CHAPTER XXXVII
WAYNE VISITS HIS FATHER’S HOUSE
MOST of the houses in the neighbourhood were deserted, but lights shone from the Craighill library as Wayne entered the grounds. He had his latch-key, but he was not sure that he had still the right to use it. He had come reluctantly, and the sight of the house did not intensify his zeal for an interview with his father. Near the hedge that marked one of the Craighill boundaries stood a rustic summer house. It had been a favourite retreat of Wayne’s mother, and as he debated afresh whether he should see his father he left the path and walked toward it. His step on the grass was noiseless. As he stood in the low doorway of the little house Mrs. Craighill sprang up from the corner where she had been idling.
“Oh, Wayne, have you come back?”
“I’m back unexpectedly, and only for the night. How are you—how’s father?”
He groped for chairs in the dark.
“Your father’s not himself at all. How could he ever be after that?”
“Let us not talk of it. I didn’t come for that.”
“But—you know what happened?” Her voice fell to a whisper. “He let the doctors pass on the old man’s death—and said nothing. They took his word for it. And of course what you offered to do—he didn’t take advantage of that.”
“He didn’t have to; the doctors’ verdict made it unnecessary. And so we’ll never know just what would have happened. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Well, how are things going?”
“Your father’s business affairs have troubled him. He never talks to me of them, but I know he worries. Mr. Walsh has been helping him, and he has been very kind to me, too—in many ways. Since he began to help your father he has come to the house a good deal. He thinks your father will pull out in time; he’s trying to get the dead horses out of the stable—that’s what he calls the poor investments.”
“Tom can straighten father out if anybody can. Has father spoken of me since that night?”
“No; not once.”
“Hasn’t mentioned me at all?”
“I’m sorry, but he hasn’t, Wayne.”
“Where’s Fanny?”
“She’s at York Harbour. She was terribly cut up over your going away; but Mr. Walsh knew where you were all the time, and what you were doing. So he told me and I told her. Your man Joe kept Mr. Walsh posted.”
“He did, did he?” and Wayne laughed. “I’ve been at work, Addie. I’ve been driving mules up there in the anthracite country to try to get the general cussedness out of my system. I haven’t tasted a drop of anything for so long that I’ve forgotten the names of the drinks I used to lap up so abundantly. I saw a trayful of cocktails go by me in the club to-night, and the sight of them tickled my throat for a minute, but I poured a gallon of ice water into the serpent and was all right. As soon as I’m dead sure I’ve got a grip on myself I’m coming back to go into the mercantile company with Walsh.”
In the dim light of the summer house she studied this new Wayne Craighill, puzzled by deeper changes than those of outward person. A new simplicity and directness, a certain self-confidence and definiteness of aim that had been lacking in the Wayne she had known of old set him apart. She wished to let him know that she realized the wide sweep of the change.
“That night, that awful night in the library, you were fine; it was splendid of you to offer to take—that—on yourself. I have thought of it every hour since.”
“Oh, Addie, Addie! Please never speak of that! You didn’t understand it. I didn’t want to stand in his place to help him, but to punish him. I hated him. He had done a foul thing in striking old Gregory, but by taking the blame for it I thought I should be revenging myself on him—my own father—that was it. You see my mind had got a strange twist or I should never have thought of such a thing; but when the opportunity offered there that night I was ready for it. I knew that if once he let the moment pass and I took his crime on my own shoulders, I should have him in torture all the rest of his days. It was an ugly thought; I had other and uglier thoughts about him, but I hope I’m not going to think that sort of thing any more. I’ve got half a grip and I’m going to try to hold on.”
“Have you seen Jean Morley?” she asked after a silence. He did not know that this question had been on her lips from the moment he appeared.
“Yes, once; to talk to her.”
“Fanny’s asked her to York; she’s going there for September.”
“I’m not going to York Harbour now or in September,” he answered shortly.
“But don’t you suppose Fanny expects you to come while Jean is there? Fanny has been crazy to go to Denbeigh to see you. You know how perfectly devoted she is to you.”
“Yes; dear old Fanny! It’s a good thing she didn’t see me up there. It would have given her a stroke.”
“Fanny is fond of Jean—and proud of her,” Mrs. Craighill persisted, and her note was plaintive. Her presence in the tea house at that hour expressed her isolation. The tone in which she had spoken of Jean had its pathos and it did not escape him. And the remembrance of his own attitude toward her when she had come home, his father’s wife—his hope that he might make her the instrument of his vengeance upon his father, wrenched him now. This sudden revulsion brought him abruptly to his feet.
“I’m going in to speak to father. You needn’t be afraid of what I shall say to him. There must be peace between us all.”
She was near to tears, and she was loath to have him go. These were dreary days for Adelaide Craighill; but Wayne had eaten of the fruit of the tree of wisdom and knew the danger that lies in woman’s tears. Their hands touched, and he left her.
Colonel Craighill sat empty-handed by the library table, staring with unseeing eyes at the wall. He did not recognize his son at once and Mrs. Craighill’s intimations had not prepared Wayne for the broken figure before him; his father’s rosy complexion had given way to a sick pallor, and he had lost flesh. He sprang to his feet and flung round with a pitiful look of fear in his eyes.
“Good evening, father. I’m sorry I startled you; please sit down again. I can stay only a few minutes.”
Colonel Craighill sank back into his chair—the big leathern seat that had been his father’s as long as Wayne could remember.
“You have been away, Wayne. They told me you had been West. I didn’t know you had come back.”
“I’m back for only a short time. I have seen Walsh, and he has gone over your affairs with me. He is sanguine of the outcome and believes that you will yet save a good part of your estate. I don’t mean to trouble you by discussing these things with you. I came to help.”
“The banks have acted ungenerously,” flared the Colonel. “Men I had thought my friends have turned against me. The worst of the depression passed long ago, but they are not satisfied to carry me until I can make a turn.”
“I understand it all perfectly. I have seen the figures.”
“The Hercules National people have pursued me malevolently,” continued Colonel Craighill, his voice wavering as his anger rose, “and the others have taken their cue from them. Walsh has done all he could; but they are a lot of ingrates—when I have laboured all my life for the honour and dignity of the city.”
“Yes; they have put the pressure on at a time when it seems unnecessary; but they are all disposed to be over-cautious now, I suppose.”
“I told them all along the stringency was only temporary, and they used me—were glad to use my name—to help uphold the city’s credit; and now—now——”
“Let us forget all that for a minute, father,” said Wayne, kindly. “It’s about these loans that I want to speak to you. Walsh is trying to save the good things until you can realize on them to advantage. The notes now falling due will be cared for.”
“No; they say they won’t renew them! And my friends elsewhere refuse to help.”
“It is all arranged,” said Wayne quietly. “I have taken them up myself and given my own in place of them. You may be at ease about them. I will carry them as long as you want me to. Here are the old notes. They are cancelled, you see.”
He had spoken with a gentleness he had never used to any being before. His father’s helplessness had disarmed any lingering resentment; he faced a sadly decrepit old man in whom there was no spark of hope. Why had their lives been so irreconcilably at variance? In the Virginia hills and at Denbeigh he had thought much of this. Jean had helped him; Paddock and Stoddard had lifted and urged him on; to Walsh and Wingfield he was under definite obligations; and Joe—even Joe—had made sacrifices for him; but his father had never dealt with him as an individual, but rather as a type. Even in his childhood they had never met on any common ground. He had never been conscious of a father’s faith or sympathy. His father, with his head in the clouds, had merely stumbled in annoyance over his son’s playthings.
But he realized now that life nobly lived is not an affair of reprisal and vengeance, or even of measured reciprocity. What he had missed through his father’s vanity and selfishness was nothing when weighed against this new experience of the joy of giving and serving.
He put into his father’s hands the little bundle of notes he had gathered up at the banks, with the cancellation marks stamped upon them. Roger Craighill gazed at them dully. His mind did not at once comprehend what it was that his son had done.
“That is all there is of that, but there is something else I have to say. You are my father. I have used you ill; I have brought shame upon you, and in my bitterness against you I have sought to injure you—in infamous ways that I won’t describe. The night old Gregory died here——”
Colonel Craighill lifted his head quickly and raised his hand in quite his old authoritative manner.
“It was his heart—the autopsy showed it had been diseased for years. I insisted on the most careful examination!”
“I dare say. I didn’t come to discuss that. That is your affair. What I have to say concerns me alone. When I offered that night to take whatever blame might follow his death here, it was from no good feelings toward you, but in a spirit of evil. I wanted to place you under a crushing weight of shameful obligation to me—that was it. And I’ve come back to say that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for every hour of anxiety and shame I ever gave you. Come, father, let us be friends!”
Roger Craighill was slow to comprehend what had happened. He tried to get upon his feet, and Wayne caught him and lifted him up, his arm round his father’s shoulders, and it was he who gave the handclasp, vigorous and strong with the strength of his redeemed manhood. He had gone low, but he had risen high. He who had been of the companionship of dragons had come into possession of his own soul. He had still his weaknesses, and he might yet stumble and fall; but for an instant he stood above the clouds, master of himself and drinking deep of clean airs of hope and aspiration.