THE following Wednesday afternoon, when he had concluded his business
at one of the larger wholesale houses in Atlanta, Nelson Floyd took a
street-car for his uncle's residence. Reaching it, he was met at the
door by the white woman who had admitted Pole Baker to the house on his
visit to Atlanta. She explained that her master had only gone across
the street to see a neighbor, and that he would be back at once. She led
Floyd into the old-fashioned parlor and gave him one of the dilapidated,
hair-cloth chairs, remaining in the room to put a few things to
rights, and dusting the furniture with her apron. On either side of
the mantel-piece hung a crude oil-portrait, in cracked and chipped
gilt frames of very massive make. The one on the right was that of a
dark-haired gentleman in the conventional dress of seventy-five years
previous. The other was evidently his wife, a woman of no little beauty.
They were doubtless family portraits, and Floyd regarded them with
reverential interest. The servant saw him looking at them and remarked:
“They are Mr. Floyd's mother and father, sir. The pictures were made a
long time ago. Old Mr. Floyd was a very smart man in his day, and his
wife was considered a great beauty and a belle, so I've heard folks say,
though I'm sure I don't see how any woman could be popular with her hair
fixed that bungly way. But Mr. Floyd is very proud of the pictures. He
wouldn't sell them for any price. We thought the house was going to burn
down one day when the kitchen-stove turned over, and he sprained his
ankle climbing up in a chair to get them down.”
“They are my grandparents,” he told her.
“You don't say! Then you are Mr. Floyd's--”
“I'm his nephew. My name is Floyd--Nelson Floyd. I've never met my
uncle.”
“Oh, I see!” The woman's brow was corrugated. “Mr. Floyd _did_ have a
brother who died young, but I don't think I ever heard him speak of him.
But he don't talk much to anybody, and now--la me!--he's so worried over
his business that he's as near crazy as any man I ever saw. You say
you haven't ever seen him! Then you'd better not expect him to be very
sociable. As I say, he's all upset over business. The way he's doing
is the talk of the neighborhood. There, I heard the gate shut. I reckon
that's him now.”
She went to one of the front windows and parted the curtains and looked
out.
“Yes, that's him. I'll go and tell him you are here.”
Nelson heard the door open and close and then muffled voices, a gruff,
masculine one, and that of the servant lowered persuasively. Heavy steps
passed on down the hall, and then the woman came back.
“I told him you was here, sir,” she said. “He's gone to his room, but
will be back in a minute. He's queer, sir; if you haven't seen him
before you had as well be prepared for that. I heard Dr. Plympton say
the other day that if he didn't stop worrying as he is that he'd have a
stroke of paralysis.”
The woman retired and the visitor sat for several moments alone.
Presently he heard the heavy-steps in the hall and Henry A. Floyd came
in. He was very pale, his skin appearing almost ashen in color, and
his eyes, under their heavy brows, had a restless, shifting expression.
Nelson felt repelled in a way he could not account for. The old man
failed to offer any greeting, and it was only the caller's extended hand
that seemed to remind him of the courtesy due a stranger. Even then only
the ends of his cold fingers touched those of the young man. A thrill
of intense and disagreeable surprise passed over Nelson, for his uncle
stood staring at him steadily, without uttering a word.
“Did your servant tell you who I am?” the young man ventured, in no
little embarrassment.
“Yes, she told me,” old Floyd answered. “She told me.”
“From your stand-point, sir,” Nelson said, “perhaps I have little excuse
for coming to see you without an intimation from you that such a visit
would be welcome, but I confess I was so anxious to hear, something from
you about my parents that I couldn't wait longer.”
“Huh, I see, I see!” exclaimed the old man, his glance on the floor.
“You may understand my eagerness more fully,” said Nelson, “when I tell
you that you are the first and only blood relative I remember ever to
have seen.”
The old man shrugged his bent shoulders, and Nelson was almost sure that
he sneered, but no sound came from his tightly compressed lips.
The young man, in even greater embarrassment, looked at the portraits
on the wall, and, for the lack of anything more appropriate to say,
remarked: “Your servant tells me that these are my grandparents--your
father and mother.”
“Yes, they are my parents,” the old man said, deep down in his throat.
Then all of a sudden his eyes began to flash angrily. “That old hussy's
been talking behind my back, has she? I'll teach her what her place is
in my house, if--”
“Oh, she only answered a question or two of mine,” said Nelson,
pacifically. “I told her you were my uncle and for that reason I was
interested in family portraits.”
“_Your uncle!_” That was all the reply old Floyd made.
Nelson stared at him in deep perplexity for a moment, then he said:
“I hope I am not on the wrong track, sir. A friend of mine--a rough
mountaineer, it's true, but a sterling fellow--called here some time
ago, and he came back and told me that you said--”
“He came here like the spy that he was,” snorted the old man. “He came
here to my house pretending to want to rent land, and in that way got
into my confidence and had me talk about family matters; but he didn't
want to rent land. When he failed to come back my suspicions were roused
and I made inquiries. I found out that he was the sharpest, keenest man
among mountain revenue detectives, and that he had no idea of leaving
his present location. Now I'd simply like to know what you and he are
after. I haven't got anything for you--not a dollar in the world, nor
any property that isn't mortgaged up to the hilt. Why did you send a man
of that kind to me?”
“You actually astound me, sir,” Nelson said. “I hardly know what to
say.”
“I reckon you don't--now that I hurl the unexpected truth into your
teeth. You didn't think I'd be sharp enough to inquire about that fellow
Baker, did you? You thought a man living here in a city as big as this
would let a green country lout like that get him in a trap. Huh! But I
wasn't a fool, sir. You thought you were getting facts from me through
him, but you were not, by a long shot. I wasn't going to tell a stranger
like that delicate family matters. God knows your father's conduct was
disgraceful enough without my unfolding his life to a coarse greenhorn
so long after his death. You know the reputation my brother Charles had,
don't you?”
“Not till it came from you, sir,” said Nelson, coldly. “Baker told me
you said he was a little wild, that he drank--”
“My father kicked him out of our home, I tell you,” the old man snapped.
“He told him never to darken his door again, after the way he lived
before the war and during it. It completely broke that woman's heart.”
Old Floyd pointed a' trembling finger at his mother's portrait. “I don't
understand why you--how you can come here as you do, calling me your
uncle as if you had a right to do so.”
“Right to do so?--stop!” Nelson took him up sharply. “What do you mean?
I've the right to ask that, sir, anyway.”
“Oh, you know what I mean, I reckon. That man Baker intimated that you
knew all about your family history. You know that your mother and my
poor, deluded brother were never married, that they--”
“Not married!” Nelson Floyd shrank as if he had been struck in the face.
“For God's sake don't say that! I can stand anything but that.”
“I won't ask you to believe me without ample proof,” old Floyd answered,
harshly. “Wait here a minute.”
Nelson sank into a chair, and pale and trembling, and with a heart that
seemed dead within him, he watched the old man move slowly from the
room. Old Floyd returned presently. An expression that seemed born of
grim, palpitating satisfaction lay on his colorless face; a triumphant
light blazed in his sullen eyes. He held some books and a package of
letters in his hands.
“Here are your father's letters to my parents,” he began. “The letters
will tell the whole story. They bear his signature. If you doubt their
authenticity--if you think the name is forged, you can compare it to all
the specimens of his writing in these old school-books of his. This is
a diary he kept in college. You can see from its character how his life
was tending. The letters are later, after he met your mother--a French
girl--in New Orleans.”
For a moment Nelson stared up into the withered face above him, and
then, with a groan of dawning conviction, he took the letters. He opened
the one on the top.
How strange! The handwriting was not unlike his own. But that was too
trivial to marvel over. It was the contents of the letter that at once
benumbed and tore his heart in twain.
_“Dear father and mother,” it began; “I am longing for the old home
to-night; but, as you say, it is perhaps best that I should never come
back again, especially as the facts are known in the neighborhood. The
things you write me in regard to Annette's past are, alas! only too
true. I don't deny them. Perhaps I'm the only one in the world who will
overlook them, for I happen to know how she was tried by poverty and
temptation when she was hardly more than a child. But on one point I can
set your minds at rest. You seem to think that I intend to marry her;
but I promise you now that I shall never link your honored name to hers.
Really the poor girl doesn't wish it. She seems to understand how you
feel exactly. And the baby! you are worried over its future. Let that
go. As soon as the war is over, I shall do my full duty by it. It is
nameless, as you say, and that fact may sting it later in life, but such
things have happened before, and, my dear father and mother, young men
have fallen into bad ways before, and--“_
Nelson Floyd read no further. Turning the time-stained sheet over, he
saw his father's signature. With lifeless fingers he opened one or two
of the other letters. He tried to glance at the fly-leaves of the books
on his quivering knees, but there was a blur before his sight. The
scrawny hands of the old man were stretched out to prevent the mass from
falling to the floor.
“Are you satisfied? That's the main thing,” he said. “Because, if you
are not, there are plenty of legal records which--”
“I am satisfied.” Nelson stood up, his inert hand on the back of the
rocking-chair he had just vacated.
“I was going to say if you are not I can give you further proof. I can
cite to you old legal documents to which my brother signed his name. He
got hard up and sold a piece of land to me once. I have that deed. You
are welcome to--”
“I am satisfied.” Those words seemed the only ones of which the young
man's bewildered brain were capable. But he was a gentleman to the core
of his being. “I'm sorry I intruded on you, Mr. Floyd. Only blind
ignorance on my part--” He went no further.
The inanimate objects about him, the chairs, the table, the door towards
which he was moving, seemed to have life.
“Well, good-day.” Old Floyd remained in the centre of the room, the
books and letters held awkwardly under his stiff arm. “I see that you
were not expecting this revelation, but you might as-well have been told
to-day as later. I understand that the Duncans and Prices up your way
are under wrong impressions about your social standing, but I didn't
want to be the one to open their eyes. I really don't care myself.
However, a thing like that is sure to get out sooner or later.”
“They shall know the truth,” said Floyd, with the lips of a dead man. “I
shall not sail under false colors. Good-day, Mr. Floyd.”
Out into the broad, balmy sunlight the young man went. There was a
despondent droop upon him. His step was slow and uncertain, his feet
seemed to him to have weights attached to them. He walked on to the
corner of the next street and leaned against a tree. From the city's
palpitating heart and stony veins came the hum of traffic on wheels,
the clanging of bells, the escaping of steam. Near by some one was
practising a monotonous exercise on a piano. He looked up at the sky
with the stare of a subject under hypnotic influence.
A lump was in his dry throat. He made an effort to swallow it down, but
it stuck and pained him. Persons passing caught sight of his face and
threw back stares of mute inquiry as they moved on. After half an hour
of aimless wandering here and there through the crowded streets, he
paused at the door of a bar-room. He recognized the big gilt sign on the
plate-glass windows, and remembered being there years before at midnight
with some jolly friends and being taken to his hotel in a cab. After
all, whiskey now, as then, would furnish forgetfulness, and that was his
right. He went in and sat down at a little round table in the corner of
the room. On a shelf near him was a bowl of brown pretzels, a plate of
salted pop-corn, a saucer of parched coffee-beans mixed with cloves.
One of the bartenders came to him, a towel over his arm. “What will you
have, sir?” he asked.
“Rye whiskey straight,” said the customer, his eyes on the sawdust at
his feet. “Bring the bottle along.”