CHAPTER XXVI

ON the morning of the fourth day after the meeting of Dora and Kenneth Galt, f old Stafford was stirred to its outskirts by the return of the most popular young man who had ever lived in the town. Fred Walton got in an hour or so before noon.

He had sent a telegram to his father announcing his coming, but had failed to mention the hour of his arrival, and so there was no special conveyance at the station to meet him, though old Simon, in his Sunday frock-suit and a fresh collar, with a five-cent shoe-shine and a ten-cent shave at the barber-shop adjoining the bank, sat in the counting-room waiting, not sure whether his son would get in during the morning or by the afternoon train.

He was not long kept in doubt, for the electric trolley-car that whizzed up from the station was fairly packed with individuals of both sexes and all classes, who, it seemed, had ridden up chiefly that they might be among the first to pay tribute to their old favorite and hear him talk.

It was all joyous and reassuring enough to Fred at first, and might have continued so had the car not stopped at a crossing half-way between the station and the square, and taken on Wynn Dearing, who, having returned home, had been visiting a patient near by. The eyes of the two met. Fred colored high; but with a hard, grave countenance Dearing simply turned to the conductor, paid his fare, and sat down near a window, through which he stared stonily all the way to the square.

The heart of the returning exile sank into a veritable slough of despair. His admirers, packed about him, were stilled for a moment by the “cut” he had received, and then, not being able to interpret it, they valiantly passed it over, and showed by their excessive cordiality that if one of his old companions had been coarse enough to snub him on that day of all days, they remained true.

But the light and joy of it all was blotted out for the one most concerned. He sat trying to answer the innumerable questions, trying to return humorous sallies and references to the gay old days with smiles that would reflect their good-will, but it was a poor effort at best. He endeavored, in a miserable maze, to recall the exact words of his father’s hurried letter ordering him home, and his spirits sank lower and lower as he made the effort. After all, he told himself, he had misunderstood Margaret’s message—the message which had raised him to the very skies of delight. The letter, which he had read hundreds of times, was in the pocket of his coat, and he could feel its now grim and satirical pressure against his breast.

“She told me she wanted to see you,” old Simon had written, “and for me to write you so. She said she was sure when you and her got together you and her would understand each other perfectly. She was powerful flushed and excited, and I could hardly make out just what she did or did not mean. It was the way she acted more than what she actually said in so many plain words that made me believe she had concluded to let bygones be bygones. So, if I was you, Fred, and still thought she would be a proper mate, why, I should lay business aside and make hay for a while. The sun seems shining up this way for you right now, and so, as I say, I would come right on before some other cloud rises. Women are changeable, and she may be no exception to the rule. I can’t quite understand why she shut off my proposition in your behalf when I went up to see her, and then come down all in a tilt and hustle the next day, and did what she did, and talked like she did. I am too much of a business man by habit, I reckon, to encourage anybody in a deal that ain’t fully closed, signed, sealed; and delivered; so, you see, all I can say is to come on and work out your own salvation.”

Now, sure that he had made a grave mistake, and with the heaviest of hearts, Fred left the car at the postoffice, noting that Wynn Dearing, with a hard, set face, was striding across the street to his office with never another look in his direction.

“He is furious because I have come back,” Fred said to himself. “I promised him I’d stay away, and I have broken my word. General Sylvester is as much against me as ever, and so is Wynn. It is all up. I’ll never live it down. These persons who seem glad to see me have nothing at stake, or they would snub me too. My father has forgiven me, but that has nothing to do with Margaret. After he wrote as he did, I hoped—hoped—well, I was a fool! I hoped too much. I’ll go back West and stay there. I’ll see Wynn Dearing and tell him of my mistake. Surely that will justify me if my—my presumption ends there.”

As he neared the bank he saw his father standing in the door, backed up by all his clerks. The gaunt, grizzled visage of the old man, under its half-sheepish look, was lighted up as it had never been in his son’s memory, and the faces around him were wreathed in welcoming smiles, but it was a hand of lead that Fred extended, a smile that was dead lay on his handsome face.

Dearing, to his surprise, on reaching his office after leaving the car, found Margaret waiting for him. He stared at her almost fiercely for a moment; then, as she avoided his eyes and was silent, he broke out:

“You have come down here to see him?”

“Yes, brother,” she answered, simply. “I want to be among the first to welcome him home. He has suffered enough, and has proved his genuine nobility. I can’t explain everything just now, for I have no right to; but you will know all that I know very, very soon.”

“I know this, Madge,” he said, and he sat down before her, looking like a figure carved in stone, so ghastly pale and rigid was he. “I know this: if you pardon that man for what he has done, I’ll never speak to you again. I can stand some things, but I can’t stand that. No man can marry my sister who has stamped the very heart out of my life, as this one has! Now, perhaps you understand.”

“Oh, brother, you mean that you love—”

He nodded, and his head sank to his chest.

“Then you must listen to me!” Margaret began. “But, no, you will have to wait—I can’t tell you even now—I can’t explain.”

At this juncture there was a step on the floor of the front room. Some one was approaching. It was a messenger boy with a telegram.

Dearing took it and tore it open. The letters on the yellow sheet swam before his eyes, but he read the words:

Kenneth and I are married; now you will understand everything. We are all going to New York, then to Paris for a while. With love from mamma, Lionel, and myself, good-bye. Dora.

Margaret had read the telegram over her brother’s shoulder, and with a woman’s tact she signed the boy’s book and led him to the outer door. She stood there alone for several minutes, looking out into the street. There was no sound in the office. She waited ten minutes, and then, with a tear of sympathy in her eye, she went back to her brother and put her arms about his bowed form.

As soon as was practicable, Fred led his father away from the clerks back to the old man’s office.

“Wynn Dearing refused to speak to me on the car as we came up,” he said. “Father, I am afraid I misunderstood your letter, and have made an awful fool of myself by coming. He will think, and his sister will think—” But Fred could go no further. He sank into a seat near the desk, and the banker slowly lowered himself into his revolving chair.

“You say Wynn—you say her brother wouldn’t speak to you,” he faltered. “Now, I wonder if—I—I wonder—You see, I hardly knew what to think when she popped in here like she did that day. What she said was all so jumbled and roundabout that, as I wrote you, it was more the way she acted that made me draw my conclusions than her exact words on any direct line.”

“Well, how did she act?” Fred inquired, despondently.

“Why, if you will know—” old Simon was growing red in the face. “I had no idea of telling it even to you, but the truth is she up and kissed me—so she did! She gave me a smack right on the cheek!”

“She kissed you?”

“That’s what she did, by gum! And Toby come in just in time to make her let go of my neck. So, you see, after I thought it all over, why, I thought that maybe she regarded me as being a kin to her in some shape or other, and meant that as a sort o’ hint of what she was willing to do.”

At this moment a voice was heard in the corridor. It was Wynn Dearing’s, and he was asking for Fred.

“I wonder if he’s come here to pick a row,” old Simon asked, as his startled eyes bore down on the face of his son. “If he has, I reckon we can accommodate him. I ain’t no fighter, but you are my own flesh and blood, and considering the time you’ve been away, and what you have accomplished, he hain’t treated you right. Toby”—raising his voice and going to the door and looking out—“show that fellow back here. Nobody ain’t hiding in this shebang, I am here to say, and if folks ain’t satisfied all round—clean all round—why—”

But Wynn Dearing was brushing past the old man through the narrow doorway, his face pale, his hand extended to Fred.

“I have done you a great wrong, old man,” he said, in a shaking voice, “and I have come to beg your pardon.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Wynn,” Fred gasped, in surprise. “I am sure you have treated me no worse than I deserve.”

“Oh yes, I have, Fred. I have worked against you ever since you left, and I now find that you are wholly innocent of what I accused you of. Let me talk it over with your father. Margaret is waiting at my office to see you. I promised I’d send you to her.”

As if in a dream, Fred hastened out of the bank and went down to Dearing’s office. No one was in the front, but he found Margaret in the back room standing at a window, looking out. She turned as he entered and gave him both her hands.

“Oh, I’m so glad—so glad!” she cried, and he saw tears on her lashes, and the handkerchief she held in one of her hands was damp. “Oh, Fred, we have all treated you so badly, so cruelly, so unjustly, when you were striving so hard! A great mistake was made. If I had known what I now know when we met in New York, I would never have treated you as I did. You were thinking of one thing and I of another.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, groping for her meaning, his big, honest eyes dilating.

“And I can’t explain,” she said. “It really doesn’t matter, anyway. I don’t want even to think about it—at least to-day, when I am so happy. But I want you to know one thing: you see, Dora Barry showed me the letter you wrote her, and I want you to know that I love you. I have loved you every day, every minute, since you left.”

“You love me—you really care for me?” he said, deep in his throat.

“Yes; but come walk home with me, dear,” she said. “I want you all to myself. I shall never get my own forgiveness for allowing myself to misjudge you as I did. Let’s not talk about it, but come on. Wynn may be back in a moment, and I don’t want any explanations now, anyway. I want you wholly to myself.”

As they walked down the quiet street side by side he tried to speak, but the happiness within him had risen to a storm, and he could only stare at her in silent wonder, as if doubting his own good-fortune.