Dolly shook her rein gently. "I must go," she said, smiling sadly. "Good-by."
The horse galloped down the road. Like a fair, winged creature she floated away in the sunlight.
"Am I to lose her at last?" he groaned. "After all these years of patient watching and waiting is she going back to the man who could have had her but would not? God knows that is not fair. Surely I deserve better treatment—if—if I deserve anything. Can I urge him to come—will it be possible for me sincerely to pen the words which may seal my doom? Yes, I must—if I don't I would not be worthy of her respect, and that I must have, even if I lose her."
CHAPTER XVIII
The letter was written. It was full of manly sympathy and friendly assurances. It brought the afflicted banker three days later to the plantation. A delightful cool and airy room was assigned to him. The open sympathy of the mountaineers and the negroes about the place was vaguely soothing. Looking back upon the city, it seemed a jarring place of torture when contrasted to the eternal peace of this remote spot. Free to go when and whither he liked, Mostyn spent whole days rambling alone through the narrow roads and by-paths of the mountains, often reaching all but inaccessible nooks in canons and rocky crevices where dank plants and rare flowers budded and bloomed, where velvet mosses were spread like carpets, and ferns stood like miniature palms.
One morning Mostyn saw Saunders hoeing weeds out of the corn-rows in a field back of the house; and, taking another hoe, he joined him, working steadily by his friend's side till noon. And here he made a discovery. He found that the work furnished a sort of vent for the festering agony pent up within him. It seemed to ooze out with the sweat which dampened his clothing, to be absorbed in his heated blood, and after a cooling bath he slept more profoundly than he had slept for years. He now saw the reason for Saunders's partiality to country life. It was Nature's balm for all ills. In fact, he was sure now that he could not do without it. Nearly every morning after this he insisted on working in the fields. Sometimes it was with a plow, which he learned to use under the advice of Tobe Barnett, a scythe in the hay-field, or a woodman's ax in the depths of the forests. But still sorrow and shame brooded over him like a material pall that refused to be put aside. As he lay in his bed at night he would fancy that he heard little Dick calling to him from the nursery, and the thought that the voice and love of the child were forever dead to him was excruciating.
One evening after supper Saunders informed him that Dolly and some of her literary friends were to hold a club-meeting at the schoolhouse to discuss some topic of current interest, and asked him if he would care to go along with him. Mostyn was seated at the end of the veranda smoking. He hesitated, it seemed to Saunders, longer than was necessary before he answered:
"I hope you will excuse me, but you mustn't let me keep you away. I am very tired and shall go to bed early."