The funeral was over, and Mr. Reybold marvelled much that the Judge
had not put in an appearance. The whole committee had attended the
obsequies of Crutch and acted as pall-bearers. Reybold had escorted
the page's sister to the Congressional cemetery, and had observed even
Old Beau to come with a wreath of flowers and hobble to the grave and
deposit them there. But the Judge, remorseless in death as frivolous
in life, never came near his mourning wife and daughter in their
severest sorrow. Mrs. Tryphonia Basil, seeing that this singular want
of behavior on the Judge's part was making some ado, raised her voice
above the general din of meals.
"Jedge Basil," she exclaimed, "has been on his Tennessee purchase.
These Christmas times there's no getting through the snow in the
Cumberland Gap. He's stopped off thaw to shoot the--ahem!--the wild
torkey--a great passion with the Jedge. His half-uncle, Gineral
Johnson, of Awkinso, was a torkey-killer of high celebrity. He was a
Deshay on his Maw's side. I s'pose you haven't the torkey in the Dutch
country, Mr. Reybold?"
"Madame," said Reybold, in a quieter moment, "have you written to the
Judge the fact of his son's death?"
"Oh yes--to Fawquear."
"Mrs. Basil," continued the Congressman, "I want you to be explicit
with me. Where is the Judge, your husband, at this moment?"
"Excuse me, Colonel Reybold, this is a little of a assumption, sir.
The Jedge might call you out, sir, for intruding upon his incog. He's
very fine on his incog., you air awair."
"Madame," exclaimed Reybold straightforwardly, "there are reasons why
I should communicate with your husband. My term in Congress is nearly
expired. I might arouse your interest, if I chose, by recalling to
your mind the memorandum of about seven hundred dollars in which you
are my debtor. That would be a reason for seeing your husband anywhere
north of the Potomac, but I do not intend to mention it. Is he
aware--are you?--that Joyce Basil is in love with some one in this
city?"
Mrs. Basil drew a long breath, raised both hands, and ejaculated:
"Well, I declaw!"
"I have it from her own lips," continued Reybold. "She told me as a
secret, but all my suspicions are awakened. If I can prevent it,
madame, that girl shall not follow the example of hundreds of her
class in Washington, and descend, through the boarding-house or the
lodging quarter, to be the wife of some common and unambitious clerk,
whose penury she must some day sustain by her labor. I love her
myself, but I will never take her until I know her heart to be free.
Who is this lover of your daughter?"
An expression of agitation and cunning passed over Mrs. Basil's face.
"Colonel Reybold," she whined, "I pity your blasted hopes. If I was a
widow, they should be comfoted. Alas! my daughter is in love with one
of the Fitzchews of Fawqueeah. His parents is cousins of the Jedge,
and attached to the military."
The Congressman looked disappointed, but not yet satisfied.
"Give me at once the address of your husband," he spoke. "If you do
not, I shall ask your daughter for it, and she cannot refuse me."
The mistress of the boarding-house was not without alarm, but she
dispelled it with an outbreak of anger.
"If my daughter disobeys her mother," she cried, "and betrays the
Jedge's incog., she is no Basil, Colonel Reybold. The Basils repudiate
her, and she may jine the Dutch and other foreigners at her pleasure."
"That is her only safety," exclaimed Reybold. "I hope to break every
string that holds her to yonder barren honor and exhausted soil."
He pointed toward Virginia, and hastened away to the Capitol. All the
way up the squalid and muddy avenue of that day he mused and wondered:
"Who is Fitzhugh? Is there such a person any more than a Judge Basil?
And yet there _is_ a Judge, for Joyce has told me so. _She_, at least,
cannot lie to me. At last," he thought, "the dream of my happiness is
over. Invincible in her prejudice as all these Virginians, Joyce Basil
has made her bed amongst the starveling First Families, and there she
means to live and die. Five years hence she will have her brood around
her. In ten years she will keep a boarding-house and borrow money. As
her daughters grow up to the stature and grace of their mother, they
will be proud and poor again and breed in and out, until the race will
perish from the earth."
Slow to love, deeply interested, baffled but unsatisfied, Reybold made
up his mind to cut his perplexity short by leaving the city for the
county of Fauquier. As he passed down the avenue late that afternoon,
he turned into E Street, near the theatre, to engage a carriage for
his expedition. It was a street of livery-stables, gambling dens,
drinking houses, and worse; murders had been committed along its
sidewalks. The more pretentious _canaille_ of the city harbored there
to prey on the hotels close at hand and aspire to the chance
acquaintance of gentlemen. As Reybold stood in an archway of this
street, just as the evening shadows deepened above the line of sunset,
he saw something pass which made his heart start to his throat and
fastened him to the spot. Veiled and walking fast, as if escaping
detection or pursuit, the figure of Joyce Basil flitted over the
pavement and disappeared in a door about at the middle of this
Alsatian quarter of the capital.
"What house is that?" he asked of a constable passing by, pointing to
the door she entered.
"Gambling den," answered the officer. "It used to be old Phil
Pendleton's."
Reybold knew the reputation of the house: a resort for the scions of
the old tide-water families, where hospitality thinly veiled the
paramount design of plunder. The connection established the truth of
Mrs. Basil's statement. Here, perhaps, already married to the
dissipated heir of some unproductive estate, Joyce Basil's lot was
cast forever. It might even be that she had been tempted here by some
wretch whose villainy she knew not of. Reybold's brain took fire at
the thought, and he pursued the fugitive into the doorway. A negro
steward unfastened a slide and peeped at Reybold knocking in the hall;
and, seeing him of respectable appearance, bowed ceremoniously as he
let down a chain and opened the door.
"Short cards in the front saloon," he said; "supper and faro back.
Chambers on the third floor. Walk up."
Reybold only tarried a moment at the gaming tables, where the silent,
monotonous deal from the tin box, the lazy stroke of the markers, and
the transfer of ivory "chips" from card to card of the sweat-cloth,
impressed him as the dullest form of vice he had ever found. Treading
softly up the stairs, he was attracted by the light of a door partly
ajar, and a deep groan, as of a dying person. He peeped through the
crack of the door, and beheld Joyce Basil leaning over an old man,
whose brow she moistened with her handkerchief. "Dear father," he
heard her say, and it brought consolation to more than the sick man.
Reybold threw open the door and entered into the presence of Mrs.
Basil and her daughter. The former arose with surprise and shame, and
cried:
"Jedge Basil, the Dutch have hunted you down. He's here--the Yankee
creditor."
Joyce Basil held up her hand in imploration, but Reybold did not heed
the woman's remark. He felt a weight rising from his heart, and the
blindness of many months lifted from his eyes. The dying mortal upon
the bed, over whose face the blue billow of death was rolling
rapidly, and whose eyes sought in his daughter's the promise of mercy
from on high, was the mysterious parent who had never arrived--the
Judge from Fauquier. In that old man's long waxed mustache, crimped
hair, and threadbare finery the Congressman recognized Old Beau, the
outcast gamester and mendicant, and the father of Joyce and Uriel
Basil.
"Colonel Reybold," faltered that old wreck of manly beauty and of
promise long departed, "Old Beau's passing in his checks. The chant
coves will be telling to-morrow what they know of his life in the
papers, but I've dropped a cold deck on 'em these twenty years. Not
one knows Old Beau, the Bloke, to be Tom Basil, cadet at West Point in
the last generation. I've kept nothing of my own but my children's
good name. My little boy never knew me to be his father. I tried to
keep the secret from my daughter, but her affection broke down my
disguises. Thank God! the old rounder's deal has run out at last. For
his wife he'll flash her diles no more, nor be taken on the vag."
"Basil," said Reybold, "what trust do you leave to me in your family?"
Mrs. Basil strove to interpose, but the dying man raised his voice:
"Tryphonee can go home to Fauquier. She was always welcome
there--without me. I was disinherited. But here, Colonel! My last drop
of blood is in the girl. She loves you."
A rattle arose in the sinner's throat. He made an effort, and
transferred his daughter's hand to the Congressman's. Not taking it
away, she knelt with her future husband at the bedside and raised her
voice:
"Lord, when Thou comest into Thy kingdom, remember him!"