TWO mornings later Dr. Cheyney finished his breakfast in abstracted
silence; not even Miss Lucinda’s best rice griddle-cakes calling
forth a word of approval. He had been talking over the telephone with
Diana Royall. He finished his perfunctory examination of the daily
paper, which was full of the flight of Jacob Eaton, the collapse of
the Eaton Investment Company, the ruin of many prominent citizens,
and the illness of Mrs. Eaton, who had been sent at once to a private
sanitarium in the city.
The absorbing topic of Eaton had almost swallowed up the hitherto
absorbing topic of Caleb Trench, though Caleb once more loomed up,
directing the forces of the opposition.
The doctor folded the paper viciously and put it in his pocket, then he
went out and climbed into his old buggy; he remembered quite distinctly
that other morning when he had climbed into it at six o’clock to
drive past the Eatons at a convenient hour. It might be said that the
old man was so hardened in kindly iniquity that his conscience never
suffered a single twinge. He and old Henk traveled more slowly up the
hill, however, than on that previous occasion. As he approached Broad
Acres he was struck with the dreary aspect of the autumn, and noticed
that even the house itself looked less cheerful. He had seen Colonel
Royall’s name on every quotation of losses in the Eaton Company, and he
drew his own conclusions.
At the door Diana met him. She was very pale.
“Dear Dr. Cheyney,” she said, holding out both hands, “it’s a relief to
see you! I couldn’t tell you over the ’phone--but--” She stopped, her
lips trembled.
“What is it, Diana?” the old man asked gently.
“You know the Shut Room?” She looked up imploringly.
The silence of the house behind her seemed impenetrable; the long hall
was vacant.
“I know,” said the doctor, and Diana understood that he knew even more
than she did.
“He’s been sitting there alone; he will not let me stay with him,” she
explained.
Dr. Cheyney stood a moment in some doubt, his hand at his chin in
a familiar attitude of thought. His gospel refused to intrude into
the confidence of any one, but there were cases where it might be an
absolute necessity to interfere; the question which confronted him was
whether or not this was one of these rare instances.
“How long has it been?” he asked finally.
“Two whole days,” replied Diana, “and he has scarcely eaten a mouthful.
This morning he took only one cup of coffee; he looks like death. And
you know how it is,--that room always affects him so, he never seems
himself after he has been there. Sometimes,” she added passionately,
“sometimes--I wish I could wall it up!”
“I wish you could!” said Dr. Cheyney devoutly.
“He sits there and looks out of the window: and twice he has forbidden
me to come there,” Diana went on. “What can I do? It--it breaks my
heart to see him so, and I’m sure my mother would not wish it, but he
will not listen to that.”
The old doctor’s lips came together in a sharp line: without another
word he turned and went up the stairs, reluctance in his step. At the
landing was a stained glass window, the work of a famous European
artist, and the doctor glanced at it with a certain weariness:
personally he preferred plate glass and a long glimpse of level fields.
He had reached the head of the second broad flight now, and the second
door to the left of the wide hall was ajar, the door which was usually
shut and locked. Where the doctor stood he could see across the room,
for one of the window shutters was open, and it looked still as it
had looked twenty-three years before, when Diana was born. There were
the same soft and harmonious coloring, the same rich old furniture,
the deep-hued Turkey rug on the polished floor, the spotless ruffled
curtains. It was unchanged. Life may change a thousand times while
these inanimate things remain to mock us with their endurance. The
doctor moved resolutely forward and pushed open the door. Colonel
Royall was sitting erect in a high-backed chair in the center of the
room, his hands clasping the arms, his head bowed, and his kindly blue
eyes staring straight before him. He was singularly pale and seemed
to have aged twenty years. Dr. Cheyney walked slowly across the room
and laid his hand on his old friend’s shoulder,--they had been boys
together.
“Is it as bad as that, Davy?” he asked.
Colonel Royall roused himself with an apparent effort, and looked up
with an expression in which patient endurance and great grief were
strongly mingled. There was a touch, too, of dignity and reluctance
in his manner, yet if he resented the doctor’s intrusion he was too
courteous to show it. “I’m pretty hard hit, William,” he said simply,
“pretty hard hit all around; there’s not much more to be said--that
hasn’t been said already on the street corners and in the market-place.”
His wounded pride showed through his manner without destroying his
delicate restraint.
The doctor drew a chair beside him and sat down unasked. His
sympathy was a beautiful thing and needed no voicing; it reached out
imperceptible feelers and made him intuitively aware of the raw cut
where not even tenderness may lay a finger.
“It’s not all gone, David?” he inquired.
Colonel Royall ran his fingers through his thick white hair. “Pretty
much all, William,” he said mechanically; “the place here is free,
unmortgaged, I mean, and I reckon I can hold the property in Virginia,
but the rest--” He raised his hands with a significant and pathetic
gesture; he had fine old hands, and they had saved and directed from
his youth up until now--to this end! To have trusted too deeply to an
unworthy relative. William Cheyney leaned back in his chair; the awful
actuality of the calamity was borne in upon him, and he remembered,
even at that moment, his feeling of confidence in the stability of
Colonel Royall’s fortune, though, sometimes, he had doubted the
colonel’s money sense. There was sometimes, too, a terrible synchronism
between ruin and mental collapse. He looked keenly at the old man
before him, who seemed suddenly shrunken and gray, and he was troubled
by the absent expression of the mild blue eyes; it was almost a look of
vacancy. He laid his hand tenderly on the other’s arm.
“Davy, man,” he said, “cheer up; there are worse things than financial
losses.”
The colonel recalled himself apparently from very distant scenes and
gazed at him reproachfully. “No one can know that better than I,” he
said, with a touch of bitterness.
The doctor stretched out his hand with a bowed head. “Forgive me,
David,” he said simply.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” replied Colonel Royall. “I let you say
things, William, that other men could not say to me. But this is a
bitter hour; my youth was not idle, I never knew an idle day, and I
laid up a fortune in place of my father’s competence; I wanted to spend
my old age in peace, and I trusted my affairs to a rogue. By gum, I
hate to call my cousin’s son a rascal, but it seems he is! Not half the
burden, though, lies in my own loss; it’s the thought of all these poor
people he has ruined. Women and girls and old men who had savings--all
gone in the Eaton Investment Company. What was it Caleb Trench stated
about that company? It seems as if I couldn’t understand it all,
I’m--I’m dizzy!” The colonel touched his forehead apprehensively.
The doctor regarded him thoughtfully over his spectacles, but he made
no reservations. “Well, there isn’t any investment company; that’s
about the size of it, David,” he said reluctantly. “People bought their
shares and got--waste paper. They say Jacob used lots of the money
campaigning; it isn’t charged that he wanted it for himself.”
“I’ve always held that blood was thicker than water,” said Colonel
Royall, “and Jacob is a thief--a thief, sir!” he added, putting aside
an interruption from the doctor with a wide sweep of the hand. “He’s
robbed hundreds in this State because his name, his family, stood for
honesty, business reputation, honor--and once I thought him fit to be
my confidant!”
“We’re all deceived sometimes, David,” said the doctor soothingly,
watching him with his keen skillful look, “we’re not omniscient; if we
were, there’d be a lot more folks in jail, I reckon. I wouldn’t take
it to heart; Jacob was on his own responsibility; they can’t blame
you.”
“They ought to,” declared the colonel passionately. “I’m an old man,
I’m his relative; it was my business to know what he was doing. And
there’s poor Jinny! I wanted her to come here, so did Diana, and you
packed her off to a sanitarium.”
“To be sure,” said Dr. Cheyney grimly; “there’s no need of having three
lunatics instead of one. Jinny’s nerves were about wrecked, she needs
quiet, and she’ll come out well enough; it’s not Jinny I’m worried
about. You let Jacob go, don’t you shoulder Jacob; no one thinks you’re
to blame!”
Colonel Royall let his clenched hand fall on the arm of his chair. “The
disgrace of it!” he said, and his lips trembled. “I’ve had my share of
disgrace, William!”
Dr. Cheyney rose abruptly and walked to the window. Through the open
shutter he could see, from this side of the house, the distant river,
and near at hand was a tall jingo tree, yellow as gold with autumn. The
other trees stood half naked against the sky. Below him a few white
chickens strayed on the lawn unrebuked.
“You see more of the river since the railroad cut that last crossing,”
Colonel Royall remarked irrelevantly, “and have you noticed how late
the jingo stays in leaf? It was so the year that--” He stopped.
The doctor turned and fixed an irate eye upon him.
Colonel Royall was leaning forward, his eyes fixed absently on the
window, yet he had felt instinctively the doctor’s attitude. “It may be
folly,” he pleaded, as if in extenuation, “but I don’t want the place
changed; it was like this when she was happy here and”--his head sank
lower--“I’ve got to sell it! I’ve got to sell it--oh, my God!”
The doctor went over and took hold of him. “Davy!” he said fiercely,
“Davy, you’ve got to get out of here! I’m glad it’s to be sold; have
done with it! You’ve got to eat and drink and sleep or you’ll--”
He stopped, his hands still on his old friend’s, for Colonel Royall had
slipped gently into unconsciousness, and lay white and helpless in the
high-backed chair.