Mr. Dalton, hearkening professionally to the adventure, took charge
of the legal aspects of the matter in the interests of his client. He
notified by telephone the local officials of the death of the guide,
and also by the long distance wire the marshal of the district of the
probable location of the still, and in each communication offered on
the part of Lloyd and young Laniston to be prepared to give their
testimony whenever it should be required.
Then, since caution is always concomitant with conscience in a certain
organisation, he proposed that the summer sojourners should depart New
Helvetia forthwith.
"There is no use in mincing matters," he said. "These moonshiners are
very desperate men. They may make an effort to prevent this direct
and irrefutable testimony against them from ever reaching the ear of
the authorities, Federal or local. For a while they may not know who
Mr. Lloyd was, as he appeared judgment-wise in the niche, like the
miracle of the writing on the wall of the palace of Belshazzar. But the
rescue party will of course spread the details far and wide through the
countryside, and the lives of both Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Laniston might
be much endangered in lingering in this sequestered place. In fact
this wild region is not now safe. I am not an alarmist, but I should
recommend indeed the immediate closing of the hotel and the departure
of all the guests from New Helvetia at this very critical juncture."
There were grave faces contemplating the glowing log fire in the great
chimney-place of the hotel office as he talked. Few people relish the
role of scapegoat. The idea of becoming a sacrifice to a possible
mistake of identity for either of these formidable witnesses, the
billet for the bullet of a distiller's rifle fired from the ambush of
the shrubbery of the lawn one of these dark moonless nights, seemed far
from a fitting sequel to the placid summer pleasuring at New Helvetia.
There was also the possibility, unpleasing indeed to anticipate, of the
incendiary destruction of the hotel, with all its guests, to make sure
of the witnesses in the holocaust, to shield the crime of the murderous
distillers. The personality of the adviser went far to commend his
counsel, and the fact that the host ardently seconded the proposition
made it manifest that the owner of the hostelry was not without fears
for his property and person. A short consultation resulted in the
resolution of the guests to quit the place early the next morning, no
one caring after dark to encounter in addition to possible attack by
the wayside the dangers of the precipitous mountainous road in the
descent from the heights.
The night was already coming on, clouded and drear; the white cumuli so
gaily racing with the wind through the blue matutinal skies had grown
grim in heavy grey tumultuous threats of storm. The wind was still
astir amongst the tossing cumulose tumult and falling weather seemed
hardly yet imminent, but when Lucia, refreshed by rest and sleep under
the influence of bromide administered by her aunt, joined the group in
the office, the gusts were beginning to dash torrents of rain against
the great black windows, all adrip, and the shouts of the riotous
powers of the air filled the outer voids of mountain and valley and the
utter darkness of the moonless night.
Mrs. Laniston had deemed it better when the girl returned that
afternoon from the ill-starred jaunt, exhausted and half hysterical
from fright and horror, that as scant regard as possible should
be accorded her nervous agitation. She urged Lucia to exert her
will-power to throw off the influences of the disastrous day, even its
recollection. The evil results upon her mind and physique would be best
nullified by slipping with as slight jar as might be into the normal
routine of life.
"Think of it no more, dearest Lucia," she said pettingly. "Wear your
prettiest gown and come down to tea. If you lie here and brood over
this to-night, you may not to-morrow be able to quit the subject."
But Lucia found naturally enough the theme still rife about the
fireside in the office. The question of transportation, the problems
of conveyances and horses had already been settled, partly with the
aid of the hotel stables which were usually available only for pleasure
trips, a Colbury livery establishment having the monopoly of the
general travel; but on this occasion every vehicle and horse at New
Helvetia were brought into requisition, so eager was the proprietor
to be rid of such a source of danger as his pleasant guests seemed
now likely to prove. An arrangement was made by telephone by which
the Colbury livery stable was to send up additional vehicles for
baggage and servants, and the business interests thus satisfactorily
concluded, the minds and conversation of the group reverted forthwith
to the sensation of the day and the solution of details of mystery,
not altogether comprehended in the jejune accounts that had at first
reached the hotel.
The views of Mr. Dalton, by reason of his profession and his close
association with the chief actor in the sensation, commanded much
respect and were very generally adopted.
"I take it," he was saying as Lucia entered and Lloyd rose and offered
her a chair--the lawyer glanced up from where he was comfortably
ensconced with his cigar in a rocking-chair before the blazing fire,
"Good-evening, Miss Laniston--I trust you are fully recovered from
the ill effects of these unlucky excitements--I take it that the man
met the horseback party merely by accident, and having some deep and
murderous grudge against Mr. Lloyd----"
"Someone in the rescue party," interrupted Frank, "when the body was
found and identified, was saying that his sweetheart had thrown him
over, and that he suspected that it was the influence of her foolish
admiration of Mr. Lloyd, whom she had seen at the Street Fair, where
she danced."
"And that's arrant nonsense," Lloyd instantly asseverated. "She did
a song-and-dance turn, like any other coryphée, and had no more
consideration for me than the Flying lydy or the Fat lydy who perform
in their own interests."
"At all events," Mr. Dalton said, "this Eugene Binley thirsted for your
blood. He was unarmed--which surprises me very much----" Mr. Dalton
fitted the tips of his fingers accurately together as he pieced out his
bits of evidence--"really surprises me. These mountaineers, if to all
appearances without weapons, usually carry what they call a shooting
iron in the leg of their long boots. He could not kill a professional
athlete like Mr. Lloyd in a fist-fight; he could not probably get
an opportunity to push him when off his guard into an abyss--though
this is what I think he contemplated when he refused to accompany Mr.
Laniston back for the ladies or to wait alone."
"That idea occurred to Mr. Jardine--after we had remembered seeing the
man in disguise at the Fair and in the Ferris Wheel," said Ruth, who,
being far more phlegmatic than Lucia, and having been tortured by fears
for her relatives rather than physical hardships and the sight of a
hideous deed, had readily recovered her equanimity when their safety
was assured. "That's why we gave them so little time to return before
we rode off and raised the community as we went."
"This man's plan was well laid and evidently was evolved almost on the
spur of the moment." Mr. Dalton continued his research into the motives
of the deed. "He bethought himself that the moonshiners would not stay
their hand should a presumable spy be detected looking in upon their
illicit still. Thus he led Mr. Lloyd to their lair within their view.
He must have had a grudge at the moonshiners too, for he had provided
himself in Mr. Laniston and Miss Lucia with witnesses to the nefarious
deed. What a precious shifty rascal this was--committing a murder by
proxy!"
"A wonderful escape for Mr. Lloyd," said Mrs. Laniston. "And where do
you go, Mr. Lloyd, from New Helvetia?" She was seeking to change the
subject on Lucia's account. The young girl was looking very pallid,
though delicately lovely in a gown of white voilé over white silk. She
wore a belt of old gold brocade which had as a clasp a fine old topaz,
a bit of the antiquated jewelry that recent fashions have caused to be
delved out of old cases and brought to light in new settings. This had
been a great brooch, and three other stones, similar but smaller--once
the ear-rings and bracelet-clasp of the same set,--were now mounted in
a "dog-collar" of filigree gold about her delicate neck. In her hair
Lloyd noted a cluster of golden-rod, a relic of the ride to-day.
"Where am I going?"--Lloyd repeated the question--"as soon as I can get
away from the coroner's jury I shall go to my own house--I am due there
on the tenth at any rate."
"To receive your cousin Mr. Thomas Jennico Lloyd, I suppose?" said the
gentleman who was well acquainted in Glaston and who had manifested
much interest in the transformed showman.
"And his wife and his daughter, Miss Geraldine Lloyd."
Mrs. Laniston looked bewildered. "But isn't this rather early to go so
far south? The danger from yellow fever is by no means counteracted by
these light frosts in the upper country."
The gentleman who had connections in Glaston surveyed her in surprise.
"Why, there has never been a case of yellow fever to originate near
Glaston--they feel no apprehension whatever."
"Mr. Lloyd's home-place is within a few miles of Glaston," Mr. Dalton
explained.
In common with most talkative women Mrs. Laniston could not silently
await developments. "Oh--I thought his home was near us--in
Louisiana--beyond the bight of the bayou."
"That----" said Mr. Dalton, with undisguised disregard, "why I
understand that that plantation has only a little house on it--a
neglected place, too. I think that Mr. Jennico only took it for a
debt."
"Mr. Lloyd's home-place, the old Jennico place, near Glaston, is one of
the finest country seats in the whole South," the gentleman who knew
Glaston said, with almost local pride. "It is positively baronial. I
should think, Mr. Lloyd, that you would be very happy to own it."
Lloyd smiled, his eyes on the fire. "I saw it only once," he said.
"Yes--yes----" exclaimed Mr. Dalton delightedly, "the time you called
on your grandfather, Judge Lloyd, when he was visiting there. Ah ha!
you took no notice whatever of the plump little gentleman reading the
paper in his easy chair in the bay-window--and listening to every
word. Charles Jennico always had more curiosity than any woman! He had
intended to leave all his property to the eldest grandson of his friend
and cousin, Judge Lloyd--this Thomas Jennico Lloyd. 'But by George, I
made up my mind then that I'd divide my estate evenly between the two
grandsons,' he told me when he gave me his instructions to draw up his
will. He said, 'I wouldn't do anything then; I wouldn't interfere with
the young cock's independence--I honoured him for it. But I never saw
anybody who would grace wealth better and I made up my mind that he
shouldn't eat the bread of carefulness all his days.' And that's how
our young friend came to be the residuary legatee and devisee."
The priggish gentleman, who was of the type who grudges a
fellow-creature nothing so much as self-satisfaction, remarked with
sour emphasis: "Your Street Fair colleagues, Mr. Lloyd, will have
marvellously little trouble in advertising themselves with your
accession to fortune. The newspapers are beforehand with them already.
You are spread all over the New York papers,"--and he turned a sheet
trembling and crackling in his hand as he unfolded it, and read the
following flaring headline:
"A Windfall. From Mountebank to Millionaire."
Mrs. Laniston could not forbear so sharp an exclamation of surprise
that Mr. Dalton turned and looked interrogatively at her.
"Why--we have made no secret of it," said he. "I mentioned that a good
bit of money went with the real estate."
"Oh," Mrs. Laniston explained, faltering and flushing, "I had no idea
that it was as much as that." Then recovering herself as best she
might she continued, "I suppose I received that impression because I
had heard you say that his grandfather, Judge Lloyd, was so reduced in
fortune."
"Judge Lloyd left nothing," said Mr. Dalton. "This fortune comes from
Charles Jennico, a very distant relative who was a childless widower
and much attached to Judge Lloyd's family."
Lloyd's eyes were fixed discerningly upon Mrs. Laniston for one moment,
with that infrequent sternness that was yet so definite in his face.
He wondered if the girl's course toward him to-day had been prompted
by her influence. He reflected that Lucia had shown,--she had said
indeed,--that she loved him. And yet she would not tolerate his suit.
This he felt sure was the work of the cautious chaperon, under the
mistake that his affluence was but a most limited competence. Doubtless
she had subtly argued, urgently constrained, really overwhelmed the
young girl's mind and preference, for independent and self sufficient
as Lucia affected to be she was in reality docile to authority and in
any matters of importance easily controlled, as he could see, by the
judgment of her aunt, whom she loved and respected and trusted.
Mrs. Laniston could not disguise her dismay when once more Lucia and
she were together in the upper story of the hotel. The apartment seemed
bare and wintry as the storm beat upon the resounding roof and gables
of the building, and the infinite stretches of the tempestuous clouds,
above the vast purple mountains and the untenanted valleys, showed in
the occasional broad flashes of the lightning through the uncurtained
windows, as the summer birds rifled their temporary nests and made
ready for their flitting on the morrow.
"Oh, Lucia, Lucia, my dear," wailed Mrs. Laniston. "I have made such a
terrible mistake! I have destroyed your splendid chances--for you loved
that man, and but for me you would have married him."
And Mrs. Laniston sat on the side of the bed in the sparsely furnished
fireless summer room and wrung her hands in wretchedness.
Lucia's face was wan and wistful as she stood tall and slim and
beautiful, in her sheer white dress with the shimmer of the silk
beneath it, against the background of the dark window with the
fluctuating view of the tempestuous landscape without. She held in her
hand the golden-rod that she had drawn from her hair and she looked
like the personification of the departing joys of summer.
But she had taken strong control of her nerves and she held it.
"You meant for the best, Aunt Dora," she murmured. "All that you said
is true--as true now as then."
"But, oh, child, money makes such a difference--opportunity, travel,
splendid environment. The incompatibility I feared, the bizarre
influences of his past life, his language, his opinions, his manners,
his lack of education would all be condoned by the world in a man of
great wealth. And, even without it, you loved him." After a pause,
"Lucia," Mrs. Laniston pleaded tremulously, "can't you try to lure him
back. It would do no harm to try."
"I will not," cried Lucia with sudden passion. "I would not--for all
his fortune--have him to think that it made the difference to me."
Mrs. Laniston could not herself have attained such dignity of poise,
but she had a dreary satisfaction that Lloyd could perceive no
suggestion of change in Lucia's manner wrought by the revelations of
the magnitude of his windfall, no token of relenting in the scanty
association that remained to them during the journey and the final
parting.
His detention in Colbury was slight. In that short dazzled bewildered
moment when he had looked down upon the still in the cave he had not
recognised any face or figure among the distillers. No facts could be
adduced against the Pinnott family in connection with the moonshining
evidently practised in the cavern, and he was not sorry that they
should go scot free despite his suspicions. Clotilda had obviously lost
little in losing her lover, but it was because of this he thought that
she seemed dazed and dull and dense to him when he told her of his
windfall and bestowed upon her and the old crone and Daniel Pinnott's
wife and child such gratuities "to remember him by" as he fancied might
please their taste. Then he was gone and she heard of him never again.
Mrs. Laniston did not lose sight of him. She was wont to scan with
pangs of self-reproach the reports of the social world in the
newspapers, and bitterly noted the fulfilment of her prophecy how
easily it might reconcile itself to peculiar antecedents and endowments
when the wealth was commensurate--and in justification of this mundane
appraisement it might be urged that the prestige of family distinction
was great also. In the shortest imaginable interval Lloyd became noted
in the social whirl; he was a patron of the theatre and the fine arts;
a great devotee to outdoor sports, master of the fox-hounds, prominent
in the country club and at the horse show, and he soon grew interested
in the turf as an owner of fine racers. His attractive personality,
and his inherited claims to fine social position speedily made him
a favourite in certain high and exclusive circles. He became, so to
speak, the fashion; his traits were admired and imitated; his sayings
were repeated; his every movement was chronicled; and when it became
bruited abroad before many months that he was about to marry his
cousin's only child, Miss Geraldine Lloyd, his popularity rendered it
a matter of very general satisfaction that the great Jennico fortune,
which had been divided in his behalf, was once more to become a single
interest to his further advantage.
When this news came to Louisiana Lucia Laniston was moved to take her
way in a solitary walk down toward his little neglected plantation
which she knew lay beyond the bight of the bayou near the swamp.
The narrow path kept the summit of the levee along the Mississippi
River, the great embankment covered with the thick mat of the Bermuda
grass,--the still, deserted plantation fields on one side, the crisp
sere stalks flaunting here and there a flocculent lock, "dog-tail"
as the ungathered remnant of the cotton is called, and on the other
side shining pools, where the encroaching river was creeping up into
the area of the "no man's land" between the protective levee and the
treacherous current. A lonely region this; she met no living creature,
and as she, herself, swiftly walked along the embankment, her tall slim
figure in her gray cloth dress with her gray chinchilla furs--the only
note of vivid colour being the red wing with the grey ostrich plume in
her hat--might have been visible a long way off, had there been any
observer in view. When she quitted this path she followed the quiet
country road, along its many windings to Lloyd's little plantation, a
pilgrimage of final farewell to a cherished thought, and stood at the
padlocked gate, and looked long at the little humble unpainted house,
which was without a tenant now. The soft bland air of the Southern
winter was about her; the sheen of the sunlight had a glister like
spring; the eternal green of the hedges of the Cherokee rose and the
never-dying foliage of the live oak above the roof aided the illusion.
She had never regretted his millions, but looking over the gate locked
against her, she saw herself as once heretofore rocking in her chair
on the porch of his house, and again, with blowsy hair and red cheeks,
planting lily bulbs in the high turfed flower beds of fantastic shape,
and she knew that she had had then as now a vision of happiness.
So definitely was Lloyd present to her thoughts that as she turned
and saw him standing on the border of Bermuda grass that fringed the
road, she did not start with an appreciation of the reality of the
apparition,--it affected her only as the continuity of her dream. It
was indeed the surprise in his face, the embarrassment of his manner,
the searching questioning look beginning to grow intent in his eyes as
he lifted his hat that brought her suddenly to the recognition of the
facts of the moment.
"You are not surprised to see me here," he said, ill at ease, flushing,
consciously malapropos,--it was as if presumptuously recognising the
fact that he must have been predominant in her mind at the moment.
"I was thinking of you." She regained her self-possession by a mighty
effort, as she offered her hand. "We have heard the news. I am glad to
have an early opportunity to congratulate you."
His mobile eyebrows went up at an acute angle of amazement. "Oh,"
he said at length, as if suddenly bethinking himself, "that happy
man's name is 'Boyd'--not Lloyd. The similarity is giving us no end
of confusion,--the gossips are all off the track. No, no," he added,
"for myself I have nothing more serious on hand than a cruise in the
Gulf,--my yacht is lying-to for supplies across the bend." He turned
and glanced out at the great Mississippi, at high water resembling some
vast lake, it stretched out so far, and the vermilion sphere of the
sun, slowly sinking, made a great sheen of red glister on its murky
rippling expanse. They could both see the smoke rising from the funnel
of a yacht lying below the point where a fringe of pecan trees cut off
the view, and a noisy bevy of green parroquets flitted in and out in
search of nuts. "It struck my fancy, while waiting, to come ashore and
view my possessions here."
He had thrust his hat back on his head and she winced as his look of
critical, supercilious disparagement wandered cynically about the
dreary, shabby, neglected little farmhouse.
"So this is the palatial home which you thought I had done you the
honour to offer to you," he said, smiling ironically.
"Oh, don't--don't guy it,"--she cried with a sharp accent of pain,
remembering her visions.
She had not kept the control of her nerves; she was consciously
embarrassed and flushing painfully. She felt his intent eyes on her
face, and she averted her own and looked up at the sunset aglow on the
tiny panes of the blurred cheap glass of the windows.
"You thought little enough of it once," he said hardily,--he had
acquired an assurance, doubtless through much adulation, which kept him
from the fear of misapprehension,--"even after you had learned that
it was not to be a home of poverty,--yes, indeed," he continued with
an accession of bitterness, "you took pains to convince me that even
wealth was powerless to commend me. I am not sensitive--but there was
no need to turn and turn the knife in the wound."
He gave a short, angry sigh. "Well,--it is all over. I never meant
to persecute you with my protestations again. I knew then that
Mrs. Laniston urged you to reconsider,--that she would leave no
stone unturned. I never expected to see you again,--and yet it is
a melancholy pleasure,"--he looked at her with a sad smile in his
eyes,--"and I take it mighty kindly of you that you don't deride the
little place that you thought was the home I offered you."
"I love it," she cried with a gush of tears. "I have never regretted
it but once,--and that was every moment and all the time, since I let
a word of counsel,--a well meant word though it was,"--she hastily
stipulated, "close its doors upon me."
He was at her side in a moment. "Then tell me why--_why_ were you
afterward so cold, so silent, avoiding even a casual glance?"
"Lest you might think that the discovery,--the wealth,"--she faltered.
"Don't put that into words," he interpolated sternly. "I will not
forgive you even an imaginary aspersion of your motives."
They had turned away from the padlocked gate, but they were together
and there was no shadow of misunderstanding between them. As they took
their way up the embankment of the levee in the direction of her aunt's
house, revolving their plans for the future, Lucia glanced over her
shoulder, then turned and with her wonted airy grace she kissed her
hand to the dingy little cottage, so sombre and meagre beneath the
gorgeous sunset sky.
"_Au revoir_, little home," she cried, her voice ringing out joyously
in the silence. "I shall set up my staff here for a time at least. It
is the trysting-place of Happiness, and all its dreams come true."
For she had romantically stipulated that their honeymoon should be
passed here, where she had seen herself in visions so simply happy.
Lloyd looked at her, his eyes shining with a new glow. Then he, too,
fervently kissed his hand toward the cottage and echoed her words.
"_Au revoir_," he said, "a low lintel, but that door will be the portal
of Paradise."
THE END