_The
Thirteenth Man_
By
MRS. COULSON KERNAHAN
_Author of
“Under Seal of the Confessional,” “The Gate of Sinners,”
“The Fraud,” “Trewinnot of Guy’s,”
“An Artist’s Model,” etc., etc._
[Illustration]
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
THE THIRTEENTH MAN
TO
MISS M. BETHAM-EDWARDS
Whom all the world admires as poet, novelist and essayist, and all who
know her personally love and reverence as true woman and dear friend.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--WHICH INTRODUCES A YOUNG AUTHOR 7
II.--A CONFESSION 13
III.--AN ALARMING SUGGESTION 20
IV.--A COMPLICATION 27
V.--A WOMAN’S HONOR 34
VI.--THE THIRTEENTH MAN 41
VII.--THE PRISONER 48
VIII.--THE KISS 55
IX.--PHYLLIS THROWS A BOMB 61
X.--FOR A SON’S SAKE 67
XI.--A RAY OF HOPE 73
XII.--THE MYSTERY OF THE LITTLE WOOD 79
XIII.--A JUDGMENT BY APPEARANCES 84
XIV.--“AND WHAT A NOBLE PLOT WAS CROSSED” 91
XV.--“STRONG IN WAR, BUT WEAK IN LOVE” 97
XVI.--THE BIRTH OF A SOUL 103
XVII.--WHAT A DOG’S LEASH PREVENTED 110
XVIII.--PHILIP SITS IN JUDGMENT 118
XIX.--COLONEL LANE GOES OFF GUARD 123
XX.--“SO NEAR, AND YET SO FAR!” 131
XXI.--TWO MEN DISCUSS A WOMAN 140
XXII.--ALVIN TRIES ARTFULLY TO BRING OLD LOVERS TOGETHER 147
XXIII.--THE LETTER 154
XXIV.--WORSE COMPLICATIONS 161
XXV.--PHYLLIS THE MARTYR! 166
XXVI.--“DRAT LOVE AFFAIRS!” SAID MRS. PICKETT 174
XXVII.--A HALF-CONFIDENCE 181
XXVIII.--THE PROBLEM OF EWERETTA’S MIND 189
XXIX.--“A DANIEL INDEED!” 195
XXX.--SUCH IS LOVE 202
XXXI.--THE COLONEL GOES AGAIN “ON DUTY” 208
XXXII.--UNCLE ROBERT IS EFFECTIVELY DAMPED 216
XXXIII.--DAMNING EVIDENCE 224
XXXIV.--THE FLIGHT OF PHYLLIS 231
XXXV.--PHILIP TAKES DRASTIC MEASURES 237
XXXVI.--COLONEL LANE APOLOGIZES 243
XXXVII.--THE HAND OF FATE 251
XXXVIII.--IN THE DEPTHS OF DESPAIR 258
XXXIX.--A SUPERNATURAL HAPPENING 266
XL.--MOTHER AND SON 273
XLI.--A TESTIMONIAL TO MISS LINKIN 278
XLII.--HOW REPUTATIONS ARE RUINED 286
XLIII.--A MIRACULOUS MEDICINE 292
XLIV.--HOW AN EDITION OF “WINGS AND WINDS” WAS SOLD 298
XLV.--HOW A SCANDAL-MONGER WAS SERVED 303
XLVI.--THE MYSTERY OF THE LITTLE WOOD REVEALED AT LAST 308
XLVII.--THE LAST 315
THE THIRTEENTH MAN
CHAPTER I
WHICH INTRODUCES A YOUNG AUTHOR
A strange, mournful song broke the stillness of a hot July afternoon,
and caused two pedestrians to come to a halt in a lane on which dust
lay thick.
On either side were high banks, surmounted by unclipped hedges.
One of the pedestrians, a young and athletic man, had climbed the bank
nearer to him in a second, and was peering through a gap in the hedge,
where nothing met his gaze but miles of smiling country, dotted by
farms at long intervals, a bungalow covered with rambler roses, and a
white house on the border of a wood.
“Can you see anybody, sir?” asked the man in the lane, who was dressed
as a farmer.
The weird singing rose again.
“I should take it for a sea-gull, sir,” said the puzzled farmer,
“except that we are a good five miles from the sea here.”
The young man sprang back into the lane, causing a cloud of white dust
to rise. His clean-shaven face had a troubled expression.
“It sounded to me like a woman chanting a dirge.”
“I expect it is some rascal of a boy amusing himself,” said the farmer
reassuringly. “A most unholy noise to make, I call it.”
He looked uneasily at his companion. If Mr. Barrimore were a nervous
sort of man he might not take the bungalow, and the farmer wanted to
let it.
The bungalow looked lovely now, covered by roses, but it was undeniably
lonely at any time, and in winter desolate enough. He followed up his
remark:
“If you come to live in the country, Mr. Barrimore, you will have to
get used to queer noises. The owls at night hoot, and the way they
_breathe_ would almost make you believe it was a human being. But you
soon get to take no heed to country sounds. If book-writing is your
trade, you couldn’t find a better place to carry it on in than my
bungalow. Wonderfully pretty it looks now, with the roses out. We shall
be coming to it at the turn of the road.”
“I saw it just now, Mr. Pickett, from the top of the bank,” said
Barrimore. “It looked charming. But I can’t get that sad singing out
of my head. It was to me a heart-break set to music. But”--(Barrimore
smiled, and for the first time his companion noted that the young man
was good-looking)--“but authors are imaginative, and I am willing to
accept your view of the case. You seem to think I am nervous!” (He
smiled again.) “But I have never had that character. Here we are!”
On the right stood the big red-tiled bungalow, with its white verandah
and its wealth of red rambler roses.
Pickett jingled a bunch of keys as he approached the padlocked gate.
“You see, sir, that the garden is in good order,” he remarked, as he
unfastened the gate. “And the water in the well is beautiful, and cold
as can be, even this weather. The painter-chap who built it spared no
expense, and there’s flooring put down in yonder clear space for a
stable, if you should like me to put one up, which I will do, if you
take the bungalow for three years.”
“I think I can promise to do that if I like the place,” said Barrimore
rather absently. “One can always shut it up, you know.”
Pickett stared. He could not understand the wastefulness suggested by
the idea of paying rent and shutting up the place. However, it was all
right so far as he personally was concerned, and this well-dressed
young man, who carried a gold cigar-case, had probably a big banking
account.
The interior of the bungalow turned out to be ideal. There were six
rooms in all--two reception-rooms, three bedrooms and a kitchen. The
scheme of decoration was charming, and had evidently been carefully
thought out by the “painter-chap” Pickett had referred to.
Above all, there was a splendid bathroom.
This last item decided Barrimore to take the bungalow. To him who
revelled in a cold morning tub it was of no consequence that there was
no means of heating the bath.
“You may start on the stable as soon as you like,” he said to the
delighted farmer. “I shall come in with a manservant next week. I
suppose I can put up a saddle-horse at your farm till the stable is
ready? I shall need to ride into Hastings frequently at first.”
“Oh, certainly, sir. I have plenty of stable room,” responded Pickett.
While the farmer was locking the door, Barrimore, took out a penknife
and cut some roses to take back for his mother, who loved little
attentions.
“Poor old mummy!” he said to himself. “She is a bit sore about my
wanting to be away from home, but I _can’t_ stand Uncle Robert’s
quotations!”
Barrimore had walked the whole five miles from Hastings to Pickett’s
Farm at Gissing, having seen an advertisement of the bungalow, and
he was going to walk the whole distance back, to get rid of the
irritability caused by Uncle Robert’s quotations.
Uncle Robert was his mother’s brother, and had been christened Robert
because his surname was Burns, and he had evidently conceived the idea
that the mantle of the poet after whom he was named had descended upon
him. He read incessantly, and remembered all he read. It was not his
fault if everyone else did not remember it also. He also wrote verse.
Uncle Robert had made his home with his sister since she had been a
widow, and Philip Barrimore, who had taken up literature as a career,
found at last that home was an impossible place to work in.
If Uncle Robert was a nuisance, he was sublimely ignorant of the fact.
He was of a singularly cheerful disposition, and it was impossible
to ruffle his sweet temper. Even this last fact was an annoyance to
Barrimore, for had Uncle Robert fired up occasionally, his nephew would
have felt less of a pig (as he expressed it) in snubbing him.
Mrs. Barrimore, a sweet little woman, over forty, and looking less,
had been much exercised in spirit to keep her idolized and only son
from wounding her idolized and only brother; hence, she had consented
to Philip’s plan of getting a little place in the country to work
in. He would be near enough for frequent visits, and would have the
conditions he craved for his work.
Nevertheless, she felt sad that he should not reside under her roof.
Barrimore reached the West Hill at Hastings as the sun was setting. The
sky was flooded with exquisite color. The sea, calm and unruffled, and
of a lovely blue, was dotted over with sailing craft.
It was low tide, and within the harbor (so called, though it had never
been completed) little naked boys ran, throwing pink reflections on the
wet sand, while fishermen lounged against their boats, which they would
soon be getting ready for the night’s work.
“I shall miss the sea,” thought Barrimore regretfully; “but, after all,
I can soon ride in from Gissing.”
Before making his way to Hawk’s Nest (his mother’s house), which was
situated near the Alexandra Park, he walked across the hill to the
point where the entrance to St. Clement’s Caves is situated, and looked
down at the old town, with its quaint red-roofed houses, and then
across to the little churchyard of All Saints on the slope of the East
Hill.
As his eyes rested on this churchyard they suddenly dimmed.
Under a white cross, like one he now saw, rested the woman he had
loved. Woman? Eweretta Alvin had been but a girl when she had suddenly
ceased to be, and his heart lay buried with her away in Canada.
At five-and-twenty Barrimore had vowed himself to bachelorhood, which
was his only point of resemblance to his Uncle Robert Burns.
Never again would he love, he told himself, for which reason he allowed
himself a certain freedom with the women-folk who gathered about his
mother. Some of these were pretty girls, too, and charming enough
to stir any ordinary man’s pulses. Phyllis Lane, for instance, was
bewitching, if not exactly pretty.
Barrimore suddenly remembered that on this particular day there had
been a garden-party at his mother’s, and Phyllis and her father,
Colonel Lane, were staying on to dinner. He must hurry or he would be
late.