would be easier to apply to him for the loan than to Mrs. Welsh.
"Has the old uncle died and left you a fortune?" laughed Batty, as he
handed over the dollar.
"Blamed if I can make out," answered Jimmy, holding the scrap of paper
at arms length and squinting at it. "I ain't got my specs. Here! you
read it."
Batty, taking the telegram, read in his hoarse whisper:
"Dane arrived safely God bless you Matthew twentyfive
forty. Harriet Ward."
Then he looked up for an explanation. Jimmy was staring at him
open-mouthed. "Well, if that ain't the blamedest message ever was," he
exclaimed. "I don't know any sucker named Matthew. Is the woman plumb
crazy?"
Batty looked up from the second reading, enlightened.
"No, I take it she wanted to send you some sort of a Christmas greeting,
but probably she's as poor as she is pious and had to count her words.
Come on, we'll look up Matthew twenty-five and forty. I guess I haven't
forgotten how to do such stunts, even if it has been such a precious
while since the last one."
He led the way to his tent, and while Jimmy lighted the lamp he began
burrowing through his trunk. Down at the very bottom he found it, the
Book he was looking for, then the chapter and the verse. When he cleared
his throat and read the entire telegram it sounded strangely impressive
in his hoarse whisper:
"Dane arrived safely. God bless you. 'And the king
shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you,
inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'"
There was an awkward pause as they faced each other a moment, pondering
the queer message. Then as a conscious red began to burn up through the
tan of Jimmy's weather-beaten face, Batty understood.
"_You_ sent that boy home to his mother," he began, but Jimmy, bolting
out of the tent, shambled off, shamefaced, through the dusk.
For a long time Batty stood in the door looking out over the darkening
desert. The one star swinging above the horizon seemed to point the way
to a little home among snow-clad hills, where Christmas gladness had
reached its high-tide. Presently as the supper-bell rang, a voice came
floating up from the bamboo thicket. Cracked and thin it was, but high
and jubilant, as if the old man had forgotten that he had no tobacco for
the refreshment of his soul in this world, and no prospect of a mass for
its repose in the next.
"Wa-it for me at heav-un's gate,
Sweet Belle Mahone!"
"All right for you, old Jimmy," whispered Batty to himself. "In the game
St. Peter keeps the score for, you'll be counted the highest card that
_this_ camp holds."
The Second Traveler
Gid Wiggan
In the Wake of a Honeymoon
NO matter what kind of a procession paraded the streets of Gentryville,
one unique tailpiece always brought up the rear. As the music of the
band died away in the distance, and the pomp of the pageant dwindled
down to the last straggling end, necks about to be relieved of their
long tension invariably turned for one more look. It was then that old
Gid Wiggan drove by in his Wild-cat Liniment wagon, as unfailing as the
Z that ends the alphabet.
Lank and stoop-shouldered, with a long, thin beard that reached his lap,
and a high, bell-crowned hat pulled down to meet his flabby, protruding
ears, he of himself was enough to provoke a laugh; but added to this he
bore aloft on a pole the insignia that proclaimed his calling. It was a
stuffed wild-cat, shelf-worn and weather-beaten, glaring with primeval
fierceness with its one glass eye, and wearing a ridiculously meek
expression on the side that had been bereft.
Across the ribs of the old black horse that drew the wagon was painted
in white letters, "Wiggan's Wild-cat Liniment;" but as if this were not
advertisement enough, the proprietor sowed little handbills through the
crowd, guaranteeing that the liniment (made from the fat of the animal)
would cure any ache in the whole category of human ills. He had followed
in the wake of the Gentryville processions so many years that he had
come to be regarded as much a matter of course as the drum-major or the
clown. Civic or military, the occasion made no difference. He followed a
circus as impartially as he came after the troops reviewing before the
Governor's stand, and he had been known to follow even one lone
band-wagon through the town, on its mission of advertising a minstrel
troupe.
There must have been something in the geography of the Wiggan family
corresponding to a water-shed, else his course in life could not have
differed so widely from his brother's. They had drifted as far apart as
twin raindrops, fated to find an outlet in opposite seas. Indeed, so
great was the difference that the daughters of the Hon. Joseph Churchill
Wiggan (distinct accent on the last syllable when referring to them)
scarcely felt it incumbent upon them to give his brother Gideon the
title of uncle.
To Louise and Maud the proper accentuation of their family name was
vital, since it seemed to put up a sort of bar between them and the
grotesque liniment peddler. The townspeople always emphasized the first
syllable in speaking of him.
The brothers had turned their backs upon each other, even in the
building of their houses. While only an alley separated their stables in
the rear, the Hon. Joseph's mansion looked out on a spacious avenue, and
old Gid's cottage faced a dingy tenement street. He had his laboratory
in the loft of his stable, from the windows of which he could overlook
his brother's back premises.
Maud and Louise, regarding him and his business in the light of a family
skeleton, ignored him as completely as a family skeleton can be ignored
when it is of the kind that will not stay in its allotted closet. It
seemed to meet them every time they opened their palatial front door.
They could not turn a street corner without coming upon it. Only the
ultra-sensitive young lady just home from the most select of fashionable
schools can know the pangs that it cost Louise to see her family name
staring at her in white letters from the bony sides of that old horse,
in connection with a patent medicine advertisement; and the faintest
whiff of any volatile oil suggesting liniment was enough to elevate
Maud's aristocratic nose to the highest degree of scorn and disgust.
Once, years ago, when the girls were too young to be ashamed of their
eccentric kinsman, they had visited his laboratory out of childish
curiosity. He had given them peanuts from a pocket redolent with
liniment, and had asked them to come again, but they had had no occasion
to repeat the visit until after they were grown.
It was the night before Louise's wedding day. They had both finished
dressing for the evening, but, not quite satisfied with her appearance,
Louise still stood before the mirror. She was trying to decide how to
wear one of the roses which she had just shaken out of the great bunch
on her dressing table. Ordinarily she would not have hesitated, for
there was nothing she could do or wear that would not be admired by this
little Western town. It was the card accompanying the roses which made
her pause--the correct, elegant little card, engraved simply, "Mr.
Edward Van Harlem." It seemed to confront her with the critical stare of
the most formal New York aristocracy, coldly questioning her ability to
live up to it and its traditions.
That the Van Harlems had violently opposed their son's marrying outside
their own select circle she well knew. His mother could not forgive him,
but he was her idol, and she was following him to his marriage as she
would have followed to his martyrdom. By this time she was probably in
Gentryville, at the hotel. She had refused to meet Louise until the next
day.
Louise laid the great, leafy-stemmed rose against the white dress she
wore. It was a beautiful picture that her mirror showed her, and for an
instant there was a certain proud lifting of the girlish head; a gesture
not unworthy the haughty Mrs. Van Harlem herself. But the next moment a
tender light shone in her eyes, as if some sudden memory had banished
the thought of the Knickerbocker displeasure.
The maid had brought in the evening paper, and Maud, picking it up,
began reading the headlines aloud. Louise scarcely heard her. When one's
lover is coming before the little cuckoo in the clock has time to call
out another hour, what possible interest can press dispatches hold?
She laid the velvety petals against her warm cheek, and then softly
touched them to her lips. At that, her own reflection in the mirror
seemed to look at her with such a conscious smile that she glanced over
her shoulder to see if her sister had been a witness too. As she did so,
Maud dropped the paper with a horrified groan.
"Oh, Louise!" she cried. "What shall we do? There's to be an industrial
parade to-morrow morning, with dozens of floats. The line of march is
directly past the Continental Hotel. What will Mrs. Van Harlem say when
she sees Uncle Gid's wagon and our name in the Wiggan Wild-cat
advertisement?"
Louise dropped weakly into a chair, echoing her sister's groan. The
colour had entirely left her face. She was more in awe of her patrician
lover and his family than she had acknowledged, even to herself.
"Think of that awful, old moth-eaten wild-cat on a pole!" giggled Maud,
hysterically.
"Think of Uncle Gid himself!" almost shrieked Louise. "It would kill me
to have him pointed out to the Van Harlems as father's brother, and
somebody will be sure to do it. There's always somebody mean enough to
do such things."
Maud pushed aside the curtain and peered out into the June twilight, now
so dim that the street lamps had begun to glimmer through the dusk.
"If we could only shut him up somewhere," she suggested. "Lock him down
cellar--by accident--until after the parade, then he couldn't possibly
disgrace us."
There was a long silence. Then Maud, dropping the curtain on the dusk of
the outer world, turned from the window and came dancing back into the
middle of the brightly lighted room.
"I've thought of a plan," she cried, jubilantly. "We can't do anything
with Uncle Gid, but if the wild-cat and harness could be hidden until
after the parade, that would keep him safely at home, hunting for them."
Louise caught at the suggestion eagerly, but immediately sank back with
a despairing sigh. "It's of no use!" she exclaimed. "There's no one whom
we could trust to send. If Uncle Gid should have the faintest suspicion
of such a plot, there is nothing too dreadful for him to attempt in
retaliation. He'd bring up the rear of the wedding procession itself
with that disreputable old beast on a pole, if he thought it would
humble our pride."
As she spoke, she again caught sight of the little card that had come
with the roses. It nerved her to sudden action. "I must go myself," she
cried, desperately, springing up from her chair.
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Maud, "you're surely joking. It's pitch dark in the
stable by this time. Besides you might meet some one--"
"It's my only salvation," answered Louise, with an excited tremor in her
voice. "Oh, you don't know the Van Harlems! Come on, Sis, and help me,
that's a dear. It will be our last lark together."
"And our first one of this kind," answered Maud, drawing back. "Edward
will be here in a few minutes, and--"
"All the more reason for us to hurry," interrupted Louise, taking a
candle from the silver sconce on her dressing table, and snatching up
some matches. "Come on!"
Carried away by her sister's impetuosity, Maud followed softly down the
back stairs and across the tennis court. In their white dresses they
glimmered through the dusk like ghosts. They were laughing under their
breath when they started out, but as they crossed the dark alley they
looked around nervously, and clutched each other like frightened
schoolgirls.
Ten minutes later they were stealing up the back stairs again, carrying
something between them wrapped in Maud's white petticoat. She had taken
it off and wrapped it around the beast to avoid touching it. They had
not been able to find a safe hiding place in the stable, and in sheer
desperation had decided to carry it home with them for the night. A
strong odour of liniment followed in their wake, for Louise, in her
frantic haste, had upset a bottle all over the wild-cat, and liberally
spattered herself with the pungent, oily mixture.
As they hurried up the stairs, the cook suddenly opened the door into
the back hall, sending a stream of light across them from the kitchen.
There was a look of amazement on her startled face as she recognized her
young mistresses coming in the back way at such an hour, but she was too
well trained to say anything. She only sniffed questioningly as the
strange smell reached her nostrils, then shut the door.
Just as the girls reached the head of the stairs there was a loud ring
of the front door-bell. "Edward!" exclaimed Louise, helplessly letting
her end of the bundle slip.
"Run and change your dress," said Maud. "You are all cobwebs and soot
from dragging that harness into the coal-cellar. I'll attend to this."
Opening the door into a little trunk room at the end of the hall, she
dragged her burden inside. An empty dress-box on the floor suggested an
easy way of disposing of it. But when she had stuffed it in, still
wrapped in the petticoat, not satisfied as to its secrecy, she opened an
empty trunk and lifted the box into that. As she passed her sister's
door Louise called her.
"Here!" she said, despairingly, holding out both hands. "We might as
well give up. Smell!"
Maud's nose went up in air. "Liniment!" she exclaimed, solemnly. "Yes,
it's fate. We can't get away from it."
"Edward will wonder what it is," said Louise, almost tearfully. "Oh, it
seems as if he must surely know. There's no mistaking _that_!"
Maud poured some cologne on her handkerchief, and rubbed it briskly over
her sister's fingers. "You look as frightened as Blue Beard's wife when
she dropped the key in the bloody closet."
All through her dressing, Louise kept sniffing suspiciously at her
dainty fingers, and even when she was ready to go downstairs, stopped at
the door to look back, like a second Lady Macbeth.
"'Not all the odours of Araby can sweeten that little hand,'" she said
in a tragic whisper, and Maud answered under her breath:
"'You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
The scent of the roses will cling 'round it still.'"
A little later, Mrs. Wiggan's French maid, going into the trunk room
with an armful of clothes, began packing the bride's dainty trousseau.
The trunks to be used for that purpose had been pointed out to her that
afternoon.
As she opened the first one, such a penetrating odour greeted her that
she drew back.
"Maybe ze camphor ball," she exclaimed aloud, lifting a corner of the
box which nearly filled the bottom of the trunk. "Ah yes!" she went on,
peeping in. "It ees mademoiselle's furs, what air protect from ze bugs
by zat killing odair. It will presairve also ze woollens as well."
Forthwith she began deftly packing a pile of snowy flannels around the
box which held the family disgrace.
Twenty-four hours later, that trunk among a number of others was jogging
along in a baggage car on its way to New York. It was checked to the
pier from which the _Majestic_ was to sail that week, and tagged, "For
the hold."
It was the first parade that old Gid Wiggan had missed in twenty years,
but it was not his niece's plotting which kept him at home. He lay with
closed eyes in his dark little bedroom, too ill to know that a
procession was passing. The old man had come to a place where he could
no longer follow at the heels of a cheerful crowd. He must branch off by
himself now, and find his solitary way as best he could, over a
strangely lonesome road.
"He's an old miser, but it won't do to let him die like a heathen," said
one of the neighbours, when his condition was discovered. So there were
watchers by his bedside when the end came. Carriages had been rolling
back and forth all the evening, and at last the ponderous rumbling
aroused him.
"What's that?" he asked, opening his eyes as the sound of wheels reached
him. "Is the parade coming?"
"Only the carriages driving back from St. Paul's," was the answer.
"There's a wedding there to-night."
Old Gid closed his eyes again. "I remember now," he said. "It's Joe's
little girl, but I didn't get a bid. They're ashamed of their old uncle.
Well, they'll never be bothered with him any more now, nor any of his
belongings."
The watchers exchanged glances and repeated the remark afterwards to the
curious neighbours who came to look at the old man as he lay in his
coffin. He had long had the reputation of being a miser, and more than
one hand that day was passed searchingly over some piece of battered
furniture. It was a common belief on that street that his fortune was
stuffed away in some of the threadbare cushions.
His will, which came to light soon after, directed that the rickety old
house should be sold to pay the expenses of his last illness and burial,
and to erect a monument over him. As if not content with humiliating his
family in the flesh, he had ordered that it be cut in stone: "Here lies
the manufacturer and proprietor of Wiggan's Wild-cat Liniment." The old
horse, after taking the part of chief mourner at his funeral, was to be
chloroformed.
Of kith and kindred there had been no mention until the last clause of
the will, by which he left the meagre contents of his laboratory to a
distant cousin in Arizona, whom he had never seen, but who bore the same
name as himself, with the addition of a middle initial. This was the
clause which turned Gentryville upside down:
"And I also give, devise and bequeath to the said Gideon J. Wiggan, my
stuffed wild-cat, hoping that he will find in it the mascot that I have
found."
The same letter which informed the Arizona cousin of his legacy told him
that it had mysteriously disappeared. No money was found in the house,
and the disappearance of the wild-cat strengthened the prevalent belief
that old Gid had used it as a receptacle for his savings, and had hidden
it with all a miser's craftiness.
A week later the Arizona cousin appeared, having come East to unearth
the mystery and to meet the remaining members of the Wiggan family, who,
he understood, were living in Gentryville. He was too late. Maud and her
mother had closed the house immediately after the wedding, and started
on a summer jaunt, presumably to Alaska. His letters and telegrams
received no answer and he could not locate his relatives, despite his
persistent efforts. The more he investigated, the more he became
convinced that old Gid, alienated from his immediate family, had made
him his heir on account of the name, and that a fair-sized fortune was
stuffed away in the body of the missing wild-cat. A few leaves from a
queerly kept old ledger confirmed this opinion. Most of them had been
torn out, but judging from the ones he examined, the receipts from the
liniment sales must have been far greater than people supposed.
He did not suspect his cousin Joseph's family being a party to the
disappearance, until some servants' gossip reached him. The cook gave
him his first clue, when a dollar jogged her memory. She remembered
having seen the young ladies slipping up the back stairs the night
before the wedding, carrying something between them. The laundress had
asked her the next day where the young ladies could have been to get
their dresses so soiled in the evening. They were streaked with
coal-soot and smelled strongly of the liniment that their uncle made.
The French maid, who had not gone with her mistress, but had taken a
temporary position with a dressmaker, recognized the odour when a bottle
was brought to her. She swore that it was the same that mademoiselle's
furs were filled with. She had smelled it first when she packed them in
the trunk.
The evidence of the cook, the laundress and the maid was enough for
Gideon J. Wiggan. He was a loud, rough man, without education, but so
uniformly successful in all his business enterprises that he had come to
have an unbounded conceit, and an unlimited faith in himself. "I never
yet bit off any more than I could chew," he was fond of saying. "I'm a
self-made man. I've never failed in anything yet. I'm my own lawyer and
my own doctor, and now I'll be my own detective; and I'll worm this
thing out, if I have to go to Europe to do it."
To Europe he finally went. The happy bridal couple, making a tour of the
cathedral towns of England, little dreamed what an avenging Nemesis was
following fast in the wake of their honeymoon. From Canterbury to York
he followed them, from York to Chester. They had always just gone.
Evidently they were trying to elude him. Once he almost had his hand
upon them. It was in London. He had reached the Hotel Metropole only two
hours after their departure. They had gone ostensibly to Paris, but had
left no address. He ground his teeth when he discovered that fact. How
was he to trace them further without the slightest clue and without the
faintest knowledge of any foreign tongue? For the first time in his life
he had to acknowledge himself baffled.
The next day, while he was making cautious inquiries at Scotland Yard,
preparatory to engaging a first-class detective, he fell in with an old
acquaintance, a man whom he had known in Arizona, and who was employed
in the detective service himself. He had been sent over on the trail of
some counterfeiters, and seemed to have an inexhaustible fund of
information about every wealthy American who had gone abroad that
summer. Within half an hour the baffled Gideon had put his case into his
hands, humbly acknowledging that for once in his life he had bitten off
more than he could chew.
* * * * *
Dinner was in progress in one of the most fashionable hotels of Paris.
Edward Van Harlem, seated opposite his wife at one of the many little
tables, looked around approvingly. His fastidious eyes saw nothing to
criticize in the whole luxurious apartment, except perhaps the too
cheerful expression of the man who served them. A more sphinx-like cast
of countenance would have betokened better training. Then he looked
critically at his wife. It may be that the elegant New Yorker was a
trifle over-particular, but he could find no fault here. She was the
handsomest woman in the room. She was dressed for the opera, and the
priceless Van Harlem pearls around her white throat were worthy of a
duchess. She wore them with the air of one, too, he noticed admiringly.
He had not realized that a little Western girl could be so regal. Ah! if
his mother could only see her now!
"What is it, Louise?" he asked, seeing her give a slight start of
surprise. "Those two men at the table behind you," she answered, almost
in a whisper, for the service was so noiseless and the general
conversation so subdued that she was afraid of being overheard. "They
look so common and out of place in their rough travelling suits. They
are the only persons in the room not in evening dress."
Van Harlem turned slightly and gave a supercilious glance behind him.
"How did such plebeians ever get in here?" he said, frowning slightly.
"I wish America would keep such specimens at home. It's queer they
should stumble into an exclusive place like this. They must feel like
fish out of water."
Louise tasted her soup, and then looked up again. One of the men was
watching her like a hawk. His persistent gaze annoyed her, but there was
a compelling force about it that made her steal another glance at him.
His eyes held hers an instant in startled fascination, then she dropped
them with a sudden fear that made her cold and faint. The man bore a
remarkable likeness to her Uncle Gideon. More than that, she had
discovered some resemblance to her father in the determined chin and the
way his hair rolled back from his forehead. That little droop of the lip
was like her father's, too. Could it be that there was some remote tie
between them and that the stranger was staring at her because he, too,
saw a family likeness? She was afraid for her husband to turn around
lest he should discover it also.