Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; City and town life -- Fiction
She read the next day, with a chastened satisfaction, the newspaper
accounts of her father's career. A new and careless public was carried
back once more to the early day whose revivification is always attempted
for a preoccupied and unsympathetic community upon the passing away of
another old settler. Then the frontier village lifts once more its
bedraggled forlornness from the slime of its humble beginnings, and the
lingering presence of the red man is again made manifest upon the grassy
horizon. Again the struggles of the early days are rehearsed, again fire
deals out its awful devastation, and once more the city grows from an
Indian village to a metropolis of two millions within the lifetime of a
single individual.
One morning, the second after the funeral, Truesdale stood at the front
parlor window, while the first snow-storm of the season swirled over the
long reach of the street and across the straggling paths that traversed
the wide stretches of broken prairie land round about. On the chair
beside him was a newspaper containing the statement that the affairs of
the Marshall & Belden Company were to be wound up, all thought of
continuing the business having been abandoned. And on the table beside
him lay the cards which announced the marriage of Bertie Patterson.
"No business," he said; "no bride." He feigned to himself that he had
really designed going into his father's office, and that he had had a
serious intention of asking Bertie Patterson to become his wife. He
looked out through the wide, clear pane, and thought of the view, of the
weather, of the hideous hubbub of the whole town. "Ouf! What a prospect,
what a climate, what a human hodge-podge! Everything unites for me in
saying--Japan."
David Marshall's will was opened this same day. It made Japan possible
for Truesdale, and England possible for Rosamund. A codicil, added in
Roger's hand at the latest practicable moment, revoked the bequest for a
collegiate building and transferred the whole amount of it directly to
Jane.
"This mustn't make any difference," said Jane to Brower. "It shall go for
that, after all. My father was a good man, and he deserves to be
remembered."
Brower bowed quietly. He appreciated the gravity of this their joint
sacrifice, but he would not dispute the justness of it.
THE END
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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