SIMON WALTON had been away a week, and the force at the bank had not heard from him, when one morning Toby received a telegram from him dated that day in Atlanta. The carefully chosen ten words ran as follows:
“Meet me with horse and buggy at afternoon up train.”
So Toby went down to the old man’s house, and, unassisted, got out the gaunt animal and the time-worn vehicle with the dilapidated leather hood, and drove to the station. He was in a fine glow of appreciation of the compliment implied by the telegram’s being addressed solely to him, and by the additional fact that on returning from former journeys Walton had either walked home or taken the cars. Toby told himself, with no little unction, that it meant that his employer had something of a confidential nature to impart.
The train had scarcely come to a standstill when Simon, who was on the front platform of the first passenger-coach, sprang down, valise in hand, and, looking much the worse for the dust and fine cinders that lay on him like frost of the infernal regions, walked stiffly toward Toby and the buggy.
“Well, I see you got my wire,” was his greeting, as he relinquished the valise and allowed Toby to put it behind the seat in the buggy.
“Yes, I got it all right,” the clerk responded. “Shall we drive home or to the bank?”
Walton waited till Toby was in the seat beside him; then he replied: “Well, we may as well head for home, though I reckon we could take a sort o’ roundabout direction through the edge of town. I want to tell you what I did out there, and we might not have as good a chance later. My wife will be nagging the life out of me for particulars, and while there are no particulars in this thing that she has any concern in, if I was to be cornered somewhere with you right at the start she’d think it strange. Then, on the other hand, if me and you slid off together the very minute I got to the bank, the rest might think I was partial, and so I thought this slow ride was the very idea.”
“Yes, of course, Mr. Walton. I suppose you saw Fred?”
“Oh yes, but not the first shot out of the box.” Walton took off his hat and wiped the perspiration from his brow, upon which lay the red imprint of his hatband, and smiled sheepishly. “The truth is, Toby, the nigher I got to that blamed town the sillier I felt, till by the time I was there and duly quartered at what they told me was their best hotel I hardly knew my hat from a hole in the ground. You see, my predicament was peculiar, and would have been odd to any man in the plight I was in. I didn’t know but two souls in the town. One of ‘em was not only the great high mucky-muck of the place, but a man I’d called a thief and a liar and kicked plumb out of my sanctum when he had called to do me a favor; and the other was—well, he was my only son, who I had treated like a yellow dog. You see, I knew that downright apologies was what I owed both of ‘em; but, Toby, let me tell you something odd—I don’t know how to account for it: but, as just and upright as I’ve always been in my dealings in a general way, I never, in so many plain words, ever told a human being I was sorry. I have been that way, and was willing to try to sort o’ look it, in cases where I was dead wrong; but I’d rather take a thousand lashes on my bare back any day than come right out and beg a fellow’s pardon.”
“I understand,” Toby said, sympathetically. “A great many folks are that way.”
“Well, I don’t think I’m like a great many folks,” Walton replied, as his eyes rested on the back of his horse, “but I couldn’t swallow that pill. So there I was, registered at that fine joint, with a front room all to myself, overlooking the street, and the clerks and nigger porters looking at me, same as to say, ‘Well, what is your game? Are you a whiskey drummer, bank-examiner, detective, stock-drover, or escaped convict?’ I was like a fish out of water. I didn’t know what to do or how to make any sort of start. I sat round the office half the time, and the rest I was flopping about in my room. The first day passed that way, and the next night, in which I had hardly got a wink of sleep. There was a bar-room and gambling-hell right under me, and I could hear some whizzing thing and balls rolling, and a deep voice calling out in some game or other. It was a gay town, and I was in the middle of it. The next morning I determined I’d write Fred a note and let him know where I was at, but I’d no sooner got it ready and backed and sealed than I recalled that Fred wasn’t using his own name, and that a note addressed to him in the old style might cause talk, and so I tore it up. Then I ventured out and, half-scared to death, actually walked by the big store—on the opposite side of the street, though—and peeped in through the windows. It was as busy as a beehive during a swarm, but I couldn’t see head nor tail of Fred. All at once I took the bit in my mouth and started across the street to go in, but was stopped short. And what do you reckon done it, Toby?”
“I can’t imagine, Mr. Walton,” said the clerk, deeply interested.
“Toby, it was that new sign you spoke about—‘Stephen Whipple & Son.’ It was on the front of the big red building, and seemed to me to be just so many long, black letters stalking clean across the sky. ‘Stephen Whipple & Son,’ and the last word, small as it was, overtopped all the rest. The thing simply knocked me silly. Wasn’t it Saint Paul (it was one of them fellows in the good Book) that fell down in some great light that blazed out over him? Mine wasn’t a light; it wasn’t wind; it wasn’t a kick in the jaw from an army mule, but it hit me like all three combined. I was mad; I was sorry; I was ashamed; but I couldn’t walk under that dad-blasted sign. It hung over them doors like a long white sword of an enemy ready to chop me into halves.
“I whirled about and went back to my room and actually hid the rest of the day, wondering how on earth I was going to do the job. Once I packed up my valise and started down to pay my bill, with the intention of shirking the whole thing; but I saw that wouldn’t do. So I passed another day. I read my Bible a little, and I reckon I prayed some. I don’t know, Toby, but I would have bowed down before a heathen idol to have got help out of my predicament. I remembered what you said about seeing Fred at Whipple’s house, and the next night I went out and inquired the way to his place. I found it, and, having nothing better to do, I walked clean around it like you did. Nobody was in sight, but I could see lights inside, and then the thought came to me that Fred, my son, maybe, was at that very minute in there keeping company with that old man and woman, and that made me feel as bad as the sign had. I tried to argue that I’d been right in pinning down on the boy for what he had done; but I knew there was no stability to my point, for that fat chap had secured better results through a different method, and he wasn’t no blood kin. So I went back to the hotel, and made another night of it. I wasn’t like you. I couldn’t talk to strangers in an off-hand way about it. I tried once to the clerk behind the counter, but I couldn’t make it go. He looked at me mighty curious, and I changed the subject. I think I asked him if that State wa’n’t heavy on hog-raising.”
“You were in an embarrassing position,” Toby remarked, as he shook the drooping lines over the plodding horse’s back.
“I never would have got out of it if it hadn’t been by pure accident,” Walton said. “The office of the hotel was a sort of meeting-place for the young men of the town of an evening, and there was a little smoking and writing room off of it. I was sitting there on the third evening, and the office was thronged with young chaps. Some sort of entertainment was on hand at the opera-house across the street, for a band was playing outside, and the young men in their best outfits were smoking and chatting in the office, when who should I see come in but Fred. He came in at the front door in a swallowtail suit with a light overcoat on his arm, and I tell you the crowd all made way for him. Toby, I am an old man; I’ve been through the rubs; I’ve seen near and dear comrades shot down at my side on the field of battle; I have had all sorts of experiences; but the sight of my boy there looking so much older and more dignified than when I last saw him—a sort of king among his kind—with this one and that one giving him the glad hand, and hailing him right and left with words and smiles of welcome while I was slinking off th............