The Brute

by Frederic Arnold Kummer

It cut him bitterly to think of his treachery to Donald, a treachery in no way lessened by the fact that love was its motive, yet he argued to his conscience that the future happiness of both Edith and himself was at stake and demanded of him even the sacrifice of his friendship.

He did not go to his accustomed rooms at the Prairie, for he intended to make his stay in the city as short and uneventful as possible. There was but one purpose in his mind—to dispose of his holdings in the mine, resign his office as vice-president of the company and invest his entire fortune in safe and desirable bonds, upon the interest of which he would be able to carry out his future plans with no greater attention to business affairs than that involved in clipping off his quarterly or half-yearly coupons. Therefore he held aloof from his old friends, his former associations. If he should let the men at the club know of his presence in the city, they would not only take up a great deal of his time, but would inevitably inquire into his plans in a way that might easily prove embarrassing. He therefore betook himself to a quiet hotel, not usually patronized by the traveling public, and, after a smoking-hot breakfast, proceeded to the offices of the company.

West had anticipated that his associates in the Lone Star Mining Company would be the most probable purchasers of his holdings and for this reason had determined to offer them the first opportunity to buy. His interview with Atkinson, the president, was entirely satisfactory. While expressing deep regret at West’s desire to withdraw from active participation in the business, the astute Boston man grasped at once the opportunity to acquire at, or near, par, a block of stock which would be worth double its present value in the course of a few years. He at once closed with West’s offer, taking an option on his holdings for ten days, during which time he expected to arrange for the necessary capital to carry out the purchase. A meeting of the board was called to act upon West’s resignation, and, when the latter left the office for luncheon, he had, as far as was possible, for the moment, completed the business that had brought him to Denver.

The following ten days were a nightmare. There was nothing to do, but write to Edith, it seemed, and to read her daily letters over and over, drawing from them new inspiration for his plans with each rereading. Slowly the ten days passed. Atkinson reported entire success in his plans for the syndicate he was forming to take over West’s holdings; within a week the latter expected to be flying eastward, leaving the matter of reinvesting his money until he should reach New York.

His anxiety to return as quickly as possible was accentuated by traces of a change of heart which he fancied he detected in some of Edith’s later letters. She had spoken of her fears for the success of their plans—her duty to her husband, her boy. “Poor little girl,” thought West, “she needs me with her, to keep up her courage in these most trying hours of her life.”

The night of the ninth day he went to bed early, with a dull, insistent pain in his right side which he attributed to a cold, a result of the raw, unseasonable weather. In the morning the pain had increased; he had passed a restless, broken night, and arose feeling dizzy and half-sick. He determined to consult a doctor, but not until he had completed his business.

At ten o’clock he met Atkinson and his associates, and within an hour the stock had been delivered, and the certified check for close to half a million dollars deposited in the bank. A great sense of relief filled his mind—he was free, to seek happiness wherever in the broad expanse of the world he might find it. Yet beneath all his joy—his exultation, there throbbed a double sense of pain, the dull gnawing of conscience at his heart, and the sharp, insistent throbbing that, knife-like, shot through his right side. Clearly this latter was not a matter to be trifled with. He turned into the first doctor’s office that met his eye, and joined the other unfortunates waiting in the anteroom.

The doctor would see him presently, the low-voiced maid informed him. He sat bolt upright in an uncomfortable chair and gripped his hands together fiercely as the sharp pangs of pain tore at his vitals. Would these people never be through? he wondered. From within the doctor’s office, shut off by glass doors, came the faint echoes of conversation; some unfortunate, no doubt, hearing the dread sentence of life or death, or perhaps only a nervous woman, being prescribed bread pills for a fancied indisposition. There were two men and a woman waiting ahead of him. They looked healthy enough; he wondered what they could have the matter with them that made their faces so grave.

For nearly an hour he was forced to wait in an agony of mind and body, until his turn came, and his thoughts were the thoughts of a man upon whom the hand of death has already laid its icy touch. He knew it was all nonsense—engendered of pain-racked nerves, yet his conscience smote him, and would not be stilled. The pain in his side spelled disaster, and he could not shake off the thought. He had never believed in the direct intervention of Providence in the affairs of mankind, yet here was he, at the moment when all his future, as he had planned it, lay smiling before him, stricken with an illness which, laugh at it as he would, he could not help fearing might mean an end to all his hopes.

He sat up and shook his head with a quick, nervous motion which had been characteristic of him since childhood. This was all the height of folly, he argued—the natural train of gloomy thoughts which resulted from his surroundings. Even the faint odor of carbolic acid, compounded with that of other unknown chemicals, was enough to make a man feel blue. He rose as the maid beckoned to him—the other consultations had happily been short.