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,
SIBYL EVERSLEIGH.
I am afraid Randolph thought more of the simple-minded girl who, in the midst of her excitement, turned to him half unconsciously, than he did of Sir William. Had it not been for the necessity of seeing the captain, he would probably have taken the next train to the rectory. Perhaps he might later. He thought little of Sir William’s illness, and was inclined to accept the young girl’s naive suggestion of its cause. He read and reread the letter, staring at the large, grave, childlike handwriting–so like herself–and obeying a sudden impulse, raised the signature, as gravely as if it had been her hand, to his lips.
Still the day advanced and the captain came not. Randolph found the inactivity insupportable. He knew not where to seek him; he had no more clue to his resorts or his friends–if, indeed, he had any in London–than he had after their memorable first meeting in San Francisco. He might, indeed, be the dupe of an impostor, who, at the eleventh hour, had turned craven and fled. He might be, in the captain’s indifference, a mere instrument set aside at his pleasure. Yet he could take advantage of Miss Eversleigh’s letter and seek her, and confess everything, and ask her advice. It was a great and at the moment it seemed to him an overwhelming temptation. But only for the moment. He had given his word to the captain–more, he had given his youthful FAITH. And, to his credit, he never swerved again. It seemed to him, too, in his youthful superstition, as he looked at the abandoned portmanteau, that he had again to take up his burden–his “trust.”
It was nearly four o’clock when the spell was broken. A large packet, bearing the printed address of a London and American bank, was brought to him by a special messenger; but the written direction was in the captain’s hand. Randolph tore it open. It contained one or two inclosures, which he hastily put aside for the letter, two pages of foolscap, which he read breathlessly:–
DEAR TRENT,–Don’t worry your head if I have slipped my cable without telling you. I’m all right, only I got the news you are bringing me, JUST AFTER YOU LEFT, by Jack Redhill, whom I had sent to Dornton Hall to see how the land lay the night before. It was not that I didn’t trust YOU, but HE had ways of getting news that you wouldn’t stoop to. You can guess, from what I have told you already, that, now Bobby is gone, there’s nothing to keep me here, and I’m following my own idea of letting the whole blasted thing slide. I only worked this racket for the sake of him. I’m sorry for him, but I suppose the poor little beggar couldn’t stand these sunless, God-forsaken longitudes any more than I could. Besides that, as I didn’t want to trust any lawyer with my secret, I myself had hunted up some books on the matter, and found that, by the law of entail, I’d have to rip up the whole blessed thing, and Bill would have had to pay back every blessed cent of what rents he had collected since he took hold–not to ME, but the ESTATE–with interest, and that no arrangement I could make with HIM would be legal on account of the boy. At least, that’s the way the thing seemed to pan out to me. So that when I heard of Bobby’s death I was glad to jump the rest, and that’s what I made up my mind to do.
But, like a blasted lubber, now that I COULD do it and cut right away, I must needs think that I’d like first to see Bill on the sly, without letting on to any one else, and tell him what I was going to do. I’d no fear that he’d object, or that he’d hesitate a minute to fall in with my plan of dropping my name and my game, and giving him full swing, while I stood out to sea and the South Pacific, and dropped out of his mess for the rest of my life. Perhaps I wanted to set his mind at rest, if he’d ever had any doubts; perhaps I wanted to have a little fun out of him for his d—-d previousness; perhaps, lad, I had a hankering to see the old place for the last time. At any rate, I allowed to go to Dornton Hall. I timed myself to get there about the hour you left, to keep out of sight until I knew he was returning from the horse show, and to waylay him ALONE and have our little talk without witnesses. I daren’t go to the Hall, for some of the old servants might recognize me.
I went down there with Jack Redhill, and we separated at the station. I hung around in the fog. I even saw you pass with Sibyl in the dogcart, but you didn’t see me. I knew the place, and just where to hide where I could have the chance of seeing him alone. But it was a beastly job waiting there. I felt like a d—-d thief instead of a man who was simply visiting his own. Yet, you mayn’t believe me, lad, but I hated the place and all it meant more than ever. Then, by and by, I heard him coming. I had arranged it all with myself to get into the yew hedge, and step out as he came to the garden entrance, and as soon as he recognized me to get him round the terrace into the summer house, where we could speak without danger.
I heard the groom drive away to the stable with the cart, and, sure enough, in a minute he came lurching along toward the garden door. He was mighty unsteady on his pins, and I reckon he was more than half full, which was a bad lookout for our confab. But I calculated that the sight of me, when I slipped out, would sober him. And, by —, it did! For his eyes bulged out of his head and got fixed there; his jaw dropped; he tried to strike at me with a hunting crop he was carrying, and then he uttered an ungodly yell you might have heard at the station, and dropped down in his tracks. I had just time to slip back into the hedge again before the groom came driving back, and then all hands were piped, and they took him into the house.
And of course the game was up, and I lost my only chance. I was thankful enough to get clean away without discovering myself, and I have to trust now to the fact of Bill’s being drunk, and thinking it was my ghost that he saw, in a touch of the jimjams! And I’m not sorry to have given him that start, for there was that in his eye, and that in the stroke he made, my lad, that showed a guilty conscience I hadn’t reckoned on. And it cured me of my wish to set his mind at ease. He’s welcome to all the rest.
And that’s why I’m going away–never to return. I’m sorry I couldn’t take you with me, but it’s better that I shouldn’t see you again, and that you didn’t even know WHERE I was gone. When you get this I shall be on blue water and heading for the sunshine. You’ll find two letters inclosed. One you need not open unless you hear that my secret was blown, and you are ever called upon to explain your relations with me. The other is my thanks, my lad, in a letter of credit on the bank, for the way you have kept your trust, and I believe will continue to keep it, to
JOHN DORNTON.
P.S. I hope you dropped a tear over my swell tomb at Dornton Church. All the same, I don’t begrudge it to the poor devil who lost his life instead of me.
J. D.
As Randolph read, he seemed to hear the captain’s voice throughout the letter, and even his low, characteristic laugh in the postscript. Then he suddenly remembered the luggage which the porter had said the captain had ordered to be taken below; but on asking that functionary he was told a conveyance for the Victoria Docks had called with an order, and taken it away at daybreak. It was evident that the captain had intended the letter should be his only farewell. Depressed and a little hurt at his patron’s abruptness, Randolph returned to his room. Opening the letter of credit, he found it was for a thousand pounds–a munificent beneficence, as it seemed to Randolph, for his dubious services, and a proof of his patron’s frequent declarations that he had money enough without touching the Dornton estates.
For a long time he sat with these sole evidences of the reality of his experience in his hands, a prey to a thousand surmises and conflicting thoughts. Was he the self-deceived disciple of a visionary, a generous, unselfish, but weak man, whose eccentricity passed even the bounds of reason? Who would believe the captain’s story or the captain’s motives? Who comprehend his strange quest and its stranger and almost ridiculous termination? Even if the seal of secrecy were removed in after years, what had he, Randolph, to show in corroboration of his patron’s claim?
Then it occurred to him that there was no reason why he should not go down to the rectory and see Miss Eversleigh again under pretense of inquiring after the luckless baronet, whose title and fortune had, nevertheless, been so strangely preserved. He began at once his preparations for the journey, and was nearly ready when a servant entered with a telegram. Randolph’s heart leaped. The captain had sent him news–perhaps had changed his mind! He tore off the yellow cover, and read,–
Sir William died at twelve o’clock without recovering consciousness.
S. EVERSLEIGH.
VI
For a moment Randolph gazed at the dispatch with a half-hysterical laugh, and then became as suddenly sane and cool. One thought alone was uppermost in his mind: the captain could not have heard this news yet, and if he was still within reach, or accessible by any means whatever, however determined his purpose, he must know it at once. The only clue to his whereabouts was the Victoria Docks. But that was something. In another moment Randolph was in the lower hall, had learned the quickest way of reaching the docks, and plunged into the street.
The fog here swooped down, and to the embarrassment of his mind was added the obscurity of light and distance, which halted him after a few hurried steps, in utter perplexity. Indistinct figures were here and there approaching him out of nothingness and melting away again into the greenish gray chaos. He was in a busy thoroughfare; he could hear the slow trample of hoofs, the dull crawling of vehicles, and the warning outcries of a traffic he could not see. Trusting rather to his own speed than that of a halting conveyance, he blundered on until he reached the railway station. A short but exasperating journey of impulses and hesitations, of detonating signals and warning whistles, and he at last stood on the docks, beyond him a vague bulk or two, and a soft, opaque flowing wall– the river!
But one steamer had left that day–the Dom Pedro, for the River Plate–two hours before, but until the fog thickened, a quarter of an hour ago, she could be seen, so his informant said, still lying, with steam up, in midstream. Yes, it was still possible to board her. But even as the boatman spoke, and was leading the way toward the landing steps, the fog suddenly lightened; a soft salt breath stole in from the distant sea, and a veil seemed to be lifted from the face of the gray waters. The outlines of the two shores came back; the spars of nearer vessels showed distinctly, but the space where the huge hulk had rested was empty and void. There was a trail of something darker and more opaque than fog itself lying near the surface of the water, but the Dom Pedro was a mere speck in the broadening distance.
A bright sun and a keen easterly wind were revealing the curling ridges of the sea beyond the headland when Randolph again passed the gates of Dornton Hall on his way to the rectory. Now, for the first time, he was able to see clearly the outlines of that spot which had seemed to him only a misty dream, and even in his preoccupation he was struck by its grave beauty. The leafless limes and elms in the park grouped themselves as part of the picturesque details of the Hall they encompassed, and the evergreen slope of firs and larches rose as a background to the gray battlements, covered with dark green ivy, whose rich shadows were brought out by the unwonted sunshine. With a half-repugnant curiosity he had tried to identify the garden entrance and the fateful yew hedge the captain had spoken of as he passed. But as quickly he fell back upon the resolution he had taken in coming there–to dissociate his secret, his experience, and his responsibility to his patron from his relations to Sibyl Eversleigh; to enjoy her companionship without an obtruding thought of the strange circumstances that had brought them together at first, or the stranger fortune that had later renewed their acquaintance. He had resolved to think of her as if she had merely passed into his life in the casual ways of society, with only her personal charms to set her apart from others. Why should his exclusive possession of a secret–which, even if confided to her, would only give her needless and hopeless anxiety–debar them from an exchange of those other confidences of youth and sympathy? Why could he not love her and yet withhold from her the knowledge of her cousin’s existence? So he had determined to make the most of his opportunity during his brief holiday; to avail himself of her naive invitation, and even of what he dared sometimes to think was her predilection for his companionship. And if, before he left, he had acquired a right to look forward to a time when her future and his should be one–but here his glowing fancy was abruptly checked by his arrival at the rectory door.
Mr. Brunton received him cordially, yet with a slight business preoccupation and a certain air of importance that struck him as peculiar. Sibyl, he informed him, was engaged at that moment with some friends who had come over from the Hall. Mr. Trent would understand that there was a great deal for her to do–in her present position. Wondering why SHE should be selected to do it instead of older and more experienced persons, Randolph, however, contented himself with inquiries regarding the details of Sir William’s seizure and death. He learned, as he expected, that nothing whatever was known of the captain’s visit, nor was there the least suspicion that the baronet’s attack was the result of any predisposing emotion. Indeed, it seemed more possible that his medical attendants, knowing something of his late excesses and their effect upon his constitution, preferred, for the sake of avoiding scandal, to attribute the attack to long-standing organic disease.
Randolph, who had already determined, as a forlorn hope, to write a cautious letter to the captain (informing him briefly of the news without betraying his secret, and directed to the care of the consignees of the Dom Pedro in Brazil, by the next post), was glad to be able to add this medical opinion to relieve his patron’s mind of any fear of having hastened his brother’s death by his innocent appearance. But here the entrance of Sibyl Eversleigh with her friends drove all else from his mind.
She looked so tall and graceful in her black dress, which set off her dazzling skin, and, with her youthful gravity, gave to her figure the charming maturity of a young widow, that he was for a moment awed and embarrassed. But he experienced a relief when she came eagerly toward him in all her old girlish frankness, and with even something of yearning expectation in her gray eyes.
“It was so good of you to come,” she said. “I thought you would imagine how I was feeling”– She stopped, as if she were conscious, as Randolph was, of a certain chill of unresponsiveness in the company, and said in an undertone, “Wait until we are alone.” Then, turning with a slight color and a pretty dignity toward her friends, she continued: “Lady Ashbrook, this is Mr. Trent, an old friend of both my cousins when they were in America.”
In spite of the gracious response of the ladies, Randolph was aware of their critical scrutiny of both himself and Miss Eversleigh, of the exchange of significant glances, and a certain stiffness in her guardian’s manner. It was quite enough to affect Randolph’s sensitiveness and bring out his own reserve.
Fancying, however, that his reticence disturbed Miss Eversleigh, he forced himself to converse with Lady Ashbrook–avoiding many of her pointed queries as to himself, his acquaintance with Sibyl, and the length of time he expected to stay in England–and even accompanied her to her carriage. And here he was rewarded by Sibyl running out with a crape veil twisted round her throat and head, and the usual femininely forgotten final message to her visitor. As the carriage drove away, she turned to Randolph, and said quickly,–
“Let us go in by way of the garden.”
It was a slight detour, but it gave them a few moments alone.
“It was so awful and sudden,” she said, looking gravely at Randolph, “and to think that only an hour before I had been saying unkind things of him! Of course,” she added naively, “they were true, and the groom admitted to me that the mare was overdriven and Sir William could hardly stand. And only to think of it! he never recovered complete consciousness, but muttered incoherently all the time. I was with him to the last, and he never said a word I could understand–only once.”
“What did he say?” asked Randolph uneasily.
“I don’t like to say–it was TOO dreadful!”
Randolph did not press her. Yet, after a pause, she said in a low voice, with a naivete impossible to describe, “It was, ‘Jack, damn you!'”
He did not dare to look at her, even with this grim mingling of farce and tragedy which seemed to invest every scene of that sordid drama. Miss Eversleigh continued gravely: “The groom’s name was Robert, but Jack might have been the name of one of his boon companions.”
Convinced that she suspected nothing, yet in the hope of changing the subject, Randolph said quietly: “I thought your guardian perhaps a little less frank and communicative to-day.”
“Yes,” said the young girl suddenly, with a certain impatience, and yet in half apology to her companion, “of course. He–THEY–all and everybody–are much more concerned and anxious about my new position than I am. It’s perfectly dreadful–this thinking of it all the time, arranging everything, criticising everything in reference to it, and the poor man who is the cause of it all not yet at rest in his grave! The whole thing is inhuman and unchristian!”
“I don’t understand,” stammered Randolph vaguely. “What IS your new position? What do you mean?”
The girl looked up in his face with surprise. “Why, didn’t you know? I’m the next of kin–I’m the heiress–and will succeed to the property in six months, when I am of age.”
In a flash of recollection Randolph suddenly recalled the captain’s words, “There are only three lives between her and the property.” Their meaning had barely touched his comprehension before. She was the heiress. Yes, save for the captain!
She saw the change, the wonder, even the dismay, in his face, and her own brightened frankly. “It’s so good to find one who never thought of it, who hadn’t it before him as the chief end for which I was born! Yes, I was the next of kin after dear Jack died and Bill succeeded, but there was every chance that he would marry and have an heir. And yet the moment he was taken ill that idea was uppermost in my guardian’s mind, good man as he is, and even forced upon me. If this–this property had come from poor Cousin Jack, whom I loved, there would have been something dear in it as a memory or a gift, but from HIM, whom I couldn’t bear–I know it’s wicked to talk that way, but it’s simply dreadful!”
“And yet,” said Randolph, with a sudden seriousness he could not control, “I honestly believe that Captain Dornton would be perfectly happy–yes, rejoiced!–if he knew the property had come to YOU.”
There was such an air of conviction, and, it seemed to the simple girl, even of spiritual insight, in his manner that her clear, handsome eyes rested wonderingly on his.
“Do you really think so?” she said thoughtfully. “And yet HE knows that I am like him. Yes,” she continued, answering Randolph’s look of surprise, “I am just like HIM in that. I loathe and despise the life that this thing would condemn me to; I hate all that it means, and all that it binds me to, as he used to; and if I could, I would cut and run from it as HE did.”
She spoke with a determined earnestness and warmth, so unlike her usual grave naivete that he was astonished. There was a flush on her cheek and a frank fire in her eye that reminded him strangely of the captain; and yet she had emphasized her words with a little stamp of her narrow foot and a gesture of her hand that was so untrained and girlish that he smiled, and said, with perhaps the least touch of bitterness in his tone, “But you will get over that when you come into the property.”
“I suppose I shall,” she returned, with an odd lapse to her former gravity and submissiveness. “That’s what they all tell me.”
“You will be independent and your own mistress,” he added.
“Independent,” she repeated impatiently, “with Dornton Hall and twenty thousand a year! Independent, with every duty marked out for me! Independent, with every one to criticise my smallest actions–every one who would never have given a thought to the orphan who was contented and made her own friends on a hundred a year! Of course you, who are a stranger, don’t understand; yet I thought that you”–she hesitated,–“would have thought differently.”
“Why?”
“Why, with your belief that one should make one’s own fortune,” she said.
“That would do for a man, and in that I respected Captain Dornton’s convictions, as you told them to me. But for a girl, how could she be independent, except with money?”
She shook her head as if unconvinced, but did not reply. They were nearing the garden porch, when she looked up, and said: “And as YOU’RE a man, you will be making your way in the world. Mr. Dingwall said you would.”
There was something so childishly trustful and confident in her assurance that he smiled. “Mr. Dingwall is too sanguine, but it gives me hope to hear YOU say so.”
She colored slightly, and said gravely: “We must go in now.” Yet she lingered for a moment before the door. For a long time afterward he had a very vivid recollection of her charming face, in its childlike gravity and its quaint frame of black crape, standing out against the sunset-warmed wall of the rectory. “Promise me you will not mind what these people say or do,” she said suddenly.
“I promise,” he returned, with a smile, “to mind only what YOU say or do.”
“But I might not be always quite right, you know,” she said naively.
“I’ll risk that.”
“Then, when we go in now, don’t talk much to me, but make yourself agreeable to all the others, and then go straight home to the inn, and don’t come here until after the funeral.”
The faintest evasive glint of mischievousness in her withdrawn eyes at this moment mitigated the austerity of her command as they both passed in.
Randolph had intended not to return to London until after the funeral, two days later, and spent the interesting day at the neighboring town, whence he dispatched his exploring and perhaps hopeless letter to the captain. The funeral was a large and imposing one, and impressed Randolph for the first time with the local importance and solid standing of the Dorntons. All the magnates and old county families were represented. The inn yard and the streets of the little village were filled with their quaint liveries, crested paneled carriages, and silver-cipher caparisoned horses, with a sprinkling of fashion from London. He could not close his ears to the gossip of the villagers regarding the suddenness of the late baronet’s death, the extinction of the title, the accession of the orphaned girl to the property, and even, to his greater exasperation, speculations upon her future and probable marriage. “Some o’ they gay chaps from Lunnon will be lordin’ it over the Hall afore long,” was the comment of the hostler.
It was with some little bitterness that Randolph took his seat in the crowded church. But this feeling, and even his attempts to discover Miss Eversleigh’s face in the stately family pew fenced off from the chancel, presently passed away. And then his mind began to be filled with strange and weird fancies. What grim and ghostly revelations might pass between this dead scion of the Dorntons lying on the trestles before them and the obscure, nameless ticket of leave man awaiting his entrance in the vault below! The incongruity of this thought, with the smug complacency of the worldly minded congregation sitting around him, and the probable smiling carelessness of the reckless rover–the cause of all–even now idly pacing the deck on the distant sea, touched him with horror. And when added to this was the consciousness that Sibyl Eversleigh was forced to become an innocent actor in this hideous comedy, it seemed as much as he could bear. Again he questioned himself, Was he right to withhold his secret from her? In vain he tried to satisfy his conscience that she was happier in her ignorance. The resolve he had made to keep his relations with her apart from his secret, he knew now, was impossible. But one thing was left to him. Until he could disclose his whole story– until his lips were unsealed by Captain Dornton–he must never see her again. And the grim sanctity of the edifice seemed to make that resolution a vow.
He did not dare to raise his eyes again toward her pew, lest a sight of her sweet, grave face might shake his resolution, and he slipped away first among the departing congregation. He sent her a brief note from the inn saying that he was recalled to London by an earlier train, and that he would be obliged to return to California at once, but hoping that if he could be of any further assistance to her she would write to him to the care of the bank. It was a formal letter, and yet he had never written otherwise than formally to her. That night he reached London. On the following night he sailed from Liverpool for America.
Six months had passed. It was difficult, at first, for Randolph to pick up his old life again; but his habitual earnestness and singleness of purpose stood him in good stead, and a vague rumor that he had made some powerful friends abroad, with the nearer fact that he had a letter of credit for a thousand pounds, did not lessen his reputation. He was reinstalled and advanced at the bank. Mr. Dingwall was exceptionally gracious, and minute in his inquiries regarding Miss Eversleigh’s succession to the Dornton property, with an occasional shrewdness of eye in his interrogations which recalled to Randolph the questioning of Miss Eversleigh’s friends, and which he responded to as cautiously. For the young fellow remained faithful to his vow even in thinking of her, and seemed to be absorbed entirely in his business. Yet there was a vague ambition of purpose in this absorption that would probably have startled the more conservative Englishman had he known it.
He had not heard from Miss Eversleigh since he left, nor had he received any response from the captain. Indeed, he had indulged in little hopes of either. But he kept stolidly at work, perhaps with a larger trust than he knew. And then, one day, he received a letter addressed in a handwriting that made his heart leap, though he had seen it but once, when it conveyed the news of Sir William Dornton’s sudden illness. It was from Miss Eversleigh, but the postmark was Callao! He tore open the envelope, and for the next few moments forgot everything–his business devotion, his lofty purpose, even his solemn vow.
It read as follows:–
DEAR MR. TRENT,–I should not be writing to you now if I did not believe that I NOW understand why you left us so abruptly on the day of the funeral, and why you were at times so strange. You might have been a little less hard and cold even if you knew all that you did know. But I must write now, for I shall be in San Francisco a few days after this reaches you, and I MUST see you and have YOUR help, for I can have no other, as you know. You are wondering what this means, and why I am here. I know ALL and EVERYTHING. I know HE is alive and never was dead. I know I have no right to what I have, and never had, and I have come here to seek him and make him take it back. I could do no other. I could not live and do anything but that, and YOU might have known it. But I have not found him here as I hoped I should, though perhaps it was a foolish hope of mine, and I am coming to you to help me seek him, for he MUST BE FOUND. You know I want to keep his and your secret, and therefore the only one I can turn to for assistance and counsel is YOU.
You are wondering how I know what I do. Two months ago I GOT A LETTER FROM HIM–the strangest, quaintest, and yet THE KINDEST LETTER–exactly like himself and the way he used to talk! He had just heard of his brother’s death, and congratulated me on coming into the property, and said he was now perfectly happy, and should KEEP DEAD, and never, never come to life again; that he never thought things would turn out as splendidly as they had–for Sir William MIGHT have had an heir–and that now he should REALLY DIE HAPPY. He said something about everything being legally right, and that I could do what I liked with the property. As if THAT would satisfy me! Yet it was all so sweet and kind, and so like dear old Jack, that I cried all night. And then I resolved to come here, where his letter was dated from. Luckily I was of age now, and could do as I liked, and I said I wanted to travel in South America and California; and I suppose they didn’t think it very strange that I should use my liberty in that way. Some said it was quite like a Dornton! I knew something of Callao from your friend Miss Avondale, and could talk about it, which impressed them. So I started off with only a maid–my old nurse. I was a little frightened at first, when I came to think what I was doing, but everybody was very kind, and I really feel quite independent now. So, you see, a girl may be INDEPENDENT, after all! Of course I shall see Mr. Dingwall in San Francisco, but he need not know anything more than that I am traveling for pleasure. And I may go to the Sandwich Islands or Sydney, if I think HE is there. Of course I have had to use some money–some of HIS rents–but it shall be paid back. I will tell you everything about my plans when I see you.
Yours faithfully,
SIBYL EVERSLEIGH.
P. S. Why did you let me cry over that man’s tomb in the church?
Randolph looked again at the date, and then hurriedly consulted the shipping list. She was due in ten days. Yet, delighted as he was with that prospect, and touched as he had been with her courage and naive determination, after his first joy he laid the letter down with a sigh. For whatever was his ultimate ambition, he was still a mere salaried clerk; whatever was her self-sacrificing purpose, she was still the rich heiress. The seal of secrecy had been broken, yet the situation remained unchanged; their association must still be dominated by it. And he shrank from the thought of making her girlish appeal to him for help an opportunity for revealing his real feelings.
This instinct was strengthened by the somewhat formal manner in which Mr. Dingwall announced her approaching visit. “Miss Eversleigh will stay with Mrs. Dingwall while she is here, on account of her–er–position, and the fact that she is without a chaperon. Mrs. Dingwall will, of course, be glad to receive any friends Miss Eversleigh would like to see.”
Randolph frankly returned that Miss Eversleigh had written to him, and that he would be glad to present himself. Nothing more was said, but as the days passed he could not help noticing that, in proportion as Mr. Dingwall’s manner became more stiff and ceremonious, Mr. Revelstoke’s usually crisp, good-humored suggestions grew more deliberate, and Randolph found himself once or twice the subject of the president’s penetrating but smiling scrutiny. And the day before Miss Eversleigh’s arrival his natural excitement was a little heightened by a summons to Mr. Revelstoke’s private office.
As he entered, the president laid aside his pen and closed the door.
“I have never made it my business, Trent,” he said, with good- humored brusqueness, “to interfere in my employees’ private affairs, unless they affect their relations to the bank, and I haven’t had the least occasion to do so with you. Neither has Mr. Dingwall, although it is on HIS behalf that I am now speaking.” As Randolph listened with a contracted brow, he went on with a grim smile: “But he is an Englishman, you know, and has certain ideas of the importance of ‘position,’ particularly among his own people. He wishes me, therefore, to warn you of what HE calls the ‘disparity’ of your position and that of a young English lady–Miss Eversleigh–with whom you have some acquaintance, and in whom,” he added with a still grimmer satisfaction, “he fears you are too deeply interested.”
Randolph blazed. “If Mr. Dingwall had asked ME, sir,” he said hotly, “I would have told him that I have never yet had to be reminded that Miss Eversleigh is a rich heiress and I only a poor clerk, but as to his using her name in such a connection, or dictating to me the manner of”–
“Hold hard,” said Revelstoke, lifting his hand deprecatingly, yet with his unchanged smile. “I don’t agree with Mr. Dingwall, and I have every reason to know the value of YOUR services, yet I admit something is due to HIS prejudices. And in this matter, Trent, the Bank of Eureka, while I am its president, doesn’t take a back seat. I have concluded to make you manager of the branch bank at Marysville, an independent position with its salary and commissions. And if that doesn’t suit Dingwall, why,” he added, rising from his desk with a short laugh, “he has a bigger idea of the value of property than the bank has.”
“One moment, sir, I implore you,” burst out Randolph breathlessly. “if your kind offer is based upon the mistaken belief that I have the least claim upon Miss Eversleigh’s consideration more than that of simple friendship–if anybody has dared to give you the idea that I have aspired by word or deed to more, or that the young lady has ever countenanced or even suspected such aspirations, it is utterly false, and grateful as I am for your kindness, I could not accept it.”
“Look here, Trent,” returned Revelstoke curtly, yet laying his hand on the young man’s shoulder not unkindly. “All that is YOUR private affair, which, as I told you, I don’t interfere with. The other is a question between Mr. Dingwall and myself of your comparative value. It won’t hurt you with ANYBODY to know how high we’ve assessed it. Don’t spoil a good thing!”
Grateful even in his uncertainty, Randolph could only thank him and withdraw. Yet this fateful forcing of his hand in a delicate question gave him a new courage. It was with a certain confidence now in his capacity as HER friend and qualified to advise HER that he called at Mr. Dingwall’s the evening she arrived. It struck him that in the Dingwalls’ reception of him there was mingled with their formality a certain respect.
Thanks to this, perhaps, he found her alone. She seemed to him more beautiful than his recollection had painted her, in the development that maturity, freedom from restraint, and time had given her. For a moment his new, fresh courage was staggered. But she had retained her youthful simplicity, and came toward him with the same naive and innocent yearning in her clear eyes that he remembered at their last meeting. Their first words were, naturally, of their great secret, and Randolph told her the whole story of his unexpected and startling meeting with the captain, and the captain’s strange narrative, of his undertaking the journey with him to recover his claim, establish his identity, and, as Randolph had hoped, restore to her that member of the family whom she had most cared for. He recounted the captain’s hesitation on arriving; his own journey to the rectory; the news she had given him; the reason of his singular behavior; his return to London; and the second disappearance of the captain. He read to her the letter he had received from him, and told her of his hopeless chase to the docks only to find him gone. She listened to him breathlessly, with varying color, with an occasional outburst of pity, or a strange shining of the eyes, that sometimes became clouded and misty, and at the conclusion with a calm and grave paleness.
“But,” she said, “you should have told me all.”
“It was not my secret,” he pleaded.
“You should have trusted me.”
“But the captain had trusted ME.”
She looked at him with grave wonder, and then said with her old directness: “But if I had been told such a secret affecting you, I should have told you.” She stopped suddenly, seeing his eyes fixed on her, and dropped her own lids with a slight color. “I mean,” she said hesitatingly, “of course you have acted nobly, generously, kindly, wisely–but I hate secrets! Oh, why cannot one be always frank?”
A wild idea seized Randolph. “But I have another secret–you have not guessed–and I have not dared to tell you. Do you wish me to be frank now?”
“Why not?” she said simply, but she did not look up.
Then he told her! But, strangest of all, in spite of his fears and convictions, it flowed easily and naturally as a part of his other secret, with an eloquence he had not dreamed of before. But when he told her of his late position and his prospects, she raised her eyes to his for the first time, yet without withdrawing her hand from his, and said reproachfully,–
“Yet but for THAT you would never have told me.”
“How could I?” he returned eagerly. “For but for THAT how could I help you to carry out YOUR trust? How could I devote myself to your plans, and enable you to carry them out without touching a dollar of that inheritance which you believe to be wrongfully yours?”
Then, with his old boyish enthusiasm, he sketched a glowing picture of their future: how they would keep the Dornton property intact until the captain was found and communicated with; and how they would cautiously collect all the information accessible to find him until such time as Randolph’s fortunes would enable them both to go on a voyage of discovery after him. And in the midst of this prophetic forecast, which brought them so closely together that she was enabled to examine his watch chain, she said,–
“I see you have kept Cousin Jack’s ring. Did he ever see it?”
“He told me he had given it to you as his little sweetheart, and that he”–
There was a singular pause here.
“He never did THAT–at least, not in that way!” said Sybil Eversleigh.
And, strangely enough, the optimistic Randolph’s prophecies came true. He was married a month later to Sibyl Eversleigh, Mr. Dingwall giving away the bride. He and his wife were able to keep their trust in regard to the property, for, without investing a dollar of it in the bank, the mere reputation of his wife’s wealth brought him a flood of other investors and a confidence which at once secured his success. In two years he was able to take his wife on a six months’ holiday to Europe via Australia, but of the details of that holiday no one knew. It is, however, on record that ten or twelve years ago Dornton Hall, which had been leased or unoccupied for a long time, was refitted for the heiress, her husband, and their children during a brief occupancy, and that in that period extensive repairs were made to the interior of the old Norman church, and much attention given to the redecoration and restoration of its ancient tombs.
MR. MACGLOWRIE’S WIDOW
Very little was known of her late husband, yet that little was of a sufficiently awe-inspiring character to satisfy the curiosity of Laurel Spring. A man of unswerving animosity and candid belligerency, untempered by any human weakness, he had been actively engaged as survivor in two or three blood feuds in Kentucky, and some desultory dueling, only to succumb, through the irony of fate, to an attack of fever and ague in San Francisco. Gifted with a fine sense of humor, he is said, in his last moments, to have called the simple-minded clergyman to his bedside to assist him in putting on his boots. The kindly divine, although pointing out to him that he was too weak to rise, much less walk, could not resist the request of a dying man. When it was fulfilled, Mr. MacGlowrie crawled back into bed with the remark that his race had always “died with their boots on,” and so passed smilingly and tranquilly away.
It is probable that this story was invented to soften the ignominy of MacGlowrie’s peaceful end. The widow herself was also reported to be endowed with relations of equally homicidal eccentricities. Her two brothers, Stephen and Hector Boompointer, had Western reputations that were quite as lurid and remote. Her own experiences of a frontier life had been rude and startling, and her scalp–a singularly beautiful one of blond hair–had been in peril from Indians on several occasions. A pair of scissors, with which she had once pinned the intruding hand of a marauder to her cabin doorpost, was to be seen in her sitting room at Laurel Spring. A fair-faced woman with eyes the color of pale sherry, a complexion sallowed by innutritious food, slight and tall figure, she gave little suggestion of this Amazonian feat. But that it exercised a wholesome restraint over the many who would like to have induced her to reenter the married state, there is little reason to doubt. Laurel Spring was a peaceful agricultural settlement. Few of its citizens dared to aspire to the dangerous eminence of succeeding the defunct MacGlowrie; few could hope that the sister of living Boompointers would accept an obvious mesalliance with them. However sincere their affection, life was still sweet to the rude inhabitants of Laurel Spring, and the preservation of the usual quantity of limbs necessary to them in their avocations. With their devotion thus chastened by caution, it would seem as if the charming mistress of Laurel Spring House was secure from disturbing attentions.
It was a pleasant summer afternoon, and the sun was beginning to strike under the laurels around the hotel into the little office where the widow sat with the housekeeper–a stout spinster of a coarser Western type. Mrs. MacGlowrie was looking wearily over some accounts on the desk before her, and absently putting back some tumbled sheaves from the stack of her heavy hair. For the widow had a certain indolent Southern negligence, which in a less pretty woman would have been untidiness, and a characteristic hook and eyeless freedom of attire which on less graceful limbs would have been slovenly. One sleeve cuff was unbuttoned, but it showed the blue veins of her delicate wrist; the neck of her dress had lost a hook, but the glimpse of a bit of edging round the white throat made amends. Of all which, however, it should be said that the widow, in her limp abstraction, was really unconscious.
“I reckon we kin put the new preacher in Kernel Starbottle’s room,” said Miss Morvin, the housekeeper. “The kernel’s going to-night.”
“Oh,” said the widow in a tone of relief, but whether at the early departure of the gallant colonel or at the successful solution of the problem of lodging the preacher, Miss Morvin could not determine. But she went on tentatively:–
“The kernel was talkin’ in the bar room, and kind o’ wonderin’ why you hadn’t got married agin. Said you’d make a stir in Sacramento– but you was jest berried HERE.”
“I suppose he’s heard of my husband?” said the widow indifferently.
“Yes–but he said he couldn’t PLACE YOU,” returned Miss Morvin.
The widow looked up. “Couldn’t place ME?” she repeated.
“Yes–hadn’t heard o’ MacGlowrie’s wife and disremembered your brothers.”
“The colonel doesn’t know everybody, even if he is a fighting man,” said Mrs. MacGlowrie with languid scorn.
“That’s just what Dick Blair said,” returned Miss Morvin. “And though he’s only a doctor, he jest stuck up agin’ the kernel, and told that story about your jabbin’ that man with your scissors– beautiful; and how you once fought off a bear with a red-hot iron, so that you’d have admired to hear him. He’s awfully gone on you!”
The widow took that opportunity to button her cuff.
“And how long does the preacher calculate to stay?” she added, returning to business details.
“Only a day. They’ll have his house fixed up and ready for him to-morrow. They’re spendin’ a heap o’ money on it. He ought to be the pow’ful preacher they say he is–to be worth it.”
But here Mrs. MacGlowrie’s interest in the conversation ceased, and it dropped.
In her anxiety to further the suit of Dick Blair, Miss Morvin had scarcely reported the colonel with fairness.
That gentleman, leaning against the bar in the hotel saloon with a cocktail in his hand, had expatiated with his usual gallantry upon Mrs. MacGlowrie’s charms, and on his own “personal” responsibility had expressed the opinion that they were thrown away on Laurel Spring. That–blank it all–she reminded him of the blankest beautiful woman he had seen even in Washington–old Major Beveridge’s daughter from Kentucky. Were they sure she wasn’t from Kentucky? Wasn’t her name Beveridge–and not Boompointer? Becoming more reminiscent over his second drink, the colonel could vaguely recall only one Boompointer–a blank skulking hound, sir–a mean white shyster–but, of course, he couldn’t have been of the same breed as such a blank fine woman as the widow! It was here that Dick Blair interrupted with a heightened color and a glowing eulogy of the widow’s relations and herself, which, however, only increased the chivalry of the colonel–who would be the last man, sir, to detract from–or suffer any detraction of–a lady’s reputation. It was needless to say that all this was intensely diverting to the bystanders, and proportionally discomposing to Blair, who already experienced some slight jealousy of the colonel as a man whose fighting reputation might possibly attract the affections of the widow of the belligerent MacGlowrie. He had cursed his folly and relapsed into gloomy silence until the colonel left.
For Dick Blair loved the widow with the unselfishness of a generous nature and a first passion. He had admired her from the first day his lot was cast in Laurel Spring, where coming from a rude frontier practice he had succeeded the district doctor in a more peaceful and domestic ministration. A skillful and gentle surgeon rather than a general household practitioner, he was at first coldly welcomed by the gloomy dyspeptics and ague-haunted settlers from riparian lowlands. The few bucolic idlers who had relieved the monotony of their lives by the stimulus of patent medicines and the exaltation of stomach bitters, also looked askance at him. A common-sense way of dealing with their ailments did not naturally commend itself to the shopkeepers who vended these nostrums, and he was made to feel the opposition of trade. But he was gentle to women and children and animals, and, oddly enough, it was to this latter dilection that he owed the widow’s interest in him–an interest that eventually made him popular elsewhere.
The widow had a pet dog–a beautiful spaniel, who, however, had assimilated her graceful languor to his own native love of ease to such an extent that he failed in a short leap between a balcony and a window, and fell to the ground with a fractured thigh. The dog was supposed to be crippled for life even if that life were worth preserving–when Dr. Blair came to the rescue, set the fractured limb, put it in splints and plaster after an ingenious design of his own, visited him daily, and eventually restored him to his mistress’s lap sound in wind and limb. How far this daily ministration and the necessary exchange of sympathy between the widow and himself heightened his zeal was not known. There were those who believed that the whole thing was an unmanly trick to get the better of his rivals in the widow’s good graces; there were others who averred that his treatment of a brute beast like a human being was sinful and unchristian. “He couldn’t have done more for a regularly baptized child,” said the postmistress. “And what mo’ would a regularly baptized child have wanted?” returned Mrs. MacGlowrie, with the drawling Southern intonation she fell back upon when most contemptuous.
But Dr. Blair’s increasing practice and the widow’s preoccupation presently ended their brief intimacy. It was well known that she encouraged no suitors at the hotel, and his shyness and sensitiveness shrank from ostentatious advances. There seemed to be no chance of her becoming, herself, his patient; her sane mind, indolent nerves, and calm circulation kept her from feminine “vapors” of feminine excesses. She retained the teeth and digestion of a child in her thirty odd years, and abused neither. Riding and the cultivation of her little garden gave her sufficient exercise. And yet the unexpected occurred! The day after Starbottle left, Dr. Blair was summoned hastily to the hotel. Mrs. MacGlowrie had been found lying senseless in a dead faint in the passage outside the dining room. In his hurried flight thither with the messenger he could learn only that she had seemed to be in her usual health that morning, and that no one could assign any cause for her fainting.
He could find out little more when he arrived and examined her as she lay pale and unconscious on the sofa of her sitting room. It had not been thought necessary to loosen her already loose dress, and indeed he could find no organic disturbance. The case was one of sudden nervous shock–but this, with his knowledge of her indolent temperament, seemed almost absurd. They could tell him nothing but that she was evidently on the point of entering the dining room when she fell unconscious. Had she been frightened by anything? A snake or a rat? Miss Morvin was indignant! The widow of MacGlowrie–the repeller of grizzlies–frightened at “sich”! Had she been upset by any previous excitement, passion, or the receipt of bad news? No!–she “wasn’t that kind,” as the doctor knew. And even as they were speaking he felt the widow’s healthy life returning to the pulse he was holding, and giving a faint tinge to her lips. Her blue-veined eyelids quivered slightly and then opened with languid wonder on the doctor and her surroundings. Suddenly a quick, startled look contracted the yellow brown pupils of her eyes, she lifted herself to a sitting posture with a hurried glance around the room and at the door beyond. Catching the quick, observant eyes of Dr. Blair, she collected herself with an effort, which Dr. Blair felt in her pulse, and drew away her wrist.
“What is it? What happened?” she said weakly.
“You had a slight attack of faintness,” said the doctor cheerily, “and they called me in as I was passing, but you’re all right now.”
“How pow’ful foolish,” she said, with returning color, but her eyes still glancing at the door, “slumping off like a green gyrl at nothin’.”
“Perhaps you were startled?” said the doctor.
Mrs. MacGlowrie glanced up quickly and looked away. “No!–Let me see! I was just passing through the hall, going into the dining room, when–everything seemed to waltz round me–and I was off! Where did they find me?” she said, turning to Miss Morvin.
“I picked you up just outside the door,” replied the housekeeper.
“Then they did not see me?” said Mrs. MacGlowrie.
“Who’s they?” responded the housekeeper with more directness than grammatical accuracy.
“The people in the dining room. I was just opening the door–and I felt this coming on–and–I reckon I had just sense enough to shut the door again before I went off.”
“Then that accounts for what Jim Slocum said,” uttered Miss Morvin triumphantly. “He was in the dining room talkin’ with the new preacher, when he allowed he heard the door open and shut behind him. Then he heard a kind of slump outside and opened the door again just to find you lyin’ there, and to rush off and get me. And that’s why he was so mad at the preacher!–for he says he just skurried away without offerin’ to help. He allows the preacher may be a pow’ful exhorter–but he ain’t worth much at ‘works.'”
“Some men can’t bear to be around when a woman’s up to that sort of foolishness,” said the widow, with a faint attempt at a smile, but a return of her paleness.
“Hadn’t you better lie down again?” said the doctor solicitously.
“I’m all right now,” returned Mrs. MacGlowrie, struggling to her feet; “Morvin will look after me till the shakiness goes. But it was mighty touching and neighborly to come in, Doctor,” she continued, succeeding at last in bringing up a faint but adorable smile, which stirred Blair’s pulses. “If I were my own dog–you couldn’t have treated me better!”
With no further excuse for staying longer, Blair was obliged to depart–yet reluctantly, both as lover and physician. He was by no means satisfied with her condition. He called to inquire the next day–but she was engaged and sent word to say she was “better.”
In the excitement attending the advent of the new preacher the slight illness of the charming widow was forgotten. He had taken the settlement by storm. His first sermon at Laurel Spring exceeded even the extravagant reputation that had preceded him. Known as the “Inspired Cowboy,” a common unlettered frontiersman, he was said to have developed wonderful powers of exhortatory eloquence among the Indians, and scarcely less savage border communities where he had lived, half outcast, half missionary. He had just come up from the Southern agricultural districts, where he had been, despite his rude antecedents, singularly effective with women and young people. The moody dyspeptics and lazy rustics of Laurel Spring were stirred as with a new patent medicine. Dr. Blair went to the first “revival” meeting. Without undervaluing the man’s influence, he was instinctively repelled by his appearance and methods. The young physician’s trained powers of observation not only saw an overwrought emotionalism in the speaker’s eloquence, but detected the ring of insincerity in his more lucid speech and acts. Nevertheless, the hysteria of the preacher was communicated to the congregation, who wept and shouted with him. Tired and discontented housewives found their vague sorrows and vaguer longings were only the result of their “unregenerate” state; the lazy country youths felt that the frustration of their small ambitions lay in their not being “convicted of sin.” The mourners’ bench was crowded with wildly emulating sinners. Dr. Blair turned away with mingled feelings of amusement and contempt. At the door Jim Slocum tapped him on the shoulder: “Fetches the wimmin folk every time, don’t he, Doctor?” said Jim.
“So it seems,” said Blair dryly.
“You’re one o’ them scientific fellers that look inter things–what do YOU allow it is?”
The young doctor restrained the crushing answer that rose to his lips. He had learned caution in that neighborhood. “I couldn’t say,” he said indifferently.
“‘Tain’t no religion,” said Slocum emphatically; “it’s jest pure fas’nation. Did ye look at his eye? It’s like a rattlesnake’s, and them wimmin are like birds. They’re frightened of him–but they hev to do jest what he ‘wills’ ’em. That’s how he skeert the widder the other day.”
The doctor was alert and on fire at once. “Scared the widow?” he repeated indignantly.
“Yes. You know how she swooned away. Well, sir, me and that preacher, Brown, was the only one in that dinin’ room at the time. The widder opened the door behind me and sorter peeked in, and that thar preacher give a start and looked up; and then, that sort of queer light come in his eyes, and she shut the door, and kinder fluttered and flopped down in the passage outside, like a bird! And he crawled away like a snake, and never said a word! My belief is that either he hadn’t time to turn on the hull influence, or else she, bein’ smart, got the door shut betwixt her and it in time! Otherwise, sure as you’re born, she’d hev been floppin’ and crawlin’ and sobbin’ arter him–jist like them critters we’ve left.”
“Better not let the brethren hear you talk like that, or they’ll lynch you,” said the doctor, with a laugh. “Mrs. MacGlowrie simply had an attack of faintness from some overexertion, that’s all.”
Nevertheless, he was uneasy as he walked away. Mrs. MacGlowrie had evidently received a shock which was still unexplained, and, in spite of Slocum’s exaggerated fancy, there might be some foundation in his story. He did not share the man’s superstition, although he was not a skeptic regarding magnetism. Yet even then, the widow’s action was one of repulsion, and as long as she was strong enough not to come to these meetings, she was not in danger. A day or two later, as he was passing the garden of the hotel on horseback, he saw her lithe, graceful, languid figure bending over one of her favorite flower beds. The high fence partially concealed him from view, and she evidently believed herself alone. Perhaps that was why she suddenly raised herself from her task, put back her straying hair with a weary, abstracted look, remained for a moment quite still staring at the vacant sky, and then, with a little catching of her breath, resumed her occupation in a dull, mechanical way. In that brief glimpse of her charming face, Blair was shocked at the change; she was pale, the corners of her pretty mouth were drawn, there were deeper shades in the orbits of her eyes, and in spite of her broad garden hat with its blue ribbon, her light flowered frock and frilled apron, she looked as he fancied she might have looked in the first crushing grief of her widowhood. Yet he would have passed on, respecting her privacy of sorrow, had not her little spaniel detected him with her keener senses. And Fluffy being truthful–as dogs are–and recognizing a dear friend in the intruder, barked joyously.
The widow looked up, her eyes met Blair’s, and she reddened. But he was too acute a lover to misinterpret what he knew, alas! was only confusion at her abstraction being discovered. Nevertheless, there was something else in her brown eyes he had never seen before. A momentary lighting up of RELIEF–of even hopefulness–in his presence. It was enough for Blair; he shook off his old shyness like the dust of his ride, and galloped around to the front door.
But she met him in the hall with only her usual languid good humor. Nevertheless, Blair was not abashed.
“I can’t put you in splints and plaster like Fluffy, Mrs. MacGlowrie,” he said, “but I can forbid you to go into the garden unless you’re looking better. It’s a positive reflection on my professional skill, and Laurel Spring will be shocked, and hold me responsible.”
Mrs. MacGlowrie had recovered enough of her old spirit to reply that she thought Laurel Spring could be in better business than looking at her over her garden fence.
“But your dog, who knows you’re not well, and doesn’t think me quite a fool, had the good sense to call me. You heard him.”
But the widow protested that she was as strong as a horse, and that Fluffy was like all puppies, conceited to the last degree.
“Well,” said Blair cheerfully, “suppose I admit you are all right, physically, you’ll confess you have some trouble on your mind, won’t you? If I can’t make you SHOW me your tongue, you’ll let me hear you USE it to tell me what worries you. If,” he added more earnestly, “you won’t confide in your physician–you will perhaps– to–to–a–FRIEND.”
But Mrs. MacGlowrie, evading his earnest eyes as well as his appeal, was wondering what good it would do either a doctor, or– a–a–she herself seemed to hesitate over the word–“a FRIEND, to hear the worriments of a silly, nervous old thing–who had only stuck a little too closely to her business.”
“You are neither nervous nor old, Mrs. MacGlowrie,” said the doctor promptly, “though I begin to think you HAVE been too closely confined here. You want more diversion, or–excitement. You might even go to hear this preacher”–he stopped, for the word had slipped from his mouth unawares.
But a swift look of scorn swept her pale face. “And you’d like me to follow those skinny old frumps and leggy, limp chits, that slobber and cry over that man!” she said contemptuously. “No! I reckon I only want a change–and I’ll go away, or get out of this for a while.”
The poor doctor had not thought of this possible alternative. His heart sank, but he was brave. “Yes, perhaps you are right,” he said sadly, “though it would be a dreadful loss–to Laurel Spring– to us all–if you went.”
“Do I look so VERY bad, doctor?” she said, with a half-mischievous, half-pathetic smile.
The doctor thought her upturned face very adorable, but restrained his feelings heroically, and contented himself with replying to the pathetic half of her smile. “You look as if you had been suffering,” he said gravely, “and I never saw you look so before. You seem as if you had experienced some great shock. Do you know,” he went on, in a lower tone and with a half-embarrassed smile, “that when I saw you just now in the garden, you looked as I imagined you might have looked in the first days of your widowhood– when your husband’s death was fresh in your heart.”
A strange expression crossed her face. Her eyelids dropped instantly, and with both hands she caught up her frilled apron as if to meet them and covered her face. A little shudder seemed to pass over her shoulders, and then a cry that ended in an uncontrollable and half-hysterical laugh followed from the depths of that apron, until shaking her sides, and with her head still enveloped in its covering, she fairly ran into the inner room and closed the door behind her.
Amazed, shocked, and at first indignant, Dr. Blair remained fixed to the spot. Then his indignation gave way to a burning mortification as he recalled his speech. He had made a frightful faux pas! He had been fool enough to try to recall the most sacred memories of that dead husband he was trying to succeed–and her quick woman’s wit had detected his ridiculous stupidity. Her laugh was hysterical–but that was only natural in her mixed emotions. He mounted his horse in confusion and rode away.
For a few days he avoided the house. But when he next saw her she had a charming smile of greeting and an air of entire obliviousness of his past blunder. She said she was better. She had taken his advice and was giving herself some relaxation from business. She had been riding again–oh, so far! Alone?–of course; she was always alone–else what would Laurel Spring say?
“True,” said Blair smilingly; “besides, I forgot that you are quite able to take care of yourself in an emergency. And yet,” he added, admiringly looking at her lithe figure and indolent grace, “do you know I never can associate you with the dreadful scenes they say you have gone through.”
“Then please don’t!” she said quickly; “really, I’d rather you wouldn’t. I’m sick and tired of hearing of it!” She was half laughing and yet half in earnest, with a slight color on her cheek.
Blair was a little embarrassed. “Of course, I don’t mean your heroism–like that story of the intruder and the scissors,” he stammered.
“Oh, THAT’S the worst of all! It’s too foolish–it’s sickening!” she went on almost angrily. “I don’t know who started that stuff.” She paused, and then added shyly, “I really am an awful coward and horribly nervous–as you know.”
He would have combated this–but she looked really disturbed, and he had no desire to commit another imprudence. And he thought, too, that he again had seen in her eyes the same hopeful, wistful light he had once seen before, and was happy.
This led him, I fear, to indulge in wilder dreams. His practice, although increasing, barely supported him, and the widow was rich. Her business had been profitable, and she had repaid the advances made her when she first took the hotel. But this disparity in their fortunes which had frightened him before now had no fears for him. He felt that if he succeeded in winning her affections she could afford to wait for him, despite other suitors, until his talents had won an equal position. His rivals had always felt as secure in his poverty as they had in his peaceful profession. How could a poor, simple doctor aspire to the hand of the rich widow of the redoubtable MacGlowrie?
It was late one afternoon, and the low sun was beginning to strike athwart the stark columns and down the long aisles of the redwoods on the High Ridge. The doctor, returning from a patient at the loggers’ camp in its depths, had just sighted the smaller groves of Laurel Springs, two miles away. He was riding fast, with his thoughts filled with the widow, when he heard a joyous bark in the underbrush, and Fluffy came bounding towards him. Blair dismounted to caress him, as was his wont, and then, wisely conceiving that his mistress was not far away, sauntered forward exploringly, leading his horse, the dog hounding before him and barking, as if bent upon both leading and announcing him. But the latter he effected first, for as Blair turned from the trail into the deeper woods, he saw the figures of a man and woman walking together suddenly separate at the dog’s warning. The woman was Mrs. MacGlowrie–the man was the revival preacher!
Amazed, mystified, and indignant, Blair nevertheless obeyed his first instinct, which was that of a gentleman. He turned leisurely aside as if not recognizing them, led his horse a few paces further, mounted him, and galloped away without turning his head. But his heart was filled with bitterness and disgust. This woman– who but a few days before had voluntarily declared her scorn and contempt for that man and his admirers–had just been giving him a clandestine meeting like one of the most infatuated of his devotees! The story of the widow’s fainting, the coarse surmises and comments of Slocum, came back to him with overwhelming significance. But even then his reason forbade him to believe that she had fallen under the preacher’s influence–she, with her sane mind and indolent temperament. Yet, whatever her excuse or purpose was, she had deceived him wantonly and cruelly! His abrupt avoidance of her had prevented him from knowing if she, on her part, had recognized him as he rode away. If she HAD, she would understand why he had avoided her, and any explanation must come from her.
Then followed a few days of uncertainty, when his thoughts again reverted to the preacher with returning jealousy. Was she, after all, like other women, and had her gratuitous outburst of scorn of THEIR infatuation been prompted by unsuccessful rivalry? He was too proud to question Slocum again or breathe a word of his fears. Yet he was not strong enough to keep from again seeking the High Ridge, to discover any repetition of that rendezvous. But he saw her neither there, nor elsewhere, during his daily rounds. And one night his feverish anxiety getting the better of him, he entered the great “Gospel Tent” of the revival preacher.
It chanced to be an extraordinary meeting, and the usual enthusiastic audience was reinforced by some sight-seers from the neighboring county town–the district judge and officials from the court in session, among them Colonel Starbottle. The impassioned revivalist–his eyes ablaze with fever, his lank hair wet with perspiration, hanging beside his heavy but weak jaws–was concluding a fervent exhortation to his auditors to confess their sins, “accept conviction,” and regenerate then and there, without delay. They must put off “the old Adam,” and put on the flesh of righteousness at once! They were to let no false shame or worldly pride keep them from avowing their guilty past before their brethren. Sobs and groans followed the preacher’s appeals; his own agitation and convulsive efforts seemed to spread in surging waves through the congregation, until a dozen men and women arose, staggering like drunkards blindly, or led or dragged forward by sobbing sympathizers towards the mourners’ bench. And prominent among them, but stepping jauntily and airily forward, was the redoubtable and worldly Colonel Starbottle!
At this proof of the orator’s power the crowd shouted–but stopped suddenly, as the colonel halted before the preacher, and ascended the rostrum beside him. Then taking a slight pose with his gold- headed cane in one hand and the other thrust in the breast of his buttoned coat, he said in his blandest, forensic voice:–
“If I mistake not, sir, you are advising these ladies and gentlemen to a free and public confession of their sins and a–er– denunciation of their past life–previous to their conversion. If I am mistaken I–er–ask your pardon, and theirs and–er–hold myself responsible–er–personally responsible!”
The preacher glanced uneasily at the colonel, but replied, still in the hysterical intonation of his exordium:–
“Yes! a complete searching of hearts–a casting out of the seven Devils of Pride, Vain Glory”–
“Thank you–that is sufficient,” said the colonel blandly. “But might I–er–be permitted to suggest that you–er–er–SET THEM THE EXAMPLE! The statement of the circumstances attending your own past life and conversion would be singularly interesting and exemplary.”
The preacher turned suddenly and glanced at the colonel with furious eyes set in an ashy face.
“If this is the flouting and jeering of the Ungodly and Dissolute,” he screamed, “woe to you! I say–woe to you! What have such as YOU to do with my previous state of unregeneracy?”
“Nothing,” said the colonel blandly, “unless that state were also the STATE OF ARKANSAS! Then, sir, as a former member of the Arkansas BAR–I might be able to assist your memory–and–er–even corroborate your confession.”
But here the enthusiastic adherents of the preacher, vaguely conscious of some danger to their idol, gathered threateningly round the platform from which he had promptly leaped into their midst, leaving the colonel alone, to face the sea of angry upturned faces. But that gallant warrior never altered his characteristic pose. Behind him loomed the reputation of the dozen duels he had fought, the gold-headed stick on which he leaned was believed to contain eighteen inches of shining steel–and the people of Laurel Spring had discretion.
He smiled suavely, stepped jauntily down, and made his way to the entrance without molestation.
But here he was met by Blair and Slocum, and a dozen eager questions:–
“What was it?” “What had he done?” “WHO was he?”
“A blank shyster, who had swindled the widows and orphans in Arkansas and escaped from jail.”
“And his name isn’t Brown?”
“No,” said the colonel curtly.
“What is it?”
“That is a matter which concerns only myself and him, sir,” said the colonel loftily; “but for which I am–er–personally responsible.”
A wild idea took possession of Blair.