“God bless my soul, Hawkins!”
The morning paper dropped from the Colonel’s nerveless-grasp.
“What is it?”
“He’s gone!—the bright, the young, the gifted, the noblest of his
illustrious race—gone! gone up in flames and unimaginable glory!”
“Who?”
“My precious, precious young kinsman—Kirkcudbright Llanover
Marjoribanks Sellers Viscount Berkeley, son and heir of usurping
Rossmore.”
“No!”
“It’s true—too true.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Where?”
“Right here in Washington; where he arrived from England last night,
the papers say.”
“You don’t say!”
“Hotel burned down.”
“What hotel?”
“The New Gadsby!”
“Oh, my goodness! And have we lost both of them?”
“Both _who?_”
“One-Arm Pete.”
“Oh, great guns, I forgot all about him. Oh, I hope not.”
“Hope! Well, I should say! Oh, we _can’t_ spare _him!_ We can better
afford to lose a million viscounts than our only support and stay.”
They searched the paper diligently, and were appalled to find that a
one-armed man had been seen flying along one of the halls of the hotel
in his underclothing and apparently out of his head with fright, and as
he would listen to no one and persisted in making for a stairway which
would carry him to certain death, his case was given over as a hopeless
one.
“Poor fellow,” sighed Hawkins; “and he had friends so near. I wish we
hadn’t come away from there—maybe we could have saved him.”
The earl looked up and said calmly:
“His being dead doesn’t matter. He was uncertain before. We’ve got him
sure, this time.”
“Got him? How?”
“I will materialize him.”
“Rossmore, don’t—don’t trifle with me. Do you mean that? Can you do
it?”
“I can do it, just as sure as you are sitting there. And I will.”
“Give me your hand, and let me have the comfort of shaking it. I was
perishing, and you have put new life into me. Get at it, oh, get at it
right away.”
“It will take a little time, Hawkins, but there’s no hurry, none in the
world—in the circumstances. And of course certain duties have devolved
upon me now, which necessarily claim my first attention. This poor
young nobleman—”
“Why, yes, I am sorry for my heartlessness, and you smitten with this
new family affliction. Of course you must materialize him first—I quite
understand that.”
“I—I—well, I wasn’t meaning just that, but,—why, what am I thinking of!
Of course I must materialize him. Oh, Hawkins, selfishness is the
bottom trait in human nature; I was only thinking that now, with the
usurper’s heir out of the way. But you’ll forgive that momentary
weakness, and forget it. Don’t ever remember it against me that
Mulberry Sellers was once mean enough to think the thought that I was
thinking. I’ll materialise him—I will, on my honor—and I’d do it were
he a thousand heirs jammed into one and stretching in a solid rank from
here to the stolen estates of Rossmore, and barring the road forever to
the rightful earl!
“There spoke the real Sellers—the other had a false ring, old friend.”
“Hawkins, my boy, it just occurs to me—a thing I keep forgetting to
mention—a matter that we’ve got to be mighty careful about.”
“What is that?”
“We must keep absolutely still about these materializations. Mind, not
a hint of them must escape—not a hint. To say nothing of how my wife
and daughter—high-strung, sensitive organizations—might feel about
them, the negroes wouldn’t stay on the place a minute.”
“That’s true, they wouldn’t. It’s well you spoke, for I’m not naturally
discreet with my tongue when I’m not warned.”
Sellers reached out and touched a bell-button in the wall; set his eye
upon the rear door and waited; touched it again and waited; and just as
Hawkins was remarking admiringly that the Colonel was the most
progressive and most alert man he had ever seen, in the matter of
impressing into his service every modern convenience the moment it was
invented, and always keeping breast to breast with the drum major in
the great work of material civilization, he forsook the button (which
hadn’t any wire attached to it,) rang a vast dinner bell which stood on
the table, and remarked that he had tried that new-fangled dry battery,
now, to his entire satisfaction, and had got enough of it; and added:
“Nothing would do Graham Bell but I must try it; said the mere _fact_
of my trying it would secure public confidence, and get it a chance to
show what it could do. I _told_ him that in theory a dry battery was
just a curled darling and no mistake, but when it come to _practice_,
sho!—and here’s the result. Was I right? What should _you_ say,
Washington Hawkins? You’ve seen me try that button twice. Was I
right?—that’s the idea. Did I know what I was talking about, or didn’t
I?”
“Well, you know how I feel about you, Colonel Sellers, and always have
felt. It seems to me that you always know everything about
_every_thing. If that man had known you as I know you he would have
taken your judgment at the start, and dropped his dry battery where it
was.”
“Did you ring, Marse Sellers?”
“No, Marse Sellers didn’t.”
“Den it was you, Marse Washington. I’s heah, suh.”
“No, it wasn’t Marse Washington, either.”
“De good lan’! who did ring her, den?”
“Lord Rossmore rang it!”
The old negro flung up his hands and exclaimed:
“Blame my skin if I hain’t gone en forgit dat name agin! Come heah,
Jinny—run heah, honey.”
Jinny arrived.
“You take dish-yer order de lord gwine to give you I’s gwine down
suller and study dat name tell I git it.”
“I take de order! Who’s yo’ nigger las’ year? De bell rung for _you_.”
“Dat don’t make no diffunce. When a bell ring for anybody, en old
marster tell me to—”
“Clear out, and settle it in the kitchen!”
The noise of the quarreling presently sank to a murmur in the distance,
and the earl added: “That’s a trouble with old house servants that were
your slaves once and have been your personal friends always.”
“Yes, and members of the family.”
“Members of the family is just what they become—_the_ members of the
family, in fact. And sometimes master and mistress of the household.
These two are mighty good and loving and faithful and honest, but hang
it, they do just about as they please, they chip into a conversation
whenever they want to, and the plain fact is, they ought to be killed.”
It was a random remark, but it gave him an idea—however, nothing could
happen without that result.
“What I wanted, Hawkins, was to send for the family and break the news
to them.”
“O, never mind bothering with the servants, then. I will go and bring
them down.”
While he was gone, the earl worked his idea.
“Yes,” he said to himself, “when I’ve got the materializing down to a
certainty, I will get Hawkins to kill them, and after that they will be
under better control. Without doubt a materialized negro could easily
be hypnotized into a state resembling silence. And this could be made
permanent—yes, and also modifiable, at will—sometimes _very_ silent,
sometimes turn on more talk, more action, more emotion, according to
what you want. It’s a prime good idea. Make it adjustable—with a screw
or something.”
The two ladies entered, now, with Hawkins, and the two negroes
followed, uninvited, and fell to brushing and dusting around, for they
perceived that there was matter of interest to the fore, and were
willing to find out what it was.
Sellers broke the news with stateliness and ceremony, first warning the
ladies, with gentle art, that a pang of peculiar sharpness was about to
be inflicted upon their hearts—hearts still sore from a like hurt,
still lamenting a like loss—then he took the paper, and with trembling
lips and with tears in his voice he gave them that heroic
death-picture.
The result was a very genuine outbreak of sorrow and sympathy from all
the hearers. The elder lady cried, thinking how proud that
great-hearted young hero’s mother would be, if she were living, and how
unappeasable her grief; and the two old servants cried with her, and
spoke out their applauses and their pitying lamentations with the
eloquent sincerity and simplicity native to their race. Gwendolen was
touched, and the romantic side of her nature was strongly wrought upon.
She said that such a nature as that young man’s was rarely and truly
noble, and nearly perfect; and that with nobility of birth added it was
entirely perfect. For such a man she could endure all things, suffer
all things, even to the sacrificing of her life. She wished she could
have seen him; the slightest, the most momentary contact with such a
spirit would have ennobled her whole character and made ignoble
thoughts and ignoble acts thereafter impossible to her forever.
“Have they found the body, Rossmore?” asked the wife.
“Yes, that is, they’ve found several. It must be one of them, but none
of them are recognizable.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I am going down there and identify one of them and send it home to the
stricken father.”
“But papa, did you ever see the young man?”
“No, Gwendolen-why?”
“How will you identify it?”
“I—well, you know it says none of them are recognizable. I’ll send his
father one of them—there’s probably no choice.”
Gwendolen knew it was not worth while to argue the matter further,
since her father’s mind was made up and there was a chance for him to
appear upon that sad scene down yonder in an authentic and official
way. So she said no more—till he asked for a basket.
“A basket, papa? What for?”
“It might be ashes.”