Colonel Kenwynton, now at his home on his plantation on the bayou, also
gazed with starting eyes and dumfounded amazement at the excerpt from
the legal proceedings, within his own knowledge so palpably false. He
read it aloud under the kerosene lamp to Hugh Treherne on the other side
of the old-fashioned marble-topped center table.
“What do you think of that, sir?” and the Colonel gave the newspaper a
resounding blow.
Treherne smiled significantly.
“I am impressed all the time, Colonel, with the insanity of the people
outside the asylum in comparison with the patients under treatment.”
“Good God, sir,” cried the Colonel in great excitement, “this is a
shotgun business, and Floyd-Rosney is the man of all others to brazen it
out on a plea of the ‘unwritten law.’ He will shoot one or the other of
the Ducies on sight, and they are as much alike as two black-eyed
peas,--they really ought to wear wigs,--he is as likely to pot one as
the other. And the poor lady! My heart bleeds for her. I must clear this
matter up,” concluded the all-powerful. “I will send a communication to
the newspapers.”
Now Colonel Kenwynton had, in his own opinion, the pen of a ready
writer. It was not his habit to mince phrases or to revise. He wrote a
swift, legible hand, for he was a relic of an age when gentlemen prided
themselves on an elegant penmanship, in the days when the typewriter was
not. He had no sort of fear of offending Floyd-Rosney, nor care for
wounding his feelings. He recited in great detail the facts of Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney’s entrance into the Adelantado Hotel, her disclosure of her
husband’s desire that she should tour the Orient with the Hardingtons,
who had already acquainted the writer that she was to be of their party,
and her grief because of her separation from her child, who had been
secretly removed from her home as a preparation for her departure. Now
and then the Colonel cast his eyes upward for inspiration and waved his
pen at arm’s length.
“Not too much hot shot, Colonel,” remonstrated Hugh Treherne, a little
uneasy at these demonstrations.
“Attend to your own guns, sir,” retorted the Colonel.
With no regard for the awkwardness of the incident, he stated that the
poor lady, although the wife of a millionaire, had not command of ten
dollars in the world with which to defray the expenses of her journey to
the home of her youth, and to her uncle who stood in the relation of a
father to her, for his advice and protection against being shipped out
of the country.
“It is my firm belief,” and the Colonel liked the words so well he read
them aloud to his comrade, “that we do not live in Turkey, that the
honored wives of our Southland do not occupy the position of inmates of
a harem, and I could not regard Mrs. Floyd-Rosney as the favorite of a
sultan. Therefore it afforded Mr. Adrian Ducie and me great pleasure to
advance the money for her tickets to the home of her uncle, Major
Majoribanks, and to see her on the train.” He explained, at great
length, that the departure of the train was so imminent and immediate
that Adrian Ducie bought tickets to the first station for himself and
Colonel Kenwynton, in order that they might not be detained by any
question at the gate, and, at the moment of boarding the cars, Mr.
Floyd-Rosney, “hunting down the persecuted fugitive,” had mistaken
Adrian Ducie for his brother, Randal Ducie, who at this moment was in
New Orleans, making an address to the Mississippi River Association,
giving them the benefit of his very enlightened views, which the whole
country would do well to study and adopt, thereby saving many thousands
of dollars to the cotton planters of the jeopardized delta.
Restraining himself with difficulty from pursuing this attractive
subject, Colonel Kenwynton explained that while Randal Ducie was an old
acquaintance of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s, Adrian Ducie was a stranger to her,
and had met her only on one previous occasion. The undersigned and
Adrian Ducie had accompanied the poor lady so far as the first station,
and taking farewell of her they had returned to town in the interurban
electric. He furthermore informed the public that in view of some
possible unforeseen emergency he had taken the liberty of pressing upon
this poor lady, absolutely unprovided with money for her necessities, a
twenty dollar bill, to be returned at her pleasure, and had since
received a letter from her uncle, inclosing that sum, and thanking him
for his consideration. At the home of this uncle--the home of her
girlhood--she was now domiciled with him and her aunt, who was formerly
the charming Miss Azalia Thornton, whom many elder members of society
would well remember.
The Colonel was enjoying himself famously, and now and again Hugh
Treherne looked anxiously over the top of the newspaper at him as he
tossed the multiplying pages across his left hand, and took a fresh
sheet.
The Colonel, with keen gusto, then entered on the subject of
Floyd-Rosney, whom he handled without gloves. There ought to be some
adequate criminal procedure, he argued, for a man who had offered such
an indignity to the wife of his bosom as this. If an equivalent insult
could have been tendered to a man Mr. Floyd-Rosney would have been shot
down in his tracks--or, at the least, have been made to pay roundly for
his brutality. But the wife, whom he has sworn to love, honor, and
cherish, is defenseless against his hasty, groundless conclusions. She
can only meekly prove her innocence of a guilt that it is like the
torments of hell-fire to name in connection with her. Colonel Kenwynton
solemnly commended to our lawmakers the consideration of this subject of
a penalty of unfounded marital charges. The converse of the proposition
never occurred to him. In his philosophy the women were welcome to say
what they liked about the men.
If, he maintained, the gentleman accompanying Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had been
Randal Ducie instead of his brother, the circumstance would have
signified naught with a lady of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s character, which the
good people of this city would uphold against her husband even backed
by all his filthy lucre. But Randal Ducie was in New Orleans making an
address on levee conditions, on which subject his brother Adrian was
peculiarly uninformed, and it did seem to Colonel Kenwynton that almost
any man would have learned more from sheer observation, even though he
had been absent from the country for the past six years. He was now in
Memphis, where, being singularly like his twin brother, he was mistaken
for Randal Ducie, well known here, and his arrival thus chronicled in
the papers. Adrian Ducie was not widely acquainted in Memphis, having
spent the last six years in the south of France, where he was interested
in silk manufacture.
If Mr. Floyd-Rosney’s course, declared the Colonel, pursuing the
subject, in forcing a ghastly round of pleasure on his wife, sighing for
her absent child, was typical of his domestic methods, his wife was a
martyr. When she would insist on having her child restored to her arms
one could imagine his saying--“Go to, woman, where is your pug!” Colonel
Kenwynton ardently hoped that the pressure of public opinion would force
Mr. Floyd-Rosney to disregard no longer the holy claims of motherhood,
and give back this child to the aching arms of his wife. The heart of
every man that ever had a mother was fired in revolt against him,
despite his wealth, that cannot buy sycophancy, and abject acquiescence
and pusillanimous silence from us.
The Colonel admired the rolling periods of his production so much that
he read aloud with relish the whole effort from the beginning.
“What do you think of it, Hugh?” he demanded.
“I think the paper won’t publish it,” said Hugh Treherne.
The paper, however, did publish it. The position of Floyd-Rosney in the
affair, as the incontestable facts began to be elicited, took on so
sorry an aspect that he was hardly in case to bring an action for libel,
and the Colonel’s letter was good for the sale of a double edition.
People read it with raised eyebrows and deprecation, and several said
the Colonel was a dangerous man and ought to have his hands tied behind
him. But the plain truth, so plainly set forth, the old traditions which
he had invoked, which they had all imbibed more or less, went far to
reinstating Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s position, and to exhibit her husband’s
character in a most damaged and disastrous disparagement. He was advised
by his counsel, who were disconcerted in the last extreme by being
connected in so disreputable a proceeding, that the only course open to
policy and prudence and the prospect of conserving any place in public
esteem, was to retract absolutely and immediately, frankly confessing a
mistake of identity, and to restore the child to the custody of his
mother.
“Even that won’t mend the matter,” said Mr. Stacey--his face corrugated
with lines unknown to his placid sharpness when he and his firm had no
personal concern. He had nerves for his own interest, though not an
altruistic quiver for his client.
“All the world thinks,” he continued, “that you are as jealous as a
Turk, and that will add a sensational interest to the Duciehurst suit,
of a kind that I despise”--he actually looked pained--“when it is
developed that your wife found and restored the Ducie papers. I wish
you had taken my advice; I wish you had taken my advice.”
And Floyd-Rosney said never a word.
He had come to be more plastic to counsel than of yore, and in a few
days thereafter the train made its infrequent stoppage at Ingleside, and
deposited Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s favorite old colored servant and her
little charge, who sturdily trudged through the grove of great
trees--vast, indeed, to his eyes--and suddenly appeared in the hall
before his mother, with a tale of wonder relating to the bears, which he
believed might be skulking about among the giant oaks.