SIX years had wrought a wonderful change in Gate City. It had increased in size and importance. Stephen Whipple was still the only wholesale grocer of the place, and Fred Walton had become his chief assistant. He was known to be the old man's special favorite, and was living on the footing of a son in the Whipple household.
On the day that Kenneth Galt had returned to Stafford, Fred and his employer were seated in the old man's private office. Whipple had opened his heart to him in regard to a certain financial development which had gone against his interests. The old grocer's pride had been wounded as it had never been wounded before. Since the starting of the business he had been specially proud of the fact that he had been able to supply the retail dealers of Gate City with the groceries consumed by their customers as cheaply as any of the far-off markets could do, even with the freight cost added.
But in competing with his rivals for the patronage of the town, an ambitious retail dealer—a certain J. B. Thorp—to cut at Whipple, who had refused him further credit, owing to Thorp's unwillingness to meet his bills when due, began to advertise that the reason he could undersell his rivals was that he didn't stop at home to buy his supplies. This had evoked a sharp retort in “a card” in the town papers from the offended Whipple, and it had brought out further and more sarcastic allusions from Thorp. He said that it was as plain as the nose on anybody's face that a man could not have waxed so rich as the money king of Gate City had done except at the expense of the public, and he scored a commercial triumph by giving therewith a list of his retail prices for that day, which, on staple wares at least, were really as low as Whipple's salesmen could give their customers at wholesale.
The publicity of the whole thing had a bad effect on the old man's clientèle. The shrewd retailer chuckled with gratified revenge as he saw the public fairly streaming his way. The stores which were being supplied by Whipple were absolutely inactive. The clerks stood on the sidewalk ruefully regarding the human current, and, by way of amusement, laying wagers on the outgoings of Thorp's loaded delivery wagons, each of which now bore an American flag, with a motto in big black letters: “Live and Let Live! Down with the Money God of Gate City!”
Whipple's salesmen made their usual rounds among his patrons, only to meet with utter stagnation on every hand, and returned with long faces to report few if any sales. Consumers, quick to secure even an ephemeral advantage, were easily convinced that Thorp was working for their interests, and they stood by him.
“Oh, I reckon we can make shift some way, my boy,” the old man sighed; “for our business out of town is widening and growing; but in all my life I never was hit under the belt as bad as this, for I did want to hold my own here at home. And to think that I am done, and done good, by that measly Thorp, simply because we pinned down on him and forced him to pay up. It hurts like salt rubbed in a sore to be treated this way, after all I've done for the town. The boys say our best customers are paying more money than we ask right now in the Eastern markets in the effort to counteract Thorp's trickery. Do you know, I'd draw my check this minute for ten thousand round dollars and pay it to anybody who will show me a way to crush that sneaking scamp. Put the boys on their mettle, Fred; tell 'em I said fresh ideas are better than stale ones, and the man that helps me out of this tight hole will be well paid for his trouble.”
“I was hoping that it would die out in a few days,” said Walton, “but it has only grown worse. Thorp has got the upper hand, and the more we fight him the bigger advertisement he gets out of it. Johnston and Wells say they can't possibly make the payment they promised this month, owing to the big slump in their sales.”
“Well, I didn't expect it!” Whipple groaned, his head resting on his fat hand. “And the trouble is, the thing may drive many of our customers clean to the wall. Thorp would sell groceries for no profit at all for twelve months to swamp the others. The public are getting low prices, the Lord knows, but it means the ruin of regular trade and the desperation of good, energetic business men. Look here, Fred, we must down that rascal, I tell you. Start the boys to thinking. Surely among us we can turn up some plan or other.”
“I'll do what I can, Mr. Whipple,” Walton promised, as he stood up and opened the door for the old man, who had desperately snatched his hat from its hook on the wall and was ponderously striding out.
When he had left the store, Fred called Dick Warren to him from his high stool in the counting-room. With his increased years and regular life Dick had vastly improved in appearance. He hadn't risen so rapidly as his friend, but he was a capable bookkeeper, a fine salesman, and a steady, accurate worker, who earned a good salary.
“This thing has hit the old man hard, Dick,” Walton said.
“Anybody can see it by the way he walks with his head down like that,” Dick returned. “The house can stand it, of course, with all its out-of-town support, but Gate City trade was the old man's pet, and I'll be blamed if it doesn't look like he'll never get any more of it. It actually gives a store a black eye to have any of our brands on sale. Jim Wilson said just now that he'd take a keg of our soda if we'd scrape our name off of it. I gave him a piece of my mind, but he said we were looking to our interests and he was looking to his. I had no idea the people of this town could be such blasted fools!” and, considerably disgruntled, Dick went back to his post.
Several days passed. The situation was no better. Thorp had induced one of the railroads to build a sidetrack from the main line to a platform in the rear of his store, and Eastern goods were being unloaded in wholesale quantities right on the premises. He was also advertising for a vacant house in which to accommodate the overflow of his business. The only available one on the street belonged to Whipple, and that, of course, he couldn't rent at any price.
Among those most concerned, though rather indirectly, was the Rev. Luke Matthews. He was seeing his rich patron in a new light, for, now that he was in trouble, old Whipple had less time to devote to the uplifting of humanity, either spiritually or materially, and he often denied himself to the minister's frequent calls.
“Just wait till I get my head above water,” Whipple said once, when Matthews clutched his arm and essayed to speak of a matter concerning the church. “I reckon I'm worldly minded, Brother Matthews, but a man has to be tainted that way to fight worldly matters. Right now I am as full of Old Nick as I ever was in my worst days. I know it; I feel it; but, by gum! I am not ashamed. Day and night prayers wouldn't move a rascally skunk like Thorp. He was my friend as long as he could suck my blood, and now he is my worst enemy because I wouldn't let him.”
As the weeks passed, matters only grew worse for the wholesale store. Its town customers dropped off till local business amounted to nothing at all. One morning the merchant walked the full length of the main street. He went up one side to the court-house at the far end, and then slowly returned on the other side. On the way he met Matthews, who told him something he had not heard, and he walked on, now more slowly than ever. As he was passing through the counting-room on his way to his private office he paused between the stools on which Fred and Dick were seated. His face was ashen in color, his lower lip was quivering like that of a weeping child.
“What do you think is in the wind now, boys?” he gulped, as he placed an unsteady hand on Fred's shoulder.
“I have no idea,” Fred answered.
“All the balance have combined,” Whipple groaned.
“Who?—what?—how combined?” Fred asked, wondering if his old friend was not actually losing his reason.
“Why, all the other retailers have formed a pool to beat Thorp, and in doing it they have knifed me. They have formed a combine to buy their stuff in St. Louis and New York in order to get car-load rates. They had a caucus last night in the rear end of Thompson & White's shebang, and the last one signed up. They don't buy a thing from us—the man who spends a nickel at this house loses his membership. They are a lot of sneaking curs, to pull me down and stamp on me just because that scamp's upset business, but they done it. The thing will spread all over the State, and I'll be laughed at as a doddering old idiot. Folks like nothing better than to see a successful man get it in the neck.
“As I passed along the street just now they slunk away from their doors, so I couldn't see 'em laugh. They callthemselves'wholesale men' now, and say they are going to oust me and Thorp both—make us count cross-ties out of town. I've had insults in my time, but being yoked with that skunk is a dose I can't swallow. I'm beat, and beat bad. If there was a loophole to crawl out at—if I could take one single step to defend myself—I'd give away half I've accumulated to be able to do it. My money paid for two-thirds of the Belgian-block pavement around the park; I gave more than half that was subscribed to the girls' school-building, and paid, entire, for the wall round the graveyard, to say nothing of what I put in the fire company, and new engines at the gas-works. I done those things, boys, for the town they live in, and yet they can drag my name in the mire and throw mud and slime on me.”
He turned suddenly and left them, striding on to his desk in the adjoining room.
“Poor old fellow!” Dick said. “Nothing on earth could have cut his pride more.”
“If he could only hit back in some substantial way,” Walton reflected, aloud. “Think of some plan, Dick.”
“Think of nothing!” the younger man said, gloomily. “Of all things on earth, I never could have dreamt of those fellows combining that way.”
A moment later a postman came in with a bundle of letters and handed them to Fred.
“Looks like they are getting you fellows in the nine hole at last,” he said, with a laugh. “Every grocer on the street is putting out a big sign. One of them has got a picture of the old man with a handkerchief to his eyes standing in a store without a single customer, while all the crowd is headed for another place.”
“Oh, we'll have to wait and see,” Fred retorted, angrily. “I must give these letters to Mr. Whipple.”
As he went in the old man's office, he found the grocer pacing up and down, his hat in his hand, his brow dark with passion. He waved the letters from him.
“Open 'em yourself,” he said. “I'm going home. I feel like a candidate on election night who didn't get a vote in his own precinct. I don't intend to stay down here where everybody can pick at me. I heard what that whelp said to you and Dick. They are all gloating over me like buzzards over a dead ox. When you come up to supper, bring the night mail with you.”
He strode from the room, and Fred heard his despondent step on the resounding floor all the way to the rear door of the long house.
Fred worked over his books and out-of-town orders till near sunset; then he took down his coat and hat.
“It might work,” he mused. “At any rate, there can be no harm in asking him about it.” He went out, and, turning into a quiet side-street, he walked up to the comfortable home of his employer, which stood on a slight elevation among the best houses of the place.
It occupied a small lot, as did its neighbors, and there were no grass or flowers about it. It was built of yellow bricks, and had a porch in front, against which, on a lattice, some vines were growing.
As he entered the gate an elderly woman approached the front door and stood waiting for him. It was Stephen Whipple's wife, a gaunt woman in a simple black dress without ornament, and wearing her iron-gray hair brushed smoothly over her brow.
“You are earlier than usual,” she said. “I hope you have good news. I don't think he can stand it much longer. I have never seen him so much troubled in my life. His pride is cut to the quick. He has always thought he could cope with trickery in any form, and being helpless this way under the taunts of those men is fairly killing him. If he was thoroughly at himself he might hold his own, but he is getting old, and being mad this way really keeps him from using his best judgment.”
“No, nothing has turned up yet,” Fred told her; “but I thought I'd speak to him before supper.”
“Well, he'll be glad to see you, anyway,” the woman said, plaintively. “He thinks a lot of you, Fred—in fact, we both do. He has often said he blesses the day you came to him. He is lying down on the lounge in your room. Some of the neighbors were in just now chattering about the thing, and he slipped up there to keep from hearing what was said.”
Fred found his employer stretched out at full length on a lounge in the big, light room which he had occupied for over two years.
“Oh,” Whipple said, “it's you! Well, has anything turned up—I mean—but I know nothing has. Nothing can succeed against a gang of plotting, ungrateful dogs like they are. I've boosted 'em up through every panic and hard spell that come, keeping some of 'em afloat when they didn't have a dollar in their pockets, and now they not only knife me, but they make a public joke of it.”
“Mr. Whipple, I've been trying to think of some way to—”
“Oh, youhave?Well, spit it out!—spit it out!” And the merchant suddenly threw his feet around and sat up, clutching the edge of the lounge with his big hands, while he stared anxiously from dilating eyes that were all but bloodshot.
“Of course, I hesitate to—” Fred began modestly, but was interrupted by Whipple.
“Hesitate!—hesitate the devil! It is always that way with you, although you've got the safest, soundest judgment of any young man in the West. You hesitated to tell me you thought San Antonio would be a good place to put an agent, and it has proved the biggest opening we ever had. You hesitated before advising me against that Eastern salt company that had been sucking my blood for years before you came and smelt out their thievery. You hesitated to—but, darn it, quit hesitating! This is no time to hesitate; we are in a dirty fight, and twenty yellow dogs are on top of us gnawing the meat from our bones.”
“Well, I've been thinking over it all, Mr. Whipple—” Fred was slightly flushed—“and there is only one way I can see to make any move at all; but that really does seem tometo offersomechance of—”
“Move? What is it? For God's sake, what is it?”
“Why, you know you own the large retail store building which was vacated when Stimpson Brothers gave up, and you have not found a suitable tenant, there being no one but Thorp who wants it. It is in the very heart of the retail section, and the best-furnished building in town, with the best show-windows, and—”
“Yes, yes; but what of that?” Whipple burst out, impatiently. “I don't care a snap for the rent of a mere house when I am being literally choked to death by a mob of devils.”
“It wasn't that,” Walton said; “but there are hundreds of your personal friends in town who would gladly buy their home supplies from you if you would only accommodate them. There are many first-class wholesale houses which conduct retail stores in the towns they are in, and, you know, none of them ever had a better reason for doing it than you now have. It wouldn't hurt your trade out of town a bit, for your customers are not concerned in this fight; and a big, first-class, up-to-date retail store in the centre of town, supplied from our stock, would—”
Whipple sprang up. His eyes were dancing with delight. He leaned over Walton and put his hands on his shoulders.
“Great God, why didn'tIthink of that?” he chuckled. “My boy, you are a dandy!—you are a wheel-horse! It will work like a charm. The thing advertises itself. We'll make 'em quake in their socks. They will laugh on the other sides of their faces now. And the beauty of it is, we can flaunt the thing on the public ten days before they can receive their first shipment; we'll bill the town in the morning, and cover the front of the new store with black letters. Whoopee! whoopee!” And in his heavy boots old Whipple actually executed a clumsy clog-dance. “And we'll let Dick manage it,” he went on, as he paused panting. “That sort of promotion would be a feather in his cap. As for you, you've got to pilot thebigship, my boy. A head like yours needs big things to deal with. Lord, I see Thorp's face now, and, as for that other gang of cutthroats, they will actually die of dry rot!”
Whipple gave another whoop, and shuffled his feet thunderously.
“What is the matter up there?” It was Mrs. Whipple's astonished voice from below.
“Matter nothing!” her husband replied, as he leaned over the balustrade in the corridor and looked down. “Put the best supper you can rake up on the table. Kill the fatted calf, and don the royal purple! Me and this boy is going to celebrate. He has saved the ship! Get out a bottle of that grape wine, and let joy be unconfined. We're in the fight to stay now, and we're going to have a feast—a regular war-feast!”
ABOUT ten days after the happenings recorded in the foregoing chapter old Simon Walton sat alone in his office. A typewriter was clicking in the counting-room adjoining, its sound deadened by the closed door and thin partition through which it passed. With noiseless tread Toby Lassiter, now older, more careworn, more machine-like than ever, entered and laid a bulky express envelope before his employer.
“What is this?” the banker asked, as he examined the heavy wax seals and reached for his paper-knife.
“I don't know, sir; it came just now,” and Toby silently withdrew.
Walton clipped the twine, pried under the seals, and tore open the thick paper. It contained money. Six five-hundred-dollar bills were drawn out and laid on the desk. Wondering what it meant, the old man looked into the envelope. There was a letter, and it covered several pages of paper. A glance at the writing caused him a dull thrill of surprise. There was no address from which it was written, and it bore no date. It ran as follows:
My dear Father,—I am sure you will be surprised to hear from me. I would have written before this if it could have done either of us any good. As I wrote you when I left, I had determined to turn over a new leaf, if such a thing were possible. It was an awful fight against big odds.
Finally, however, I happened to meet—and it was when I had almost given up—a rich man with a good heart who befriended me, and offered me a position in his big wholesale store. I had a struggle with myself as to what I ought to do in regard to revealing my past life, but I finally decided to tell him the truth, and I am glad to say he overlooked it all and became my friend and benefactor. I never knew it, when I was a wild, headstrong boy, bent on ruining myself and you, but I now realize that every growing soul needs some sort of incentive to endeavor, and I have found two which have helped me a lot. The first was to refund by honest earnings what I took from you, the next to prove my worthiness of the trust my employer placed in me when all hope was lost. I see now that I never could have overcome my bad habits if I had stayed on in Stafford. It was getting out into the world and learning what it means to fight adversity, with no one to lean on, that helped me. When I think over what you, yourself, had to go through with to get your start in life, and remember that I was deliberately throwing away the hard-won rewards of your efforts, the blood of shame fairly boils in my veins.
I am sending herewith three thousand dollars, which are my savings up to date. I had got together only twenty-five hundred, but when my employer, at my suggestion, succeeded in putting a certain deal through the other day which he considered advantageous to his interests, he insisted on adding five hundred dollars to the amount which I had told him was going to you. I am sending the money by express instead of by draft on any bank, for I would still prefer for you not to know where I am at present. When I have made the last payment on my debt (if you will let me call it that), I may feel differently, but until I am able to clear it all up I shall still hide from you and everybody who knew me in the past. I do hope you will read these lines kindly. I have wronged you (terribly wronged you), dear father, but I am trying now to live right, and surely you will be glad to know that, even at this late day. Concealing my whereabouts may anger you, I am well aware of that; but the good man for whom I am working thinks it is best—for a while, at any rate. Of course, if I could have a talk with you, I'd know better how you look at the matter, but being so far away leaves me no alternative than to let things remain as they are. Good-bye, dear father. It has taken six years to get together the money I am sending, but if I live and keep my health I feel reasonably sure that I can send the balance, including the interest, within the next two years, for I am doing much better than I was.
When he had finished reading the letter, Simon Walton laid it on the desk before him and sat in deep thought for several minutes. Then, with no visible trace of emotion on his wrinkled face, he took the money in his hands, laid it on the letter, and rose and went to the door opening into the counting-room. He stood looking at the workers for several minutes, and then, happening to catch the glance of Toby, who was dictating to a stenographer, he signalled him to approach. Handing him the letter and the bills, he said, curtly:
“Credit the money on my private account, then read that letter carefully and bring it back to me. Don't let anybody see it. It's private.”
“Very well, sir,” said the clerk. “I was just dictating a note to Morton & Co., telling them that we can't possibly extend—”
“Never mind about thatnow,” Walton ordered, sharply. “Do as I tell you!” And he turned back into his office, where he sat slowly nodding his great, shaggy head, as was his habit when making up his mind over any matter of importance.
“Huh!” he said, suddenly and with a sneer, “that's it! I can see through a millstone if it has a big enough hole in it. Huh, yes, that's it! I'd bet a yearling calf to a pound of butter that I am onto the game, and it is one, too, that would take in nine men out of ten.” He tapped his brow with his pencil and smiled craftily. “Deep scheme; good scheme; bang-up idea! Might have pulled the wool over my eyesonce. But a burnt child dreads the fire, and I've certainly been burnt.”
The door creaked. Toby Lassiter, with the letter quivering in his excited hand, approached. His lethargic face was filled with emotion; his mild eyes were glowing ecstatically.
“I always thought—I mean I alwayshoped, Mr. Walton—that it would turn out this way.” He started to say more, but checked himself as his glance fell on the parchment-like face craftily upturned to his.
“Yes, I know, Toby!” Simon snarled, as he took the letter and put it into his desk drawer. “You always thought the scamp had sprouting wings, and now you are sure they are full size. That is why you have never risen higher in life, Toby. Your eyes are too easily closed. Leave it to you, and we'd never foreclose a mortgage on a widow with a full stocking hid away under her hearth. Believing in heaven on earth has held many a man back from prosperity.”
“Then you don't think—you don't actually believe that Fred—”
“Set down in that chair, Toby. Me and you are the only folks in Stafford that know how that boy buncoed me, and I reckon it's only natural for me to be willing to talk about it when there is anything to say. I endured several years of that fellow's devilment, and I'm not calculated to be fooled as easily as others might who never had him on their hands. You see,” the banker went on, as his clerk lowered his thin person timidly into a chair and leaned forward—“you will note that he writes that he's got a good, substantial job with a rich man, who, while he knows all about the boy's devilment here at Stafford, has completely overlooked it. Huh! we all know the world is full of men of capital who are ready to take in a runaway thief and hand over three thousand cool plunks to him just to show good-will and the like! To begin with, Toby,thatis an underhanded slap at me; it is saying, in a roundabout way, that a plumb stranger is giving a son of mine a chance that he never had at home. But the tale, from start to finish, is a lie out of whole cloth, as I have good and private reason to know.”
“Do you think so, Mr. Walton?” Lassiter's fallen countenance sank even lower.
“Of course I think so, or I wouldn't be sitting here telling you about it. I haven't been idle on this thing, Toby, though I never let anybody know what I was up to. You see, I am an old man now, and in law I never had but one heir to my effects, outside of my present wife, and it struck me as pretty queer for that heir, disinherited on paper or not, to keep absolutely out of sight and sound all these years when as big a plum as I am supposed to be is still aboveground. You see, the scamp has got what some folks would call a 'natural expectancy,' even on the chance of breaking any will I might make, and you can bet there are plenty of men slick enough to speculate on such chances, slim as they might look to me or you. So you see, Toby, knowing all that, I kept a sharp lookout for developments. I decided first of all to keep a watch on the young woman he left high and dry and in such a miserable plight. I used to sort o' saunter by her mammy's house once in a while. Sometimes I'd catch a glimpse of the girl by accident, but she kept as well hid as any mole that ever burrowed in the ground. Sometimes I'd see her—when she was to be seen at all—daubing away at some picture or other on a peaked frame, and I must say that every time I'd see her looking so neat and pretty, with her fine head of hair flowing over her brow in that easy, fluffy sort of way, and them big, deep, babyish eyes of hers—well, to come to the point, I began to think that it wasn't quite natural foranyfellow to go clean off and leave such a creature behind for good and all. You see, she's too good-looking, too attractive, for any man to drop once he was favored, and—well, it made me suspicious, to say the least. Then I begun to notice the child, who was always hemmed up in that little pen of a yard, and never allowed to stick his head out or have any playmates. I saw that he was always rigged up as fine as a fiddle, looking as if he'd just come out of a bandbox; and as I knew, from personal knowledge, that the old lady had no income to speak of, except the rent on her barren little farm, I used to wonder where the cash was coming from. Now and then I'd see Watts & Co.'s delivery wagon leaving groceries at the back door, and I found out through them, on the sly, that the grub bills was always paid. Then what do you think I did? I did some bang-up, fine detective work, if Idosay it. I nosed around until I found out, through a clerk in the express office here, that packages of money were coming pretty regularly to the sly little lassie from somebody in Atlanta who called himself 'F. B. Jenkins.' Whoever it was, was using the express to hide his tracks, instead of sending bank-checks, which might come to my attention, as Fred well knew.”
“So you think, Mr. Walton—you think—”
“I think Fred's letter is a lie out of whole cloth,” old Simon blurted out. “I don't think he is at work; I don't think it was everinhim to work in any capacity; but Idobelieve he has set out to make good that shortage for a deep-laid reason. Some sharper or money-shark may be backing him, or he may have had a temporary streak of luck at poker or cotton futures, and has decided to invest something in me, as too big a fish to remain unhooked. I don't swallow one word of his mealymouthed tale. I'd bet my last dollar he's this F. B. Jenkins, and that he has been hanging around Atlanta all these years, keeping himself out of sight, and, like as not, coming here now and then under cover of night to see that woman. That's why she has kept so close at home. They have guarded the child, too, so that he wouldn't let the cat out of the bag. Toby, if I wanted to—if I justwantedto—I could put a watch on that cottage and nab our man in less than a month. I say, if I justwantedto.”
“Then you wouldn't arrest him, Mr. Walton?” Lassiter breathed, in relief.
“Well, not now, at any rate,” Walton said, grimly. “We are too solid in every way now for such a thing to do us any great financial damage, but I don't fancy the idea of stirring up the stench again. He has put in a pretty big amount to start with, and he won't lie idle after that. Mark my words, we'll hear from Atlanta, and it will be apt to come through the fellow that calls himself F. B. Jenkins.”
OH, here you are, you old agnostic!” Wynn Dearing called out jovially to Galt, one afternoon when he found the railroad president walking to and fro on the veranda of the latter's home. “If you say so, we'll go in the house, and I'll make that examination here and save you the trouble of coming down to my pigpen of an office.”
“You could do it here, then?” said Galt, a weary look on his pale face.
“Easy enough; I've got my stethoscope in this satchel. I've just been across the street to see a negro with a whiskey liver. He is a goner, I guess, but I have more hopes of you. Your trouble may be found in those cigar boxes your railroad friends are sending you. If it is that, I'll cut you down to one a day, and smoke the rest myself.”
They had gone into the big library, the walls of which were hung with family portraits in oil, and lined with long, low cases filled with Galt's favorite books.
“Take the big chair,” Dearing said, “and open your shirt in front.”
Galt tossed his half-smoked cigar through an open window and complied. The examination was made, and questions in regard to diet and habits were asked and answered. Dearing said nothing as he put his instrument into the satchel and closed it. He stood over his patient, eying him critically.
“It looks to me like you are fundamentally as sound as a dollar,” he said, his fine brow furrowed, “but your case puzzles me a lot. To be frank, you are entirely too thin, your cheeks are sunken, your skin is dry, and your eye dull. You are very nervous, and are growing gray hairs as fast as crab-grass. Somehow, I don't think you need any sort of medicine. Now, if you were not absolutely the luckiest man in Georgia, I'd think you had something to worry about. Worry has killed more men than all the plagues on earth; but that can't be your trouble, for every good thing in life has come your way. You had a great ambition a few years ago, but you gratified it; surely you don't want to own any more railroads.”
“No, one is enough,” Galt answered, with a faint, forced smile. “I can't say that I am worrying over that.”
“Well, the condition of the minds of patients,” said Dearing, “is the biggest thing doctors have to tackle. We can hold our own with a disease of the body, because we can see it and, at least, experiment with it for good or bad; but when the seat of the thing is in a man's soul, and he won't uncover it, but keeps fooling himself and his doctor by looking for it under his hide or in his blood or bones, why, we are at a standstill. I had a patient once who certainly had me at my wit's end. He was sound as you are physically, but he was restless, dissatisfied, morbid, lonely, and utterly miserable. I exhausted every resource on him. I sent him to specialists all over America, but they were as helpless as I was. Finally, in sheer desperation, I took the bull by the horns and asked him if he had anything on his mind of a disagreeable nature. He hung his head, and I knew then that something was wrong. I pumped him adroitly, assuring him that all private matters were held in confidence by a physician, and he finally made a clean breast of it. He was a rich man, but every dollar he owned had been accumulated from money stolen from another man, and a man who had failed in life and died in abject poverty.”
“Ah, I see!” Galt sat more erect, his eyes fixed on Dearing's face. “That was his trouble; and what did he do about it?”
“Died hugging the rotten thing to his breast,” the doctor said; “and that is the way with most of them. He couldn't face the music—he couldn't confess to the puny little world around him that he wasn't what it had always thought him. Perhaps he had gone too far to believe in the cure that God has made possible for every poor devil in toils of that sort. That's the trouble. Spirituality has to be practised to be a reality. Faith cures of all sorts have their place in the world, for a sick soul will certainly make a sick body.”
“So you believe in rubbish of that sort,” Galt said, contemptuously.
“To the extent I have indicated, yes,” Dearing replied. “I think I could demonstrate scientifically that health of body and faith in something higher than mere matter go hand in hand. Tell a weak man that his body is sound, and he will gain strength; convince a man that he is hopelessly old, and he will no longer be buoyed up by the hope of life. Show him his grave, and he will begin to measure himself for it. Therefore—and here is where I am going to hit you, you old atheist,” Dearing continued, half jestingly—“let a man constantly argue to himself that life ends here on earth, and he will wither away physically, as he already has spiritually; for what would be the incentive to live if death ends all? I meet all sorts of men and women, and the healthiest old codgers I run across are the old chaps who believe they are sanctified. They may be as close as the bark of a tree, absolutely proof against any sort of charitable impulse, but the belief of their immortality keeps them pink and rosy to their graves; half of them die only because they want a change of residence, and expect to own a corner lot on the golden streets of the New Jerusalem. The preachers teach us that we've got to go through a lot of red-tape to be saved, but I believe the time will come when immortality will be demonstrated as plainly as the fact that decayed matter will reproduce life in a plant.”
“Oh, life is too short to argue on these things,” Galt said, wearily. “You have always seen the thing one way, and I another. I am in good company. The greatest minds of the world have believed as I do. I can't say that Iwantto live forever.”
“Well, I do—I do,” returned Dearing. “There was a time, thanks to my early association with you, by-the-way, when I doubted; but I always had a frightful pang at the thought that the wonderful mystery of life must continue to be a closed book to me. I fought it, Kenneth, old man—I fought that thought day and night, because my soul was so enamoured with the great secret that I could not give it up; and now—well, on my honor, the faith in it has become my very existence. Without that prospect I'd stop right here. I'd not care to move an inch. I'd as soon cut your throat as to treat you as a friend. But I didn't come to preach. What is that you've got stacked up on the table—drawings for another trunk-line?”
“No.” Galt rose languidly and smiled. “I'll show you something very pretty. You know I am fond of good pictures, and I flatter myself that I have discovered a genius. There is an art dealer, F. B. Jenkins, in Atlanta, whom I know pretty well, and he called me in the other day to show me some water-color pictures by a young girl, who, it seems, is too modest to allow her name to be used. Then, too, I think he regards her as his find, and doesn't want other dealers to know about her. I bought these.”
Galt opened a big portfolio, and began taking out the pictures one by one. “Where has any one ever seen a child more lifelike than that one? Why, it is actually walking away from the paper; and look at that one on the fence, and this boy with the top and string!”
“Why, good gracious!” Dearing cried out, impulsively, as he stood transfixed by surprise, “I know who did that work—I—” But he checked himself suddenly.
“Youknow who did it?” Galt said, facing him in surprise. “What do you mean, Wynn. Do you really know anything about it?”
“I spoke without thinking,” Dearing said, awkwardly. “You know, a physician sometimes runs across matters which he is obliged to regard as confidential, and, since the—the lady doesn't want to be known, I could not feel free to mention her name; besides, you know, Imightbe mistaken.”
Dearing turned from the pictures and moved toward the door.
“I am satisfied that you could tell more about it if you would,” Galt said. “I really would like to know, for I have never run across pictures I liked so well. And to think they are done by some young woman who may not know how good her work really is!”
“I know nothing—absolutely nothing,” Wynn said, with a non-committal smile. “But, if I did, I wouldn't trust it to you or any other man, so there you are. Why haven't you been over? Uncle Tom and Madge look for you every afternoon to join them at tea. You'd better come soon; they are off for New York in a few days.”
“New York!” Galt exclaimed, in surprise.
“Yes; you know they go up there every summer for a ten days' stay, visiting the Marstons. Old Marston was a colonel under my uncle in the war. He went to New York after peace was declared and invested all he had left. He is now a big tea-and-coffee importer, and worth a lot of money. Mrs. Marston likes Madge, and gives her a big time once a year. It is always a picnic for uncle and her. They start off like jolly school-children. They have the time of their lives from the moment they leave till they get back all tired out and coated with dust. Now, you look after your health, Kenneth. Lie around this quiet old house and take a good rest. Keep those bookcases with their lying contents closed, and read sound, hopeful literature, and I'll see that you stay above ground for a good many years to come.”
“If I could only getyouto read those books, instead of the namby-pamby stuff issued by the Sunday-schools for the edification of children who still believe in Santa Claus, you'd be a wiser man,” Galt said, good-naturedly, as he accompanied Dearing to the door. “But, then, I'd not have the fun of arguing with you.”
“I could put up as good an argument, even on your own side, as you can,” Dearing said, half seriously. “I could give one illustration which would prove to men like you, at least, that the whole world is topsy-turvy, and the Creator, if there is such a thing, more heartless than any man alive.”
“You could? Well, that's interesting—coming from you, at least.”
“It was this,” Dearing went on, now quite serious, as he stood facing Galt, swinging his satchel in his hand: “As I came in just now I saw about thirty children—little boys and girls—over on Lewis Weston's lawn. They were all rigged out in their Sunday clothes and playing games, just as you and I did on the same spot when we were kids. It was little Grover Weston's birthday, and his daddy, being our Congressman, the undersized 'four hundred' were doing honors to the occasion. Even from where I stood I could see the toys, wagons, tricycles, and hobby-horses which had been presented to the little Georgia lord, and he was strutting about thoroughly enjoying the limelight that was on him. That wasoneside of the picture. The other side was this: Down at the lower end of our place stood a solitary little figure. Not one among them all could hold a candle to him in looks or brightness of mind. You know who I mean; it was the little chap you took a fancy to the other day when he jumped into your arms from that tree. There he stood, his bat and ball idle at his feet, watching every movement of the gay little crowd across the way. I couldn't know what his thoughts were, but, as I stood looking at him, I wondered what I should have thought at his age. Was his growing and supersensitive mind already struggling with the question of inequality? I remember that I, at his age, felt a slight keenly, and ifIdid, with my many advantages as a child, what must he feel? There is an argument for you, Kenneth. The next time you want to prove the utter heartlessness and aimlessness of God and His universe, just paint that picture.”
Galt made no response. His blood seemed to turn cold in his veins as the grimly accusing words fell from his friend's lips.
“But that is not the way I'm going to let the story end, in my fancy, at least,” Dearing continued, after a pause. “Kenneth, old chap, I see a silver lining peeping out from beneath even that poor child's cloud. I see the hidden hand of God following the father who deserted his duty to flee to some far-off hiding-place. I see that man hungering for spiritual rest; I see his very crime humbling and sweetening his soul and causing him to long for what he has left behind him. I see the fortune that avarice is piling up in his father's coffers being turned to good account. In short, I see that boy and his beautiful child-mother, who never had a fault but that of blindly trusting, taken away somewhere to ultimate happiness.”
“You think—you think—” Galt stammered, unable to formulate an adequate reply.
“I think the man does not live who could have been loved and trusted by Dora Barry and ever forget her. The man does not live who could be the father ofsucha child bysucha mother—such as she has grown to be since her great misfortune—and not fight for her and her child with his last breath.”