Next day the crash came. The papers revelled in it; the Pallinders'
affairs occupied the place of honour (or at least of supreme notoriety)
in the first column of the first page; the Pallinders' creditors
assembled and filled the air with thunder; Muriel was incontinently
recalled to Washington; excited Gwynnes rushed upon the scene. And
when at last the smoke of conflict lifted, where were the Pallinders?
Nobody knew; nobody cared--except Scheurmann and Goldstein Brothers,
and perhaps a few others. Within a fortnight there was a red flag,
flaunting garishly on the lawn among the budding lilacs and faintly
greening beeches. Templeton had out sandwich-men and yard-long posters
announcing an auction in the house--"everything without reserve to the
highest bidder."
The Armenians reappeared, and various other greasy-looking,
dark-skinned birds of prey flocked through the rooms, rapping on the
mirrors, testing the peacock-blue and old-gold draperies between their
dirty talons. I met Mrs. Maginnis coming out of Doctor Vardaman's yard,
boo-hooing and calling on all the saints to bless him, with a tribe
of little Maginnises at her heels. What had the doctor done? I do not
know. The old gentleman went quite shabby that summer in an old linen
duster we had not seen on him for years; and it is certain he bought no
more first editions for a long while.
And here closes the episode--for episode it truly was, and no story,
as must have been discovered by this time. A story, properly conceived
and executed, must have a beginning and an end, and this lacks both;
it even lacks a hero and heroine. Fiction would have demanded, and a
conscientious storyteller would have supplied, a much more picturesque
and appropriate final act. The diamonds should have been restored, and
(let us hope) the bill paid; Muriel should have married J. B.; Bob
should have married Mazie; the curtain should have gone down on the
lovers embracing and everyone else shaking hands. I have not been a
novel-reader all these years for nothing, and nobody need remind me how
a romance should end; if this narrative finishes in open defiance of
all the proprieties, I can only offer the mean apology that it is all,
or nearly all, true. _Pars minima fui!_ Some of it I saw, some heard,
some merely guessed, and alas, none of the beautiful things mentioned
above came to pass! Looking back on it now, with the compliant wisdom
of forty-odd, I am satisfied it is as well those marriages did not take
place. Muriel would hardly have been a success transplanted; and the
Pallinder connection would inevitably have proved disastrous to poor
Bob.
As for Huddesley, I cannot sincerely say I was ever sorry that that
entertaining and original scoundrel escaped; in other and more gallant
days, he and the Pallinders alike might have figured as a sort of
pirates, differing in degree and methods perhaps, hardly at all in
kind. There is humour in the spectacle of one of them preying on the
other. And, for the soul of me, I cannot be angry with either. _Bon
voyage_, oh ye adventurers! What shores have you not coasted, and what
men essayed in all these twenty-five years! At least I did not suffer
by you, and therefore, with a noble generosity, I wish you well!
I fell in with J. B. the other day, after a long interval; and he had
a good deal to tell me in the pleasant hour we spent of, "Don't you
remember----" and "Whatever has become of----?" J. B. goes up and
down the world, and knows many men and their cities these days; he
is getting a little bald and massive, yet is still a notable figure,
not greatly changed; and, "What do you think?" he said, "I've seen
Huddesley, and he knew me at once! It was the year of the St. Louis
Fair; that's the last time I was West, you know. I went from there to
the town of Joliet, Illinois, where you know the Government runs an
elegant home for ladies and gentlemen whose society and services the
community doesn't need all the time.
"I went out there--voluntarily," he added, with a chuckle. "It was
the Fourth of July and blazing hot, and I had three hours to put in
before my train left. The man I went to see told me I'd find the Pen
'very instructive.' But when I got there, they were giving all these
wretches a holiday, in honour of Uncle Sam's birthday, and I tell you
they were a pretty hard-looking set. The guard was showing me through
a yard, when suddenly one of these jolly, cursing, sky-larking parties
in stripes dropped out of a bunch of them, and, says he, getting in
the way, and staring hard at me: 'Mr. Breckinridge, don't you know
me?' I didn't at all, for a minute, although really, considering his
age, and the kind of life he must have led, he hasn't changed much.
Then: 'Will you 'ave 'ock with your hoysters, sir?' said the scoundrel
with a wink--and it flashed on me who he was! 'Huddesley!' I shouted
out. The attendant was perfectly petrified; he thought I must be some
old pal of Huddesley's--I had to explain before he would let us talk.
Eh? Why, _sure_! As the children say, _sure_! I talked to him, and he
asked after everybody with the greatest interest. He even got quite
autobiographical and confidential after a while; told me he was up for
five years this time (for a little trouble he got into in New Orleans,
he said delicately), but he had served two-thirds of the sentence, and
would be out in six months, his time having been shortened for good
behaviour. 'There's nothin' to it, anyway, Mr. Breckinridge,' says he,
in a serious manner. 'I guess I ought to know, I've tried both ways.
It's me for the simple life after this; my eyes are kind of troubling
me, and I'm getting along in years. I'm goin' to square it after I get
out this time----' He meant he was going to live honestly, you know.
'In all I've spent eighteen years in the stir'--that's slang for the
prison, it seems--'with a sentence here and a sentence there, since
the first time of all in Pentonville, 'long back in '72. That's a
good while out of a man's life that ain't but fifty-five years old.
I'm going to cut it out after this. I begun pretty young and I'm
through now.' He told me he was London-born, Seven Dials, some slum, I
suppose--'That's where Hi got the haccent,' he said, grinning again.
He had a chequered career before we knew him, footman, errand-boy,
sneak-thief, actor, preacher, insurance-agent, confidence-man--it
would be hard to say what he hadn't been. There was an interval when
he was apprentice to a pastry-cook--I think he was honest then, for
about a year, until the till was left open one evening. He said that
was where he learned the trade of cook--'But I was always was one to
pick up things quick, _you_ know that, Mr. Breckinridge,' he said with
a funny swagger. I asked him if he had had an eye on Mrs. Pallinder's
diamonds from the first, or whether he just took the chance when it
came. He gave me an odd look. 'Say, you don't mind asking questions,
do you?' he said. And then, quickly with a half-laugh: 'Oh, well, Mr.
Taylor, you're straight, I know you wouldn't throw me down, and it's
twenty years, anyhow.' He went on to say that he had landed in town
just about the time of the Charity Ball, when the papers were full of
the diamonds--you remember, don't you? The Pallinders were It then.
'I thought I might get the job of butler at the house, and applied,'
he said. 'Nothin' doin'--their help was all coloured. The very next
day Doctor Vardaman's advertisement came out; say, I was right there
with the goods. He was easy, the old gent was. I hadn't spieled my
little spiel five minutes before I saw it was 'M' lud, the carriage
waits,' for mine. And let me tell you, Mr. Taylor, I was wise to
the Pallinder game from the start; I knew Pallinder was due to blow
up any day, and your Uncle James would have to hustle to get those
diamonds, or somebody else would. That's why I went after 'em by the
Romeo-and-Juliet route, 'stead of taking it slow and easy, and getting
to be like a son of the house like I'd planned. Well, you know that
deal fell through owing to Mrs. Pallinder's neuralgia; if you and
the colonel and everybody else had stepped a little livelier, you'd
'a' nipped me. As it was, I just barely had time to get back home;
and then what does the faithful, devoted, all-to-the-square-dealing
Huddesley do but wake up Doctor Vardaman, and lodge an information
against himself----' 'What?' I cried. 'You were the burglar?' To tell
the truth, I hadn't quite been able to follow Huddesley's flights of
metaphor for the last few sentences, until all at once it come over
me what he meant. 'You mean you were the burglar all the time?' I
asked him. He grinned with a queer kind of pride. 'Sure I was. But,
say, didn't I play it smooth? Couldn't I give Hen. Irving cards and
spades, though? Next day I _did_ have a sore throat--I'm subject to
'em--but I wasn't sick like Doctor Vardaman thought. I kept up the
game--stayed in bed and passed up the cops and the high-brows with
the stylographic pens--I couldn't risk seein' 'em, you know. I don't
know how that fellow Judd got on the trail--I guess he had a little
more grey matter than the rest of 'em. Of course they had photos and
descriptions of me all over the country. Anyway, when he turned up,
peddlin' collar-buttons about six weeks later, I was next right off.
I knew I'd better beat it for the tall and waving--but I did hate
like poison to go without those rhinestones--after all the trouble
I'd took, too.' The fellow's persistence and patience were something
astonishing," said J. B., with wonder. "Enough to have insured his
success at any honest undertaking, you'd think. He told me it was very
hard to keep up the rôle. 'Sometimes I'd forget--about the talk, and
all, you know,' he said. 'And then I'd lay awake at nights in a cold
sweat for fear somebody had noticed it. Yes, sir, I'd been studying
and studying, making myself solid with everybody, and playing the
faithful-and-devoted racket until I was sick of it--and no diamonds in
sight yet! Then "Mrs. Tankerville" came up, and all at once I began
to see a ray o' light. But just as things was going like greased
rollers on a toboggan-slide, hanged if the doctor didn't sour on the
Pallinders! Said he was never going there again. 'Stead of shooting the
chutes, looked like I was due to bump the bumps.'
"'In the end, that was the best thing that could have
happened--because, you know, the old gent invited you all to dinner,
and the minute he did that, I saw the chance. I knew Johns was a good
deal of a lusher, and if I could get him stewed good and plenty,
why, I could turn the trick. If some of the rest of you got a little
how-come-you-so, not batty, you know, just a little googleish, it
wouldn't hurt. But I wasn't taking any chances on Johns; I fixed
him with some kind of rock-a-bye-baby dope out of the doctor's
closet. You remember what happened after that. Say, I enjoyed
it--honest-to-goodness I did; I liked all you boys first-rate. Say,
if I'd been different, if I'd been born and brought up like you, for
instance, I'd have cut a pretty wide swath, now, wouldn't I? It's all
in the start a man gets, ain't it?'"
J. B. paused.
"I dare say Huddesley could imitate me better than I can him," he said.
"But wasn't that last a funny thing for a man like that to say? He was
in earnest, proud of his peculiar talents, and a little regretful. I
didn't know what to say, but I knew better than to sermonise."
"Do you suppose he really did 'square it' after he got out?"
"Not likely, I think. Good resolutions aren't very lasting with that
class. I've no doubt he meant it at the time. He asked about Doctor
Vardaman. I told him, and do you know the fellow's face clouded over
for a second. I believe he really was pained.
"'Well,' he said. 'The doctor was an old man, and of course it wasn't
to be expected he could live very much longer. I might have known. But
it makes me feel bad, Mr. Taylor. I kind of expected to go and see him
when I got out this time, and tell him I was going to finish out on
the square. He was the whitest man I ever knew. I never took the value
of a cent from him, though I had plenty of chances; yes, sir, he was
the real thing, that old gent was.' And, just as I was leaving he said:
'I'd like mighty well to know who that nice little trick was that I
kissed on the back stairs when I was dusting out with the necklace. I
didn't know her name, I guess she didn't ever come to rehearsals when
I was around. Kind of a fat little girl, with brown eyes--she was too
surprised to squeal; it was a fool thing to do, but I felt pretty good,
and she was just my size in girls.' I couldn't place her for him, but I
shouldn't wonder if it was Kitty. It would be like Kitty to keep quiet
about it." I agreed with him that it would be much like Kitty; her eyes
are blue, by the way, but J. B. had forgot that.
His face was a little sober as he answered some of my questions.
"I met the colonel in New York not long ago," he said. "He looks pretty
old and seedy and shifty-eyed these days. He talked just the same; had
a few shares to sell--just a few, you know, they were soaring up in
price and in a week would be unobtainable for love or money, but he
wanted to let me in on the ground floor--in a gold mine down in Eastern
Tennessee.
"Don't laugh; it wasn't funny. He was too anxious to be so fluent and
convincing as he used to be in the old days; he reminded me of a poor,
hungry, eager old dog. I bought some of the shares, for the sake of
auld lang syne--I couldn't help it. And there was something sordidly
pathetic in the air of affluence he put on after he'd gathered the
money up in his trembling old hands. I suppose he hadn't handled so
much in months; yet the sum was not large. He insisted on my going
home to dinner with him; they were in a dingy boarding-house over in
Brooklyn. It gave me a start to see Mrs. Pallinder; I actually thought
for a minute it was the old Botlisch woman, although she died years
ago, the colonel told me. Mrs. Pallinder's got to looking exactly like
her, but she has more manner, you know; she put on a lot of 'side'
for my benefit. The boarding-house people were very much impressed.
I shouldn't wonder if my visit bolstered up the Pallinder credit a
good deal--I'm so solidly respectable. But do you know, I'm sure, that
aside from any motives of self-interest, the Pallinders were honestly
glad to see me; they talked about old times the same as you and I are
doing now--just as if they hadn't left owing everybody and under a
cloud generally! I wouldn't have opened my mouth about the diamond
necklace, and that last night, but Mrs. Pallinder brought it up right
away; she rather flourished it before the other boarders. Huddesley and
her jewels, and what she said, and what So-and-So said--it was rather
diverting to hear her version."
"Mazie wasn't with them, was she?"
"Oh, no, Mazie's married. Married an army-officer, and they're living
in the Philippines. Mrs. Pallinder told me the name, but I've forgotten
it."
"We used to think that Bob Carson----"
"Yes. Bob's never married--he was awfully in earnest. Remember what
a sweet voice he had? They used to get him to sing 'Comfort ye, my
people,' in Trinity the last Sunday in Advent, don't you remember? Poor
old Bob!"
"Rich old Bob, you'd better say! He's made a lot of money. Susie's
children will get it all, most likely. He's very fond of them; he sent
the youngest girl to Europe last year to study music, somebody told me.
Maybe, if Mazie knew, she'd be sorry she wouldn't have him. But it's
better so; they wouldn't have been happy. Do you suppose he ever asked
her, though?"
"Well, a man don't--one isn't likely to know about things like that,"
said J. B. somewhat embarrassed. "But I believe he did--right after the
party, in the midst of the rumpus when the Pallinders were getting it
right and left from everybody."
"And she refused him? I think it was fine of Bob to ask her. Like you
and Muriel, wasn't it?"
"Hey?" said J. B., very much startled. A sudden flush appeared on his
amiable, middle-aged countenance; he goes clean-shaven now, he who was
so gallantly moustached in eighty-three--such are the mutations of
fashion.
"I mean in the play--in 'Mrs. Tankerville,'" I added hastily.
"Oh, the play--oh, yes, I remember." He looked down meditatively,
fingering the stem of his wine-glass as we sat at luncheon. Muriel
would not have refused _him_, had she been asked in good earnest; I
wondered if he knew it--but I think he was at once too gallant and too
simple--honest, kindly J. B.!
"I saw her when I was over this last time," he said. "She's the
Countess of Yedborough now, you know. She's got eight children! The
oldest girl looks something like her, but not so handsome as her mother
was at her age--oh, not to compare. She was the handsomest woman I ever
saw."
"Has she changed much?"
"Well, these big women--she's got awfully fat--fine-looking still,
of course, but she's too fat." Then, catching my eye inadvertently
directed on his own not inconsiderable expanse of light waistcoat, he
grinned good-naturedly. "Guess I'd better be careful how I throw stones
around here," said he. "I'm living in a glass house myself."
"Did Muriel ask after any of us?"
"Oh, yes, wanted to know about everyone--even Ted Johns. I told her
they'd found out that Huddesley put some drug in Ted's wine that night,
so that it wasn't liquor that was the matter with him. I thought I'd
save his reputation that much, if I could. Poor Ted, how he did waste
his life! No man ever had better chances at the beginning, but he was
his own worst enemy."
"You might say that of all of us."
"Yes, I suppose so. But we don't all drink like fish. Kind of sad about
Teddy; he got some appointment in the commissariat when our troops went
to Cuba, and died of the fever at Siboney in '98--you knew that? He
ought never to have risked going to that climate; he couldn't have had
any constitution left by that time."
I assented, and we paid Teddy's memory the tribute of a moment's
silence; yet I dare say we were not thinking so much of him and his
career, as of our own youth and the inevitable years.
"Well, this has been very pleasant, but I must go," he said presently
and rose. "Next time I come West I'm going to bring my wife; I want her
to meet everyone here--the old set, I mean. She's heard me talk about
you so much. I wish we could meet a little oftener, but living so far
apart--you know----"
Well, _fuit Ilium_! _Fuimus Troes!_ J. B. will find both the old set
and the old town changed greatly (for the better, no doubt) when he
returns. The coming generation--nay, the generation that has already
arrived, will not remember the look of things as they were in my time.
As I was saying, they were tearing down the old Gwynne house the other
day.
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|Transcriber's note: |
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|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. |
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