Edward Floyd-Rosney in some sort habitually confused cause and effect.
In his normal entourage he mistook the swift potencies of his wealth,
waiting on his will, like a conjurer’s magic, for an individual
endowment of ability. He had great faith in his management. In every
group of business men with whom his affairs brought him in contact his
financial weight gave him a predominance and an influence which
flattered his vanity, and which he interpreted as personal tribute, and
yet he did not disassociate in his mind his identity from his income.
His wealth was an integral part of him, one of the many great values
attached to his personality--he felt that he was wise and witty, capable
and coercive. He addressed himself to the manipulation of a difficult
situation with a certainty of success that gave a momentum to the force
with which his money carried all before him. So rarely had he been
placed on a level with other men, in a position in which wealth and
influence were inoperative, that he had had scant opportunities to
appraise his own mental processes--his judgment, his initiative, his
powers of ratiocination.
He did not feel like a fool when Randal Ducie walked deliberately into
the hall of his fathers, staring in responsive surprise to see the
Floyd-Rosneys still lingering there. That admission was impossible to
Floyd-Rosney’s temperament. He felt as if contemplating some revulsion
of nature. He had seen this man among the crowd, boarding the steamer,
and lo, here he was again, on dry land and the boat now miles distant.
He stood stultified, all his plans for the avoidance of Ducie strangely
dislocated and set at naught by the unexpected falling out of events.
He was not calculated to bear tamely any crossing of his will, and the
blood began to throb heavily in his temples with the realization that
his wife had understood his clumsy maneuver, of which she was the
subject, and witnessed its ludicrous discomfiture. His pride would not
suffer him to glance toward her, where she sat perched up on the grand
staircase, in the attitude of a coquettish girl. He curtly addressed
Ducie:
“Thought you were gone!”
“No,” said Ducie, almost interrogatively, as to why this conclusion.
Floyd-Rosney responded to the intonation.
“I saw you going down to the landing.”
“To see my brother off.”
“Oh,--ah----”
What more obvious--what more natural? The one resumed his interrupted
journey, and the other was to take up his usual course of life. That is,
thought Floyd-Rosney, if this one is Randal Ducie. But, for some reason,
they might have reversed the program, and this is the other one.
Floyd-Rosney struggled almost visibly for his wonted dominance, but
Ducie had naught at stake on his favor, naught to give or to lose, and
his manner was singularly composed and inexpressive--too well bred to
even permit the fear of counter questions as to why they lingered here
and let the steamer leave without them. Perhaps, he felt such inquiries
intrusive, for, after a moment, he turned away, and Floyd-Rosney still
confronted him with eyes round and astonished and his face a flushed and
uneasy mask of discomfiture.
Momentarily at a loss how to dispose of himself, Ducie looked about the
apartment, devoid of chairs or any furniture, and, finally, resorted to
the staircase, taking up a position on one of the lower steps. Perhaps,
had he known that the Floyd-Rosneys were within he would have lingered
outside. But dignity forbade a retreat, although his disinclination for
their society was commensurate with Floyd-Rosney’s aversion to him and
his brother. For his life Floyd-Rosney, still staring, could not decide
which of the twain he had here, and Paula, with a perverse relish of his
quandary, perceived and enjoyed his dilemma. Although he was aware she
could discern the difference her manner afforded him no clew, as she sat
silent and intentionally looking very pretty, to her husband’s
indignation, as he noted the grace of her studied attitude, her face
held to inexpressive serenity, little in accord with the tumult of
vexation the detention had occasioned her.
Floyd-Rosney could not restrain his questions. Perhaps they might pass
with Ducie as idle curiosity, although with Paula he had now no
disguise.
“You are waiting----?”
“For my horse,” returned Ducie, with the accent of surprise. “There was
no room in the phaeton for me, as Colonel Kenwynton and Major Lacey
concluded to accompany the doctor and his patient to the sanatorium.”
So this was Randal Ducie, and the brother had resumed his journey down
the river.
“The doctor promised to send the horse back for me----” he paused a
moment. “I hope he will send the phaeton, too, for if you have made no
other arrangements----” Once more he paused blankly--it seemed so
strange that Floyd-Rosney should allow himself to be marooned here in
this wise. “If you have made no other arrangements it will give me
pleasure to drive you to the station near Glenrose.”
“We are due at the sanatorium for the insane, I think,” cried Paula,
with her little fleering laugh, her chin thrust up in her satirical
wont.
Floyd-Rosney, sore bestead and amazed by her manner, made a desperate
effort to recover his composure.
“Oh, I sent a telegram by one of the passengers to be transmitted when
the boat touches at the landing at Volney, and this will bring an
automobile here for my family.”
“If the passenger does not forget to send it, or if, when the boat
touches he is not asleep, after his vigils here, or if he is not taking
a walk, or eating his lunch, or, like Baal of old, otherwise engaged,
when we, too, may cry Baal, Baal, unavailingly. For my part, I accept
your offer, Mr. Ducie, if your vehicle comes first; if not I hope you
will take a seat in the automobile with us.”
“That is a compact,” said Ducie graciously.
Floyd-Rosney felt assured that this was Randal. He was more suave than
his brother--or was it that old associations still had power to gentle
his temper? He could not understand his wife’s revolt. Now and again he
looked at her with an unconscious inquiry in his eyes. So little was he
accustomed to subject his own actions to criticism that it did not occur
to him that he had gone too far. The worm had turned, seeming unaware
how lowly and helpless was its estate. He had all the sentiment of
grinding it under his heel, as he said loftily:
“We shall have no need to impose upon you, Mr. Ducie. Our own conveyance
will be here in ample time,”--then, like a jaw-breaker--“Thanks.”
“I march with the first detachment,” declared Paula hardily. “I shall
accept your offer of transportation, Mr. Ducie, if the auto does not
come first.”
Floyd-Rosney thought this must surely be Adrian Ducie, and not his
brother. For some reason of their own they _must_ have exchanged their
missions, and Randal had gone down the river, leaving his brother here.
For she--a stickler on small points of the appropriate--could never say
this if it were her old lover. Her sense of decorum, her respect for her
husband, her habitual exercise of good taste would alike forbid the
suggestion. Doubtless, it was Adrian Ducie.
“I don’t think an automobile will come,” remarked Ducie. “The roads are
very rough between here and Volney.”
Paula’s next words seemed to mend the matter a trifle in Floyd-Rosney’s
estimation.
“I think we have all had enough of Duciehurst for one time! I would not
risk remaining here, as evening closes in, for any consideration. All
the riverside harpies will be flocking here when this story of treasure
trove is bruited abroad. The old place will be fairly torn stone from
stone, and there will be horrible orgies of strife and bloodshed. There
ought to be a guard set, though there is nothing now to guard.”
“Do you suppose Captain Treherne’s story of the river pirates was all
fact or was partly the effect of his hallucination?” Ducie asked.
“The cords he was bound with were pretty circumstantial evidence,” said
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, not waiting, as usual, for her husband’s word, but
taking the lead in the conversation with aplomb and vivacity--he
remembered scornfully that before her marriage she had been accounted in
social circles intellectual, a _bel esprit_ among the frivols.
“The gag failed of its function of silence,” she continued, “it told the
whole story. You would have known that it was stern truth if you had
seen it.”
Floyd-Rosney vacillated once more.
“This _must_ be Randal Ducie,” he thought, “for Adrian was present at
the liberation of Captain Treherne--indeed, he was with the group
searching among the series of ruined vacant apartments when the prisoner
was discovered.”
“The finding of the box was very singular,” speculated Ducie, “the
closest imaginable shave. It was just as possible to one of the parties
on the verge of discovery as the other.”
He was in that uneasy, disconcerted state of mind usual with a stranger
present at a family discord which he feels, yet must not obviously
perceive and cannot altogether ignore.
“It seems the hand of fate,” said Paula.
“I went up to the third story this morning and looked at the place,”
remarked Randal. “I really don’t see how, without tools, you contrived
to wrench the heavy washboard away, and get at the bricks and the
interior of the capital of the pilaster.”
“It seems a feat more in keeping with Miss Dean,” suggested
Floyd-Rosney, “she has such a splendid physique.”
“Hilda is as strong as a boy,” declared Paula. “She does ‘the
athletic’--affects very boyish manners, don’t you think?” she added,
addressing Ducie directly.
There were few propositions which either of the Floyd-Rosneys could put
forth with which Randal Ducie would not have agreed, so eager was he to
close the incident without awkward friction. To let the malapropos
encounter pass without result was the instinct of his good breeding.
But, upon this direct challenge, he felt that he could not annul his
individuality, his convictions.
“Why, not at all boyish,” he said. “On the contrary, I think her manners
are most feminine in their fascination. Did you notice that the old
blind Major was having the time of his life?”
Floyd-Rosney, without the possibility of seating himself unless he, too,
resorted to the stair, was pacing slowly back and forth, his head bent
low, his hands lightly clasped behind him. Now and again he sent forth a
keenly observant glance at the two disposed on the stair, like a couple
of young people sitting out a dance at a crowded evening function.
“Hildegarde will flirt with anything or anybody when good material
cannot be had,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, with a manner of vague
discomfiture.
“Well, that is scarcely fair to my brother,” said Randal. He would not
let this pass.
“Oh, I should judge his flirting days are over,” cried Paula, wilfully
flippant. “He is as crusty as a bear with a sore head.”
“Or a sore heart,” said Randal, thinking of Adrian’s long exile, and his
hard fate, ousted from his home and fortune; then he could have bitten
his tongue out, realizing the sentimental significance of the words.
Still one cannot play with fire without burning one’s fingers, and there
are always embers among the ashes of an old flame.
For her life Paula could but look conscious with the eyes of both men on
her face.
“He doesn’t seem an exponent of a sore heart.” She stumbled inexcusably
in her clumsy embarrassment. There was an awkward silence. The
implication that Adrian might be representative passed as untenable, and
the subject of hearts was eschewed thereafter.
“Miss Dean has been quite famous as a beauty and belle in her brief
career,” Mr. Floyd-Rosney deigned to contribute to the conversation.
“She is wonderfully attractive--so original and interesting,” said Ducie
warmly.
“It seems to me Hilda carries her principal assets in her face,” said
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney. “They say she wouldn’t learn a thing at the
convent--and what is worse, she feels no lack.”
“What does any woman learn?” demanded Floyd-Rosney iconoclastically,
“and what does any woman’s education signify? A mosaic of worthless
smattering, expensive to acquire, and impossible to apply. Miss Dean
lacks nothing in lacking this equipment.”
Paula sat affronted and indignant. In her husband’s sweeping assertion
he had not had the courtesy to except her, and it was hardly admissible
for Ducie to repair the omission. He could only carry the proposition
further and make it general, and his tact seized the opportunity.
“I think that might be said of the youth of both sexes. The fakir, with
his learning made-easy, is the foible of the age and its prototype
extends to business methods--the get-rich-quick opportunities match the
education-while-you-wait, and the art, reduced to a smudge with a thumb,
and the ballads of a country--the voice of the heart of the people,
superseded by ragtime.”
But Paula would not be appeased.
“If women are constitutionally idiots and cannot be taught,” she cried,
“they ought not to be responsible for folly. That is a charter wide as
the winds.”
“Not at all--not at all,” said her husband dogmatically. But how he
would have reconciled the variant dicta of incapacity and accountability
must remain a matter of conjecture, for there came suddenly on the air
the iterative sound of the swift beat of hoofs and, through the open
door in another moment, was visible a double phaëton drawn by a glossy,
spirited blood bay, brought with difficulty to a pause and lifting
alternately his small forefeet with the ardor of motion, even when the
pressure on the bit in his mouth constrained his eager activity and
brought him to a halt.
“I have won out,” said Ducie genially. Since it had awkwardly fallen to
his lot to offer civilities to these people he did it with a very
pretty grace. “I shall be glad to see you and your family to the
station, Mr. Floyd-Rosney.”
Floyd-Rosney’s eyes were on the space beyond the portico.
“That’s a good horse you have,” he remarked seriously.
“Yes--before I bought him he was on the turf,--winner in several
events.”
“You don’t often see such an animal in private use,” said Floyd-Rosney,
unbending a trifle. He, too, loved a good horse for its own sake.
“True, but I am located at a considerable distance from the plantations
I lease, and going to and fro he is of special use to me. I can’t stand
a slow way of getting through the world, and the roads won’t admit of an
auto.”
The two men were quite unconstrained for the moment in the natural
interest of a subject foreign to their difficult mutual relations.
Randal Ducie’s head was thrown up, his eyes glowed; he was looking at
the horse with a sort of glad admiration--an expression which Paula well
remembered. Floyd-Rosney’s eyes narrowed as they scanned successively
the points of the fine animal, his own face calm, patronizing,
approving. Neither of them, for the moment, was thinking of her. She had
followed them out upon the wide stone portico and stood in the sun, her
head tilted a trifle that her broad hat of taupe velvet might shade her
eyes. She brought herself potently into the foreground, seizing the fact
that Randal was unincumbered with baggage of any sort.
“Where is the treasure trove?” she cried. “Surely you are not going to
leave it in the ruins of this old mansion!”
Her husband flashed at her a glance of reproof which would once have
silenced her, abashed to the ground. Now she repeated her words,
wondering to feel so composed, so possessed of all her faculties.
Without a conscious effort of observation the details of the scene were
registered in her mind unbefogged by her wonted bewilderment in her
husband’s disapproval. She even noticed the groom who had driven the
vehicle back from the livery stable--no colored servant, but a
carrot-headed youth, with jockey boots, riding breeches, a long freckled
face, and small red-lidded eyes, very close together, gazing at Ducie
with a keen intentness as she asked the question. The fame of the
discovery must have been bruited abroad already, and she vaguely
wondered at this, for, as yet, no one on land knew the facts, except the
alienist and his party, safely housed at the sanatorium.
“The chest of valuables found here last night?” replied Ducie. “Why, I
haven’t it. My brother took it on the boat in his suitcase, and, before
nightfall, it will be in one of the banks in Vicksburg.”
Floyd-Rosney, thrown out of all his reckonings by the unaccountable
behavior of his wife, spoke at random, more to obviate its effects than
with any valid intendment.
“I saw the box opened,” he said; “only family jewels and a lot of gold
coin and papers, but I should think, from the pretensions of this place,
there must have been elaborate table services of silver, perhaps of gold
plate. Were any such appurtenances hidden, do you know, and recovered?”
Ducie shook his head. “I know nothing of such ware. It may be, or it may
not be here. The absence of the papers brought out the story of the
hiding of the family diamonds, else the box would have remained in the
capital of the pilaster, where my uncle left it, till the crack of
doom.”
Paula never understood the impulse that possessed her. Boldly, in the
presence of her husband, she took from her dainty mesh bag a small key
set with rubies and one large diamond.
“Your brother carelessly left one of the Ducie jewels on the table and I
picked it up. I am so glad I remembered to restore it to you. It should
have been in your possession long ago.”
Floyd-Rosney was watching her like a hawk, and she began to quail before
his eyes. Oh, why had she not remembered that he was a connoisseur in
bijouterie and bric-à-brac of many sorts and would detect instantly, at
a glance, the modern fashion and comparatively slight value of the
trinket. More than all, why had she not reckoned on the fact that Randal
Ducie was no actor. Who could fail to interpret the surprised
recognition in his eyes, his gentle upbraiding look before the
associations thus ruthlessly summoned? It was as if some magic had
materialized all the tender poignancy of first love, all his winged
hopes, all the heartbreak of a cruel disappointment crystallized in this
scintillating bauble in his hand. He glanced from it to her, then back
at the flashing stones, red as his heart’s blood. He looked so wounded,
so passive, as if content to succumb to a blow which he was too
generous, too magnanimous to return in kind.
And he said never a word.
She felt that her face was flaring scarlet; the hot tears were smitten
into her eyes. She could not speak, and, for a long moment neither of
the two men moved, although the horse, restive and eager to be off,
plunged now and again, almost lifting from his feet the groom at his
head, still swinging at the bit, but staring, as if resolved into eyes,
at the group on the piazza.
“It is the key to something of value”--she found her voice suddenly--“or
it would never have been so charmingly decorated. I hope it will unlock
all the doors shut against you,” she concluded with a little bow.
“Thank you,” he said formally. And he said no more.
“And now shall we go?” asked Floyd-Rosney curtly.
There being only four places, the gentlemen occupying the front seats,
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, the nurse and the baby the others, there was no room
for the groom, and Ducie, gathering up the reins preparatory to driving,
directed him to return to the livery stable on one of the cotton wagons
which would be starting in an hour or so. The ill-looking fellow touched
his cap, loosed the bit and the horse sprang away with an action so
fine, so well sustained, that Floyd-Rosney’s brow cleared. The pleasure
of the moment was something.
“What will you take for him?” he asked, quite human for the nonce.
“Not for sale. Couldn’t spare him,” Ducie responded, the reins wound
about his forearms, all his strength requisite to hold the abounding
vitality and eagerness of the animal to the trot, the hoofs falling
with the precision of machinery, mile after mile.
Only once did the pace falter. Suddenly the animal plunged. A man dashed
out from the Cherokee rose hedge that bordered the high-way and clutched
the bit. With the momentum of his pace the horse swung him off his feet,
and frightened and swerving from the road, reared high. As the forefeet
crashed to the ground once more with a sharp impact the man was thrown
sprawling to the roadside, and the horse was a mile away before the
occupants of the vehicle knew exactly what had happened.
“Oh,--oh----” cried Paula, “was the man hurt? What did he want?”
“No good,” said her husband grimly.
“Oh, oughtn’t we go back and see what we have done?” She could scarcely
speak with the wind of their transit blowing the words down her throat.
“Oh, I know Mr. Floyd-Rosney won’t, but, Randal, don’t you think we
ought?”
“Hardly,” said Randal.
Floyd-Rosney’s head slowly turned, and his slumberous eyes, with a bated
fury smoldering in their depths, looked their sneering triumph at his
wife.
“That crack,--was it----?” he asked of Randal.
“A pistol ball, I think. I saw--I thought I saw a puff of smoke from the
Cherokee hedge. My head feels hot yet. For simple curiosity look at my
hat.”
Floyd-Rosney removed the hat from the head of the man by him. He turned
it in his hand and his eyes glittered. Then he held it out for Ducie’s
observation.
There was a small orifice on one side, and a corresponding rift,
higher, on the other. Evidently, the ball had passed through.
“Thirty caliber, I should judge,” Floyd-Rosney ventured.
“Looks so?” Randal assented.
“But why--_why_----” exclaimed Paula, “should Randal be shot at--he
might have been killed--oh, any of us might have been killed!”
“The story of the treasure trove--out already, I suppose,” suggested
Floyd-Rosney.
“And it is believed that I have it now in my possession, carrying it to
a place of safety,” said Ducie.
“Just as well for you to get to town as speedily as possible,” remarked
Floyd-Rosney.
To have escaped an attempt at highway robbery is not an agreeable
sensation, however futile and ill advised the enterprise. This
possibility had not occurred to Floyd-Rosney, yet he perceived its
logic. It was obvious that the rich find of gold and jewels must be
removed from Duciehurst, and by whom more probably than their owner?
Doubtless, the miscreants had expected Ducie to be accompanied only by
the groom, perhaps a party to the conspiracy, and albeit this
supposition had gone awry, there was only one unarmed man beside himself
to contend against a possible second attack. Floyd-Rosney would be glad
to be rid of Ducie on every account. No such awkward association had
ever befallen him, significant at every turn. But, when actual physical
danger to himself and his family was involved in sitting beside him, he
felt all other objections frivolous indeed, and it was in the nature of
a rescue when the fast horse drew up beside the platform of the little
station near Glenrose, where the train was already standing.
The _congé_ was of the briefest, although Randal omitted no observance
which a courteous voluntary host might have affected. He left the horse
in charge of an idler about the station, assisted Mrs. Floyd-Rosney into
the coach, where, to her husband’s satisfaction, the stateroom was
vacant and they might thus be spared the presence of the vulgar horde of
travelers. He shook hands with both husband and wife, only leaving the
train as it glided off. Paula, looking from her window, had her last
glimpse of him, standing on the platform, courteously lifting his hat in
farewell. She had a wild, unreasoning protest against the parting, her
eyes looked a mute appeal, and she felt as if delivered to her fate.