“Oh, you don’t say!” Harry King rose. “Leaving?”
“No. I have a few letters to write––and––”
“Sorry to miss you. Staying in town for some time?”
“I hardly know. I may.”
“Plans unsettled? Well, times are unsettled and no money stirring. My plans are all upset, too.”
The young man returned to his room and continued his writing. One short letter to Betty, inclosing the worn scrap of paper the wind had brought him; he kissed it before he placed it in the envelope. Then he wrote one to her father and mother jointly, and a long one to Hester Craigmile. Sometimes he would pause in his writing and tear up a page, and begin over again, but at last all were done and inclosed in a letter to the Elder and placed in a heavy envelope and sealed. Only the one to Amalia he did not inclose, but carried it out and mailed it himself.
Passing the bank on the way to the post office, he dropped in and made quite a heavy deposit. It was just before closing time and the clerks were all intent on getting their books straight, preparatory to leaving. How well he remembered that moment of restless turning of ledgers and the slight accession of eagerness in the younger clerks, as they followed the long columns of figures down with the forefinger of the left hand––the pen poised in the right. The whole scene smote him poignantly as he stood at the teller’s window waiting. And he might have been doing that, he thought! A whole lifetime spent in doing just that and more like it, year in and year out!
How had his life been better? He had sinned––and failed. Ah! But he had lived and loved––lived terribly and loved greatly. God help him, how he loved! Even for life to end here––either in prison or in death––still he had felt the tremendous passions, and understood the 360 meaning of their power in a human soul. This had life brought him, and a love beyond measure to crown all.
The teller peered at him through the little window behind which he had stood so many years peering at people in this sleepy little bank, this sure, safe, little bank, always doing its conservative business in the same way, and heretofore always making good. He reached out a long, well-shaped hand,––a large-veined hand, slightly hairy at the wrist, to take the bank notes. How often had Harry King seen that hand stretched thus through the little window, drawing bank notes toward him! Almost with a shock he saw it now reach for his own––for the first time. In the old days he had had none to deposit. It was always for others it had been extended. Now it seemed as if he must seize the hand and shake it,––the only hand that had been reached out to him yet, in this town where his boyhood had been spent.