the palms threaded their endless line along the yellow river. the little steamer lay at the wharf, and george faxon, sitting in the verandah of the wooden hotel, idly watched the coolies carrying the freight across the gang-plank.
he had been looking at such scenes for two months. nearly five had elapsed since he had descended from the train at northridge and strained his eyes for the sleigh that was to take him to weymore: weymore, which he was never to behold!... part of the interval—the first part—was still a great grey blur. even now he could not be quite sure how he had got back to boston, reached the house of a cousin, and been thence transferred to a quiet room looking out on snow under bare trees. he looked out a long time at the same scene, and finally one day a man he had known at harvard came to see him and invited him to go out on a business trip to the malay peninsula.
“you’ve had a bad shake-up, and it’ll do you no end of good to get away from things.”
when the doctor came the next day it turned out that he knew of the plan and approved it. “you ought to be quiet for a year. just loaf and look at the landscape,” he advised.
faxon felt the first faint stirrings of curiosity.
“what’s been the matter with me, anyway?”
“well, over-work, i suppose. you must have been bottling up for a bad breakdown before you started for new hampshire last december. and the shock of that poor boy’s death did the rest.”
ah, yes—rainer had died. he remembered....
he started for the east, and gradually, by imperceptible degrees, life crept back into his weary bones and leaden brain. his friend was patient and considerate, and they travelled slowly and talked little. at first faxon had felt a great shrinking from whatever touched on familiar things. he seldom looked at a newspaper and he never opened a letter without a contraction of the heart. it was not that he had any special cause for apprehension, but merely that a great trail of darkness lay on everything. he had looked too deep down into the abyss.... but little by little health and energy returned to him, and with them the common promptings of curiosity. he was beginning to wonder how the world was going, and when, presently, the hotel-keeper told him there were no letters for him in the steamer’s mail-bag, he felt a distinct sense of disappointment. his friend had gone into the jungle on a long excursion, and he was lonely, unoccupied and wholesomely bored. he got up and strolled into the stuffy reading-room.
there he found a game of dominoes, a mutilated picture-puzzle, some copies of zion’s herald and a pile of new york and london newspapers.
he began to glance through the papers, and was disappointed to find that they were less recent than he had hoped. evidently the last numbers had been carried off by luckier travellers. he continued to turn them over, picking out the american ones first. these, as it happened, were the oldest: they dated back to december and january. to faxon, however, they had all the flavour of novelty, since they covered the precise period during which he had virtually ceased to exist. it had never before occurred to him to wonder what had happened in the world during that interval of obliteration; but now he felt a sudden desire to know.
to prolong the pleasure, he began by sorting the papers chronologically, and as he found and spread out the earliest number, the date at the top of the page entered into his consciousness like a key slipping into a lock. it was the seventeenth of december: the date of the day after his arrival at northridge. he glanced at the first page and read in blazing characters: “reported failure of opal cement company. lavington’s name involved. gigantic exposure of corruption shakes wall street to its foundations.”
he read on, and when he had finished the first paper he turned to the next. there was a gap of three days, but the opal cement “investigation” still held the centre of the stage. from its complex revelations of greed and ruin his eye wandered to the death notices, and he read: “rainer. suddenly, at northridge, new hampshire, francis john, only son of the late....”
his eyes clouded, and he dropped the newspaper and sat for a long time with his face in his hands. when he looked up again he noticed that his gesture had pushed the other papers from the table and scattered them at his feet. the uppermost lay spread out before him, and heavily his eyes began their search again. “john lavington comes forward with plan for reconstructing company. offers to put in ten millions of his own—the proposal under consideration by the district attorney.”
ten millions... ten millions of his own. but if john lavington was ruined?... faxon stood up with a cry. that was it, then—that was what the warning meant! and if he had not fled from it, dashed wildly away from it into the night, he might have broken the spell of iniquity, the powers of darkness might not have prevailed! he caught up the pile of newspapers and began to glance through each in turn for the head-line: “wills admitted to probate.” in the last of all he found the paragraph he sought, and it stared up at him as if with rainer’s dying eyes.
that—that was what he had done! the powers of pity had singled him out to warn and save, and he had closed his ears to their call, and washed his hands of it, and fled. washed his hands of it! that was the word. it caught him back to the dreadful moment in the lodge when, raising himself up from rainer’s side, he had looked at his hands and seen that they were red....
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