“I will if you ask me to,” he said.
Gerald’s plans were already laid. He wrote to Thomas Hastings to come at once to St. Louis, and three days later all three started for Chicago. There Gerald called upon Stephen Cochrane, the lawyer, who had in his possession the agreement signed by Mr. Wentworth to pay Warren Lane twenty thousand dollars in a certain contingency.
“The promise is outlawed,” said the lawyer, “but with the collateral evidence which you have in your possession I don’t think that Bradley Wentworth will feel like setting this up as a bar to the payment.”
We must now precede Gerald to the town of Seneca, which was his ultimate destination.
A change had come over Bradley Wentworth. He was a man of iron constitution and had never had a sick day in his life. Yet a few weeks previous the grip, which had recently ravaged the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific, attacked him, and though he had recovered from it the languor which usually follows had come upon him in an aggravated form. He found it difficult to attend to his business, and was obliged to spend half of his time reclining upon a lounge in his office.
Those who are seldom sick feel the effects of illness much more keenly than those who are frequently indisposed. Bradley Wentworth found himself depressed in an unaccountable manner. He became alarmed about himself, and feared that he would never regain his strength. What then would become of his property? Where was the boy for whom he had been laboring these many years, and whom he had fondly looked upon as his heir? He was an exile from home, suffering perhaps. Why was he an exile from his father’s house? Because, as he was compelled to acknowledge, he had been harsh and stern, unnaturally severe. For, after all, what had the boy done? He had not committed a crime. He had committed an act of youthful indiscretion, for which he was heartily sorry, yet to save his own pride and gratify his vindictive disposition the father had left the boy to the cold mercies of the world. Suppose Victor should die? What lay before him but a cold and solitary life, without object and without sympathy? Too late Bradley Wentworth lamented his refusal to send Victor money when he wrote for it.
“I must have him back,” he said to himself in feverish impatience, and began to institute a search for the lost boy. But he was without a clew. He despatched a messenger to Kansas City, but he returned without information.
It was while he was suffering from this disappointment, and anxiously considering what to do next, that a servant entered the room where he was resting after supper and presented a card.
“A young gentleman who wishes to see you,” she explained.