At his desk he found a message from Webster. “The old turkey cock has fled,” it said; “we should have saved the twenty-five thousand.”
On the phone Webster told Sam of an early visit to the club to see Colonel Tom and that the old man had left the city, going to the country for the day. It was on Sam’s lips to tell of his changed plans but he hesitated.
“I will see you at your office in an hour,” he said.
Outside again in the open air Sam walked and thought of his promise. Down by the lake he went to where the railroad with the lake beyond stopped him. Upon the old wooden bridge looking over the track and down to the water he stood as he had stood at other crises in his life and thought over the struggle of the night before. In the clear morning air, with the roar of the city behind him and the still waters of the lake in front, the tears, and the talk with Sue seemed but a part of the ridiculous and sentimental attitude of her father, and the promise given her insignificant and unfairly won. He reviewed the scene carefully, the talk and the tears and the promise given as he led her to the door. It all seemed far away and unreal like some promise made to a girl in his boyhood.
“It was never a part of all this,” he said, turning and looking at the towering city before him.
For an hour he stood on the wooden bridge. He thought of Windy McPherson putting the bugle to his lips in the streets of Caxton and again there sounded in his ears the roaring laugh of the crowd; again he lay in the bed beside Colonel Tom in that northern city and saw the moon rising over the round paunch and heard the empty chattering talk of love.
“Love,” he said, still looking toward the city, “is a matter of truth, not lies and pretence.”
Suddenly it seemed to him that if he went forward truthfully he should get even Sue back again some time. His mind lingered over the thoughts of the loves that come to a man in the world, of Sue in the wind-swept northern woods and of Janet in her wheel-chair in the little room where the cable cars ran rumbling under the window. And he thought of other things, of Sue reading papers culled out of books before the fallen women in the little State Street hall, of Tom Edwards with his new wife and his little watery eyes, of Morrison and the long-fingered socialist fighting over words at his table. And then pulling on his gloves he lighted a cigar and went back through the crowded streets to his office to do the thing he had determined on.
At the meeting that afternoon the project went through without a dissenting voice. Colonel Tom being absent, the two employé directors voted with Sam with almost panicky haste as Sam looking across at the well-dressed, cool-headed Webster, laughed and lighted a fresh cigar. And then he voted the stock Sue had intrusted to him for the project, feeling that in doing so he was cutting, perhaps for all time, the knot that bound them.
With the completion of the deal Sam stood to win five million dollars, more money than Colonel Tom or any of the Raineys had ever controlled, and had placed himself in the eyes of the business men of Chicago and New York where before he had placed himself in the eyes of Caxton and South Water Street. Instead of another Windy McPherson failing to blow his bugle before the waiting crowd, he was still the man who made good, the man who achieved, the kind of man of whom America boasts before the world.