tight lips. Ten years had left him as they found him, but for a
thought of grey in the sandy hair.
"Sit down," said Weldon briefly, "what is it?"
"You've put on a little weight, I see," said Webb, nodding at the
proffered chair, "but that's only proper in the president of a bank, I
suppose. You've done well, Mr. Weldon."
Weldon bowed.
"You did not come to Bermuda to tell me this, Mr. Webb, I think?"
"No," said Webb, "I didn't. Ten years ago, Mr. Weldon, you called me a
mind-reader when I had put two and two together once or twice, put
myself in your place for ten minutes, complimented you by assuming that
your course had been what mine would have been, and spoken to you
accordingly. Can't you do a little mind-reading on your own account,
now?"
"I confess myself unequal to it," Weldon said coldly.
Webb nodded indulgently.
"All right," he returned, "we'll take it that way, if you want to. Mr.
Weldon, I don't know if you read our papers down here at all?"
"I have never opened an American newspaper since I left the country,"
said Weldon briefly.
"I see. I suppose you know that Blickenstern's dying, though?"
"Yes," Weldon answered indifferently, "we all know that, of course."
"Yes. Well, Mr. Weldon, I'm supposed to inherit his shoes. It's not
much to you, of course, but a lot to me--and to a lot of other people,
too. Now for something you don't know. In just about five days, Mr.
Weldon, we're going to break through the crust and drop into the
biggest panic since '93. That and Blickenstern's death--he must go
soon, now--and this fearful railroad business--I won't bore you--will
put me into a bad hole. A worse hole, I don't mind telling you, Mr.
Weldon, than Blick's successor can afford to get into. It's all a
matter of balance now; pretty fine balancing, too, for the next week.
In six weeks there'll be enough for most of us, but just now--well,
there'll be dozens of us in the Street who'll be grateful for ten
thousand in cash around the corner. Think of it--ten thousand! Now
I'll be short. I need some money--not stage money, Mr. Weldon, real
money! I wouldn't take Blick's name on paper for what I want this
week--and getting it or not getting it means the top of the heap for
me, or three years' fight for it. I can't afford three years. I
wasn't a bank president at forty, you know."
"You mean you want the ten thousand pounds you gave me?"
"Just so. I want fifty thousand dollars, Mr. Weldon--for six weeks. I
hate to do it, honestly. Nothing but this infernal panic could have
driven me to this. But I'm helpless. And it's worth millions to me to
have no one suspect it. I can't touch a penny elsewhere--it's all tied
up. I must be able to produce it without any fuss, or disturbing the
jack-straws a particle. There's no use in going into the details."
"No use at all," said Weldon stiffly, "for it will be impossible for me
to lend you such a sum, Mr. Webb, impossible. I have paid well for my
position here."
"And a good move, too," said the other heartily. "You stand well,
Weldon; none better."
"I have never been what you would call ambitious," Weldon went on, more
passionately, now. "When you yourself asked me why I demanded no more
than the ten--the fifty thousand, you remember my answer. I knew that
it would buy me a good, respectable interest out here, assure me of a
position I had every capacity to sustain honourably and efficiently,
and give me the leisure and climate that I wanted. I shall never be a
rich man--by your standards. I don't care. I thought my brains and
initiative were worth what I asked, and you agreed with me. I promised
utter silence and have kept my word. You promised the same and have
broken yours. I can do nothing for you, even if I wished to. I'd
rather not discuss it further."
"_Manana! manana! manana!_" the parrot shrilled. It still hung head
down in the shining cage. Weldon could have wrung its neck. It was
worse than a clock. Webb sighed regretfully and raised his heavy lids.
As the old snakish glance reached him Weldon felt the old net-like
sensation, the old baffled rage.
"I'm sorry, Weldon, but I can't let it go. It's no use--you can't
afford it. It's all like a house you build out of cards, you see, and
you can't slip out one without the whole thing caving in. Whatever I
pull out I have to explain. How do you suppose I got you your fifty
thousand, back there? You know I've never had much money--to call
money. It's brains--what you call mind-reading, you other
fellows--that I've matched against the rest of them. And I've got them
where they're afraid of me. I can't drop back. Listen to me, Weldon!"
He drew his chair close and talked low and steadily for five minutes.
The air seemed to grow dense; the rustling hiss of the foam on the
creamy beach was the hiss and flicker of a sea-coal fire; the grotesque
shadow of the wicker chair, black on the white verandah floor, was the
spread, silent bulk of a dead man.
The low voice ceased.
"How about it, Weldon?" it added abruptly, "can you afford that?"
Weldon pushed away his chair roughly. "Come down to my room at the
bank," he said.
Hours afterward he dragged himself into his bedroom, an older man by
ten years than when he had quitted it. His body seemed heavier, his
face hollower, with pinched lips and sunken eyes. The man who waited
on him stared openly and mentioned the doctor, only to receive a curse
for his pains--the first he had ever heard from his master.
In the late dusk his wife found him asleep in a long chair with an
empty decanter beside him and heavy rugs dragged up to his chin. They
tried, both of them, to make that nervous chill account for the change
in him, but she watched him narrowly and he felt her eyes day and night.
Something tolled like a bell in him and never stopped for a moment:
_six weeks! six weeks! six weeks!_ all his waking movements went to
that intolerable rhythm; he was like a man under a gallows, with a
reprieve coming to him, at the mercy of all the elements. It was
observed at the bank that he worked harder and longer and much alone:
they said the American blood was coming out at last, and smiled at each
other.
"Only mind you don't engage us in speculations, old man," said one of
his colleagues jocosely, "'safe and sound,' you know! Look at the
States--a pretty mess that!"
Weldon turned on him in a fury of anger.
"Speculation! speculation!" he cried harshly, "you know that I hate it
like hell!"
They were genuinely anxious about him.
One morning he found his wife in his dressing-room, white-faced over
something in her hand.
"Philip! Philip!" she whispered and clung to him.
He put the shining little steel-eyed thing behind him.
"My dear, don't be foolish," he said quietly, "if I have my reasons for
wishing a certain sort of protection for a few days, will you make me
regret my sparing you?"
"You--you mean the bank?" she gasped.
"What else could I mean?" he said steadily, and in some quaint woman's
reasoning she was appeased.
At the end of three weeks the strain eased a little. He read a letter
from Webb with a grim smile, bought an American newspaper, and passed
an entire day away from the bank. His wife held her breath as she
watched him, but affected not to notice the change, and he blessed her
for it: his nerves were raw. Two days, three days went by. He sent
out for another newspaper and later in the day raised the tiny salary
of the page who had brought it to him. In the cool of the afternoon he
rode with his wife, the boy on a shaggy pony beside them, and kissed
her as she turned in the saddle in the shadow of the dusk.
"You are the best wife a man ever had," he said, looking deep into her
honest brown eyes, and she galloped away from him to hide her happy
tears.
The next day he told the servant to bring the parrot cage back to the
verandah, where the little daughter liked to have it, and grimaced
tolerantly at its strident cry:
"_Manana! manana!_"
Life is as it is, he thought, and can we hope to change it because we
change? Surely not. Everything had its price, and he had really never
paid the price of that ten-years-old bargain till now--he acknowledged
it. Out of that blue-stained air the messenger of fate had dropped and
taken his toll of youth and candour and elasticity, and departed again,
and now the weight was slackening from his chest and there were but
fourteen days to wait. The next day he found a second letter from Webb
on his desk. To relieve him from needless anxiety, said the great
financier, he wrote to inform Mr. Weldon that six weeks had proved too
wide a margin and he promised himself the pleasure of a complete
settlement six days from the date of writing. Weldon stared at the
letter head: it had been three days on the way--that meant in three
days--by the next boat! The letter was grave, but subtly jubilant.
The railroads were subdued. Blickenstern was dead, the country hailed
his successor. A foundation of millions lay firm beneath his feet.
The president left his bank early and went home on horseback to
luncheon. His wife saw the husband of many days ago and asked no more
of life, but sang among her flower jars.
"Will you come up to Government House this afternoon, dear? It's weeks
since you've been," she said, and he smiled and promised. "I've a new
frock," she confided shyly, like a girl, "and I think you'll like to
see it--now."
"I'll be back before four," he told her, "a little late, but I promised
one of our young fellows an appointment."
She pouted as she had done in her courtship days.
"A young man!"
"I can't disappoint him, sweetheart. Youngsters feel those things. He
wants more money, and I really believe he's worth it."
As he entered his private room something struck him disagreeably. He
glanced about--a sea-coal fire burned in the tiny English grate. He
scowled and touched a bell. Asked to explain, the page confessed that
he had promised Mrs. Weldon to put a fire there whenever any dampness
should threaten, and that to-day being noticeably damp he had kept his
word. The president nodded and the lad made his escape.
In another moment a slender young man entered, with a discreet knock,
and faced him. He seemed unaccountably excited--even blustering, for a
young man in his position.
The president took out his watch and counted the ticks to quiet his
irritation. We must be kind to the young ones--promotion means so much
to them.
"Let us look at all this a little quietly," he said, softened already,
"believe me, I want to satisfy every reasonable claim. It is to my
interest----"
He caught his breath. Something in the young man's attitude as he
faced him, level eyed, hands between his knees, a contemptuous smile on
his hard young face, smote him to the very marrow.
"What is he thinking of me?" flashed through him. The answer came like
the shot from a cannon.
"Is it to your interest to satisfy every reasonable claim on the ten
thousand pounds you borrowed from the bank last month, Mr. Weldon?"
The soft lines faded from his face and two grey streaks grew around his
mouth. The ticking of the watch in his hand rose and swelled and
filled the room--_one, two! one, two! one, two!_
So this was the end. Never a night of honest sleep again. Never a
free swell of the chest. To go down in sight of land, to drop just
outside the fort! _All over! All over! All over!_
The young man was still talking, quickly, definitely enough, but it
grew blurred as it reached his brain. He found his tongue, dry and
stiff in his mouth, asking questions mechanically?
Did any one know of this?
No, only the young man. He was not inclined to be rapacious. He had
an interest in a bank in Gibraltar, and two thousand pounds would
establish him there. He had thought it might be worth the president's
while to put him in the way of two thousand pounds--considering
everything. Promotion was slow in Bermuda ... dead men's shoes....
The tongue in Weldon's mouth asked, calmly enough, how he was to be
protected against further demands. The young man explained very
clearly. The president had managed thoroughly well: in a few days the
recent transaction would be a ripple under water. But during those few
days ... he smiled disagreeably.
The fire whistled in the grate; the bank was utterly still. They were
alone in it. In one second of time, years and the future itself
wheeled before Philip Weldon's sunken eyes. So the black drop _had_
lasted, after all, and would tint his life as long as that life lasted
on earth ... and longer? Anything was possible. Must the sordid drama
play itself eternally, through the years and countries, till the final
ripple hit the southern-most port of refuge? Would this young man sit
before a sea-coal fire in Gibraltar, one day, frozen, his life and
honour nipped at the root by the triumphant hound who had tracked down
his one fault? Before God, it was _his_ only one! He was white beside
some others who lived and died respected. Prove the contrary, any one!
_One, two! one, two! one, two!_ That watch. Either he was going mad
or it could be heard in the street outside, it shouted so. Who was he,
anyway--Deeping or himself? Who was that young man?
Suddenly his head cleared. He moistened his lips and leaned forward,
the watch crystal shivered in his grasp.
"And you are going----"
"To Gibraltar," said the young man briskly. "I am glad that you----"
"No," said Weldon thoughtfully, "I am afraid you are not going to
Gibraltar. You are going to die."
He pushed his hand back into his pocket and felt the precious hard
little object there. His finger clasped it, when a heavy blow sent him
reeling in his chair. A pain like a knife cut through his heart and he
fell heavily backward on his bent arm.
* * * * *
His eyes opened. He drew a deep breath. A tall, carved clock in the
corner struck, and a man, a lank, sandy man beside him, seemed to have
said something, for his voice was in the air.
"He must have had some papers--if there is anything wrong--good God,
Webb, what shall we do?"
This was a slender, foppish man, iron-grey. Weldon sprang to his feet,
pulling his right arm from behind him, wide, wide awake now. He was
free! He was free!
The clock struck again.
Thrusting his hand in his coat he drew out a sheaf of papers and
pressed them upon Webb.
"Here, gentlemen," he cried breathlessly, "are the papers you want!
And here," he threw a small folded slip on the floor, "is an
explanation that may help you with them. I wish you good-day."
To get out! To get out! He burst through the portieres and the door,
as four men, uniformed, with a black stretcher between them, entered it
from without. In the moment of his withdrawal from them he saw, as one
sees a stage group from his red plush seat, Potter, panting and
terrified, Fayles, anguished, Dupont dazed and suspicious, their eyes
fixed on Webb, who, calm as in his own office, ran over the sheaf with
his snake-like eye. Even as he nodded shrewdly, the stretcher was in
the room and the group dissolved.
Weldon found his hat in his hand; he polished it furiously as he strode
down the corridor. He threw himself on the outside door and as he
opened it, he heard through the unclosed door of the private room the
great clock strike eleven. With a shudder he plunged across the
threshold, out, out into the clean, free air.
THE LEGACY
Of course, it doesn't make any difference to me whether anybody
believes this or not. It's only because Dr. Stanchon asked me to, that
I'm writing it, anyway. And nobody needs to get the idea that I think
I'm a writer, either: I'm not such a fool as all that. But there's not
a nurse in the place who wouldn't lie down and let the doctor walk over
her, if he wanted to--and he knows it, too. Not that he's cocky about
it, though.
"You know I'm no magazine muck-rake, doctor," I said as I got out of
the motor (he had taken me up through the Park to Morningside and back,
while I was telling him), "and I'll probably be a little shy on style."
"Style be damned," he said. "You're long on facts, and that's all I
want, my dear. And don't for heaven's sake work in any of that
C----r's rot on me!"
I had to laugh, really, at that, because he was so funny about it. I
took care of Mr. C----r, the novelist, when he had his appendix
removed, and he used to dictate a lot to me, and Dr. Stanchon always
insisted that my charts were made out in his style, after that. But of
course they weren't.
"Just tell it as it happened, you know," he said, "and in your own
language. I'd like to keep it."
And of course anybody can do that. Although Mr. C----r told me once
that that was the hardest job he ever tackled. He said he could write
like his heroes easy enough, but not like himself. But he was always
joshing, that man.
"Why, Miss Jessop," he used to say to me, "if I could write like
myself, I'd have won the Nobel prize any time this last ten years!"
But he wrote awfully well, I always thought. Hardly a patient I had
that year, but if I offered to read, they'd say:
"Oh, well, what's the last C----r's?" and when I got to the parts I'd
taken for him (I learned stenography before I took up nursing) it used
to give me a queer sort of feeling, really!
It was Dr. Stanchon that got me the case. He 'phoned me to drop in at
the office, and a patient of mine took me around in her car: I'd been
shopping with her all the morning. She had just invited me to go out
to her country place for a few days, and I was quite pleased with the
idea, for I was a little tired: I was just off a hard pneumonia case
that had been pretty sad in lots of ways, and I felt a little blue.
It's an awfully funny thing, but nurses aren't supposed to have any
feelings: when that poor girl died, I felt as bad as if it had been my
own sister, almost. She was lovely.
But when the doctor asked if I was free, of course I had to say yes,
though my suit-case was all packed for the country.
"That's good," he said, "for I specially want you. It's nothing to do,
really, and you'll enjoy it, you're such a motor-fiend. There's a
family I'm looking after wants a nurse to go along on a tour through
the country--New England, I believe. They've got a big, dressy car,
and they expect to be gone anywhere from two weeks to a month, if the
weather's reasonably good."
"What do they want of a nurse?" I said.
"Oh, they just want one along, in case of anything happening," he said.
"They can afford it, so why shouldn't they have it?"
Well, that sounded all right, and yet I got the idea that it wasn't the
real reason, somehow. I don't know why. Those things are queer.
Of course, there was no reason why it shouldn't be so: I spent a month
on a private yacht, one summer, just to be there in case of sickness,
and nobody wanted me all the time we were gone, for a minute. As a
matter of fact, the lady's maid took care of me the first three days
out!
But I never happened to be asked on a motor-trip in that way, and it
seemed a little different. For of course you could pick up a nurse
almost anywhere, if you wanted one, on that sort of a tour, and every
place in the tonneau counts.
"Isn't there anything the matter with any of them?" I asked.
"What a suspicious lot you nurses are!" he said, with his queer little
chuckle (all the young doctors try to imitate it in the hospital).
"The daughter's a little nervous, that's all. It's for her they're
taking the trip, to give her a change."
"Now look here, Dr. Stanchon," I said, "I'm here to tell you that I
don't want any of your old dope cases, and I might just as well say so
first as last. That last young man of yours was about all I wanted.
He was a sweet creature, wasn't he?"
This probably sounds very fresh to you, but everybody knows me: I speak
right out, and if you want me, you have to stand it! And the way I
slaved over that boy, and he getting morphine from his valet right
along--it was simply disgusting.
"It's nothing like that--nothing at all," said he; "don't get so
excited!"
"Oh, very well," I said, "then I suppose it's melancholia. Not for
mine, if you please. Perhaps you remember that charming woman that
jumped out of the window? I'm no clairvoyant, and that was enough for
me, thank you."
"You're getting saucy, Jessop," he said, "but it's not melancholia.
But you certainly had a hard time with that one."
And I should say I did. The foxy thing was as good as gold for three
weeks, minded everything I said, fairly ate out of my hand, and got us
so that we all believed she did better for me alone than when I had
help handy. Of course I kept my eye on her, but nevertheless, the
other nurse just above gave up the job, and used to be off learning
French from the governess they had, most of the time. So when madam
got us where she wanted us, she tied me to the door knob and jumped out
of the window before my eyes! And I can tell you, the thirty dollars a
week that would get me on a case like that again, never left the
Treasury!
"I assure you it's not that at all," he said. "It's a case of nerves,
that's all."
"Nerves! nerves!" I repeated (I _was_ pretty snippy, I suppose).
"That's all right for the family, doctor, but what's the matter with
her? I've got to know, haven't I, some time?"
"Well, I must say you nurses are getting to be the limit," he said.
"The truth is, I spoil you. But there's something in what you say, of
course. Now here's the whole business. This girl, and she's a sweet,
lovely girl, too, had a maid, that was a sort of nurse, I believe, when
she was a child, and had seen her grow up, and was very much attached
to her, and all that. Like all those old servants she was pretty well
spoilt, I imagine, and seems to have had the girl under her thumb. She
always slept in the room with her. Now; the maid had bad headaches and
used to take all sorts of proprietary remedies for them--coal-tar, of
course, and probably had weakened her heart with them. Anyway, she
waked the girl up one night with her troubles and the girl gets up and
gives her an overdose in the dark, and the maid's dead in her bed in
the morning."
"Oh, I see," I said, trying to make up for my nasty attitude about that
suicidal woman. "So she's blue about it, and thinks she's to blame.
An automobile trip will certainly do her a lot of good."
"Well, there's a little more to it than that," he said. "As a matter
of fact, she's a very sensible sort of girl and she knows she's not to
blame, really. Of course it was pretty rough, but then, the maid had
no business to expect her to wait on her, and she ought to have given
careful directions about the dose, anyhow. She might have gone off any
time, and the girl knows it. But the night of the funeral, after the
girl was in bed, what does she see but the maid sitting on the foot of
the bed, looking at her! Of course she was overwrought nervously.
Only the trouble is, this was three months ago, and she swears the
woman comes every night. She knows it's hallucination, optical
delusion, anything you like, and she tries to treat it as such, but
she's beginning to break down under it, and I don't know what to do.
They've travelled, they've had her in a sanitarium, they've tried
auto-suggestion--no use. She's all right through the day, but at
night, in any bedroom, under any circumstances, this thing appears and
she just has to go through with it till morning."
"Why doesn't she have some one sleep with her?" I asked.
"It doesn't make the slightest difference," he said. "One week she had
a bed between her father's and mother's, but it was just the same, and
of course they got pretty bad, out of sympathy. They'd spend two or
three ordinary fortunes to cure her--but it's one of the cases where
money doesn't talk, unfortunately. So there we are. It came over me
last night that I'd like to have you try what you can do with her."
"But, heavens and earth, what good will I be?" I said. "Am I a
ghost-catcher? I never knew it."
"No," says he, "but I'm sorry for the ghost that would run up against
you, Jessop--honestly, I am!"
"Much obliged, I'm sure," I said, "but why doesn't she take her sleep
in the daytime? That would fool the ghost from her point of
view--wouldn't it?"
I'll never forget the look he gave me. "Listen to me, my girl," he
said, running out his jaw in the way he does when he's in dead earnest
and means you to know it, "listen to me, now. If that young woman ever
takes to living by night and sleeping by day, on that account, _she's a
gone goose_!"
"What do you mean?" said I.