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Updated: May 9, 2025
He was not, perhaps, aware of how much he liked him. Plank's unexpected fits of shyness, of formality, often and often amused him. But there was a subtler feeling under the unexpressed amusement, and, beneath all, a constantly increasing sub-stratum of respect. Too, he found himself curiously at ease with Plank, as with one born to his own caste.
So Siward was becoming a very busy man among men; and Plank, still carrying on his broad shoulders burdens unbearable by any man save such a man as he, shook his heavy head, and ordered Siward into the open. And Siward, who had learned to obey, obeyed. But September had nearly ended, when Leila, in Plank's private car, attended by Siward and Sylvia and two trained nurses, arrived at the Fells.
Sipping their tea in the pleasant, sunny room, they discussed matters of common interest Plank's recent fishing trip on Long Island and the degeneracy of liver-fed trout; the North Side Club's Experiments with European partridges; Billy Fleetwood's new stables; forestry, and the chance of national legislation concerning it a subject of which Plank was very fond, and on which he had exceedingly sound ideas.
Sylvia, always instinctively and particularly nice to people of Plank's sort whom she occasionally encountered, was so faultlessly amiable, that Plank, who had never before permitted himself the privilege of monopolising her, found himself doing it so easily that it kept him in a state of persistent mental intoxication.
That surface cynicism which all must learn, sooner or later, or remain the victims of naive credulity, was, in Siward, nothing but an outer skin, as it is in all who acquire wisdom with their cynicism. It was not long proof against Plank's simple attitude and undisguised pleasure in doing something for a man he liked.
So we thanked him, or I did, and we walked in and sot down in some big, cool cane-seat easy-chairs. And we sot there and visited back and forth for quite a spell, and took comfort. Yes, indeed, we did. This room wuz on the cool side of the house, and the still side. And it wuz big and furnished beautiful. It wuzn't Miss Plank's taste, I could see that. No, her taste is fervent and gorgeous.
He sensed it with the instinct of kind for kind, not because Plank's millions meant anything to him as a force; not because this lumbering, red-faced meddler had blundered into a family affair where confidence consisted in joining hands lest a pocket be inadvertently picked; not because Plank had knocked at the door, expecting treachery to open, and had found it, but because of the awful simplicity of the man and his methods.
And that was all there was to be done until he could come into Plank's camp with arms and banners, a conquered man, cynical of the mercy he dared not expect and which, in all his life, he had never, never shown to man, to woman, or to child.
Sylvia nodded, and exchanged a smile with Agatha, who turned at the sound of Plank's voice. For a while, as he ate and drank largely, she made the effort to keep up a desultory conversation, particularly when anybody to whom she owed an explanation hove darkly in sight on the horizon.
So this miserable, doomed man crept out along the plank, whimpering pleas for mercy to the murderers behind him and prayers for mercy to the God above him, until he was come to the plank's end and cowered there, raising and lowering his bound hands in his agony while he gazed down into the merciless sea that was to engulf him.
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