Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
Arkwright left the apartment with a sensation of such keen
disappointment that it turned him ill and dizzy. He felt that the great
purpose of his life was being played with and put aside. But he had not
selfish resentment on his own account; he was only the more determined
to persevere. He considered new arguments and framed new appeals; and
one moment blamed himself bitterly for having foolishly discouraged the
statesman by too vivid pictures of the horrors he might encounter, and
the next, questioned if he had not been too practical and so failed
because he had not made the terrible need of immediate help his sole
argument. Every hour wasted in delay meant, as he knew, the sacrifice
of many lives, and there were other, more sordid and more practical,
reasons for speedy action. For his supply of money was running low and
there was now barely enough remaining to carry him through the month of
travel he had planned to take at Stanton’s side. What would happen to
him when that momentous trip was over was of no consequence. He would
have done the work as far as his small share in it lay, he would have
set in motion a great power that was to move Congress and the people of
the United States to action. If he could but do that, what became of him
counted for nothing.
But at the end of the week his fears and misgivings were scattered
gloriously and a single line from the senator set his heart leaping and
brought him to his knees in gratitude and thanksgiving. On returning one
afternoon to the mean lodging into which he had moved to save his money,
he found a telegram from Stanton and he tore it open trembling between
hope and fear.
“Have arranged to leave for Tampa with you Monday, at midnight” it read.
“Call for me at ten o’clock same evening.--STANTON.”
Arkwright read the message three times. There was a heavy, suffocating
pressure at his heart as though it had ceased beating. He sank back
limply upon the edge of his bed and clutching the piece of paper in his
two hands spoke the words aloud triumphantly as though to assure himself
that they were true. Then a flood of unspeakable relief, of happiness
and gratitude, swept over him, and he turned and slipped to the floor,
burying his face in the pillow, and wept out his thanks upon his knees.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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