"Remember my letter." It was dated from Washington, and was not signed.
CHAPTER XXV
THE LAST DITCH
Romantic folly—The impulse that comes from beyond our sight—I go to seek Mr. Carboner—An unpromising location for a banker—I receive advice and help—Dickie Pierson gets an order from me—What is Strauss's game?
The yellow paper lay in my hand, and, with a flash, my memory went back to that mysterious note which Jane Dround had sent on the eve of her departure for Europe. It lay undisturbed in a drawer of my office desk. I smiled impatiently at the woman's folly—of the letter, the telegram. And yet it warmed my heart that she should be thinking of me this day, that she should divine my troubles. And I seemed to see her dark eyebrows arched with scorn at my weakness, her thin lips curl disdainfully, as if to say: "Was this to be your finish? Have I helped you, believed in you, all these years, to have you fall now?" So she had spoken.
But still I was unconvinced, and in this state of mind I went back to bed, knowing that I should need on the morrow what sleep I could get. But sleep did not come: instead, my mind busied itself with Jane Dround's letter—with the woman herself. As the night grew toward morning I arose, dressed myself, and left the house. The letter in my office pulled me like a thread of fate; and I obeyed its call like a child. In the lightening dawn I hurried through the streets to the lofty building where the Products Company had its offices, and groped my way up the long flights of stairs. As I sat down at my desk and unlocked the drawers, the morning sun shot in from the lake over the smoky buildings beneath me. After some hunting I found the letter. Mrs. Dround wrote a peculiar hand—firm, clear, unchangeable, but with curious tiny flourishes about the r's and s's.
As I glanced at it, the woman herself rose before my eyes, and she sat across the desk from me, looking into my face. "Yes, I need you," I found myself muttering; "not any letter, but you, with your will and your courage, now, if ever. For this is the last ditch, sure enough!"
The letter shook in my hand and beat against the desk. It was a silly thing to leave my bed and come chasing down here at five in the morning to get hold of a romantic woman's letter! My nerves were wrong. Something in me revolted from going any further with this weakness, and I still hesitated to tear open the envelope. The other battles of my life I had won unaided.
At the bottom of our hearts there is a feeling which we do not understand, a respect for the unknown. Terror, fear,—call it what you will,—sometime in life every one is made to feel it. All my life has been given to practical facts, yet I know that at the end of all things there are no facts. In the silence and gray light of that morning I felt the strong presence of my friend, holding out to me a hand.... I tore open the letter. Inside was another little envelope, which contained a visiting-card. On it was written: "Mr. J. Carboner, 230 West Lake Street," and beneath, in fine script, this one sentence: "Mr. Carboner is a good adviser—see him!"