HIS image, however, remained importunately present with the man whom
he had characterized as a “hawk.” In the days that ensued, it intruded
between Maurice Brennett and many an abstruse commercial calculation,
with which it was devoid of analogy in any particular. He became
conscious, with a sharp surprise, of the dereliction of his trained
and tutored attention. Even then he admitted to himself that this was
strange, although he argued plausibly that it was but the lingering
impression of a startlingly unexpected episode and a notable face.
Long afterward, in the light of subsequent events, he remembered this.
And then he called it a presentiment--this man of facts and figures!
One night while it still harassed him, he chanced to come in late from
the deserted streets. The rotunda of the hotel was deserted too, and
so quiet that he could hear in the distance the carriage, which he
had left, rolling away with a dull monotonous whir over the Nicholson
pavement. A solitary night-clerk languished behind the counter. The
water was motionless in the basin of the fountain. A single gas-jet
served to accent the darkness and dreariness of the scene, bereft of
its wonted animation. The shadows clung thick about the great pillars,
and as he walked slowly and listlessly among them, he wore a grave,
pondering, baffled aspect. His hat was pulled far over his brow, and
his hands were sunk deep, with a certain surliness of gesture, in his
trousers’ pockets. His overcoat hung loosely on his shoulders, giving
glimpses of his dress-suit beneath it, and of a half crushed flower in
his button-hole. These exponents of recent participation in some genial
festivity, were at this moment curiously at variance with his face,
in which there was so marked an expression of keen intensity, and so
strong, though subtle, a suggestion of latent rapacity, that it fully
justified Captain Estwicke’s descriptive phrase, “a hawk’s face.” His
peculiarly brilliant eyes--so bright even in the checkered glooms--were
downcast. They held an intimation of a deep dejection of spirit.
So he, too, had his hopes deferred--his far off Canaan! He, too, had
some vital part that could be called a heart, where at least wounds
might rankle, and disappointments chill. But once admit that idea of a
latent rapacity, and he seemed an unpleasant transformation of a man
into a creature of prey.
He paused when he reached the counter, and as he glanced over the
register, his eyes suddenly dilated with eager intentness. His hand was
poised, quivering over a certain scrawling autograph.
“When did Mr. Travis arrive?” he asked sharply of the clerk.
“Ten minutes ago,” replied the impassive functionary.
Brennett hastily noted the number of the room, turned from the counter,
and took his way swiftly up the stairs and through the dim twilight of
the long halls. Above the row of doors on either hand, only one transom
was still alight. He knocked with loud impatience, and he trembled with
suspense, while the key was turned within.
“_Hello!_ unexpected pleasure!” exclaimed the occupant of the
room, opening the door and seeking to suppress a mighty yawn. “You
_are_ quick on the trigger. How did you find out that I was in
town?”
Brennett made no reply. He was even more excited when they were shut in
together. He tossed aside his overcoat and hat as if he were stifling,
threw himself into a chair, and in hastily drawing off his light kid
gloves, he wantonly tore them bit from bit with gestures that were most
unpleasantly like his cousin, the feathered hawk, whom he so closely
resembled. Though the meeting was fraught with a deep significance,
there were no indications of the fact in Travis’s unruffled demeanor,
except that he now and then looked uneasily at his friend, as if in
deprecation of this intensity of impatience and eagerness. His eyes
were blue, finely set, and contemplative; his hair was of an equivocal
shade, called golden by his feminine acquaintance, and sandy by his men
friends; a very recent railway journey was suggested by the cinders on
his beard. He was half undressed; his throat was bare; he had taken off
his coat and vest, and they hung on the back of the chair where he sat
thrusting his feet into a pair of slippers. He was tall, handsomely
proportioned, and was popularly supposed to run on his looks. By
virtue of his prepossessing exterior, aided by a singularly quiet and
gentlemanly manner, he retained his hold on well-regulated society,
and fostered a prevalent scepticism as to stories of extravagant
dissipation told about him. Although far from being intellectual,
he had a habit of putting plain sensible ideas into unpretentious
language, which gave casual observers the impression that he was a
shrewd practical fellow with solid views. He presented the anomaly of a
man credited with acumen by his general acquaintance, and pronounced a
fool by his intimates.
“You received my telegram?” he drawled, as he rose to his feet and
stood leaning against the mantel-piece.
“Rather enigmatical it was--I did not understand it.”
Brennett’s tone was acrid, and Travis replied as to a reproach.
“I don’t see how I could have made it more explicit, considering the
circumstances. I said, ‘It has all gone wrong.’”
“How has it gone wrong?”
“You know she died in London more than a month ago, and I started soon
afterward for New York. Her will--you remember I gave you a copy of
it--well, when I reached New York, I found there was a codicil of which
I had before known nothing. It changed the former disposition of her
property. She left everything available for our purposes away from me.
I telegraphed you as soon as I discovered it.”
Brennett fixed his eyes, sullen and lowering, though never losing that
quality of searching brilliancy, upon his friend, and replied not a
word.
The silence shook Travis’s equilibrium.
“Say something, Brennett,” he cried angrily. “There’s no use
in jay-hawking me. You seem to hold me responsible for your
disappointment, while I--why this thing is my ruin! I have sunk in that
mine every cent I could rake and scrape for years. Give over the luxury
of stamping on me, and stir your wits to see if anything can help us
now--or”--with anxious doubt--“do you throw up your hand?”
Brennett still said nothing, and Travis with an impatient gesture
shifted his position, leaning more heavily on the mantel-piece, and
struck a match for his cigar.
By a dexterous use of the system known as “freezing out,” the two had
become exclusive owners of a certain silver mine in Colorado. But
after a time it had seemed that the biters were bitten. The yield grew
meagre, the expenses continued, their perseverance had only brought
them largely into debt, and now their liabilities had swollen like
a gigantic boa-constrictor. Ruin was close upon them, when suddenly
brighter prospects opened. If they could retain the mine now they
thought it would be worth millions to them, but their necessities were
immediate. A large sum must be raised within the next few months or the
property, with all its inchoate wealth, would be sacrificed, possibly
for the merest fraction of its value,--possibly only for the amount of
the debts.
Travis had looked for extrication to the estate of his widowed and
childless sister, who had been in a dying condition for months, and the
result seemed only to demonstrate the long-conceded futility of waiting
for the shoes of the dead.
“I tell you, Brennett,” he said presently, sheltering with his hand
the feeble flicker of the match from some draught that stole shivering
in, “this thing came upon me like a thunder-clap. She had intimated so
often--she had virtually promised me those houses. They are equivalent
to cash, as you know--could be converted at a moment.”
“And what do you get?” asked Brennett, with a voracious look.
“The Arkansas plantations--a drug on the market.”
“You are to blame,” Brennett interjected sharply.
“You can always prove that--to your own satisfaction,” said Travis,
with a sneer, which might have pointed a more pungent sarcasm. He threw
himself back in his chair with an air of bracing himself for endurance.
“We should have taken some account of Mrs. Perrier’s stand-point--we
ought to have managed so as to give her a different view. I suppose,”
Brennett pursued, impelled rather by an incisive mental habit of
stripping facts bare, than by a definite purpose, “I suppose her idea
was that the plantations would give you a comfortable income always,
and would be likely to stay by you--as nobody will buy them now-a-days,
nor lend money on them. She intended to protect you against your own
imprudence in speculation, perhaps--or your gambling proclivities.”
Travis eyed his cigar sourly, while he flipped off the ash with his
delicate fourth finger.
“How obvious!” cried Brennett. “And I never thought of it before! Yet I
knew she had strong objections to your habits.”
“Laura was religious, you know.” Travis suggested this as if it were a
disease, which had impaired her judgment, and was therefore a plea in
extenuation of her weakness. “She was really very fond of me. She cared
for nobody else, and I have no doubt the provisions of this codicil
surprised Antoinette beyond measure.”
“_Antoinette!_ What the devil are you talking about?” demanded
Brennett, impatiently, rousing himself from his absorption.
“I am talking,” said Travis, with an elaborate show of placidity,
“about my step-sister, Antoinette St. Pierre, to whom Laura left the
property which I expected to receive.”
“I never before heard of her,” said Brennett, sternly. “Why did you not
tell me that there was some one likely to share with you Mrs. Perrier’s
estate?”
“My dear fellow,” said Travis, with a debonair wave of the hand, “my
friends urge against me that I am indolent, but I have never been given
over to such an abandonment of idleness as to have nothing better to do
than to talk about Antoinette St. Pierre.”
Brennett, goaded though he was, made some concession to the displeasure
which expressed itself in this frivolous affectation.
“Well--tell me about her now, and how it happened that Mrs. Perrier
gave her that valuable property at your expense?”
“Why, she is the same relation to Laura that I am. You see, my
father married a second time, and so it came about that Laura is
my half-sister. After his death his widow also married again, and
Antoinette is the child of that marriage. So Laura is the half-sister
of each of us, although Antoinette is no relation whatever to
me--merely a step-sister. Make it out?” he asked, knitting his brows,
as if he had propounded some dark conundrum.
“Of course--how can I help making it out?”
“Well,” said Travis, lightly, “it is a relationship that gets away with
most people.”
Then he pulled calmly at his cigar.
“And you never told me this before!” exclaimed Brennett, desperately.
“And this girl had the same claim exactly on Mrs. Perrier that you had.”
“But Mrs. Perrier had promised,” interrupted Travis. “She had written
and signed her will.”
“It is hard--hard!” cried Brennett, springing up and walking nervously
back and forth,--“that in a matter like this I should have such a
coadjutor, who doltishly keeps me in ignorance”--
“I am beholden to you,” drawled Travis, airily, caressing his
straw-colored beard, with a gentle gesture, as he watched, with a
smiling face and incongruously fierce eyes, his friend’s movements.
In a juncture like this he carried more weight than might be argued
from his limited mental capacity. Brennett had found him and his
resources convenient in more ways than one, and it was not yet
conclusively demonstrated that this usefulness was a thing of the past.
“You must overlook something, Travis,” he said, as a reluctant
retraction. “But I ought to have been fully informed.”
Travis readily accepted the amende, for this matter of usefulness was
mutual. He was one of those fools who are sub-acutely aware of the
fact. Not that he deprecated it; he would have found a ponderous brain
merely a dead weight in those giddy and lightsome scenes which made
up to him the pleasure and the worth of existence. He preferred to
exert judgment and foresight by proxy, and he experienced unfailing
satisfaction in the fact that his interests were indissolubly
interwoven with those of Maurice Brennett, whose acumen had been
attested by success.
“How could I imagine that Antoinette was to come into our plans? What
could I have told you--that she is an interesting orphan, twenty-three
years of age--and incidentally the color of her hair and eyes?”
“Where is she now?”
“She has just come to Tennessee on a visit to General Vayne’s family,
up there in the country somewhere,” with a vague backward nod of the
head. “She has a lot of friends in that neighborhood, and sometimes
visits among them for months.”
“Where has she been all this time?” asked Brennett.
“She has lived with her father’s mother, in a rented house three
miles from New Orleans, until about six months ago, when the old lady
died--in the nick of time, too,” added Travis, unfeelingly, “for the
mortgages on her Mississippi plantation, which she had been fighting
off for the last ten years, had just been foreclosed. So you see she
left Antoinette nothing. Old Mrs. St. Pierre’s death was the reason
that Laura wanted to return from Europe. She intended to take a house
in town this winter and have Antoinette with her. I don’t know why
you never heard of Antoinette, unless it is because she is rather an
unimportant little body.”
Brennett came back and sat down in front of the fire. Travis watched
him vacantly for a few moments. Then he yawned portentously and shifted
his position. Certainly he had had time to recover somewhat from the
first poignant anguish of disappointment, but few men with interests of
magnitude at stake could so readily detach the mind and so trivially
catch at trifles. He glanced about the room with its stereotyped hotel
furnishing; then he fell to gazing at the uncertain flickering of the
gas-jet.
“What the devil do you suppose is the matter with the meter?” he
suggested, lazily.
Brennett sat silent and absorbed. Presently Travis yawned again, and
broke forth suddenly--
“Oh, I say--its getting on to two o’clock. And, my dear fellow, I am
fagged out. I’ve been travelling for two days. I can’t get hold of my
faculties for a midnight consultation like this. Let’s adjourn till
to-morrow.”
Perhaps Brennett had scant regard for the efficacy of these faculties
when got hold of. Still silent and absorbed he made no motion. It had
begun to rain, and the wind was rising. Heavy gusts dashed against
the window, and in the intervals one might hear the drops trickling
drearily down the panes. They beat with a resonant clamor on the
tin-covered roof of some portico near at hand. The sound was chilly and
cheerless, and after once more observing Brennett’s impassive attitude,
Travis rose and re-dressed himself completely, with a resigned
deliberation of gesture; then languidly resumed his chair.
“Well, since you are determined to talk it out now I have only to say
that I think we have come to the financial jumping-off place. Can’t you
suggest anything except unavailing regrets that you didn’t know about
Antoinette?”
“I can suggest a sure way to command that money,” returned Brennett,
taking his cigar from his lips, and glancing keenly though furtively at
his friend.
“How?” demanded Travis, excitedly.
“A sure way,” reiterated Brennett.
“How?” asked Travis again.
“Marry her,” said Brennett, coolly, replacing his cigar. “Marry her.”
Travis looked at him in silence.
“Well,” said Brennett, impatiently, “what have you to say to it?”
“Got nothing to say to it,” replied Travis, shortly.
And again the man who managed him as one manages a restive horse was
fain to concede the point, and give him his head.
“Well, see here,” said Brennett, presently, “the division which Mrs.
Perrier made is, except in the matter of convertibility, largely in
your favor. Suppose you try to persuade Miss St. Pierre to exchange the
houses for your plantations. Represent to her----”
“You can’t _represent_ anything to Antoinette. I tell you she is
sharp, sharp as you yourself--and very suspicious. If you knew her you
would appreciate that you can’t represent things to _her_.”
“In some respects the exchange would really be to her advantage. The
rents of those houses are an inconsiderable per cent upon the value
of the property in comparison with the income of the plantations and
their market value. She would give her houses to you at the maximum
valuation and take your lands at the minimum. She would exchange a
small income-bearing property for a large income-bearing property.
Don’t you see?”
“Ye-es,” Travis assented, dubiously. “Perhaps. But there are the labor
questions, and the unsettled state of the country, and the low price of
cotton. And, Brennett,--you don’t know Antoinette!”
“There is another possibility that she might be induced to make this
exchange. Her title--Mrs. Perrier’s title to those houses is not
indefeasible.”
Travis turned with a stare of blank amazement. He took instant fright.
“Then God knows,” he cried fervently, “_I_ don’t want them.
_I_ won’t exchange.”
“You were so certain that your sister would leave you that property,
that I thought it worth while to have the title looked into, in view of
a speedy sale.”
“And what’s the matter with it?” asked Travis anxiously, vaguely aware
that his friend had some intention shuffling behind all this, but as
yet utterly unable to “spot it.”
“Why, Clarence Clendinning, the man who fraudulently sold to Mrs.
Perrier, purporting to convey in fee, was only a tenant _per autre
vie_, and at the period of this sale this life estate was just
terminated. Thereafter he could be regarded only as a tenant at
sufferance. So you see she bought literally nothing, and all this time
she has been liable to be ejected at any day by the remainder-man.”
“And who the devil is the remainder-man?”
“His name is John Doane Fortescue.”
“John Doane Fortescue?”
Brennett assented.
“Hm-m,” said Travis, meditatively. “I have never seen him, but I know
who he is. Antoinette is related to him. They are cousins--distant--but
I should say she is about the nearest relation he has, for he is the
last of his family.” He thought it over silently for a moment. “This
whole affair seems to me very queer,” he suggested.
“Not so queer, after all,” said Brennett. “The way of it is this,--John
Fortescue’s grandfather, who first owned the property, was pressed for
a large sum of money--more than he could raise by mortgages--and as
he had always intended to will it to his grandson he did not wish to
alienate it absolutely. So he granted to Clendinning an estate in it
_per autre vie_, remainder to John Fortescue in fee. This estate
_per autre vie_ was limited to the life of James Murray, who was
then a young man and only died in April, 1857. The same year and month
Clendinning--I suppose he had expected his tenancy to last longer, and
wanted to make more out of it--sold the property to Mrs. Perrier for a
good big price.”
Travis turned upon him a face of smiling triumph. “1857! That lets us
out,” he remarked, cheerfully. “The remainder-man’s remedy is barred.
I happen to know that here the statute of limitations allows only
seven years next, after the right of action first accrues, for the
institution of proceedings to recover real estate.”
“I talked to the lawyer about that,” said Brennett. “It seems that in
Tennessee an intermission or sort of suspension has been prescribed, in
view of the disorganization caused by the war, during which no statute
of limitations can be held to have operated. This period extends from
the sixth of May, 1861, to the first of January, 1867--something more
than five years to be added to the original seven.”
“Throw in your suspension,” said Travis, liberally. “Can you count,
Brennett?--can you count? Seven years and your suspension--eh? We’re in
1871.”
“But,” persisted Brennett, pressing the point, “the statute doesn’t run
against some people. There are minors, you know, and married women,
persons ‘beyond the seas,’ or _non compos mentis_--all of these
have three years next after the disability is removed to bring suit.
The remainder-man may set up a disability and recover the property at
any time within the next ten, twenty, thirty years.”
“Ah, but Brennett, that is a very remote possibility.”
“It is probable enough,” Brennett declared, with a weighty significance
of manner, “to frighten Miss St. Pierre.”
Travis cast upon him a sudden glance of comprehension. “By the Lord,
Maurice,” he exclaimed, “what a head you have!”
“You must represent,” continued Brennett, careless of this tribute,
“that you are willing to exchange your solid lands for her houses,
with their shaky title, because it is imperative for you to have a
convertible property, and you are therefore prepared to encounter some
risk.”
“And I can say, too,” added Travis, temporizing with a certain pulpy
weakness which he called his conscience, “that the remainder-man may
never appear. And I’ll say it,” he added with a curious inconsistency,
“in such a way as will make her think he is knock, knock, knocking at
the door.”
He gave a short, abrupt laugh, impressed with the humor of the
situation. The next moment he was himself frightened by the bugbear
conjured up for the intimidation of Miss St. Pierre.
“But suppose upon these representations she does exchange--and before
I have time to do anything with the property up comes John Fortescue,
brisk and smiling, fresh from the Lunatic Asylum, or he may turn out to
be a minor, or a married woman, or just returned from circumnavigating,
or”--
“All that need not be considered by us,” said Brennett, impatiently.
“The man is dead, no doubt, or he would never have let this thing lie.
In fact, I think I have heard that he is dead. And I am quite sure,
too, he was not married.”
“Never, so far as I know,” rejoined Travis.
“And so, no widow,”--said Brennett, with satisfaction--“and no heirs
nearer than Miss St. Pierre, herself.” Presently he added--
“It would be a good plan for you to go to General Vayne’s place, have
an interview with her, and propose an exchange of property. We can’t
manage it through an agent, because we don’t care to take any one into
our confidence.”
Travis’s countenance fell, but he said nothing. There was much
conversation between them not expressed in words--hardly in reciprocal
glances. Brennett replied to the objection in his face.
“So she doesn’t like you,” he said, slowly.
Travis’s pause was impressive.
“I should think not,” he declared.
Brennett knitted his brows.
“That is a complication. Can’t you propitiate her--_make_ her like
you.”
Travis for a moment was dubious, but reflective. Then he glanced up
with some hopefulness. “There is one way to please her,” he said. “The
very fact that I thought of it would propitiate her.”
Brennett turned toward him with quick interest.
“You see,” Travis explained, discursively, “Laura left her personalty
to me, and among her valuables is an old heirloom of the St. Xantaine
family. Laura was descended from the St. Xantaines, you know.”
Brennett knew it. Everyone who had ever been within speech of a
descendant of the St. Xantaines knew the fact.
“And so is Antoinette,” continued Travis. “So you see it would be
peculiarly appropriate for me to give this old trinket to her. She
ought to have it, really. It is a very curious old cross--diamonds set
in silver, in the shape of the letter X--rather handsome diamonds, but
nothing extraordinary. It is not very valuable, intrinsically.”
Brennett looked disappointed.
“I tell you, Brennett, the thing is famous,” persisted Travis, replying
to the look as the other had done. “She would value it more than
something worth twenty times as much. I know her way. The stones have
a history--it may be true, and it may not. I have my doubts. It is
said that they were originally set in some ornament given, ages ago,
by royalty itself, to some interesting member of the St. Xantaine
family--I can’t say how many ages--can’t say what royalty--can’t say
what interesting member of the family.” He spoke with the air of a
man who had been nagged by these mythical splendors of ancestry which
he did not share. “I have heard the story often enough, but the Lord
knows I don’t want to burden my mind with it. Antoinette, though, could
tell you all about it. She would be immensely pleased to have it, and
pleased with me for thinking to bring it to her.”
“That will do,” said Brennett, decisively. “But, Travis, talk about the
business first, and bring in the cross as an afterthought.”
And upon this the two parted.