe to the Almighty….
The news was communicated first to Henry G. Woodhouse. Craig and Dave laid before him the facts and proofs…. What shock of joy, what rebirth of faith and confidence in the excellence of his Creator came to Henry G. no man may say—for he retired to his room, there to ​remain in privacy—alone with his own thoughts and his God—while Craig and Dave waited without….
After an hour he appeared, and his face was a face of peace; his joy was piteous…. “I—I want to tell him,” he said tremulously. “I want to—tell my boy!…”
He called to Angus, who stood surprised, expectant in the presence of his three best friends…. Henry G., eager as a child, glowing with happiness, sought to find roundabout words—to approach the truth without baldness…. But he spoke baldly; could find no words but bald, direct words.
“Angus—Angus—I have learned—we have learned—that my daughter—was your mother.”
Angus did not speak, did not go to his grandfather, but turned and walked slowly to the window like one in a dream, and stood there blindly…. Henry G. would have followed him, but Dave Wilkins touched his arm. “Wait,” he said, “give him time.”
Presently, it may have been five minutes, it may have been less, for at such a moment time crawls on leaden feet, Angus turned and came back to them. He searched his grandfather’s face with questioning eyes, and as the old gentleman held out his hand in welcome Angus grasped ​it…. “I’m glad….” he said. That was all, but it sufficed….
“And I,” said Henry G., with the tremulous joy of old age, “am glad, my boy—and proud…. My God, how proud!”