Adrian Ducie was affronted beyond measure by the unseemly notoriety
given to his part in the Floyd-Rosney incident, in the subsequent
publications emanating from various sources. The serious menace,
however, that the circumstances held for Randal moderated for a time his
indignation. He thought it not improbable that Floyd-Rosney would shoot
Randal Ducie on sight, and he greatly deprecated the fact that his
brother was chronicled by the New Orleans papers as having quitted that
city, on his way to Memphis, returning by boat.
“Why didn’t the fellow stay where he was until matters should have
developed more acceptably?” Adrian fumed in mingled disgust and
apprehension. His anxiety was somewhat assuaged in the meantime when
Colonel Kenwynton’s letter appeared, and more especially when
Floyd-Rosney withdrew his petition for divorce--a definite confession of
his clumsy mistake. Still in Adrian’s opinion latent fires slumbered
under the volcanic crust, as this sudden eruption had proved. This city
was no place for the bone of contention between husband and wife. The
season for the preparations for cotton planting was already well
advanced. Assuredly it was seemly and desirable for Randal to repair to
his plantation and supervise the operations of his manager and his
laborers. Adrian found his own stay in the city harassing to his
exacerbated nerves. The questioning stare of men whom he passed on the
streets, who looked as if they expected salutation, in default of which
surmised that this was the twin brother, hero of the Floyd-Rosney
_esclandre_, annoyed him by its constant repetition, and gave his face a
repellant reserve which the countenance of the gentle and genial Randal
had never known. A dozen times he was more intimately assailed, “Hey,
Ran, old man, how goes it?” with perhaps a quizzical leer, or an eager
hopefulness that some discussion of the reigning sensation of the day
might not be too intrusive. When the stranger was enlightened, not
abruptly, however, for Adrian was cautious to refrain from alienating
Randal’s friends, the comments on the wonderful likeness implied an
accession of interest in the significant incident in Union Station, and,
doubtless, many a surmise as to what had betided heretofore to arouse
the lion in the husband’s breast. Obviously, both the brothers for every
reason should be removed from the public eye till the story was stale;
but, although Adrian felt this keenly, he himself could not get away in
view of the interests of his firm in an important silk deal with a large
concern desiring to treat directly with the representative of the
manufacturers.
He had never cared so little to see his brother as one day when the door
of his bedroom in the hotel unceremoniously opened and Randal entered.
He had deprecated the effect of all this publicity on the most sensitive
emotions of that high-strung and spirited nature. He was proud, too, and
winced from the realization that all the world should be canvassing the
fact of Randal’s rejection by Mrs. Floyd-Rosney in her girlhood days.
She had treated him cruelly, and had dashed her plighted troth, his
love, his happiness to the ground with not a moment’s compunction, for a
marriage of splendor and wealth--“and,” said Adrian grimly to himself,
“for it she has got all that was coming to her.”
He felt for Randal. His heart burned within him.
“Why, who is this that I see here?” cried Randal gaily, as he entered.
“Not myself in a mirror surely, for I never looked half so glum in all
my life.”
There was a hearty handclasp, and a sort of facetious fraternal hug,
after the fashion of men who humorously disguise a deeper emotion, and
they were presently seated in great amity before the glowing fire.
“This is imported Oriental tobacco,” said Adrian, handing his brother a
cigar.
“Imported from where--the corner drugstore?” demanded Randal, laughing,
his face illumined by the flicker of the lighted match.
“Genuine Ladikieh,” protested Adrian.
“It’s like carrying coals to Newcastle to pay duty on tobacco in
America.”
“I didn’t say I paid any duty, did I?”
“Oh, you haven’t the grit to smuggle anything through, and if you had
you would have brought enough to generously divvy up with me.”
He sent off a fragrant puff, stretched out luxuriously in his armchair,
and turned his clear eyes upon his brother.
There was a momentary silence.
“I read the report of your address in the papers. It was very able and
convincing.”
“I’d care more for your compliments if you understood the subject,”
declared Randal cavalierly. Then, roguishly, “Is that _all_ you have
read about me in the papers lately?”
Adrian stared, dumfounded. And he had so wincingly deprecated the effect
of this limelight of publicity upon the shrinking heart of the rejected
lover.
“I think it very hard you should be subjected to this,” he began
sympathetically.
“Who--I? Why,--I was never so pleased in my life!”
“Why--what do you mean, Randal? It is a very serious matter; it might
have had a life-and-death significance.”
“Serious enough for Floyd-Rosney,” Randal laughed bluffly. “Did ever a
fellow so befool himself, and call all the world to witness! Of course,
I deprecate the publicity for the lady, but everybody understands the
situation. It does not injure her position in the least. That is the
kind of husband she wanted--and she has got him.”
Adrian silently smoked a few moments.
“I never was so affronted in my life,” he said.
Once more Randal laughed. “I was simply enchanted,” he declared.
“Honestly, Randal, I don’t understand you,” said Adrian, holding his
cigar delicately in his fingers.
“Oh, I am very simple, quite transparent, in fact.”
Adrian shook his head, restoring his cigar to his lips. “Don’t make you
out, old man.”
“Because you have never been told by a lady to take foot in hand, and
toddle! Discarded--rejected--despised! Therefore”--with a strong
puff--“you can’t know what a keen joy it is to realize that you are
still important enough to be the cause of domestic discord between
husband and wife, when you haven’t seen the lady but once in five years,
and then in his presence, besides, being five hundred miles away, meekly
babbling about levee protection.”
Adrian stared. “And you like that?”
“Like it? It goes to the cockles of my heart.”
“Randal, I should never have thought it of you,” said Adrian rebukingly.
“Because, kid, I am older than you and know many things that you haven’t
learned. I got a little bit the start of you in life and I have kept
ahead of you ever since,” Randal declared whimsically.
“I can’t comprehend how you like to be mixed up in that miserable
misunderstanding.”
“Why, it flatters me to death. She couldn’t put me out of her heart,
although she could and did lacerate terribly my heart. Floyd-Rosney is
jealous of my very existence. But for that he would have inferred no
more from seeing me, as he thought, assisting her to board the train
than any incidental acquaintance tendering that courtesy. He is not
disturbed that _you_ boarded the train with her.”
“You are jealous of Floyd-Rosney,” said Adrian abruptly.
Randal thrust his cigar between his lips and spoke indistinctly with
this obstruction. “Not I,” he laughed. “Not under these circumstances.”
Adrian was frowning anxiously. The two faces, so alike in feature, were
curiously dissimilar at the moment, the one so genially confiding, the
expression of the other, alert, expectant, with a grave prophetic
rebuke.
“Look here, Randal,” Adrian said seriously, “you perturb me very much.
You speak actually as if you are still--still sentimentally interested
in this woman--another man’s wife--because you discover----”
“That both she and her husband are sentimentally interested in me; ha!
ha! ha!” Randal interrupted.
“I could never imagine such a thing,--it perturbs me,” Adrian persisted
seriously.
“It perturbs me, too,” declared Randal quizzically, “to have you gadding
about in my likeness, escorting other men’s wives,--the gay Lothario
that you are!--and getting _me_ into the papers, the public prints. Oh,
fie, fie.”
“And she _is_ another man’s wife,” remonstrated Adrian.
“She won’t be long if she has a spark of spirit left,” declared Randal
boldly. “She will bring suit for divorce herself.”
“But I doubt if she can get it,” said Adrian in dismay.
The difference of mood made itself manifest in the tones of their
voices--Adrian’s crisp, imperative, even tinctured with sternness,
Randal’s careless, musical, drawling.
“Oh, she can get it fast enough. I should think from what I observed of
his manner to her she could prove enough instances of cruelty and
tyranny to melt almost any trial judge.”
Adrian reflected silently upon the episodes on the _Cherokee Rose_, but
kept his own counsel, while the smoke curled softly above the duplicate
heads.
“When I saw them together,” observed Randal, “he impressed me as being a
veritable despot, and in a queer way, too. I can’t understand his
satisfaction in it. He arrogated the largest liberty to criticize her
views and actions, as if his dictum were the fiat of last resort. I tell
you now, kid, criticism and cavil in themselves are incompatible with
love. No man can depreciate and adore at the same time the same object.
When he thinks the feet of his idol are of clay the whole structure
might as well come down at once. He seemed to have a certain perversity,
and this is a connubial foible I have seen in better men, too; a
tendency to contradict her in small, immaterial matters for the sheer
pleasure of contrariety, I suppose,--to oppose her, to balk her, merely
because he could with impunity. I imagine he has enjoyed a long lease of
this impunity because his perversity has attained such unusual
proportions, and her plunges of opposition had the style of sudden
revolt rather than the practiced habit of contention. She has lived a
life of repression and submission with him. Her identity is pretty much
annihilated. The Paula of her earlier days is nearly all disappeared.”
For a few moments Adrian said nothing in response to this keen analysis
of character, which corresponded so well to his longer opportunity of
observation, but sat silently eyeing the fire in serious thought.
Suddenly he broke out with impassioned eagerness.
“Randal, you are my own twin brother----”
“I am obliged to admit it,” interpolated Randal flippantly.
“--my other self. The tie that binds us seems to me closer than with
other brothers. We came into the world together; we have lived hand in
hand almost all our lives; we even look alike.”
“And make a precious good job of it too,” declared Randal gaily.
“We feel alike; we believe alike; we have been educated in the same
traditions; we respect the sanctities of the old fireside teachings; we
have not strayed after strange gods.”
Randal had taken his cigar from his lips and in his half recumbent
position was gazing keenly at his brother.
“What are you coming to, kid?”
“Just this--you are not looking forward to this divorce in the hope--the
expectation of marrying this woman? Are you? Tell me.”
Randal’s eyes flashed. “What do you take me for?” he said angrily
between his set teeth. “She could never again be anything to me,--not
even if Floyd-Rosney were at the bottom of the Mississippi River.”
“Oh, how this relieves my mind,” cried Adrian.
“You may set it at rest,--for I could never again love that woman.”
“I know that I have no right to interfere or even to question--but you
always appreciate my motives, Randal. You are the best fellow in the
world.”
“I always thought so,” said Randal, smoking hard.
“I believe she will expect it,” suggested Adrian, still with some
anxiety.
“She will be grievously disappointed, then,--and turn about is fair
play.”
“I want you to guard against any soft surprise,” said Adrian. “She
seemed so sure of you. She said you were the only friend she had in the
world. She came to the Adelantado Hotel to find you--that you should
lend her ten dollars for the railroad fare to Ingleside!”
“The liberal Floyd-Rosney!”
“I want you to look out for her. She is a designing woman. She is
heartily tired of her bargain, and with reason, and she wants to pick up
the happiness she threw away five years ago----”
“With me and poverty.”
“She has enjoyed an artful combination of real poverty and fictitious
splendor. I want you to be frank with me, Randal, and confide in me,
and----”
“Take that paw off my arm.”
“--and,” continued Adrian, removing his hand, “not make an outsider of
your own, only twin brother.”
“Heaven protect me from two twin brothers like unto this fellow,”
laughed Randal. “Make yourself easy, Adrian; when I am finally led to
the altar I shall countenance an innovation in the marriage
ceremony--the groom shall be given away by his own only twin brother.”
“She broached the matter herself when she had an opportunity to speak
aside to me on the _Cherokee Rose_,” said Adrian, his reminiscent eyes
on the fire.
“What? Divorce and remarriage?”
“Oh, no--no. The course she had pursued with you.”
Randal’s eyes glowed with sudden fire; his face flushed deeply red.
“That was very unhandsome of her,” he said curtly, “and by your leave it
was very derogatory to both you and me for you to consent to discuss
it.”
“Why should _I_ decline to discuss it when she introduced the
subject,--as if I felt that _you_ were humiliated in the matter or had
anything to regret?”
“It would seem that neither of you were hampered with any delicacy of
sentiment or sensitiveness.”
“She spoke to me of a gift of yours that she had failed to return. She
wished me to convey it to you. But I referred her to the registered mail
or the express.”
“That was polite, at all events.”
“I told her that the relations between my brother and myself were
peculiarly tender, and that I would not allow her to come between us.
And, with that, I bowed myself away.”
Randal’s eyes gloomed on the fire, with many an unwelcome thought of an
old and shattered romance. But when he spoke, it was of the present.
“Adrian, I am sorry I was so short with you. Of course I know you could
not openly avoid the topic forced upon you in that way. I am sure, too,
that you did not fail to take full cognizance of my dignity, as well as
your own. I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for a million dollars.”
“Well, you did it,” retorted Adrian, “and nobody that I know of has
offered you so much as fifty cents. It was a gratuitous piece of
meanness on your part. And you can take that paw off me,” glancing down
with affected repugnance at Randal’s caressing hand laid on his sleeve.
“Well,” said Randal, with a long sigh, “she closed the incident herself.
She gave me the trinket in her husband’s presence--and you can imagine
Floyd-Rosney was all eyes.”
“She placed it on the table among the Ducie jewels the previous night,”
said Adrian; “and, as I was occupied in reading the papers, I asked her
pointedly to take charge of it. And she looked most awfully cheap as she
repossessed herself of it.”
“Adrian, you really have a heart of stone in this connection,” smiled
Randal, “and after she had been chiefly instrumental in restoring to us
the Duciehurst papers and jewels!”
“What else could she do--commit a felony and keep them? I certainly
entertain no fantastic magnanimity on that score.”
Randal laughed, but the solicitous Adrian fancied this phase of the
subject might develop a menace to the future, and hastened to change the
topic. “I wish you would come with me and confer with our lawyers
to-day, Randal,” he suggested. “It is better to have both principals in
interest present at any important consultation. I have an engagement
with them at three,” drawing out his watch for a hasty glance.
“Agreed,” said Randal, springing up alertly. “Where’s your
clothes-brush?--but no, I suppose there is not a speck of the dust of
travel on me, for, when I tipped the man on the boat, he practically
frayed all the nap off my clothes to show his gratitude. I am
presentable, eh?”
He stood for a moment before the long mirror, then broke forth
whimsically in affected alarm. “Adrian, who is this in the mirror, you
or I? I am all mixed up. I can’t tell us apart. What are we going to do
about it?” he continued, as if in great agitation, while Adrian, with a
leisurely smile--for he had often taken part in this _gambade_, a
favorite bit of fooling since their infancy--looked about for his hat.
“Let’s go downstairs and get somebody to pick us out,” suggested Randal,
“for, really, I don’t want to be you, Adrian. You are too solemn and
priggish; why, this must be I, for, if it were you, you would have said
‘piggish.’ You are so dearly fraternal. Don’t come near me, I don’t want
to get mixed up again. I begin to know myself. This is I.”
But, notwithstanding this threatened peril of proximity, they walked
down the street together, arm in arm, to the office of the counsel,
followed by many a startled glance perceiving the wonderful resemblance,
and sometimes a passing stranger of an uncultured grade came to a full
halt in surprise and curiosity.
There were many consultations with the legal advisers in the days that
ensued, which Randal Ducie found very irksome, accustomed as he was to
an active outdoor life and a less labyrinthine species of thought than
appertains to the purlieus of the law. Unexpected details continually
developed concerning the interests involved. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s bill
for divorce was filed in the meantime, and because it had a personal
interest paramount to its importance in the Duciehurst case it brought
up again the matter of taking her deposition in these proceedings which
had been pretermitted by reason of affairs of greater magnitude.
The decision was reached on a day when to Randal’s relief he was able to
dub facetiously the counsel “the peripatetic philosophers” by reason of
a journey which they thought it necessary to take in the company of
their clients and which he found much more tolerable than the duress of
their offices and their long indoor prelections. The four men boarded a
packet leaving the city at five o’clock; it being deemed advisable that
the lawyers should make a personal examination of the locality and the
hiding place of the Ducie papers and other valuables, before conferring
with the Mississippi counsel retained in the case. The question of
summoning Mrs. Floyd-Rosney was discussed as they sat on the hurricane
deck in the approaching dusk between the glitter of the evening sky, all
of a clear pink and gold, and the lustrous sheen of the expanse of the
river, reflecting a delicate amber and rose. The search-light apparatus
was not illumined and looked in the uncertain half twilight as if it
might be some defensive piece of artillery of the mortar type, mounted
on the hurricane deck. The great smoke-stacks, towering high into the
air, had already swinging between them the green and red chimney lamps,
required by law, but as yet day reigned and all the brilliancy of the
evening bespoke a protest against the coming night.
Adrian Ducie doubted the availability of summoning Mrs. Floyd-Rosney in
their interest. The proof could inferentially be made without her, by
those who saw her deliver the box and witnessed its opening and
contents. Besides, here were the papers to speak for themselves. But
Randal Ducie urged the deposition. It would seem conscious not to call
her. Why should she not give her testimony. It was disrespectful to
imply that Mrs. Floyd-Rosney would be reluctant to do this.
“Mr. Floyd-Rosney is a mighty touchy man,” suggested the junior counsel.
This practitioner was about forty years of age, thin, wiry, eager, even
fidgetty. He had a trick of passing his hand rapidly over his
prematurely bald head, of playing with his fob chain, of twisting a
pencil, or his gloves, or his eyeglasses--these last also, perhaps, a
prematurely acquired treasure. Apparently he had burned a great deal of
midnight oil to good purpose, for he was admittedly an exceedingly able
lawyer, destined to rise very high in his profession.
His associate in the case was in striking contrast, in many respects, to
Mr. Guinnell. He was a portly man, with a big head, and a big frame, and
a big brain. It was his foible,--one of them, perhaps,--in moments of
deep thought to close his eyes; it may have been in order to commune the
more closely and clearly with the immanent legal entity within; it may
have been more definitely to concentrate his ideas; it may have been to
shut out the sight of Mr. Guinnell’s swiftly revolving pencil or
eyeglasses; whatever his reason, the habit had a most unnerving effect
on clients in consultation, suggesting the idea that their
affairs--always of vital importance to the parties in interest--were of
slight consequence to their adviser and of soporific effect. Both
gentlemen were serious-minded, and, which is more rare in their
profession, abysmally devoid of a sense of humor.
“The filing of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s bill for divorce and alimony
complicates the situation,” continued Mr. Guinnell, “although I have
thought since the Union Station incident,” he hesitated slightly,
glancing toward Randal,--“you will excuse me for mentioning it in
professional confidence.”
“Certainly; I often mention it myself as a mere layman,” said Randal,
debonairly.
“I have thought that Mr. Floyd-Rosney will make a stiff fight on the
hard letter of the law,--_à l’outrance_, in fact,--with no contemplation
of such concessions as would otherwise present themselves to litigants,
looking to compromise, settlement of antagonistic interest by equitable
adjustment. In the present development of his domestic affairs he will
find it quite intolerable for his wife to give testimony in the interest
of Mr. Randal Ducie and his brother. Mr. Floyd-Rosney will wince from
it.”
“It is a good thing that something can make him wince,” declared Randal
hardily. “A stout cowhide is evidently what he needs.”
“I hope, Mr. Ducie,” said Mr. Harvey, the senior counsel in alarm and
grave rebuke, “that you will not take that tone in testifying. All the
circumstances in the case render the situation unusual and perilous, and
we want to do and say nothing that will place either you or your brother
in personal danger from Mr. Floyd-Rosney.”
“The only cause for wonder is that your brother was not shot down at
Union Station, being mistaken for you,” Mr. Guinnell added the weight of
his opinion to his partner’s remonstrance. “If Floyd-Rosney had chanced
to wear a revolver Adrian Ducie would not be here to-day to tell the
tale.”
“Count on me; I am yours to command,” declared Randal, lightly. “I am a
very lamb, when necessary, and you may lead me through the case with a
blue ribbon and a ring in my nose. I’ll eat out of any man’s hand!”
The ponderous senior counsel looked at him soberly. The junior twirled
and twirled his fob-chain.
“We wish to conduct this case to the best advantage,” said Mr. Harvey,
“and leave no stone unturned that can contribute to success. But we wish
to be conservative--we must keep that intention before us, to be
_conservative_, and give Floyd-Rosney no possible opportunity for
outbreak at our expense, either in regard to the interests of the case
or the personal safety of our clients.”
“I will order my walk and conversation as if on eggs,” declared Randal,
with a wary look.
“I do not apprehend any unseemly measures or conduct on the part of the
opposing counsel,” continued Mr. Harvey. “They are gentlemen of high
standing. But Mr. Floyd-Rosney has a most unruly and unreasoning temper
and he has placed himself at a deplorable public disadvantage in this
matter, which, be sure, he does not ascribe to himself. We will go
slowly and safely--coming necessarily into contention with him. But we
shall take Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s deposition by all means.”
And thus the matter was settled.
On the third day the boat made the Duciehurst landing, and some hours
were spent in exploring the ruins of the mansion. Later the party
separated, the lawyers repairing to the inland town of Caxton for a
conference with the local legal firm who would prosecute the interests
of the case in Mississippi, and the two Ducies making a prearranged
excursion to a plantation which Randal had leased at some distance
higher up the river. As the residence on this plantation was comfortable
and in good repair he had quitted his quarters at the hotel in Caxton
and had taken up his abode here. It had been a wrench to him to
relinquish the operations on the Ducie estate; but he was advised that
his claim to rightful possession might be jeopardized by consenting to
hold under Floyd-Rosney, which course, indeed, he had never
contemplated. As the two, mounted on the staid farm horses, rode through
the fields and speculated on their possibilities, Randal would often
pause in the turn-rows--the cotton of last year a withered stubble--in
systematic lines, with here and there a floculent “dog-tail,” as the
latest wisp of the staple is called, flaunting in the chill spring
breeze, and would descant on the superior values of the Duciehurst lands
compared to these, illustrating sometimes by the fresh furrows near at
hand, showing the humus of the soil, for the plows were already running.
Now and again he turned his eager, hopeful eyes on his brother as he
declared, “This time next year, old man, I shall have the force busy
getting ready to bed up land for cotton at Duciehurst.” Or “When the
estates of our fathers are restored to us I shall live in formality at
our ancestral mansion, and if you dare go back to France I shall revenge
myself by marrying somebody.”
“Anybody in view?”
“Apprehensive, again? Well, to set your mind at rest, I was thinking,
pictorially merely, how stately Hilda Dean looked walking down the
grand staircase with her head up. How beautifully it is poised on her
shoulders.”
“She is truly beautiful,” Adrian said heartily, “and during all that
trip down the river I was impressed with her lovely character, and her
sterling qualities of mind and heart. Her beauty, great as it is, really
is belittled by the graces of her nature. Pray Heaven your visions of
Hildegarde as your chatelaine at Duciehurst may materialize.”
“One more year,--one more year of this toilsome probation, and then,”
Randal’s face was illumined as if the word radiated light, “Duciehurst!”
Adrian, looking over the river which was now well in view from the
fields, began to speculate on the approach of a skiff heading down
stream, and running in to the bank. “I wonder if that is the boat that
your manager was to send for me for my trip to Berridge’s?”
For, although the terror of the fierce pursuit of the riverside harpies
inaugurated by Colonel Kenwynton had swept the others in flight from the
country, not a foothold of suspicion had been found against Berridge and
his son. It was known that Captain Treherne had spent the night at their
amphibian home, and had gone thence to his conference with Colonel
Kenwynton on the sand-bar; so much he himself had stated, but he
declared positively that neither of the Berridges was with the
miscreants who had waylaid him on his return and conveyed him bound to
Duciehurst. It was beyond his knowledge, indeed, that this choice twain
had later joined his captors at the mansion. Their strength of nerve,
however, failed them when they were notified that the Ducie counsel
desired an interview with them on this visit to the vicinity to
ascertain if their testimony would be at all pertinent in the matters
preliminary to the discovery of the documents. Even their non-appearance
this afternoon did not excite unfavorable comment. It was supposed that
in the depths of their illiteracy they had not understood the nature of
the communication, if indeed they had received it, and Adrian Ducie
promised the counsel to see old Berridge or his son personally and
explain the matter in order to have them present in Caxton the following
day when the lawyers should be in conference.
“Oh, I will go instead,” cried Randal; “I really ought not to let you go
on this errand, for,” with a quizzical smile, “you are ‘company,’ you
know.”
“Not very formal ‘company.’ You ought to see to the placing of that new
boiler in the gin-house,--and I have nothing to do. Yes,” continued
Adrian, still regarding the approach of the skiff, “that is your man
Job, and he can take this horse back to the stable.”
He dismounted hastily and throwing the reins to Randal, he ran lightly
up the slope of the levee. He paused on the summit to wave his hand and
call out cheerily, “Ta, ta--see you later,” and then he threw himself in
the skiff, which was dancing on the floods close below, the boatman
holding it by the painter as he stood on the exterior slope of the
embankment.
The river was at flood height and running with tremendous force. But for
the aid of the current Adrian’s strength plying the oars would have made
scant speed. It was only a short time before he sighted the little
riverside shanty which no longer showed its stilts, but sat on the water
as flush with the surface as a swimming duck. Adrian was able from his
seat between the rowlocks to knock on the closed door without rising.
There was no response for a few minutes, although the building was
obviously inhabited, the sluggish smoke coiling up from the stove-pipe
into this dull day of late winter or early spring, whichever season
might be credited with its surly disaffection. A child’s voice within
suddenly babbled forth, and but for this Adrian fancied a feint of
absence might have been attempted. With a slight motion of the oars he
kept the skiff in place at the entrance, and at length the door slowly
opened and the frowsy, copper-tinted hair and freckled face of Jessy
Jane was thrust forth.
She was one of that type of woman to whom without any approach to moral
delinquency a handsome man is always an object of supreme twittering
interest, however remote of station and indifferent of temperament;
however crusty or contemptuous. That he should obviously concern himself
in no wise with her existence did not in any degree minimize the
intensity of her personal absorption in him. Her face, sullen and
lowering, took on a bland and mollifying expression, and with a fancied
recognition of the rower she broke forth with a high, ecstatic chirp:
“Why, Mr. Ran, I never knowed ’twas you hyar!” though she had never
spoken to Randal Ducie, and knew him only by sight.
“This is not Mr. Randal Ducie, but his brother,” said Adrian, and as
she stared silently at him, noting the wonderful resemblance, he
continued:
“I want to speak to Joshua Berridge,” he consulted a paper in his hand.
“He lives here, doesn’t he?”
“My dad-in-law,” she explained, suavely; “but he ain’t at home just now,
though”--with a facetious smile, “’twon’t be long ’fore he comes--most
supper time, ye know. Won’t ye kem in an’ wait?”
Ducie declined this invitation and sat meditatively eyeing the waste of
waters, for the river was now at its full scope, barring inundation, and
stretched in great majesty to a bank scarcely visible on the farther
shore.
“I ain’t sure, but what ye mought find him over on the old _Che’okee
Rose_,” she said, speculatively, for Ducie was very comely and she had a
special impulse to be polite to so worthy an object of courtesy.
“Is the old steamboat there yet?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at
the murky swirls of the swift current. There was now no sign of the
sand-bar on which the ill-fated craft had stranded. The foaming waves
raced past and submerged its whole extent. None might know where it lay.
A deep-water craft, drawing many feet, might have unwittingly plied
above its expanse. Only a fraction of the superstructure of the
steamboat--the pilot-house and texas, and the upper part of the cabin,
showed above the waste of waters to distinguish the spot where the
steamer had run aground and the pitiless storm had flayed out all its
future utility.
“The wreckers have been down time and again,” she went on with a note of
apology. “They tuk off all the vallybles before the water riz,--the
kyarpets, an’ funnicher, an’ mirrors, an’ sech--even the big chimbleys.
The water got the rest, but wunst in a while ef us pore folks wants
somethin’ that be lef’ fur lost--like some henges, or somthin’ we jest
tries to supply ourse’fs ez bes’ we kin.”
Adrian was still silently looking at the wreck that he had such cause to
remember, with all that had since come and gone.
“Well, I reckon Dad is over there now, hunting fur them henges,” said
the woman, speculatively. “Leastwise,” holding her palm above her eyes,
“’pears like I kin see a boat on the tother side, a-bobbin at the e-end
of a painter!”
Adrian moved with a sudden resolution. The oars smote the water, and
with curt and formal thanks for the information, he began to row
strongly across the current that despite his best endeavors carried him
continually down and down the river, and required him to shape his
course diagonally athwart the stream to counteract its impetus.
The woman stood for a time aimlessly watching him, as the rhythmic oars
plied, and the skiff, shadowless this dull day, kept on its way. At last
she turned within and shut the door.