The Merivale banks

by Mary Jane Holmes

“Gone like the dew,” he whispered, involuntarily stretching out his hands as if to take something from an unseen presence.

Then, relighting the gas, he went a second time to the safe, counting what was there to see if he had not made a mistake, and feeling the tears in his eyes again because there was so little.

“I must go now,” he said. “Good-by, old bank! I shall know the worst or best perhaps when I am here again.”

He shut the safe, put out the gas, and went out into the sunshine, with a feeling that he had closed the door on all that was respectable in Thomas Grey. Every one he met had for him a cheery good-afternoon, which he returned, as cheerily, but with a feeling that he ought not to be spoken to in this way. Once, as he walked, he found himself stooping from sheer humility, as he thought what he was and what the world would know him to be erelong if help did not come. He paid the butcher and the baker and the grocer and the confectioner, and a small bill at his tailor’s, which he remembered had been owing for some little time. Then he started for home, where he found his wife anxious to know what had detained him, and Louie absorbed in the contents of two express boxes which had just arrived from Boston and contained the finery intended for Narragansett Pier.

“Isn’t this be-u-tiful!” she said to him, holding up an evening dress of silk and lace and chiffon. “Only it cost twice as much as I thought it would. Look,” and she handed her father a bundle of bills, which had come with the express packages, and which made Mr. Grey gasp for a moment.

Then he smiled and said: “Nearly a thousand dollars for gewgaws! That is pretty steep. But never mind; they will be paid like the rest. And now give me some strong, clear coffee. My head is splitting.”

He looked very pale, and said he could not go to dinner, but would lie on the couch in his den. Headaches were very frequent with him now, but this seemed worse than usual, and at an early hour he retired to his room, saying sleep would do him good, and he should be all right in the morning.

He was all right, or seemed so, when he went down to breakfast, and to Louie’s question, “How did you sleep?” he replied:

“Sleep? Why, there was not a single break from the time I put my head upon the pillow until I heard Jane open the blinds.”

He did not explain that the “no break” was in wakefulness rather than in sleep, for he had not closed his eyes. Once, when he knew by his wife’s breathing that she was sleeping soundly, he arose, and going to the drawer where he kept his revolver, took it out and examined it carefully, holding it once to his head, and thinking how easy it would be to end everything in this world so far as he was concerned.