In his inexorable view of the sanctity of his promise Colonel Kenwynton
had no impulse to confide the details of the revelation he had received
or to take counsel thereon. Still, he could but look with an accession
of interest at Adrian Ducie when he met him at the breakfast table, the
passengers of the _Cherokee Rose_ dallying over the meal, prolonging it
to the utmost in the dearth of other interest or occupation.
Although Ducie seemed to have mustered the philosophy to ignore the
serious aspects of this most irksome and dolorous detention, it had
darkened all the horizon to Floyd-Rosney’s exacting and censorious mood.
“I can’t imagine, Captain, how you should not have been on the lookout
for the formation of an obstruction capable of grounding the boat,” was
his cheerful matutinal greeting.
“Oh, Miss Dean says he knew it was there all the time, and only wished
to entertain us,” his wife interposed, with a view of toning down her
lord’s displeasure, but her sarcastic chin was in the air, and her
clipped, quick enunciation gave token only of one of her ironic
pleasantries.
“Well, I intend to eat him out of house and home while I am about it,”
said Ducie, with an affectation of roughness. “This table is not run _à
la carte_. You can’t charge more than the passage-money, Captain, no
matter how long we abide with you in this pleasance of a sand-bar--and I
really think, waiter, I can get away with the other wing of that fried
chicken.”
“You think you can get away; _can_ you?” Mrs. Floyd-Rosney fleered.
The queer little roughness he affected was incongruous with the delicate
elegance of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s presence. The polish of his own
appearance and ordinary manner warranted it as little, and the
contrariety of his mental attitude was like that of a bad child “showing
off” in the reverse of expectation or desire. Between the heavy sulking
of her husband in the troublous _contretemps_ of the detention of the
boat, and the peculiar tone that Adrian Ducie had taken, in which,
however, offense was at once untenable and inexplicable, it might seem
that Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had much ado to preserve her airy placidity and
maintain the poise of the delicate irony of her manner. This became more
practicable when Ducie’s attention was diverted to a little girl of
twelve who had boarded the packet with her father at the landing of a
fashionable suburban school some distance up the river, evidently
designing to spend the week-end at home. She was a bouncing little girl,
with liquid black eyes, and dark red hair, long and abundant, plaited on
either side of her head and tied up with black ribbon bows of
preposterously wide loops. While she was as noisy and as active as a
boy, she was evidently constantly beset with the realization that her
lot in life was of feminine restrictions, and miserably repented of
every alert caper. Her memory, however, was short, as short, one might
say, as her very abbreviated skirts, and the monition of the staid
gait, appropriate to her sex, always struck her after the fantastic
gallopade or muscular skip on her long, handsome, black-stockinged legs,
and never by any chance earlier. She had a most Briarean and centipedal
consciousness in Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s presence, which she instinctively
appraised as critical, and she was covered with confusion as she came
flustering out of her stateroom to the breakfast table to realize that
she had banged the door behind her. By way of disposing of one
superfluous foot at least she crooked her leg deftly at the knee, placed
its foot in the chair and sat down upon it, turning scarlet as she did
so, realizing all too late that the maneuver was perfectly obvious, and
wondering what Mrs. Floyd-Rosney must think of a girl who sat on her
foot. For the opinion of the score of other persons at the tables she
had not a thought or a care, doubtless relying on their good nature to
condone the attitude, curiously affected and prized by persons of her
age and sex. An agile twist had got the foot down to the floor again,
and now with restored composure and rebounding spirits her gushing
loquacity was reasserted, and she was exchanging matutinal greetings
with her traveling companions; her father, a tall, lean, quiet man, who
had marked her entrance with raised eyebrows and a concerned air, having
resumed his talk on the tariff with his next neighbor at table.
“Have compassion on our dullness, Miss Marjorie,” said Adrian Ducie,
suavely smiling at her from across the board. In his contrariety he
seemed to have divined Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s covert disapproval and made a
point of according his own favor. Marjorie’s heart, however, was in no
danger from his fascinations. To her he seemed a man well advanced in
years, quite an old bachelor, indeed. “Tell us your dreams.”
“Dreams? oh, mercy!” How often had she been warned against rising
inflections and interjections? “My dreams are all mixed up. I don’t know
now what they were.”
“I will disentangle them for you,” he said, blandly; then in parenthesis
to the waiter, “Give the cook my compliments and tell him to send up
another omelette, which I will share with Miss Ashley.”
“Oh, I don’t like eggs,” Marjorie blurted out, then stopped short. How
often had she been admonished never to say at table that she disliked
any article of diet. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, she was sure, must have noticed
that lapse.
“Then I will eat it all by myself--mark me now, Captain! While awaiting
its construction I will tell your dreams, and interpret their mystery.”
“Oh, oh,” gurgled Marjorie. What a nice old man was this Mr. Adrian
Ducie! Her blithe young eyes were liquid and brilliant with expectation.
“You dreamed that you and I went hunting, with some others who don’t
matter and who shall be nameless,” he glanced slightingly up and down
the row of passengers at the table. “We went ashore in the yawl, and I
borrowed the Captain’s rifle, and----”
“No, you didn’t,” said the Captain, from the next table, “for I haven’t
got one.”
“You don’t mean it?” said Ducie, stopping short. “Then what would become
of us if pirates should board this gallant craft of ours? Depend wholly
on the pistol pockets of the passengers?”
“Oh, oh, Mr. Ducie,” cried Marjorie, quite losing her hold on herself,
“you are so funny!”
“Thank you, oh, very much, I can be funnier than that when I try.”
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s unseeing eyes perceived no interest apparently in
this conversation. Now and then, with an absorbed air, she recurred to
her tea and toast as if naught were going forward, while her husband ate
his breakfast as silently and with as much gruff concentration as a
hound with a bone.
Their persistent expression of a lack of interest seemed to stimulate
Mr. Ducie to a further absorption of the attention of the company. “Are
there really no shot-guns, no fowling-pieces aboard, nothing to shoot
with deadlier than the darts of Miss Marjorie’s bright eyes?”
“Oh, oh,” she squealed, enchanted at this turn, and laid down her knife
and fork to put her hands before her lips apparently to suppress a
series of similar shrillnesses, for this old man’s funniness was of a
most captivating order.
“I notice that there is a swamper’s cabin over there on the bank; I’ll
bet he has got a rifle; but what is the nearest plantation house,
Captain? Mansion, I should say,” he corrected the phrase with the
satiric flout of the younger generation at the mannerisms of yore.
The Captain seemed to resent it. “You may very safely call it a
‘mansion,’ sir, it has twenty-five rooms, exclusive of ball-room,
billiard-room, picture-gallery, and the domestic offices, kitchen,
laundry, dairy, and quarters for servants, and so forth. The Duciehurst
plantation-house is the nearest mansion. It is really a ruin, now, and
uninhabited, I suppose, but it was good enough in its day.”
A sudden portentous gravity smote the countenance of Adrian Ducie.
Although the risible muscles and ligaments still held the laughing
contour, all the mirth was gone out of it. His face was as if stricken
into stone, as if he had suddenly beheld the Gorgon Head of trouble. The
change was so marked, so momentous, that Colonel Kenwynton, forgetting
for the moment whence came the association of ideas, suddenly asked:
“You have the same name as the former owner, Mr. Ducie, though I suppose
you don’t hold the title to the mansion?”
“Oh, I hold the title fast enough,” replied Ducie, with his wonted
off-hand manner, “though it’s like my ‘title to a mansion in the skies,’
I can’t read it clear.”
Floyd-Rosney’s mood was already lowering enough, but for some reason,
not immediately apparent, his averse discontent was fomented by the
change of the subject. He paused with his tea-cup poised in his hand.
His deep voice weighed more heavily than usual on the silence.
“It seems to me a mis-statement to say that you have a title to the
property,--a title is a right. There are certainly some forty years’
adverse possession against any outstanding claim, of which I have never
heard.”
Ducie was eyeing Floyd-Rosney with a look at once affronted and amazed.
“And where do you derive your information as to my title to
Duciehurst?”
“I have no information as to your _title_ to Duciehurst, which is the
reason that I could not remain silent when such title was asserted,
though the discussion cannot be edifying to this goodly company.” He
waved his hand at the rows of breakfasting passengers with an unmirthful
smile and his courtesy was so perfunctory as obviously to have no root.
“The title is mine, it comes to me within the year from the will of my
Uncle Horace Carriton, who held it for forty years. But,” with his sour,
condescending smile at the company, “the courts and not the breakfast
table are the proper place to assert a right that is not barred by the
lapse of time.”
“The remedy may be barred, but not the right,” Ducie retorted angrily.
Captain Disnett’s voice sounded with pacifying intonations. He did not
seek to change the subject but to steer it clear of breakers. “I never
could understand why Mr. Carriton let the old mansion go to wreck and
ruin, fine old place as there is on the river. Though he rented out the
lands the house has always remained untenanted.”
Mr. Floyd-Rosney’s dignity was enhanced by the composure which he found
it possible to maintain in this nettling discussion. “The house was much
injured by the occupancy of guerillas and military marauders during the
Civil War,” he rejoined. “After it came into the possession of my uncle,
when peace was restored, it was left vacant from necessity. My uncle,
who was a non-resident,--lived in Tennessee,--would not cut up the
plantation into small holdings; many tenants make much mischief, so he
preferred to lease the entire place to some man of moderate means for a
term of years, as no person of fortune appeared as a purchaser of the
house, which it would cost largely to restore. None of the successive
lessees was able or willing to furnish or maintain the mansion in a
style suitable to its pretensions, yet they were too proud to live in a
corner of it like a mouse in a hole. Such a man would prefer to live in
a neighboring villa or cottage while farming the lands as better suited
to his comfort and credit than that vacant wilderness of architecture.”
“Strange visitors it must have at odd times,” meditated the Captain.
“Once in a while in our runs I have seen lights flitting about there at
night, quite distinct from the pilot-house. And in wintry weather a
gleam shows far over the snow.”
“Tramps, gipsies, river-pirates, I suppose,” suggested Colonel
Kenwynton.
Ducie was glowering down at his spoon as he turned it aimlessly in his
empty cup, a deep red flush on his cheek and his eyes on fire.
“Yes, yes. There is a tradition of hidden treasure at Duciehurst, one of
the wild riverside stories as old as the hills,” said the Captain, “and
I suppose the water-rats, and the shanty-boaters, and the river-pirates
all take turns in hunting for it when fuel and shelter get scarce, and
the pot boils slow, and work goes hard with the lazy cattle.”
For one moment Colonel Kenwynton’s head was in a whirl. Had he dreamed
this thing, this story of family jewels and important papers stowed in a
knapsack and hidden on Duciehurst plantation? So sudden was the
confirmation of the war-time legend, so hard it came on the revelation
of last night in the turbulent elements on the verge of the sand-bar
that it scarcely seemed fact. He had not had time to think it over, to
canvass the strange chance in his mind. Treherne had declared that for
forty years he had been an inmate of an insane asylum. Without analyzing
his own mental processes Colonel Kenwynton was aware that he had taken
it for granted that the story was a vain fabrication of half-distraught
faculties, an illusion, a part of the unreasoning adventure that had
summoned him forth from his bed in the midnight to stand knee-deep in
the marsh to hear a recital of baffled rights and hidden treasure. In
all charity and candor he had begun to wonder that Hugh Treherne should
find himself now beyond the bounds of detention. In these corroborative
developments, however, his opinion veered and he made a plunge at
further elucidation of the mystery.
“Mr. Ducie, I should be glad to know what relation you are to Lieutenant
Archibald Ducie, who died of typhoid in a hospital in Vicksburg during
the war?”
Ducie answered in a single word, “Nephew.”
“Then you are George Blewitt Ducie’s grandson.”
“Grandson,” monosyllabic as before.
The old man thought himself a strategist of deep, elusive craft. For the
sake of his friend, Captain Treherne, and his plaintive disability; for
the sake of the implied trust accepted in the fact that he had received
this confidence, he must seek to know the truth while he screened the
motive. “Well, since these old world clavers are mighty interesting to
an ancient fossil such as I am--I must look backward having, you know,
no future in view,--wasn’t there some talk of a lost document, a deed
of trust missing, mislaid,--what was it about--a Duciehurst mortgage?”
“A _release_ of a mortgage,” replied Ducie, his words coming with the
impetus and fury of hot shot. “The lost paper was a release of a
mortgage, a quit-claim, signed and witnessed, but not registered. There
were no facilities at the time to record legal papers, not a court nor a
clerk’s office open in the country, which was filled with contending
armies.”
Mr. Floyd-Rosney had finished his breakfast and seemed about to rise.
The vexation of this discussion was beyond endurance to a proud and
pompous man. But it was not his temperament to give back one inch. He
stood his ground and presently he began to affect indifference to the
situation, placing an elbow on the table and looking with his imperious
composure first at one speaker and then at the other. He was not so
absorbed, however, that he did not note how his wife loitered over the
waffles before her, spinning out the details of the meal that no point
of the conversation might escape her.
“I remember now, I remember,” said Colonel Kenwynton, nodding his white
head. “It was claimed that the mortgage was lifted, the debt being paid
in gold, and that a formal release was executed here in Mississippi and
delivered with the original paper, though not noted in the instrument of
registration.”
“There being no courts in operation,” interpolated Ducie, obviously as
restive as a fiery horse.
“And by reason of the intervention of the Federal lines and the sudden
deaths of the two principals to the transaction the promissory notes,
thus secured on the plantation, were not returned to the maker, but
remained in Tennessee, where Mr. Carroll Carriton had deposited them in
a bank for safekeeping.”
“Is this a fairy-story, Colonel Kenwynton?” sneered Floyd-Rosney, his
patience wearing thin under the strain upon it, and beginning to
deprecate and doubt the effect on his wife.
“No, it is a story of the evil genii,” said Ducie, significantly.
“You mean War and Confusion, and Loss,” said Floyd-Rosney, in bland
interpretation, and apparently in excellent temper. “They are, indeed,
the evil genii. But you will please to observe, Colonel Kenwynton, that
the executors of the mortgagee, Mr. Carroll Carriton, could not accept
this unsupported representation of an executed release of the mortgage.
The executors had the registered mortgage, with no marginal notation of
its satisfaction, and they had the promissory notes. They sued the
estate of George Blewitt Ducie on the promissory notes and foreclosed on
Duciehurst.”
“I remember, I remember,” said Colonel Kenwynton, “and although at the
period when the mortgage was made it was for a sum inconsiderable in
comparison with the value of the property Duciehurst went under the
hammer in the collapsed financial conditions subsequent to the war for
less than the amount of the original indebtedness, plantations being a
drug on the market, and the executors of the mortgagee bought it in for
the Carriton estate.”
“The executors proceeded throughout under the sanction of the court,”
said Floyd-Rosney. “Of course, I would have the utmost sensitiveness to
the position of an interloper or usurper, but in this instance there
can be no such suggestion. No papers could be produced by the defendant,
and a wild legend of the loss of such documents could not withstand the
scrutiny of even the least cautious and strict chancellor. The fact that
Carroll Carriton happened to be in Mississippi at that time and that
George Blewitt Ducie was known to have aggregated a considerable sum in
gold by a successful blockade-running scheme of selling cotton in
Liverpool was dwelt upon by the counsel for the Ducie heir as
corroborative evidence that the two principals to the transaction met
expressly to lift the incumbrance, but this contention was not admitted
by the court.”
He paused for a moment. Then he turned directly upon Ducie. “While I
should be sorry, Mr. Ducie, if you should grudge me my rightful holding,
I observe that your brother does not share your view. He acquiesced in
the existing status by renting certain of these lands while in my
uncle’s possession before I succeeded under the will.”
“By no means, by no means,” cried Ducie, furiously. “He is no tenant of
yours. He only purchased the standing crop of cotton from your uncle’s
tenant, who was obliged to leave the country for a time--shot a man.
But, as I understand it, you could not plead that acquiescence, even if
it existed, in the event that the release could be found,--take
advantage of your own tort in the foreclosure of a mortgage duly paid.”
“Oh, if you talk of ‘torts,’ this ‘knowledge is too excellent for me, I
cannot attain unto it.’” Floyd-Rosney retorted, lightly.
His wife still held her fork in her hand, but he significantly placed
her finger-bowl beside her plate. Then he rose. “Any rights that you can
prove to my estate of Duciehurst, Mr. Ducie, will be gladly conceded by
me. Kindly remember that, if you please.”
His wife was constrained to rise and he stood aside with a bow to let
her pass first down the restricted space between the tables and the
wall. They were out on the guards when she lifted her eyes to his and
laid her hand on his arm.
“Why did you never tell me that the property which has lately come to
you really belongs to the Ducies?”
He stared down at her, too astonished to be angry.
“Why? Because it is a lie. The Ducies have not a vestige of a right to
it.”
“Oh, no, no. The Ducies would never seek to maintain a lie. Only they
can’t substantiate their claim on account of the disastrous chances of
war.”
She put her hands before her face and shook her head. When she looked up
again there were vague blue circles beneath her eyes. The nervous stress
of the incident and some unformulated association with the idea were
obviously bearing on her heavily.
“It seems to me that we ought not to keep it,” she faltered.
“Keep it!” he thundered. “Why, we, that is our predecessors, have owned
it for the last forty years, without a question. Why, Paula, are you
crazy? The whole affair went through the courts forty years ago. ‘_Ought
not to keep it!_’ The Ducie heir, this man’s father, who was then a
minor, had not a scrap of paper nor one material witness, only the
general understanding in the country that as Carroll Carriton happened
to be in Mississippi at the time, and George Blewitt Ducie had a lot of
specie from running his cotton through the blockade to England, he paid
off the mortgage in gold. But that was mere hearsay, chiefly rumor of
the gabble of the men who, it was claimed, had witnessed the execution
of the quit-claim, and who took occasion to die immediately thereafter.”
“There is some inherent coercive evidence, to my mind, of the truth of
those circumstances,” she declared. “It is too hard that the Ducies
should have paid the money owed on the mortgage and then lose the place
by foreclosure, and, oh, for less than the amount of the original debt.”
“But, Paula, can’t you see there is not a grain of proof that they ever
paid the money? How, when, where? We held the promissory notes and the
registered deed of trust and the court did not even take the matter
under advisement.”
“But you know the confusion of the times,--no courts of record, no mail
facilities or means of communication.”
“Much exaggerated, I believe. But at all events we had the promissory
notes and the registered mortgage and they had their cock-and-bull
story.”
“Oh, I should like to give it back,--it would be so noble of you. I
cannot bear that we should own what the Ducies claim is theirs, and I
feel sure that if it is not theirs in law it is by every moral sanction.
And for such a poor price!--to lose the whole estate for the little
amount, comparatively, of the debt! It is too sharp a bargain for us.
How much was the amount for which the executors bought it in?”
His face changed and he did not answer. It had not been a pleasant
morning, and his imperious temper had been greatly strained. “I
remember,” he said, satirically, losing his self-control at last, “that
you once entertained a tender interest in one of these Messieurs Ducie.
I must say that I did not expect it to last so long or to go so far,--to
propose to denude me of my very own, one of the finest properties in
Mississippi, and vest him with it!”
Her face flushed. Her eyes flashed. “You have broken your promise! You
have broken your promise!” She looked so vehement, so affronted, so
earnest, that her anger tamed him for a moment.
“It was inadvertent, dear. The circumstances forced it.”
“It was solemnly agreed between us that we would never mention this man,
never remember that he existed. When I promised to marry you I told you
frankly that I had been engaged to him, and had never a thought, a hope,
a wish, but that I might marry him, until I met you.”
“I know, dear, I remember.” His warm hand closed down on her trembling
fingers that she had laid on the railing of the guards as if for
support.
“It is a matter of pride with me. I have no idea that I should feel so
about it if it were any one else. But, of course, I know that he must
reproach me for my duplicity, my inconstancy--”
“But you do not reproach yourself,” with a quick, searching glance.
“No, no, I was not inconstant. Only then I had not met you. But I have
caused him unhappiness, and a sort of humiliation among his friends,
who consider that I threw him over at the last minute, and I cannot bear
to own anything that he accounts his. I don’t want _his_ land. I don’t
want _his_ house. I wish you would deed it all back to him.”
“You tiresome little dunce!” he exclaimed, laughing. “It is one of the
largest plantations in acreage, cleared and tillable, in Mississippi,
and I really should not like to say how much it is worth, especially now
with the price of cotton on the bounce. People would think I was crazy
if I did such a mad thing as to deed it back. I should be unfitted for
any part in the business world. No one would trust me for a moment. And
apart from my own interest, consider our son. What would he think of me,
of you, when he comes to man’s estate, if we should alienate for a whim
that fine property, of which he might one day stand in dire need. Change
is the order of the times. Edward Floyd-Rosney, Junior, may not have a
walk over the course as his father did.”
“But, Edward, we are rich--”
“And so would the Ducies be, by hook or by crook, if they knew what is
comfortable.” He laughed prosperously. He was tired of the subject, and
was turning away as he drew forth his cigar-case. He was good to
himself, and fostered his taste for personal luxury, even in every
minute manner that would not be ridiculously obtrusive as against the
canons of good taste. The ring on the third finger of his left hand
might seem, to the casual glance of the uninitiated, the ordinary seal
so much affected, but a connoisseur would discern in it a priceless
intaglio. The match-box which he held as he walked away along the
guards was of solid gold, richly chased. His clothes were the
masterpieces of a London tailor of the first order, but so decorous and
inconspicuous in their fine simplicity that but for their enhancement of
his admirable figure and grace of movement their quality and cost might
have passed unnoticed.
Paula looked after him with an intent and troubled gaze, her heart
pulsing tumultuously, her brain on fire. It would never have been within
her spiritual compass to make a conscious sacrifice of self for a point
of ethics. She could not have relinquished aught that she craved, or
that was significant in its effects. To own Duciehurst would make no
item of difference in the luxury of their life,--to give it up could in
no way reduce their consequence or splendor of appointment. To her the
acquisition of a hundred thousand dollars, more or less, signified
naught in an estate of millions. They were rich, they had every desire
of luxury or ostentation gratified,--what would they have more? But that
this prosperity should be fostered, aggrandized by the loss of the man
whom she had causelessly jilted, wounded her pride. It was peculiarly
lacerating to her sensibilities that her husband should own Randal
Ducie’s ancestral estate, bought under the disastrous circumstances of a
forced sale for a mere trifle of its value, and that she should be
enriched by this almost thievish chance. She could not endure that it
should be Randal Ducie at last from whom she should derive some part of
the luxury which she had craved and for which she had bartered his
love--that he should be bravely struggling on, bereft of his
inheritance, in that sane and simple sphere to which she had looked
back last night as another and a native world, from which she was exiled
to this realm of alien and flamboyant splendor, that suddenly had grown
strangely garish and bitter to the taste as she contemplated it. What,
indeed, did it signify to her?--She had no part, no choice in dispensing
her husband’s wealth. Everything was brought to her hand, regardless of
her wish or volition, as if she were a puppet. Even her charities, her
appropriate pose as a “lady bountiful,” were not spontaneous. “I think
you had better subscribe two hundred dollars to the refurnishing of the
Old Woman’s Home, Paula,--it is incumbent in your position,” he would
say, or “I made a contribution of five hundred in your name to the
Children’s Hospital,--it is expected that in your position you would do
something.” Her position--this made the exaction, not charity, not
humanity, not generosity. But for the mention in the local journals the
institutions of the city would never have known the lavish hand of one
of its wealthiest and most prominent citizens. The money would,
doubtless, do good even bestowed in this spirit, but the gift had no
blessing for the giver, and she felt no glow of gratulation. Indeed, it
was not a gift,--it was a tax paid on her position. More than once when
she had advocated a donation on her own initiative he had promptly
negatived the idea. “No use in that,” he would declare, or the story of
destitution and disaster was a “fake.” These instances were not
calculated to illustrate her position. She could not endure that it
should levy its tribute on Randal Ducie’s future, and she noted the
significant fact that always hitherto in mentioning the recent
acquisition under his kinsman’s will her husband had avoided the name of
the estate which must have acquainted her with its former ownership.