“Why, no. Does he want me?”
“Yasser, yasser, he sho' do,” the negro answered, now thoroughly himself. “He been searchin' fer you high and low, Marse Kenneth. He went all thoo yo' house. He got some'n 'portant ter tell you. He ordered me ter hurry an' get out de team, an' have it raidy fer you'n him. He just run in his house er minute ago. Dar he is comin' now. He's dat excited an' worried about not findin' you he can't hardly hold in.”
General Sylvester, as he stepped from the veranda, recognized Galt, and hurried toward him, pulling out his watch and looking at it in the doubtful light.
“Great heavens!” he cried, “we haven't a minute to lose. You've only got twenty minutes to catch the 11.10 North-bound train! Run up and get your bag! I saw it there, still unpacked, and you needn't waste a minute. I've glorious, glorious news from New York—a wire from Alberts, Wise & Co. They have got the right men for our deal, and with dead loads of money. They are ripe for the thing, and the brokers wire that if you can be there day after to-morrow morning you can close it. They say if you are not there then that the money may be diverted to other deals, and they advise all possible haste. So hurry. You must not miss the train. Everything depends on it. Run, get the bag! John, you get it! Quick!”
“No, I'll—I'll do it!” Galt gasped. “Wait, I'll be down in—in a minute!”
“Then hurry. We can talk on the way to the station. My boy, we are simply going to land it! The blessings of the widows and orphans, whose property is going to bound up in value, will be on your plucky young head. Hurry up!”
Galt moved away, as weak in action as a machine run by a spring of such delicacy that it could be broken by the breath of an insect or the fall of an atom. It struck him as ridiculous that he should be going for his bag if he did not intend to use it; and to confess even now that he couldn't make the trip would seem queer and cowardly, for he ought to have explained at once. Ascending the stairs, he reached his room. He turned up the gas, and his image in the big pier-glass between the two end windows looked like that of a dead man energized by electricity. There lay the bag by the bed, the black letters “K. G.,” on the end, blandly staring at him. Galt looked at it, and then back to his reflection in the mirror.
“My God!” he cried out, suddenly, “if I go to-night I'll be deserting her forever, and she will have read me rightly! She would keep the secret; no human power could wrench it from her. She would keep it; and I—I, who have led her to her ruin, would be deserting her as only a coward could! I am beneath contempt. And yet what am I to do? I am what I am—what the damnable forces within me and my ancestors have made me. Napoleon loved, and put aside and cast down for his ambition, and have I not the same right for mine? I am not an emperor, but my ambition, such as it is, is as sweet to me as his was to him. As she says—as the gentle wilting flower says—I'd be miserable, even with her, under the wreckage of all these hopes. She knows me; child though she is, she is my superior in many things. She knows that the loss of this thing—now that I've tasted the maddening cup of success, now that the poison of fame and public approval is rioting in my blood—would damn me forever! Accidents of this sort have ruined weak men. Strong men have lived to smile back upon such happenings as the inevitable consequence of the meeting of flame and powder, and have gone to their graves without remorse. I've known such men. I've heard them say that no matter how heavily nature may scourge the conscience of man for theft, for murder, for any other misdeed, it yet deals lightly with this particular offence. And why? Because there can be no charge of deliberation in an act to which passionate youth is led by the very sunshine and music of heaven. And yet I'll lose her. Great God, I'll actually lose her! I can never look into her sweet face again, or kiss the dear lips ever whispering their vows of undying faith until hell opened her eyes to—to my frailty. No, no, I can't desert her; I can't—I simply can't! I want her! I want her. With all my soul, I want her!” There was a step in the hall below, and General Sylvester's excited old voice rose and rang querulously through the still space below:
“In the name of Heaven, what's the matter?” he cried. “Come on! You may miss the train as it is! Come on!”
“One second, General!” Galt cried out. “Wait!” He had not yet decided, he told himself, and yet his cold hand had clutched the handle of his bag. He lifted it up, swung it by his side, and, stepping out into the corridor, peered over the balustrade down the stairs.