“Well—well—well.” He paused, then after a time, continued, “Who is her father?”
My father was on his feet instantly, hands on top of the desk, jaw set and leaning forward. He thundered, “You know damn well who her father is. You told me back in the lane at the Pines that her father is your father. Are you a hypocrite? Don’t carry this lie with you any longer.”
The banker opened his desk drawer, snatched a cigar from a box, lit it, and puffed viciously for a few seconds.
“Sit down! Sit down!” he commanded. “I understand. I understand.”
“You understand what?” asked my father, as he seated himself back into the chair.
“In a moment of emotional weakness, I became confused and thought her my sister. But I assure you, it was untrue,” blurted the banker. As he removed a checkbook from his desk drawer, he continued in a cold, nervous voice, “I’ve halfway been expecting you ever since the day there on Gauley Mountain. How much do you want to forget my mistake? Say, ten thousand?”
“Forget—forget—damn you, there isn’t enough money in your bank to bribe me, sir!” Losing his temper, my father jumped to his feet, shouting, “I’m not here to take one damn cent from you or yours, but only to ask that you treat your sister as you like and surely expect her to treat you. You now refuse to recognize her as your sister, and you were too selfish to tell her when you saw her in her home a few weeks ago. Definitely and without question she is your sister. She did not learn your identity or that her father still lives until a week ago, and I did not tell her. The letter, when it came, was like a dream to Pearl. It is only natural that she should desire to see him. That desire has become a consuming passion. I cannot and I will not deny her the privilege to see him even if I have to take the letter to your police.”
“Is—is—that all she desires? Merely Father?” Mr. Wainwright blurted.
“You have made a mean, dirty insinuation, Mr. Wainwright. Let me give you a warning. When you insult a mountaineer, you are treading on dangerous ground,” my father warned, as he leaned across the desk. “We are poor but we are not paupers, nor are we beggars, nor are we blackmail artists. Sir, you had better retract your damn defaming words.”
The banker slid down in his chair, and I am sure he was frightened, as he humbly said, “I apologize, rash of me to assume blackmail, but you have to look at this thing from my point of view. Father is old and in bad health. He could not withstand the shock of seeing her. I know it would kill him. Don’t you see? I’m protecting my old father, and I feel it unwise to take such a chance.
“I do not see it that way,” Father replied. “Mr. Jack Yates Wainwright wrote Pearl a letter on this, his bank’s stationary, requesting that she come to see him. It’s unfair to him and to her to keep them apart. I do not believe he would have it so at any price. To meet her and know her will be a joy in his last days. When he meets her and recognizes the fact that she is his own, it will be the happiest moment of their lives. Let us not deprive or disappoint your father by keeping him from meeting her, as he has requested.”
The banker was silent, but his nervousness was evident as his fingertips drummed on the desk top. He then got up and paced back and forth across the room behind his desk. Finally, he paused, turned, and confronted my father with another offer. “Would fifty thousand dollars be any inducement for you and Pearl to go back home and forget this thing forever?” he asked.
My father froze for a moment then started around the desk after Mr. Wainwright, saying, “Why, you damn son of a bitch. I warned you.”
Holding up his hands, the banker hastily replied, “I’m sorry—I’m sorry. I had to test you with one more offer. Mr. Keener, you are an honest man. Now, calm yourself and listen to what I would like to suggest. We will meet here at four o’clock today. I will brief Father and prepare him for our meeting. Yes—yes—I know we close at three, and what if I don’t show? Our cashiers have to balance the day’s business, which makes it later when they leave. Don’t fear, we will be here, and I insist that you be our dinner guests tonight.”
It was noon when we returned to the hotel. Pearl was up, refreshed, and seemingly without ill effects from the trip. The Nigger was still in his blue bibbed overalls, this being the only form of dress he had ever owned. We went to lunch, and Father told Pearl about his conference with Mr. Wainwright and about the fact that we were to meet him and perhaps her father at four o’clock at their bank. He carefully avoided the talk with her brother and the attitude her brother had assumed.
“By the way,” Father said, “we are invited to dinner tonight and are expected, according to your letter, to be their guests during our stay in Chicago. Pack your things, and we will check out. Reckin we mountaineers will not feel at home in the mansion of the elite. But it’s your father’s home, after all, so we’ll stay anyway.”
“I guess we would be expected to do that. But we’ll leave our things and wait for Father’s invitation. I just can’t wait to meet him. What a privilege it will be. What a dream come true,” replied Pearl.
Back in our room at the hotel, we rested and waited. Father assured me that Mr. Wainwright would not change his mind and he would meet us with his father at the appointed time.
To Pearl it must have seemed that four o’clock would never come. But it did, and we boarded a taxi that carried us to the bank.
We hadn’t traveled far when Pearl asked, “What if they don’t meet us at the bank?”
Our fears were ungrounded. Mr. Wainwright himself was standing at the curb in front of the bank to greet us as we came to a stop. The greeting he accorded his sister left us astounded. He must have experienced a change of heart since our meeting earlier. I thought, What a miracle transformed this man in such a short time.
Mr. Wainwright made no attempt to deny identity when Pearl emerged from the taxi. He flung his arms around her, and big tears ran down his cheeks.
“I’m so thrilled you have come to see your father,” he sobbed. “This is going to be one of the happiest moments of his life.”
Without undue delay, he ushered us into the building and into an office one door down the hall from where we had met him that morning. And there, in the office seldom used by him anymore, in that great financial institution he had built and directed for many years, on that late afternoon, sat a man later still in his rapidly ebbing life. Colonel Jack Yates Wainwright, once Jack (Andy) Yates, the Gray Dragoon, saw Pearl for the first time, his little Molly, who had been his inspiration through the awful years from Fredericksburg to Appomattox. He was ninety-four now, and she was seventy.
There on the beautiful, plush carpet, under the soft light, face-to-face, at last, the tall, slim, erect, snow-white haired but feeble man held her to his breast, and she hugged him even tighter. There was not a dry eye in the room. It had been sixty-seven years since the day he had passed her, unaware, in the lane at the Pines. In his aging mind he recalled hearing “Da-da!” but through tear-blinded eyes, he did not see her, for his grief-stricken heart was back at the grave—there with his Molly, who had given her all for two opposing ideals: him and the old South.
“Yes—yes,” he sobbed in a crackly and stifled voice. “I would have known you. Your face, your eyes, your voice—you, you are so much like her—your mother. I would have known you had I met you anywhere. Pearl—oh, God forgive me that I have neglected you, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know! I could never go back—no—no, I could never go back. I never dreamed Molly left me a child. There wasn’t anything left—for me—but to forget. I worked—in my grief I devoted myself only to my work, trying to forget. Finally, my grief left me and I married, but never have I forgotten Molly. You shall never leave me. No—no, child! You shall never go from me!”