David Lawrence spread the books open before him. It would be an endless task. One fact kept burning into his brain like fire. The Eastmans, or Hope Mills, owed Yerbury Bank seventy thousand dollars, the hard earnings and self-denials of poor and middle-class people. How it stung his haughty pride, unused even to dishonorable thoughts! If he had been an exact master, he had also been a just and honest one. Shame and disgrace stared him square in the face, where they would have but looked askance at Horace Eastman.
It had been quite impossible to take cognizance of every thing after the business grew so unwieldy. Then he thought of his son again with passionate longing. Never had he so wanted some of his own kin to lean upon, to take counsel with, to consider what must be done toward saving honor: that was no social figment with him, but a deep, heaven-abiding truth.
Heaven! By some strange turn of thought it entered his mind. He was so tired, he had been so tired for months and months, so engrossed with cares and business, that he had hardly stepped inside a church. How they used to go in the old days; how proud he had been of his four pretty children, of his tall handsome girls, and his manly son! Respectability, and setting a good example,—these had been his motives for church-going. Bits of sermons came back to him: how strange that he could remember them! There was a rest from labor, a refreshing of soul. Oh, how dark and arid, how confused and chaotic, his felt! Was there a something he had never known?
Then he pulled himself together mentally, roused his dreaming brain, and said something must be done. Fred must come back, and face the terrible truth. As well send for him now.
He wrote out a message, and rang the bell. A tall, slim youth answered it.
"I want this telegram sent immediately," he said in his quiet tone of command. "Is Farrell anywhere about?"
"I can take it, sir, if you please: I often do."
"Very well."
Back to the books again with their long lines of figures. Did he think he would find the shame and ruin here in bold black and white? He studied them until they all ran together, and his brain seemed to become a mass of luminous light with black motes floating about in it. The tense agony abated. Strange visions haunted him, frivolous fancies, and wonders that had puzzled him in boyhood; heroic fragments of bygone declamation; the incidents of a week ago; a picture of some bold scenery, and he in the cars, whirling by.
"Am I going crazy?" he asked with a ghastly expression. Then he took several turns about the room, listened to the noise of the great engine, and assured himself that he was sane.