Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team
[Illustration Caption: Martha told him that he had always been her
ideal and that she worshipped him.]
HER WEIGHT IN GOLD
By GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON
NEW YORK
1914
Nearly all of the stories presented in this volume appeared separately
in various magazines. The author desires to acknowledge his thanks to
the publications for courtesies extended by their editors: The National
Magazine, Short Stories, the Saturday Evening Post, The Reader, The
Woman's World, Good Housekeeping and The Illustrated Sunday Magazine.
CONTENTS
HER WEIGHT IN GOLD
THE MAID AND THE BLADE
MR. HAMSHAW'S LOVE AFFAIR
THE GREEN RUBY
THE GLOAMING GHOSTS
WHEN GIRL MEETS GIRL
QUIDDLERS THREE
THE LATE MR. TAYLOR
THE TEN DOLLAR BILL
HER WEIGHT IN GOLD
"Well the question is: how much does she weigh?" asked Eddie Ten Eyck
with satirical good humour.
His somewhat flippant inquiry followed the heated remark of General
Horatio Gamble, who, in desperation, had declared that his
step-daughter, Martha, was worth her weight in gold.
The General was quite a figure in the town of Essex. He was the
president of the Town and Country Club and, besides owning a splendid
stud, was also the possessor of a genuine Gainsborough, picked up at
the shop of an obscure dealer in antiques in New York City for a
ridiculously low price (two hundred dollars, it has been said), and
which, according to a rumour started by himself, was worth a hundred
thousand if it was worth a dollar, although he contrived to keep the
secret from the ears of the county tax collector. He had married late
in life, after accumulating a fortune that no woman could despise, and
of late years had taken to frequenting the Club with a far greater
assiduity than is customary in most presidents.
Young Mr. Ten Eyck's sarcasm was inspired by a mind's-eye picture of
Miss Martha Gamble. To quote Jo Grigsby, she was "so plain that all
comparison began and ended with her." Without desiring to appear
ungallant, I may say that there were many homely young women in Essex;
but each of them had the delicate satisfaction of knowing that Martha
was incomparably her superior in that respect.
"I am not jesting, sir," said the General with asperity. "Martha may
not be as good-looking as--er--some girls that I've seen, but she is a
jewel, just the same. The man who gets her for a wife will be a blamed
sight luckier than the fellows who marry the brainless little fools we
see trotting around like butterflies." (It was the first time that
Eddie had heard of trotting butterflies.)
"She's a fine girl," was his conciliatory remark.
"She is pure gold," said the General with conviction. "Pure gold, sir."
"A nugget," agreed Eddie expansively. "A hundred and eighty pound
nugget, General. Why don't you send her to a refinery?"
The General merely glared at him and subsided into thoughtful silence.
He was in the habit of falling into deep spells of abstraction at such
times as this. For the life of him, he couldn't understand how Martha
came by her excessive plainness. Her mother was looked upon as a
beautiful woman and her father (the General's predecessor) had been a
man worth looking at, even from a successor's point of view. That
Martha should have grown up to such appalling ugliness was a source of
wonder, not only to the General, but to Mrs. Gamble herself.
Young Mr. Ten Eyck was the most impecunious spendthrift in Essex. He
lived by his wits, with which he was more generously endowed than
anything in the shape of gold or precious jewels. His raiment was
accumulative. His spending-money came to him through an allowance that
his grandmother considerately delivered to him at regular periods, but
as is the custom with such young men he was penniless before the
quarter was half over. At all times he was precariously close to being
submerged by his obligations. Yet trouble sat lightly upon his head, if
one were to judge by outward appearances. Beneath a bland, care-free
exterior, however, there lurked in Edward's bosom a perpetual pang of
distress over the financial situation.
What worried him most was the conviction that all signs pointed toward
the suspension of credit in places where he owed money, and, Young Mr.
Ten Eyck's sarcasm was inspired by a mind's-eye picture of Miss Martha
Gamble. To quote Jo Grigsby, she was "so plain that all comparison
began and ended with her." Without desiring to appear ungallant, I may
say that there were many homely young women in Essex; but each of them
had the delicate satisfaction of knowing that Martha was incomparably
her superior in that respect.
"I am not jesting, sir," said the General with asperity. "Martha may
not be as good-looking as--er--some girls that I've seen, but she is a
jewel, just the same. The man who gets her for a wife will be a blamed
sight luckier than the fellows who marry the brainless little fools we
see trotting around like butterflies." (It was the first time that
Eddie had heard of trotting butterflies.)
"She's a fine girl," was his conciliatory remark.
"She is pure gold," said the General with conviction. "Pure gold, sir."
"A nugget," agreed Eddie expansively. "A hundred and eighty pound
nugget, General. Why don't you send her to a refinery?"
The General merely glared at him and subsided into thoughtful silence.
He was in the habit of falling into deep spells of abstraction at such
times as this. For the life of him, he couldn't understand how Martha
came by her excessive plainness. Her mother was looked upon as a
beautiful woman and her father (the General's predecessor) had been a
man worth looking at, even from a successor's point of view. That
Martha should have grown up to such appalling ugliness was a source of
wonder, not only to the General, but to Mrs. Gamble herself.
Young Mr. Ten Eyck was the most impecunious spendthrift in Essex. He
lived by his wits, with which he was more generously endowed than
anything in the shape of gold or precious jewels. His raiment was
accumulative. His spending-money came to him through an allowance that
his grandmother considerately delivered to him at regular periods, but
as is the custom with such young men he was penniless before the
quarter was half over. At all times he was precariously close to being
submerged by his obligations. Yet trouble sat lightly upon his head, if
one were to judge by outward appearances. Beneath a bland, care-free
exterior, however, there lurked in Edward's bosom a perpetual pang of
distress over the financial situation.
What worried him most was the conviction that all signs pointed toward
the suspension of credit in places where he owed money, and, as he owed
without discrimination, the future seemed hard to contemplate.
Prudent mothers stood defiantly between him and what might have been
prosperity. He could win the hearts of daughters with shameful
regularity and ease, but he could not delude the heads of the families
to which they belonged. They knew him well and wisely.
The conversation between him and General Gamble took place in the
reading-room of the Town and Country Club. There was a small table
between them, and glasses.
"What is the market price of gold to-day, General?" asked Eddie
impudently, after he had watched the old man's gloomy countenance out
of the corner of his eye for the matter of three minutes or more.
The General regarded him with deep scorn. "Gold? What do you know about
gold? You seldom see anything more precious than copper."
"That's no joke," agreed Eddie with his frank smile. "I am the only,
original penny limit. That reminds me, General. I meant to speak of it
before, but somehow it slipped my mind. Could you lend me--"
The General held up his hand. "I've been waiting for that, Eddie. Don't
humiliate yourself by asking for a small amount. I haven't the remotest
idea how much you already owe me, but it doesn't matter in view of the
fact that you'll never pay it. You were about to request the loan of
ten dollars, my boy. Why not ask for a respectable amount?--say, fifty
dollars."
Eddie's heart leaped. "That's just the amount I meant to ask you to let
me have for a week or two. 'Pon my word, it is."
"Well," said the General, taking a notebook from his pocket and
carefully jotting down an entry with his gold-tipped pencil, "I
cheerfully give it to you, Eddie. I shall credit your account with that
amount. Fifty dollars--um! It is a new system I have concluded to
adopt. Every time you ask me for a loan I shall subtract the amount
from what you already owe me. In time, you see, the whole debt will be
lifted,--and you'll not owe me a cent." Eddie blinked. A slow grin
crept into his face as he grasped the irony in the General's scheme.
"Fine financing, General. It suits me to a dot. By the way, do you
think you can spare another hundred or two?"
"The books are closed for the month," said the General placidly. He
rang the bell on the table. "More ice, boy, and the same bottle. As I
was saying, Eddie, I can't for the life of me see why you fellows are
so blind when it comes to Martha. She is--"
"We are not blind," interrupted Eddie, not at all annoyed by his
failure to negotiate the loan. "That's just the trouble. If a blind man
came along, I've no doubt he could see something attractive in her."
"Damme! If she were my own daughter, I'd thrash you for that remark,
sir."
"If she were your own daughter, you wouldn't be discussing her with a
high-ball in your hand."
The General coughed. "Ahem! Eddie, I'd give a good deal to see that
girl married. Leave the bottle on the table, boy. She will have money--a
lot of it--one of these days. There are dozens of young men that we
know who'd do 'most anything for money. I--By George!" He broke off to
stare with glittering eyes at the face of the young man opposite. A
great thought was expanding in his brain.
Eddie shifted nervously. "Why are you looking at me like that? I don't
need it that badly."
"I'd never thought of you, Eddie,--'pon my word I hadn't. Not until
this moment. You need money worse than any one I know. There isn't
another girl in town who would marry you, and Martha WOULD. Believe me,
she would! And let me tell you, sir, you couldn't find a truer wife
than Martha. You--"
"She couldn't help being true," mused Eddie, rattling the ice in his
empty glass. The General pushed the bottle toward him.
"She is a bit older than you, I'll admit," pursued the General
reflectively. "Worth her weight in gold," he murmured with a sort of
ecstasy in his voice.
Young Ten Eyck assumed an injured air. "I am poor, General Gamble, but
I am NOT blind."
"She likes you," went on the older man, revelling in the new-found
hope. "You don't amount to much,--and she knows it, I suppose,--but you
can have her, my boy. She'll be the richest girl in Essex when I die.
Take her, my boy; I gladly give my consent. Will you permit me to
congratu--"
"One moment, if you please. In a case like this, you would NEVER die.
It would be just my luck. No, I thank you. I decline the honour. If you
could perform a miracle and transform her into REAL gold, I might
consider the proposition, but not as it now stands."
"She weighs about one-eighty," said the General speculatively.
Eddie glanced at him sharply. "One hundred and eighty pounds in gold.
Quite a pile, eh?"
The General was silent for a long time, permitting the vague idea to
thrive in his harassed mind. His young companion was moodily trying to
estimate the value of one hundred and eighty pounds of virgin gold.
At last the General reached a conclusion. It was a rather heroic
effort. He relighted his cigar with trembling fingers.
"I suppose you haven't heard of the wedding present I intend to bestow
upon the fortunate man who leads her to the altar!" said he, casting
the fatal die.
"No; but a separate house and lot wouldn't be despised, I should say."
"Nonsense. By the way, Eddie, this must not go any farther. It's
strictly entre nous. I don't want to have the dear girl pestered to
death by fortune hunters. On his wedding day the man who marries Martha
is to have the equivalent of her weight in double eagles. Isn't that
ra--rather handsome?"
He sank back and waited for the seed to sink deeply into Ten Eyck soil.
Eddie's eyelids flickered. The grin of a Cheshire cat came to his lips
involuntarily and remained there without modification for the matter of
an hour or two.
"Great!" he said at last.
"I must be on my way," observed the wily step-father, beating a retreat
so hastily that Eddie missed the opportunity to scoff. But the
contemplative smile remained just as he had left it.
Several days passed before the two met again. The General had sowed
wisely, and he was reasonably certain of the harvest. He knew that it
would be hard for young Ten Eyck to bring himself to the sacrificial
altar; but that he would come and would bend his neck was a foregone
conclusion. He went on the theory that if you give a man rope enough
he'll hang himself, and he felt that Eddie was almost at the end of his
rope in these cruel days.
As for Eddie, he tried to put the thought out of his mind, but as time
went on he caught himself many times--(with a start of shame)--trying
to approximate the worth of Martha Gamble on the basis set forth by her
step-father. The second day after the interview he consulted a friend
of his who happened to be a jeweller. From him he ascertained the
present market value of twenty-four carat gold. So much for the start!
His creditors were threatening to sue or to "black-list" him; his
friends long since had begun to dodge him, fearing the habitual request
for temporary loans; his allowance was not due for several weeks.
Circumstances were so harsh that even Martha appeared desirable by
contrast. He felt an instinctive longing for rest, and peace,
and--pecuniary absolution.
He was therefore deserving of pity when he finally surrendered to the
inevitable. How he cursed himself--(and his creditors)--as he set out
to find the General on that bright spring day when every other living
creature on earth seemed to be happy and free from care. Kismet!
General Gamble was reading in a quiet corner of the Club. That is to
say, he had the appearance of one reading. As a matter of fact, he had
been watching Eddie's shy, uncertain evolutions for half an hour or
more, and he chuckled inwardly. As many as ten times the victim
strolled through the reading room, on the pretext of looking for some
one. Something told the General that he was going to lose Martha.
At last Eddie approached him. He came with the swift impetuosity of a
man who has decided and is afraid to risk a reaction.
"Hello, General," was his crisp greeting as he dropped into the chair
which the astute old gentleman had placed, with premeditation, close to
his own some time before. He went straight to the point. "I've been
thinking over what you said the other day about Martha. Well, I'll
marry her."
"You!" exclaimed the General, simulating incredulity. "You!"
"Yes. I'll be IT. How much does she really weigh?"
"Are--are you in earnest, my boy?" cried the other. "Why, she'll be
tickled to death!"
"May I have her?"
"God bless you,--YES!"
"I suppose I ought to go up and see her and--and tell her I love her,"
said Eddie lugubriously. "Or," with a fine inspiration, "perhaps you
wouldn't mind telling her for me. I--"
"Tell her yourself, you young rascal," cried the General in fine good
humour, poking his prospective stepson-in-law in the ribs.
Eddie winced. "You can do that to me now, but if you jab me in the ribs
after I'm married I'll jab you in the eye."
"Good! I like your spirit. Gad, I love a fighting-man! And now, my boy,
it seems to me there's no sense in delaying matters. You have my
consent. As a matter of form you ought to get Martha's. She'll take
you, of course, but I--I suppose she would like the idea of being
proposed to. They all do. I daresay you two can settle the point in a
jiffy in some quiet nook up at the--But, there! I shall not offer
suggestions to you in an affair of the heart, my son. Will you be up to
see her this evening?"
Eddie drew a long breath. "If--if she has no other engagement."
"Engagement?" gasped the General, with popping eyes. "She hasn't sat up
after eight o'clock in four years, except on Christmas Eve. You won't
be disturbed; so come around."
"Perhaps, to be sure of finding her up, I'd better come to dinner."
"By all means. Stay as late as you like, too. She won't get sleepy
to-night. Not a bit of it." He arose to depart.
"Just a moment, General," said Eddie curtly. "We've got a few
preliminaries to arrange before I commit myself. Here is a paper for
you to sign. Business is business, you know, and this is the first
really business-like thing I've ever done. Be good enough to read this
paper very carefully before signing."
General Gamble put on his glasses and read the brief, but ample
contract which bound him to pay to Edward Peabody Ten Eyck, on the day
that he was married to Martha Gamble, for better or for worse, an
amount equivalent to the value of her weight in pure gold. He hesitated
for one brief, dubious moment, then called for pen, ink, and paper.
When these articles were brought to him, he deliberately drew up a
second contract by which Edward Ten Eyck bound himself to wed Martha
Gamble (and no other) on a day to be named by mutual consent at a later
date--but not very much later, he was privately resolved.
"Now," said he, "we'll each sign one. You sha'n't get the better of me,
my boy."
Each signed in the presence of two waiters, neither of whom knew the
nature of the instruments.
"Troy weight," said the General magnanimously. "She is a jewel, you
know."
"Certainly. It's stipulated in the contract--twenty-four carat gold.
You said pure, you remember. You may have noticed that I take her at
the prevailing market price of gold. It is now four cents a carat.
Twenty-four carats in a pennyweight. That makes ninety-six cents per
pennyweight. Twenty pennyweight in an ounce, and there we have nineteen
dollars and twenty cents per ounce. We'll--we'll weigh her in by
ounces."
"That's reasonable. The price of gold isn't likely to fluctuate much."
"It must be distinctly understood that you keep her well-fed from this
day on, General. I won't have her fluctuating. She hasn't any silly
notions about reducing, has she?"
"My dear fellow, she poses as a Venus," cried the General. "Good! And
here's another point: pardon me for suggesting it, but you understand
that she's to weigh in--er--that is to say, her clothing is to be
weighed in with her."
"What's that?"
"You heard what I said. She's to be settled for--dressed." "Good Lord,
she isn't a chicken!"
"Nobody said she was. It is fit and proper that her garments should be
weighed with her. Hang it all, man, I'm marrying her clothes as well as
anything else."
"I will not agree to that. It's preposterous."
"I don't mean her entire wardrobe. Just the going-away gown and hat.
You can't very well ask her to weigh herself without any--But as
gentlemen we need not pursue the matter any farther. You shall have
your way about it."
"She has a fine pair of scales in her bedroom. She weighs herself every
night for her own gratification. I don't see why she can't do it once
or twice for my sake."
"But women are such dreadful liars about their own weight. She'll be
sure to lop off fifteen or twenty pounds in the telling. Hang it, I
want witnesses."
The General assumed a look of distress. "Remember, sir, that you are
speaking of your future wife. You'll have to take her word."
Eddie slumped down in his chair, muttering something about
niggardliness.
"I suppose I'll have to concede the point." His eyes twinkled. "I say,
it would be a horrible shock to you, General, if she were to refuse me
to-night."
"She sha--WON'T!" said the General, setting his jaw, but turning a
shade paler. "She'll jump at the chance."
Eddie sighed dismally. "Doesn't it really seem awful to you?"
"Having you for a son-in-law? YES."
"You know I'm only doing this because I want to set up in business for
myself and need the money," explained the groom-elect in an effort to
justify himself. "Oh, another little point. I'd almost forgotten it. I
suppose it will be perfectly convenient for us to live with you for a
year or two, until I--"
"No!" thundered the General. "Not by a long shot! You go to
housekeeping at once, do you understand?"
"But think of her poor mother's feelings--"
"Her mother has nothing whatever to do with it, sir. See here, we'll
put that in the contract." He was visibly disturbed by the thought of
what the oversight might have meant to him. "And now, when shall we
have the wedding?"
"Perhaps we'd better leave that to Martha."
"We'll leave nothing to anybody."
"She'll want to get a trousseau together and all that sort of thing.
I'm ready to go through with it at any time, but you know what girls
are." He was perspiring.
"Yes," said the General with a reminiscent light in his eye. "I daresay
they all enjoy a few weeks of courtship and love-making."
Eddie gulped suddenly and then shot a quick, hunted look toward the
buffet door.
"Have a drink?" demanded the other abruptly. He had caught the sign of
danger.
They strolled into the buffet, arm-in-arm, one loving the world in
general, the other hating everybody in it, including the General.
Before they parted Eddie Ten Eyck extracted a solemn promise from his
future step-father-in-law that he would ascertain Martha's exact weight
and report the figure to him on the following day.
"It will seem easier if I know just about what to expect," explained
the young man.
That very afternoon the General, with a timidity that astonished him,
requested his stepdaughter to report her correct weight to him on the
following morning. He kept his face well screened behind his newspaper
while speaking, and his voice was a little thick.
"What for, father?" asked Martha, looking up from her book in surprise.
Her eyes seemed to grow even larger than the lenses of her spectacles.
"Why, you see--er--I'm figuring on a little more insurance," he
stammered.
"What has my weight to do with it?"
"It isn't life insurance," he made haste to explain. A bright idea
struck him. "It is fire insurance, my dear."
"I don't see what my--"
"Of course you don't," he interrupted genially. "It's this way. The
fire insurance companies are getting absurdly finicky about the risks.
Now they insist on knowing the weight of every inmate of the houses
they insure. Has something to do with the displacement of oxygen, I
believe. Your mother and I--and the servants, too--expect to be weighed
to-night."
"Oh," she said, and resumed her reading.
He waited for a while, fumbling nervously with his watch chain.
"By the way, my dear," he said, "what have you been doing to that bully
chap, Eddie Ten Eyck?"
"Doing to him? What do you mean?"
"Just what I say."
"I haven't seen the miserable loafer in months," she said. Her voice
was heavy, not unlike that of a man. For some reason she shuffled
uneasily in her chair. The book dropped into her capacious lap.
"You've been doing something behind my back, you sly minx," he chided.
"What do you think happened to-day?"
"To Eddie Ten Eyck?"
"In a way, yes. He came up to me in the Club and asked my permission to
pay--er--court to you, my dear. He said he loved you better than--Hey!
Look out there! What the dev--Hi, Mother! Come here quick! Good Heaven,
she's going to die!"
Poor Martha had collapsed in a heap, her arms dangling limply over the
side of the chair, her eyes bulging and blinking in a most grotesque
manner. At first glance one would have sworn she was strangling.
Afterwards the General denounced himself as an unmitigated idiot for
having given her such a shock. He ought to have known better.
Mrs. Gamble rushed downstairs in great alarm, and it was not long
before they had Martha breathing naturally, although the General almost
made that an impossibility by the ruthless manner in which he fanned
her with the very book she had been reading--a heavy volume which he
neglected to open.
The whirligig room reduced itself to a library for Martha once more,
not so monotonous as it once had been, no doubt, but still a library.
Out of the turmoil of her own emotions, she managed to grasp enough of
what the General was saying to convince herself that this was not
another dream but a reality, and she became so excited that her mother
advised her to go to bed for a while before dinner, if she expected to
appear at her best when Eddie arrived.
For the first time since early childhood, Martha blushed as she
attempted to trip lightly upstairs. As a matter of fact, she DID trip
on next to the top step and sprawled. Under ordinary circumstances she
would have been as mad as a wet hen, but on this happy occasion she
merely cried out, when her parents dashed into the hall below on
hearing the crash:
"It's good luck to fall upstairs!"
The fires of life had been rekindled, and when such a thing happens to
a person of Martha's horse-power, the effect is astonishing. At four o
'clock she began dressing for the coming suitor. When he arrived at
seven, she was still trying to decide whether her hair looked better by
itself or with augmentations.
Below, in the huge library, Eddie Ten Eyck sat disconsolate, nervously
contemplating the immediate future. He was all alone. Not even a
servant was to be seen or heard. It was as still as the Christmas Eve
whose jingle we love so well.
Never in all his aimless existence had he felt so small, so
unimportant, so put-upon as at this moment. His gaze, sweeping the
ceiling of the library, tried to penetrate to the sacred precincts
above. Even the riches and the stateliness of the Gamble mansion failed
to reimburse his fancy for the losses it was sustaining with each
succeeding minute of suspense. Dimly he recalled that General Gamble
had spent nearly half a million dollars in the construction of this
imposing edifice. The library was worth more than one hundred thousand
dollars; the stables were stocked with innumerable thoroughbreds; the
landed estate was measured by sections instead of acres; the stocks and
bonds were--But even as he considered the question of assets, there
surged up before him an overwhelming liability that brought the
General's books to balance.
By this time, Eddie had become so proficient in the art of rapid
calculation that he could estimate within a few ounces just what a
person would have to weigh in order to be worth as much as the library,
the mansion, or the bonds. The great Gainsborough that hung in the west
end of the room corresponded in value (if reports were true concerning
the price Gamble had asked for it) to a woman weighing a shade over two
hundred and three pounds troy.
He lifted a handsome bronze figure from the library table and murmured:
"It's worth a ten-pound baby, twenty-two hundred dollars and a
fraction."
The General came in, followed closely by the butler, who bore a tray
holding at least ten cocktails. After the greetings, Eddie glanced
uneasily at the cocktails.
"Is--is it to be as big a dinner as all this?" he asked ruefully.
"Oh, no. Just family, my boy; we four. The women don't drink, Eddie, so
help yourself."
Eddie gratefully swallowed three in rapid succession.
"I see you mean to make it absolutely necessary for me to take the gold
cure," he said with a forlorn smile.
Martha put in an appearance at seven-thirty, having kept dinner waiting
for half an hour, much to the amazement of those who had lived with her
long enough to know her promptness in appearing for meals.
Mr. Ten Eyck, who was a rather good-looking chap and fastidious to a
degree, did not possess the strength to keep his heart anywhere near
the customary level. It went hurtling to his very boots. He shook hands
with the blushing young woman and then involuntarily shrank toward the
cocktails, disregarding the certainty that he would find them lukewarm
and tasteless.
She was gotten up for the occasion. But, as it was not her costume that
he was to embrace in matrimony, we will omit a description of the
creation she wore. It was pink, of course, and cut rather low in order
to protect her face from the impudent gaze of man.
Her face? Picture the face of the usual heroine in fiction and then
contrive to think of the most perfect antithesis, and you have Martha
in your mind's eye much more clearly than through any description I
could hope to present.
She was squat. Her somewhat brawny shoulders sloped downward and
forward--and perhaps a little sidewise, I am not sure about that. Her
hair was straw-coloured and stringy in spite of the labour she had
expended on it with curling-iron and brush. As to her face, the more
noticeable features were a very broad, flat nose; a comparatively
chinless under jaw, on which grew an accidental wisp of hair or two; a
narrow and permanently decorated upper lip. When she smiled--well, the
effect was discouraging, to say the least. Her eyes were pale and
prominent. In spite of all this, practice in rouging might have helped
her a little, but she had had no practice. Young men never came to the
house, and it was not worth while to keep up appearances for the old
ones who were content to dodder at the end of the way. You would say at
a glance that she was a very strong and enduring person, somewhat along
the lines of a suffragette ward politician.
The dinner was a genial one, after all. The General was at his best,
and the wine was perfect. In lucid moments, Eddie found himself
reflecting: "If I can drink enough of this I'll have delirium tremens
and then I won't have to believe all that I see."
Martha had always called him Eddie. In fact, every one called him
Eddie. He was that sort of a chap. To-night, he observed, with a hazy
interest, she addressed him as Mr. Ten Eyck, and rather frequently, at
that. It was: "Do you really think so, Mr. Ten Eyck?" or "How very
amusing, Mr. Ten Eyck," or "Good gracious, Mr. Ten Eyck," until poor
Eddie, unused to this distinction, reached a point where he muttered
something in way of protest that caused the General to cough violently
in order to give his guest a chance to recover himself before it was
too late.
After dinner the General and Mrs. Gamble retired somewhat
precipitously, leaving the young people alone.
Eddie heaved a tremendous sigh of decision and bravely crossed the
room. Martha was seated upon the davenport, nervously toying with her
fan. He saw with misgiving that she evidently expected something was
going to happen. Her eyes were downcast.
He stood silent and somewhat awed before her for many minutes, taking
the final puffs at an abbreviated cigarette. Then he abruptly sat down
at the opposite end of the couch. As he did so, she thought she heard
him mutter something about "one hundred and seventy, at the lowest."
"So many people have given up playing golf, Mr. Ten Eyck," she said. "I
am surprised that you keep it up."
"Golf?" he murmured blankly.
"Weren't you speaking of your score for the eighteen holes?"
He gazed at her helplessly for a moment, then set his jaw.
"Say, Martha," he began, in a high and unnatural treble, "I am a man of
few words. Will you marry me? Oh! Ouch! What the dickens are you doing?
O--oh! Don't jump at me like that!"
The details are painful and it isn't necessary to go into them. Suffice
it to say, she told him that he had always been her ideal and that she
had worshipped him from childhood's earliest days. He, on the other
hand, confessed, with more truth than she could have guessed, that he
had but recently come to a realisation of her true worth, and what she
really meant to him.
She set the wedding day for November the eleventh,--just seven weeks
off.
Before leaving,--she kept him until nearly twelve,--he playfully came
up behind her as she stood near the table, and, placing his hands under
her elbows, said:
"Hold 'em stiff now."
Then, to her amazement, he tried to lift her from the floor. He
couldn't budge her.
"It's all right," he exclaimed exultantly and refused to explain.
That night in his dreams an elephant came along and stood for a while
on his chest, but he was used to it by that time, and didn't mind.
The next morning, General Gamble reported by telephone that Martha
weighed one hundred and sixty-eight pounds and nine ounces. A minute
later, Eddie was at his desk calculating.
On the twenty-third of September she weighed two thousand and
twenty-five ounces troy. At nineteen dollars and twenty cents an ounce
she was then worth $38,880. With any sort of luck, he figured, she
might be expected to pick up a few pounds as the result of her
new-found happiness and peace of mind. Her worries were practically
over. Contented people always put on flesh. If everything went well,
she ought to represent at least $40,000 on her wedding day. Perhaps
more.
He haunted the Country Club by day and the town clubs by night, always
preoccupied and figuring, much to the astonishment of his friends and
cronies. He scribbled inexplicable figures on the backs of golf cards,
bar checks, and menus.
By the end of the first week he had made definite promises to all of
his creditors. He guaranteed that every one should be paid before the
middle of November. Moreover, he set aside in his calculations the sum
of $7,000 for the purchase of a new house. Early in the second week he
had virtually expended $15,000 of what he expected to receive, and was
giving thanks for increased opportunities.
He called at the Gamble house regularly, even faithfully. True, he
urged Martha to play on the piano nearly all of the time, but to all
intents and purposes it was a courtship.
When the engagement was announced, the town--in utter ignorance of the
conspiracy--went into convulsions. The half-dozen old maids in upper
circles who had long since given up hope began to prink and perk
themselves into an amazing state of rejuvenation,--revival, you might
say. They tortured themselves with the hope that never dies. They even
lent money to impecunious gentlemen who couldn't believe their senses
and went about pinching themselves.
Eddie Ten Eyck's credit was so good that he succeeded in borrowing
nearly five thousand dollars from erstwhile adamantine sceptics.
One day the General met him in the street. The old soldier wore a
troubled look. "She's sick," he said without preamble. "Got pains all
over her and chills, too."
"Is it serious?" demanded Eddie.
"I don't know. Neither does the doctor. He's waiting for developments.
Took a culture to-day. She's in bed, however."
"SHE MUST NOT DIE," said Eddie, a desperate gleam in his eye. "I--can't
afford to have anything like that happen now. Can't she be vaccinated?"
At the end of the second day thereafter it was known all over town that
Martha Gamble was ill with typhoid fever. She was running a temperature
of 104 degrees and two doctors had come up from New York to consult
with the Essex physician, bringing with them a couple of trained
nurses. They said her heart was good.
After the consultation, the General and Eddie sat alone in the library,
woebegone and disconsolate.
"They think they can pull her through," said the former vaguely.
"Curse 'em," grated Eddie; "they've GOT to do it. If there is the least
prospect of her dying, General, I must insist that the wedding day be
moved forward. I'll--I'll marry her to-day. By Jove, it might go a long
way toward reducing her temperature."
"Impossible! We shall stick to the original agreement." "Confound you,
I believe you are hoping she'll die before the eleventh of November. It
would be just like you, General Gamble."
"I'm not hoping for anything of the sort, sir," thundered the other.
"But, if it SHOULD happen--" He did not finish the sentence, but there
was a green light in his eyes.
Eddie was silent for many minutes.
"And if she SHOULD die, where do I come in, or get off, or whatever is
the proper thing to say in the circumstances? It wouldn't be fair to
me, General Gamble. You know it wouldn't. It would be a damned outrage.
Here am I, a devoted lover, eager to make her happy--to MAKE HER LAST
MOMENTS happy ones, mind you, and you sit there and deny her the
consolation of--"
"All's fair in love, my boy," said the General blandly.
"Rats!"
"Martha wasn't strong enough to stand the excitement. It was like a
sudden and frightful change in the weather. Her constitution couldn't
fight it off." "Constitution? Good Lord!"
"We ought to make allowances, my boy."
"I am in no position to make allowances. Are these doctors any good?"
"The best in New York City."
"And the nurses? Everything depends on good nursing."
"They are real Canadians."
"General, up to the time I was eleven years old I said my prayers every
night. I'm going to begin again to-night," said Eddie solemnly, as he
passed his hand across his brow.
The days went by with monotonous similarity. Bright or dark, wet or
dry, they looked the same to Eddie Ten Eyck. At first he had been
permitted to visit her once or twice a day, staying for a few minutes
on each occasion. After a while the visits were stopped by the doctor's
order. But still he haunted the Gamble mansion. He waylaid the doctor;
he bribed or coerced the nurses; he watched the sick-room door with the
eye of a hungry dog; he partook inordinately of the General's liquors.
Martha was delirious, that much he was able to gather by persistent
inquiry. She seemed obsessed with the idea that she and Eddie were to
keep house in Heaven, with two cherubs and a hypodermic syringe.
Mrs. Gamble was deeply touched and not a little surprised by the
devotion of her daughter's fiance. She turned to him in these hours of
despair and gave to him a large share of her pity and consolation. She
asked him to pray for Martha. He said he had been praying for some one
else nearly all his life, but henceforth would put in a word for Martha.
The wedding day was near at hand when an unexpected and alarming
complication set in. The doctors were hurriedly gathered in
consultation. There was a crisis. One of the nurses confided to Mr. Ten
Eyck that there was no hope, but the other declared that if the patient
survived the eighth of November she would "be out of the woods." The
eighth was three days off. Those three days were spent by Eddie in a
state of fearful suspense. He implored Providence and Fate to stand by
him until after the eleventh. He went so far as to add a couple of days
to include the thirteenth, not being superstitious. The night of the
eighth was a memorable one. No one in the Gamble house went to bed. The
ninth came and then the doctors appeared with glad tidings. The crisis
was past and there was every chance in the world for the patient to
recover, unless of course, some unforeseen complication intervened.
Eddie staggered out to the stables and performed a dance of joy.
"What's her temperature?" he demanded of one of the grooms, absently
repeating a question he had asked five thousand times during the past
few weeks. "I beg your pardon, Smith." Then he hurried back to the
house. Meeting one of the doctors he gripped him by the arm.
"Is she sure to live, doc--doctor?"
"Forever," said the doctor, meaning to comfort him.
"No!" gasped Eddie.
"Let me congratulate you, Mr. Ten Eyck. She is quite rational now
and--pardon me if I repeat a sick-room secret--she declares that there
shall be no postponement of the wedding. She is superstitious about
postponements."
Eddie hesitated. "Ahem! Is--is she emaciated?"
"No more than might be expected."
"I--I hope she hasn't wasted very much."
"Skin and bones," said the doctor with the most professional bluntness.
Eddie mopped his brow. "You--you don't mean it! See here, doctor, you
ought to advise very strongly against the--er--marriage at this time.
Tell her it would kill her. The shock, I mean. I am willing to
wait--GOD KNOWS, I am only too willing to wait--until she is strong and
well and herself once more. Tell her--"
"Perhaps you would better talk it over with her father, Mr. Ten Eyck. I
am not--"
"Her father--" began Eddie, but caught himself up.
"I would not answer for her safety if a postponement were even
suggested. Her heart is set on it, my dear fellow. She will be strong
enough to go through with it."
"But I want to be married in church."
"I daresay you will agree with me when I say that your feelings are not
to be considered in a crisis of this kind," said the doctor coldly, and
moved away.
At noon on the eleventh Martha awoke from a sound and restful sleep.
Sweet lassitude enveloped her, but her mind went groping for something
that had been troubling her in a vague sort of way for the last
forty-eight hours.
"Is it the eleventh?" she whispered, stretching out her hand to the
watchful nurse.
"Yes, my dear. Now try to go to sleep again--"
"Where is Mr. Ten Eyck?"
"Sh!"
"What time is it!"
"Now don't worry about the time--"
"Is it night or day?"
"It is noon."
"I am to be married at eight o'clock this evening, Miss Feeney."
"Yes, yes, I know," soothingly.
"You might send word to Mr. Ten Eyck that I shall be ready. He may
forget the ring unless you tell him that--there--is--to be--no post--"
She went to sleep in the middle of postponement.
While the nurses were preparing her for the ceremony, General Gamble
sent word into the sick-room that the doctor desired her correct
weight--for scientific purposes.
The patient, too weak to help herself, was lifted upon the scales,
where she remained long enough for it to be seen that she weighed
seventy-three pounds and eight ounces. She was then hustled into bed,
but seemed to be in even better spirits than before, confiding to the
nurses that she knew Mr. Ten Eyck was partial to slender women, and
that if she had anything to do with it she'd never weigh more than one
hundred and ten again, "as long as she lived."
"One hundred and ten is a lovely weight, don't you think, Miss Feeney!"
she asked.
Miss Feeney was feeling her pulse. The other nurse was trying to stick
a mouth thermometer between the patient's lips.
"It is a much lovelier weight than seventy-three," said Miss Feeney
gently.
The General, in the privacy of his bed-chamber, reduced the pounds to
ounces and found that Martha, in her present state, represented eight
hundred and eighty-four ounces. He could not suppress a chuckle, even
though he felt very mean about it. She was worth $16,972 in gold. Her
illness had cost him approximately $2,000 in doctors' fees, et cetera,
but it had cost Eddie Ten Eyck $21,911 in pure gold, with twenty cents
over in silver.
It is said that the bridegroom almost collapsed when he looked for the
first time upon his emaciated investment. It was worse than he had
expected. She was literally "skin and bones."
Mechanically, semi-paralysed, he made the responses to the almost
staccato words of the clergyman. The ceremony was hurried through at a
lively rate, but to Eddie it seemed to take hours. Her fingers felt
like a closed fan in his own pulseless hand. He replied "I do" and "I
will" without really being aware of the fact, and all the time he was
gazing blankly at her, trying to remember where he had seen her before.
Away back in the dim, forgotten ages there was a robust, squat,
valuable figure; but--this! His brain reeled. He was being married to
an utter stranger. His loss was incalculable.
We will speed over the ensuing months. It goes without saying that
Martha became well and strong and abominably vigorous in the matter of
appetite. Her days of convalescence--But why go into them? They are
interesting only to the person who is emerging from a period of
suffering and fasting. Why dwell upon the reflections of Eddie Ten Eyck
as he saw an erstwhile stranger transformed into an old acquaintance
before his very eyes? Why go into the painful details attending the
stealthy payment of nearly $17,000 by the party of the first part to
the party of the second part, and why tell of the uses to which the
latter was compelled to put this meagre fortune almost immediately
after acquiring it? No one cares to be harassed by these miserable,
mawkish details.
One really needs to know but one thing: the bridegroom soon stood shorn
of all his ill-gotten gains, unless we except the wife of whom no form
of adversity could rob him.
A month after the wedding, Eddie was eagerly awaiting the fourth
quarterly instalment of his allowance. He was out of debt, it is true,
but he never had been poorer in all his life. The thing that appalled
him most was the fact that he had unlimited credit and did not possess
the courage to take advantage of it. He could have borrowed right and
left; he could have run up stupendous accounts; he could have lived
like a lord. But Martha, before she was really able to sit up in bed,
began to talk about something in a cottage,--something that made him
turn pale with desperation,--and bread and cheese and kisses, entirely
with an eye to thrift and what Eddie considered a nose for squalor. He
couldn't imagine anything more squalid than a subsistence on the three
commodities mentioned. In fact, he preferred starvation.
Martha harped for hours at a stretch on how economically she could
conduct their small establishment, once they got into the house he had
bound himself to buy in his days of affluence. She seemed to take it
for granted that she would be obliged to skimp and pinch in order to
get along on what Eddie would be able to earn.
"Our meat and grocery bills will be almost nothing, Eddie dear," she
said one day, with an enthusiasm that discouraged him. "You see, I mean
to keep my figure, now that I've got it. I sha'n't eat a thing for days
at a time. We'll have no meat, nor potatoes, nor sugar--"
"Just bread and cheese," said he wanly.
"And something else," she added coquettishly.
"Kisses are fattening," he said.
"Goodness! Who ever told you that?" she cried in dismay.
"A well-known specialist," he said, his mind adrift.
"Well, there is one thing sure, Eddie," she declared firmly; "we will
not go into debt for anything. We positively must keep out of debt. I
won't have you worrying about money matters."
"I'm not likely to," said he with conviction.
He then began to watch for signs of decrepitude in the General.
As soon as Martha was strong enough to travel, her step-father
suggested that they go South for the winter instead of opening the
little house down the street. He went so far as to offer to pay the
expenses of the trip as a sort of belated wedding gift.
Eddie objected. He said that his real estate business was in such a
state that he couldn't afford to leave it for a day.
"I didn't know you HAD a business," exclaimed the General.
"I am making arrangements to take up a Government claim in Alaska,"
said his son-in-law grimly.
"Great Scott!"
"I'm going to some place where I can DIG for gold."
"Are you in earnest?"
"Bitterly."
"And--and would you subject Martha to the rigours of an Alaskan winter
in--"
"Inasmuch as we shall have to subsist on snowballs until you pass in
your cheques, General, I think we'd better go where they are fresh and
plentiful."
Fortunately for the bride and groom, everybody that was anybody in
Essex gave them a wedding present. Not a few, in a fever of exultation,
gave beyond their means, and a great many of them with unintentional
irony gave pickle dishes. By the time they were ready to go into their
new home, it was cosily, even handsomely furnished. The General,
contrite of heart, spent money lavishly in trying to make the home so
attractive for Eddie that he wouldn't be likely to desert it for
something worse.
The groom's sense of humour was only temporarily dulled. He noted signs
of its awakening when he assisted in the unpacking of four cheval
mirrors, gifts to the bride from persons who may or may not have been
in collusion but who certainly wanted Martha to see herself as others
saw her, and, as it turned out, from all sides.
The glow of health--an almost superhuman health--increased in the
countenance of Mrs. Edward Ten Eyck. Her hair was a bit slow in
restoring itself, and a shade or two darker, but on the other hand,
despite all she could do to prevent it, she resumed her natural
proportions with a rapidity that was sickening.
It was not long before her figure was unquestionably her own.
Eddie tried to conceal his dismay. He even tried to drown it. Their
first quarrel grew out of her objection to the presence of intoxicating
liquors in the house.
"I don't approve of whiskey," she said flatly.
"But you had it at your house."
"You forget that he was only my stepfather."
"He isn't in the past tense yet," said he bitterly.
"I've always maintained that whiskey should be used for medicinal
purposes only."
"Then please don't worry about it," said he curtly. "I've ordered a
barrel of it."
"For--for medicinal purposes?" "Strictly."
She studied his face with uneasy alarm in her eyes.
"You--don't feel as though you were going to be ill, do you, dear?"
He moved to the opposite side of the table, involuntarily lifting his
left elbow as if to shield himself. She stopped half-way. Then he
laughed awkwardly and turned the subject.
One day he reached the startling conclusion, that she was getting
heavier than she had ever been before. It required days of
contemplation, scrutiny, and development of purpose before he could ask
her to step onto the scales at the meat market.
A cold perspiration started on his forehead as he moved the balance
along the bar and found it would be necessary to use the two-hundred
pound weight instead of the one-hundred, the fifty, and divers small
ones that had been sufficient in days of yore.
She weighed two hundred and three pounds.
At nine o 'clock that night some one took him home from the Essex Club,
and Martha was in hysterics until the doctor, summoned with haste and
vehemence, assured her that her husband was not dead.
The approach of springtime found Eddie in a noticeably run-down
condition. Friends and acquaintances began to remark that he was "going
to seed in a hurry," or "he's awfully run down at the heel," or "I've
never seen such a change in a man."
He was no longer the gay, whilom, inconsequent man about town. The best
proof of this was his utter lack of pride in the matter of dress and
his carelessness in respect to his personal appearance. Once he had
been the beau-ideal of the town. Nowadays he slouched about the streets
with a cigarette drooping listlessly between his lips, his face
unshaven, his clothes unpressed and dusty. There was always a hunted,
far-away look in his eyes.
Habitues of the Club began to notice that he was once more making
mathematical calculations on the backs of envelopes or the margins of
newspapers and magazines. No one pretended to explain this queer habit
of his, but they observed that his efforts represented sums in
multiplication. Occasionally, as if to throw them off the track, he did
a sum in subtraction, and there were frequent lapses into simplified
addition.
It was noted, however, that the numerals one, nine, decimal, two and a
cipher, invariably in that sequence, figured somewhere in every
calculation.
General Gamble could have solved the mystery, but he maintained a rigid
silence. In his heart, the old schemer nurtured a fear that sooner or
later Eddie would commit suicide or run away, either of which would
signify the return of Martha to the mansion she had deserted for a
cottage. And he knew that if she ever came back it would be as a
permanent visitor.
He encountered his son-in-law frequently at unexpected times and in
unusual places, and was never without the feeling that the young man
eyed him balefully. He could feel the intensity of that unwavering gaze
for hours after meeting Eddie. It was an ardent, searching look that
seemed to question his right to survive the day.
After such meetings, the General was wont to survey himself long and
fearsomely in the first mirror or show window that presented itself. He
began to wonder if he was in failing health. At times he thought he
discerned signs of approaching decrepitude, but his doctor assured him
that he was never healthier or happier than he appeared to be at this
particular period in his life.
Still, he could not shake off the rather ghastly feeling that Eddie was
secretly praying that his days were numbered.
One day at the Club he complained of a severe pain in his back, and the
very next day he was shocked to find his son-in-law dressed in sombre
black with a strip of crape around his arm. Immediately on seeing the
General in his usual state of health, Eddie solemnly removed the band
from his sleeve and, carefully rolling it up, stuck it into his
waistcoat pocket.
"I'm saving it for a rainy day," said Eddie with a cold-blooded smile.
"Good Heaven!" said the General, and at once felt the pain return to
his back.
"Have you seen Martha lately?" asked Eddie, tapping the bell on the
table.
"Oh, yes," said the General, settling a little deeper into his chair.
"She is looking remarkably well."
"Do you know what she weighs at present?"
"Of course not. She took the scales over to your house. Besides, I
don't care a hang."
"Day before yesterday she weighed two hundred and ninety-eight pounds."
His voice rose to a shrill screech. "It's a blamed outrage!" He dropped
his chin into his hands and went on muttering vaguely, his eyes glued
to the top button of the General's waistcoat.
"By Jove, she IS doing well."
"She can hardly walk. If she keeps on, she won't be able to see,
either. Her eyes are almost lost. I screwed up the courage to take a
long look at her to-day. She has lost her neck entirely and I haven't
the remotest idea where her ears are."
"I--I DO feel sorry for you, Eddie," cried the General, moved by
unexpected compunction.
Eddie rambled on. "Sometimes I sit down and actually watch her grow.
You can notice, it if you look steadily for a given time."
The two sat stiff and silent for many minutes. Eddie stole a sly glance
at his companion's ruddy face.
"You are a remarkably well preserved man, General," he ventured
speculatively. "Would you mind telling me your age?"
"I am seventy-one, Eddie, if it is any encouragement to you," said the
General eagerly.
"You look good for another ten years," said Eddie hopelessly.
"I am a little worried about my heart," prevaricated the General. He
meant to be magnanimous. Eddie did not look up, but his eyes began to
blink rapidly. "There is heart disease in the family, you know."
"Then maybe Martha has--er--has--"
"Has what, my son!"
"I forgot. She is only your step-daughter. I was worried for a moment,
that's all."
In the fall of the year, Eddie announced to his father-in-law that
Martha was tipping the beam at three hundred and fourteen pounds, three
ounces, and increasing daily. The General gave vent to an uneasy laugh,
whereupon Eddie, mistaking his motive, launched into a tirade that
ended with the frantic wish that the old man would hurry up and die.
"Now, Eddie, don't talk like that! I have about made up my mind to do
something handsome for you and Martha. I have practically decided to
make her an allowance for clothing and so forth--"
"Clothing!" groaned Eddie. "She doesn't want clothes. What could she do
with 'em? I am the one who needs clothes. Look at me. Look at the
frayed edges and see how I shine in the back. There is a patch or two
that you can't see. I put those patches on myself, too. Martha is so
darned fat she can't hold a pair of trousers in her lap. Moreover, she
can't sew with anything smaller than a crochet needle. Look at me! I am
growing a beard so that people can't see my Adam's apple. That's how
poor and thin I'm getting to be. Now just listen a minute; I'll give
you a few figures that will paralyse you."
He jerked out his lead pencil and with the rapidity of a lightning
calculator multiplied, added, and subtracted.
"She is worth $72,403.20 to-day. What do you think of that? Prove the
figures for yourself. Here's the pencil."
"I don't care to--"
"The day of the wedding," went on Eddie wildly, "she weighed in at
$16,972.80, I think. See what I mean? She's bulling the market and I
can't realise a cent on her. She's gone up $55,430 in less than a year.
Suffering Isaac! Why couldn't she have weighed that much a year ago?"
He was so furious that he chopped off his words in such a way that they
sounded like the barking of a dog.
The General pushed back his chair in alarm.
"Calm yourself, Eddie."
"Oh, I'm calm enough."
"Martha will be a very rich woman when I die, and you won't have to--"
"That sounds beautiful. But don't you see that she's getting so blamed
fat that she's liable to tip over some day and die before I can find
any one to help me set her up again? And if that should happen, will
you kindly tell me WHERE _I_ WOULD COME IN?"
"You are a heartless, mercenary scoundrel," gasped the General.
"Well, you would be sore, too, if this thing had happened to you,"
whined Eddie. He sprang to his feet suddenly. "By thunder, I can't
stand it a day longer. Good-bye, General. I'm going to skip out."
"Skip out! Leave her? Is that what you mean?"
"Yes. She can always find a happy home with her mother and you. I'm off
to the--"
"For Heaven's sake," cried the General hoarsely, "don't do that, Eddie.
Don't you dare do anything like that. I--I--I am sure we can arrange
something between us. I'm not a stingy, hard-hearted man, and you know
it. You deserve relief. You deserve compensation. I am your
father-in-law and, damme, I'll not go back on you in your time of need.
I'll make up the amount you have already lost, 'pon my soul I will,
Eddie. Stand by your guns, that's all I ask."
A seraphic expression came into Eddie's face. "When?" he demanded.
"Immediately. Can you come to my house this evening? Alone, of course."
"I should say I can!" shouted Eddie, growing two inches taller in an
instant. He took the package of crape from his pocket and threw it into
a cuspidor. Then he sighed profoundly. "Gad, have you ever felt like
another man, General? It's great."
As the General was past the point where he could risk saying another
word, he maintained a strenuous silence.
Eddie indulged in an expansive grin. "You asked if I could come alone.
That's the only way I can come. If you ever expect to see Martha,
General, you will have to come to my house to do so. Do you remember
that saying about Mahomet and the mountain?"
THE MAID AND THE BLADE
Over two centuries ago. Virginia, fair Virginia, in her most rugged,
uncouth state, yet queen of all the colonies, rich in the dignity of an
advanced settlement, glorious in prophecies and ambitions; the favoured
ward of England's sovereigns, the paradise of her royal pillagers, the
birthplace of American Freedom.
Jamestown was in the throes of a savage struggle, confined not to
herself alone, but spreading to the farthermost ends of the apparently
unbounded state. The capital fight was on, the contest waging between
the town in which grew Bacon's rebellion and Williamsburg, in which
William and Mary College had just been born, an infant venture that
seemed but a mockery in the wilds. Boisterous, boasting Jamestown,
since the rule of Berkeley and the unfortunate overthrow of Bacon, had
resumed a state of composure which she had not known in the five
preceding decades, and was beginning to look upon herself as the
undisputed metropolis of the wilderness. The impudence of Williamsburg,
with her feeble scholastic claims, was not even condemned--it was
ignored.
The crude fort at Jamestown held a merry garrison, the Governor having
impressed upon royalty across the sea the importance of troops in a
land where unexpected rebellions against authority might succeed the
partially triumphant uprising against Sir William in 1676. Bacon's
death in the October of that year had lost the fight which had been
fairly won, and it was wisdom which told the new Governor that troops
were essential, even in time of peace.
The commander of the garrison was Colonel Fortune. The number and
quality of his troops are not important factors in this tale.
Among the men were a dozen or more subalterns, fresh from England,
undergoing their first rough work in the forests of Virginia. In this
fledgling crowd were young Grafton, afterward a general; Mooney,
Vedder, Hoicraft and others, whose names, with those of their Virginia
companions went into colonial history.
Near the fort were the homes of the officers, the Governor's residence
being but a short distance down the rough, winding lane, which was
dignified by the name of street. Colonel Fortune's home was the
handsomest, the merriest of them all, a typical frontier mansion. A
mansion of those days could be little more than a cottage in these, yet
the Colonel's was far brighter, gayer than the palace of today. In his
house gathered chivalrous subalterns from English homes, stalwart
Virginians of inherited gallantry, the men and women from whom sprung
the first families of that blue blood which all Americans cherish
lovingly and proudly.
His board was more hospitable than that of the Governor, his favours
were coveted more eagerly even than were those of his superior. Stern,
exacting, yet affable and courteous, he was the idol of a people whose
hatred for those who ruled them had wrought ruin more than once. Mrs.
Fortune, a lady of gentle birth closely related, in fact, to a certain
branch of nobility, shared the power of her husband.
But there was a colonial queen whose reign was of more consequence to
the youth of Jamestown than was that of the august person across the
sea. She was queen of hearts, this daughter of theirs, airy Kate
Fortune. Daintiest maid in all the land, famed for her wit, her
follies, her merry loveliness, her dimples and her sunshine, she was
the wiliest tempter who ever laid unconscious siege against man's
indifference. The English officers called her an angel, the more
deferential Virginians moaned that she was a witch, yet would not have
burned her for the whole universe. On the contrary, they sacrificed
themselves to the worship of her craft. War and strife were forgotten,
the treacheries of the Indians were minimised, and a score or more of
dreamers, awake or asleep, found their minds so full of dainty Kate
that thought of else could work no means of entrance. In that year of
our Lord, Jamestown was a veritable cauldron of rivals, fair suitors
all, some bold, some timid, none hopeful.
Strange as it may appear to those who live these two centuries later,
there were no jealousies, no bitterness among them. In those good days
the favoured man's best friends were his beaten rivals. Kate's kingdom
was not large, was not glittering, but her sceptre was mighty. It was
made of tenderness and beauty.
For two months the Governor's nephew had been her most ardent admirer,
notwithstanding the fact that he had been in Virginia but sixty days.
His surrender had been instantaneous.
Ordinarily the nephew of the Governor, who was a lord of the realm,
might be considered a superior rival, but in this instance he was not
even feared. He had come to Jamestown with exalted ideas. He dressed
better, talked better and lived better, and he seemed to hold every man
in the colony in disdain. Friendly, courteous even to the lowest
soldier, he still gave forth the impression that he was condescending,
not alone to those beneath, but to those above him. That this scion,
this self-ordered perfect man, should have drifted to the colonies from
the drawing-rooms of London only to fall in love with Kate Fortune
seemed incredible.
Moreover, he had refused to wrestle in the contests at the fort, and
had failed to fight the man who had warmly called him a coward in the
presence of others.
Tales of his conduct in that and other exhibitions had been spread, and
the good-looking young officer eventually became a laughing-stock. One
day, however, he pulled the nose of an impudent lieutenant. When the
red-faced lieutenant insisted upon satisfaction with swords he merely
turned pale and ignored the challenge.
"I came here to fight the Indians, not to kill my comrades," he had
said, and a disdainful laugh followed, bringing a flush to his face as
he walked away.
Kate Fortune rather admired the easy elegance of the stranger, yet
despised his lack of courage, the story having come to her promptly
enough. She began to treat him coldly and he was at last driven to feel
that he was her most unwelcome suitor. One day he bluntly asked her why
she treated him so unkindly.
"Captain Studdiford, I will be frank with you," replied the girl. "How
can you expect me to admire a man who submits to the ridicule of a
whole company of men, not one of whom seems able to cope with him in
strength or in the experience of arms? I am the daughter of an English
soldier; that should be sufficient reason for my conduct. If I have
mistreated you it was because I could not help it." She saw a look of
pain come and go in his flushed face, hence the hasty apology, such as
it was.
"So I am an object of derision to you, as well as to them," he
observed, quietly. "I shall not intrude myself again, Miss Fortune. I
am brave enough to tell you, for the first time, and in the face of
your evident dislike, that I love you better than I ever dreamed I
could love a woman." He was turning away in apparent indifference as he
concluded this strange avowal.
Kate planted herself squarely before him, her pretty, perplexed face
twitching between a smile and a frown, wonder fairly popping from her
curious blue eyes.
"Isn't it cowardly to say that when you know how I feel? You are safe
in confessing something that you already know I cannot consider," she
said.
"I would rather not discuss it. You may treat it as a jest, as
cowardice, or what you like. I cannot control your treatment of the
best thing an honest man has to give a woman." It left the girl
standing on the tips of her toes in sheer surprise. She was at no time
a dignified queen, but she was an inquisitive one.
"But, Captain, you must not go away fearing that I--I shall treat
lightly what you have said to me," she murmured.
"Fearing? Why should I fear your ridicule more than that of others? You
are brighter, more bewitching, more tantalising than any woman I have
ever known--you are maddening--do you hear? Ah, I crave your pardon for
so far forgetting myself as to dwell upon a matter which I should have
forgotten in your displeasure. By the way, I should like to tell you
why I will not accommodate these young fools with a duel, why I have
controlled my natural desire to resent their insults. I have fought one
duel and I have killed a man. These men would have no more chance than
that man had. You may tell them so. Farewell!"
She watched his tall figure move from her dooryard and disappear in the
direction of the river. Then Kate sat down in the window and gazed half
regretfully toward the opening in the timber through which he had
passed.
It began to occur to her that Captain Studdiford was somehow the
superior of any man she had ever seen. She felt a joy that he had
fought a duel, although the thought that he had killed a man caused her
to shudder. With the shudder, however, came the relieved feeling that
he had not been the victim. Her face flushed faintly, too, as she
recalled his strange avowal of love.
That same night a half dozen young men, with as many maids, dropped in
to spend the chilly evening before the Colonel's roaring fires. They
were toasting apples and chattering gaily when Kate suddenly turned to
a young Virginian, and with taunting eyes, cried:
"Morton Trask, I know why Captain Studdiford would not fight a duel
with you."
"So do I," responded Trask. "Because he feared me."
"'Twas no such reason. He says he does not choose to kill anything but
Indians." A big laugh went up from the men.
"The fool! Did he say that to you?" cried Trask.
"He truly did; and, besides, he has fought and killed a man."
"Ho! Ho!" laughed Trask, disdainfully.
"Did he stab him in the dark?" questioned Farring.
"He lies if he says he fought aught save a boy," sneered Trask.
"Yet he pulled your valiant nose until it was red for near a week,"
said Kate, cheerily.
"Oh, would that I were at him--the coward!" cried Trask, white and
trembling.
"You can pull his nose when next you meet him, Morton, it is your turn,
you know," said Kate, laughingly, and Trask glared at the burning logs
in angry silence.
"Please forgive me, Morton; I did not mean to hurt you by recalling a
previous injury," cried Kate, and Trask's injury increased with her
contrition.
"I cannot see why you defend the Captain, Miss Fortune," ventured
Farring.
"Why not? He will not defend himself."
"But you surely cannot approve a coward?"
"Are you sure he is a coward?"
"I should consider myself one under the circumstances, I believe," he
replied, evasively.
"Would it not be cowardly to fight Morton Trask if he knew he could
kill him?"
"Bah!" came from the angry Trask.
"He could, at least, have given Trask satisfaction for an insult," said
Varney. Kate wavered.
"That's true," she said; "he should have been a gentleman. Still, that
does not prove him a coward."
"I'll wager that I can prove him a coward," observed Lieutenant Holmes.
"And safely, too."
"'Twere wise to do it safely," supplemented Miss Fortune.
"One time at home we exposed a boasting captain, who would have had us
think him the bravest man on earth--"
"But that does not seem to be Captain Studdiford's object," interrupted
Kate.
"True," went on Holmes, "but that has nothing to do with it. This
captain was one night approached by five of his fellow officers,
disguised as highwaymen, and despite his declarations that he had
fought dozens of such men, he ran like a hound, screaming murder all
the way. Why not test your captain's courage as we tested ours, Miss
Fortune?"
"In the first place, I could not be a very impressive highwayman, and
in the second place, he might shoot."
"You have plenty of men at your command who would serve as Indians for
such an experiment," speculated Varney.
"Egad! we all would!" exclaimed Holmes. "So you might!" she cried. "He
would be willing to kill you if you were Indians."
"We might as well give up the plan, for we could not force him to leave
town without a bodyguard," sneered Trask.
"Fie! That is easy. Miss Fortune could ask him to ride with her into
the forest and he would go blindly enough," said Holmes.
"I?" cried Kate, blushing to think of herself in that position after
Studdiford's proclamation. "I could not--would not do such a thing.
Prove him a coward, but do not ask me to help you." "Holmes is right,
and Miss Fortune should be willing to make the test. She is his
defender; she cannot refuse to satisfy herself of her error in this
harmless, yet effective way," announced big Farring, and every member
of the party laid siege against Kate's faltering opposition. The fun of
it all finally appealed to her and she rather timidly agreed to the
proposition. How could she ask him to ride with her after what had
passed between them? He would think her unwomanly and, strangely
enough, with that thought she began to feel that she must have his good
opinion. Yet she went, half dubiously, into the plot to prove a coward
of the man she was beginning to admire.
The details of the scheme were submitted by the men, and were as
follows: Kate was to ask him to ride horseback with her to "Big Fork,"
five miles through the forest, on some near afternoon, and the men were
to bedeck themselves as Indians, attack them, take her from his custody
and hurry her off into apparent captivity, whilst he trembled with fear
and inaction.
"But suppose he should happen to be disappointing and shoot somebody,"
objected Lucy Gaines.
"Oh, he must have no chance to do that," said Varney. "Miss Fortune can
induce him to discharge his pistols in some feat of marksmanship and we
will swoop down before he can reload them."
"For shame!" cried Kate. "How could that be a fair test of bravery? An
unarmed man against five brawny Indians! I'll have none of it. His
pistols must remain undisturbed."
"But--good heavens!--he may kill us all," cried Trask.
"Well, how else is he to prove his courage? You must take your chances,
gentlemen, with your coward. If he is a coward you need not fear his
pistols, though he had a dozen; if he is not, then you may have to run
from them."
"Allow us to capture you and offer him the privilege of fighting for
your liberty, choosing his own weapons. If he agrees to fight for you,
instead of taking his proffered freedom, we will leave the field to him
and you may call him hero. That is fair, is it not?" proposed Farring.
"You will not hurt him?" asked Kate doubtingly.
"Hurt him? We shall not even catch him. He will leave you and fly for
his life!" cried Trask.
"I tell you now, gentlemen, if he stands the test and disproves your
taunts against his valour, my respect for him will be far more than you
can ever hope to inspire. Yet, after all, it will be a diversion--it
will be fun to see how he will act," mused the fair plotter.
It required all of Kate's courage and a dismal sacrifice of pride to
suggest the ride to Captain Studdiford, but she did it the next
morning, stopping him near the fort after having walked not thirty feet
behind for more than two hundred yards. She was a trifle insecure as to
her own valour in this preliminary step.
The rosiness of her cheeks might have been by others attributed to the
chill of the December morn, but she knew they were the flames from an
inward fire.
Captain Studdiford's heart thumped unusually fast as he looked down
into the piquant face and big blue eyes, which for the first time since
he had known her, wore a gleam bordering on embarrassment. They were
very soft and timid this morning--there was something appealing in
their tempting depths.
"May I not walk with you? I am going your way," were her first words as
she reached his side.
"Whither, pray?"
"Oh, to--" and here she blushed, for in truth she had no
destination--"to Anna Corwin's," she concluded in relief.
"But Mistress Corwin lives back yonder. How came you to be going this
way?"
"Did I say Anna Corwin?"
"If I am not deaf."
"Then I must have meant some one else; to be sure I did--how queer of
me. I am going to Lucy's. You cannot say, sir, that she does not live
in this direction. I'll not walk with you if you are bound to be
particular, though." Her little ears were very red.
"I beg you to forgive me and allow me to walk with you," cried the
Captain eagerly.
"I like that much better. No matter if I were going to Anna's and chose
a roundabout way, you should not be so impolite as to remonstrate. As a
rule, Captain, the men prefer the roundabout way."
"Be it miles I would walk it with thee," cried he, smiling at her merry
vanity.
"Oh, would you do that?" she asked, suddenly seeing her way clear. Yet,
in spite of all, her composure deserted her and she blurted it out,
turning red again. "I am dying to ride to 'Big Fork' tomorrow, but I
have no one to accompany me. Would you like to go?" Then to herself,
"What a fool he thinks me!"
"Gladly; but, are we sure there are no stray Indians about?" he asked,
rather quickly.
"He is afraid," she thought, with strange disappointment. "If you are
afraid, we will not go," she said a trifle coldly.
"Afraid? Not for myself, but for you. We will go if you like, and I
should rejoice to meet all of the Indians in Virginia if it will please
you."
So they made their plans, and she was so loth to leave him that he was
forced to remind her that they had passed the home of Lucy Gaines a
full furlong or more. He left her at the door, his heart exultant, hers
all a-flutter.
The next afternoon the two rode forth from Jamestown and into the
forest, following the well-made road which led to the westward beneath
the red and yellowing oaks. Half an hour previous to their departure
five young men had ridden from the home of Lucy Gaines, strange bundles
strapped to their saddles. Above all things, they had cautioned Kate to
demand the Captain's proof of marksmanship at a point near Big Fork.
It was with some consternation, notwithstanding all the plotting, that
Kate observed the big pistols at the Captain's side and the heavy sword
which jangled against his leg. That jangling sword gave her the
tremors, and she cast many furtive glances toward its chain and
scabbard. At last she was compelled to ask:
"How can you, I pray, use such a monstrous sword, Captain Studdiford?
It must have been made for a giant." "It was; it was my
great-great-grand-father's over a century ago. See! It is serviceable,
even in my weak hand." He pulled the gleaming blade, long and heavy,
from its scabbard, and swept it downward through the air so fiercely
that it resembled a wide sheet of silver. Kate's blue eyes grew wide
with apprehension, a cold chill seized upon her and her ruddy face
paled. He returned the weapon to its sheath with such a forceful crash
that she started violently in her saddle, her little teeth clicking in
sheer affright.
"I could cleave a man's skull in twain as easily as you can cut an
apple. Would that we could meet a warlike Indian that I could show you
how it merits my praise."
"Goodness!" gasped Kate hopelessly. "You would not strike a--a--man
with it, would you?"
"If he were an enemy. For you, loved one, I could cut down an army."
Their horses drew more closely side by side and the fierce, strong hand
was gently laid upon her trembling fingers. Tenderly clasping the
little one the big one raised it until it touched the lips of him who
leaned across to kiss it. Their eyes met as he raised his head. His
were full of love, hers with a pleading dread, the uncertain quiver
between love and fear. Without a word he dropped the hand, suddenly
sick at heart.
"I could die for her and she despises me," he groaned to himself.
"Oh, what have I--have we done?" she thought, a thousand fears
gathering in her heart. "He is no coward and he will kill one of them!
How can I tell him--how can I save their lives? He will despise me!
That awful sword! A man's skull! Oh, dear! He called me loved one! How
big and strong he is! He called me--how can I keep him from using the
sword? The pistols I can manage and--perhaps they will not be there. He
will kill them all--horror upon horror! What have I done? Oh!" the last
exclamation was so loud and so sudden that the pale Captain turned
quickly.
"What is it? What is it?"
She laughed wildly, even gleefully, almost in the face of her companion.
"Nothing--nothing at all!" she cried.
"I am glad to have afforded you amusement, Mistress Fortune. You may
tear my heart to shreds."
Her manner changed instantly. Tears flew to the blue eyes and her hand
crept toward him.
"Forgive me, pray, Captain Studdiford, I--I did not mean to hurt you.
I--I--am very foolish, very unkind. You must hate me," she faltered.
"Hate you! How could I? You do not love me--why should I have hoped? I
can but blame myself." Her hand had fallen to her side because he had
not touched it. "And it is our last afternoon together."
"Last?" she repeated, faintly.
"Yes; for I shall not see you again."
"Oh--you--you--do not mean that!"
"I have asked to be transferred to Willamsburg. I--I have not one
friend in Jamestown; why should I stay here?" he cried bitterly.
"But you have," she exclaimed, eagerly; "you have. I am your friend."
"Friend! That is not what I ask of you," he said, almost gruffly.
Silence, broken only by the clatter of the hoofs upon the road followed
his words. In her confusion she had forgotten the terrible sword, but
it recurred to her, and, with it, the thought which had given birth to
her untimely mirth, the thought that was to lead her from the chief
predicament into which she had been cast. She would ask the Captain to
turn back to Jamestown at once, avoiding the possibility of conflict.
"Captain Studdiford, I believe we had better turn back." Her face grew
crimson beneath his calm gaze. "As you like. You will grant me time to
adjust my saddle girth; it is slipping," he said coolly, dismounting
without another word.
They were fully three miles from the village, and in a dense piece of
forest. On either side of the narrow road grew the thickest of
underbrush with the great, gaunt trees stretching above like silent
sentinels. The girl's mind was chaos; her thoughts were changing and
interchanging like leaves before the whirling wind. She knew that she
admired this man, and that something even sweeter was beginning to
throb its way into her heart. A half smile came to her troubled face as
she thought of the war-painted plotters two miles away, waiting to make
a coward of her hero. A touch of remorse came to her as she remembered
her part in the play, and that the plot would have been carried out had
she not seen the great swing of that fearful sword. What havoc it would
have wrought! And he was to leave Jamestown! Without a friend, he had
said. How could he say that?
In the midst of these varying thoughts she allowed her softening eyes
to wander from him toward the trees above and the straggling brush
beneath their knotty limbs. A suppressed scream called the Captain's
attention to her staring eyes. They were blinking with consternation.
Deep in the underbrush she had seen the form of an Indian warrior!
Horrors! The sword!
"What do you see?" cried he, staring toward the now deserted brush.
"Nothing--nothing!" she gasped. "Yes--I mean, that red bird! See? Do
shoot it for me--I must have it! Isn't it beautiful?" She was excitedly
pointing toward a red bird in the top branches of a big oak.
He drew his pistols and deliberately aimed with one of them. The shot
missed and the bird darted away.
"Oh, goodness!" she cried. "Try the other one!"
"But the bird is gone."
"Is it? So it is--but, quick! See if you can cut off that twig up
there--the one with three red leaves. I wager you cannot! Quick, and
then we will ride for home."
"Why are you so excited?"
"I am not the least bit excited--I never am! Why do you not shoot at
that twig?"
"You try it," he surprised her by saying, pushing a pistol into her
hand. Without a word or aim she blazed away at the sky and his firearms
were useless. She handed the smoking pistol to him with a laugh.
"Would it not be awful if Indians came upon us!" she cried, with
strange exultation. "But mount, and race with me to the spring!"
As the Captain placed his foot in the stirrup a yell burst from the
thicket, an arrow whizzed above their heads, and a half-a-dozen, fierce
warriors were dashing toward them.
"Do not use your sword!" she screamed.
Before the bewildered soldier could catch his breath an ugly brave was
in the road, not ten feet away, knife in hand. Out whizzed the sword!
Kate screamed in agony, clasping her hand over her eyes.
"They are friends! Do not strike!"
But it was too late. The streak of steel cut the air. A sickening thud,
a gurgling howl, and the assailant fell, his head half severed from his
body. An instant later the big Englishman was in his saddle. A second
slash and an Indian at his side went down beneath the ancestral blade!
The two horses plunged forward as a brawny redskin grasped her arm and
she felt herself being dragged to the ground. Then a hand clasped her
other arm, a big form leaned over behind her, far across the back of
her horse. She heard the hiss of something cutting the air, the crash
as of splitting wood, a scream, of agony and the Indian's ruthless
grasp was loosened. Her horse stumbled and seemed to totter beneath
her, but again that arm from aloft exerted itself and it seemed as if
she were being lifted to the tree tops. Almost before she could realise
it she was upon another horse, clasped in the arm of its rider, and
they were off like the wind.
Suddenly she felt the form of the man who held her so closely drop
forward with a groan and then straighten again slowly. Exultant yells
came from behind them, several arrows whizzed past, and then naught was
heard but the thunder of the horse's hoofs upon the frozen road. As her
eyes opened involuntarily, terror possessing them, they fell upon the
scene far behind. Two hundred yards away her own horse lay struggling
in the road, two human forms stretched near it, another dragging itself
to the roadside. Three feathered Indians were some fifty yards nearer,
gesticulating wildly. Her brain whirred and buzzed, and--consciousness
was lost!
When she regained her senses she was lying upon the ground. With feeble
eyes she glanced wonderingly about. To a tree near by a horse was
hitched, beneath her body were the blankets from the horse and certain
garments from the back of man. All was as a dream; she could account
for nothing. Studdiford was leaning against the big oak, coatless and
as pale as a ghost. Deep lines stretched across his brow and down his
mouth; his eyes were closed, as if in pain.
An involuntary moan escaped her lips, and the Captain was at her side
almost before it had died away. She was crying.
"Oh, what have I done! What have I done!"
"Calm, yourself, dearest! You are safe--entirely so. See, we are alone,
far from those devils. It is but a mile to Jamestown. Be brave and we
will soon be at home," he murmured hoarsely, kneeling at her side and
lifting her to a sitting posture.
"Home! I can never go home! Oh, God, you do not know--you do not know!"
"There--there! Now, be quiet."
"How could you know? I am a murderess--I am the wretch! Kill me; I
cannot live!" she wailed.
"Hush!" he cautioned, lovingly.
"You could not know--you did not know them, Captain Studdiford!" she
cried, sitting bolt upright, glaring wildly about her, then
shudderingly plunging her white face against his shoulder. "They were
not Indians," she almost whispered.
"Not Indians!" he gasped.
"God forgive me--no! It was all a trick--to test your courage--forgive
me--to test--to test--oh! and I allowed you to kill them!"
"Speak! Go on! What do you mean?" "They were our friends--not Indians!
My dearest friends! Oh, how is it that I am not struck dead for this?
Please heaven, let me die!" she wailed.
"My God!" he exclaimed, after the first bewildering shock. "A
trick--and I have killed--oh, it cannot be true!" He leaped to his
feet, allowing her to fall from his side to the ground, where she lay,
a wretched, shivering heap. With a ferocious oath he snatched the big
sword from the ground and turned upon her, with eyes blazing, muscles
quivering.
She was looking up at him, those wide blue eyes gleaming piteously.
"Kill me!" she murmured, and closed the eyes to await the stroke.
His big arm relaxed, the sword fell from his nerveless grasp, clanging
to the ground.
When she reopened her eyes after an age of suspense she saw him leaning
against the tree, his body shaking with sobs. A second glance and she
started to her feet alarmed.
His broad back was covered with blood. Near his left shoulder the
clothing was torn and an ugly, gaping wound leered at her.
"Oh," she gasped; "you--you are hurt!"
"Hurt!" he groaned. "They have killed me! You have killed me--you and
your friends. I hope you--are--satisfied--with--your--see?" As he sank
to the ground, he pointed feebly to the cruel arrow which he had torn
from his side. It lay not far away, grim and bloody.
The horrified girl glanced at it helplessly and then at the unconscious
man, unable to realise. Then she cried aloud in her agony and threw
herself upon the prostrate form, moaning:
"Dead! Dead! Speak to me, Ralph--look up! I love you--I worship you!
You shall not leave me!"
She kissed the pallid face, caressed the chilling head, sobbing:
"Forgive me--forgive me!"
An hour afterward the clatter of hoofs upon the road aroused her from
the semi-conscious condition into which her grief had thrown her.
Through the gathering darkness she saw horsemen approaching--Indian
riders! A moment later they were dismounting at her side, and
well-known voices were calling to her:
"Are you hurt?"
"What has happened?"
"Killed? My God!"
It was Farring, Trask and the other plotters, reeking with excitement.
Their horses were wet from the fierceness with which they had been
ridden.
"Do not touch him! You have killed him!" she cried, striving to shield
the body from Farring's anxious touch.
"Killed him? Good God, Kate! where did you meet them!" cried Farring,
as Trask pulled her from Studdiford's side.
"Are you not dead?" she finally whispered to the men.
"We? He killed three of them--split their heads! But the wretches put
an arrow into him, after all. What a dreadful thing we have done!
Fairly tricked him to his death!" cried poor Trask.
"Then--then it was not you?" cried Kate.
"Heavens, no! We found the Indians dragging their dead from the road,
three miles back, and knew that something terrible had happened.
"Thank God! I am spared that! But he must not die--he shall not! I love
him. Do you hear? I love him!"
For three weeks the victim of that ill-fated trick hung between life
and death. Surgery was crude in the colonies, and the first evidence of
restoration was due more to his rugged constitution than to the skill
of his doctors. The poor fellow rolled and tossed upon one of Mrs.
Fortune's soft beds, oblivious to the kind offices of those about him.
They had taken him there at Kate's command, and she had worn herself to
a shadow with anguish, love and penitence. She watched him by day and
by night--in her restless dreams; her whole existence was in the
tossing victim of her folly. Every twitch of that pain-stricken body
seemed to show her that he was shrinking from her in hatred. Her pretty
face was white and drawn, the blue eyes dark and pitiful, the merry
mouth, plaintive in its hopelessness.
And those jovial tricksters--those who had jeered over his lack of
courage, the testing of which they had undertaken! They were smitten by
their own curses, haunted by their own shame. The fiery Trask, the
polished Farring, the ingenious Holmes, with all of Jamestown, prayed
for his recovery, and spared no pains to bring to life and health the
man who had won that which they had relinquished hope of having--Kate's
love. They were tender, sympathetic, helpful--true men and good.
Kate could not forget the look of disgust she had seen upon
Studdiford's face as he stood above her with the great sword in his
hand. His first thought had been to kill her!
Sitting beside him, bathing the fevered brow, caressing the rumpled
hair, holding his restless hands, she could feel her heart thumping
like lead, so heavy had it grown in the fear of his awakening.
Finally the doctors told her that he would recover, that the fever was
broken. Then came the day when he slept, cool and quiet, no trace of
fever, no sign of pain.
It was then that Kate forsook him, burying herself in her distant room,
guilty and heart-broken, fearing above all things on earth, the first
repellent glance he would bestow upon her. Once, while he slept, she
peered through his door, going back to her room and her spinning with
tears blinding the plaintive blue eyes.
At last, one day, her mother came from the Captain's room and said to
her gently:
"Kate, Captain Studdiford asks why you do not come to see him. He tells
me that for three days he has suffered because you have been so unkind.
Go to him, dear; he promises he will not plead his love if it is so
distasteful to you!"
Distasteful! The girl grew faint with wonder. Her limbs trembled, her
lips parted, her eyes blurred and her ears roared with the rush of
blood from her heart.
"Mother!" she whispered, at last, steadying herself against the wall.
"Are you sure, Mother?"
"That he wants you? My child, his eyes fill with tears when he thinks
of you. I have seen them moisten as he lies looking from the window."
But Kate was gone.
When Mrs. Fortune opened the door to the sick man's room soon afterward
she drew back quickly, closed it again, and, lifting her eyes aloft,
murmured:
"God make them happy!"
MR. HAMSHAW'S LOVE AFFAIR
Mr. Hamshaw was short, bald, pudgy--and fifty-seven. Besides all this,
he was a bachelor, and one jolly one, at the time when this narrative
opens. He lived in apartments pretty well downtown, where he was looked
after with scrupulous care by a Japanese valet and an Irish
"cook-lady." Mr. Hamshaw was forever discharging his valet and forever
re-engaging him. Sago persistently refused to leave at the hour set for
his departure, and Mr. Hamshaw finally came to discharge him every
evening in order that he might be sure to find him at his post in the
morning. Regularly, he would call Sago into the den, very red in the
face over some wholly imaginary provocation.
"This ends it, Sago! You go! I've stood it as long as I can--or will.
You leave the place tonight, sir--bag and baggage. I don't want to see
your face again. Understand?"
"Yes, sir; very well, sir" Sago would respond with perfect equanimity.
Sago engaged to be very, very English at such distinguished times.
"You go tonight."
"Yes, Mr. Hamshaw. May I ask what I have done to displease you, sir!"
"Never mind, sir! I'll tell you tomorrow. Don't bother me about it
today. And, say, if you don't press this dinner coat of mine before
tomorrow night I'll discharge you without a recommendation."
"Very good, sir."
Once when Sago threatened to leave unless Ellen, the cook, was
dismissed, poor Mr. Hamshaw had a most uncomfortable half-hour. Young
Mr. Goodrich from the bank was dining with him at the time. Now it was
quite as hard to get rid of Ellen, notwithstanding the fact that she
was constantly on the verge of leaving of her own accord, as it was to
discharge Sago. The host prayed down to his comfortable boots that the
threats of Sago might not grow louder than confidential hisses as he
passed behind his chair in the capacity of butler, but he was counting
without Ellen. There was a long, painful interval between courses, and
then Ellen marched in from the kitchen, majestically attired for the
street.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Hamshaw, but this time I go for fair. It's
aither me or the Chinee-"
"Blawst yer eyes!" snarled Sago in his very best English, mightily
incensed.
"But, Ellen--" began Mr. Hamshaw, bowled over.
"Don't beg me to stay," she cried, glaring at Sago, who glared back
safely from behind Mr. Goodrich's chair. "The dago has insulted me for
the last toime. I'm sorry, sor, it had to come roight in the middle of
dinner, sor, but it couldn't wait."
"Can't you subdue yourself till morning, Ellen? It is--"
"I can subjue meself, sor, but who the divil is to subjue the Malay?
He's gone too far this--"
"I've only been doing my duty, sir," inserted Sago, drawing the salad
spoon through his hand very much as a Samurai would have drawn a sword.
"Ellen she--I mean her didn't--"
"Never mind, never mind," groaned Mr. Hamshaw, at bay. "You may both
go. I fire--I discharge both of you! I'm sure, Mr. Goodrich, you will
overlook this unfortunate--"
"Discharge me, sor?" half shrieked Ellen. "I never was discharged from
a place in me loife. I won't stand for it! I'll lave, but I'll not be
discharged. It's Sago that has to be discharged--not me."
"Discharge both of them, Mr. Hamshaw," advised Goodrich amiably. "I
know where you can get an excellent cook and--"
"Oh, you do, eh? With recommindations, too, I suppose!" sniffed Ellen
in a fine flare.
"The very best, my good woman."
"Well, I'd loike to see them," announced Ellen loyally. "No wan can
cook for Mr. Hamshaw unless she gives the best of characters."
"She's a Japanese woman," explained Mr. Goodrich, "and they're said to
be the best cooks in the world."
"The divil a step will I take out of this place to make way for a
haythen Jap." Shebegan taking off her hat. "I'll have the squab on in a
minute, Mr. Hamshaw, and I'll serve it, too." This last with a deadly
look at Sago. "He says he'll quit if I don't. Well, I don't!"
"Will you make the dressing for the salad, sir, or shall I?" politely
inquired Sago, ignoring Ellen completely.
"Have you decided to stay long enough for that purpose?" demanded Mr.
Hamshaw.
"I have given notice, sir, that Ellen has to go," said Sago soberly.
"And I refuse to go for the loikes of you," retorted Ellen with great
dignity.
"Then, Mr. Hamshaw, I shall remain until she does go. But go she must."
"I'll go when I get good and ready, Mr. Sago."
"We'll have the squab now, Sago," said Mr. Hamshaw.
"Very good, sir."
It was quite an old story among the members of the club, especially
those who knew Mr. Hamshaw intimately, that he had once felt the
inclination to take unto himself a wife. That, of course, was years and
years ago, and it is hardly necessary to remark that the young woman,
whoever she may have been, was not possessed of a responsive
inclination. Result: Mr. Hamshaw not only refrained from marrying any
one in all the subsequent years but astutely prevented any one from
marrying him. It was quite true that at fifty-seven he was not a thing
of beauty, but he had a heart of gold and was beloved by all the men
and children who knew him. Certainly it is quite doubtful if he could
have been all this had he married even the woman of his choice.
One day there came to the big apartment-house where lived Mr. Hamshaw
and his two servants a most uncommon hullabaloo and sensation. It was
an unheard-of proceeding for a tenant to move out of this amiable and
exclusive establishment, and naturally, it was impossible for any one
to move in. Of course, however, such contingencies as births, weddings,
and funerals could not be provided against, and it was due entirely to
the advent of a bride that the aforesaid uproar occurred. A widower on
the second floor took unto himself a widow, and she was now being moved
in with all her goods and chattels.
It would appear that the new Mrs. Gladding did not approve of her
husband's furniture, his servants, or his own flesh and blood. As a
consequence, they were departing jointly, and in their stead came
substitutes from her former apartments in Eads Avenue. Mr. Gladding's
two grown-up sons were shuffled off to bachelor quarters downtown and
their rooms were turned over to Mrs. Gladding's two grown-up
daughters--just out in society. The transfer was over at last, and, to
the intense gratification of Mr. Hamshaw, the big building saw the last
of its moving-vans, its plumbers and decorators, and the new Gladdings
were as quietly ensconced as the old had been. It was not until the end
of the second week thereafter that Mr. Hamshaw had his first glimpse of
the two debutantes--the young Misses Frost.
But that one glimpse was his undoing.
All those years of constancy to his original inclination were blotted
out as if by magic. His primeval affection was uprooted, turned over,
and then jolted unceremoniously out of existence. One divided glimpse
had restored vigour to his waning passion and it flamed with all the
fury of coals that have smouldered long and lazily. The one distressing
condition attached to this pleasant and refreshing restoration was the
fact that he succumbed not to one, but to both of the Misses
Frost--succumbed heartily and bodily, without the faintest hope of
discrimination. He was in love with both at first sight. For the life
of him he could not tell which he had seen first.
That very evening at the dinner hour he rode up and down in the
elevator no less than a dozen times, and each time as he passed the
second floor he hopefully but surreptitiously peered forth at the
Gladdings' door. Once the car stopped to take some one on at this
floor, and his dear old heart gave an enormous throb of anticipation,
turning to disappointment an instant later when a messenger-boy
slouched in.
"Find 'em at home?" asked the elevator-boy.
"Sure. Say, dey're wonders, ain't dey, dese society girls? I don't
blame people for sendin' 'em violets."
Mr. Hamshaw could have slain No. 329 for his familiarity, but lost the
opportunity in wondering what the young ladies would think if they
received 10,000 violets from an unnamed sender. For days, be it said in
all solemnity, Mr. Hamshaw waited and watched for glimpses of the young
ladies--princesses he was calling them down in the neighbourhood of his
rejuvenated heart. He neglected his business, ate at the most irregular
hours, and finally gave himself up to the astonishing habit of walking
up and down five flights of stairs. Sago and Ellen, united in worrying
over these idiosyncrasies, were troubled deep down in their consciences.
The master took to standing out in front of the main entrance on
bitterly cold days, smoking cigar after cigar. He said, in explanation,
that it was unhealthy to smoke indoors. Twice in as many weeks he had
glimpses of the young ladies. On both occasions they walked briskly
past him with their pretty noses in the air. It was evident that they
disdained carriages and street cars, for they struck off downtown with
the stride of athletes.
"By Jove, they're fine specimens!" murmured Mr. Hamshaw, admiring their
bonny figures from the doorway.
It is quite natural that he should have kept his secret from Sago and
Ellen. Sooner would he have died than permit these staunch guardians to
grasp the whole truth concerning his--he even felt guilty enough to
call it "foolish"--infatuation. If the Misses Frost received frequent
offerings of rare violets from an unmentioned source they were not so
puzzled that they could find no one to thank even though it surprised
the innocent young man in the extreme. If they took notice of the
stout, bald old gentleman who shuffled his feet and looked conscious
when they strode past it was not for him to know at that stage of the
game. He felt so small after the weary weeks of watching that he went
and had himself weighed, devoutly certain that he shrunk respectably.
He even went in for a savage system of training, calculated to reduce
his avoirdupois.
One day, while he was swinging along through the park, a mile and a
half from home, trying to take off a few of the pounds that made him
impossible to the willowy Misses Frost, he unexpectedly came upon his
dual affinity. In his agitation he narrowly escaped being run down by a
base and unsympathetic cab operated by a profane person who seldom
shaved. As it was, he lost his hat. The wind whirled it over the ground
much faster than he could sprint, with all his training, and brought it
up against a bush in front of the young women. One of them sprang
forward and snatched it up before it could resume its flight. Mr.
Hamshaw came up puffing and confused, but radiant.
"Thank you, thank you, ever so much!" he panted. "Never mind the dust.
It's been dusty before. Besides, it's an old one. I have a better one
at home, and a silk--"
He brought himself up with a jerk, realising that he was jabbering like
a fool. The young women were polite and respectful. Not a sign of
derision appeared in their faces.
"Fierce wind, isn't it?" asked one of them, and it dawned instantly
upon him that she was the one he loved. He jammed his hat far down upon
his head, glancing, as he did so, at the other girl. She was smiling
genially, her face rosy from the wind her sister condemned, and, with
ruthless inconstancy, Mr. Hamshaw at once changed his mind. She was the
one.
"Pardon me for the liberty," he said, "but I am Mr. Hamshaw. We are
neighbours, you know. Live in the same building."
"Oh, is that so?" asked the taller of the two, and, to his dismay, he
saw that her surprise was genuine.
"Yes; you are on the second--I am on the sixth."
"Where the Jap is?" asked the shorter one.
"He's my valet."
"Funny little thing, isn't it?"
"An excellent servant, Miss--"
"Look out, there goes your lid again! I'll get it--my legs are swifter
than yours!" cried the tall athlete in petticoats, and off she sailed
in pursuit.
"You need some one to chase your hat for you, Mr. Hamshaw," said the
short one airily.
"Are you going our way?" asked the other, with a smile that could have
led him to perdition.
"To the end of the earth," he murmured gallantly.
For the next ten minutes he walked on air. His heart was so light that
it bobbed up and down like a fisherman's cork. He was not long in
discovering that the tall one was Mame and the short one Lou--short for
Marie and Louise, they explained on request!
"I see a good many boxes of flowers going up to your apartment,"
ventured Mr. Hamshaw, quite out of breath.
"Every day, and sometimes in between," said Marie.
"Ah, it's so nice to be popular!" he chirped. "And--and you can't blame
the men, either, you know."
"You can't thank them, either, if they don't enclose their cards.
Nearly every day there is a guessing match in the back parlour. It's
poor form to send flowers without a card."
"By George, they're fine girls!" reflected Mr. Hamshaw. "Healthy,
vigorous, full of life, and not a bit spoiled. Hang it all, I'm an ass
to act like this! But I can't help it. A man is never too old to learn
or to love. I'll play hob with some of these young dandies before I get
through. Hamshaw, you've got to win one of these girls. But which one?
There's the rub! It's awfully annoying!"
But it grew to be quite romantic. Mr. Hamshaw came to look upon himself
as an up-to-date Romeo. The young ladies did not offer him any
inducement to call upon them in their own home, but they frequently
walked with him in the park of afternoons, and were astonishingly
agreeable about candy, soda-water and matinees. Their reluctance to
lunch or dine with him downtown stamped them in his mind as something
most admirable. He quite understood. And their devotion to their sick
friend was truly beautiful. He never saw them but they were going to
visit her. Miss Louise naively informed him that they gave her some of
the violets he sent to them, but that she knew he wouldn't mind.
"Do you think she'd like it if I sent her some good books to read?"
asked he, quite delighted.
"Sure," replied Miss Marie.
"How very unconventional," beamed Mr. Hamshaw to himself. "Hang it all,
I wish I could decide between them! I think I'd look better with the
short one, but--"
One day his nephew, young Jimmy Sprang, met him on the street and
proceeded to twit him about his second childhood.
"What do you mean, sir?" demanded Mr. Hamshaw with great dignity and a
sinking heart.
"Who are the fairies you're trotting--"
"Stop, sir!" thundered Mr. Hamshaw. "Not another word, sir! They are
ladies, and not to be discussed by such a bounder as you."
At last Mr. Hamshaw decided to take Louise. "I'll tell her tomorrow,"
he said to himself, quite sure that it was only necessary to tell and
not to ask. But that evening, just after returning from the club, he
saw something that troubled and harassed him not a little. He saw and
heard Sago talking to the Misses Frost--not only talking but in a
manner so familiar that it must have been extremely nauseating to the
cultured young women. The three were standing under the electric light
at the corner, and the young women instead of appearing annoyed at the
heathen's twaddle, seemed to be highly amused. Only the greatest
exercise of self-restraint kept Mr. Hamshaw from kicking Sago into the
middle of the next block.
Mr. Hamshaw was on the point of intervening when, to his utter
consternation, the two young women started off up the street with Sago.
To add to his misery, Sago did not come in at all that night. In
response to Mr. Hamshaw's savage inquiry, Ellen, who attended him the
next morning, said that Sago had gone to a dance on the West Side and
had not turned up. Mr. Hamshaw sat bolt upright in bed and then
collapsed.
The next afternoon he went home early, haggard and with a headache. His
confidence was not gone, however. After arranging himself carefully--he
refused to call for Sago--he boldly descended to the second floor. Then
he lost his nerve. Instead of ringing the Gladding door-bell he walked
on downstairs and out into the open air. At the corner he came plump
upon Mr. Gladding himself, the step-father of the two girls.
"How are you, Mr. Hamshaw? Fine weather we're having," greeted the man
from the second floor.
"I've just been to your flat," said Mr. Hamshaw.
"Indeed! Any one at home?"
"I don't know--that is, I didn't go in. You see--are you going home
now, Gladding, or downtown?"
"Home, of course. I've been downtown all day. Anything you wanted to
see me about, Mr. Hamshaw?"
"Oh, no--nothing important."
"Well, won't you come up with me now? By the way, I'd like you to meet
my wife and her daughters."
"I know your daughters, I believe."
"Ah!"
"It is about one of them that I wish to speak with you, sir." They were
on the second-floor landing by this time. "May I come in?"
"Certainly," said Mr. Gladding.
Mr. Hamshaw sat stiff and uncomfortable on the divan while Mr. Gladding
rang for a maid. He also called down the hall to ask Mrs. Gladding and
the young ladies to come in and greet Mr. Hamshaw.
"Before they come," began the latter, fidgeting nervously, "I want to
say that I expect to marry Miss Frost. It's been hard work to choose
between them--"
"What are you talking about?" gasped the father.
"I know I've done a most reprehensible thing in courting them--I mean
her--in this manner, but, you see--"
At this juncture Mrs. Gladding entered the room, followed by two
strange young women--sleepy, tired, scrawny young women, who looked at
Mr. Hamshaw as if he were a sofa-cushion and nothing more.
"My wife--er--Mr. Hamshaw, and the Misses Frost," mumbled Mr. Gladding,
bowled over completely.
"What's that?" shouted Mr. Hamshaw, coming to his feet and toppling
over backward again. The others stared at him as if he were mad.
"How--how many have you--I mean, how many daughters are there?"
"Two!" exclaimed Mrs. Gladding, freezing up immediately. The society
young women relaxed into a giggle.
"Then--who--is this a joke?" gasped Mr. Hamshaw, perspiration starting
in torrents.
"What do you mean, sir?" demanded Mr. Gladding.
"Where are Marie and Louise?" murmured Mr. Hamshaw.
Just then a trim maid appeared in the doorway--white-capped and aproned.
"Did you ring, Ma'am?--Good Heavens!"
It was Marie!
Mr. Hamshaw fainted without more ado, and the apartment was in an
uproar. Everybody thought he was dead, and the Misses Frost promptly
duplicated his swooning act.
When Mr. Hamshaw opened his eyes, Marie was standing near by with
ammonia and wet towels.
"Where is Louise?" he asked weakly.
"She's went and married that awful little Jap of yours last night.
Here, take another sniff at this. Go on; don't be afraid of it. I've
give it to the young ladies regular for the last five years. What's
that, sir?"
"Nothing--nothing," he whispered.
"You said something, sir."
"And you're not Miss Frost?"
"One of them scrawny--I beg pardon, sir! Did you think I was--"
"Well, if that's the case, I can tell you what I said a moment ago. I
said 'D--n it all!' Where am I?"
"At Mr. Gladding's, sir."
"Is Sago upstairs?"
"No, sir; they've gone to the matinee on their wedding trip, Mr.
Hamshaw."
"Oh!"
It was not what Mr. Hamshaw said but the way he said it.
THE GREEN RUBY
He was a very good-looking chap--this Cannable who lived in the
civilised city of New Orleans. It is quite true that he came from an
island in the sea, but as that island is known to geographers, great
and small, as England, it is scarcely worth while to mention his
migration as an achievement of civilisation. Moreover, it was known
that he had eaten of human flesh, but it was not with the gusto of
those ancient Fijis who banqueted on salubrious sailors and munchable
ministers whenever they had the simultaneous chance and appetite.
He was one of three survivors of the ill-fated Graceby polar
expedition, and as such he had been obliged to subsist for some days on
whatsoever was set before him by the cook, a discreet but overpowering
person who certainly would have been the sole survivor if the relief
expedition had been delayed a few days longer. But that portion of Mr.
Cannable's history sounds much better in whispers and it does not look
pretty in print. He never repeated it of his own accord. The newspapers
told it for him when he was too weak and exhausted to deny or affirm.
His uncle, Sir John Bolingbroke, sent him out from London soon after
his return from the frozen North to represent great financial interests
on the Cotton Exchange at New Orleans. For two years the young man
stuck manfully to his post in the southern city, but it was an irksome
restraint to one whose heart was turbulent with the love of travel and
adventure. Just at the time when he was ready to resign his position
and hie himself into the jungles of the Amazon on an exploring
expedition two things happened, either of which was in itself
sufficient to stay him for the while. In the first place, his uncle
died and left him two hundred thousand pounds in good English money,
and in the second place he met Agatha Holmes.
The two hundred thousand pounds, it is but just to say, might not have
kept him from the equator, but it is doubtful if all, much less any
specific portion of the globe, could have induced him to leave Agatha
Holmes. And so it was that Mr. James Cannable--for short
"Jimmy"--remained in New Orleans for many months, estimably employed in
the business of evolving a plan that might permit him to journey to the
world's end with two hundred thousand pounds in one hand and a certain
girl's future in the other.
The months and the plans were profitable, it seems, for one splendid
evening saw him at the altar-rail beside the fairest girl in all the
Southland, the queen of a thousand hearts. Agatha Holmes became Mrs.
Cannable, and thereby hangs a tale. It would appear, from all the
current but unpublished records of social Louisiana, that Agatha had
gone about shattering hearts in a most unintentional but effective
fashion up to the time Mr. Jimmy Cannable refused to be routed.
Certainly it is no blot upon this fair young coquette's fame to admit
that she had plighted herself to at least four ardent suitors in days
gone by, and it was equally her own affair if she took every woman's
privilege of shifting her fancy before she was ready to marry.
Unluckily for Agatha, however, she neglected to disengage herself
properly from the most recent suitor next before Mr. Cannable. So far
as that worthy was concerned the engagement still obtained, for he,
poor chap, was down in Patagonia somewhere surveying for railroads and
did not have the slightest means of ascertaining her change of
affection. How was he to know that she had married Jimmy Cannable, and
how was he to know that she had forgotten his very existence without a
single pang of remorse? He only knew that he had starved himself to
give her a diamond ring, to say nothing of the wonderful old ruby
heirloom that had been in the family for centuries.
He told her at parting that no power on earth could keep him from some
day reclaiming the heirloom and with it the hand of the girl who was to
wear it all her life.
One day, out of the past and up from the wilds, came the word that
Harry Green was on his way home after an absence of three years. Agatha
Holmes had been Mrs. Cannable for three months and she had forgotten
young Mr. Green as completely as if he never had been a part of her
memory. A cablegram addressed to Agatha Holmes one day was delivered to
Agatha Cannable. It simply said: "Am coming back at last for the ruby.
Harry," and it was sent from London. She found herself wondering what
he was doing in England and how long it would be before he could reach
New Orleans, but it did not dawn upon her for three full days that he
still imagined himself to be her tardy but accepted fiance. Then in the
fulness of her joy she sat down and laughed over his amazement--perhaps
his chagrin--when he learned that she was another man's wife.
At first thought she decided to tell Jimmy the news, permitting him to
enjoy the fun as well, but the discretion which shapes woman's ends
forestalled the impulse. There was much she could not explain in
justice to herself, to say nothing of the other man who had gone away
with her in his heart. True, it may not have been difficult to hold her
immaculate in a heart surrounded by Patagonians, but there was
something disturbing in the fact that he had been constant, after all.
She recalled, with a slight shiver (which grew with time, by the way),
that she had sworn to kill herself rather than to marry any one but
Harry Green. It also came back to her memory that the hot-blooded Harry
had promised faithfully, though fiercely, that he would accomplish that
end for her in case she violated her oath.
It is sufficient to say that she was the most wretched young woman in
New Orleans by the time Harry Green landed in New York. He telegraphed
to her, announcing his arrival and his hasty departure for the Southern
metropolis. Somehow the slip of paper read like a death-warrant to her
peace of mind.
"How annoying it is to have an old affair revived like this," she
wailed to herself. "Why couldn't he, too, have married some one else?
How, in Heaven's name, will it end?" She thought of a thousand
subterfuges through which she might avoid seeing him, but put them all
aside with the recollection of his indomitable will. He would see her
sooner or later; the inevitable could not be avoided.
She finally took to her bed with daily headaches, distractedly but
stealthily studying a railroad time-table.
"He's leaving New York by this time. Good Heaven, he'll be in Mobile by
one o'clock tomorrow, Pass Christian a few minutes later--oh, dear, I
wonder if he will be terribly violent! Jimmy is noticing, too. He says
I'm ill. He wants to take me to California, but I don't dare--I don't
dare! Harry Green would be sure to follow. I know him--oh, how well I
know him! He would--"
A servant came in to announce that Miss Carrithers was down stairs.
"Ask her to come up," sighed Agatha. "I'll tell her myself that I don't
want to see her, but it won't mean anything to Betty. She'll stay all
morning."
"Yes, ma'am," agreed the maid as she hurried away. A moment later Miss
Carrithers fairly bounded into the darkened bed-chamber, her face full
of excitement.
"Have you heard?" she gasped, dropping upon the side of the bed. "Harry
Green's coming home. He's in New York now. Joe Pierce had a telegram."
"Yes, I know," said Agatha drearily.
"Have you heard from him--you?" demanded Miss Betty in amazement--and
some little concern.
"Of course, Betty; why shouldn't I?" irritably.
"Oh, I suppose it's all right," said the other dubiously. "I was only
thinking of the--of the old days."
"Betty," said Mrs. Cannable, sitting up suddenly and grasping her
friend's hand, "I'm the most wretched creature on earth. I don't know
what I'm to do."
"Is it about--about Harry Green?" "Yes. You see, dear, he--he doesn't
know I'm married."
"Goodness, Agatha! You don't mean he--he still thinks you are engaged
to marry him?"
"That's just it, Betty. I didn't tell him--in fact, I had forgotten all
about him, away down there in Patagonia, wherever it is. He--"
"And, oh, he was so terribly in love with you--and you with him, too!"
"No, no; don't say that. It was so foolish. Besides, he's been gone
nearly three years. How could he expect me to wait all that time? I
haven't had a letter from him for more than a year. I counted it up
today."
"Does Jimmy Cannable know about--him?"
"I don't know and I'm afraid to ask."
"Harry's a frightfully determined person," mused Betty Carrithers
reflectively.
"He swore I should be his wife if we waited a thousand years."
"That's the one thing in your favour. When they swear such things as
that they can't possibly mean all they say," said Miss Betty sagely.
She was the prettiest and most popular girl in town, but she was a wise
body for all that. Her trim little figure was surcharged with a
magnetism that thrilled one to the very core; her brown eyes danced
ruthlessly through one's most stubborn defences; her smile and her
frown were the thermometers by which masculine emotions could be gauged
at a glance. "It will be rather difficult to face him, won't it?"
"Betty, it's simply impossible! Think of Harry Green waiting all these
years, believing in me, as constant as the sun--and then to find I've
married some one else. You know I love Jimmy Cannable with all my
heart. I can't bear the thought of what might happen if he and Harry
quarrelled about--about those old days."
"Don't cry--don't be a goose! It's the commonest thing in the world.
Every girl has had dozens of affairs."
"I know, but not just like this one. My husband wants to take me to
California. I wish--oh, how I wish I could go! But Harry would
follow--I know he'll be merciless."
Miss Carrithers was thoughtful for several minutes, paying slight heed
to the doleful sobs from the bed.
"I'll tell you what, Agatha," she said at last; "I believe this affair
can be managed easily enough if you will just leave town."
"Oh, Betty!" sitting up and looking at her friend hopefully.
"Of course, I never had a chance at Harry Green. You monopolised him. I
liked him immensely--from a distance. You go away, and let me explain
the situation to him."
It was the straw that the drowning person grasps, and Mrs. Cannable
clutched it with a shriek of delight. She poured her story into the
ears of her too loyal friend, who smiled confidently in response to her
apprehensions.
Miss Carrithers did not exchange confidences, however; she merely gave
promises to do her best. She was shrewd enough to know that if she
confessed to Agatha that she had cared for Harry Green--from a
distance--that capricious and perverse young person would have declined
to retire from the field of strife. After all, Betty admitted to
herself, it was not wholly a service of sacrifice she was granting her
friend. There was something of a selfish motive in her loyalty.
"I'll love you forever if you will explain everything and send him
away," said Agatha in the end.
"At least, I shall explain everything," agreed Betty complacently.
Agatha blushed consciously as she drew a small diamond from among those
on her fingers.
"I didn't know his address, so you see I couldn't send it back to him,"
she explained. "And, Betty, if you'll hand me my jewel box I'll ask you
to return that--er--you remember my old ruby pendant!"
"Was--that--did he give it to you?"
"Yes. You don't know how I hate to give it up. Isn't it beautiful?" She
reluctantly let the ruby slip from her fingers into those of her friend.
"Perfectly gorgeous," said Betty, fastening it about her neck and
surveying herself in the cheval glass. "I'd give anything if it
belonged to me."
"Now, excuse me a minute, dear. I'll telephone to Jimmy and tell him
we'll start for California tonight. Harry gets here tomorrow at 4:45 on
the limited."
"You can be well out of the way by that time," said pretty Miss
Carrithers with a smile.
"And now, Betty, you will send him back to Patagonia, won't you?"
"I'll keep him away from California, my dear, that's all."
Miss Carrithers sat in her carriage outside the railroad station,
waiting for the train that was to bring Harry Green into New Orleans.
Outwardly she was cool, placid; inwardly she was a fever of emotions.
He had telegraphed the time of his arrival to Agatha; Betty received
and read the message. Mr. and Mrs. Cannable were miles westward,
hurrying to California. It was one thing to say she would take certain
responsibilities off the hands of the bride; it was altogether another
proposition to sit there and wait for the man she had admired for four
or five years with a constancy that surprised even herself. Her
reflections at this specific hour were scarcely definable. Chief among
them was a doubt--this doubt: Would Harry Green remember her? It seemed
such an absurd doubt that she laughed at it--and yet cultivated it with
distracting persistency.
The train was ten minutes late. A newsboy had made two trips to the
train-board in quest of information. When the big locomotive finally
thundered and hissed its way to a stand-still near the gates, Canal
Street seemed to have become a maze of indefinite avenues, so dizzy had
she grown of a sudden. Her eyes searched the throng that swept through
the gates; at last she saw him approaching.
She had expected a tired, worn man, unfashionably dressed, eager-eyed
and wistful. Instead, the tall fellow who came forth was attired in the
most modern English garments; he was brown, fresh-faced, keen-eyed and
prosperous looking. The same old Harry Green grown stronger, handsomer,
more polished. His black eyes were sweeping the street anxiously as if
in search of some one. He did not see Betty Carrithers, and her heart
sank.
Behind him stalked two gigantic negroes. They were the centre of all
observation. People stared at the blacks who carried Harry Green's bags
as if they were looking upon creatures just out of an Arabian Night's
tale. Nearly seven feet tall and of Herculean proportions were these
giants. It is no wonder that the crowd gaped and felt something like
awe mingling with curiosity.
Mr. Green, erstwhile Patagonian surveyor, started at the sound of a
soft voice close at hand, a voice in which grateful surprise was
uppermost.
"Why, Harry Green! How do you do!" He turned and beheld Miss
Carrithers. She was leaning forward in her carriage, her little gloved
hand extended toward him impulsively. She was amazed to see a look of
relief flash in his eyes. His smile was broad and wholesome as he
gripped the little hand in a mighty brown one.
"Betty Carrithers!" he exclaimed. "Now, this is like home! By George,
you haven't changed a bit."
"Don't you think so!" She flushed. "It's been several years, you know.
A woman can change terribly in--"
"Ah, but you've just changed into a woman."
"And what a man you've grown to be," admiringly.
"I hope so. Patagonia would make a man of any one. Are you expecting
some one?"
"I was; but I see every one has come out. Won't you let me take you up
town? Goodness, who are those awful giants that stand over there all
the time like guards?"
"They're from Patagonia. Call them anything you like; they don't
understand English. They are my men of all work. Thanks, I will ride up
with you. Tell him to stop at the St. Charles." Then he turned and
spoke to the giants, who solemnly nodded their heads and climbed into a
cab close by. Green seated himself beside Miss Carrithers. There was a
hunted look in his eyes and a nervous tremor in his voice. "A sort of
bodyguard, as it were, Betty. By the way, you haven't seen Agatha
Holmes, have you? I telegraphed to her."
Miss Carrithers had braced herself for this question and she also had
prepared an answer. She could not look at his face, however, despite
her determination.
"Agatha Holmes! Is it possible you haven't heard? Don't you know
that--that she is married?"
She knew in her heart it was a cruel blow, but it was the best way,
after all. Instinctively she felt that he had ceased breathing, that
his body was stiffening under the shock, that his eyes were staring at
her unbelievingly. Imagine her surprise, even consternation, when,
after a breathless moment, his tremendous sigh of relief was followed
by the most cheerful of remarks.
"Good Lord!" he fairly gasped, "that simplifies matters!"
She turned like a flash and found his face radiant with joy. It was
hard for her to believe her own senses. He actually was rejoicing; she
had expected him to groan with despair. It is no wonder that her plan
of action was demolished on the instant; it is not surprising that
every vestige of resourcefulness was swept away by this amazing
reverse. She stared at him so pathetically, so helplessly, that he
laughed aloud.
"I know what you're thinking," he said, and there was no mistaking the
lightness of his heart. "I don't blame you for being shocked if you
thought I had come back to such a fate as you evidently pictured.
Betty, by Jove, you'll never know how happy you've made me!"
"I--I am surprised. Agatha told me that you--you--"
"And she's really married? Never mind what she told you. It doesn't
matter now. Is she happy?"
"She adores her husband--young Jimmy Cannable. You know him. She will
be crazy with joy, Harry, when she finds out that you, too, are happy.
She was half mad with remorse and all that. It will--"
"Heavens, Betty, I thought I was the remorseful one. By George, I love
you for telling me this!"
A shocking suspicion hurtled through her brain.
"You mean, there is--another woman?" she said with a brave effort. She
even smiled accusingly.
"Some day I'll tell you all about it," he said evasively. "I--I suppose
it would be all right for me to go round and call on Agatha this
evening."
"She is not in town. California," said Betty.
"Great Scott! In California?" The dismay in his face was even greater
than the relief of the moment before.
"Not exactly. She's on her way."
"By George, I wonder if I can catch her by wire? I must--I really must
see her." He was so agitated that she observed beads of perspiration
starting on his brow. She was mystified beyond description. Was he,
after all, she found herself wondering, playing a part? Was it in his
crafty heart to follow and kill Agatha Holmes!
"Oh, no,--you can't do that," she protested quickly. "Won't you--come
out to dinner tonight?" she added somewhat confusedly. "We can talk
over old times."
"Thanks, Betty, but I can't." At the same time he glanced uneasily at a
cab which drove along close behind them.
"You were going to call upon Agatha," she pouted.
"But not at dinner-time," he said, mopping his brow. "I'll come up
about nine, if I may."
He came at nine, a trifle out of breath and uneasy in his manner. The
great Green ruby hung from the chain that encircled Betty's slim,
pretty neck. Its soft red eye glowed like a coal against the white
skin, but if she thought to surprise him with it, she was to be
disappointed. He did not look at it.
She did not know at the time that a giant Patagonian stood beneath the
gas lamp at the corner above the Carrithers mansion in St. Charles
Avenue. His gaunt, dark face was turned toward her doorway and his
fierce eyes seemed to bore holes through the solid oak.
"I can't stay very late," he said almost as he responded to the
greeting. "Confounded business engagement. Where is Agatha to stay in
California?"
"I don't know. It wasn't decided. Perhaps they'll go to Japan."
"Good Lord!"
"You seem terribly interested, for a man who doesn't care," she said.
"I should say I am interested--but not in the way you think." After a
moment's reflection, as he stood looking down upon her, he went on
excitedly, "I'll tell you something, Betty. You're a good sort, and you
can keep a secret as long as any woman--which isn't long, of course.
But it will be long enough for me to get out of town first. I must go
to California tomorrow. Wait! Don't look like that! I'm not going to
annoy Agatha. She'll understand when she hears what I have to say. Have
you ever noticed the ruby pendant that she wears--or wore, perhaps?"
"The big one she called her 'coal of fire' because it burned her
conscience so terribly? Yes."
"Well, I gave it to her. I've just got to have it back. That's the
whole story. That's what I'm here for. That's why that awful black
devil is standing out there on the corner. See him? Under the gas
lamp?" He drew the curtains aside and she peeped out. "He's waiting for
me."
"What does it mean?" she cried, with a nameless dread creeping over her.
"He is there in the interest of my father-in-law," said Mr. Green.
"You---your father-in-law?" she gasped, staring at him wildly.
"Yes--my wife's father," he said somewhat plaintively. He sat down near
her, a nervous unsettled look in his eyes. She felt her heart turn
cold; something seemed to be tightening about her throat. The light of
hope that had been fanning began to flicker its way to extinction.
"You are married?" came from her stiff lips.
"Yes," he replied doggedly. "A year ago, Betty. I--I did not write to
Agatha about it because I--I hoped that she'd never know how false I
was to my promise. But, she's done the same thing; that takes a
terrible load off my mind. I feared that I might find her waiting, you
know. It would have been hard to break it to her, don't you see?"
To his amazement, she laughed shrilly, almost hysterically. In the
flash of a moment's time, her feeling toward Harry Green began to
undergo a change. It was not due to the realisation that she had lost
all hope of having him for her own; it was, instead, the discovery that
her small girlish love for him had been the most trivial of
infatuations and not real passion. She laughed because she had pitied
Agatha and Green and herself; she laughed, moreover, in memory of her
deliberate eagerness to assume Agatha's burdens for purely selfish
reasons.
"I know it's amusing to you," he agreed with a wry smile. "Everything
amused you, as I remember, Betty. Do you remember that night in
Condit's conservatory when you and I were hiding from--"
"Don't, please!" she objected, catching her breath painfully. "I was a
foolish girl then, Harry. But tell me all about your--your wife. I am
crazy to know."
He looked involuntarily toward the window before replying; she observed
the hunted look in his eyes and wondered.
"There isn't much to tell. She lives in Patagonia," he said, somewhat
sullenly. Then he glanced at his watch.
"What! Is she a--a native?" she cried.
"She was born there, but--Good Lord, you don't think she's black?"
"Or even a giantess," she smiled.
"She's white, of course, and she's no bigger than you, Betty. She isn't
as pretty, I'll have to say that. But let's talk about something else.
How am I to catch Agatha? It's imperative. 'Gad, it's life or death,
Betty."
"What do you mean?" she asked, startled.
He swallowed painfully two or three times as he scraped the edge of the
rug with his foot, looking down all the while.
"Well, you see, it's this way. I've married into a rather queer family.
My--my wife's most damnably jealous."
"That isn't very queer, is it?"
"She has a queer way of being jealous, that's all. Somehow she's got it
into her head that there's another woman up here in North America."
"Oh, I begin to see. And, of course, there isn't?"
"Certainly not. I love my wife."
"Good for you, Harry. I didn't think it of you," she said with a smile
which he did not understand.
"Oh, I say, Betty, you are making fun of me."
"On the contrary, I'm just beginning to treat you seriously."
"I suppose I owe some sort of an explanation in connection with my
remark about jealousy. It's due my wife."
"May I ask where she is at present?"
"She's on the range in Patagonia. I--I couldn't bring her here, you
know. Betty, I want you to help me with Agatha. She's got that ruby and
I simply have to get it back again. I'll tell you all about--about my
marriage. Perhaps you'll understand. You see, I meant to be true to
Agatha. But it was so cursed lonesome down there--worse than Siberia or
mid-ocean. We were surveying near the west coast--rotten country--and I
met her at her father's place. You see, they raise cattle and all that
sort of thing there. Her old man--I should say Mr. Grimes--is the
cattle king of Patagonia. He's worth a couple of millions easy. Well,
to make a long story short, we all fell in love with Pansy--the whole
engineering corps--and I won out. She's the only child and she's
motherless. The old man idolises her. She's fairly good-looking
and--well, she's being educated by private tutors from Buenos Aires.
I'm not a cad to tell you. She's pure gold in spite of her environment."
"No doubt, if she's surrounded by millions."
"Don't be sarcastic. Some day she'll come in for the old man's money.
She'll be educated by that time and as good as anybody. Then we'll come
back to the States and she'll--well, you'll see. The only trouble is
that she thinks there's a woman up here that I loved before I loved
her. One day, shortly after we were married, she found a photograph of
Agatha which I'd always carried around in my trunk. It was the picture
in which she wore the Green ruby. Don't you remember it? Well, you
can't imagine how she carried on. She acted like a sav--but I won't say
it. She has had no advantages--yet, and she's a bit untrained in the
ways of the world. Of course, she hated Agatha's face because it was
beautiful. She complained to the old man. The worst of it all is that I
had already shown her a picture of the ruby, taken from that eastern
magazine, and she recognised it as the one on Agatha's neck. "Well, you
should have heard the old--my father-in-law! Phew!"
"What did he say?" asked Betty, pitying him.
"I can't repeat it. He went on at a fearful rate about fellows of my
stripe having wives in other parts of the world, and he was in a
condition to commit murder before he got through. It all ended with a
monstrous demand from my wife. She commanded me to produce the pendant.
By George, Betty, I was in a frightful mess!
"I could only say it was in New Orleans. The old man looked holes
through me and said he'd give me four months in which to produce it.
Anything that Pansy demanded he'd see that she got it, if he had to
shoot his way to it. You ought to see him! And, incidentally, she can
shoot like Buffalo Bill herself. She shot a gaucho through the neck
half a mile away."
"A gaucho?"
"Yes--a cowherder. Hang it, everybody carries a gun down there. Now you
know why I'm here. The old man said if I didn't bring that ruby to my
wife in a given time he'd find me and shoot me full of holes. She loves
me, but she said she'd do the same thing. I've just got to have that
ruby. They mean it."
"You poor boy," said Betty scornfully. "And I was feeling so sorry for
you because of Agatha."
"It's no joke, Betty. These big blacks are my servants for appearance's
sake only. They are in reality my keepers. The old man sent them along
to see that I did come back, one way or another. They'd just as soon
throttle me as eat."
"It would be easy to lose them up here, I should say."
"Well, I reckon you don't know a Patagonian. They can scent like a
bloodhound and they never give up. Those fellows are here to attend to
me, and they'll do it, never fear. Either one of them could thrash half
the police in New Orleans. They are terrible! There's no escape from
them. I'd thought of something desperate but--but Grimes himself is to
be reckoned with. Sometimes I--I almost wish I hadn't won out."
"But think of the millions."
"The only thing I can think of, Betty, is that miserable ruby. I've got
to recover it and sail for South America inside of ten days. And she's
in California! Did you ever hear of such luck?"
Betty Carrithers walked over and looked from the window. The giant
black was still under the street lamp and she could not repress a
shudder as she glanced from time to time to the man on the couch. A
feeling of pity arose in her breast. Harry Green was unworthy, after
all. He was not what he had seemed to be to her in those days of her
teens. He was no longer an idol; her worshipful hours were ended.
Instead, he was a weak, cringing being in the guise of a strong
attractive man; he had been even more false than Agatha, and he had not
the excuse of love to offer in extenuation. Pity and loathing fought
for supremacy. Something was shattered, and she felt lonely yet
relieved. Strangely, she seemed content in the discovery.
He was leaning forward, staring blankly at the rug, when she turned to
resume her seat. A haggard face was raised to hers and his hand
trembled as he jerked out his watch for the fourth time since entering
the room.
"I'm a bit nervous," said he. "Time flies."
"Do you remember the fairy princesses of your childhood books?" she
asked suddenly. "What would you say if one should quickly appear in
real life?"
"What do you mean?"
"Outside stands the terrible ogre, ready to eat you up. Permit me to
appear before you as the fairy princess. I can save you from death. My
only regret is that I can not provide you with an enchanted tapestry,
to waft you back to your lady love in the beautiful land of Patagonia.
Here, behold! I restore to you the wonderful ruby!"
She unclasped the chain and dropped the great jewel into his shaking
hand. He turned deathly white and then leaped up with a shout of
incredulous joy. A hundred questions flew to his lips, faster than she
could answer. She allowed him to babble on disjointedly for some time.
"Isn't it sufficient that I restore it to you? Why ask questions? It
was my commission to do this thing. I'll confess it hasn't happened
just as I anticipated, but what of that? Doubtless you recall this ring
also. I think it signified an engagement. Take it. There may come a day
when it will be ornamental as well as useful to your wife." He accepted
the solitaire which she drew from her finger. His face was a study.
"Betty," he said, puzzled and helpless, "it--it isn't possible that it
was you instead of Agatha that I gave these things to? I had typhoid
fever down there. There are a lot of things I don't remember since
then. It wasn't you, of course."
She laughed in his perplexed face--a good-humoured, buoyant laugh.
"If you can't remember, Harry, I shan't enlighten you. You have the
ruby, isn't that enough?"
Ten minutes later he said good-bye to her and sallied forth into the
night. She stood in the window and watched the huge sentinel stride off
behind him like a gaunt shadow which could not be shaken off. That
figure and another like it were to cling to his heels until he came to
his journey's end. She smiled and shook her head pityingly as Harry
Green passed out of her life at the corner below.
In her own room shortly afterward she took an old photograph from a
drawer, looked at it a moment with a smile on her lips, and then tore
it into many pieces.
"The strangest part of it is that I don't seem to mind," she said to
herself, and that night she slept peacefully.
THE GLOAMING GHOSTS
PART I
Gloaming had been the home of the Gloames for two centuries at least.
Late in the seventeenth century one of the forebears acquired the
picturesque acres in Virginia and they have not been without a Gloame
as master since that time. At the time when the incidents to be related
in this story transpired, Colonel Cassady Gloame was the owner of the
famous old estate and he was lord of the countryside. The power of the
ancient Gloames was not confined to the rural parts of that vast
district in southern Virginia; it was dominant in the county seats for
miles around. But that is neither here nor there. The reader knows the
traditional influence of every old Virginia family. It is like the
royal household of an eastern monarchy. It leads, dominates, and sets
the pace for all its little universe. No one cares to learn that the
Gloames were the first family of them all; it does not matter
especially that old Sir Henry settled there nearly a hundred years
before the Revolution; it is simple history that some of the Gloames
who followed after him fought like tigers for the country in one war
and just as hard against it in another. Let it be understood that
Gloaming was two centuries old and that there was no fairer, prouder
name in all Virginia than that which had been handed down to Colonel
Cassady Gloame, the last of the race.
The rambling old house that faced the river was known from one end of
the state to the other, not only for its age, but for its hospitality.
The Gloames, whether wild or sedate, had always been famous for the
warmth of their hearts. The blood was blue and the hearts were true, is
what the world said of the Gloames. The years had made but little
change in the seat of the Gloames. The mansion, except for the repairs
that time demanded, was virtually the same as in the days of old Sir
Henry. Nine generations of Gloames had begun life in the picturesque
old house and it had been the pride of each. It had borne good
Americans and blue Virginians. The architecture, like its children,
seemed perennial. Time made few inroads upon the character of its
lines. Its furnishings and its treasures were almost as antique.
Decrepit age alone was responsible for the retirement of historic bits
of furniture. The plate was as old as the hills, the service as
venerable. Gloaming looked to be the great-great-grand-parent of every
other habitation in the valley.
Colonel Cassady Gloame was the last of the long and illustrious race.
He was going to the grave childless; the name would end with him. True,
he would doubtless leave a widow, but what is a widow when one figures
on the perpetuation of a name? The Colonel was far past sixty, his wife
barely twenty-five. He loved her devotedly and it is only just to say
that she esteemed him more highly than any other man in all the world.
But there would be no children.
Mrs. Gloame, beautiful, cultured, gay as a butterfly, was the daughter
of Judge Garrison of New York. She had been married for five years and
she was not yet tired of the yoke. Her youth was cheerfully, loyally
given over to the task of making age a joy instead of a burden to this
gallant old Virginian. She was a veritable queen in this little
Virginia kingdom. Though she was from the North, they loved her in the
South; they loved her for the same reason that inspired old Colonel
Gloame to give his heart and honour to her keeping--because they could
not help it.
The Christmas holidays were always a season of great merriment at
Gloaming. There never had been a Christmas Eve without festivities in
the good old home of the Gloames. Sometimes, in the long array of
years, there may have been sorrow and grief and trouble in the hearts
of the inmates, but all such was dissipated when the Christmas bells
began to ring. Even that terrible tragedy in the winter of 1769 lifted
its shadow long enough to permit the usual happiness to shine through
all the last week of the dying year.
There was always a genial house party in holiday times, and Gloaming
rang free with the pleasures of the light-hearted. The Colonel himself
was the merriest of the merry-makers, second only in enthusiasm to the
sunny young wife from the North. The night of December 24, 1897, found
the old mansion crowded with guests, most of whom were spending the
week with the Gloames. There had been dancing and music and games, and
eleven o'clock brought fatigue for even the liveliest of the guests. It
was then that pretty Louise Kelly, of the Major Kellys of Richmond,
peremptorily commanded the Colonel to tell the oft-told tale of the
Gloaming Ghosts.
"Come to order," she cried to the guests in the double parlours.
"Colonel Gloame is going to tell us about those dear old ghosts."
"Now, my dear Louise, I've told that story times without number to
every soul in this house," remonstrated the Colonel. "You, to my
certain knowledge have been an attentive listener for one hundred and
nine times. Even though it brings upon my head the weight of your
wrath, I must positively decline to--"
"You have nothing to say about it, Colonel Gloame," declared Miss Kelly
definitely. "The first thing required of a soldier is duty. It is your
duty to obey when commanded by the officer of the night. In the first
place, you've not told the story to every one here. Lieutenant King has
just confessed that he never has heard of the Gloaming Ghosts and,
furthermore, he laughed when I told him that you boasted of real, live
ghosts more than a hundred years old."
"Oh, we are very proud of our ghosts, Lieutenant King," cried Mrs.
Gloame.
"I imagined that people lived in some terror of ghosts," ventured King,
a young West Pointer.
"You couldn't drag the Colonel into the south wing up-stairs with a
whole regiment of cavalry horses," said old Mr. Gordon, the Colonel's
best friend.
"Tush," remonstrated the Colonel.
"There's a real ghost, a white lady who walks on air, who spends her
time in the room whose windows look out over the low lands along the
river," piped up little Miss Gordon, a grand-daughter in very short
dresses.
"How romantic," laughed the Lieutenant.
The Colonel, despite his customary remonstrances, would not have missed
telling the story for worlds. He liked to be coaxed. He was in his
element when the score or more of eager guests, old and young, crowded
into the room about him and implored him to go on with the tale.
"It's a mighty threadbare sort of a ghost we have here, my dear
Lieutenant," he admitted at last, and there was a sigh of contentment
from the lips of many. They knew the story would be forthcoming. "Poor
old thing, I've told about her so often I'm afraid she'll refuse to
come and visit us any more."
At this juncture, young Mr. Gates Garrison strolled leisurely into the
room, coming from the dining-room where he had lingered with the apples
and cider and doughnuts. He was a tall, fair young fellow of
twenty-four, a year younger than his sister, the pretty Mrs. Gloame,
and a senior in Columbia College. The Colonel stood with his back to
the blazing grate, confronting the crowd of eager listeners, who had
dragged chairs and settees and cushions from all parts of the house to
prepare the auditorium.
"Come here, Gates, and hear the ghost story," cried his sister, making
room between herself and Miss Kelly.
"Same old story?" inquired the law student, stifling a yawn.
"Of course; come and sit between us."
"Oh, I'm not afraid of ghosts," replied Gates indifferently.
Miss Kelly looked daggers through her tender blue eyes.
"I wonder what that boy has on his mind?" murmured Mrs. Gloame
anxiously.
"Nothing," responded Miss Kelly, sweetly. But the Colonel was beginning.
"Whatever you may think of this story," he began, "I can assure you
that there is a very deep mystery attached to Gloaming and as I cannot
offer the faintest explanation except to call your attention to the
supernatural conditions which exist, I am obliged to admit that I, for
one, firmly believe the house is haunted. For several generations the
Gloame family, to an individual, has believed in the ghost of the south
wing and our faith cannot be shaken. We have the evidence of our ears,
our eyes, and of all who have undertaken to explode the theory. I'll be
just as brief as possible, Major Harper, so you need not look at your
wife's watch. My great-great-grandfather, Godfrey Gloame, was born in
this house and he brought a beautiful bride here when he was married
twenty-five years afterward. He was, as are all the Gloames, a
Virginian of the old type, and he was a fire-eater, so the family
records say. When he was married it was to a young lady of wealth and
position in the North--a very gay and, if I must say it, a
particularly--ah!--unsatisfactory mistress of a home." "What could you
expect of a Yankee wife?" asked young Garrison, tantalisingly.
"They were different in those days," responded the grey old narrator,
with a smile for his wife. "My great-great-grandmother was a beautiful
woman, and she was well aware of that fact. Her husband was a jealous
devil, as unreasonable as a jackass, and as stubborn as an ox. To make
a long story short, after they had been married five years and had seen
enough of the connubial hell to drive them both out of mind, he took a
sudden fancy that she was false to him. A young Virginian, in fact, the
very man who stood up with him at the wedding, was a frequent visitor
at this house and was a decided favourite with my maternal ancestor.
Godfrey went to drinking rather heavily, simply because he found it
impossible to discover anything wrong in his wife's conduct--I may say
that he had watched her, too, ladies and gentlemen. Being too
honourable to accuse her of infidelity without having actual proof, he
suffered in silence and his cups, all the time allowing the gap between
them to grow wider and wider. One night he came home from Richmond late
and saw his friend, Harry Heminway, leaving the place on horseback.
Inflamed by jealousy, and drink, too, I reckon, he dashed up to his
wife's room. I do not know what followed, for no one ever knew, but the
next mornin' they found her dead on the bed, her throat cut from ear to
ear in a most dreadful manner. He was dead on the floor, the same knife
sticking in his breast. Their son, my great-grand-father, the famous
General George W. Gloame, then a child of three, was lying on the bed
with his mother, asleep."
"What beautiful nerves that kid must have had," muttered Gates.
"And did they never hang the murderer?" asked Lieutenant King.
"Good heavens, no! Didn't I say he had jabbed the knife into his own
heart? How could they hang him? Well, all this happened in that room at
the far end of the south wing--it's always locked now and has been for
a hundred and thirty years. The furniture stands just as it was when
that pair occupied the apartment. Now comes the strange part of the
story."
"Ugh!" interrupted Miss Kelly, with a shudder. "Just hear how the wind
whistles around the house. It positively gives me the shivers."
"Well, within a week after the murder queer things began to happen in
that room," the Colonel went on. "Odd noises were to be heard, muffled
screams came from behind the closed doors, and finally the people who
lived here saw the white, ghostly form of my great-great-grandmother
moving about in the room and in the halls. Ever since that time her
spirit can be seen up there, for it comes around once in a while to see
if anybody desecrates the room by trying to sleep in it. With my own
eyes I have seen it--dozens of times. Since my marriage it has not been
here, but I expect it almost any night."
George Washington appeared suddenly in the hall door and his stentorian
though eminently respectable tones startled the entire assemblage, the
Colonel included. There were a dozen little feminine shrieks and more
than one man caught his breath sharply. George Washington was the
butler at Gloaming.
"Majah Harpeh's kerridge, sah," he announced obsequiously.
"Oh, I'm so glad," gasped Miss Kelly, mightily relieved. Then, in
confusion: "I mean, Mrs. Harper, that I'm glad it isn't the ghost, you
know."
Half an hour later the parlours were deserted, except for the presence
of a tall young man with a far-away, dissatisfied look in his eyes. In
all the spare bed chambers guests were preparing for bed. Young
Garrison had said good night to all of them and remained below stairs
to commune with himself at the midnight hour.
For many minutes he sat before the fireplace, staring moodily at the
flames. Gates Garrison admitted reluctantly that it was all very nice
at Gloaming, that it was "a bully place to spend the holidays and all
that, you know," but for a very well-defined reason he was wishing they
were over and he was back in New York once more. He was in love. It is
not unusual for a young man of his age to be desperately in love and it
is by no means unusual that he should be in love with the most
impossible of persons. Gates Garrison's affections at this period of
his life were the property in fee simple of a very pretty and decidedly
popular member of the chorus at Weber & Field's. After convincing
himself that he was quite alone in the huge old parlour, the hopeless
Mr. Garrison guiltily drew from the inside pocket of his coat a thick
and scrawly letter. Then he did things to this letter that in after
years he would blush to acknowledge, if they remained a part of his
memory. He kissed the scribble--undeniably. Then, with rapt eyes, he
reread the lengthy missive from "Dolly." It had come in the morning
mail and he had read it a dozen times. The reader is left to conjecture
just what the letter contained. Mr. Garrison's thoughts were running
something like this:
"Lord, if my sister knew about you, Dolly, she'd have so many fits that
you couldn't count them. They think I'm an absolute stick when it comes
to girls. If they only knew! What the deuce did I do with that
photograph--ah, here it is. Inside vest pocket, left-hand side--just
where it belongs."
He pulled a small photograph from his vest pocket and sat gazing at it
rapturously. It was the portrait of the fair Dolly in tights. After a
long scrutiny of this rather picturesque product of nature and the
photographer, he arose and, with a sigh, turned off all the lights in
the room, still holding the picture in his hand. The fire in the grate
was now the only means of illumination in the parlour and the halls
were dark. Reconsidering his impulse to go to bed, he threw himself in
a chair before the grate, his elbow resting on the mahogany table at
its right. There he devoted himself to--dreams. A wave of cold air
crossing his back brought him from dreamland.
"Some one must have left a door open," he grumbled. He looked up and
down the hall and then resumed his seat before the fire. A moment later
the chilly draft struck him again. "Confound it! There's a devil of a
draft from somewhere. It goes clean through me. Must be a crack in the
floor. That's the trouble with these shacks that somebody's grandfather
built before the flood." He vigorously poked up the fire and drew his
chair a little closer to the circle of warmth.
Had he turned his head for an instant as he sat down he could have seen
that he was not alone in the room. A tall, shadowy woman in white was
standing in the hall door, looking pensively in upon him. For a full
minute she stood there, hesitating between modesty and curiosity, and
then turned as if to glide away.
Reconsidering, she smiled defiantly and more or less nervously, and
then turned back into the room. Of course, he did not hear her as she
approached. The mere fact that her filmy white dress was of the fashion
in vogue before the Revolution should prove her identity to the reader.
She was the Gloaming Ghost.
Gates Garrison was softly, tenderly addressing the photograph of the
airy but not ethereal Dolly. The words were not for the ears of others.
Even the infatuated lover would have despised the strain of softness in
his tones had he known there was a hearer.
"If you could but speak to me," he was saying to the picture, "you'd
make me happy, I know. You'd tell me that you love me. You'd tell me
that you hate that meddlesome old man Ellison. You've got it just as
bad as I have, haven't you, Dolly?"
"What a real woman she seems to be," exclaimed a soft silvery voice at
his shoulder. Garrison whirled and looked up into the beautiful face of
the ghost.
"Great Heaven!" he gasped, struggling to his feet, his eyes riveted to
the face of the wraith.
"Only a part of it, my dear sir," corrected the ghost, with a rare
smile in which courage struggled with diffidence. "Dear me, why do you
stare at me so rudely?"
She was standing directly before him now, tall and straight. He was
hanging to the mantelpiece, almost speechless.
"Who--what in Heaven's name are you?" he cried.
"Why, don't you know me? I am Mrs. Godfrey Gloame," she replied, a
touch of resentment in her voice.
"The--the ghost?"
"That's what they call me," she admitted sadly. "It's such a horrid
thing to be called, too. In reality, I'm merely a visitor from another
world. There are many more of my kind in this room at this instant,
sir, but you cannot see them. They are visible to me, however. If it
interests you in the least, I can tell you that you are surrounded by
ghosts. Please don't run! They can not hurt you. Why should they, even
if they could? What a big, strong man you are to be afraid of such
perfectly harmless, docile beings as we. Over in that corner, looking
from the window, stands my daughter-in-law, Mrs. George Gloame. I saw
her husband, my son, sitting in the hallway as I came through. Judging
from their attitudes, they've had another of those horrid quarrels. I
hope you'll pardon me for disturbing you. You looked so lonely I
couldn't resist the desire to come in and see you as I was passing."
Gates was regaining his composure rapidly. The first uncanny shock was
wearing off and he was confessing to himself that there was nothing to
fear in the spectral bit of loveliness.
"I--I'm sure I appreciate the honour," he said, bowing low.
"Permit me to introduce myself," she went on, and he marvelled at her
charm of manner. "I am the great-great-grandmother of Cassady Gloame,
and the daughter of Van Rensselaer Brevoort, of New York. He is a
millionaire."
"He must be a pretty old millionaire by this time, isn't he?"
"Oh, poor papa has been dead for a hundred and one years."
"Indeed? He isn't here, is he? I'm getting so I don't mind you in the
least but I'd rather not meet any male--er--ghosts, if you please."
Mrs. Godfrey Gloame laughed unrestrainedly.
"Don't you know that we are nothing but spectral air?" she cried
derisively.
"Ah, since you speak of it, I did feel your draft when you came in," he
said. "But, if you will pardon me, Mrs. Gloame, there is something
uncanny about you just the same. You'll admit that, I'm sure. How would
you have felt when you were in the flesh to have had a horrible ghost
suddenly walk in upon you?" "Oh, I am horrible, am I?" she said as she
leaned toward him with an entrancing smile.
"Heavens, no!" he retracted. "You are a marvel of beauty. I don't
wonder that your husband was jealous." She did not appear to have heard
the last remark.
"How I used to live in terror of ghosts," she cried, looking about
apprehensively. "Would you believe it, sir, up to the time I was
married I could not bear the thought of being left alone in the house
for a single minute of the night. The darkness, the mystic flicker of
the lights, the stillness seemed to swarm with spirits--Oh, you don't
know how I suffered with the fear of them."
"And after you got married--what then?"
"I soon had material spirits to contend with."
"How so?"
"That is an extremely personal inquiry, sir."
"I beg pardon if I have overstepped the bounds of politeness."
"I may as well tell you that my husband drank terribly. It's all over
the country anyhow, I hear."
"The Gloame pedigree says that you drove him to it."
"I know that is what the Gloames claim, but it is a shameless slander.
My poor, dear husband has told me since that he was wrong and he would
give all he has on earth to set me aright in that hateful old pedigree.
The poor fellow killed himself, you doubtless know. I was never so
shocked in my life as when I heard that he had committed such a brutal
act." Mrs. Gloame was looking sadly, reminiscently into the fire and
there was a trace of tears in her voice.
"But, my dear madam, didn't he begin by slaying you?" exclaimed Gates
in surprise.
"To be sure, he did destroy me first or I might have kept him from
committing the awful crime of suicide," she said, despondently.
PART II
"But murder is so much worse than suicide," expostulated Garrison. "We
hang men for murder, you know."
"I've a notion that it would be difficult to hang them for suicide. But
you are quite wrong in your estimation of the crime. You do not know
what it is to be murdered, I presume."
"Well, hardly."
"Nor what it is to commit suicide? Well, let me advise you, judging
from what I know of the hereafter, get murdered in preference to
committing suicide. I'd even suggest that you commit murder, if you are
determined to do anything rash."
"And be hanged for it!" laughed Gates.
"You can be hanged or be d----d, just as you like," she said meaningly.
"I wish you could talk to my husband if you are thinking of doing
anything of the kind. I'm sure your young love affairs must be getting
to the suicide stage by this time."
"But I don't want to kill anybody, much less myself. Oh, I beg your
pardon," he cried suddenly. "Pray have a chair, Mrs. Gloame. It was
unpardonable in me to let you remain standing so long. I've been a
trifle knocked out, I mean disconcerted. That's my only excuse."
"You are not expected to know anything about ghost etiquette," she said
sweetly, dropping into a chair at the side of the table farthest from
the fire. Garrison had some fear that her vapoury figure might sink
through the chair, but he was agreeably surprised to find that it did
not. Mrs. Gloame leaned back with a sigh of contentment and
deliberately crossed her pretty feet on the fender.
"Won't you sit nearer to the fire?" lie asked. "It's very cold tonight
and you must be chilled to the bone. You are not dressed for cold
weather." She was attired in a low-necked and sleeveless gown.
"I'm not at all cold and, besides, I did not bring my bones with me."
He resumed his seat at the opposite side of the table. "Have you come
far tonight?"
"From the graveyard a mile down the river. It is a beautiful cemetery,
isn't it?"
"I am quite a stranger in these parts. Besides, I'm not partial to
graveyards."
"Oh, dear me," she cried, in confusion. "The idea of my sitting here
talking to a total stranger all this time. You must think me extremely
bold."
"I am the bold one, madam. It's my first experience, you know, and I
think I'm doing pretty well, don't you? By the way, Mrs. Gloame, my
name is Gates Garrison, of New York, and my sister is the present Mrs.
Gloame."
"The pretty young thing with the old Gloame husband?"
"Can't say she's pretty, you know. She's my sister."
"I passed her in the hall tonight."
"The dev--the deuce you did!" cried Gates, coming to his feet in alarm.
"Then she must be lying out there in a dead faint." He was starting for
the door when she recalled him.
"Oh, she did not see me. She merely shivered and asked a servant to
close the door. An ill wind seems to be a north wind, so far as ghosts
are concerned," she concluded pathetically. "So you are from New York.
Dear New York; I haven't been there in a hundred and thirty-five years,
I dare say. One in my position rather loses count of the years, you
know. I suppose the place is greatly changed. And your lady-love lives
there, too, I see."
"My lady-love?" demanded Gates, taken back.
"Yes, the girl who is so well dressed from her shoulders up," with a
tantalising smile.
"You mean--this?" he asked, turning a fiery red as he tried to slip the
picture of Dolly under a book.
"Let me see it, please. Who is she?" He was ashamed, but he held out
the picture. A poorly disguised look of disgust crossed the startled
features of Mrs. Godfrey Gloame.
"She's--a friend of the Colonel's," said Gates promptly.
"I should think his wife would do well to be on her guard. This is the
first time I ever saw such a costume. In my day a woman would not have
dared to do such a thing. Don't you know her?"
"Oh, casually," answered he, looking away.
"I'm glad to hear that. She is nothing to you, then?"
He shook his head in fine disdain.
"I don't care much for you men in these days, Mr. Garrison," she said.
"You're not complimentary."
"When I compare the men of my day--men like Godfrey--with the men of
today, I thank Heaven I had the honour to be killed by a gentleman. You
don't know how many unhappy wives I meet in the cemetery."
"Well, there are no women like you in this day, either. You are
beautiful, glorious," he cried, leaning toward her eagerly. She shrank
back with a laugh, holding her hands between his face and her own.
"How lovely," she sighed. "But keep away, please."
"Well, I should say," he exclaimed, his teeth almost chattering, so
cold was the air that fanned his face. "I never got such a frost from a
woman in all my life."
"If my husband had heard your words of flattery he would have created a
terrible disturbance. He was fearfully jealous--a perfect devil when
the spell came over him."
"A devil then and a devil now, I may infer."
"Oh, no; you do him an injustice. Godfrey really was an angel, and if
he had not killed himself I think he would not now be in such an
uncertain position. He is still on probation, you see."
"Between two fires, as it were."
"I think not. The last time I saw him he was shivering."
"I don't wonder," said Gates, ruefully, recalling the chill of a moment
since. "Does he ever come here?"
"Not often. There are so many unpleasant associations, he says. It was
here that the funeral took place and he has expressed very strong
exceptions to the sermon of a minister who alluded to him as an
unfortunate victim of his own folly. The idea! It would have been
folly, indeed, for Godfrey to have lived after I was dead. Every woman
in Virginia would have been crazy to marry him. And then one of the
pall-bearers did not suit him. He had cheated Godfrey in a horse trade,
I think."
"I should like to have known Godfrey Gloame."
"You would have admired him. He was the best pistol shot, the bravest
man in all Virginia. Three times he fought duels, coming off victorious
each time. He would have been an ideal husband if he had not been so
indolent, so dissipated, and so absurdly jealous of Harry Heminway. I
shall never forgive him for killing me on account of poor Harry."
"Is that why he killed you?" asked Gates eagerly.
"He said so at the time, but he was sorry for it afterward. That is
usually the way with jealous men."
"Whew!" exclaimed the man, starting up. "There's another draft, didn't
you feel it?"
"It is my husband coming, I know his footstep," she said delightedly,
looking toward the door.
"Holy smoke!" cried Gates, in alarm.
"Don't let him hear you speak of smoke. He is very touchy about it just
now. Ah, come in, Godfrey, dear."
She crossed to the door to meet the tall, grey young man in the
eighteenth century costume, Garrison looking on with open mouth, and
rising hair.
Godfrey Gloame was a handsome fellow, albeit he was as transparent as
glass. His hair was powdered with all the care of a dandy and his
garments hung properly upon his frame. He kissed his wife and then
glared at young Mr. Garrison.
"Who is this man, Beatrice?" he demanded, his hand going to his sword
hilt. Mrs. Gloame caught the hand and there was passionate entreaty in
her eyes. "Speak, woman! What are you doing here with him at this time
of night?"
"Now, don't be cross, Godfrey," she pleaded. "It's only Mr. Garrison."
"And who the devil is Mr. Garrison?"
"What a very disagreeable ghost," muttered Gates, remembering that
ghosts are harmless.
Mrs. Gloame led the unruly Godfrey up to the table and, in a
delightfully old-fashioned way, introduced the two gentlemen.
"Mr. Garrison is the brother of my successor, the present mistress of
Gloaming," she said.
"And a devilish pretty woman, too. I've seen her frequently. By the
way, I stopped in her bedchamber as I came through. But that's neither
here or there. What are you doing here with this young whipper-snapper,
Beatrice?"
"Let me explain, Mr. Gloame," began Gates hastily.
"I desire no explanation from you, sah," interposed Godfrey, towering
with dignity. "You would explain just as all men do under like
circumstances. Beatrice, I demand satisfaction."
"Be rational, Godfrey, for once in your life. It is beneath my dignity
to respond to your insult," said Mrs. Gloame proudly.
"Good for you, Mrs. Gloame," cried Garrison approvingly. "You would be
a bully actress."
"Sah, you insult my wife by that remark," roared Godfrey Gloame, and
this time the sword was unsheathed.
"Oh, I'm not afraid of you, old chap," said Gates bravely. "You're
nothing but wind, you know. Be calm and have a chair by the fire. Your
wife says you have chills."
"I do not require an invitation to sit down in my own house, sah. I am
Godfrey Gloame, sah, of Gloaming, sah."
"You mean you were--you are now his shade," said Gates. "Ah, that's the
word I've been trying to think of--shade! You are shades--that's
it--shades, not ghosts. Yes, Mr. Gloame, I've heard all about your
taking off and I am sure that you were a bit too hasty. You had no
license to be jealous of your wife--she assures me of it, and from what
I've seen of her I'd be willing to believe anything she says."
"Ah, too true, too true! I always was and always will be a fool. It was
she who should have slain me. Will you ever forgive me, Beatrice,
forgive me fully?" said Godfrey, in deep penitence.
"I can forgive everything but the fact that you were so shockingly
drunk the night you killed us," said she, taking his hands in hers.
"Oh, that was an awful spree! My head aches to think of it."
"It was not the murder I condemn so much as the condition you were in
when you did it," she complained. "Mr. Garrison, you do not know how
humiliating it is to be killed by a man who is too drunk to know where
the jugular vein is located. My neck was slashed--oh, shockingly!"
"Yes, my dear sah, if I must admit it, I did it in a most bungling
mannah," admitted her husband. "Usually I am very careful in matters of
importance, and I am only able to attribute the really indecent
butchery to the last few sups I took from General Bannard's demijohn.
My hand was very unsteady, wasn't it, dearest?"
"Miserably so. See, Mr. Garrison, on my neck you can see the five
scars, indications of his ruthlessness. One stroke should have been
sufficient, a doctor told me afterwards. This one, the last,--do you
see it? Well, it was the only capable stroke of them all. Just think of
having to go through eternity with these awful scars on my neck. And it
was beautiful, too, wasn't it, Godfrey?"
Garrison thought it must have been the prettiest neck ever given to
woman.
"Divine!" cried Mr. Gloame warmly. "My dear sah, there never lived a
woman who had the arms, the neck, and shoulders that my wife possessed.
I speak reservedly, too, sah, for since my demise I have seen
thousands. A shade has some privileges, you know."
"Godfrey Gloame!" cried his wife, suspiciously. "What have you been
doing? Have you been snooping into the privacy of--"
"Now, my dear girl, do not be too hasty in your conclusions. You'll
observe, Mr. Garrison, that I am not the only jealous one. I have
merely seen some shoulders. Very ordinary ones, too, I'll say. Oh, I am
again reminded that I want an explanation for your damnably improper
conduct tonight, madam. This thing of meeting a man here at twelve
o'clock is--"
"Goodness!" cried Mrs. Gloame anxiously. "It is not twelve, is it! I
must hasten away by a quarter after twelve."
"It lacks considerable of that hour," said Gates. Turning to Godfrey
Gloame, who was leaning against the mantel, he went on to explain: "You
see, sir, I was reading here and your wife dropped in--blew in, I might
say--all without my knowledge, very much as you did. She had had no
invitation, we had made no date--I mean arrangement--and I was
paralysed at first. Your wife is a perfect stranger to me. There is a
disparity in our ages that ought to protect her. I am twenty-four and
she is at least a hundred and fifty."
"Sir! I am but twenty-five!" exclaimed Mrs. Gloame indignantly.
"Madam, I must remind you that you have a great-great-grandson in
Colonel Gloame the present, who, by the way, is very proud of his
ancestry. But pardon my jesting, please. Would you like a little brandy
or a glass of wine? It is a cold night, even for shades. Let me prepare
a toddy--it won't take a minute, and I know how to get up a
cracker-jack. New thing in all of the New York clubs."
After a moment of indecision the two Gloames sank into chairs beside
the table. Godfrey waved his hand pleasantly, courteously, to the young
New Yorker.
"My dear sah," he said, "your explanation of this rather unaccountable
situation is entirely acceptable. I see the position clearly, just as
it is, and I humbly apologise for afflicting you with an insinuation.
Beatrice, I crave your forgiveness again. Your proffer of the toddy,
Mr. Garrison, is timely and I should be happy to place my approval upon
your particular concoction."
"Godfrey," cried his wife in distress, "you swore you would never drink
another drop."
"But this shall be the last," he pleaded, "so help me--so help
me--Moses."
Garrison set to work with the Colonel's decanters, concocting a brew
over the spirit lamp, the two wraiths looking on in silent admiration.
"How like you Mr. Garrison is, Godfrey," said Mrs. Gloame.
"Except the water, my dear," agreed Godfrey, taking it for granted that
she referred to his ability to mix drinks. "Do you use the water to
cleanse the goblet, Mr. Garrison?"
"Chief ingredient, Mr. Gloame," explained Gates, and Godfrey's heart
sank heavily.
"By the way, have a cigarette while I am busy with this."
He tossed his cigarette case to Godfrey, who inspected it and the
contents curiously.
"Are they to smoke, sah?"
"Certainly, light up, if Mrs. Gloame doesn't object."
"It used to be we had nothing but tobacco to smoke," said Godfrey
Gloame, lighting a cigarette from a coal in the grate.
"Will it make him ill?" asked Mrs. Gloame. "He has a very frail
stomach."
"I think the smoke will mix very nicely with his stomach," said Gates.
"For want of something better to say, I'll ask you how you spent the
summer."
"For my part, I stayed at home with the old complaint: nothing to
wear," said Mrs. Gloame. "I am curious to know where my husband was,
however."
"Well, I didn't need anything to wear," said he, naively. "My summer
was spent a long way from heaven, and I have just this much to say to
you mortals: you did not know what you were talking about when you said
that the past summer was hotter than--excuse me, Beatrice; I almost
uttered a word that I never use in the presence of a lady."
"You don't mean to say you have gone to--to--oh, you poor boy!" cried
Mrs. Gloame, throwing her arms about her husband's neck.
"Not yet, dearest," said Godfrey consolingly. "I was merely spending a
season with an old friend, Harry Heminway. He asked about you and I
told him you were so far above him that he ought to be ashamed to utter
your name. Ah, Mr. Garrison has finished the toddy."
Garrison ceremoniously filled the goblets and handed them to his
guests. Godfrey Gloame arose grandly, holding his glass aloft.
"Well, Mr. Garrison," he said, "I can only say to you that I am glad to
have met you and that I am sincerely sorry we have not been friends
before. You have given us a very pleasant evening, quite unexpectedly,
and I drink to your very good health." "Hold, sir!" cried Gates. "I am
sure you will allow me to suggest an amendment. Let us drink to the
everlasting joy of the fair woman who is your wife. May her shadow
never grow less."
"Thank you," said she, "I bid you drink, gentlemen, and share the joy
with me. Ah!" as she set the goblet down, "that is delicious."
"Superb!" cried her husband. "My dear sah, it thrills me, it sends a
warmth through me that I have not experienced in a hundred and
thirty-five years. How long do you expect to remain at Gloaming?"
"One week longer."
"I shall come again if you will but prepare another like this."
"You swore that this would be your last, Godfrey; are you as
vacillating as ever!" cried his wife.
"I--oh, dearest, a few of these won't hurt me--you know they won't,"
came earnestly from the other wraith.
"If you touch another I shall despise you forever and forever," she
cried firmly. "Take your choice, Godfrey Gloame."
"It's plain that I am doomed to eternal punishment, whichever way you
put it," mourned poor Godfrey. "Take away the glasses, Mr. Garrison.
I'll no more of it if my wife so disposes."
"Noble fellow," said Gates. "Have another cigarette!"
"Stay! I have heard that they are worse than liquor," objected Mrs.
Gloame.
"I don't know but you are right," supplemented Gates.
"But I must have some sort of a vice, dear," pleaded poor Godfrey.
"Vice may be fashionable on earth, but if that's the case it was
fashion that ruined us, you'll remember, Godfrey," she reminded him.
"That's worth thinking about," mused Garrison. "There is something deep
in that observation. You spooks are--"
"'Spooks!" cried the Gloames, arising in deep resentment.
"I mean shades," apologised Gates. "You do say--"
"Pardon me," interrupted Godfrey, nervously, "but can you tell me what
time it is?"
"Ten minutes after twelve, sir." "Oh, we must be going," cried Mrs.
Gloame.
"What's the rush?" demanded Gates.
"We cannot stay out after twelve-fifteen, sah. We get an extra fifteen
minutes on Christmas Eve, you know," explained Godfrey.
"We are led to believe that you stay out till the cock crows," said
Gates.
"Oh, these absurd superstitions," cried Mrs. Gloame merrily. "How
ignorant the people are. Are you going my way, Godfrey?"
"Yes, dear, and I care not what the direction may be. Good-night, Mr.
Garrison."
"Good-night," added the beautiful Mrs. Gloame, "and a Merry Christmas.
I sincerely hope we have not annoyed you."
"I have never enjoyed anything so hugely. No one will believe me when I
tell this story at the club. Merry Christmas to both of you. You'll
come again, won't you?"
They were at the door and looking back at him.
"If you care to come to the room in the south wing, you will find me
there at most any time, Mr. Garrison," was her parting invitation.
Gates was positive he heard Godfrey swear softly as they glided away in
the darkness.
And no one did believe him when he told the story at the club.
WHEN GIRL MEETS GIRL
At a glance one would have said that they were desperadoes--the two of
them. The one who stood outside the shadow of the black, low-lying wall
was a brawny, sinister-looking woman whose age might have been fifty or
it might have been thirty, so deceptive was the countenance she bore.
Her companion, a short, heavily built creature, slunk farther back into
the protecting shadows and betrayed unmistakable signs of nervousness,
not to say fear. At the corner below a shuddering automobile purred its
ugly song, the driver sitting far back in the shelter of the top, her
eyes fixed steadily upon the two who lurked in the shadow of the wall
that surrounded the almost deserted club house. The woman who drove the
car manifestly was of a station in life far removed from those who
stood watch near the opening in the hedge-topped wall that gave
entrance to the grounds of the Faraway Country Club. Muffled and
goggled as she was, it was easily to be seen that she was of a more
delicate, aristocratic mould than the others, and yet they were all of
a single mind. They were engaged in a joint adventure, the character of
which could not be mistaken.
The taller of the two women suddenly darted into the shadow, gripping
the arm of her companion with a hand of iron.
"Sh! Here he comes. Remember now, Brown: no faltering. He's alone.
Don't lose your nerve, woman."
"I'm new at this sort of thing, Quinlan," whispered the other
nervously. "I don't like it."
"You're not supposed to like it, but you've got to see it through, just
the same. Stand ready, and do what I told you. I'll take care of the
rest."
A young man, tall and graceful, came swinging down the shrub-lined
walk, whistling a gay little air, far from suspecting the peril that
awaited him at the gate below. His cheery farewell shout to friends on
the club-house veranda had been answered by joyous voices. It was
midnight.
"Better wait awhile, old man," some one had called after him. "It's
bound to rain cats and dogs before you get to the trolley."
"A little water won't hurt me," he had shouted back. "So long, fellows."
When he passed through the gate, under the single electric light that
showed the way, and turned swiftly into the dark lane, threatening
rolls of thunder already smote the air and faint flashes of lightning
shot through the black, starless sky. A gust of wind blew a great swirl
of dust from the roadway, filling his eyes and half blinding him. As he
bent his half-turned body against the growing hurricane, a pair of
strong arms seized him from behind; almost simultaneously a thick
blanket from which arose the odour of chloroform was thrown over his
head and drawn tight. Shrill, sibilant whispers came to his ears as he
struggled vainly to free himself from those who held him.
Some one hissed: "Don't hit him, you fool! Don't spoil his face!"
He remembered kicking viciously, and that his foot struck against
something hard and resisting. A suppressed screech of pain and rage
rewarded the final conscious effort on his part. Very hazily he
realised that he was being dragged swiftly over the ground, for miles
it seemed to him, then came what appeared to be a fall from a great
height, after which his senses left him.
The automobile leaped forward, swerved perilously at the sharp curve
below the club gate and rushed off into the very teeth of the storm,
guided by the firm, resolute hands of the woman at the wheel.
Once, when they had traversed a mile or more of the now drenched and
slippery road, the woman who drove the car in its mad
flight--unmistakably the master-mind in this enterprise--called back
over her shoulder to the twain who held watch over the captive in the
tonneau:
"Is he regaining consciousness? Don't let him go too long."
"He's all right, ma'am," said the taller of the two ruffians, bending
her ear to the captive's breast. "Fit as a fiddle."
"Say, we'll get twenty years for this if we're nabbed," growled the
burly one called Brown. "Kidnapping is a serious business--"
"Hold your tongue!" cried the woman at the wheel.
"Well, I'm only telling you," grumbled Brown, nervously straightening
her black sailor.
"It isn't necessary to tell me," said the driver. Her voice, high and
shrill in battle with the storm, was that of a person of breeding and
refinement, in marked contrast to the rough, coarse tones of her
companions.
Mile after mile the big machine raced along the rain-swept highway,
back from the Hudson and into the hills. Not once did the firm hand on
the wheel relax, not once did the heart of the leader in this daring
plot lose courage. Few are the men who would have undertaken this
hazardous trip through the storm, few men with the courage or the
recklessness.
At last, the car whirled into a narrow, almost unseen lane, and, going
more cautiously over the treacherous ruts and stones, made its way
through the forest for the matter of a mile or two, coming to a stop
finally in front of a low, rambling house in which lights gleamed from
two windows on the ground floor.
The two strong-armed hirelings dragged their still inert prisoner from
the car, and, without a word, carried him up the walk to the house,
following close upon the heels of their mistress.
A gaunt old woman opened the door to admit the party, then closed it
behind them.
Two days passed before Cuthbert Reynolds, one of the most popular and
one of the wealthiest young men in New York, was missed from his usual
haunts, and then the city rang with the news that he had disappeared as
completely as if the earth had opened to swallow him in a hungry,
capacious maw.
Heir to a vast estate, unusually clever for one so markedly handsome,
beloved by half the marriageable young women in the smartest circles,
he was a figure whose every movement was likely to be observed by those
who affected his society and who profited by his position. When he
failed to appear at his rooms in Madison Avenue,--he had no business
occupation and therefore no office down town,--his valet, after waiting
for twenty-four hours, called up several of his friends on the
telephone to make inquiries. Later on, the police were brought into the
case. Then the newspapers took up the mystery, and by nightfall of the
third day the whole city was talking about the astounding case.
Those whilom friends who had shouted good-bye to him from the country
club veranda were questioned with rigid firmness by the authorities.
They could throw no light upon the mystery. The unusual circumstance of
his returning to town by trolley instead of by motor was easily
explained. His automobile had been tampered with in the club garage and
rendered unfit to use. The other men were not going into town that
night, but offered him the use of their cars. He preferred the trolley,
which made connections with the subway, and they permitted him to go as
he elected.
Naturally the police undertook to question his friends of an opposite
sex. It was known that many of them were avowedly interested in him and
that he had had numerous offers of marriage during the spring months of
the year, all of which, so far as could be learned, he had declined to
consider. As for possessing evil associates among women, there was no
one who could charge him with being aught but a man of the most
spotless character. No one, man or woman, had ever spoken ill of him in
that respect. The police, to whom nothing is sacred, strove for several
days to discover some secret liaison which might have escaped the
notice of his devoted friends (and the more devoted one's friends are,
the more they love to speculate on his misdemeanours), but without
avail. His record was as clear as a blank page. There was not a red
spot on it.
Gradually it dawned upon every one that there was something really
tragic in his disappearance. Those who at first scoffed at the idea of
foul play, choosing to believe that he was merely keeping himself in
seclusion in order that he might escape for the while from the notably
fatiguing attentions of certain persistent admirers, came at last to
regard the situation in the nature of a calamity. Eligible young men
took alarm, and were seldom seen in the streets except in pairs or
trios, each fearing the same mysterious and as yet unexplained fate of
the incomparable Reynolds. Few went about unattended after nightfall.
Most of them were rigidly guarded by devoted admirers of an opposite
sex. It was no uncommon thing to see a young man in the company of
three or four resolute protectors.
In the meantime, Reynolds' relations had the reservoir dredged, the
Hudson raked, the Harlem scooped, and all of the sinister byways of the
metropolis searched as with a fine-tooth comb. A vast reward was
offered for the return of the young man, dead, or alive or maimed. The
posters said that $100,000 would be paid to any one giving information
which might lead to the apprehension of those who had made way with
him. The Young Women's Society for the Prevention of Manslaughter
drafted resolutions excoriating the police department, and advocating
wholesale rewriting of the law.
The loveliest of Cuthbert's admirers was Linda Blake, and the most
unheralded. No one regarded her as a favourite rival, for no one took
the slightest notice of her. The daughter of a merchant princess, she
was somewhat beyond the pale, according to custom, and while she was an
extremely pretty young woman she was still shy and lamentably modest.
As third corresponding secretary of the Spinsters' League she was put
upon dreadfully by four fifths of the members and seldom had a moment
of her own in which to declare herself to be anything more than a
drudge in the movement to establish equality among God's images. She
had little time for social achievements and but little opportunity to
escape from the Spinsters' League by the means looked upon as most
efficacious. She loved Cuthbert Reynolds, but she was denied the
privilege of declaring her love to him because she seldom got near
enough to be seen by the popular bachelor, much less to speak to him
except to pass the time of day or to hear him reply that his programme
was full or that his mother was feeling better.
She had but three automobiles, whereas her haughty rivals possessed a
dozen or more.
And yet it was Linda Blake who took the right and proper way to solve
the mystery attending the disappearance of Cuthbert Reynolds, the pet
of all the ladies.
Let us now return to Reynolds, whom we left on the threshold of that
mysterious house in the hills back of Tarrytown. When he regained his
senses--he knew not how long he had been unconscious--found himself in
a small, illy furnished bed-chamber. The bed on which he was lying
stood over against a window in which there were strong iron bars. For a
long time he lay there wondering where he could be and how he came to
be in this unfamiliar place. There was a racking pain in his head, a
weakness in his limbs that alarmed him. Once, in his callow days, he
had been intoxicated. He recalled feeling pretty much the same as he
felt now, the day after that ribald supper party at Maxim's. Moreover,
he had a vague recollection of iron bars but no such bed as this.
As he lay there racking his brain for a solution to the mystery, a key
rasped in the door across the room. He turned his head. A gas jet above
the wretched little washstand lighted the room but poorly. The door
opened slowly. A tall, ungainly woman entered the room--a creature with
a sallow, weather-beaten face and a perpetual leer.
"Where am I?" demanded he.
The woman stared at him for a moment and then turned away. The door
closed swiftly behind her, and the key grated in the lock. He
floundered from the bed and staggered to the door, grasping the knob in
his eager, shaking hand.
"Open up, confound you!" he cried out. The only response was the fast
diminishing tread of heavy footsteps on a stairway outside. He tried
the window bars. The night was black outside; a cool drizzle blew
against his face as he peered into the Stygian darkness. Baffled in his
attempt to wrench the bars away, he shouted at the top of his voice,
hoping that some passer-by--some good Samaritan--would hear his cry and
come to his relief. Some one laughed out there in the night; a low,
coarse laugh that chilled him to the bone.
He looked at his watch. The hour was three. With his watch in his hand,
he came to realise that robbery had not been the motive of those who
held him here. His purse and its contents were in his pocket; his scarf
pin and his gold cigarette ease were not missing. Lighting a cigarette,
he sat down upon the edge of the bed to ruminate.
Suddenly his ear caught the sound of soft footsteps outside the door.
They ceased abruptly. He had the uncanny feeling that some one was
peeping through the keyhole. He smiled at the thought of how
embarrassing it might have been.
"Get away from there!" he shouted loudly. There came the unmistakable
sound of some one catching breath sharply and the creaking of a loose
board in the floor. "A woman," he reflected with a smile.
"If this is a joke, I don't appreciate it," he said to himself, looking
at himself in the mirror. After adjusting his disarranged necktie and
brushing his hair, he sat down in the low rocker to await developments.
He had not long to wait. A resolute tread sounded on the stairway, and
a moment afterward the door was thrown open to admit the tall athletic
figure of a very handsome young woman. Reynolds leaped to his feet in
amazement.
"Miss Crouch!" he cried, clutching the back of the chair. A slow flush
of anger mounted to his brow. "Are you responsible for this beastly
trick?"
She smiled. "I expected to hear you call it an outrage," she said
quietly.
"Well, outrage, if it pleases you. What does it mean?"
She crossed the room and stood directly in front of him, still smiling.
He did not flinch, but the light in her eyes was most disquieting.
"It means, my dear Cuthbert, that you are in my power at last. You'll
not leave this house alive, unless you go forth as my husband."
He stared at her in utter amazement. "Your husband? My God, woman, have
you no pride?"
"Bushels of it," she said.
"But I have refused to marry you at least a half-dozen times. That
ought to be ample proof that I don't love you. To be perfectly brutal
about it, I despise you."
"Thanks for the confidence, but it will do you no good. I am not the
sort of woman to be thwarted, once my mind and heart are fixed on a
thing. Whether you like it or not, you shall be my husband before
you're a day older."
"Never!" he exclaimed, his eyes flashing.
Before he could make a move to defend himself, she clasped him in her
strong, young arms and was raining passionate kisses upon his lips, his
brow, his cheek.
Weak from the effects of the chloroform, his struggles were futile. He
would have struck her had there been a weapon handy.
"I'll die before I'll marry you, Elinor Crouch," he shouted, freeing
himself at last.
"We'll see about that," she said, standing off to survey him the
better. "I'll give you until tomorrow night to submit to my demands,
peaceably and sensibly. Then, if you are still obdurate, we'll see what
starvation will do to--"
"You wouldn't starve me, you wretch," he cried in horror.
"It's a most efficacious way of bringing a man to terms," said Miss
Crouch, fixing him with glittering eyes.
"By Jove," said he, shaking his head in despair, "I knew we'd come to
this sort of thing if we passed that infernal law giving you women the
upper hand of us."
"We only ask for equal rights, my friend," she said. "This is the sort
of thing you men used to do and no one made a fuss about it. Now it's
our turn to apply the whip."
"I'm blessed if I'll vote for another woman, if I live to be a
million," he growled.
"Oh, yes, you will. You'll vote just as your wife tells you to vote,
and there's the end to that. But, I can't stand here discussing
politics with you. I give you until tomorrow night to think it over. A
justice of the peace will be here to perform the ceremony. You know I
love you. You know I'll make you a good wife--a devoted, adoring wife.
I am fair to look upon. I am rich, I am of good family. Half the men in
the town would give their boots to be in yours. You have but to say the
word and we set sail this week on my yacht for a honeymoon trip to the
ends of the earth. Everything that love and money can procure for you
shall be--"
"Stop! I will hear no more. Leave the room! No! Wait! Where am I?"
She laughed softly. "You are where no one will ever think of looking
for you. Good night!"
She turned and went swiftly through the door. With an execration on his
lips, he sprang after her, only to find himself confronted by two
vicious-looking women with pistols in their hands. With a groan, he
drew back into the room. The door closed with a bang, the key turned in
the lock, and he was alone to reflect upon the horrors of the fate
ahead of him.
Elinor Crouch was a beautiful girl, and an alluring one. Even though he
hated her, he was forced to admit to himself that she was the most
beautiful creature he had ever seen. Not once, but a hundred times, had
he passed judgment upon her physical charms from a point of view
obtained in his club window, but always there had been in his mind the
reservation that she was not the sort of woman he would care to marry.
Now he was beginning to know her for what she really was: a scheming
amazon who would sacrifice anything to appease a pride that had been
wounded by his frequent and disdainful refusals to become her husband.
Would she carry out her threat and starve him if he persisted in his
determination to defy her? Could she be so cruel, so inhuman as that?
He was considerably relieved after the few hours of sleep that followed
his interview with the fair Miss Crouch, to find a bountiful and
wholesome breakfast awaiting him. True, it was served by an
evil-appearing woman who looked as though she could have slit his
throat and relished the job, but he paid little heed to her after the
first fruitless attempts to engage her in conversation. She was a sour
creature and given to monosyllables, this Quinlan woman.
Reynolds had been brought up to respect the adage concerning "a woman
scorned." He knew that women in these days are not to be trifled with.
If Elinor Crouch set about to conquer, the chance for mercy at her
hands would be slim. There was absolutely no means of escape from his
prison. Daylight revealed a most unpleasant prospect. The barred window
through which he peered was fifty or sixty feet from the ground, which
was covered with jagged boulders. On all sides was the dark,
impenetrable forest which marks the hills along the Hudson. After a few
minutes' speculation he decided that he was confined in an upper
chamber of the pump house connected with the estate. Investigation
showed him that the bars in the windows had been placed there but
recently.
In considerable agitation he awaited the coming of night, fully
determined that if the worst came to the worst he would accept
starvation and torture rather than submit to the cruel demands of
Elinor Crouch. He would die before he would consent to become her
husband.
She came at nine o'clock, accompanied by a fat little woman in black,
who was introduced as a justice of the peace.
"Well?" said his captor, with the most enticing smile. "Have you
decided, Cuthbert?"
"I have," said he resolutely. "I want to warn you, Elinor, that you
shall pay dearly for this outrage. I shall--"
"Then you consent?" she cried, her face aglow.
"No! A thousand times, no! I mean--"
"You are wasting your breath, Cuthbert Reynolds," she interrupted, a
steely glitter in her eyes. "Justice Snow, will you proceed at once
with the ceremony? I will not--"
Reynolds sprang past her with the agility of a cat and hurled himself
through the half-open door, hoping to find the way momentarily clear
for a dash to liberty. Even as hope leaped up in his breast it was
destroyed.
Two brawny figures fell upon him at the landing and he was borne to
earth with a fierceness that stunned him into insensibility.
When he regained consciousness a few moments later, he was lying bound
on the bed. The grim figure of the redoubtable Quinlan sat in the
rocker over against the door, and there was a scornful leer on her thin
lips.
"Bread and water for you, my laddy-buck," said she, with a broad wink.
"What a blithering fool you are. The finest lady in the land wants to
make you her husband, and you kick up a row about it. You--"
"You go to the devil," said Reynolds savagely.
Quinlan laughed.
For four days and nights, he remained in the small, bare room. Each day
brought his persecutor to his side, and on each occasion she went away
baffled but hopeful. She pleaded, stormed and threatened, but he held
steadfast to his resolve.
"I'll die a thousand times, you fiend, before I'll consent to this
ceremony. Go on starving me, as you've set out to do. What will you
have gained in the end?"
"At least the consolation of knowing that no other woman shall call you
husband," she said vindictively.
He was thin, emaciated and hollow-eyed for lack of proper sustenance.
His captors gave him barely enough food and drink to keep body and soul
together. Once a day the gaunt Quinlan brought bread and water to his
room, and once the beautiful Elinor forgot her cigarettes and a bonbon
box on leaving him in a rage. He hid the boxes after emptying them,
cunningly realising that if he ever escaped her clutches the articles
would serve as incontrovertible evidence against her. But Quinlan and
Brown, strong and vigorous, were more than a match for him in his
weakened condition. They choked him until he revealed the hiding place
of the two gold boxes. Then they beat him cruelly.
"If you tell the boss that we beat you up, young fellow, you'll get
your come-uppin's good and plenty," said Quinlan savagely, as he fell
back exhausted in the corner. "You keep your mouth closed, if you don't
want it closed forever."
"If you have a spark of humanity in your soul, woman, you'll give me
food," he cried. "I am dying. Have you no heart, either of you? See
here, I'll give each of you enough money to keep you in comfort for the
rest of your lives if you'll--"
"None o' that, Mr. Reynolds," snapped Quinlan. "What do you take us
for? Men?"
"Gad, I wish you were," he exclaimed. "I'd thrash you within an inch of
your lives if you were."
"Well, don't go to offering us money, that's all. We're women, and we
don't sell out a friend. Say, ain't you about ready to give in to her?
You'd better say the word. She'll make you the happiest man on earth.
What's more, you'll get a good square meal the minute you say you'll
marry her."
"I wouldn't marry her if she were the last woman in the world," he
cried. "Listen to me! Haven't you two women husbands who are dear to
you? Haven't you husbands--"
"They're both in the penitentiary, curse 'em," snarled Brown, clenching
and unclenching her hands. "I wish I could get my hooks on that man of
mine, that's all."
"Lucky dog!" said Reynolds.
"You bet he's a lucky dog. I believe he got sent up deliberately."
"Well, he's only got eight more years to serve, Brown," said Quinlan.
"He'll come back to you for food and clothes. Then you can make up for
this lost time."
"I'll do it, all right," said Brown, smiting the window sill with her
huge fist. Quinlan chuckled.
That night Reynolds made his last stand. When Miss Crouch left him, he
was almost ready to submit. Had she but known it, another five minutes
of argument would have brought him to terms. Starvation had conquered
him.
"If I live till morning," he kept repeating to himself in the solitude
of his cell, "I'll give in. I can't stand it any longer. I shall go
mad."
He fell back on the bed and lay staring at the ceiling, a beaten wreck.
Delirium was at hand.
Sometime during the night he was aroused from a fitful slumber by a
sound at his window. The night was very dark. He could see nothing, and
yet he knew that some one was there--some one who would help him in his
final hour of despair. Struggling weakly from the bed, he dragged
himself to the bars. Beaching between them, his hand encountered the
topmost rung of a ladder. Some one was ascending from below. He could
feel the supports quiver, he could hear the ladder creak beneath the
weight of a living, moving body.
A moment later, the dull outlines of a head and shoulders appeared in
the black frame--the head of a woman! With a groan of despair he shrank
back, thinking that the visitor was one who had come to torment him in
some new fashion.
"Cuthbert!" whispered the woman on the outside. "Cuthbert, dear, are
you there? Speak!"
He staggered to the window once more. Hope buoyed him up. The voice was
not that of one of his inquisitors. It was low, sweet, gentle, yet
quivering with anxiety.
"Yes, yes!" he whispered. "Who are you? For God's sake, get me out of
this place. I am dying here."
"Thank God, you are alive," came the tense whisper from the woman. "I
am not too late."
"Who are you?" He had discovered that her features were rendered
unrecognisable by an ugly pair of motor goggles. A thick veil held her
panama motor hat in place.
She laughed nervously, even shyly.
"Never mind, Mr. Reynolds," she said. "Enough to say that I am here to
release you if it is in the power of woman to do so."
"You call me Mr. Reynolds now," he protested. "A moment ago it was
'Cuthbert dear.' Who are you, oh, my deliverer?"
"Don't ask, please. Not now. You shall know in good time. How long have
you been here?"
"Ages, it seems. In truth, but five days. She is starving me to death."
"The fiend! Tell me, are you married to her?"
"No!"
"Then I shall do my best to save you." He reflected. Perhaps it would
be leaping from the frying-pan into the fire.
"Just a moment, please. How am I to know that I am bettering my
position by accepting liberty at your hands."
"Oho! You fear that I may want to marry you against your will? Is that
it? Well, the instant you are free you shall be at liberty to go
whither you please and to marry whosoever pleases you. Is that fair
enough?"
"Forgive me for doubting you. But how are you to effect a rescue? I am
guarded by powerful women who would make short work of you in combat. I
can see that you are slight. They are huge, well-armed creatures. Are
you--"
"Don't worry about me," she whispered eagerly. "I can take care of
myself. And now, be patient. I must leave you. The only way to release
you seems to be through the house itself. I have no saw or file, but
wait! There is a saw and file in the tool box on my machine. How stupid
of me! I'll be back in a jiffy. Don't lose heart."
She went rapidly down the ladder. He bethought himself when too late
and lighted the gas. His watch showed him that it was two o'clock.
Vastly excited and strangely revived, he awaited her return, praying
that she might not be intercepted by the minions of Elinor Crouch. An
hour passed. He was about to give up in despair, confident that she had
been summarily dealt with by the eagle-eyed Quinlan, when stealthy
sounds came to his ears from the landing outside his door.
A key was gently inserted in the lock. He prepared to defend himself by
grasping the small rocker in his weak, trembling hands.
The door opened a few inches, then swung wide. Instead of Elinor Crouch
or her hirelings on the threshold stood the lithe, graceful figure of a
girl in a grey motoring suit. She sprang into the room. The goggles
were no longer in evidence, but the green veil hid her features quite
completely.
"Quick! Follow me! I have accounted for the tall woman who stood guard
on the stairway. We must get away before the others discover her body."
"Good God! Have you killed her?"
"I hope not. Just a little tap on the head with this wrench, that's
all. She'll come out of it all right. Hurry! I've got a couple of
friends watching outside. They'll give the alarm if we fail to appear
at once."
"Men? Thank heaven!"
"No! Women! What good are men at a time like this? Merciful--are you
going to faint?"
He sank to the floor with a groan, and the chair clattered against the
wall with a noise that must have been heard throughout the house.
When he opened his eyes again, his head was pillowed on her knees and
she was wildly whispering words of love and encouragement to him.
"My darling, speak to me. I am here to save you! Open your eyes. Look
at me! Don't--Oh, thank Heaven! You are alive!"
He looked up into the now uncovered face and an expression of utter
bewilderment grew in his eyes.
"Linda Blake!" he murmured. "Can it be possible?" His fingers tightened
on her arm and a glad light leaped into his eyes.
She pulled down her veil in confusion.
"Don't look at me," she whispered. "I hope you didn't hear what I said
to you."
"I heard every word, love of my life. I--Listen! What's that?" He sat
bolt upright.
"Some one's coming!" she cried, springing to her feet and placing
herself between him and the door. He saw a glistening revolver in her
small, white hand.
"It's Elinor Crouch," he whispered. "Heavens, how I have come to hate
those footsteps of hers."
Elinor Crouch, her face pale with anger and apprehension, dashed into
the room an instant later. She was attired in a loose wrapper, secured
at the waist by a handsome Oriental girdle. Her black hair hung in two
long plaits down her back. It was apparent that she had made no effort
to perfect a toilet before rushing up-stairs in response to the noise.
Her dark eyes scarcely took in the slight figure of Linda Blake. They
were for the man on the floor, and for him alone.
"Thank Heaven, you are here!" she cried, in a voice thrilling with
relief. "I was afraid you might have--"
"Stand back, Miss Crouch," interrupted Linda firmly. "Don't you dare to
touch him."
"Who--who are you?" gasped Elinor, for the first time granting the girl
a look of surprise, but not of fear. "Why, on my life, it's that Blake
girl. Soho! This is your work, is it? May I inquire, Miss Blake, what
you are doing in my house at this time of night?"
"I am not here to parley with you, Miss Crouch. Stand aside, please. If
you attempt to stop us, I shall shoot you like a dog."
"Oh, you think you can take him away from me, do you? Well, we shall
soon make short shrift of you, my excellent heroine. Brown! Quinlan!
Here, at once!" She called angrily down the stairs.
Linda smiled. "I think you'll find that my friends have taken care of
Brown and Quinlan."
As if to prove the declaration, a ringing voice came up the stairway
from far below.
"Are you all right, Linda?" It was a woman's voice and it was full of
triumph.
"We've fixed these two muckers down here. Shall we come up?"
"Stay where you are, girls. I can manage nicely by myself, thank you,"
called Linda. Then she turned to the infuriated Elinor, who had shrunk
back against the wall, panting with rage and disappointment. "You'd
better come with us peaceably, my woman," she said coldly, still
keeping the revolver levelled at the person of her rival. "Don't make
any trouble for us. If you show fight we'll be obliged to--Here!"
Elinor Crouch suddenly threw herself forward. The movement was so
unexpected that she was upon Linda before the girl could fire. Twice
the revolver was discharged in a vain attempt to end the struggle at
its beginning, and both bullets came so near to hitting Reynolds that
he hastily rolled under the bed, from which position he watched the
contest in some security but with a great deal of interest.
The combatants swayed back and forth across the narrow room, locked in
a tight embrace. The Crouch woman was the larger and stronger, but her
adversary was lithe and sinewy and as cool as a veteran in the line of
battle. She succeeded in tripping the heavier woman, resorting to a new
trick in wrestling that had just come into practice among athletic
women, and they went to the floor with a crash, Reynolds' rescuer on
top.
He crawled forth to assist her, keeping his eye on the pistol all the
while. Weak as he was, he succeeded in sitting upon Miss Crouch's head
while Linda attempted to secure her arms with the thick veil she had
torn from her hat. He suffered excruciating pain when the furious
Elinor bit him severely, but called out words of encouragement to the
brave girl who fought so valiantly for him.
Just as Elinor Crouch relaxed with a groan of despair, two eager young
women dashed into the room. In a jiffy, the late mistress of the
situation was bound securely, hand and foot, and Linda Blake stood
triumphant and lovely over her foe.
"We'll turn you over to the police," she said, smiling down upon the
ghastly face of Elinor Crouch.
"For God's sake, spare me," groaned the unhappy captive. "It was all
for love, Cuthbert. I--"
But Cuthbert Reynolds had already passed from the room, leaning feebly
on the arm of his deliverer.
"How did you trace me here, dear?" he asked as they slowly descended
the stairs.
"I found out that she was having her mail forwarded to the village over
yonder, and I knew that she owned this place in the woods. I only had
to put two and two together, Cuthbert. You--you don't mind if I call
you Cuthbert, do you?"
He pressed her arm closer to his side. "You are a darling, Linda. I'll
marry you tomorrow if you say the word."
She kissed him rapturously.
"It's too good to be true," she sighed.
QUIDDLERS THREE
CHAPTER I
THE THREE VAN WINKLES
It was not because Mr. Van Winkle had no love for his sons that he
turned the three of them out of his house and home, but because he
loved them well. There was Courtney Van Winkle--nicknamed "Corky" by
his irrepressible brothers--and, besides him, the twins, Jefferson and
Ripley. Courtney was thirty, the twins twenty-six. Jeff and Rip were
big, breezy fellows who had rowed on their college crew and rowed with
the professors through five or six irksome and no doubt valueless
years; Courtney was their opposite in every particular except
breeziness. But he was not breezy in the same way. He was the typical
society butterfly, chatty to the point of blissfulness and as full of
energy as a pint bottle of champagne. You could never by any stretch of
the fancy liken him to anything so magnificent as a quart. Dapper,
arrogant, snobbish, superior was he, and a very handy man to have about
if one wanted to debate the question: Should spats be worn this year
the same as last, or why WILL the common herd!
He had never done a stroke of work in his life. Nor, for that matter,
had his towering, able-bodied brothers. They took the not unnatural
stand that it wasn't necessary. Were they not the sons of the very rich
Mr. Van Winkle? Wasn't he accountable for their coming into the world
and wasn't he therefore responsible for them up to the very banks of
the Jordan? Of course, he was. No one will pretend to deny it. Work is
intended only for those who long for a holiday, not for him who begins
a vacation the day he is born. Such was the attitude of the Van Winkle
boys, if not their argument.
For years old Bleecker Van Winkle had paid for their automobiles, their
polo ponies, their pony ballets, their lobsters and other
glorifications, and he had finally reached the conclusion that while it
was practically impossible for him to part with his money, he was
nevertheless a fool. So he sat him down to think. As the result of his
cogitations--long-drawn-out--he turned over a leaf in the Van Winkle
family history.
"Boys," said he, at the end of a rather stupefying half-hour for them,
"you've heard what I have to say. You know that I love you all. You
will agree that I have been a fond, foolish and over-indulgent father.
As I've said before, it is my fault entirely that you are triflers and
spendthrifts. I should have done better by you. You are college men. At
least, you are CALLED college men, because, with the unceasing aid of
well-paid tutors you managed to get your degrees. I regret, however, to
say that you are not educated men. You are socially cultivated, but
that's all. I am to be blamed for all this. Now I am paying the
penalty. What I have just disclosed to you is the result of painful
deliberation and with your welfare in mind, not my own. You have agreed
at last to my proposition, not, I fear, willingly, but because there is
no alternative. I have given Jeff and Ripley an excellent education in
baseball, swimming, golf and Broadway. No doubt either of you could get
a job as a professional baseball player. Courtney has been thoroughly
polished by contact with society. He should have no trouble at all in
earning quite a decent living by teaching the nouveau riche how to
behave in polite society. If, in ten years, you all come to me and
convince me that you have actually acquired something of a fortune
without any assistance from me, I shall be happy to kill the fatted
calf and divide it with you. Please bear in mind the little statement
in regard to my last will and testament. Get it into your heads
clearly. At my death my fortune goes to the three of you, share and
share alike, but it is to be held in trust for ten years thereafter,
principal AND INCOME intact. Note that, please: and income. It is
possible, even probable that I may alter the will later on, but now it
stands in just that way."
They looked at each other blankly for a long time after the old
gentleman left the room. The expression in Courtney's cock-a-doodle
face was beyond description. The world had come to an end! The twins
were unable to lounge with their accustomed ease and elegance. They sat
bolt upright for perhaps the first time in their lives. To them, the
world was just beginning, and it was a hard, cold, unfriendly world
that lay before them.
In exactly one week from that day the three of them were to start out
in the world to make men of themselves. Each was to have two thousand
dollars in money and each was to start the journey free from debt. Mr.
Van Winkle agreed to square up every pecuniary debt of honour and every
debt of folly. They were to shift for themselves, and they were to have
a fair start. For at least three years they were to absent themselves
from his home, support themselves without assistance from him, and
report progress whenever they felt inclined to do so. He did not even
require them to do that much unless they wished, but he assured them
that he would be proud and happy if they could report PROGRESS.
"I don't ask you to get rich in ten years. You couldn't do it honestly,
my lads. All I ask is that you support yourselves honourably and be as
respectable as possible in this day and age. Don't try to be too
respectable. People will discredit you. They always do. Be square." He
had said this to them in the course of the amazing monologue.
"I can't live more than a month on two thousand dollars," whimpered
Courtney, long after the old man had closed the door behind him. "Why,
he hasn't the remotest idea what it costs to keep up one's end in
society here in New York. I--"
"Shut up, Corky," growled Ripley. "We want to think."
"Don't call me Corky," snarled his brother. "You know I detest it, even
when I'm feeling cheerful, and God knows I don't want to be spoken of
lightly today."
"Do you mean that as a joke?"
"A joke? Oh, I see. I suppose you connect 'cork' and 'light' in your
effort to--"
"Thank Heaven," broke in Jefferson, a shadow of relief crossing his
doleful face, "we are spared one thing."
"What's that?" said Ripley.
"The pleasure of lending money to Corky."
Courtney's face fell. He had intended to ask his brothers for a small
loan, and was ready to argue that they, being strong, healthy beasts,
would survive as long on fifteen hundred dollars as he could possibly
hope to exist on three thousand.
"I'm not asking for alms, confound you."
"By Jove!" exclaimed Ripley, with a gleam of joy in his eyes. "Didn't
the governor say he'd settle all of our debts, giving us a clean bill
to start with?"
"He did, bless his heart," said Jeff.
"Precious little good that will do me," lamented Courtney.
"Well, it may do me a lot of good. In settling your debts, Corky, it
occurs to me he'll have to fork over that twenty-seven hundred dollars
you owe me."
"Clever head, Rippy," shouted Jeff. "He owes me a matter of fifteen or
sixteen hundred. Fine work. The old gentleman can't go back on the
debts of honour. He'll have to settle for Corky's--"
"You go to thunder," grated Corky. "Do you suppose I'm going to see the
governor stung by you two vampires? In the first place, it was HIS
money I borrowed from you. In the second place--"
"Right you are, Corky," agreed Rip. "It WAS his money. We absolve him
but not you. If the time ever comes when you are able to pay it back to
me, out of your own pocket, I'll be pleased to collect. We'll let it go
at that."
"I expect to starve to death inside of--"
"Oh, no, you won't. Neither of us will go so far as that." It was
Jefferson who spoke. He arose and stretched his long, muscular frame.
"Do you know, I think the pater is absolutely right in this thing. He--"
"RIGHT?" shrieked Courtney.
"Yes, right. We ARE loafers. We waste time over trifles. He wants to be
proud of us if such a thing is possible. I don't blame him. If I ever
have a son I'll know how to bring him up."
"This is no time to be sentimental, Jeff," said Courtney, with deep
irony in his voice. "We are confronted by a catastrophe. Unlike most
catastrophes, it awaits our pleasure. We are expected to walk up and
shake hands with it and say, 'I'm glad to meet you, old chap,' or
something of the sort."
"It IS a pretty howdy-do, I'll admit," said Rip thoughtfully. "Still, I
agree with Jeff. The governor's right."
"You always agree with each other," said Courtney, pacing the floor in
his despair.
"Don't pull your hair like that, Corky," cautioned Jeff, with a
good-humoured grin. "You've got to be very saving from now on."
"A miserable pittance, a bagatelle," groaned Courtney.
"It IS getting thin," commented Rip.
"Eh? I'm not talking about hair, damn it!"
"Be a man, Corky," cried Jeff cheerfully.
"I asked you not to call me 'Corky,' didn't I?" He glared at his big
brother. "How can you stand there grinning like an imbecile with all
this hanging over you?"
Jefferson's smile expanded. "If dad can make men of all three of his
sons, he won't have to die to go to heaven. He'll BE there."
"And you fellows could have married those awful Sickler girls without
half trying last winter," groaned Courtney. "A million apiece in their
own right! My Lord, if you could only have looked ahead!"
"We did!" cried the twins in unison.
A cunning gleam leaped into Courtney's watery eyes. He drew a long
breath.
"I wonder--" he began, and then stopped.
"No," said Jeff, divining his thoughts. "You proposed to both of 'em,
Corky. It's no use. You are NOT the Van Winkle twins."
After a time, they fell into a discussion of plans and possibilities.
Their father had not left a loophole through which they could fire at
random. His sentence was clean-cut. They could not fall back upon him
for support, help or advice. It was all very clearly set forth. They
were to find their own road and travel it to the bitter end.
"I'm willing to work," said Jeff. "The trouble with me is I don't know
what to tackle first."
"That's my fix," said his twin.
"Well, I know the first thing I'm going to do," said Courtney,
springing to his feet. And he did it an hour later. He succeeded in
borrowing ten thousand dollars from a millionaire who had come to New
York from Cleveland to live and die a Gothamite. With sublime disregard
for the thing called conscience, Courtney included this new debt in the
list to be prepared for his father, and permitted the old gentleman to
settle without so much as a qualm of self-reproach. He considered it
high finance, I believe. His brothers lived up to his estimate of their
astuteness by never even thinking of a ruse so clever. Corky
congratulated himself on getting a long start over them. Moreover, he
had something else in mind. It will be disclosed later on.
A week later Mr. Van Winkle said good-bye to his sons, and they set out
upon their travels somewhat after the fashion laid down by those
amiable gentlemen who conceived fables and fairy tales and called them
the Arabian Nights. You may recall the Three Sons of the Merchant, and
the Three Princes, and the Three Woodmen, not to speak of innumerable
trios who served Messrs. Grimm and Andersen with such literary fidelity.
The Van Winkle brothers started out rather late in life to make men of
themselves. Inasmuch as they elected to start in separate and distinct
grooves and as their courses were not what you might call parallel, we
are likely to gain time and satisfaction by taking them up one at a
time. We must not lose sight of the fact that they set out to acquire
three separate and distinct fortunes.
Courtney set sail almost immediately for a land where "Corky" was an
unheard-of appellation--or epithet as he was wont to regard it--and
where fortunes hung on bushes, if one may be allowed to use the
colloquialism. He went to France. It may seem ridiculous to seek
fortunes in France, but he was not looking for French fortunes. He was
much too clever a chap for that. He was after American money, and he
knew of no place where it was easier to get it than in France. By
France, he meant Paris. If one is really smart, one can find a great
many American dollars in Paris. For that matter, if one is a good
bridge player and has the proper letters--not of credit but of
introduction--he can make a splendid living in any land where
civilisation has gained a substantial foothold. Nothing is so amiable
as civilisation. It actually yearns for trouble, and it will have it at
any cost. It is never so happy as when it is being skilfully abused. As
a society parasite, Corky had learned that it is easier to fool a man
who has brains than it is to fool one who hasn't any at all. He had
come in contact with both varieties, and he knew. And as for women, one
can always fool them by looking pensive. They cannot bear it.
Possessed of a natural wit, a stunted conscience and an indefatigable
ego, he had no fear that his twelve thousand, slightly reduced by this
time, would see him well along on his journey toward affluence.
Corky was well known in Paris. He had spent many a day and many a
dollar there. At this season of the year, the capital was filled with
New York, Philadelphia and Boston people whom he knew and with whom he
might have fraternised if he had felt inclined. But he aimed higher. He
hitched his wagon to the setting sun and was swept into the society of
Middle and Far Western tourists; people with money they did not know
how to spend; people who needed expert advice; people who hankered for
places at Newport but had to be satisfied with Sugar Hills. His New
York acquaintances knew him too well, but no better than he knew them.
They had no money to waste on education. They needed all they could
scrape together to keep the wolf out of Wall Street. He had no use in
this direful emergency for frugal society leaders; he was after the
prodigal climber.
Before he had been in Paris a week he was accepting invitations to dine
with solid gentlemen from Des Moines and Minneapolis and having himself
looked up to with unquestioned ardour by the wives thereof. Was he not
the gay Mr. Van Winkle, of New York? Was he not the plus-ultra
representative of the most exclusive society in the United States? Was
he not hand in glove with fabled ladies whose names were household
words wherever the English language is broken? Yes! He was THE Van
Winkle! The son of A Van Winkle! And what a WONDERFUL game of bridge he
played! It was a pleasure to lose money to him.
He soon found, however, to his discomfiture, that the daughters of
these excellent westerners were engaged to be married to young
gentlemen who were at work like himself in getting a fortune, but along
different lines. So far as he could find out, they were so busy making
headway in the commercial world that they wouldn't be able to afford a
trip to Europe until they were somewhere in the neighbourhood of
fifty-five or sixty. Their sweethearts were taking it while they could.
If Courtney had been as good-looking as either of his brothers--or as
both of them, for that matter, because there wasn't much choice between
them--he might have played havoc with the chances of more than one man
at home, but he was no Adonis. To be perfectly candid, he was what a
brawny Westerner would call a "shrimp." There is no call to describe
him more minutely than that.
Most of his new friends wanted to have supper at Maxim's or to go to
the Bal Tabarin. They wouldn't believe him when he insisted that these
places were not what they used to be, and that Montmartre was now the
fashionable roistering ground. So he took them to Maxim's and was glad
of it afterwards. There wasn't a New Yorker in sight.
One night, after a rather productive game in the apartments of a family
from Cedar Rapids, he proposed a supper at Maxim's. His host not only
fell in with the proposition, but insisted on giving the supper
himself. Corky was very polite. He took into consideration the fact
that Mr. Riggles was a much older man than himself, and allowed him to
have his own way.
It was at Maxim's that he first saw the Grand Duchess. She wasn't
really a lady of title, but she looked the part so completely that he
spoke of her as the "Grand Duchess" the instant his shifty gaze fell
upon her. That is to say, she was painted, bewrinkled, bewigged,
begowned, bejewelled and--(I was about to say be-dabbed)--for all the
world like a real duchess, and she smoked a long cigarette in a still
longer holder, and blew smoke through her nostrils with great APLOMB
and but very few coughs.
His companions bowed to her. She waved her hand in amiable response.
"Who is she?" demanded Corky of his hostess. He almost whispered it.
"Oh, she's a silly old thing from Wisconsin. Did you ever see such a
get-up?"
"It's marvellous. I thought she was a grand duchess."
"That's what SHE thinks, if airs count for anything. I think she's a
freak."
"I suppose she was good-looking in her day," remarked his hostess's
husband, appraising the grande dame with calculating eyes.
"Do you think they're real?" asked Corky, and his hostess said she
thought they were. He did not give a name to them, but they were so
overpoweringly prominent that she knew what he meant. It was almost
impossible to see anything but pearls when one looked in the direction
of the Grand Duchess. Corky couldn't help thinking how dangerous it was
for the lady to wear such a fortune at Maxim's.
He listened with keen ears to the story of the "silly old thing from
Wisconsin." She was a widow of sixty-five and she had been traversing
Europe from end to end for several years in quest of a coronet. Many
millions in gold had she, but even the most impecunious of noblemen had
given them a wide berth,--reluctantly, perhaps. Reversing the order of
things, she was not seeing Europe; she was letting Europe see her.
No one in Maxim's so gay and kittenish and coy as she! She was the
essence of youth. Her hair was as yellow as gold and so thick and
undulating that one could not help wondering how far down her back it
would drop if released. Her lips were red with the rich, warm blood of
youth and her cheeks bore the bloom of the peach. The Grand Duchess was
a creation. To make sure that every one knew she was present, she
chattered in a high, shrill voice in Malapropian French, and giggled at
everything.
"She is amazing," said Corky for the third time during supper. "And no
one will marry her?"
"Not recently," said his host. "What do you mean?"
"I mean no one has married her in the last forty years. There WAS one,
of course, but he died a few years back. That's why she wears a pearl
mourning wreath around her neck, and a cloth-of-gold gown. He was in
trade, as the English would say."
"She IS amazing," said Corky for the fourth time. "By Jove, do you know
I'd like to meet her."
"Nothing so easy," said the other. "Come along now. I'll present you.
She'll be tickled to death to meet a real Van Winkle."
Five minutes later Corky was drinking his own health in the presence of
the Grand Duchess from Wisconsin.
"I have heard so much of you, Mr. Van Winkle," she said. "Is it true
that you are a descendant of that aristocratic old Rip?"
Corky couldn't help blushing. He begged her not to get her Van Winkles
mixed, and she tapped him on the knuckles with her pearl-studded fan.
At five o'clock that morning, Corky stood before the mirror in his
bed-chamber and stared very intently at his somewhat wavering features.
Notwithstanding the champagne, he recognised a very stern resolve in
the reflection.
"I'm going to marry that woman," he said with grave precision.