A fortnight later Mostyn returned to Atlanta. He spent the first day at his sister's home trying to pass the time reading in her library, but the whole procedure was a hollow makeshift. Had he been a condemned prisoner awaiting execution at dawn, he could not have suffered more mental agony.
Unable to sleep that night, he rose before sun-up on the following morning and walked through the quiet streets for two hours. What a mad, futile thing the waking city seemed! "What are these people living for—what, after all?" he asked. "But they may be happy in a way," he added. "The fault is in me. I am seeing them through self-stained glasses. It wasn't like this in my sight once—the town was a sort of heaven when I first entered it and began to attract attention. Yes, I am at fault. I have disobeyed a spiritual law, and am getting my dues. What is the use of holding out longer? I see now that I am beaten. I have got to do this thing, and be done with it."
After breakfast he went straight to the bank. Wright, Delbridge, and the clerks and stenographers seemed unreal creatures, with flaccid, vacuous faces, as he shook hands with them and answered their conventional queries about his vacation. "Vacation!" The word was not in his vocabulary. "Business!" That, too, was a corpse of a word floating on the still waters of past usage. "Money, stocks, bonds, market-reports!" They seemed like forgotten enemies rising to stop him. How could Delbridge smile in his smug way, as he chewed his cigar and boasted of a new club of which he was the president? How could Wright put up with his moderate salary and stand all day at that prison window? What could the limp, pale-faced stenographers in their simple dresses hope for? Did they expect to marry, bear children, nurse them at their thin breasts—and bury them like close-clipped flowers of Heaven just opening to fragrance?
Seated at his desk, he asked a clerk to go to the vault and bring him his certificates of bank stock. Delbridge was passing, and, seeing them in his hands, he said, with his forced and commercial shrewdness:
"If you have any idea of selling out, Mostyn, I'm in a shape now to take that stock off your hands."
Mostyn's stare resolved itself into a glare of indecision. "What would be your price?" he asked, under his breath, and yet audibly—"that is, in case I—I found another use for the money?"
"The same price I gave Saunders," Delbridge answered. "You couldn't expect to make a better deal than that long-headed chap. If you really want to do this thing you'd better act at once. I have another plan on hand."
"You make it as an offer?" Mostyn asked.
"Yes."
"Then the stock is yours," Mostyn answered. "Figure it up and place the money to my credit. I may check it out to-day. I am thinking of leaving town."
Delbridge suppressed a glow of triumph in his eyes as he took the certificates into his hands. He spread the crisp sheets out on the desk. "Indorse them while the pen is handy," he suggested.
Mostyn dipped the pen and wrote steadily on the backs of the certificates.
"That's O. K.," Delbridge mumbled, dropping his cigar into a cuspidor. "Now I'll credit your account with the money. Check on it when you like."
When Delbridge's back was turned Mostyn drew a blank check from a pigeonhole and began to fill it in. The amount was for one hundred thousand dollars. He made it payable to Jefferson Henderson. He was about to sign his name when a great weakness swept over him like a flood from an unexpected source. How could he do a thing as silly as that? A gift of one-tenth of the amount would delight the old man and take him out of want—perhaps win his gratitude for all time. Mostyn started to tear the check up, but paused. No, no, that wouldn't be in obedience to a higher idea of justice. If the old man had been allowed to hold on to his investment in that early enterprise his earnings would have come to fully as much as the written amount. Suddenly Mostyn saw the dead face of his child as it lay in the coffin surrounded with flowers, and a sob struggled up within him and burst.
"For your sake, Dick," he whispered. "I know you'd want me to do it. I know it—I know it."
Half an hour later he was out in the open air, walking with a strange new activity. His very body seemed imponderable. He crossed the railway near the Kimball House and went on to Decatur Street. Along this street he walked for a few blocks and then turned off. Before long he was in the most dilapidated, sordid part of the city. He knew where Henderson lived. He had seen the old man pottering about the narrow front yard of the grimy little cottage as he drove past it one morning with a friend.
As he drew near the house to-day its impoverished appearance was more noticeable than ever. It was out of repair. Shingles had fallen from the sagging roof. It had not been painted for years; the slats and hinges of the outside blinds were broken, and they hung awry across the cracked window-panes. There was a little fence around it from which many palings were missing, as was the gate. On the narrow front porch a ragged hemp hammock hung by knotted and tied ropes between two posts. There was a broken baby-carriage in the yard, a child's playhouse at the step, a little toy wagon, a headless doll, a piece of bread, and some chicken-bones.
Mostyn went to the open door and rang the jangling cast-iron bell. It brought a young woman from a room on the right of the bare little hall. She held a baby in her arms as she peered questioningly at the visitor. Mostyn knew who she was. She was Henderson's youngest daughter, who had married a shiftless carpenter and been deserted by him, leaving two children to be cared for by their grandfather. It was evident by her blank stare that she did not recognize the caller.
"I want to see your father," Mostyn said. "Is he at home?"
"He's in the back yard," she answered. "He hasn't been feeling at all well to-day, and he didn't go to town as usual. Who may I say it is?"
"Tell him it is Mr. Mostyn," was the answer. "I won't keep him but a moment."
"Mostyn—Dick Mostyn!" The woman's tired eyes flashed as she jerked out the name. "So you have come here to devil him, have you?" She shifted the infant from her left to her right hip and sneered. "I don't suppose he cares to see you. I'll tell you one thing—he's my father and I have a right to be plain—you and your treatment are driving him out of his senses. He can't think of anything else or talk of anything else. Sometimes he rages, and sometimes he breaks down and cries like a child. I never have fully understood what you did to him, but I know you ruined him. Come in. I'll tell him you are here. I hope to the Lord you won't hit him any harder than you have already. We are in trouble enough. Two days last week we went without anything to eat except what a neighbor sent in, and that nearly killed my father, for he is proud. One of my sisters is sick and lost her job at the factory. If I thought you was any sort of a man I'd ask you to have pity."
With her disengaged hand the woman shoved a door open and hastily retreated. He went into a little sitting-room and sat down. There were only a few pieces of furniture in the room. A worn straw mat lay on the floor; three or four chairs, all but bottomless, stood here and there; a small square table holding a lamp and a family photograph-album bound in red plush was in the center of the room. Oil-portraits of Henderson and his dead wife, in massive frames, hung on the walls. Henderson's wore the prosperous look of the time when his means and good will had been at Mostyn's service.
Holding his hat between his knees, the caller leaned forward tensely, wondering over the present spectacle of himself. He heard loud words in the rear. "I know what he wants." Old Henderson's voice rose and cracked. "It isn't the first time he has tried to browbeat me into holding my tongue. He's heard what I've said, and wants to threaten me with prosecution. But that won't stop me. I'll tell him what I think to his teeth—the low-lived, thieving dog! He did steal my money—he did, he did!"
Heavy footfalls rang on the bare floor of the hall; an outer door was slammed. The voice of Henderson's daughter, now full of fright, was heard admonishing her father to be calm. "You'll drop like the doctor said you would if you don't be careful!" she advised. "The man isn't worth it."
With dragging steps old Henderson advanced till he stood in the doorway. His long white hair was unkempt; he wore no collar or coat. His trousers were baggy, patched at the knees, and frayed at the bottom of the legs, where they scarcely reached the gaping tops of his stringless shoes. Mostyn had risen and now stood staring at his former patron, unable to formulate what he had come to say.
"My daughter says you want to see me," Henderson blurted out. "Well, you are welcome to the sight. You've dodged me often enough lately. Do you know what I tried to see you about the other day when I was there? It wasn't to get money, for I've given that up long, long ago. I wanted to tell you that I spend my days now thanking both God and the devil for the plight you are in at last. I believe prayers are answered—you bet I do—you bet, you bet! I've prayed to have you hit below the belt, and it has come in good measure. I see from the way you look that you feel it. Ah, ha! you know now, don't you, how it feels to squirm under public scorn and lose something you hold dear? They tell me old Mitchell sees through you and is leaving all he's got to Virginia kin. The dying of your child knocked all that into a cocked hat—your own child, think of that! I've laughed till I was sick over it. First one report come, then another, till your three staggering, knock-out blows was made public. I don't know how true it is"—Henderson wrung his talon-like hands together tightly—"but business men say there isn't much left of your private funds."
"Hardly anything now, Mr. Henderson," Mostyn answered. "Now that I have decided to—"
"Ah! that is true, then!" Henderson ran on, with a sly chuckle. "It is reported that Delbridge, the feller you started out to race against so big, has swiped the bank presidency right from under your nose, nabbed the cream of the business, and put it on a respectable footing."
"That is all true," Mostyn admitted. Thrusting his hand into his pocket, he drew out the check he had written. It fluttered in the air, for he held it unsteadily. "Here is something for you," he said. "It is late coming, Mr. Henderson, but it is yours. You will find it all right."
"Mine?" The old man's limp hands hung down his sides. He saw the extended check, but failed to understand. He gazed at the quivering slip, his rigid lips dripping, his eyes filled with groping suspicion.
"Yes, it is yours," Mostyn said. "I've been long getting to it, but I am now bent on making restitution as far as possible. I can never wipe out the trouble I've put you to during all these years, but this may help. If you had held your interest in that factory as I held mine it would have been worth one hundred thousand dollars to-day."
"I know it—I know it—what the hell—" Henderson stared first at the check and then at Mostyn. "What do you mean by coming to me at this late—"
"It is my check for a hundred thousand dollars, payable to you," Mostyn answered. "The money is yours. You may draw it any time you like."
Henderson's hand shot out. The long-nailed fingers grasped the slip of paper and bore it to his eyes. He stared; he blinked; he quivered. A light flared up in his face and died.
"You don't mean it; it is another one of your damned tricks," he gasped. "You can't mean that I am to have—"
"I mean nothing else, Mr. Henderson," Mostyn faltered. He moved forward and laid his hand on the old man's shoulder. A flood of new-born tenderness rose within him and surged outward. "I have wronged you through the best part of your life. This is your money, and I am glad to be able to return it."
"Mine? Oh, God! oh, God! oh, God!" Mostyn's hand fell from the sloping shoulder, for Henderson was leaving the room. "Wait, wait, wait!" he called back, imploringly. "I want my—my daughter to read it and see if—if it is like you say it is. I can't see without my glasses; the letters run together. I don't know what to believe or—or what to doubt. Wait, wait, wait!"
Mostyn heard him clattering along the hall, calling to his daughter in the plaintive voice of an excited child. "Hettie, Hettie, here! Come, daughter, come look—read this! Quick! Quick! What does it say?"
Mostyn stood at the little window. He heard the infant crying in the rear as if it had been suddenly neglected by its mother. He heard the young woman's voice reading the words written on the check.
"He's paying it back!" Henderson's voice rose almost to a scream. "It is twice as much as I put in, too. Oh, Het, we are rich! we are rich! He isn't so bad, after all! He's more than doing the right thing! Not one man in a million would do it; he's white to the bone! He's had sorrow—maybe that's it. They say trouble will turn a man about. Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!"
The next moment Henderson, his face wet with tears, stood in the narrow doorway. He held out his hand and grasped Mostyn's. He started to speak, but burst into violent sobbing. Mostyn was shaken to the lowest depths of himself. He put his arm about the old man's shoulders and drew him against his breast. A thrill of strange, hitherto inexperienced ecstasy passed through him. He thought of his dead child; he thought of his dead wife; he thought of the mystic preacher of the mountains; he thought of Dolly Drake. The whole world was whirling into new expression. It now had transcendent meaning. At last he understood. The heights could not be seen except from the depths. Joy could not be felt till after sorrow—till after total renunciation of self. What need had he now of money? None, weeping in his arms was the most glorious of all.
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