Randolph's nature was too hopeful and recuperative to allow him to
linger idly in the past. He threw himself into his work at the bank with
his old earnestness and a certain simple conscientiousness which, while
it often provoked the raillery of his fellow clerks, did not escape the
eyes of his employers. He was advanced step by step, and by the end
of the year was put in charge of the correspondence with banks and
agencies. He had saved some money, and had made one or two profitable
investments. He was enabled to take better apartments in the same
building he had occupied. He had few of the temptations of youth. His
fear of poverty and his natural taste kept him from the speculative and
material excesses of the period. A distrust of his romantic weakness
kept him from society and meaner entanglements which might have beset
his good looks and good nature. He worked in his rooms at night and
forbore his old evening rambles.
As the year wore on to the anniversary of his arrival, he thought much
of the dead man who had inspired his fortunes, and with it a sense of
his old doubts and suspicions revived. His reason had obliged him to
accept the loss of the fateful portmanteau as an ordinary theft; his
instinct remained unconvinced. There was no superstition connected
with his loss. His own prosperity had not been impaired by it. On the
contrary, he reflected bitterly that the dead man had apparently died
only to benefit others. At such times he recalled, with a pleasure that
he knew might become perilous, the tall English girl who had defended
Dornton's memory and echoed his own sympathy. But that was all over now.
One stormy night, not unlike that eventful one of his past experience,
Randolph sought his rooms in the teeth of a southwest gale. As he
buffeted his way along the rain-washed pavement of Montgomery Street, it
was not strange that his thoughts reverted to that night and the memory
of his dead protector. But reaching his apartment, he sternly banished
them with the vanished romance they revived, and lighting his lamp, laid
out his papers in the prospect of an evening of uninterrupted work.
He was surprised, however, after a little interval, by the sound of
uncertain and shuffling steps on the half-lighted passage outside, the
noise of some heavy article set down on the floor, and then a tentative
knock at his door. A little impatiently he called, “Come in.”
The door opened slowly, and out of the half obscurity of the passage
a thickset figure lurched toward him into the full light of the room.
Randolph half rose, and then sank back into his chair, awed, spellbound,
and motionless. He saw the figure standing plainly before him; he saw
distinctly the familiar furniture of his room, the storm-twinkling
lights in the windows opposite, the flash of passing carriage lamps in
the street below. But the figure before him was none other than the dead
man of whom he had just been thinking.
The figure looked at him intently, and then burst into a fit of
unmistakable laughter. It was neither loud nor unpleasant, and yet
it provoked a disagreeable recollection. Nevertheless, it dissipated
Randolph's superstitious tremor, for he had never before heard of a
ghost who laughed heartily.
“You don't remember me,” said the man. “Belay there, and I'll freshen
your memory.” He stepped back to the door, opened it, put his arm
out into the hall, and brought in a portmanteau, closed the door, and
appeared before Randolph again with the portmanteau in his hand. It was
the one that had been stolen. “There!” he said.
“Captain Dornton,” murmured Randolph.
The man laughed again and flung down the portmanteau. “You've got
my name pat enough, lad, I see; but I reckoned you'd have spotted ME
without that portmanteau.”
“I see you've got it back,” stammered Randolph in his embarrassment. “It
was--stolen from me.”
Captain Dornton laughed again, dropped into a chair, rubbed his hands on
his knees, and turned his face toward Randolph. “Yes; I stole it--or had
it stolen--the same thing, for I'm responsible.”
“But I would have given it up to YOU at once,” said Randolph
reproachfully, clinging to the only idea he could understand in his
utter bewilderment. “I have religiously and faithfully kept it for you,
with all its contents, ever since--you disappeared.”
“I know it, lad,” said Captain Dornton, rising, and extending a brown,
weather-beaten hand which closed heartily on the young man's; “no need
to say that. And you've kept it even better than you know. Look here!”
He lifted the portmanteau to his lap and disclosed BEHIND the usual
small pouch or pocket in the lid a slit in the lining. “Between the
lining and the outer leather,” he went on grimly, “I had two or three
bank notes that came to about a thousand dollars, and some papers, lad,
that, reckoning by and large, might be worth to me a million. When I got
that portmanteau back they were all there, gummed in, just as I had left
them. I didn't show up and come for them myself, for I was lying low at
the time, and--no offense, lad--I didn't know how you stood with a party
who was no particular friend of mine. An old shipmate whom I set to
watch that party quite accidentally run across your bows in the ferry
boat, and heard enough to make him follow in your wake here, where he
got the portmanteau. It's all right,” he said, with a laugh, waving
aside with his brown hand Randolph's protesting gesture. “The old
bag's only got back to its rightful owner. It mayn't have been got in
shipshape 'Frisco style, but when a man's life is at stake, at least,
when it's a question of his being considered dead or alive, he's got to
take things as he finds 'em, and I found 'em d--- bad.”
In a flash of recollection Randolph remembered the obtruding miner on
the ferry boat, the same figure on the wharf corner, and the advantage
taken of his absence with Miss Avondale. And Miss Avondale was the
“party” this man's shipmate was watching! He felt his face crimsoning,
yet he dared not question him further, nor yet defend her. Captain
Dornton noticed it, and with a friendly tact, which Randolph had not
expected of him, rising again, laid his hand gently on the young man's
shoulder.
“Look here, lad,” he said, with his pleasant smile; “don't you worry
your head about the ways or doings of the Dornton family, or any of
their friends. They're a queer lot--including your humble servant.
You've done the square thing accordin' to your lights. You've ridden
straight from start to finish, with no jockeying, and I shan't forget
it. There are only two men who haven't failed me when I trusted them.
One was you when I gave you my portmanteau; the other was Jack Redhill
when he stole it from you.”
He dropped back in his chair again, and laughed silently.
“Then you did not fall overboard as they supposed,” stammered Randolph
at last.
“Not much! But the next thing to it. It wasn't the water that I took in
that knocked me out, my lad, but something stronger. I was shanghaied.”
“Shanghaied?” repeated Randolph vacantly.
“Yes, shanghaied! Hocused! Drugged at that gin mill on the wharf by
a lot of crimps, who, mistaking me for a better man, shoved me,
blind drunk and helpless, down the steps into a boat, and out to a
short-handed brig in the stream. When I came to I was outside the Heads,
pointed for Guayaquil. When they found they'd captured, not a poor Jack,
but a man who'd trod a quarterdeck, who knew, and was known at every
port on the trading line, and who could make it hot for them, they were
glad to compromise and set me ashore at Acapulco, and six weeks later I
landed in 'Frisco.”
“Safe and sound, thank Heaven!” said Randolph joyously.
“Not exactly, lad,” said Captain Dornton grimly, “but dead and sat
upon by the coroner, and my body comfortably boxed up and on its way to
England.”
“But that was nine months ago. What have you been doing since? Why
didn't you declare yourself then?” said Randolph impatiently, a little
irritated by the man's extreme indifference. He really talked like an
amused spectator of his own misfortunes.
“Steady, lad. I know what you're going to say. I know all that happened.
But the first thing I found when I got back was that the shanghai
business had saved my life; that but for that I would have really been
occupying that box on its way to England, instead of the poor devil who
was taken for me.”
A cold tremor passed over Randolph. Captain Dornton, however, was
tolerantly smiling.
“I don't understand,” said Randolph breathlessly.
Captain Dornton rose and, walking to the door, looked out into the
passage; then he shut the door carefully and returned, glancing about
the room and at the storm-washed windows. “I thought I heard some one
outside. I'm lying low just now, and only go out at night, for I don't
want this thing blown before I'm ready. Got anything to drink here?”
Randolph replied by taking a decanter of whiskey and glasses from a
cupboard. The captain filled his glass, and continued with the same
gentle but exasperating nonchalance, “Mind my smoking?”
“Not at all,” said Randolph, pushing a cigar toward him. But the captain
put it aside, drew from his pocket a short black clay pipe, stuffed it
with black “Cavendish plug,” which he had first chipped off in the
palm of his hand with a large clasp knife, lighted it, and took a few
meditative whiffs. Then, glancing at Randolph's papers, he said, “I'm
not keeping you from your work, lad?” and receiving a reply in the
negative, puffed at his pipe and once more settled himself comfortably
in his chair, with his dark, bearded profile toward Randolph.
“You were saying just now you didn't understand,” he went on slowly,
without looking up; “so you must take your own bearings from what
I'm telling you. When I met you that night I had just arrived from
Melbourne. I had been lucky in some trading speculations I had out
there, and I had some bills with me, but no money except what I had
tucked in the skin of that portmanteau and a few papers connected with
my family at home. When a man lives the roving kind of life I have, he
learns to keep all that he cares for under his own hat, and isn't apt
to blab to friends. But it got out in some way on the voyage that I had
money, and as there was a mixed lot of 'Sydney ducks' and 'ticket of
leave men' on board, it seems they hatched a nice little plot to waylay
me on the wharf on landing, rob me, and drop me into deep water. To make
it seem less suspicious, they associated themselves with a lot of crimps
who were on the lookout for our sailors, who were going ashore that
night too. I'd my suspicions that a couple of those men might be waiting
for me at the end of the wharf. I left the ship just a minute or two
before the sailors did. Then I met you. That meeting, my lad, was
my first step toward salvation. For the two men let you pass with my
portmanteau, which they didn't recognize, as I knew they would ME, and
supposed you were a stranger, and lay low, waiting for me. I, who went
into the gin-mill with the other sailors, was foolish enough to drink,
and was drugged and crimped as they were. I hadn't thought of that. A
poor devil of a ticket of leave man, about my size, was knocked down
for me, and,” he added, suppressing a laugh, “will be buried, deeply
lamented, in the chancel of Dornton Church. While the row was going on,
the skipper, fearing to lose other men, warped out into the stream,
and so knew nothing of what happened to me. When they found what they
thought was my body, he was willing to identify it in the hope that
the crime might be charged to the crimps, and so did the other sailor
witnesses. But my brother Bill, who had just arrived here from Callao,
where he had been hunting for me, hushed it up to prevent a scandal.
All the same, Bill might have known the body wasn't mine, even though he
hadn't seen me for years.”
“But it was frightfully disfigured, so that even I, who saw you only
once, could not have sworn it was NOT you,” said Randolph quickly.
“Humph!” said Captain Dornton musingly. “Bill may have acted on the
square--though he was in a d----d hurry.”
“But,” said Randolph eagerly, “you will put an end to all this now. You
will assert yourself. You have witnesses to prove your identity.”
“Steady, lad,” said the captain, waving his pipe gently. “Of course I
have. But”--he stopped, laid down his pipe, and put his hands doggedly
in his pockets--“IS IT WORTH IT?” Seeing the look of amazement in
Randolph's face, he laughed his low laugh, and settled himself back in
his chair again. “No,” he said quietly, “if it wasn't for my son, and
what's due him as my heir, I suppose--I reckon I'd just chuck the whole
d----d thing.”
“What!” said Randolph. “Give up the property, the title, the family
honor, the wrong done to your reputation, the punishment”--He hesitated,
fearing he had gone too far.
Captain Dornton withdrew his pipe from his mouth with a gesture of
caution, and holding it up, said: “Steady, lad. We'll come to THAT by
and by. As to the property and title, I cut and run from THEM ten
years ago. To me they meant only the old thing--the life of a country
gentleman, the hunting, the shooting, the whole beastly business that
the land, over there, hangs like a millstone round your neck. They meant
all this to me, who loved adventure and the sea from my cradle. I cut
the property, for I hated it, and I hate it still. If I went back I
should hear the sea calling me day and night; I should feel the breath
of the southwest trades in every wind that blew over that tight little
island yonder; I should be always scenting the old trail, lad, the trail
that leads straight out of the Gate to swoop down to the South Seas. Do
you think a man who has felt his ship's bows heave and plunge under him
in the long Pacific swell--just ahead of him a reef breaking white into
the lagoon, and beyond a fence of feathery palms--cares to follow hounds
over gray hedges under a gray November sky? And the society? A man who's
got a speaking acquaintance in every port from Acapulco to Melbourne,
who knows every den and every longshoreman in it from a South American
tienda to a Samoan beach-comber's hut,--what does he want with society?”
He paused as Randolph's eyes were fixed wonderingly on the first sign
of emotion on his weather-beaten face, which seemed for a moment to glow
with the strength and freshness of the sea, and then said, with a laugh:
“You stare, lad. Well, for all the Dorntons are rather proud of their
family, like as not there was some beastly old Danish pirate among them
long ago, and I've got a taste of his blood in me. But I'm not quite as
bad as that yet.”
He laughed, and carelessly went on: “As to the family honor, I don't
see that it will be helped by my ripping up the whole thing and perhaps
showing that Bill was a little too previous in identifying me. As to my
reputation, that was gone after I left home, and if I hadn't been the
legal heir they wouldn't have bothered their heads about me. My father
had given me up long ago, and there isn't a man, woman, or child that
wouldn't now welcome Bill in my place.”
“There is one who wouldn't,” said Randolph impulsively.
“You mean Caroline Avondale?” said Captain Dornton dryly.
Randolph colored. “No; I mean Miss Eversleigh, who was with your
brother.”
Captain Dornton reflected. “To be sure! Sibyl Eversleigh! I haven't seen
her since she was so high. I used to call her my little sweetheart. So
Sybby remembered Cousin Jack and came to find him? But when did you
meet her?” he asked suddenly, as if this was the only detail of the past
which had escaped him, fixing his frank eyes upon Randolph.
The young man recounted at some length the dinner party at Dingwall's,
his conversation with Miss Eversleigh, and his interview with Sir
William, but spoke little of Miss Avondale. To his surprise, the captain
listened smilingly, and only said: “That was like Billy to take a rise
out of you by pretending you were suspected. That's his way--a little
rough when you don't know him and he's got a little grog amidships. All
the same, I'd have given something to have heard him 'running' you, when
all the while you had the biggest bulge on him, only neither of you
knew it.” He laughed again, until Randolph, amazed at his levity and
indifference, lost his patience.
“Do you know,” he said bluntly, “that they don't believe you were
legally married?”
But Captain Dornton only continued to laugh, until, seeing his
companion's horrified face, he became demure. “I suppose Bill didn't,
for Bill had sense enough to know that otherwise he would have to take a
back seat to Bobby.”
“But did Miss Avondale know you were legally married, and that your son
was the heir?” asked Randolph bluntly.
“She had no reason to suspect otherwise, although we were married
secretly. She was an old friend of my wife, not particularly of mine.”
Randolph sat back amazed and horrified. Those were HER own words. Or was
this man deceiving him as the others had?
But the captain, eying him curiously, but still amusedly, added: “I even
thought of bringing her as one of my witnesses, until”--
“Until what?” asked Randolph quickly, as he saw the captain had
hesitated.
“Until I found she wasn't to be trusted; until I found she was too thick
with Bill,” said the captain bluntly. “And now she's gone to England
with him and the boy, I suppose she'll make him come to terms.”
“Come to terms?” echoed Randolph. “I don't understand.” Yet he had an
instinctive fear that he did.
“Well,” said the captain slowly, “suppose she might prefer the chance of
being the wife of a grown-up baronet to being the governess of one who
was only a minor? She's a cute girl,” he added dryly.
“But,” said Randolph indignantly, “you have other witnesses, I hope.”
“Of course I have. I've got the Spanish records now from the Callao
priest, and they're put in a safe place should anything happen to me--if
anything could happen to a dead man!” he added grimly. “These proofs
were all I was waiting for before I made up my mind whether I should
blow the whole thing, or let it slide.”
Randolph looked again with amazement at this strange man who seemed so
indifferent to the claims of wealth, position, and even to revenge. It
seemed inconceivable, and yet he could not help being impressed with his
perfect sincerity. He was relieved, however, when Captain Dornton rose
with apparent reluctance and put away his pipe.
“Now look here, my lad, I'm right glad to have overhauled you again,
whatever happened or is going to happen, and there's my hand upon it!
Now, to come to business. I'm going over to England on this job, and I
want you to come and help me.”
Randolph's heart leaped. The appeal revived all his old boyish
enthusiasm, with his secret loyalty to the man before him. But he
suddenly remembered his past illusions, and for an instant he hesitated.
“But the bank,” he stammered, scarce knowing what to say.
The captain smiled. “I will pay you better than the bank; and at the end
of four months, in whatever way this job turns out, if you still wish to
return here, I will see that you are secured from any loss. Perhaps you
may be able to get a leave of absence. But your real object must be kept
a secret from every one. Not a word of my existence or my purpose must
be blown before I am ready. You and Jack Redhill are all that know it
now.”
“But you have a lawyer?” said the surprised Randolph.
“Not yet. I'm my own lawyer in this matter until I get fairly under way.
I've studied the law enough to know that as soon as I prove that I'm
alive the case must go on on account of my heir, whether I choose to cry
quits or not. And it's just THAT that holds my hand.”
Randolph stared at the extraordinary man before him. For a moment, as
the strange story of his miraculous escape and his still more wonderful
indifference to it all recurred to his mind, he felt a doubt of the
narrator's truthfulness or his sanity. But another glance at the
sailor's frank eyes dispelled that momentary suspicion. He held out his
hand as frankly, and grasping Captain Dornton's, said, “I will go.”
V
Randolph's request for a four months' leave of absence was granted with
little objection and no curiosity. He had acquired the confidence of his
employers, and beyond Mr. Revelstoke's curt surprise that a young fellow
on the road to fortune should sacrifice so much time to irrelevant
travel, and the remark, “But you know your own business best,” there was
no comment. It struck the young man, however, that Mr. Dingwall's slight
coolness on receiving the news might be attributed to a suspicion that
he was following Miss Avondale, whom he had fancied Dingwall disliked,
and he quickly made certain inquiries in regard to Miss Eversleigh and
the possibility of his meeting her. As, without intending it, and to his
own surprise, he achieved a blush in so doing, which Dingwall noted, he
received a gracious reply, and the suggestion that it was “quite proper”
for him, on arriving, to send the young lady his card.
Captain Dornton, under the alias of “Captain Johns,” was ready to catch
the next steamer to the Isthmus, and in two days they sailed. The voyage
was uneventful, and if Randolph had expected any enthusiasm on the part
of the captain in the mission on which he was now fairly launched, he
would have been disappointed. Although his frankness was unchanged, he
volunteered no confidences. It was evident he was fully acquainted with
the legal strength of his claim, yet he, as evidently, deferred making
any plan of redress until he reached England. Of Miss Eversleigh he was
more communicative. “You would have liked her better, my lad, it you
hadn't been bewitched by the Avondale woman, for she is the whitest of
the Dorntons.” In vain Randolph protested truthfully, yet with an even
more convincing color, that it had made no difference, and he HAD
liked her. The captain laughed. “Ay, lad! But she's a poor orphan, with
scarcely a hundred pounds a year, who lives with her guardian, an
old clergyman. And yet,” he added grimly, “there are only three lives
between her and the property--mine, Bobby's, and Bill's--unless HE
should marry and have an heir.”
“The more reason why you should assert yourself and do what you can for
her now,” said Randolph eagerly.
“Ay,” returned the captain, with his usual laugh, “when she was a child
I used to call her my little sweetheart, and gave her a ring, and I
reckon I promised to marry her, too, when she grew up.”
The truthful Randolph would have told him of Miss Evereleigh's gift,
but unfortunately he felt himself again blushing, and fearful lest the
captain would misconstrue his confusion, he said nothing.
Except on this occasion, the captain talked with Randolph chiefly of his
later past,--of voyages he had made, of places they were passing, and
ports they visited. He spent much of the time with the officers, and
even the crew, over whom he seemed to exercise a singular power,
and with whom he exhibited an odd freemasonry. To Randolph's eyes he
appeared to grow in strength and stature in the salt breath of the sea,
and although he was uniformly kind, even affectionate, to him, he was
brusque to the other passengers, and at times even with his friends the
sailors. Randolph sometimes wondered how he would treat a crew of his
own. He found some answer to that question in the captain's manner to
Jack Redhill, the abstractor of the portmanteau, and his old shipmate,
who was accompanying the captain in some dependent capacity, but who
received his master's confidences and orders with respectful devotion.
It was a cold, foggy morning, nearly two months later, that they landed
at Plymouth. The English coast had been a vague blank all night, only
pierced, long hours apart, by dim star-points or weird yellow beacon
flashes against the horizon. And this vagueness and unreality increased
on landing, until it seemed to Randolph that they had slipped into a
land of dreams. The illusion was kept up as they walked in the weird
shadows through half-lit streets into a murky railway station throbbing
with steam and sudden angry flashes in the darkness, and then drew away
into what ought to have been the open country, but was only gray plains
of mist against a lost horizon. Sometimes even the vague outlook was
obliterated by passing trains coming from nowhere and slipping into
nothingness. As they crept along with the day, without, however, any
lightening of the opaque vault overhead to mark its meridian, there
came at times a thinning of the gray wall on either side of the track,
showing the vague bulk of a distant hill, the battlemented sky line of
an old-time hall, or the spires of a cathedral, but always melting back
into the mist again as in a dream. Then vague stretches of gloom
again, foggy stations obscured by nebulous light and blurred and moving
figures, and the black relief of a tunnel. Only once the captain,
catching sight of Randolph's awed face under the lamp of the smoking
carriage, gave way to his long, low laugh. “Jolly place, England--so
very 'Merrie.'” And then they came to a comparatively lighter, broader,
and more brilliantly signaled tunnel filled with people, and as they
remained in it, Randolph was told it was London. With the sensation
of being only half awake, he was guided and put into a cab by his
companion, and seemed to be completely roused only at the hotel.
It had been arranged that Randolph should first go down to Chillingworth
rectory and call on Miss Eversleigh, and, without disclosing his
secret, gather the latest news from Dornton Hall, only a few miles from
Chillingworth. For this purpose he had telegraphed to her that evening,
and had received a cordial response. The next morning he arose early,
and, in spite of the gloom, in the glow of his youthful optimism entered
the bedroom of the sleeping Captain Dornton, and shook him by the
shoulder in lieu of the accolade, saying: “Rise, Sir John Dornton!”
The captain, a light sleeper, awoke quickly. “Thank you, my lad, all the
same, though I don't know that I'm quite ready yet to tumble up to that
kind of piping. There's a rotten old saying in the family that only
once in a hundred years the eldest son succeeds. That's why Bill was so
cocksure, I reckon. Well?”
“In an hour I'm off to Chillingworth to begin the campaign,” said
Randolph cheerily.
“Luck to you, my boy, whatever happens. Clap a stopper on your jaws,
though, now and then. I'm glad you like Sybby, but I don't want you to
like her so much as to forget yourself and give me away.”
Half an hour out of London the fog grew thinner, breaking into lace-like
shreds in the woods as the train sped by, or expanding into lustrous
tenuity above him. Although the trees were leafless, there was some
recompense in the glimpses their bare boughs afforded of clustering
chimneys and gables nestling in ivy. An infinite repose had been laid
upon the landscape with the withdrawal of the fog, as of a veil lifted
from the face of a sleeper. All his boyish dreams of the mother country
came back to him in the books he had read, and re-peopled the vast
silence. Even the rotting leaves that lay thick in the crypt-like woods
seemed to him the dead laurels of its past heroes and sages. Quaint
old-time villages, thatched roofs, the ever-recurring square towers of
church or hall, the trim, ordered parks, tiny streams crossed by heavy
stone bridges much too large for them--all these were only pages of
those books whose leaves he seemed to be turning over. Two hours of this
fancy, and then the train stopped at a station within a mile or two of
a bleak headland, a beacon, and the gray wash of a pewter-colored sea,
where a hilly village street climbed to a Norman church tower and the
ivied gables of a rectory.
Miss Eversleigh, dignifiedly tall, but youthfully frank, as he
remembered her, was waiting to drive him in a pony trap to the rectory.
A little pink, with suppressed consciousness and the responsibilities of
presenting a stranger guest to her guardian, she seemed to Randolph more
charming than ever.
But her first word of news shocked and held him breathless. Bobby, the
little orphan, a frail exotic, had succumbed to the Northern winter. A
cold caught in New York had developed into pneumonia, and he died on the
passage. Miss Avondale, although she had received marked attention from
Sir William, returned to America in the same ship.
“I really don't think she was quite as devoted to the poor child as all
that, you know,” she continued with innocent frankness, “and Cousin Bill
was certainly most kind to them both, yet there really seemed to be some
coolness between them after the child's death. But,” she added suddenly,
for the first time observing her companion's evident distress, and
coloring in confusion, “I beg your pardon--I've been horribly rude and
heartless. I dare say the poor boy was very dear to you, and of course
Miss Avondale was your friend. Please forgive me!”
Randolph, intent only on that catastrophe which seemed to wreck all
Captain Dornton's hopes and blunt his only purpose for declaring
himself, hurriedly reassured her, yet was not sorry his agitation had
been misunderstood. And what was to be done? There was no train back to
London for four hours. He dare not telegraph, and if he did, could he
trust to his strange patron's wise conduct under the first shock of this
news to his present vacillating purpose? He could only wait.
Luckily for his ungallant abstraction, they were speedily at the
rectory, where a warm welcome from Mr. Brunton, Sibyl's guardian, and
his family forced him to recover himself, and showed him that the
story of his devotion to John Dornton had suffered nothing from Miss
Eversleigh's recital. Distraught and anxious as he was, he could not
resist the young girl's offer after luncheon to show him the church with
the vault of the Dorntons and the tablet erected to John Dornton, and,
later, the Hall, only two miles distant. But here Randolph hesitated.
“I would rather not call on Sir William to-day,” he said.
“You need not. He is over at the horse show at Fern Dyke, and won't be
back till late. And if he has been forgathering with his boon companions
he won't be very pleasant company.”
“Sibyl!” said the rector in good-humored protest.
“Oh, Mr. Trent has had a little of Cousin Bill's convivial manners
before now,” said the young girl vivaciously, “and isn't shocked. But we
can see the Hall from the park on our way to the station.”
Even in his anxious preoccupation he could see that the church itself
was a quaint and wonderful preservation of the past. For four centuries
it had been sacred to the tombs of the Dorntons and their effigies in
brass and marble, yet, as Randolph glanced at the stately sarcophagus of
the unknown ticket of leave man, its complacent absurdity, combined with
his nervousness, made him almost hysterical. Yet again, it seemed to him
that something of the mystery and inviolability of the past now invested
that degraded dust, and it would be an equal impiety to disturb it. Miss
Eversleigh, again believing his agitation caused by the memory of
his old patron, tactfully hurried him away. Yet it was a more bitter
thought, I fear, that not only were his lips sealed to his charming
companion on the subject in which they could sympathize, but his anxiety
prevented him from availing himself of that interview to exchange the
lighter confidences he had eagerly looked forward to. It seemed cruel
that he was debarred this chance of knitting their friendship closer by
another of those accidents that had brought them together. And he was
aware that his gloomy abstraction was noticed by her. At first she
drew herself up in a certain proud reserve, and then, perhaps, his own
nervousness infecting her in turn, he was at last terrified to observe
that, as she stood before the tomb, her clear gray eyes filled with
tears.
“Oh, please don't do that--THERE, Miss Eversleigh,” he burst out
impulsively.
“I was thinking of Cousin Jack,” she said, a little startled at his
abruptness. “Sometimes it seems so strange that he is dead--I scarcely
can believe it.”
“I meant,” stammered Randolph, “that he is much happier--you know”--he
grew almost hysterical again as he thought of the captain lying
cheerfully in his bed at the hotel--“much happier than you or I,” he
added bitterly; “that is--I mean, it grieves me so to see YOU grieve,
you know.”
Miss Eversleigh did NOT know, but there was enough sincerity and real
feeling in the young fellow's voice and eyes to make her color slightly
and hurry him away to a locality less fraught with emotions. In a few
moments they entered the park, and the old Hall rose before them. It was
a great Tudor house of mullioned windows, traceries, and battlements; of
stately towers, moss-grown balustrades, and statues darkening with the
fog that was already hiding the angles and wings of its huge bulk. A
peacock spread its ostentatious tail on the broad stone steps before the
portal; a flight of rooks from the leafless elms rose above its stacked
and twisted chimneys. After all, how little had this stately incarnation
of the vested rights and sacred tenures of the past in common with the
laughing rover he had left in London that morning! And thinking of the
destinies that the captain held so lightly in his hand, and perhaps not
a little of the absurdity of his own position to the confiding young
girl beside him, for a moment he half hated him.
The fog deepened as they reached the station, and, as it seemed to
Randolph, made their parting still more vague and indefinite, and it
was with difficulty that he could respond to the young girl's frank hope
that he would soon return to them. Yet he half resolved that he would
not until he could tell her all.
Nevertheless, as the train crept more and more slowly, with halting
signals, toward London, he buoyed himself up with the hope that Captain
Dornton would still try conclusions for his patrimony, or at least come
to some compromise by which he might be restored to his rank and name.
But upon these hopes the vision of that great house settled firmly upon
its lands, held there in perpetuity by the dead and stretched-out hands
of those that lay beneath its soil, always obtruded itself. Then the
fog deepened, and the crawling train came to a dead stop at the next
station. The whole line was blocked. Four precious hours were hopelessly
lost.
Yet despite his impatience, he reentered London with the same dazed
semi-consciousness of feeling as on the night he had first arrived.
There seemed to have been no interim; his visit to the rectory and Hall,
and even his fateful news, were only a dream. He drove through the same
shadow to the hotel, was received by the same halo-encircled lights that
had never been put out. After glancing through the halls and reading
room he hurriedly made his way to his companion's room. The captain was
not there. He quickly summoned the waiter. The gentleman? Yes; Captain
Dornton had left with his servant, Redhill, a few hours after Mr. Trent
went away. He had left no message.
Again condemned to wait in inactivity, Randolph tried to resist a
certain uneasiness that was creeping over him, by attributing the
captain's absence to some unexpected legal consultation or the gathering
of evidence, his prolonged detention being due to the same fog that had
delayed his own train. But he was somewhat surprised to find that the
captain had ordered his luggage into the porter's care in the hall below
before leaving, and that nothing remained in his room but a few toilet
articles and the fateful portmanteau. The hours passed slowly. Owing to
that perpetual twilight in which he had passed the day, there seemed
no perceptible flight of time, and at eleven o'clock, the captain not
arriving, he determined to wait in the latter's room so as to be sure
not to miss him. Twelve o'clock boomed from an adjacent invisible
steeple, but still he came not. Overcome by the fatigue and excitement
of the day, Randolph concluded to lie down in his clothes on
the captain's bed, not without a superstitious and uncomfortable
recollection of that night, about a year before, when he had awaited
him vainly at the San Francisco hotel. Even the fateful portmanteau was
there to assist his gloomy fancy. Nevertheless, with the boom of one
o'clock in his drowsy ears as his last coherent recollection, he sank
into a dreamless sleep.
He was awakened by a tapping at his door, and jumped up to realize by
his watch and the still burning gaslight that it was nine o'clock. But
the intruder was only a waiter with a letter which he had brought to
Randolph's room in obedience to the instructions the latter had
given overnight. Not doubting it was from the captain, although the
handwriting of the address was unfamiliar, he eagerly broke the seal.
But he was surprised to read as follows:--
DEAR MR. TRENT,--We had such sad news from the Hall after you left.
Sir William was seized with a kind of fit. It appears that he had just
returned from the horse show, and had given his mare to the groom while
he walked to the garden entrance. The groom saw him turn at the yew
hedge, and was driving to the stables when he heard a queer kind of cry,
and turning back to the garden front, found poor Sir William lying on
the ground in convulsions. The doctor was sent for, and Mr. Brunton
and I went over to the Hall. The doctor thinks it was something like a
stroke, but he is not certain, and Sir William is quite delirious, and
doesn't recognize anybody. I gathered from the groom that he had been
DRINKING HEAVILY. Perhaps it was well that you did not see him, but I
thought you ought to know what had happened in case you came down again.
It's all very dreadful, and I wonder if that is why I was so nervous all
the afternoon. It may have been a kind of presentiment. Don't you think
so?
Yours faithfully,