CHAPTER VI

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 I want to 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.

“You know 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, I might be 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 get you to 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 was one side 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 if I did, 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 of such a child by such a mother—such as she has grown to be since her great misfortune—and not fight for her and her child with his last breath.”