CHAPTER XIII

BRAVE, very brave, and sweet and noble!” he said to himself, as he walked back toward the gate of his grounds; “but she certainly sha’n’t have her way. I’m not low enough for that, thank God! She is the only creature I ever loved or could love, and she is mine by all the laws of heaven and earth. She looked like a young goddess as she stood there with that fire in her suffering face, and calmly consigned herself to disgrace and oblivion that my sordid schemes might prosper. I am not poor. I can make a living somehow, somewhere, if not in this sleepy old town; and with her always by my side, why—” Across the lawn he saw a light in a window of the Dearing house. It was in General Sylvester’s room. The old gentleman retired earlier than this as a rule, and Galt told himself that his being up now was due to the almost child-like joy over the encouraging condition of their joint enterprise. He saw the old soldier’s shadow as it flitted across the window, and knew that he was walking about, as was his habit under stress of excitement.

“Poor old man!” Galt, now in his own grounds, leaned against the wall of a rustic summer-house. A thought had struck him like a blow from the dark. What would Sylvester say when he was told the truth? Galt saw the look of sheer, helpless incredulity on the high-bred, war-scarred face as the revelation was made, and watched it glow and flame into that of anger, contempt, and bitter disappointment. The mere confession of wrong-doing he might accept as frankly as it was offered, but that the young man should allow such a mishap to drag his own proud name into the mire and wreck the greatest enterprise that had ever blessed a down-trodden community—well, he couldn’t have believed such a thing possible.

Heavily laden now with the fires of a purer passion burning low under the shadow of his impending ruin, Kenneth Galt dragged himself slowly along the walk toward his house. He was turning the corner to enter at the front when he saw a carriage and pair at the gate. The moon had gone under a thin cloud and the view was vague, but surely they were his own horses, and the man on the driver’s seat certainly looked like John Dilk. Wonderingly, Galt went down to the gate. The negro was fast asleep; his massive head had fallen forward, and the hands which held the reins were inert. The gate rattled as Galt touched the iron latch, and the man woke and looked about him.

“Oh, is dat you, Marse Kenneth?” he asked, sleepily. “Yes,” Galt answered, rather sharply. “What are you doing with the horses out at this time of night?”

“Oh! oh! Le’ me see, suh!” The negro’s wits were evidently scattered. “I sw’ar I dunno, Marse Kenneth. Bless my soul, you jump on me so sudden dat I can’t, ter save my life, tell you—Oh yes, now I know, suh! Why, ain’t you seed de Gineral since you got home, Marse Kenneth?”

“Why, no. Does he want me?”

“Yasser, yasser, he sho’ do,” the negro answered, now thoroughly himself. “He been searchin’ fer you high and low, Marse Kenneth. He went all thoo yo’ house. He got some’n ‘portant ter tell you. He ordered me ter hurry an’ get out de team, an’ have it raidy fer you’n him. He just run in his house er minute ago. Dar he is comin’ now. He’s dat excited an’ worried about not findin’ you he can’t hardly hold in.”

General Sylvester, as he stepped from the veranda, recognized Galt, and hurried toward him, pulling out his watch and looking at it in the doubtful light.

“Great heavens!” he cried, “we haven’t a minute to lose. You’ve only got twenty minutes to catch the 11.10 North-bound train! Run up and get your bag! I saw it there, still unpacked, and you needn’t waste a minute. I’ve glorious, glorious news from New York—a wire from Alberts, Wise & Co. They have got the right men for our deal, and with dead loads of money. They are ripe for the thing, and the brokers wire that if you can be there day after to-morrow morning you can close it. They say if you are not there then that the money may be diverted to other deals, and they advise all possible haste. So hurry. You must not miss the train. Everything depends on it. Run, get the bag! John, you get it! Quick!”

“No, I’ll—I’ll do it!” Galt gasped. “Wait, I’ll be down in—in a minute!”

“Then hurry. We can talk on the way to the station. My boy, we are simply going to land it! The blessings of the widows and orphans, whose property is going to bound up in value, will be on your plucky young head. Hurry up!”

Galt moved away, as weak in action as a machine run by a spring of such delicacy that it could be broken by the breath of an insect or the fall of an atom. It struck him as ridiculous that he should be going for his bag if he did not intend to use it; and to confess even now that he couldn’t make the trip would seem queer and cowardly, for he ought to have explained at once. Ascending the stairs, he reached his room. He turned up the gas, and his image in the big pier-glass between the two end windows looked like that of a dead man energized by electricity. There lay the bag by the bed, the black letters “K. G.,” on the end, blandly staring at him. Galt looked at it, and then back to his reflection in the mirror.

“My God!” he cried out, suddenly, “if I go to-night I’ll be deserting her forever, and she will have read me rightly! She would keep the secret; no human power could wrench it from her. She would keep it; and I—I, who have led her to her ruin, would be deserting her as only a coward could! I am beneath contempt. And yet what am I to do? I am what I am—what the damnable forces within me and my ancestors have made me. Napoleon loved, and put aside and cast down for his ambition, and have I not the same right for mine? I am not an emperor, but my ambition, such as it is, is as sweet to me as his was to him. As she says—as the gentle wilting flower says—I’d be miserable, even with her, under the wreckage of all these hopes. She knows me; child though she is, she is my superior in many things. She knows that the loss of this thing—now that I’ve tasted the maddening cup of success, now that the poison of fame and public approval is rioting in my blood—would damn me forever! Accidents of this sort have ruined weak men. Strong men have lived to smile back upon such happenings as the inevitable consequence of the meeting of flame and powder, and have gone to their graves without remorse. I’ve known such men. I’ve heard them say that no matter how heavily nature may scourge the conscience of man for theft, for murder, for any other misdeed, it yet deals lightly with this particular offence. And why? Because there can be no charge of deliberation in an act to which passionate youth is led by the very sunshine and music of heaven. And yet I’ll lose her. Great God, I’ll actually lose her! I can never look into her sweet face again, or kiss the dear lips ever whispering their vows of undying faith until hell opened her eyes to—to my frailty. No, no, I can’t desert her; I can’t—I simply can’t! I want her! I want her. With all my soul, I want her!” There was a step in the hall below, and General Sylvester’s excited old voice rose and rang querulously through the still space below:

“In the name of Heaven, what’s the matter?” he cried. “Come on! You may miss the train as it is! Come on!”

“One second, General!” Galt cried out. “Wait!” He had not yet decided, he told himself, and yet his cold hand had clutched the handle of his bag. He lifted it up, swung it by his side, and, stepping out into the corridor, peered over the balustrade down the stairs.

“We can’t wait, man!” the General shouted from the walk outside. “Hurry!”

“All right, I’m ready!” and Galt strode rapidly down the stairs, sliding his hand on the walnut railing.

“Why, what is the matter with you?” Sylvester peered at him anxiously in the moonlight as he emerged from the doorway. “You look white and worried. You’ve done too much in Atlanta, with all those receptions and banquets. Let’s call a halt on the social end of the business till we have clinched the thing good and tight. Put this New York deal through, and we can dance and sing and cut the pigeon-wing as much as we please. But you will pull it through, my boy, my prince of promoters, with that wonderful say-little air you have. You are the man to make that crowd of Yankees think we are granting them favors instead of asking for them. If you don’t miss connection and get there on time, you will win as sure as you are a foot high.”

The General was pushing him into the carriage, and John Dilk, with whip poised in the air, and a tight, wide-awake grip on the reins showed readiness for his best speed record.

“Now, John,” Sylvester cried, “miss that train, and I’ll break every bone in your black hide!”

The negro laughed good-naturedly. It was exactly the sort of command he loved to get from the old man who had done him a hundred services.

“You watch me, Marse Gineral,” he said, with a chuckle; “but you better keep yo’ mouf closed. Ef you don’t, dis hoss in de lead will fill it wid clay. He’s de beatenes’ animal ter fling mud I ever driv.”

On they sped, cutting the warm, still air into a sharp, steady current against them. The General babbled on enthusiastically, but Galt failed to catch half he was saying. To all outward appearances, he was being hurtled on to triumph; in reality, he was leaving the just-filled grave of his manhood. Before his humiliated sight stood a wonderful face written full of knowledge of himself—a knowledge more penetrating than that of the world-wise men who bowed before his prowess; a face, the beauty and tenderness of which were ever to remain stamped on his memory; a face wrung by a storm of agony, contempt, and—martyrdom! And he was striking it! The pleading eyes, scornful nose, quivering, drooping mouth were receiving the brunt of all his physical force! He knew the cost, and was going to abide by it. A believer in the eternal existence of the human soul might have paused, but Galt had always contended that nothing lay beyond a man’s short material life. And that being his view, how could he suffer material glories like these to slip through his fingers for the sake of a mere principle—a transient dream of the senses? Yes, yes; and yet the pain, the crushing agony, the maddened thing within him which all but tempted him to clutch the chattering old tempter at his side by the neck and hurl him to the earth!

And yet he nodded and said he was glad that the General had been so thoughtful as to telephone the station-agent to secure the drawing-room on the Pullman.

“We must not do things by halves,” the old soldier crowed. “The man who is to have his own private car as the president of the great S. R. and M. must not be seen, even by a negro porter, crawling into an upper berth. Your plan of living high in order to be on a high level is fine business policy. You haven’t spared expense in Atlanta; you mustn’t in New York, either. Dine ‘em, wine ‘em; throw wads of cash at the servants—do anything! They know who the Gaits of Charleston and Savannah were before the War: let ‘em see that the old blood is still alive.”

They had been at the station only a minute when the train arrived. John Dilk brushed by the porter at the step of the long sleeper, and proudly bore his master’s bag into the drawing-room. There was a hurried shaking of hands between Galt and the General, and the train smoothly rolled away.

Alone in the luxurious compartment, Galt sank down. The obsequious porter stood awaiting orders, but the passenger scarcely saw him or heard what he was saying. Galt was now fairly stupefied by the magnitude of his crime. It flashed upon him as actually an incredible thing—his leaving Dora with so much to bear!

He had taught her that their love, like that of their favorite English novelist, had lifted them above mere conventional rules and ceremonies, and rendered them a law unto themselves. But the awakening had come. She had seen him in the garish light with which Truth had pierced his outer crust and revealed his quaking, cringing soul. She would despise him, the very murmuring of the ponderous wheels beneath him told him that, and from now on he must avoid her. To offer her financial aid in her coming trial would only be adding insult to injury, knowing her as he knew her; so even that must be omitted—even that, while he was accepting the price of her misery.