“Damn it all, Truedale!” Had he been a woman he would have dissolved in tears.
Truedale at last caught his meaning. Here was a possible chance to set the accumulating money free. For two hours, while the sun travelled down to the west, the men talked over plans and projects.
“Of course I’ll look after the boy in the hospital, Dr. McPherson. I know the short cut to him and he probably can lead me to others, but I want”—and here Truedale’s eyes grew gloomy—“I want you to take with you down to Pine Cone some checks signed in blank. I know the need of roads down there,” did he not? and for an instant his brows grew furrowed as he reflected how different his own life might have been, had travelling been easy, back in the time when he was at the mercy of the storm.
“I’d like to do something for Pine Cone. Make the roads, of course, but back up those men and women who are doing God’s work down there with little help or money. They know the people—Jim has explained them to me. They’re not ‘extry polite,’ Jim says, but they understand the needs. I don’t care to have my name known—I’m rather poor stuff for a philanthropist—but I want to do something as a starter, and this seems an inspiration.”
McPherson had been listening, and gradually his long strides became less nervous.
“Until to-day, I haven’t wished your uncle back, Truedale, since he went. He was a poor, inarticulate fellow, but I’ve learned to realize that he had a wide vision.”
“Thank you, Dr. McPherson, but I have often wished him back.”
Once outside McPherson’s house, Truedale raised his head and sniffed the clear, winter air with keen enjoyment. A sense of achievement possessed him; the joy of feeling he had solved a knotty problem. He found he could think of Pine Cone—and, yes, of Nella-Rose—without a hurting smart. He was going to do something for her—for her people! He was going to make life easier—happier—for them, so he prayed in his silent, wordless way. He had a new and strange impulse to go to Lynda and tell her that at last he was released from any hold of the past. He was going to do what he could and there was no longer any dragging of the anchors. He wanted her to help him—to work out some questions from the woman’s point of view. So he hurried on and entered the house with a light, boyish step.
Thomas, bent but stately, was laying the table in the cheerful dining room. There were flowers in a deep green bowl, pale golden asters.
Long afterward Truedale recalled everything as if it had been burned in his mind.