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! Accide............