Randolph Trent's consternation at the loss of the portmanteau was partly
superstitious. For, although it was easy to make up the small sum
taken, and the papers were safe in Miss Avondale's possession, yet this
displacement of the only link between him and his missing benefactor,
and the mystery of its disappearance, raised all his old doubts and
suspicions. A vague uneasiness, a still more vague sense of some
remissness on his own part, possessed him.
That the portmanteau was taken from his room during his absence with
Miss Avondale that afternoon was evident. The door had been opened by a
skeleton key, and as the building was deserted on Sunday, there had been
no chance of interference with the thief. If mere booty had been his
object, the purse would have satisfied him without his burdening himself
with a portmanteau which might be identified. Nothing else in the room
had been disturbed. The thief must have had some cognizance of its
location, and have kept some espionage over Randolph's movements--a
circumstance which added to the mystery and his disquiet. He placed a
description of his loss with the police authorities, but their only idea
of recovering it was by leaving that description with pawnbrokers and
second-hand dealers, a proceeding that Randolph instinctively felt was
in vain.
A singular but instinctive reluctance to inform Miss Avondale of his
loss kept him from calling upon her for the first few days. When he did,
she seemed concerned at the news, although far from participating in his
superstition or his suspicions.
“You still have the letter and photograph--whatever they may be
worth--for identification,” she said dryly, “although Bobby cannot
remember about the letter. He thinks he went once with his father to a
photographer and had a picture taken, but he cannot remember seeing
it afterward.” She was holding them in her hand, and Randolph almost
mechanically took them from her and put them in his pocket. He would
not, perhaps, have noticed his own brusqueness had she not looked a
little surprised, and, he thought, annoyed. “Are you quite sure you
won't lose them?” she said gently. “Perhaps I had better keep them for
you.”
“I shall seal them up and put them in the bank safe,” he said quickly.
He could not tell whether his sudden resolution was an instinct or the
obstinacy that often comes to an awkward man. “But,” he added, coloring,
“I shall always regret the loss of the portmanteau, for it was the means
of bringing us together.”
“I thought it was the umbrella,” said Miss Avondale dryly.
She had once before halted him on the perilous edge of sentiment by a
similar cynicism, but this time it cut him deeply. For he could not
be blind to the fact that she treated him like a mere boy, and in
dispelling the illusions of his instincts and beliefs seemed as if
intent upon dispelling his illusions of HER; and in her half-smiling
abstraction he read only the well-bred toleration of one who is
beginning to be bored. He made his excuses early and went home.
Nevertheless, although regretting he had not left her the letter and
photograph, he deposited them in the bank safe the next day, and tried
to feel that he had vindicated his character for grown-up wisdom.
Then, in his conflicting emotions, he punished himself, after the
fashion of youth, by avoiding the beloved one's presence for several
days. He did this in the belief that it would enable him to make up his
mind whether to reveal his real feelings to her, and perhaps there
was the more alluring hope that his absence might provoke some
manifestations of sentiment on her part. But she made no sign. And then
came a reaction in his feelings, with a heightened sense of loyalty
to his benefactor. For, freed of any illusion or youthful fancy now, a
purely unselfish gratitude to the unknown man filled his heart. In the
lapse of his sentiment he clung the more closely to this one honest
romance of his life.
One afternoon, at the close of business, he was a little astonished to
receive a message from Mr. Dingwall, the deputy manager, that he wished
to see him in his private office. He was still more astonished when Mr.
Dingwall, after offering him a chair, stood up with his hands under his
coat tails before the fireplace, and, with a hesitancy half reserved,
half courteous, but wholly English, said,--
“I--er--would be glad, Mr. Trent, if you would--er--give me the pleasure
of your company at dinner to-morrow.”
Randolph, still amazed, stammered his acceptance.
“There will be--er--a young lady in whom you were--er--interested some
time ago. Er--Miss Avondale.”
Randolph, feeling he was coloring, and uncertain whether he should speak
of having met her since, contented himself with expressing his delight.
“In fact,” continued Mr. Dingwall, clearing his throat as if he were
also clearing his conscience of a tremendous secret, “she--er--mentioned
your name. There is Sir William Dornton coming also. Sir William
has recently succeeded his elder brother, who--er--it seems, was the
gentleman you were inquiring about when you first came here, and who,
it is now ascertained, was drowned in the bay a few months ago. In
fact--er--it is probable that you were the last one who saw him alive.
I thought I would tell you,” continued Mr. Dingwall, settling his chin
more comfortably in his checked cravat, “in case Sir William should
speak of him to you.”
Randolph was staggered. The abrupt revelation of his benefactor's name
and fate, casually coupled with an invitation to dinner, shocked and
confounded him. Perhaps Mr. Dingwall noticed it and misunderstood the
cause, for he added in parenthetical explanation: “Yes, the man whose
portmanteau you took charge of is dead; but you did your duty, Mr.
Trent, in the matter, although the recovery of the portmanteau was
unessential to the case.”
“Dead,” repeated Randolph, scarcely heeding him. “But is it true? Are
they sure?”
Mr. Dingwall elevated his eyebrows. “The large property at stake of
course rendered the most satisfactory proofs of it necessary. His father
had died only a month previous, and of course they were seeking the
presumptive heir, the so-called 'Captain John Dornton'--your man--when
they made the discovery of his death.”
Randolph thought of the strange body at the wharf, of the coroner's
vague verdict, and was unconvinced. “But,” he said impulsively, “there
was a child.” He checked himself as he remembered this was one of Miss
Avondale's confidences to him.
“Ah--Miss Avondale has spoken of a child?” said Mr. Dingwall dryly.
“I saw her with one which she said was Captain Dornton's, which had been
left in her care after the death of his wife,” said Randolph in hurried
explanation.
“John Dornton had no WIFE,” said Mr. Dingwall severely. “The boy is a
natural son. Captain John lived a wild, rough, and--er--an eccentric
life.”
“I thought--I understood from Miss Avondale that he was married,”
stammered the young man.
“In your rather slight acquaintance with that young lady I should
imagine she would have had some delicacy in telling you otherwise,”
returned Mr. Dingwall primly.
Randolph felt the truth of this, and was momentarily embarrassed. Yet he
lingered.
“Has Miss Avondale known of this discovery long?” he asked.
“About two weeks, I should say,” returned Mr. Dingwall. “She was of some
service to Sir William in getting up certain proofs he required.”
It was three weeks since she had seen Randolph, yet it would have been
easy for her to communicate the news to him. In these three weeks his
romance of their common interest in his benefactor--even his own dream
of ever seeing him again--had been utterly dispelled.
It was in no social humor that he reached Dingwall's house the next
evening. Yet he knew the difficulty of taking an aggressive attitude
toward his previous idol or of inviting a full explanation from her
then.
The guests, with the exception of himself and Miss Avondale, were all
English. She, self-possessed and charming in evening dress, nodded to
him with her usual mature patronage, but did not evince the least
desire to seek him for any confidential aside. He noticed the undoubted
resemblance of Sir William Dornton to his missing benefactor, and yet
it produced a singular repulsion in him, rather than any sympathetic
predilection. At table he found that Miss Avondale was separated from
him, being seated beside the distinguished guest, while he was placed
next to the young lady he had taken down--a Miss Eversleigh, the cousin
of Sir William. She was tall, and Randolph's first impression of her was
that she was stiff and constrained--an impression he quickly corrected
at the sound of her voice, her frank ingenuousness, and her unmistakable
youth. In the habit of being crushed by Miss Avondale's unrelenting
superiority, he found himself apparently growing up beside this tall
English girl, who had the naivete of a child. After a few commonplaces
she suddenly turned her gray eyes on his, and said,--
“Didn't you like Jack? I hope you did. Oh, say you did--do!”
“You mean Captain John Dornton?” said Randolph, a little confused.
“Yes, of course; HIS brother”--glancing toward Sir William. “We always
called him Jack, though I was ever so little when he went away. No one
thought of calling him anything else but Jack. Say you liked him!”
“I certainly did,” returned Randolph impulsively. Then checking himself,
he added, “I only saw him once, but I liked his face and manner--and--he
was very kind to me.”
“Of course he was,” said the young girl quickly. “That was only like
him, and yet”--lowering her voice slightly--“would you believe that
they all say he was wild and wicked and dissipated? And why? Fancy! Just
because he didn't care to stay at home and shoot and hunt and race and
make debts, as heirs usually do. No, he wanted to see the world and do
something for himself. Why, when he was quite young, he could manage a
boat like any sailor. Dornton Hall, their place, is on the coast, you
know, and they say that, just for adventure's sake, after he went away,
he shipped as first mate somewhere over here on the Pacific, and made
two or three voyages. You know--don't you?--and how every one was
shocked at such conduct in the heir.”
Her face was so girlishly animated, with such sparkle of eye and
responsive color, that he could hardly reconcile it with her first
restraint or with his accepted traditions of her unemotional race, or,
indeed, with her relationship to the principal guest. His latent feeling
of gratitude to the dead man warmed under the young girl's voice.
“It's so dreadful to think of him as drowned, you know, though even
that they put against him,” she went on hurriedly, “for they say he
was probably drowned in some drunken fit--fell through the wharf or
something shocking and awful--worse than suicide. But”--she turned her
frank young eyes upon him again--“YOU saw him on the wharf that night,
and you could tell how he looked.”
“He was as sober as I was,” returned Randolph indignantly, as he
recalled the incident of the flask and the dead man's caution. From
recalling it to repeating it followed naturally, and he presently
related the whole story of his meeting with Captain Dornton to the
brightly interested eyes beside him. When he had finished, she leaned
toward him in girlish confidence, and said:--
“Yes; but EVEN THAT they tell to show how intoxicated be must have been
to have given up his portmanteau to an utter stranger like you.” She
stopped, colored, and yet, reflecting his own half smile, she added:
“You know what I mean. For they all agree how nice it was of you not to
take any advantage of his condition, and Dingwall said your honesty and
faithfulness struck Revelstoke so much that he made a place for you at
the bank. Now I think,” she continued, with delightful naivete, “it was
a proof of poor Jack's BEING PERFECTLY SOBER, that he knew whom he was
trusting, and saw just what you were, at once. There! But I suppose you
must not talk to me any longer, but must make yourself agreeable to some
one else. But it was very nice of you to tell me all this. I wish you
knew my guardian. You'd like him. Do you ever go to England? Do come and
see us.”
These confidences had not been observed by the others, and Miss Avondale
appeared to confine her attentions to Sir William, who seemed to be
equally absorbed, except that once he lifted his eyes toward Randolph,
as if in answer to some remark from her. It struck Randolph that he was
the subject of their conversation, and this did not tend to allay the
irritation of a mind already wounded by the contrast of HER lack of
sympathy for the dead man who had befriended and trusted her to the
simple faith of the girl beside him, who was still loyal to a mere
childish recollection.
After the ladies had rustled away, Sir William moved his seat beside
Randolph. His manner seemed to combine Mr. Dingwall's restraint with
a certain assumption of the man of the world, more notable for its
frankness than its tactfulness.
“Sad business this of my brother's, eh,” he said, lighting a cigar;
“any way you take it, eh? You saw him last, eh?” The interrogating word,
however, seemed to be only an exclamation of habit, for he seldom waited
for an answer.
“I really don't know,” said Randolph, “as I saw him only ONCE, and he
left me on the wharf. I know no more where he went to then than where he
came from before. Of course you must know all the rest, and how he came
to be drowned.”
“Yes; it really did not matter much. The whole question was
identification and proof of death, you know. Beastly job, eh?”
“Was that his body YOU were helping to get ashore at the wharf one
Sunday?” asked Randolph bluntly, now fully recognizing the likeness that
had puzzled him in Sir William. “I didn't see any resemblance.”
“Precious few would. I didn't--though it's true I hadn't seen him for
eight years. Poor old chap been knocked about so he hadn't a feature
left, eh? But his shipmate knew him, and there were his traps on the
ship.”
Then, for the first time, Randolph heard the grim and sordid details
of John Dornton's mysterious disappearance. He had arrived the morning
before that eventful day on an Australian bark as the principal
passenger. The vessel itself had an evil repute, and was believed to
have slipped from the hands of the police at Melbourne. John Dornton
had evidently amassed a considerable fortune in Australia, although
an examination of his papers and effects showed it to be in drafts and
letters of credit and shares, and that he had no ready money--a fact
borne out by the testimony of his shipmates. The night he arrived was
spent in an orgy on board ship, which he did not leave until the early
evening of the next day, although, after his erratic fashion, he had
ordered a room at a hotel. That evening he took ashore a portmanteau,
evidently intending to pass the night at his hotel. He was never seen
again, although some of the sailors declared that they had seen him on
the wharf WITHOUT THE PORTMANTEAU, and they had drunk together at a low
grog shop on the street corner. He had evidently fallen through some
hole in the wharf. As he was seen only with the sailors, who also knew
he had no ready money on his person, there was no suspicion of foul
play.
“For all that, don't you know,” continued Sir William, with a forced
laugh, which struck Randolph as not only discordant, but as having an
insolent significance, “it might have been a deuced bad business
for YOU, eh? Last man who was with him, eh? In possession of his
portmanteau, eh? Wearing his clothes, eh? Awfully clever of you to
go straight to the bank with it. 'Pon my word, my legal man wanted to
pounce down on you as 'accessory' until I and Dingwall called him off.
But it's all right now.”
Randolph's antagonism to the man increased. “The investigation seems to
have been peculiar,” he said dryly, “for, if I remember rightly, at the
coroner's inquest on the body I saw you with, the verdict returned was
of the death of an UNKNOWN man.”
“Yes; we hadn't clear proof of identity then,” he returned coolly, “but
we had a reexamination of the body before witnesses afterward, and
a verdict according to the facts. That was kept out of the papers
in deference to the feelings of the family and friends. I fancy you
wouldn't have liked to be cross-examined before a stupid jury about what
you were doing with Jack's portmanteau, even if WE were satisfied with
it.”
“I should have been glad to testify to the kindness of your brother,
at any risk,” returned Randolph stoutly. “You have heard that the
portmanteau was stolen from me, but the amount of money it contained has
been placed in Mr. Dingwall's hands for disposal.”
“Its contents were known, and all that's been settled,” returned Sir
William, rising. “But,” he continued, with his forced laugh, which to
Randolph's fancy masked a certain threatening significance, “I say,
it would have been a beastly business, don't you know, if you HAD been
called upon to produce it again--ha, ha!--eh?”
Returning to the dining room, Randolph found Miss Avondale alone on a
corner of the sofa. She swept her skirts aside as he approached, as an
invitation for him to sit beside her. Still sore from his experience,
he accepted only in the hope that she was about to confide to him her
opinion of this strange story. But, to his chagrin, she looked at him
over her fan with a mischievous tolerance. “You seemed more interested
in the cousin than the brother of your patron.”
Once Randolph might have been flattered at this. But her speech
seemed to him only an echo of the general heartlessness. “I found Miss
Eversleigh very sympathetic over the fate of the unfortunate man, whom
nobody else here seems to care for,” said Randolph coldly.
“Yes,” returned Miss Avondale composedly; “I believe she was a great
friend of Captain Dornton when she was quite a child, and I don't think
she can expect much from Sir William, who is very different from his
brother. In fact, she was one of the relatives who came over here in
quest of the captain, when it was believed he was living and the heir.
He was quite a patron of hers.”
“But was he not also one of yours?” said Randolph bluntly.
“I think I told you I was the friend of the boy and of poor Paquita, the
boy's mother,” said Miss Avondale quietly. “I never saw Captain Dornton
but twice.”
Randolph noticed that she had not said “wife,” although in her previous
confidences she had so described the mother. But, as Dingwall had said,
why should she have exposed the boy's illegitimacy to a comparative
stranger; and if she herself had been deceived about it, why should he
expect her to tell him? And yet--he was not satisfied.
He was startled by a little laugh. “Well, I declare, you look as if
you resented the fact that your benefactor had turned out to be a
baronet--just as in some novel--and that you have rendered a service
to the English aristocracy. If you are thinking of poor Bobby,” she
continued, without the slightest show of self-consciousness, “Sir
William will provide for him, and thinks of taking him to England to
restore his health. Now”--with her smiling, tolerant superiority--“you
must go and talk to Miss Eversleigh. I see her looking this way, and I
don't think she half likes me as it is.”
Randolph, who, however, also saw that Sir William was lounging toward
them, here rose formally, as if permitting the latter to take the
vacated seat. This partly imposed on him the necessity of seeking Miss
Eversleigh, who, having withdrawn to the other end of the room, was
turning over the leaves of an album. As Randolph joined her, she said,
without looking up, “Is Miss Avondale a friend of yours?”
The question was so pertinent to his reflections at the moment that he
answered impulsively, “I really don't know.”
“Yes, that's the answer, I think, most of her acquaintances would give,
if they were asked the same question and replied honestly,” said the
young girl, as if musing.
“Even Sir William?” suggested Randolph, half smiling, yet wondering at
her unlooked-for serious shrewdness as he glanced toward the sofa.
“Yes; but HE wouldn't care. You see, there would be a pair of them.” She
stopped with a slight blush, as if she had gone too far, but corrected
herself in her former youthful frankness: “You don't mind my saying what
I did of her? You're not such a PARTICULAR friend?”
“We both owe a debt of gratitude to your cousin Jack,” said Randolph, in
some embarrassment.
“Yes, but YOU feel it and she doesn't. So that doesn't make you
friends.”
“But she has taken good care of Captain Dornton's child,” suggested
Randolph loyally.
He stopped, however, feeling that he was on dangerous ground. But Miss
Eversleigh put her own construction on his reticence, and said,--
“I don't think she cares for it much--or for ANY children.”
Randolph remembered his own impression the only time he had ever seen
her with the child, and was struck with the young girl's instinct again
coinciding with his own. But, possibly because he knew he could never
again feel toward Miss Avondale as he had, he was the more anxious to
be just, and he was about to utter a protest against this general
assumption, when the voice of Sir William broke in upon them. He was
taking his leave--and the opportunity of accompanying Miss Avondale
to her lodgings on the way to his hotel. He lingered a moment over his
handshaking with Randolph.
“Awfully glad to have met you, and I fancy you're awfully glad to get
rid of what they call your 'trust.' Must have given you a beastly lot of
bother, eh--might have given you more?”
He nodded familiarly to Miss Eversleigh, and turned away with Miss
Avondale, who waved her usual smiling patronage to Randolph, even
including his companion in that half-amused, half-superior salutation.
Perhaps it was this that put a sudden hauteur into the young girl's
expression as she stared at Miss Avondale's departing figure.
“If you ever come to England, Mr. Trent,” she said, with a pretty
dignity in her youthful face, “I hope you will find some people not
quite so rude as my cousin and”--
“Miss Avondale, you would say,” returned Randolph quietly. “As to HER,
I am quite accustomed to her maturer superiority, which, I am afraid,
is the effect of my own youth and inexperience; and I believe that, in
course of time, your cousin's brusqueness might be as easily understood
by me. I dare say,” he added, with a laugh, “that I must seem to them
a very romantic visionary with my 'trust,' and the foolish importance I
have put upon a very trivial occurrence.”
“I don't think so,” said the girl quickly, “and I consider Bill very
rude, and,” she added, with a return of her boyish frankness, “I shall
tell him so. As for Miss Avondale, she's AT LEAST thirty, I understand;
perhaps she can't help showing it in that way, too.”
But here Randolph, to evade further personal allusions, continued
laughingly: “And as I've LOST my 'trust,' I haven't even that to show in
defense. Indeed, when you all are gone I shall have nothing to remind me
of my kind benefactor. It will seem like a dream.”
Miss Eversleigh was silent for a moment, and then glanced quickly
around her. The rest of the company were their elders, and, engaged in
conversation at the other end of the apartment, had evidently left the
young people to themselves.
“Wait a moment,” she said, with a youthful air of mystery and
earnestness. Randolph saw that she had slipped an Indian bracelet,
profusely hung with small trinkets, from her arm to her wrist, and was
evidently selecting one. It proved to be a child's tiny ring with a
small pearl setting. “This was given to me by Cousin Jack,” said Miss
Eversleigh in a low voice, “when I was a child, at some frolic or
festival, and I have kept it ever since. I brought it with me when we
came here as a kind of memento to show him. You know that is impossible
now. You say you have nothing of his to keep. Will you accept this?
I know he would be glad to know you had it. You could wear it on your
watch chain. Don't say no, but take it.”
Protesting, yet filled with a strange joy and pride, Randolph took it
from the young girl's hand. The little color which had deepened on
her cheek cleared away as he thanked her gratefully, and with a quiet
dignity she arose and moved toward the others. Randolph did not linger
long after this, and presently took his leave of his host and hostess.
It seemed to him that he walked home that night in the whirling clouds
of his dispelled dream. The airy structure he had built up for the last
three months had collapsed. The enchanted canopy under which he had
stood with Miss Avondale was folded forever. The romance he had evolved
from his strange fortune had come to an end, not prosaically, as such
romances are apt to do, but with a dramatic termination which, however,
was equally fatal to his hopes. At any other time he might have
projected the wildest hopes from the fancy that he and Miss Avondale
were orphaned of a common benefactor; but it was plain that her
interests were apart from his. And there was an indefinable something he
did not understand, and did not want to understand, in the story she had
told him. How much of it she had withheld, not so much from delicacy or
contempt for his understanding as a desire to mislead him, he did not
know. His faith in her had gone with his romance. It was not strange
that the young English girl's unsophisticated frankness and simple
confidences lingered longest in his memory, and that when, a few days
later, Mr. Dingwall informed him that Miss Avondale had sailed for
England with the Dornton family, he was more conscious of a loss in the
stranger girl's departure.
“I suppose Miss Avondale takes charge of--of the boy, sir?” he said
quietly.
Mr. Dingwall gave him a quick glance. “Possibly. Sir William has behaved
with great--er--consideration,” he replied briefly.