"Now promise me you won't worry," he said, urgently kind. "I'll fix it all right——"
"You've been saying that a good while to me, and nothing's come of it so far," said Steven distrustfully. "Hope you ain't forgetting that it's Sam's money, too, you've been letting go all this year and a half?"
"I'm not forgetting it, Cousin Steven," said Gwynne, turning his haggard eyes on the other. "I won't forget Sam."
After they had gone, Gwynne went back to the office and sat a long while with his set face staring at that other face on the wall, under whose shadow he had lived his whole life, without, as it would seem, profiting much by the association. There he sat—and I think we may very well refrain from spying on him. Doubtless he did full justice upon Gwynne Peters that spring afternoon, alone with his condemning thoughts; doubtless every selfish lie, every mean evasion rose up and confronted him; doubtless he took himself to task more sternly than he deserved, and fancied he sat, a broken man, amongst the ruins of a dishonoured life. Hardly, I am sure, at his present age, can Gwynne look back upon that hour with an equal mind; when it recurs to him, the taste of his folly must yet be bitter on his tongue. He is to-day a successful man, greatly liked, greatly respected. Mrs. Gwynne Peters, I believe, is a very happy wife and mother, not at all jealous, and having no cause to be. But has Gwynne ever mentioned Mrs. Pallinder to her? He might do so without a blush, but he probably feels that it would be an unprofitable business; let the old ashes lie, and let the lost corners grow up with weeds and be forgot. Wives and husbands, if they be wise, will not go prospecting in the remote places of each other's hearts, lest they chance upon some of these disquieting ruins—ugly little cairns, decrepit old tombstones. The days were lengthening, yet it was twilight as Gwynne walked home; street-lamps burned dimly through the foggy spring air, and the newsboys were crying the last edition.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Doctor Vardaman was not a wealthy man; he occupied what he considered the golden mean, the "neither poverty nor riches" of the Preacher; enough to live in a simple, uncalculating ease. His chief pastime, as he used to describe it with some amusement, was the practising of certain small economies whereby he accumulated enough to indulge himself once in a while with an expensive new edition, or rare and equally high-priced old one. Like most professional men, he had no turn for affairs, and no temptation ever assailed him to "take a flyer in Phosphate," or anything else. It was, therefore, without any idea of investment that he scaled the stairs leading to Colonel Pallinder's office a few days after the Misses Gwynne had visited Gwynne's to explain their operations in finance. He was, in fact, bent on an errand that took him past the colonel's door, and into the rear of the Turner Building, where the City Superintendent of Parks and Gardens had a retiring, little, unfrequented room. The doctor wanted to file objections against the setting up of several monumental bill-boards and advertising signs on the vacant lots along the west side of Richmond Avenue, facing number 201. "As a physician in good standing, sir," he expounded vigorously, yet not without a smile, to the City Superintendent, who was an old acquaintance and ex-patient. "I dislike to be confronted every time I open my front door with 'Geary's Purple Pills' for various disorders not commonly referred to in polite society. And as a patriotic citizen, I don't want to see our town disfigured by any such monstrosities!"
Coming away with his point half gained, he once more passed Colonel Pallinder's office door. At that time the Turner Building was at the very core of our business district. There was a bank on the ground floor, the old Third National—J. B. had some position in it, assistant bookkeeper, perhaps. One used to catch fleeting glimpses of the young fellow's big shoulders in shirt-sleeves, and sleek, dark head on an altitudinous stool behind gilt wire screens, through the plate-glass windows on the Market Street side. On his last visit he told me that he had gone down Market Street and walked past those old windows in a sentimental mood, recalling the brave days when he was twenty-one. "I got sixty a month," he said, "and thought I was doing first-rate! It's hard to believe that that old rookery was the best office building in town. We hadn't the beginnings of an idea about fire-proof construction; but there was an elevator, and the bank had a floor of black and red tiles, remember? The passages were so dim the gas had to be kept burning at noon-day. The steam-heating apparatus must have been one of the first put in; anyway it never did very well, and was forever breaking down. I've worked in my overcoat many a time, with a blue nose, figuring away with my stiff fingers. Harvey Smith—you know, Jim's brother—had a law-office with some other young chap, I've forgot who, now, on the third floor, and they set up a sheet-iron cannon-stove to keep from freezing to death. There wasn't much business coming Harvey's way in those days—we used to wonder how he made out."