ASHES OF OLD ROMANCE
It was Friday afternoon when Genevieve started on her mission; the
following Wednesday morning I received a telegram from her announcing
that she would be home that same afternoon. The interim was so
uneventful that my note-book mentions only two incidents as being
worthy of preservation.
Late Friday night the welcome news came to headquarters that Alexander
Burke had been found. He appeared at his lodgings shortly before
midnight, looking wretchedly ill and exhausted. Saturday morning a
physician was called in, and the whilom secretary was not able to
appear upon the streets again until Tuesday. Then it was observed that
a change had come over the man. His impassivity had been penetrated at
last; it could no longer hide a nervousness and apprehension which kept
his head perpetually pivoting in backward glances across his shoulder.
I smiled with satisfaction when Fanshawe told me this.
"Stay with him," I said; "it makes no difference whether or not he
knows that you are always close behind him. In fact, I want him to
know it; I want to break that man, and I will."
The other incident referred to was a meeting I succeeded in securing
between Maillot and Miss Belle--memorable for me as being the first
occasion upon which I was favored with a glimpse of Mrs. Fluette.
Sunday afternoon mother and daughter drove up to headquarters in the
family carriage. Although the girl had been tactful enough to eschew a
heavy veil and sombre apparel, it was plain to be seen that the event
was almost too great an ordeal for even her proud and dauntless spirit.
Belle descended from the carriage hesitantly, and then stood looking
about with an air of such helpless terror that I approached--I had
previously resolved to keep myself effaced during the visit--and
conducted her into the Captain's private office, where Maillot was
waiting. She gave me an embarrassed, beseeching glance, and murmured a
barely audible "Thank you." No more was said. She faltered an instant
on the threshold, then, sobbing, rushed in. I made haste to close the
door and rejoin Mrs. Fluette.
This lady was slight and frail, with hair as white as snow, and about
her there hung an intangible something which gave me the impression
that she was a woman who had suffered much. Although I strove to speak
cheerfully of the prospects of Maillot's early release, her manner was
quite discouraging to all my overtures. When she spoke at all it was
only in the faintest of monosyllables--usually with her eyes avoiding
mine. She looked at me, when at all, shyly, started at every unusual
sound, and trembled during the whole time she sat in the Captain's big
easy-chair.
At the end of the allotted half-hour--I was n't very particular over
the number of minutes--Mrs. Fluette's increasing nervousness and
impatience moved me to rap upon the private-room door. Belle emerged,
her cheeks white and her eyes swollen with weeping. The poor girl
pressed my hand when I helped her into the carriage--clung to it
despairingly, to be exact--and the tears again gushed to her eyes.
"This is killing me!" she moaned. "Oh, it is! it is! I can't stand it
much longer."
"Courage, Miss Fluette," I undertoned assuasively. "Everything is
working for the best, believe me."
Ah, but was it? I could not say the words with much assurance. They
drove away, two sad, harassed women.
Touching again upon Wednesday afternoon, I was pretty sure that the
Fluette carriage would meet Genevieve at the station--very likely with
Belle, or possibly Mrs. Fluette. In anticipation of this contingency I
had sent a note to the house with the request that she find an excuse
to meet me at the earliest possible moment, for I was all impatience to
hear her report.
But Genevieve had anticipated also. She arrived armed with a
commission from the Ohio cousin, the performance of which would brook
no delay. So I had a minute alone with her downtown. She had been
thoughtful enough to record a detailed statement of her investigations;
it lies before me now as I write; and I shall condense from it those
portions that are essential to advancing this chronicle.
In the early '50's Clara Cooper was the belle of the village of Merton.
Wooers were many, but favors were few and grudgingly bestowed; and in
time all the suitors withdrew, leaving the field clear to Alfred
Fluette and Felix Page.
The Coopers and the Fluettes represented the wealth and aristocracy of
the community, while Felix Page was a poor, struggling young man whose
only advantages and prospects for the future lay in his indomitable
pluck and a resolution that was ready to ride roughshod over all
opposition.
And Clara favored the poor young man. He went forth from Merton
resolved to wrest a fortune from the world and lay it at his
sweetheart's feet. She promised to wait for him until he returned with
the fulfilment of his ambitious aims.
Alas, though, for the fiery Felix: she was not of a very resolute
character, being easily influenced by her sterner parents, whose
patrician eyes looked askance upon the presumptuous lover's claims.
Besides, Felix was absent--supposedly engaged in his laudable
enterprise of wresting a fortune from the world--while Alfred,
handsome, polished of manner, patient and persistently attentive, was
ever at her elbow.
Then, too, there was Miss Clara's family, to the last one of them
espousing Alfred's cause. In the end the girl allowed herself to drift
with the current. Felix would have accomplished more to his purpose
had he remained at home and married Clara, and then gone after the
fortune. At any rate, after one or two letters from Felix, which
glowed with hope and boundless zeal, she ceased to hear from him.
Doubtless he had come to realize that the wresting operation demanded
all his powers; but his silence was easily made to appear of more
significance than it deserved. It was construed--for Miss Clara, not
by her--as indisputable evidence of forgetfulness. Within the year she
married Alfred Fluette.
Six years passed. Alfred Fluette had migrated with his bride to the
city. Then Felix Page returned triumphant to Merton. His triumph,
however, was short-lived. He was well on the road, even then, to his
subsequent commercial success; a good deal of the wresting had been
accomplished; but the girl he had steadfastly loved, whom he had never
for one instant put out of his thoughts, had married his rival.
To get together most of her report Genevieve had been obliged to labor
patiently and painstakingly; when it came to the events associated with
Felix Page's return to his birth-place, her task was suddenly
transformed from one of gleaning to another equally arduous, of
selecting from the plethora of material at her disposal.
One gathers the idea, after reading it all, that his rage was that of a
cave-man who returns from the day's hunt to find that his home in the
hillside cliff has been despoiled. One thing stands out clear and
unmistakable; from that hour his life was embittered, his character
warped with the shattering of his ideals. He registered a solemn vow
of vengeance against Alfred Fluette, then disappeared.
So much for this portion of the report. Nothing in the subsequent
relations of the two men was now obscure.
And here, too, we are given a new light upon Alexander Burke, oiling
door-hinges that he might the better spy upon his employer, patiently
working out the combination of the hidden safe and running to Alfred
Fluette with the old love-letters and mementos--for a price, of
course,--playing the vindictiveness of the one against the hatred and
fear of the other, and scrupling not to gain profit for himself
whenever and wherever he might.
But it is proverbial that a woman invariably reserves the most
interesting and important item for the postscript. And it was so with
Genevieve's report. I quote the concluding paragraphs _in toto_.
On the very first day of my arrival, and from the very first person to
whom I confided the nature of my errand, I received the surprising
intelligence that I was not the first to pursue similar inquiries in
Merton. Said my informant: "Why, there was a man here two or three
weeks ago, trying to find out all he could about the Pages and the
Coopers and the Fluettes. Has some one of them died and left a lot of
money?"
I did not think so much of it the first time, but when my second victim
told me the same thing, I sat up and began to take notice. Then I
extended my inquiries so as to cover my mysterious predecessor.
I soon found out that he had ingratiated himself with everybody in
Merton who could give him a scrap of information, and that his
inquiries were all directed to one end; namely, the family histories of
the Pages, the Coopers, and the Fluettes.
Then, from all the people I could find who had seen and talked to this
man, I obtained a description of his appearance and (where they were
remembered) his personal peculiarities. One description photographed
him for me:
"A tall, lean, lanky feller--real sandy--hair, eyes, eyelashes,
eyebrows--no, he did n't have no eyebrows; but all the rest was the
same light yaller color. He was pale and sickly lookin'--poor
man!--and you could n't tell what he was a-lookin' at when he talked to
a body. Any kin o' yourn?"
Who was my mysterious predecessor in the field, if he were not
Alexander Burke?
Who, indeed!