Sally had learned to write!
Moreover, at the end were the words "with love." It was all plain now.
Sally had never repudiated him. She was declaring herself true to her
mission and her love. All that heartbreak through which he had gone had
been due to his own misconception, and in that misconception he had
drawn into himself and had stopped writing to her. Even his occasional
letters had for two years ceased to brighten her heart-strangling
isolation--and she was still waiting.... She had sent no word of appeal
until the moment had come of which she had promised to inform him.
Sally, abandoned and alone, had been fighting her way up--that she
might stand on his level.
"Good God!" groaned the man, in abjectly bitter self-contempt. His
hand went involuntarily to his cropped head, and dropped with a gesture
of self-doubting. He looked down at his tan shoes and silk socks. He
rolled back his shirtsleeve and contemplated the forearm that had once
been as brown and tough as leather. It was now the arm of a city man,
except for the burning of one outdoor week. He was returning at the
eleventh hour--stripped of the faith of his kinsmen, half-stripped of
his faith in himself. If he were to realize the constructive dreams of
which he had last night so confidently prattled to Adrienne, he must
lead his people from under the blighting shadow of the feud.
Yet, if he was to lead them at all, he must first regain their shaken
confidence, and to do that he must go, at their head, through this mire
of war to vindication. Only a fighting South could hope to be heard in
behalf of peace. His eventual regeneration belonged to some to-morrow.
To-day held the need of such work as that of the first Samson--to slay.
He must reappear before his kinsmen as much as possible the boy who
had left them--not the fop with newfangled affectations. His eyes fell
upon the saddlebags on the floor of the Pullman, and he smiled
satirically. He would like to step from the train at Hixon and walk
brazenly through the town in those old clothes, challenging every
hostile glance. If they shot him down on the streets, as they certainly
would do, it would end his questioning and his anguish of dilemma. He
would welcome that, but it would, after all, be shirking the issue.
He must get out of Hixon and into his own country unrecognized. The
lean boy of four years ago was the somewhat filled out man now. The one
concession that he had made to Paris life was the wearing of a closely
cropped mustache. That he still wore--had worn it chiefly because he
liked to hear Adrienne's humorous denunciation of it. He knew that, in
his present guise and dress, he had an excellent chance of walking
through the streets of Hixon as a stranger. And, after leaving Hixon,
there was a mission to be performed at Jesse Purvy's store. As he
thought of that mission a grim glint came to his pupils.