The Stain

Summary

A nocturnal ledger clerk, Stevens, covets the bar and the silk gown; poverty chains him to the counting-house where columns of strangers’ gold glimmer like forbidden constellations. One dusk, a tardy cattle-baron thrusts a fat roll of thousands across the marble counter—fuel enough to purchase a new name. Stevens pockets the wad, abandons wife and moppet, and vanishes into the American night. Reborn as Judge Harding, he ascends on the wings of a venal king-maker, bench and ballot both for sale. Yet the past is a blood-hound: destitution swallows the discarded family, the child is pinned like a butterfly to orphan-asylum files, the wife’s pulse is mislaid beneath another woman’s corpse, and a newspaper misprint announcing her “death” becomes the scaffold from which Harding hangs his last scruple. Years later, a young firebrand attorney, Norris, sniffs the carrion of corruption and threatens the gubernatorial coronation; Harding’s retort is to frame Norris’s fiancée on a trumped-up vice charge. In the courtroom the judge snarls, the gavel poised like an axe, while the real Mrs. Stevens—gaunt, un-dead—slips through the public gallery and recognises the stranger in ermine as the husband who once fled her arms. Accusation detonates; heart muscle ruptures; verdict of “Not Guilty” floats back like a funeral lily just as the judge collapses, the stain of embezzlement, bigamy and cruelty indelible on the marble floor.

Synopsis

Stevens, the bank clerk, is ambitious. His great desire is to become a lawyer. He stays at the bank at night to study, but is unable to take a course at college owing to his poverty. He handles immense sums of money every day and is strongly tempted to steal some, but fights off the desire till one evening when a belated customer comes late to the bank with a deposit of several thousand dollars. He sees a way for his ambition to be gratified and takes the money. His wife refuses to go with him, so he deserts her and his small daughter and goes away. Some time later we see him in a strange town living under an assumed name. His ambition has been gratified and through the good will of the political boss he has been made a judge. He falls in love with the daughter of his friend, the boss, but is deterred from marriage by the thought of his wife whom he had deserted. In the meantime Mrs. Stevens has become destitute and unable to support her daughter. She takes her daughter to an orphan asylum and releases all claim on her. Mrs. Stevens is unable to obtain work and at last is found unconscious and taken to a hospital. Her handbag, containing her identification papers, is lost and picked up by another woman who is in the last stages of exhaustion. The woman succumbs to the cold and on being found is thought to be Mrs. Stevens. Her death as Mrs. Stevens is reported to the papers. Judge Harding (formerly Stevens) sees the report of the death and marries the daughter of the boss. The boss decides to run Judge Harding for governor of the state, but his choice is attacked very strongly by a young lawyer, Norris. The boss and Harding try to buy Norris, but finding that he cannot be reached they decide to "frame up" his sweetheart in order to break his determination to prevent the election of Harding. They get her into trouble and Judge Harding is appointed to try the case. He is conducting the case in a very severe manner with a decided feeling against the prisoner. The superintendent of the orphan asylum has followed the course of the little girl's life and comes to the city to see her. She recognizes Mrs. Stevens as the woman who left the child at the orphanage and takes her to see the trial. As Mrs. Stevens enters she recognizes in Judge Harding the man who deserted her so many years ago. While the jury have retired to settle the case Mrs. Stevens accuses Judge Harding. The sudden excitement causes an attack of heart failure just as the jury return with a verdict of "Not Guilty."