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Title: The Story of Duciehurst; a tale of the Mississippi

Author: Charles Egbert Craddock

Release Date: November 25, 2017 [EBook #56046]

Language: English

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                        THE STORY OF DUCIEHURST




                       [Illustration: colophon]

                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
                      NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
                   DALLAS · ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

                       MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
                      LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
                               MELBOURNE

                   THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
                                TORONTO




                             THE STORY OF
                              DUCIEHURST

                      _A Tale of the Mississippi_

                                  BY
                        CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK

     AUTHOR OF “THE FAIR MISSISSIPPIAN,” “THE AMULET,” “THE STORM
          CENTRE,” “THE STORY OF OLD FORT LOUDON,” “A SPECTRE
               OF POWER,” “THE ORDEAL,” “THE PROPHET OF
                   THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS,” ETC.

                               New York
                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
                                 1914


                            COPYRIGHT, 1914
                       BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

            Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1914.




                        THE STORY OF DUCIEHURST




CHAPTER I


Dead low water and there the steamboat lay on the sand-bar, stranded and
helpless. The surging swirls of the swift current raced impetuously on
either side. Scarcely a furlong distant on that corrugated, rippling
surface the leadsman had heaved the plummet of the sounding-line at
“deep four.” Nevertheless the craft had grounded here on a submerged
projection of a “tow-head” built of silt and detritus by the ever
shifting Mississippi, attaining dangerous proportions since the last run
of the boat. All unknown and unsuspected it lurked till “quarter less
twain” was sung out, but the next cry of the leadsman smote the air like
the sound of doom. Before the engines could be reversed the steamer was
in shoal water, ploughing into the sand with the full momentum of her
speed, the shock of the impact shattering the equilibrium of all on
board.

Straight ensued the contortions of mechanical energy common to such
occasions; the steamboat repeatedly sought to back off from the sand;
failing in this she went forward on one wheel and then on the other,
finally on both, trying to force her way across the barrier to her
progress, in technical phrase “to jump the bar.”

At length the Captain confessedly relinquished the attempt to effect
the release of the craft under her own steam. The fires sank down in the
furnaces; the water cooled in the boilers; and the passengers of the
still and silent boat resigned themselves to await with such patience as
they could muster the rescue which might be furnished by a passing
packet, none due for twenty-four hours, or which a rise in the river
might compass, for the clouds of the dull October afternoon were heavy
and sullen and intimated the near probability of rain.

A group had begun to assemble on the promenade deck, disconsolately
looking out at the rippling tawny expanse of the vast vacant river, for
the bight of the bend was as lonely a spot as could be found throughout
its course. On either side of the deep groove of the great channel the
banks rose high, seeming precipitous at this shrunken stage of the
water. In the background loomed gigantic forests with foliage sere or
green as the nature of the growths might determine.

The leveling effect of the stereotyped surroundings of travel served to
bring out in distinct relief the individual characteristics of the
passengers. Mr. Floyd-Rosney received the Captain’s final admission of
defeat with the silence and surly dignity befitting an implacable
affront, and his manner could scarcely have been justified had he and
his family been wilfully abducted by orders of the owners of the packet
line. In his wonted environment at his home, encompassed by all the
insignia of wealth and station, he might have seemed a man of such
preëminent importance and fashion as to render a contretemps impertinent
and significant of a failure of respect and service, but here, on the
deck of the steamer, his sullen impatience of the common disaster, his
frowning ungenial mien in receiving the apology of the Captain, poor
victim of the underhand wiles of the great Mississippi, betokened an
exacting ill-conditioned temperament, and suggested that his wife might
be anything but a happy woman, even before she emerged from the saloon
and he met her with a rebuke, which was the obvious vent of his general
ill-humor that could not be visited on independent strangers.

“Too late,--_as usual_!” He turned and placed a chair for her with an
air of graceful and considerate courtesy. “The fun is all over,--the
Captain has given up the game.”

The coercions of good society rendered it imperative that he should
somewhat veil his displeasure, but the thin veneer of his graciousness
was patently insincere and did not commend his pretense of regret for
her sake that she should have missed the spectacle of the gyrations of
the boat in seeking to free itself from the sand-bar, though, indeed,
one might travel far and never witness the like.

He was singularly handsome, about thirty-five years of age, tall, well
built, admirably groomed, fair and florid, with finely chiseled
features, straight dark hair and large brown eyes, whose inherent luster
was dulled by their haughty, disparaging gaze. He rated his fellow-men
but lightly in the scale of being, and, save for the detention, he would
not have appeared on deck or exchanged a word with the rest of the
passengers in the tedious interval of making his landing.

“I am glad that you have at last consented to sit here awhile,” he
continued to his wife, with flimsy solicitude. “That stuffy little
state-room is enough to asphyxiate you.”

His moods, indeed, were elements to be reckoned with and his wife was
eager and smiling in making her excuses. “Oh, I should have come at
once,” she protested,--“only the baby was so reluctant to take his nap.
I couldn’t get away till he was asleep.” She was nervously adjusting her
wrap, appropriate and handsome, but evidently hastily flung on.

“I think he has a nurse,” her husband remarked in surly sarcasm.

“Oh, yes, of course,--but he wanted me,--he would not let go my hand
till he was fast asleep.”

She was as much as ten years her husband’s junior, of a blonde type very
usual in American life. One might have thought to have seen her often,
so familiar have become the straight, delicate somewhat angular
lineaments, the fair hair, the gray or blue eyes, the slender, yet
strong, elastic physique. The degree of beauty, of course, is dependent
on the blending of these elements and its pleasing appeal. Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney was one of the finer examples of the ordinary mold. Her
features were classic in their regularity; her delicately kept,
redundant blonde hair had a silken sheen that simulated burnished gold;
her gray eyes were of a darkly greenish luster that suggested
moss-agates, and they were shaded by long, pensive lashes almost black;
the whole effect was heightened by her dark brown cloth gown with narrow
bands of seal fur, the hat corresponding with the rich yet plain costume
that betokened a traveling garb. She had a certain covertly derisive
expression in her eyes, whenever diverted from her husband, for it must
needs be a brave wife, indeed, who could banter that imposing presence.
To this look a trick of an occasional upward cant of the chin gave
special emphasis. When she seemed amused one could not be sure whether
she was laughing with her interlocutor, or at him. In fact, she had a
marked gift of irony which she sometimes carried so far as to suggest
the danger of recoil. Her old nurse, in the state-room, who had tended
her infancy, as well as now her three-year-old boy, had often warned her
in years agone, when the victim of her unhallowed mirth, “You surely
will stump your toe some day,--better mind how you skip along.” The
discerning observer might well fancy she had duly met this check in her
career in her choice of a husband, for the obvious repression in her
manner toward him suggested a spirit-breaking process already well in
hand. Her deprecatory disarming glance when their eyes met had in it an
eager plea for approval which was almost derogatory, curiously at
variance with her beauty, and position, and handsome garb, and her
assured manner in deporting herself toward others.

“The best you can do for us, Captain Disnett?” she had caught the words
of the skipper’s apology as she issued. “Then all I can say is that bad
is the best!”

She regarded the immense spread of the great river with disparaging
objection. “How low it is,--in every sense of the word.”

Despite her assured pose a certain consciousness informed her manner
when her eyes suddenly fell upon a young man of thirty, perhaps, who was
standing near the railing of the guards, apparently ruefully revolving
the Captain’s announcement that it was impossible to get the _Cherokee
Rose_ off the sand-bar under her own steam. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s
surprise, for she had started on perceiving him and flushed with
embarrassment, was not reciprocal. He gave her no glance of recognition,
although his eyes met hers in a casual regard as he turned from the rail
and drew forth his cigar-case with the presumable intention of making
himself as comfortable as the detention would permit. As yet the baleful
sign, “Cotton aboard. No smoking on deck,” had not been displayed, for
the boat was on its downward beat and would not take on cotton until
returning up the river. His muscles were suddenly stilled, however, and
there was a moment of intent, though covert, observation of her, when
her name was abruptly called out in blithe tones as a young girl emerged
upon the deck.

“Oh, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney! I did not know you were on board. How perfectly
delightful,” with a swift cordial rush, both hands outstretched.
“Captain Disnett,” she whirled upon the skipper, in buoyant parenthesis,
“I forgive you! You have merely contrived us an enchanting week-end
house party. I don’t know when or where I should have met Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney otherwise. And Mr. Floyd-Rosney, too. Is little Ned here?
Asleep?--Well, I’ll spare his nap.”

The deck, the whole dull day, seemed suddenly irradiated by the presence
of the joyous young beauty. Naught but happiness surely came her way.
Eternal springtide shone lustrous, soft, mellow in the depths of her
great sapphire eyes with their long black lashes and thick white lids.
Her hair was black and straight but her complexion was transparently
fair and an exquisitely delicate rose bloomed on her cheek. Her coral
lips were slightly parted, for she was always exclamatory and
breathless, and showed a glimpse of her even white teeth. She was tall
and slender, very erect, and moved with the deft certainty of trained
muscles, the athletic girl of the day. She wore a simple gown of rough
gray cloth, and a knowing little gray toque. She had no disposition to
await events and, after a brief comprehensive survey of the personnel of
the group, she abruptly accosted the young man at the rail, an impassive
spectator of her entrance on the scene.

“Why, Mr. Ducie,” she exclaimed in blended surprise and affront, “aren’t
you going to speak to me?”

He started as if he had been shot. He had much ado to get his hat off
his head with a cigar in one hand and a blazing match in the other. But
this accomplished, through casting the match overboard, he came forward,
replying with genial grace, albeit in some embarrassment: “I think my
brother has the advantage of me. I am Mr. Ducie, all right, but my
Christian name is Adrian. I fancy it must be Mr. Randal Ducie who has
the honor of your acquaintance.”

“Oh,--oh,--yes,--but this----” She was leaning on the back of one of the
stiff arm-chairs and across it openly studying his lineaments. He had
distinctive features; a thin, delicate, slightly aquiline nose, a firm
well-rounded chin, bold, luminous hazel eyes, with a thick fringe of
long straight lashes, a fair complexion not altogether devoid of the
concomitant freckles here and there; fine teeth and mobile red lips; and
his hair, glowing in the light, for he still held his hat in his hand,
was of that rich auburn shade that artists love and that one sees in
paintings and seldom elsewhere. “But this----” she continued, “oh,--you
are fooling us. Do you think I can forget you so soon when I waltzed ten
miles with you last winter, if it were all strung out in a row! This is
certainly Randal Ducie.”

He had begun to laugh in enjoyment of her perplexity. “Randal Ducie is
not half so good a man,” he protested gaily.

“_Les absens ont toujours tort_,” Mrs. Floyd-Rosney brought herself,
uninvited, into the conversation. Not altogether welcome was her
interpolation, for the laugh faded from Mr. Ducie’s face and he
remembered to resume his hat and to slip his cigar-case into his pocket,
as if in preparation to betake himself elsewhere. But if this were his
intention it was forestalled by Miss Dean.

“Now, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” she turned vivaciously to that lady, since she
had of her own motion entered the discussion, “wouldn’t anybody think
this was Randal Ducie?”

“They are much alike, but I saw the difference in a moment,” Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney was smiling naturally, graciously, and looking extremely
pretty, as her husband, leaning against one of the posts that supported
the superstructure of the deck and, smoking with strong long-drawn
puffs, watched her with fixed inscrutable eyes.

“Oh, you didn’t,” Miss Dean contradicted gaily. “You _couldn’t_! The
likeness is amazing! Oh, pshaw! it is no likeness. He is guying us. This
_is_ Randal Ducie.”

“You are the twin brother of my young friend, Randal Ducie?” Colonel
Kenwynton asked, smiling, an old gentleman of the old school, with a
courteous manner and a commanding presence. His tall figure still
retained the muscular slenderness of his athletic youth and his stately
martial carriage; his dense snowy hair, brushed forward to his brow and
parted on the side, and also, straight down the back, the white imperial
and long military mustachios gave him the look of a portrait of some
by-gone celebrity rather than a man of to-day, so had the thought of
this fashion perished. His age was frosty but kindly, and the young man
responded with covert humor, as if elucidating a mystery.

“Oh, yes, we have always been twins,” he declared.

“How _did_ you know the difference, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney?” demanded Miss
Dean.

“I knew it at once,” she replied, still smiling, but the gravity in the
eyes of her husband deepened momently as he gazed, silently,
motionlessly at her. “I myself don’t know the difference at all,” said
the subject of the discussion. “When I am with Ran I feel as if I were
looking into a mirror.”

“Oh, how quaint,--how enchanting it must be,” cried Miss Dean
extravagantly.

“And so convenient,--I have always made Ran try the new hair cuts
first.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean any such preposterous thing as that--but to have
another self so near, so dear, to duplicate one’s lot in life, to
understand and sympathize with every sentiment, to share one’s mind,
one’s heart----”

“No,--no,--we draw the line there. I am a deep secret fellow! I could
tolerate no twin of an inner consciousness to spy out my true soul.”
Ducie was letting himself go in this badinage, and he had no meaning of
a deeper intent than the surface of jest. “And I could undertake no such
contract as to sympathize with Ran’s extravagant enthusiasms and silly
sentimentalities.”

The attention of the group was focused on the speaker. None of them
noticed the uprising conscious flare in the face of Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney--except, indeed, her husband, who was quick, too, to
recollect the significant fact that only she had had the keen
discernment to detect the difference between this man and the twin
brother of whom he seemed the counterpart.

“Oh, Mr. Ducie, how unkind!” cried Miss Dean.

“Yes, indeed,” with affected obduracy, “Ran must sigh his sighs, and
hope his hopes, and shed his tears all by himself. For my own part I
don’t deal in goods of that grade. But if ever he strikes on some nice
little speculation, or discovers a gold mine, why I am his own only twin
brother and I will come in with him on the ground floor.”

“And, speaking of business,” said Colonel Kenwynton, “how goes it in the
south of France? Your brother did not accompany you.”

The group had taken chairs, and, with the permission of the ladies,
Ducie had lighted his cigar. “No, Ran sticks to cotton through thick and
thin. It is his creed that God never thought it worth while to create
anything but the cotton plant, and the earth was evolved to grow and
market it.”

Mrs. Floyd-Rosney was struggling with the species of discomposure which
is incompatible with reserve and silence. “You went into the wine trade
instead,” she made the parenthetical statement from an imperfect
memory.

Mr. Ducie had that air of averse distaste which one feels in hearing
one’s own affairs misrepresented. “Beg pardon,” he said, “I quitted New
Orleans some six years ago with old Mr. Chenault; he was a wine merchant
there, a branch of a Bordeaux house,--knew my father and used to furnish
my grandfather’s cellar at Duciehurst in the long ago. He offered me an
opening in the French house at Bordeaux, but I didn’t take kindly to the
trade, and as the Chenaults had connections with the silk manufacturing
interests in Lyons they contrived to wedge me in with their relatives.”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had obviously lost her poise, “I remember
now,--but I can’t recall who was speaking of you and your success the
other day,--to be a junior partner in the concern.”

Adrian Ducie’s consciousness of the breach of the commercial verities
turned him stiff. “Oh no! I?--a junior partner? Why, never in the
world!” he exclaimed brusquely. Then, realizing that there was no reason
for heat, since the matter had no concern for those present, he went on
more suavely. “I occupy a sort of confidential and privileged relation
to the members of the firm, owing chiefly to the value of the Chenault
interest, but I have neither the responsibility nor the profits of a
junior partner.”

As he ceased to speak he had a sudden look of affront--more than aught
else it suggested the impulse of some spirited horse refusing a mandate
of urgency, and ready to bolt, to rear, to assert an insurgent and
untamed power. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s words might bear an interpretation
of an ill-judged patronage,--her facile foolish blandness in magnifying
the importance of his opportunity that at its best must seem so very
small to her. With an almost visible effort he brought himself under
control without a snort of contempt or an impatient stamp. There was an
interval of silence so awkward, in view of these forced disclosures of
commercial status and financial interest, that Ducie was disposed to
continue the personal relation as a less crude method of its conclusion
than bolting precipitately from the subject. “We have close connections,
of course, with importers in America as well as elsewhere. It is my
mission to effect a settlement of a matter in controversy with a company
having extensive dealings with us and I am glad to utilize the
opportunity to run in on Ran at his plantation in this lower country
while I am en route to New Orleans. It makes this detention all the more
unfortunate. I lose time that I might otherwise spend with him.”

“You must be awfully lonesome over on the other side without your twin
brother, your other self,” said Miss Dean, sweetly commiserative.

And, indeed, his face fell.

“But how lovely to be in France,” sighed Mrs. Floyd-Rosney. “I envy you
your Paris.”

“Paris!” he could but fleer. “I see as much of Paris as if I were in the
Mississippi swamp.” Then, recovering himself, “Paris is not France, so
far as the silk manufacturing interest is concerned.”

An interruption was at hand and this seemed well. An old gentleman,
dressed in black, a Prince Albert coat, a wide soft felt hat, with a
white beard and sightless eyes, seeming more aged and infirm than he
really was, by reason of his groping progress between a stout stick and
a pompous negro man-servant, was steered down the guards and toward the
group; perceiving whom, Colonel Kenwynton hastily arose and advanced.

“Here we are, Major,” he exclaimed jovially, “and here we are likely to
stay. (Make yourself scarce, Tobe,” he added in parenthesis to the
servant, “I’ll look after the Major.”) And Tobe relinquished his charge
with a grateful bow, after the manner of the servitors of yore.
Doubtless, he was glad of the leisure thus vouchsafed him to spend,
after his own liking, but he showed no undue alacrity to avail himself
of it. He did not disappear until he had placed chairs both for the
Major and Colonel Kenwynton, glanced discerningly at the clouds to judge
whether a possible outburst of the setting sun might render the spot
selected undesirable, asked if he should not bring glasses of water,
notified the Major that he had placed a light overcoat on a chair hard
by, in case the veering of the wind should necessitate protection, and
only then did the Major’s faithful body-servant “make himself scarce.”

It was seldom, indeed, that Major Lacey ventured so far from his home,
in view of his increasing age, with which his infirmities waxed in
proportion, except, indeed, on the various occasions of Confederate
reunions, when his years fell from him, and the scales dropped from his
eyes, and he was once more a dashing young officer with his sword in his
hand and his heart in his cause. He was now returning from one of these
symposia, and the old soldier would canvass its incidents, and discuss
its personnel, and repeat the toasts, and recount the old stories and
live again in the days of yore, growing ever dimmer, till the next
reunion would endow the past with reviviscence and it would glow anew
and the dull present would sink out of sight. He was barely ensconced in
his chair when Miss Dean gaily accosted him.

“Yes,--here we are, indeed, Major,--you remember me?--Miss Hildegarde
Dean,--but you ought to have been on deck when we were trying to get
away. It was just like an attempt to jump over a fence by pulling on the
rosettes of your slippers,--wasn’t it, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney?”

“Oh, she didn’t witness it,” said Floyd-Rosney hastily, reminded of his
displeasure because of her tardiness. “Too late,--_as usual_. She
closely resembles Athelstane the Unready. You remember the Saxon
nobleman, Major Lacey.”

His bland patronage was a bit more insufferable than his obvious
disapproval, if such comparison be attempted, for the casual stranger
had done naught to incur his unwelcome benignities, whereas his wife, by
consenting to become his wife, had brought her doom upon her own head.

The receptivity of the object of his grace in this instance was blunted
by misunderstanding. “Well, now,” the Major replied, knitting his brows,
“there was a foreign nobleman--a native of Saxony,--for a time on the
staff of General Lancaster while I, too, was a member of his military
family. This stranger was eager to see our artillery in action,--greatly
interested in the Gatling gun,--it was new, then, invented by a
gentleman from North Carolina. But I don’t remember that the officer’s
name was Athelstane,--my memory is not so good as it once was,--his
name has escaped me. But he had been a lieutenant of the Line in his own
country,--light artillery.”

Colonel Kenwynton observed Floyd-Rosney’s satiric smile and resented it.
He would not suffer the matter to rest here. “Mr. Floyd-Rosney is
alluding to a character in one of the Waverley novels, Major,” he said
tactfully.

“Eh? Oh, I remember, now,--I remember,--Ivanhoe,--Athelstane of
Coningsburgh,” the Major replied casually. “But I was thinking of that
foreign nobleman from Saxony,--much impressed by the Gatling gun in
action.”

The war was all-in-all with the Major.

Miss Hildegarde Dean suddenly rose and, with her swinging athletic gait,
walked across the deck and seated herself in a chair beside the Major.
He was conscious, of course, of an approach and a new proximity, but
whose presence it was and of what intent he could not divine. He turned
his sightless face toward his unseen neighbor, expressive of a courteous
abeyance, ready and reciprocal toward the advance were it charged with a
meaning for him, yet with a dignity of reserve in awaiting it. He, of
course, could not see Hildegarde smiling at him so brightly that one
must needs deplore afresh his affliction which debarred him from such
suffusive and gracious radiance.

“Major Lacey,” she began blithely, “I have just lived for this moment. I
want you to tell me exactly how your grandmother--now that is your
great-niece Elodie Lacey’s great, great stupendously great
grandmother,--Elodie is a chum of mine and a precious monkey-fied
thing.” (The Major’s eyebrows were elevated doubtfully at this
description of his young relative, but the tone was one of approval and
affection and he took the compliment on trust.) “We have such gay old
times together,” in a burst of reminiscent enthusiasm. “But now about
your grandmother’s romance. How did she happen to marry the
Revolutionary lieutenant and not the rich English baronet whom she sent
away in despair. Elodie delights in telling the story,--all about the
fox-chase and all--but she mixes things up so with a piece of the white
brocade of the wedding dress that she treasures and the carved ivory fan
and the white satin slippers and she owns the whole bertha too--it is
Honiton,--lovely lace, but out of style now,--that one can’t get at the
details for the millinery. A rational account of the whole affair would
be as sentimental and exciting as a novel. Take a turn with me up and
down the guards, Major, and justify your grandmother’s choice. I am as
steady as a rock, and this ship is not going to pitch and toss among the
breakers on this sand-bar,--eh, Captain Disnett?” with an arch smile
over her shoulder.

The old man’s stick was tremulously feeling the way as he arose. Then
she passed her arm through his, and moved forward at a measured pace,
with the other hand deftly putting out of the way chairs that might have
otherwise blocked their progress. Colonel Kenwynton looked on with a
benignant smile, for, presently, their slow and wavering march up and
down, the old blind soldier, supported between the radiant young beauty
and his stout cane, was interrupted by bursts of laughter, genuine and
hearty, such as he had not enjoyed for many a day.

Then ensued deep and earnest narrative, entangled in such a whirl of
questions as would imply that Miss Hildegarde Dean had never before
heard of the great battle of Shiloh, and, indeed, save that she had once
been of an excursion party that had visited the famous site, she would
have scarcely remembered its name. But she was gifted with a keen and
enduring observation, and ever and anon she broke into his detail of
special incidents,--the fall of noted officers, the result of intrepid
charges, the location of certain troops,--to describe the monuments that
now marked the spot, their composition, their approximate measurements,
their inscriptions, and her opinion of the general effect, with such
gusto as to incite a revival of recollection and to recall an episode or
two of that momentous event which had eluded till now his comprehensive
memory.

“That is a lovely, lovely girl,” said Colonel Kenwynton to Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney, as he contemplated the incongruous cronies.

“Yes, indeed,” she acceded with graceful alacrity, “but she should not
trifle with the affections of the venerable Major.”

“Perhaps the venerable Major is a bit of a flirt himself”; the flavor of
Mr. Floyd-Rosney’s pleasantry was acrid to the taste.

“Why, I should not call that ‘flirting,’ on her part,” said the
matter-of-fact captain of the steamboat. “I have known her since she was
that high,”--he indicated with his right hand a minute stature,--“her
uncle has a plantation down here a bit and she and her mother have often
been passengers of the _Cherokee Rose_. She was always just of that
kind, thoughtful disposition.”

For the old Major was laughing on keys of mirth so long disused that
they had fallen out of tune and accord with the dominant tones of his
voice, as if in another moment he might burst into tears.

“Well, perhaps not exactly ‘flirting,’--only a bit of her universal
fascination system,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, with her chin in the air.

“I shouldn’t think she pursues any sort of system,--she seems all
spontaneity. She is incapable of calculation,” said young Ducie.

Once more Mrs. Floyd-Rosney flushed unaccountably, but she said,
lightly, “I perceive that you are profoundly versed in that most
difficult science, the knowledge of human nature.”

“You do me too much honor,” he replied, looking not at her but at his
cigar as he flipped off the ash. “It requires a very superficial
observation to discern that she is as open and undesigning as the day.”

“For my own part I think the day is particularly enigmatic,” she
retorted with her scathing little laugh, that yet was so sweetly keyed.
“I think it has something in reserve, especially obnoxious for us.”

“So it seems that you, too, are a profound observer, and that
meteorological phenomena are your province,” her husband ponderously
adopted her method of persiflage. Then he added pointedly, “I beg you to
observe it was not I that initiated the personal tone of this talk.”

He rose with his pervasive suggestion of a lordly ill-humor, which
enabled one to realize how grievous it was to be alone with him and
privileged to note the workings of his disaffected and censorious
moods. He strolled casually off, and began to talk at some little
distance to one of the several passengers about the price of cotton and
the disposition of the planters to hold it back from the market for a
rise.

Mrs. Floyd-Rosney and Mr. Ducie were left seated near each other amidst
a cluster of vacant chairs. With that peculiar clarity of the twilight
air when there is no mist every detail of this limited world was visible
with special distinctness, as if there were no insufficiency of light,
but one looked through amber glasses;--the slate-tinted lowering sky,
the ceaseless silent flow of the vast murky river, the high bank so far
above the water at this low stage that the grassy levee, an elevation of
prominent emphasis in so level a country, was far withdrawn and
invisible from this point of view. There was on the bank a swamper’s hut
perched on tall grotesque supports to escape inundation in the rise of
the river, which gave some idea of the height of the flood-level in
times of high water. The red glow from the open door of the cabin pulsed
like the fluctuating fires of an opal, and thus intimated that a mist
was insidiously beginning to rise. There was no other token of life in
the riparian borders,--no token on the broad spread of the river, save
that a tiny craft, a dugout, was slowly making its way across the
tortured currents,--seemingly an insignificant object, for who could
imagine it was freighted with grim Fate? The moment was of peculiarly
lonely intimations and she spoke abruptly.

“By your leave I shall make the conversation even more personal.” Then,
with an intent gaze, “Where is your brother?--and what is he doing?”

Adrian Ducie flushed deeply, looking both affronted and indignant. Then
he replied in his wonted vein: “You do not know but that I am my
brother,--you could not distinguish one of us from the other to save
your life.”

“Oh, yes, the difference is obvious to me,” she exclaimed in agitated
tones. “Besides, Randal would have spoken,--he would have greeted me.
When you evidently did not recognize me I was sure that you were the one
I had never seen.”

“Doubtless, Randal would have rejoiced to offer you the compliments of
the season.” He could not altogether maintain his self-control and his
voice had a tense note of satire.

She cast upon him a quick upbraiding glance. Then, as if with an
afterthought: “I am aware that you must resent my course toward Randal.”

“Oh, no,--not at all,--though it would scarcely be courteous to say that
I congratulate him upon your inconstancy. But when a lady plays a man
out within a fortnight of their anticipated marriage with no reason or
provocation, his relatives can hardly be expected to lament his escape.
Pardon my blunt phrase for its sincerity, since I am no artist in words,
and this discussion has taken me by surprise.”

She flushed hotly, feeling arraigned for having introduced the
inappropriate subject. Yet she persisted: “Oh, you do not understand,”
she said in increasing agitation. “You haven’t the temperament, I can
see, to make subtle deductions.”

“Well, if Randal has such a temperament as you seem disposed to credit
him with,--or to discredit him with, if I may appraise the endowment,--I
am happy to say, in reply to your kind inquiries, that his subtlety has
not affected his health or spirits. He is in fine fettle and as happy as
he deserves to be. As to the rest, he is much absorbed in business,--in
fact, he is in a fair way to make a fortune. He is of a speculative turn
and has always been peculiarly lucky. Randal is something of a gambler.”

“No, never,” she interrupted hastily, “Randal was never a gambler.”

He revolted at her tone of defense and arrogations of superior
knowledge. He could not restrain a smile of sarcastic rebuke as he
retorted: “Oh, of course I meant only in a commercial way. He is bold
and takes chances that would deter many men. He has great initiative.”

“We have been abroad so long that I had lost sight of him altogether,”
she said in embarrassment.

The subject was infinitely distasteful to him but its sensitive
avoidance would seem a disparagement of his slighted brother. His
fraternal affection nerved him to complete the response she had
elicited.

“Randal has made a ‘ten strike’ several times, and has a long lease of
some fine land that this year has produced a stunning crop of cotton. He
has had a rare chance, too, to buy a standing crop, and, of course, he
took it in. The planter had shot a man,--very unpopular affair,--and had
to quit the country.”

Even as he spoke he realized how meager were these scanty graces of
opportunity in comparison with Floyd-Rosney’s magnificent fortune, but
he would not seem to recognize the fact. He would not minimize his
brother’s lot in life as too small for her consideration, since, with an
avid curiosity and interest, she had sought information.

Mrs. Floyd-Rosney was silent for a moment. She had achieved a startling
and florid success in her brilliant marriage, a girl of very limited
means. But this temperate, conventional atmosphere, the opportunities of
people of moderate resources and high lineage, was her native element,
and somehow it exerted a recurrent fascination upon her at the moment,
it had the charm of old associations forever relinquished. The joy of
effort, of laborious acquisition, the splendor of superior capacity, of
trying conclusions with Fate could never be hers to share, but she felt
it was fine to ride at Fortune with lance in rest as in the jousts of
some great tourney. She listened wistfully to the simple annals of
agricultural ventures so familiar to her early experience, with the
sentiment of gazing through barred gates,--she, to whom all the world
was open.

“I am glad to know that Randal is well and happy,” she said at length.
“You may think it strange that I should introduce this topic with
you,--and you not even an acquaintance.”

She paused to give him space for a disclaimer, but he was rancorous on
this theme,--he would not make it easy for her. “No, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,”
he said gravely, “nothing that you could do would seem strange to me.”

She was accustomed to deference, apart from the sullen tyranny of her
husband, and this experience of conjugal life was only within the last
five years. She scarcely knew how to dispense with the phrase, the
smile, the bow, which, however little genuine, respectfully annotated
and acquiesced in her discourse. Adrian Ducie’s blunt rebuke,--it did
not affect her as discourtesy, for it was too sincere--his obvious
hatred of her, not only of her course, his absolute lack of confidence
or approval, the impossibility of winning him even to a modicum of
neutrality baffled her. She was losing her composure,--the threads of
her intention. Her eyes, looking at him wistfully, large and lustrous,
despite the closing dusk, pleaded with him for help. When the sound of
the dynamo began to pulse on the stillness, the electric lights flared
out on the deck as well as in the saloon, and showed that those eyes
were full of tears. He met their glance calmly with unconcern. He had
not caused her grief. This evident attitude of mind flung her back on
her pride, her own individuality. In the supreme crisis of her life she
was arguing within herself, she had exerted her feminine prerogative of
choice, and this in the manner that best suited her. He should not sit
in judgment thus on the justice of her decisions, on her line of
conduct, and she wondered at her meekness that had permitted him to take
this position, that had made his standpoint possible. She sought to
rally her self-control, and then she said, in her clear-cut enunciation:

“Thank you very much,--the idea occurred to me when I saw you this
afternoon that I had here an opportunity which I have long sought.”

She glanced about among the shadows, bulkier, blacker, because of the
keenness of the electric glare, as if she feared observation or
interruption. The piano in the saloon was beginning to strum “Oh, rosy
dreams!” with a disregard of accidentals calculated to give the
nightmare to the fellow-passengers of the performer. The perfume of
cigars floated down from the hurricane deck--Ducie’s was dead in his
hand. A dreary cow on the lower deck seemed to have just discovered that
she was in process of shipment and was mournfully lowing for her calf a
hundred miles or more up-stream. Deep guttural voices of roustabouts
rose in jocose altercation for a moment from the depths of the boiler
deck, and then all was silent again.

“I have long sought an opportunity to restore to Randal one of his
gifts, overlooked at the time that I returned the others. I found it
afterward, and was embarrassed,--shocked, in fact----” she paused
abruptly.

“There was the registered mail, or the express, I suppose,” he suggested
coolly.

“I wanted to explain.” She felt her face flame. “It was of intrinsic
value other than sentimental.”

“----which was great,” he interpolated.

“And,” she sturdily held to her purpose, “I did not wish him to
misinterpret my motive in keeping it.”

“You could not write to him?”

“Oh, no, I could not write to him.”

“I can easily understand that,” he fleered, full of vicarious rancor.

“It is a bauble in the shape of a key--it is set with a large diamond
and a circle of rubies. It was understood between us as the key of his
heart,” she could but falter at the revelation of the forlorn little
sentimentalities, shallow of root and wilted in the sun of a sudden
blaze of prosperity. “And I kept it,” she quavered.

“Randal would never think of the diamond and rubies,” he said, reaching,
indeed, the limit. “You have too many jewels, doubtless, for your
motive to be misconstrued.”

There was a moment of dead silence. “He could never have said that,” she
replied, in a voice that trembled with anger. “He is not in the least
like you. I hate you for looking like him.”

“Thank you for dispensing with ceremony and telling me this on so short
an acquaintance. It is more than evident that you like neither of us
over-much. May I ask what are the commands you design to lay upon me,
for if you have no more to say I should be glad to withdraw, with your
kind permission.”

“Only this,--that you will take this valuable which I chance to have
with me and give it to him,--explaining that there was no sentimental
motive in my retention of it, only the accident of overlooking it at a
moment of great commotion.”

He remembered that this event was the famous nuptials that filled the
countryside with _éclat_, and the metropolitan newspapers with the names
of the guests of distinction and the description of their jewels and
gowns. To him, to whom the journals had been sent in France, and to his
brother, this tawdry phase of display cheapened the marriage and lowered
it, and that it was the splendid superstructure on the ruins of the
heart of the jilted lover did not serve to further commend it.

“I wonder that you remembered to return any of the little trinkets,” he
remarked. “But, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, you must forgive me for declining to
repair your negligence. I really cannot undertake your commission. The
relations between my brother and me are peculiarly tender. All my life I
can remember almost in every scene that other self, from the time when
we were little toddlers in our red coats and toboggan caps.”

He paused, for he saw, at the moment, almost with the distinctness of
actuality, the swift little image of himself and its replica in
childhood days, scuttling about among the vacant chairs of the deserted
deck, snow-balling each other in juvenile joviality in some forgotten
winter. He caught himself and went on. “My brother is dear to me and I
to him, and I will not allow the shadow you cast to come between us.”

“And you will do nothing in the matter?” Her voice was keen with its
plaint of surprise and disappointment.

“Oh, you will easily find another emissary,” he said, rising and
standing with one hand on the back of his chair. “Permit me to suggest
that you give the thing to Miss Dean. She, evidently, is very well
acquainted with Randal. Tell her that it is the key to his heart, and,
perhaps, she may unlock it.”

And with that he lifted his hat and left her.




CHAPTER II


In all riparian estimation the grotesque plight of a craft stranded is
more or less a catastrophe. Even in this sequestered nook spectators
were not slow to mark, at a distance, the grounding of the _Cherokee
Rose_ in the afternoon and to discuss the magnitude and the management
of the mishap.

The earliest of these were two men summoned from the swamper’s shack
situated in the “no man’s land,” thrown out between the levee and the
high precipitous bank of the river. It was mounted on four pillars some
twelve feet in height, and was entered by means of a ladder placed at
the door. These supports not long before had been stanch cotton-wood
trees, and their roots still held fast in the ground despite its
frequent submergence. Having been sawn off at a height that lifted the
little domicile to a level with the crest of the levee beyond, they
served so far to render the hearth-stone safe from the dangers of flood.
If the river should rise above this limit, why then was the deluge,
indeed, and the swamper’s hut must needs share with the more opulent and
protected holdings the common disaster of the overflow.

The two men were standing on the brink of the high bank, using
alternately a binocle of elaborate finish and great power. The swamper,
however, presently relinquished the glass altogether to his companion,
who was evidently a stranger and of a much higher condition in life. He
seemed to develop an inexplicable agitation as he continued to gaze
through the lenses across the tawny expanse of the river at the big,
white bulk of the steamer stranded on the bar, and the groups of
passengers on the decks, easily differentiated as they loitered to and
fro. His breath was coming in quick gasps,--he was suddenly a-quiver in
every fiber. All at once he broke forth as if involuntarily: “Colonel
Kenwynton, by God!”

There was a sort of frenzy of recognition in the tense bated tones, yet
incredulity too, as one might doubt the reality of a vision, though
incontestably perceived. The swamper watched in silence, patient,
curious, sinister, this manifestation of emotion. It seemed to surprise
him when the stranger spoke to him with a certain unthinking openness.

“Did you notice,--could you distinguish--a gentleman there on the
hurricane deck walking to and fro,--his hair is white,--oh, how
strange!--his hair is white!”

He asked the question in an eager, excited way, his dark, distended eyes
wildly agaze.

“Yes, sir,--oh, yes, sir,--I seen him plain,” the swamper replied
casually, but he did not relax the keenness of his inquisitive
observation of the stranger beside him, nor even again glance at the
boat.

“Did you ever before see him?” The question was less a gasp than a
convulsive snap,--it was articulated in such a paroxysm of excitement.

“Yes, sir,--oh, yes, sir.”

“Do you know his name?”

“Yes, sir,--oh, yes, sir.”

The swamper’s replies were as mechanical as the ticking of a clock.

The stranger turned, lowered the binocle and glanced at him with an odd
blending of animosity and contempt. The swamper was of an aspect queerly
disheveled, water-soaked and damaged, collapsed almost out of all
semblance of humanity. He suggested some distorted bit of unclassified
and worthless flotsam of the great river, washed ashore in one of its
stupendous floods and left high and dry with other foul detritus when
the annual shrinkage regained once more low water mark. He was an
elderly man with a pallid, pasty face, large, pouch-like cheeks and a
sharp rodential nose. His small, bright eyes were so furtive of
expression that they added to his rat-like intimations and he had a long
bedraggled grizzled beard. He wore trousers of muddy corduroy, and a
ragged old gray sweater. His sodden, diluvian, pulpy aspect would
justify the illusion that he had been drowned a time or two,
resuscitated and dried out, each immersion leaving traces in slime, and
ooze, and water-stains on his garments and character. He must have
seemed incongruous, indeed, with the acquaintance he claimed, for it was
a most commanding and memorable figure focused by the lenses.

“Who is he, then,--what is his name?” the stranger asked with sudden
heat, as if he fancied some deception was practiced upon him, and
evidently all unaware that he had himself, in the surprise of the first
glimpse, pronounced aloud the name he sought. His interlocutor discerned
his incredulity and replied with a flout.

“Who? him?--that old blow-hard? Why ever’ body all up an’ down the ruver
knows old Cunnel Kenwynton.”

“God!” exclaimed the wild-eyed stranger, with a most poignant
intonation, “to doubt my own sight,--my own memory,--my”--he became
suddenly conscious of that sinister scrutiny, so much more
discriminating and intelligent than accorded with the status of the
water-rat that it had an inimical suggestion. He broke off with an
abrupt air of explanation. “I have been under treatment for--for--an
ocular difficulty, my eyes, you know.”

“Edzac’ly,” exclaimed the swamper, with a tone of bland acceptance of
the statement. “Well, now, Mister, I thought your eyes appeared queer.”

“Do they?” asked the stranger with an inexplicable eagerness. “Have they
an odd expression,--to your mind?”

“Why, I dunno ez I would have tooken notice of it, but my darter-in-law,
Jessy Jane, remarked it las’ night. She is mighty keen, though, Jessy
Jane is,--an’ spies out mos’ ever’ think.”

The stranger was a conventional, reputable looking person, not
remarkable in any respect save for that recurrent optical dilatation. He
was neatly dressed in one of the smart hand-me-down suits to be had
anywhere in these times and he wore a dark derby hat. He was himself an
elderly man, although he had a certain fresh pallor that bespeaks an
indoor life and that gave him an unworn aspect of youth. His
clean-shaven face was notably delicate, but the years were registered in
the fine script of wrinkles about the eyes and were obvious to the
careful observer. He had dark, straight, thin hair, and keen features,
and there was an intent look in his wild, dark eyes. He cast over his
shoulder so lowering a glance at the daughter-in-law under discussion, a
young woman who was sitting in the door of the cabin, that even at the
distance she marked the expression of disfavor, of suspicion, of
resentment that informed it. She could not divine the nature of their
communication but, justifying old Josh Berridge’s account of her powers
of discernment, she knew, in some subtle way, that she was its subject.
She tossed her head with a flirt of indifference and spat out on the
ground below her contempt for the stranger’s displeasure.

Her red calico dress and her tousled mass of copper red hair made a bit
of flare amidst the dull hues of the somber scene. As she sat on the
elevated threshold at the summit of the ladder that led to the door she
was dandling a muscular though small infant in her arms, who with his
blond, downy head almost inverted twisted here and there with motions so
sudden and agile that he might have been expected presently to twist
quite out of the negligent maternal clasp and fall to the earth below.
But, suddenly, she rose and, tossing the child to her shoulder, went
within the house.

So definite was the impression of something abnormal about the stranger
that she experienced a sentiment of relief when the swamper came in to
his supper alone. “Jessy Jane,” he said, pausing in the doorway and
jerking his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the subject of his
discourse, “that man is as queer a fish as ever war cotched. Says he is
waitin’ fur a boat an’ has hired my old dugout an’ is paddling out to
that air steamboat whut’s aground on the sand-bar.”

She gazed dully at him, a big spoon in her hand with which she had been
lifting a mass of cat-fish from a skillet on a red-hot monkey-stove.
“Nuthin’ queer in that as I kin see,--Hesh up!” she broke off in jocose
objurgation of the baby who was beaming upon the supper table from where
he was tied in one of the bunks and who lifted his voice vociferously,
apparently in pæans of praise of the great smoking cat-fish spread at
length on a dish. “You ain’t goin’ ter have none,--fish-bone git cotched
in yer gullet, an’ whar-r would Tadpole-Wheezie be then.” Resuming the
conversation in her former serious tone, “What’s queer in waitin’ fur a
boat? Plenty folks have waited fur boats, an’ cotch ’em an’ rid on ’em
too.”

“But this feller is goin’ ter cotch a boat what can’t go nowhar. He is
right now paddlin’ fur dear life out to the _Cher’kee Rose_, old
stick-in-the-mud, out thar on the sand-bar.”

Josh Berridge flung himself down in a chair at the half prepared table,
and awaited there in place the completion of the “dishing up” of supper.

She stood eyeing him doubtfully, the big spoon still in her hand. “I
wonder all them passengers don’t come ashore, an’ track off through the
woods, like he spoke of doin’ las’ night an’ flag the train.”

“Gosh, Jessy Jane,--it’s a durned sight too fur. Ten mile, at least, ez
the crow flies, an’ thar ain’t no road nor nuthin’.”

He said no more for his mouth was full, and the attention of the woman
was diverted by the entrance of her husband, with the declaration that
he was as hungry as a bear. He was of a bulky presence, seeming to
crowd the restricted little apartment, which was more like the cabin of
a shanty-boat than a room in a stationary dwelling. It was of a hazy
aspect, low-ceiled and soot-blackened, as shown by a lamp swinging from
the central beam, smoking portentously from an untrimmed protrusion of
charring wick. Two tiers of bunks were arranged nautically on either
side, and the windows still above were small oblong apertures,
suggestive of cabin lights or transoms; perhaps this had been their
earlier use, for several articles about the place betokened an origin
inapposite to the culture and condition of its occupants. A fine
barometer in a shining mahogany case graced the wall near a door leading
to an inner apartment. The handsome binocular glass lay on a shelf so
rough that the undressed wood offered an opportunity for splinters to
every unwary touch. Each of the pillow-cases bore a rude patch where the
name of a steamboat had been cut out, and the dirty cloth on the table
was of linen damask suited to the requirements of the somewhat exacting
traveling public. Even the bowl into which the woman was heaping a
greasy mass of potatoes and pork from the pot was of the decorated china
affected by the packet usage, and a compote filled with doughy fat
biscuits bore the title of a steamer that went to the bottom one windy
night some years ago.

Now and again the ladder without would creak beneath the weight of a
sudden footfall when the woman would desist from her occupation, the big
spoon brandished in her hand, and her red hair flying fibrous in the hot
breath of the stove, to mark in eager excitement the entrance of first
one and then another figure that seemed evolved from the falling night,
cogeners of the gloom and the solitude, normal to the place and the
hour.

“Ye’re sharp on time,--how did ye know the _Cher’kee Rose_ had struck?”
she cried, as a pallid, wiry, small man with close cropped sandy hair,
wearing jockey boots and riding breeches, with a stable cap on one side
of his head, climbed into view up the ladder without.

He vouchsafed her a wink of his lashless, red-lidded left eye, in full
of all accounts of greeting and reply. He stood flicking his boots with
a crop and wagged his sandy head knowingly at the group of men about the
stove.

“I was at Cameron Landing, the last p’int she teched. I went aboard an’
seen her passenger list. She’s got some swell guys aboard.”

“Pity, then, she didn’t go down when she struck,” said a lowering,
square-faced man, of a half sailor aspect, the master of a shanty-boat
lying snugly under the willows in a bayou hard by. “The water on this
side the bar is full twenty fathom, even at dead low water.”

“Bless my stirrups, that’s one hundred an’ twenty feet!” cried “Colty”
Connover, palpably dismayed by the loss of the opportunities of the
accident.

“The wind is fixin’ ter blow,” said Daniel Berridge from the table, with
his mouth full, but glancing up through the open door at the darkening
skies. “Mought h’ist the old tub off the tow-head after all’s come an’
gone.”

“Oh, oh, oh, oh,” said Connover, wagging his head
expressively,--“there’d be rich pickings for true in those passengers’
baggage.” He smacked his lips wistfully.

For this was a coterie of riverside harpies brought together by the
rumor of the disaster in the hope of the opportunity of spoils. They had
long infested the riparian region, not only baffling the law and justice
but even evading suspicion. Their operations were cleverly diversified,
restricted to no special locality. By the aid of the swift and
inconspicuous dug-out an emissary could drop down the river twenty miles
and abstract a bale of cotton, from a way-landing, awaiting shipment, or
roll off a couple of boxes or a barrel, under cover of the water, till
such time as the shanty-boater should find it practicable to fish them
thence some dark midnight,--while the suits for their non-delivery
dragged on in the courts between the shipper and the consignee. A bunch
of yearlings driven off from the herds that were wont to be grazed in
the “open swamp” throughout seasons of drought when these dense
low-lying woodlands are clear of water, would seem the enterprise of
professed cattle thieves, and suspicion pointed to rogues of bucolic
affiliations, but the beef had been slaughtered and salted and shipped
down the Mississippi by the small craft of the tramp or pirate
proclivities and sold in distant markets before the depletion in the
numbers of the herd was discovered by the owner.

The cunning and capacity that devised these exploits tolerated no policy
of repetition. Never did the gang fit their feet into their old tracks.
Thus the thwarted authorities failed of even a clew to forward
conviction and certain tempting baits dangled unnoticed and ineffective,
while the miscreants for a season went their ways with circumspection
and kept well within the law. Only once did they attempt the exploit of
a railroad hold-up, and so entirely did it succeed that at the mere
recollection the small, light gray eyes of the shanty-boater narrowed to
a mere slit as he gazed speculatively from his chair across the room and
through the open door at the great dim bulk of the stranded steamboat,
lying there on the bar in the midst of the weltering surges of deep,
swift water on every side. There was no smoke from her chimneys, no stir
now on her decks, but a series of shining yellow points had just begun
to gleam from her cabin lights, and a circlet of shifting topaz
reflections gemmed the turgid waters. Purple and gray were the clouds;
the sky was starless and blank; the great bare terraces of the bank on
either side were like a desert in extent, uninhabited, unfrequented.
Anything more expressive of helplessness than the steamer aground it
were difficult to conceive,--bereft of all power of locomotion, of
volition, of communication.

“Now, just how many of those ‘swell guys’ are on that boat?” a deep bass
voice queried.

The speaker was of more reputable aspect than any of the others. He was
the only man in the room with a clean-shaven jaw and wearing a coat; the
abnormal size of his right arm, visible under the sleeve, indicated the
vocation of a blacksmith. He had a round bullet head that implied a sort
of brute force, and his black hair was short and close-clipped. In view
of his mental supremacy and his worldly superiority as a respectable
mechanic the authority he arrogated was little questioned, and, as he
flung himself back in his chair, tilted on the hind legs and fixed his
sharp black eyes on the half tipsy jockey, Connover sought to justify
his statement by adducing proofs.

“Why,” still flicking his boots and thrusting his stable-cap far back on
his sparse sandy hair, “there is Edward Floyd-Rosney and family, and he
is a millionaire. You are obliged to know that.”

Jasper Binnhart nodded his head in acceptance of the statement.

“And, Lord, what a string he had before he sold out when he went abroad.
He owned ‘County Guy,’ the third son of imported Paladin, dam Fortuna,
blood bay, stands sixteen hands high, such action.” He smote his meager
thigh in the abandonment of enthusiasm. “I saw him in Louisville at the
training stables--such form!”

“And who else?” demanded Binnhart.

“Why, a beautiful roan filly--three years old--Floyd-Rosney gave only
three thousand dollars for her, but speedy! And he owned----”

“Who else is on that boat?” reiterated Binnhart raucously. “I don’t want
to hear ’bout no horses, without I’m on my shoeing stool,” he added with
a sneer.

“Oh, yes, I know, of course.” The jockey felt the bit himself and
adapted his pace to the pressure of control. It seems strange to
contemplate, but even such a nature as his has its æsthetic element, its
aspirations and enthusiasms, its dreams and vicissitudes of hope. All
these just now had a string on them, as he would have phrased it, and
were dragging in the dust. He had ridden with credit in several events
elsewhere, but he was the victim of intemperance and his weak moral
endowment offered special material for the fashioning of a cat’s paw.
It was said and believed that he had “pulled” more than one horse in a
race, and although this was not indisputable, the suspicion barred him
from the employ of cautious turfmen. In connection with his frequent
intoxication, it had brought him down at last to work as a groom for his
daily bread, and what was to him more essential, his daily dram, in a
livery stable in the little inland town of Caxton, some ten or twelve
miles distant, for there was scant opportunity in view of the stringent
laws against gambling to ply his vocation as a jockey in Mississippi.

“Oh, you are talkin’ about the passenger list. The _Cherokee Rose_ has
sure got swells aboard. There are Mrs. Dean and Miss Hildegarde Dean.
You must have read a deal about _her_ in the society columns of the
newspapers. She won hands down in Orleans las’ winter. Reg’lar favorite,
an’ distanced the field.”

“I ain’t talkin’ about the wimmen,” said the smith.

“Well, mebbe old Horace Dean ain’t as rich as some, but they are dressed
as winners, sure. I seen ’em in a box at the horse-show--I was there
with Stanley’s stable--an’ the di’monds Mrs. Dean had on mos’ put out my
eyes.”

“She don’t wear di’monds on a steamboat, I reckon,” put in Mrs.
Berridge. “Them I have seen on deck ginerally don’t look no better
’n--’n--me.”

“But you are a good-looker, ennyways, Mrs. Berridge,” said the jockey,
and he paid her the tribute of another facetious wink.

“But the woman would carry her di’monds in her trunk or hand-bag,”
suggested the shanty-boater.

“Horace Dean ain’t aboard, eh? Let us have the men’s names,” said the
smith. He was turning the matter over exactly as if he had it in some
raw material on the anvil before him, striking it here and there,
testing its malleability, shaping it to utility.

“Oh, well, there’s one of the Ducies, the fellow that has been abroad so
long--registers from Lyons, France. Adrian Ducie.”

The younger Berridge turned half around from the table, chewing hard to
clear his mouth before he spoke impressively: “One of the Ducies? Now
you are coming to the Sure-enoughs! They used to own Duciehurst. They
did for a fack. Finest place in Mississippi; in the world, I reckon.”

“But, used to be ain’t now, by a long shot,” said Jorrocks, the
shanty-boater, sustaining the intention of the investigation. “No Ducie
nowadays would be worth a hold-up.”

“This is a young man?” Binnhart queried.

“Rising thirty, I reckon,” replied the jockey.

“You dunno--you ain’t seen his teeth,” said Mrs. Berridge. “That’s the
way you jockeys jedge of age.” She could be facetious, too.

“Then there’s old Colonel Kenwynton?” said Connover.

“He has got a deal of fight left in him yet,” observed Binnhart,
reflectively. “He would put up a nervy tussle.”

“Yes, sir,” corroborated the shanty-boater, with emphasis. “The devil
himself will have a tough job when he undertakes to tow old Jack
Kenwynton in.”

“There are several other men, names I don’t know--dark horses,” said
the jockey seriously, seeing at last the trend of the discussion.

Binnhart was slowly, thoughtfully, shaking his head. “A good many men, I
misdoubts. Then there are the captain and the clerks and the mate, but
they would all be took by surprise, an’ mos’ likely without arms.”

“An’ then there’s another man, besides,” suggested the elder Berridge. A
certain wrinkled anxiety had corrugated the bedraggled limpness of his
countenance and he was obviously relieved by the effect of the
computation of the odds.

“Oh, yes,” cried Mrs. Berridge, “that comical galoot what bided here
las’ night, an’ this evenin’ hired our dugout an’ paddled out to the
steamboat. He ain’t back yit.” She paused at the door and peered into
the gathering gloom.

“Jessy Jane,” cried her husband with an accession of interest, “tell ’em
all what you heard him say las’ night. Every other word was
‘Duciehurst.’”

The younger Berridge was a stalwart fellow, in attire and features
resembling his father, save that his straw-tinted beard and shock of
hair were not yet bleached by the river-damp and the damage of time to
the dull drab hue of the elder’s locks. The woman had evidently intended
to reserve such values as she had discovered for the benefit of her own,
her husband and his father. But Dan Berridge, all improvident and
undiscerning, was gobbling a second great supply of the cat-fish, and
did not even note the expanding interest that began to illumine
Binnhart’s sharp eyes as they followed her around the table while she
again set on the platter. She sought to gain time and perchance to
effect a diversion by inviting him to partake of the meal, but he
replied that he had eaten his supper already, “and a better one,” he
added as he cast a disparaging glance at the cloth. The rude jeer would
have served to balk his curiosity, one might have thought,--that in
resentment she would have withheld the disclosure he coveted. But the
jeer tamed her. She realized and contemned their poverty, and despised
themselves because they were so poor. The dignity of labor, the
blessedness of content, the joy of health and strength, the relative
values of the gifts of life, the law of compensation, no homilies had
ever been preached here on these texts. She could not controvert nor
contend. It was indeed a coarse, cheap meal brought to the door by the
river, a poverty-cursed home on its fantastic stilts, where they might
live only so long as the waters willed, and she was all at once ashamed
of it, and of her own compact of rude comfort and quiescence with it.
She had a certain spirit, however, and when the other visitors chuckled
their enjoyment of her discomfiture she included them in the invitation
after this wise, “Mebbe you-all ain’t too proud to take a snack with
us.” The shanty-boater, who permitted nothing good to pass him,
compromised on a slice of pork, eaten sandwich-wise, in a split pone of
corn-bread held in his hands as he crouched over the monkey-stove at the
other end of the room. Nevertheless, she was submissive and in some sort
constrained to respond when Binnhart said with a suave intonation: “Yes,
ma’am, we would like to hear from you about that talk of Duciehurst.”

“I dunno what you mean,” she said, still with an effort to fence: “oh,
yes, the man jus’ talks in his sleep, that’s all.”

“He’s got secrets,” said her husband, over his shoulder to Binnhart. He
paused suddenly with an appalled countenance to extract from his mouth a
great spiny section of fishbone, which seemed to have caught on the
words. “Tell on, Jesse Jane. I can’t. I’m eatin’.”

It was obviously useless to resist. “Why,” she said, “when the baby had
the croup las’ night an’ kep’ me up an’ awake--don’t you dare to look at
me an’ laugh, you buzzard!” she broke off to speak to the infant, who
was bouncing and crowing jovially at the end of his tether where he was
tied in the bunk, “he knows I’m talkin’ about him. Why, what was I
saying? Oh, I was in the back room there, an’ the man was sleepin’ in
here. An’ he talked, an’ talked in his sleep, loud fur true every wunst
in a while. I wonder he didn’t wake up everybody in the house.”

“What did he say?” asked Binnhart with a look of sharp curiosity.

“I didn’t take time to listen much,” replied the woman, fencing anew.
“Old ‘Possum thar,” nodding at the baby, “looked like he’d choke every
other minute. He’ll smell of turkentine fur a month of Sundays. I fairly
soaked his gullet with that an’ coal-oil.”

“A body kin make money out of other folks’ secrets ef they air the right
kind of secrets.” Binnhart threw out the suggestion placidly.

The woman hesitated. She noted her father-in-law behind the stove,
almost collapsing over his pipe, so inert he might scarcely make shift
to fill it; her husband, his younger image, was still at the table,
lazily chasing the last morsel of fish about his greasy plate with a bit
of cornbread. Little might they hope to metamorphose the babble of a
dreamer into discoveries of value. Jasper Binnhart, on the contrary, was
a man of force, of action, the leader, the prime mover, in every scheme
that had brought to them some measure of success and gain, and then,
too, would she not be present, to aid, to hear, invested with the
mystery and controlling its preservation.

She took on the air of retrospective pondering as she sank down in a
chair on one side of the table, putting her bare elbows on the cloth and
supporting her chin in her hands. “Lemme see,” she said, “ef I kin call
any of his gabble to mind.” She glanced up to find Binnhart’s eyes,
contracted to mere points of light, fixed upon her, and once more she
bent her gaze on the pattern of the damask.

“’Twar mos’ly ’bout Duciehurst, all night, all night. Duciehurst was the
word.”

“That sounds like something doing,” Binnhart remarked. “All my life I
have heard of hidden money at Duciehurst.”

Jessy Jane ceased to pose. She lifted her head suddenly with the
contempt of the uninformed, her lips thickening with a sneer. “Now, what
fool would put money in that old ruined shell, instead of a bank?”

“Why, lots of folks, during the war,” explained Binnhart. “The banks
were not open then, and people hid their vallybles wherever they could.
After the peace some things, here and there, were never found again.”

“Why, shucks, Mrs. Berridge, the name of Duciehurst is famous for hidden
treasure, has been ever since I could remember,” the shanter-boater
said. “You see, Major Ducie and two of his sons were killed in the war,
an’ only one was left, this passenger’s father.” He jerked his thumb
toward the bar, where the boat lay so still in the night, amidst its
element of surging waters. “This son, being so young at the time, just a
child, didn’t know anything about where they had stowed the family
silver and jewels, and a power of gold money, they say.”

“The family gave up the search more than forty years ago, and the place
was sold to satisfy a mortgage,” Binnhart commented.

“But the river folks take up the search every wunst in a while, an’ go
thar and dig around the walls,” said the younger Berridge.

“Sure!” exclaimed the shanty-boater. “I have been thar myself with a
git-rich-quick gang.” He leered humorously at the party from behind the
stove-pipe. Presently he continued reminiscently:--

“Then pirates tore all the hearths up, mighty nigh, that night. They had
a stonemason along, with crowbars and chisels, an’ such like tools. He
was a tombstone worker, an’ I reckon his biz queered the job, for we
found nothing at all.”

“’Tain’t in a hearthstone,” said the woman, suddenly. “Is there anything
about a house named pillow? He kep’ a-talkin’ about a pillow--I thought
he meant the one he had his head on.”

Jasper Binnhart started as with a galvanic shock. He suddenly let down
the forelegs of his chair and sat stiff and upright.

“Pillar?” he said, in a curiously muffled tone. “Has this mansion of
Duciehurst got anything like a porch with posts? I have never seen the
river-front of the house.”

“Posts!” exclaimed the younger Berridge. “The porch has got posts the
size of a big gum tree, a round dozen, too, an’ mighty nigh as high as a
gum tree.” He fell to steadily picking his teeth with a fish-bone, and
idly riding his chair to and fro.

“What did he say about ‘pillars,’ Mrs. Berridge?” asked the blacksmith,
eagerly.

“He talked about a base, an’ a pilaster, an’ columns, an’ a capital.”

“That’s Jackson, capital o’ Miss’ippi, seat of government, second to
none in the Union,” explained her husband.

“Sometimes he would call ‘Archie, Archie.’”

“Lieutenant Archibald Ducie as sure as you are born,” said the
shanty-boater, solemnly. “He died in Vicksburg, an’ he war the one
rumored to have had charge of hidin’ the money.”

“This man never said nothin’ ’bout no money. Jes’ kept on ’bout
docyments, an’ a chist,” persisted Mrs. Berridge, incredulously.

“Money mought have been in the chist,” remarked her husband.

“He war specially concerned ’bout a ‘pilaster’--he went back to that
ag’in an’ ag’in. He’d whisper, sly an’ secret, ‘in the pilaster.’ What
is a pilaster?”

There was no information forthcoming, and she presently resumed, with a
drawling voice and a dispirited drooping head. “He seemed to say the
docyments was there, though I thought he meant something about a pillow.
I wish I had paid mo’ attention, though I had never heard ’bout a pot o’
money bein’ hid at Duciehurst. I wish I could git the chance to hear
him talk agin in his sleep.”

“But will he come back?” asked Binnhart, eagerly.

“Sure. He said so when he hired the dugout,” said the old water-rat;
“but I made him pay fust, as much as it is wuth--two dollars. He’s got
plenty rocks in his pocket.”

“Well, I should think he’d stay the night with the steamboat, a man of
his sort,” Binnhart said. He cast a glance of gruff distaste about the
squalid and malodorous place, reeking with the greasy smell of fish, and
the sullen lamp. He thought of the contrast with the carpeted saloon,
the glittering chandeliers, the fine pure air, the propinquity of people
of high tone and good social station. Strange! Indeed, it would seem
that no man in his senses would resort instead to this den of thieves
and cut-throats.

“He’ll come back fast enough,” protested the elder Berridge. “There’s
something queer about that man, though he made no secret o’ his name,
Captain Hugh Treherne.”

“There’ll be something mighty queer about me if I don’t git a-holt of
some of them rocks in his pockets ye war tellin’ about,” declared the
shanty-boater.

“What ailed him to take out for the steamer?” demanded Binnhart.

“He seemed all struck of a heap when he seen old Cunnel Kenwynton
through the spy-glass. He claims he knows the old Cunnel,” replied the
water-rat.

“And yet he is coming back here,” exclaimed Binnhart, incredulously. “I
wish I could have heard him talk.”

He rose, still with that intent and baffled look, and went to the door
staring out into the gloomy night to descry, if he might, the course of
the little craft on the face of the waters and its progress; to canvass
the object of the man who wielded the paddle and the nature of the
business he could have with old Colonel Kenwynton; and to speculate in
futile desperation as to the knowledge he might possess of the storied
treasure of Duciehurst, and how this secret might be wrested from him.




CHAPTER III


That night Colonel Kenwynton had a strange dream. He had come to the
time of life when he had no appreciable future. His possibilities were
limited to the renewal of his promissory notes secured on his mortgaged
lands and the stress to feed the monster debt with its accustomed
interest. Beyond these arid vicissitudes he never looked. The day
bounded his scope of view. His life lay in the past, and although the
present constrained his waking moments, all the furniture of his dreams
had garnished the years come and gone. It was not strange to him,
therefore, as he lay asleep in his berth, that he should hear in the
shaking of the glass-door of his stateroom that opened on the guards the
clanking of sabers. The sound was loud, assertive in the night. The wind
had risen. Along the convolutions of the “great bends” it swirled, with
a wide breathy resonance, the gusts seeming full of gasps. Now and then
the timbers of the boat creaked and groaned and the empty chimneys
towering into the gloom of the upper atmosphere sometimes piped forth
sonorous blasts. No longer the somber monotony held the sky. Clouds were
rolling in tumultuous surges from the south, and the wind fretted the
currents into leaping turbulence as it struck upon the waves, directly
against the course of the waters. Low along the horizon pale lightnings
flickered. The river became weirdly visible in these fluctuating
glimmers, and anon there was only the sense of a vast black abyss where
it flowed, and an overpowering realization of unseen motion--for it was
silent, this stupendous concourse of the waters of the great valley,
silent as the grave. In the fitful illuminations the lace-like summit of
the riparian forest would show momentarily against the clouds; the big,
inert structure of the boat, and long ghastly stretch of the arid
sand-bar, would be suddenly visible an instant, then as suddenly sunken
into darkness.

And again and again the door of Colonel Kenwynton’s stateroom shook with
a clatter in its casing.

He was not a light sleeper, which is usual to old age. His robust
physique was recruited by the sound slumber that might have accorded
with a score less years than had whitened his hair. The lightnings,
glimmering ever and anon through the glass door and into his placid,
aged, sleeping face--that ere long should sleep hardly more placidly and
to stir no more--did not rouse him. The violent vibrations of the glass
door would scarcely have impinged upon his consciousness save that the
sound suggested the clash of sabers. But all at once Colonel Kenwynton’s
whole being was translated into a day of the past--a momentous day. The
air blared with a trumpet’s imperious mandate; the clank of sabers
filled his ears, and in the lightning’s pale flare he saw, plainly
against the surging clouds of the southwest, the face of the man who had
ridden close to his bridle rein in a furious cavalry charge that broke
the serried ranks of a redoubtable square.

“Regiment! Draw--_swords_! Trot!--_March!_ Gallop!--_March!_
Charge!--_Charge!_”

The stentorian, martial cry was filling the restricted spaces of the
little stateroom. Colonel Kenwynton, awakened by the sound of his own
voice, had pulled himself up on his elbow and was staring in amazement
at the dull, opaque black square of the glass door of his stateroom,
which might be only discerned because the apartment was partially
illumined through the transom of the opposite door, admitting the
tempered radiance of the lights burning all night in the saloon within.

He was nettled as with a sense of ridicule. He had known an old
war-horse that after peace had been degraded to cheap domestic uses, but
was accustomed to prance in futile senility and in stately guise to the
sound of a child’s drum. He listened to discern if his wild martial cry
had reached other ears. No--the scoffers slept. Peace to their pillows.
He grimly wished them rest. He--he was an old man, an old man, and not
of much account any more, save at the reunions. Ah, it must have been
the associations of the reunion which resurrected that face--the face of
a man to whom he owed much, a man but for whom he would scarcely be here
now, laying his head down in undisturbed slumber. Once more the
similitude of the clank of sabers. With the thought of the possible
ridicule should he again, in his dreaming, audibly refer this noisy
tumult to the memory of his battles--fought anew here in the dim
midnight, he leaned forward to obviate the repetition of the sound and
the renewal of the hallucination. From his berth he easily reached the
door to the guards, flung it open, and lay down content in the
comparative quiet. The river air was dank, but this was on the lee side
of the boat, and though he could hear the wind rush by he could only
slightly feel its influx here. Still illusions thronged the night. The
chimneys piped in trumpet tones to his dreams. The doors of neighboring
staterooms clanked faintly; whole squadrons rode by, their sabers
unsheathed, and suddenly he became conscious of a presence close at hand
that he could not discern in his sleep. All at once he was stiff,
vigilant, expectant, fired by the pulses of a day long dead!

“The parole, officer of the day,” he gasped, curiously waking, yet still
in the thrall of slumber.

“Shoulder to shoulder,” came in a shivering whisper from the twilight of
the stateroom.

Suddenly impressed with the reality of the experience the old man,
agitated, almost speechless, breathless, struggled up on his elbow.

“Why, Captain,” he began, in a piping travesty of his wonted sonorous
greeting, “when did you come aboard?”

“Colonel,” said the man standing by the bed, and even the twilight
glimmer of the room showed the wild light in his eyes, “you haven’t
forgotten the day when ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ was the parole?”

“Never--! Never!” Colonel Kenwynton clasped his hand on the visitor’s
hand. “But for you on that day I should have been these forty odd years
in hell.”

“Then follow me. I have something to say. It must be in
private--something to disclose. You can trust me, Colonel--Shoulder to
Shoulder!”

“Trust you? To the death--Shoulder to Shoulder!” Colonel Kenwynton
cried, in a fervor of enthusiasm.

Nevertheless he was chilled while he hastily half dressed and emerged
into the dank obscurity of the guards. His hand trembled as he laid it
on the stair rail. “An old man,” his lips were involuntarily formulating
the words, as he followed his guide, who was descending to the lower
deck. “An old man,” and he drew his overcoat about him.

Colonel Kenwynton was born to authority and had had the opportunities of
command. But his martial experience had taught him also to obey, and
when he had once accepted a mandate he did not hesitate nor even harbor
an independent thought. With his soft, broad felt hat drawn far over his
brows, down the stairs thumped his groping old feet, doggedly active.
The wind was surging amidst the low clouds which were flying before the
blast in illimitable phalanxes in some distraught panic of defeat. There
must have been a moon lurking beyond their rack and rout, for the weird
night landscape was strangely distinct, the forests that restricted the
horizon bowed, and bent, and rose again in definite undulations to the
successive gusts. One might hardly say how the surface of the far spread
of water was discerned, dark, vaguely lustrous, with abysmal
suggestions, though with never a glimmer, save where the dim lights of
the boat pierced the glooms with a dull ray, here and there, or lay
along ripples close at hand with a limited, shoaling glister.

These shallows covered the line of the treacherous sand-bar that had
been secretly a-building all summer beneath the surface with the
deposits of silt and in the uncovenanted ways of the great water
course, till now the tow-head was possibly a peninsula in lieu of the
island it had once been, and the packets of the line would never again
find free passage as of yore between its stretches and the bank.
Accustomed eyes could see how far extended the stabilities of the
tow-head and thus differentiate the definite land formation from the
element of land transition, that was neither land nor water. Here the
wind made great sport, shrilling along the desolate arid spaces of the
pallid sand dunes defenseless against the blast. A wild night, and cold.

The tread of his guide was silent--one might almost say secret. He came
to a shuddering galvanic pause as he suddenly encountered a watchman, a
lantern in his hand. The big, burly Irishman gazed with round,
unfriendly, challenging eyes at the foremost of the two advancing
figures, then catching sight of the familiar face of the Colonel his
whole aspect changed; he beamed with jovial recognition.

“Oh, the Cunnel, is ut? Faix, the top o’ the mornin’ to yez, sor, if
it’s got anny top to ’t--’tis after twelve. This grisly black night
seems about the ground floor of hell. The river’s risin’ a bit, sor; an’
if this wind would fall we’d sure have a rain, an’ git out o’ this,
foreshortly.”

He touched his hat and moved on, the feeble halo of the lantern
betokening his progress among the shadowy piles of freight, dimly
visible in the dull light of the fixed lamps.

Not even a speculation did Colonel Kenwynton allow himself when suddenly
his precursor put a foot on the gunwale of the boiler deck and sprang
over into the darkness. The old soldier followed without a moment’s
doubt. The unseen water surged about his feet, cold as ice, and at the
swiftly flowing, unexpected impact he caught his breath with a gasp. But
the guide had forgotten the lapse of time--how old a man, how feeble,
was the erstwhile stalwart commander. He pressed on, the water splashing
about his feet, now rising to ankle depth, now even deeper, once surging
about his knees. Even Colonel Kenwynton at last had a thought of
protest. This was always a good soldier, Captain Treherne, but a bit
reckless and disposed to unnecessary risks. There was no word of
remonstrance, however, from the elder man, and he was fairly blown when
suddenly Captain Treherne paused at a considerable distance in a level
space near the river’s margin where was beached a clumsy little craft
which the Colonel recognized as a dug-out.

Captain Treherne seemed all unconscious of the pallid countenance, the
failing breath, the halting step of the old man. For, indeed, Colonel
Kenwynton was fain to catch at his companion’s arm for support as he
listened, panting.

“Come, Colonel, you will come with me. I need your advice. You can wield
a paddle, and together we can make the distance.”

Only the obviously impossible checked the old soldier.

“Wield a paddle against this current, my dear sir? Make the distance!
You forget my age--seventy-five, sir; seventy-five years.”

“It is not life and death, Colonel. We have faced that together, you and
I, and laughed at both. Dishonest possession is involved now, and
legalized robbery, and hidden assets. And _I_ have the secret of the
cache, Colonel, _I_, alone. It must be revealed. I need your help. This
is the crucial crisis of my life. My life--!” He broke off with an
accent of scorn--“of lives worth infinitely more than mine. And, Colonel
Kenwynton,” he laid a sudden, lean hand on the old man’s arm, “the
helpless! For they know nothing of their rights. It must be revealed to
one who will annul this wrong, this heinous disaster.”

He had drawn very close, and his grasp on the Colonel’s arm, that had
once been so firm-fleshed and sinewy, seemed to crush the collapsed
muscles into the very bone. The old man winced with the pain, but stood
firm.

“I’m with you, heart and soul, always. Command me. But, my dear boy,
this is impracticable. Let’s get a roustabout to row.”

The intensifying grip might really have broken the old man’s bone.

“Not for your life--never a whisper to any other living creature! Only
you can do this. I--I--I should not be believed.”

“Not believed! You!” cried Colonel Kenwynton in a tone of such
indignant, vicarious, insulted pride, that what self-control the other
man possessed broke down; he flung his arms about the old man’s
quivering frame, bowed his head on the Colonel’s shoulder and sobbed
aloud.

“Not even you would believe me--if you knew--if you knew what I have
been--what I am.”

“Exactly what I do know,” said the Colonel, sturdily. “You are overcome
by your emotions, dear old fellow. You are overwrought. We will put an
end to this, sir. Come, halloo the boat. I can’t halloo, Cap--think of
that for me!--damn this cough! Halloo the boat, and tell the mate to
send us a roustabout to paddle. Or, hadn’t we better take the yawl? That
dug-out looks tricky--and, by God, man, it’s leaky.” He had advanced to
the brink where the craft lay.

“No, no,” cried the other, “not a breath, not a whisper. It would
frustrate all.” Then impressively, “Colonel Kenwynton, strange things
have come about in this country because of the war. The rich are the
poor; the right are the wrong; the incompetent sit bridling in the
places that the capable have builded; an old paper, an old treasure,
lost time out of mind, would reverse some lives, by God! And _I_ hold
the secret, like an omnipotent fate. There must be no miscarriage of
justice here, Colonel Kenwynton.”

The old man’s eyes stared through the dusk like an owl’s.

“You didn’t call me out here at this time of night to talk of titles to
property and acts of justice, Hugh Treherne, in this marsh--why, there
ain’t a bull-frog left here.”

He lifted his head and gazed out from the flapping broad brim of his hat
at the windy waste of waters, the indefinite lines of the shore, the
distant summits of the forest trees tossing to and fro against the
tumultuous unrest of the clouded horizon.

Close at hand rose sheer precipitous elevations of the tow-head; seeming
far away towered the great bulk of the grounded steamer, whitely
glimmering through the night, her lamps a dim yellow focus here and
there, her fires extinguished, her engines sleeping and supine.

“I called you out here, Colonel, because you are the only man left in
the world who respects his promise, who reverences his Maker, who trusts
his friend and would go through fire and water on his summons.”

“I’ll take an affidavit to the water, dammy,” said the Colonel, grimly,
stamping about as the trickling icy streams ran sleekly down his
garments, over his instep. “But come to the steamboat, Hugh. We’ll have
a glass of hot brandy and water, and talk this thing over in comfort.”

Captain Treherne seemed to struggle for a modicum of self-control. His
voice had a remonstrant cadence such as one might use in addressing a
fractious child.

“Colonel, you knew once what a council of war might mean.”

“Heigh? I did so--I did so.”

“This is secret--to be kept in the bottom of your heart. Your own
thoughts must not revolve about it, lest they grow too familiar and
canvass details with which you have no concern.”

“Hugh, I am an old man. I don’t believe it, as a general thing. The
rheumatism has to give me a sharp pinch to remind me of the fact. I
couldn’t paddle a boat to save my life--and against that current.”

It showed in the chiaro-oscuro like the solution of the problem of
perpetual motion as the murky waters sped past.

“Tell me here and now. Where in all the world could we be more
private?”

Captain Treherne lifted his head and looked about him,--only the bare
sand of the bar, dimly visible in the vague light of the clouded moon,
and of a differing tint from the dull neutral hue of the atmosphere of
darkness. The steamer was absolutely silent, save as a loose chain might
clank, swinging in the wind, for at this distance one could not discern
the shaking of the transoms in their casings. There was no sight or
sound of living creature, until a great bird, driven forth from its
roost by the falling of a bough, or evicted by the wind, went screaming
overhead. A shrill blast pursued his flight and presumably from the dark
distance down the river one could not have distinguished the sounds of
the living cry from the skirling of the restless spirit of the air.

“We crossed the river in a dug-out, under the nose of a gunboat,”
Captain Treherne began, suddenly.

“Who? When? Where?” interrupted the old man, his face vaguely mowing
under his big hat as he sought to compose his features.

“How can I tell where? In forty years who knows any locality in the
course of this deceitful old river? All over here,” he pointed to the
expanse of waters, “used to be dense cypress woods. You couldn’t find
the sign of a tree now, unless some snag gets washed up by the current.”

“For the government snag-boats to pull up,” commented Colonel Kenwynton.

“Victor Ducie had been wounded, it was thought mortally, in a skirmish
on the Arkansas side, and his brother, Archie, and I,--we were together
in the rangers then,--slipped through the lines one dark midnight to
Duciehurst with the news. You remember the Ducies?”

“Indeed, indeed, I do. There is a gentleman of that name--”

But Treherne was going on. “Mrs. Ducie determined to go to her son
Victor at once; she had only one of her children at home then, a
twelve-year-old boy named Julian, and she could take him with her. The
country was full of bands of wandering marauders and bushwhackers, and
in leaving the house Archie placed a few of his father’s most important
papers, with a lot of specie, and some family jewels, in a strong box,
which we wrapped in an old knapsack and hid away.”

He had pushed his hat back from his brow and Colonel Kenwynton felt a
pang of blended pity and surprise to note that the head was nearly bald.
The years had trafficked with Treherne as well as with himself, hard
dealings, it seemed. For they had taken his youth, his spirit, his
pervasive cheer; there was something indefinable suggested that savored
of deep melancholy. And had these covetous years given him full value in
return--learning, in the lessons of life, just judgment, self-control,
disciplined purpose, earnest effort, and, last and not least,
resignation and calm and restful faith? Colonel Kenwynton was
unwittingly shaking his old white head at the thought in his mind. Time
had not dealt honestly by Hugh Treherne. Time had exacted usury and had
paid no fair equivalent for the ineffable possession of youth. Colonel
Kenwynton realized, however, that his own foible was hasty judgment, and
he sought to hold his conclusions in suspension while he listened.

“We will come to the end of the story sooner if I give him his head,” he
said to himself and ruefully added as he shivered in his drenched garb,
“that is, if it _has_ any end.”

“Archie understood the value of these papers of his father’s,” Treherne
resumed suddenly. “There was a mortgage on Duciehurst that had been
lifted, but as all courts of record were closed by the operations of war
the satisfaction had not been noted on the registered instrument.
Carroll Carriton, who held the mortgage, happened to be in Mississippi
at the time and he executed a formal release, and quit claim, signed and
witnessed, but, of course, not registered. You know the chaotic state of
courts of law at that time. The release also expressed a formal
relinquishment of the promissory notes, secured on the land, for they
were not returned; in fact, all the original papers were still out,
having been placed for safekeeping in a bank in Nashville, Tennessee,
where Carriton then resided, and which was within the Federal lines. The
whole matter of the lifting of the mortgage and the full satisfaction of
the debt was thoroughly understood between the principals and the
witnesses, although it was a hasty transaction and in a way irregular,
owing to the lack of facilities for recording the instruments in the
state of war.”

“But, look here,” cried the Colonel in great excitement,
“Duciehurst--you know, I was a friend of George Ducie--Duciehurst was
sold to satisfy that mortgage, in behalf of the heirs of Carroll
Carriton.”

“Ah, Lord. That’s why I am here, Colonel,” cried Treherne with a strange
note of pathos.

“But, man alive, you ought to have been here forty years ago with
Carriton’s release.”

“Ah-h, Lord, Colonel, you don’t understand.”

“But I do understand, I understand mighty well,” cried the Colonel.
“Archie, God bless his soul, I remember him like yesterday, died of
typhoid fever in Vicksburg, where his father was killed by the explosion
of a cannon during the siege. His mother died in Arkansas, succumbed to
pneumonia, contracted on the river that cold night when she crossed it
to join her wounded son, and never returned to Duciehurst. Victor did
not die till long afterward, he recovered from his wound and fell at
last in the battle before Nashville. Not one of the family was left when
the war closed except the youngest son, Julian, and although the suit on
the promissory notes, brought by the executors of Carriton, was defended
in his behalf, he being a minor at the time, no proof of the
satisfaction of the debt could be made, and in default of payment the
mortgage was foreclosed, and the magnificent estate of Duciehurst went
under the hammer for a mere fraction of its value in the collapsed
conditions of those disorganized times.”

“Ah-h-hh, Lord, Colonel,” Treherne was swaying back and forth as in a
species of anguish.

“No time to say ‘Ah, Lord, Colonel,’” the old man muttered the words in
irascible mimicry. “Where did you and Archie hide that knapsack?” and,
with increasing sternness, “why have you never produced those
valuables?”

Was there a fluctuating glimmer of moonlight in the rack of clouds, or
did the pallid day look forth for one moment, averse and reluctant--he
saw distinctly that face which he once knew so well, with something
new, strangely unrecognizable upon it. Then he had a sudden vision of a
scene wreathed in the smoke of cannon and the mists of rain; the glitter
of dull gray light on the polished, serried, fixed bayonets of an
infantry square; the sense of the motion of a mad tumultuous gallop of a
charge; the sound of trumpets wildly blowing, pandemonium, yells,
shrieks of pain, hoofbeats, a gush of blood suffusing eyes, and all
consciousness lost save that this man was helping him to his own horse
from under the carcass of the slain charger, humbly holding by the
stirrup in their mad precarious escape through the broken square.

The years since that momentous day had been something to Colonel
Kenwynton, and but for this man’s courage and devotion he would not have
lived them.

“Hugh, dear old boy, remember one fact. Through everything misty, I
trust you; I trust you implicitly, Hugh. I know your honorable motives.
Tell me anything you will, but through thick and thin I trust you.”

“The Ducie valuables are what I am coming to,” said Treherne uneasily,
his voice husky, his articulation muffled, his tongue thick. “We hid
’em--Archie and I. We hid ’em at Duciehurst in the mansion. That is what
I want to tell you.”

He paused to gaze about, pointing wildly, now up, now down the river.

“Then we crossed there, no, there, and landed on the Arkansas side. We
had put Mrs. Ducie and Julian into the skiff, which we rowed ourselves.
She had a lot of things with her that she was taking to Victor,
bed-linen, blankets, clothes, medicines, wines and such like, so hard to
come by in the Confederacy in those times. We landed there, no,
_there_.”

Again he was pointing wildly from place to place. Now and then he took
short, agile runs to and fro, as if he sought a better view in the windy
obscurity.

“It was very cold and a pitch black night. We almost got under the hull
of a Yankee gunboat--she was a vessel that had been captured from the
Confederates, armored with iron rails, you know--that kind of iron-clad.
As she swung at anchor I wonder the suction didn’t swamp us, but it
didn’t. The look-out on deck never challenged nor heard us. We hit it
like the bull’s eye, at the Arkansas landing,--Archie knew every twist
and quirk in the current like an old song, born at Duciehurst, you know.
And after we made it to the farm-house, where Victor was lying at the
point of death it seemed, we returned to our command according to
orders, our leave being expired, for we had already hid the box in the
knapsack at Duciehurst. And that’s all.”

He laid his hand on Colonel Kenwynton’s shoulder and gazed wistfully
into his face. Day was coming surely, for the elder man’s feebler vision
read a strange fact in those eyes, a fact that made him shudder, even
when half perceived, a fact against which his credulity revolted.

“Hugh, Hugh, why in the name of God have you not produced those papers,
restored the gold and jewels?”

“Why, why, why,” Treherne’s voice rose to a shriek. “Why, I have
_forgotten_ where they were hidden. Forgotten! Forgotten! Forgotten!”

Colonel Kenwynton was trembling like a leaf. A chill keener than the
cold had set his heart a-quiver. “Forgotten,” he echoed in a vague
fright. “Forgotten--impossible!”

The contradiction seemed to restore Treherne--not so much that it
aroused the instinct of contention as the determination to set himself
right in the eyes of his old commander.

“Do you know, Colonel, where I have been these forty years?” he
demanded, quietly.

“I thought, in Paradise, dear old boy. I often asked, but could never
hear a word.”

Wherever he had been it was evident he had not been happy there. The
trembling clasp of Colonel Kenwynton’s arm on his shoulder brought the
younger man’s face down on the soft old wrinkled neck. But now there
were no tears.

“I have been at Glenrose.”

The words came from between set teeth, in the merest thread of a voice.

“Glenrose?” Colonel Kenwynton was aware that there was a significance in
the reply which he had not grasped. “A beautiful little town, I am told,
not far from Caxton, and growing quite into commercial importance,” he
said, glibly, his instinct of courtesy and compliment galvanically
astir.

“Oh, horrible! Horrible!” Hugh Treherne cried, poignantly. “Do you
wonder now that I have forgotten? _I_ can only wonder that I remember
anything. They pretend that it was the wound at Franklin--the injury to
the medulla substance.”

“Hugh! Hugh!” the old Colonel was near to falling into the marshy slough
at his feet. “You don’t mean--you can’t mean--the--asylum--the private
sanatorium for the insane. Oh, my poor boy, my poor boy. Wait, wait,
give me your hand, I shall fall, wait, wait.”

But there were sudden voices on the wind, calling here, calling there.
Colonel Kenwynton heard his own name, but he did not respond. He only
sought to detain his old comrade in his endearing clasp. The younger man
was the stronger. Treherne wrested himself away, though not without
repeated efforts, seized the paddle, pushed off the dug-out, and in a
moment was lost in the gloom, for the moon was down, mists were rising
from the low-lying borders of a bayou delta, and the frail craft was
invisible on the face of the waters.

Colonel Kenwynton was not devoid of a certain kind of policy. He rallied
his composure, realizing that the Captain of the steamboat had been
alarmed by his absence on this precarious spot which the sound of his
voice had betrayed, and before the emissaries sent out to seek him had
reached the old man he had determined on his line of conduct. He
maintained a studied reticence, the more easily since Treherne’s
presence had not been observed to excite curiosity and he himself was in
a state of exhaustion and cold that precluded more than a shivering gasp
in reply to questions. For he was determined to take counsel within
himself before he indulged in explanations. He said to himself that he
could better afford misconstruction of his conduct as some fantastic
freak of drunkenness than run the risk of divulging the interests of
another man to his possible detriment,--this man, who had so obviously,
so appealingly suffered. He steeled himself in this, although he loved
the approval, or rather the admiration, of his fellows, and he felt
that his position in some sort forfeited it, not being aware how
thoroughly established he was as a public favorite, so that, indeed, he
could hardly incur reprobation.

“Ain’t the old Colonel game--must have been tight as a drum last night,”
the Captain said to the clerk. “He was making the tow-head fairly sing
when I heard him, luckily enough.”

Then to the Boots, who was looking from one to the other of the miry
shoes into which he had thrust each hand: “Take his clothes and get them
dried and pressed and see that you are careful about it. Colonel
Kenwynton shall have the best service aboard as long as I have a plank
afloat.”

He had no plank afloat now, high and dry as the _Cherokee Rose_ was on
the sand-bar, but his meaning was clear, and Colonel Kenwynton’s gear,
despite its strenuous experience, seemed improved by this careful
handling when once more donned, and he strode out, serene and smiling,
into the outer air.

“How the old fellows stand their liquor--a body would think he was never
overtaken in his life.”

The Captain possessed the grace of reticence. None of the passengers had
any inkling of the incident of the previous night, either as Colonel
Kenwynton knew it, or in the interpretation which the Captain had placed
upon it.




CHAPTER IV


If the patience, the concentration, the tireless endurance with which
Jasper Binnhart awaited the return of the stranger, could have been
applied to any object of worthy endeavor commensurate results must have
ensued. It was necessarily, even in his own estimation, a fantastic
expectation to learn from him aught of value concerning the treasure
hidden at Duciehurst during the Civil War. If the stranger really had
knowledge of the place of its concealment it was not likely that he
would divulge it, since this would require the division of the windfall.
But, he argued speciously, the man might need assistance, which probably
explained his singular mission to the stranded _Cherokee Rose_ to confer
with Colonel Kenwynton. This confirmed the impression of the Berridge
family that there was something eccentric, inexplicable about him. What
he needed in such an enterprise was not a man of seventy-five, as soft
as an old horse turned out to grass, but a master mechanic, such as
himself, indeed, a man accustomed to the use of tools, with the
dexterity imparted by constant work and the strength of muscles trained
to endurance. The Colonel! Why he would be as inefficient as a baby. But
perhaps only his advice was desired. Binnhart wished again and again
that it had chanced that he could have seen the stranger first. More
than once he despondently shook his round bullet head, with its closely
cropped black hair,--as sleek as a beaver’s, from his habit of sousing
it into the barrel of water where he tempered his steel,--as he sat on
one of the steps of the rude flight that led to the door of the
semi-aquatic dwelling of the water-rat’s family, and gazed across the
darkling river at the orange-tinted lights of the _Cherokee Rose_, lying
high and dry on the bar. It was a pity for Colonel Kenwynton to be let
into the secret at all. If the stranger had any right to possess himself
of the hidden money he could boldly hire laborers and go to the spot in
the open light of day. If his right were complicated or dubious, and
this was most likely, or why had it lain so long unasserted, the old
Colonel would clamp down on it with both feet. The Colonel had highflown
antiquated ideas, unsuited to the world of to-day; Binnhart had heard
him speak in public. He talked about honor, and patriotism, and
fair-dealing in politics, and such chestnuts, and, although the people
applauded, they were secretly laughing at him in their sleeves. No, no!
Binnhart shook his head once more. It was a thousand pities to bring old
Kenwynton into it at all; nothing he knew was of any value
nowadays,--except the Colonel did know how a horse should be shod, and
the proper care of the animal’s feet; people said he used to own fine
racers in his rich days. If Colonel Kenwynton returned with the stranger
there might be trouble. The old man was a hard proposition. He seemed to
think himself a Goliath, and would certainly put up a stiff fight on an
emergency. “I’d rather see him come back with any three men than the old
Colonel,” Binnhart concluded ruefully.

This was the hour of the night when a mist began to rise, and the
orange-tinted lights from the steamer’s cabin glimmered faintly through
the haze. Binnhart became apprehensive that he might not discern the
tiny craft in the midst of the great river, struggling across its
intricate braided currents, and thus the stranger return unaware, or
perhaps give him the slip altogether. He rose and took his way down the
successive terraces to the verge of the water. He must needs have heed
not to walk into the river, for silent as the grave it flowed through
the deep gorge of its channel, and but for some undiscriminated sense of
motion in the dark landscape one might never know it was there.

Long, long he stood at gaze, watching in the direction of the bar, his
ear keenly attentive, aware that he could hear from far the slightest
impact of a paddle on that silent surface. But the wind was rising now;
the mists, affrighted, spread their tenuous white wings and flitted
away. Presently there lay visible before him, vaguely illumined by the
light of a clouded moon, the vast spread of the tossing turmoils of the
sky, the dark borders of the opposite bank, the swift swirling of the
great river, and the white structure of the steamboat, rising dimly into
the air on the sand-bar. Her lights were faint now, lowered for the
night; the vague clanking of the dynamo came athwart the currents; still
the surface of the waters showed no gliding craft, and listen as he
might he heard no measured dip of paddle.

Once more he betook himself back to the shack and found Connover and
Jorrocks seated on the outer stair. They evidently had no faith in the
adage of honor among thieves, and albeit they had alternately enjoyed
the refreshment of a nap in the bunks of the cabin one remained always
vigilant as to the movements of Binnhart. As the night wore on and
naught was developed both had taken up a position on the outer stair and
alertly awaited the crisis.

Dan Berridge and his father were but poor exemplifications of the
sybarite, but the paramount instincts of self-indulgence overpowered
their hope of loot, and their doubt of the fair-dealing of their
co-conspirators, and in their respective bunks they snored as noisily as
if in the sleep of the just.

Jessy Jane alone took note of the fact that, but for their disclosure of
the somnolent talk of the stranger, the others would have known naught
of the possibility of the discovery of the hidden valuables at
Duciehurst and she resented the chance that they would profit to the
exclusion of her and hers. She remained in the dark in the back room of
the little cabin, but up and dressed, now and again listening intently
for any stir of movement or sound of voices. When she heard the heavy
tread of Jorrocks and Connover tramping to the outer stair as they
relieved each other’s watch, she would set the communicating door ajar
to thrust in her tousled red head to spy upon their motions, withdrawing
it swiftly. Now she perceived through the dim vista of the room the
square face of Jorrocks against the gloom of the night, looking at her
with calculating, narrowing eyes, evidently appreciating the full
significance of her espionage, and, beyond still, a vague shadowy
outline which she recognized as Jasper Binnhart’s profile. She closed
the door with a bang, partly in pettishness and partly through
embarrassment, at the moment that Binnhart grew stiff and rigid,
motionless in excitement. He had sighted a canoe down the river, which
was shining in a rift of the clouds, a mile, nay, two, below the landing
for which it was bound. Thus she did not see his wild, silent gesture of
discovery, his hand thrown high into the air. Its muscles became
informed with a mandatory impulse as he beckoned to Jorrocks and
Connover to follow and set forth in a dead run for the water’s side.

A skiff was lying there scarcely discernible in the vague light. It
belonged to the shanty-boater, and into it the owner threw himself,
grasping the oars, the other two with less practiced feet tumbled into
the space left available, and the craft shot out from the land under the
swift, strong strokes of the shanty-boater, rowing as if for a purse.
There was a belt of pallor along the horizon. A sense of dreary
wistfulness, of sadness, lay on the land, coming reluctantly into view.
The clouds hung low and menacing, although the wind still was high. The
dawn was near, or even the practiced eyes of the river pirates might not
have distinguished the dugout, seeking to cross the great expanse, yet
being carried by the strong current further and further down the river
from its objective point.

“See her now?” asked Jorrocks, resolutely rowing and never turning his
head.

“Well out todes mid-stream,” replied Binnhart. “Nigh to swampin’, too.
Git a move on ye, Jorrocks, git a move on ye.”

After a contemplative moment he suddenly threw himself on another pair
of oars and the combined strength of the two men sent the light boat
shooting like an arrow down the surface of the river upon the craft,
evidently having shipped water and beginning to welter dangerously,
showing a tendency to capsize, the trick so frequently practiced by the
faithless dug-out.

“Hello, sport!” called out Binnhart, as soon as he was within earshot.
“You’ll go to the bottom in three minutes unless you can swim agin the
Mississippi current better than I can. Will you have a lift?”

The stranger’s exhausted face showed ghastly white in the dull, slow
light. His wide, dark eyes were wild and suspicious. There was something
in their expression that sent a chill coursing down the spine of the
impressionable Connover, his shaken, exacerbated nerves all on edge from
his constant potations, as well as from the excitements of this
experience and the strain of his long vigil. The stranger scanned them
successively, keeping the canoe in place by an occasional dip of the
paddle. It might seem as if he debated the alternative--Davy Jones’s
locker or a place among these boat-men. When he spoke his reserved
gentlemanly tone struck their attention.

“I shall be much obliged,” he said, with grave and distant courtesy,
evidently recognizing a vast gulf between their station and his.

“Move out of the gentleman’s way, Connover,” said Binnhart, quickly. For
this was a gentleman, however water-soaked, however queer of conduct,
whatever project he might have in view.

After securing the dug-out as a tow, Binnhart seated himself opposite
the stranger, who was given the place of honor in the stern.

“Nothin’ meaner afloat than a dug-out,” Binnhart remarked, keenly
watching the face of his guest, whose lineaments became momently more
distinct as the dull dawn grew into a dreary day. “Though to be sure a
dug-out ain’t used commonly for crossing the river, jes’ for scoutin’
about the banks, and in the bayous, and lakes.”

“I am not accustomed to its use,” the stranger replied.

“You come mighty nigh swampin’, an’ that’s a fact, though you couldn’t
have got nothin’ better at Berridge’s, an’ I s’pose your business with
Colonel Kenwynton on the _Cherokee Rose_ wouldn’t wait.”

“Colonel Kenwynton!” cried the gentleman, with a strange sharpness. “How
do you know I had business with Colonel Kenwynton?”

“No offense, sir. You spoke of it at Berridge’s. He is a leaky-mouthed
old chap. What goes in at his ears comes out of his jaws.”

“I spoke of it? _I_ spoke of it?” repeated the stranger. His voice was
keyed to the cadences of despair. The modulation of those dying falls
was scarcely intelligible to Binnhart; he could not have interpreted
them nor even the impression they made upon his mind. But some
undiscriminated faculty appraised their true intendment and on it
fashioned his course. Once more he looked keenly at the stranger’s face,
while the gentleman gazed with deep reflectiveness at the swift waters
so near at hand racing by on either side.

“Where shall we set you ashore, sir?” Binnhart asked with respectful
urbanity.

Ah, here was evidently a dilemma. Berridge’s hut was now far up stream,
since the brawny practiced arms of Jorrocks had steadily continued to
row the skiff down and down the current, which of itself would have been
ample motive power for a swift transit. An expression of despondency
crossed the stranger’s face.

“I should have noticed earlier,” he said. “I had intended to return to
Berridge’s, but I cannot ask you to go so far out of your way against
the current. Just set me ashore at the nearest practicable point and I
can walk back.”

“All ’ight, sir. Duciehurst is the nearest safe landing, the bank is
bluff an’ caving above.”

Binnhart was quick to note as the word was spoken the change of
expression and a sudden sharp gasp that was not unlike a snap, so did
the muscles evade control.

“You are acquainted with the old mansion, sir, spoke of it bein’ part of
your business with Colonel Kenwynton to git the hidden money an’ papers
an’ vallybles--take care, Colty, he’ll fall out of the boat!”

For Captain Treherne, his eyes distended, his lower jaw fallen, his face
livid, had risen in the boat and stood tottering in the unsteady craft,
staring aghast and dumfounded at Binnhart. “_I_ spoke of that? _I_ told
you that?”

“No, sir, but you told Berridge, Josh, the old man.”

“You lie, you infamous liar! What, _I_ publish abroad the secret that I
have kept through thick and thin, till after forty years of acute mania
I may right the wrong and establish the title. Oh, my God!” he broke
forth shrilly, “am I raving now? Is this a species of hallucination,
obsession,” he waved his wild hands toward sky, and woods, and
sinister, silent river, “or, worse still, is it stern fact and have I
betrayed my sacred trust at last?”

“He’ll turn this boat upside down,” the shanty-boater in a low voice
warned the others.

“‘Liar’ is a toler’ble stiff word for me to have to take off ’n you,
Mister,” said Binnhart, with affected gruffness, for his affiliations
with the truth were not so close as to cause him to actually resent an
accusation of divagation. “It ain’t my fault if you got absent-minded
an’ told Berridge that the vallybles are hid in a pillar or a pilaster,”
he broke off abruptly.

A shrill scream rent the air. It seemed for one moment as if Captain
Treherne himself had made a discovery, so elated were his eyes, so
triumphant was his face, changed almost out of recognition in the
moment. Agitated as he was he had lost his balance and was swaying to
and fro as if he might pitch head-foremost into the river.

“If you don’t want the whole water-side popilation rowing out here to
see what’s the matter aboard you had better make him stop that n’ise,”
the shanty-boater urged. “Gag him. Take his handhercher, or his hat,” he
recommended, still swiftly rowing.

The dull, purplish twilight of the slow-coming day gave little token of
stir amongst the few scattered inhabitants of the riverside within
earshot; cottonpickers are never in the field till the sun has dried the
dew from the plant, but Jorrocks was mindful of the fact that there are
barnyard duties in an agricultural community requiring early rising;
cows are to be milked, horses fed and watered, and any bucolic errand
might bring to the bank an inquisitive interest in these weird cries
ringing from shore to shore in an intensity of agonized emotion. The
suggestion of Jorrocks was acted upon instantly. Binnhart roughly
knocked the hat from Captain Treherne’s head, crushed it into a stiff,
shapeless mass, thrust it between his jaws, attempting to secure it with
his large linen handkerchief, despite his strenuous resistance. The
struggle was fierce, and the miscreants were dismayed by the strength
the victim put forth. The two could scarcely hold him; over and again he
shook off both Binnhart and Connover. The shanty-boater had great ado
even with his practiced skill to keep the skiff from overturning
altogether, as it listed from side to side as the weight of the
combatants shifted. The stranger fought with a sort of frenzy, striking,
kicking, butting with his head, even biting with his strong snapping
jaws.

“He is like a maniac,” cried Binnhart, in amaze, and once more that
awful cry rang upon the air, shrill, wild, freighted with demoniacal
bursts of laughter, yet with an intonation more pathetic than tears.

Not until Jorrocks shipped his oars and, leaning forward, caught
Treherne’s feet, throwing him on his back in the bottom of the boat, was
the gag again introduced into his mouth, to be promptly and dexterously
ejected as he sought to rise. Again was the semi-nautical skill of the
shanty-boater of avail. A crafty knot in a rope’s end and the stranger’s
arms were pinioned to his side, and while the gag was secured the
surplusage of the cord was bound again and again about his legs till he
was helpless, able neither to move nor to speak. Only his wild eyes
expressed his indomitable courage, his sense of affronted dignity, his
resentful fury.

“I do declar’ I’m minded to spit in his face,” exclaimed Binnhart,
vindictively, as panting and breathless, he towered above his victim,
lying at his feet.

“Better not!” the shanty-boater admonished the blacksmith. Then, in a
lower voice: “You fool you, we depend on his good will to show us the
place where the swag is hid.”

“Tend to your own biz,” roughly replied Binnhart. “Look where your boat
is driftin’. Bound for Vicksburg, ain’t ye?”

For, left to its own devices when the oarsman had gone to the aid of his
comrades, the skiff had been carried by the swift current far down the
stream and toward the bank, so close, indeed, that Binnhart apprehended
its grounding. He had not an acquaintance with the river front equal to
the practical knowledge of the shanty-boater, whose peregrinations made
him the familiar of every bogue and bight, of every bar and tow-head for
a hundred miles or more.

“Look what’s ahead of your blunt pig-snout, an’ maybe ye’ll have sense
enough to follow it,” Jorrocks retorted.

For a great looming structure had appeared on the bank in the murky
atmosphere, that was not so shadowy as night, yet in its obscurity could
hardly assume to be day. An imposing mansion of three stories, with a
massive cornice and commodious wings, stood well back on the shelving
terraces. Woods on either hand pressed close about and many of the trees
being magnolias and of coniferous varieties foreign to the region, the
foliage was dense despite the season, and gave the entourage a singular,
sinister sense of deep seclusion. In the dim light one could hardly
discern that there was no glass in the windows, but the black, gaping
intervals intimated somehow vacancy and ruin, and Binnhart was quick to
notice the dozen great pillars rising to the floor of the third story
and supporting the roof of the long broad portico. Then he gave no
further attention to the unwonted surroundings, but fixed his gaze on
the face of their prisoner as his helpless bulk was lifted from the boat
by the three. He was of no great weight and they bore him easily enough,
inert and motionless, along the broad broken stone pavement to the
deserted ruin.

A ready interpretation had Binnhart, a keen intuition. The native
endowment might have wrought him good service in a better field. As it
was it had been the pivotal faculty on which had turned with every wind
of opportunity the nefarious successes that the thieves had achieved. He
now watched the glimmer of recognition in Captain Treherne’s eyes as he,
too, gazed breathlessly with intent interest at the mansion, despite his
bound and gagged situation. He even made shift to turn his head that he
might fix his eyes on the eastern side. Only to the east he looked, and
always. Binnhart felt a bounding pulse of prideful discovery that in the
east the treasure was hidden, in an eastern pilaster of the portico.

He was not familiar with the meaning of the architectural term, but just
what a “pilaster” was he would know before he was an hour older, he
swore to himself, if there was a carpenter or builder awake in the
little town of Caxton where his shop was located and where he must needs
repair for tools. There he would learn this all-significant fact, for
that there was treasure hidden at Duciehurst all the country-side had
been aware for forty years--the question was, where?

They bore Captain Treherne through half a dozen darkling rooms, showing
as yet scant illumination from the slow coming day. The windows gave
upon a gray nullity outside, and even the size and condition of the
bare, echoing apartments could not be ascertained by the prisoner’s
searching gaze as he was laid down on the floor at full length, watching
the preparations of his captors for their temporary departure. One of
them would remain, as he was assured by Binnhart, who had again adopted
a tone of deference suited to the evident station and culture of the
victim. Connover would stay and see to it that he was not molested in
any manner whatever during the short absence of the others. Binnhart,
making his words as few as possible, took his leave and once more in the
boat Jorrocks pulled down the river with every pulse of energy he could
command.

Captain Treherne had spent forty years of his life in an insane asylum,
but the experience had not bereft him in this lucid interval of the
appreciation of certain fundamental facts of human nature. He realized
that although he could not use his hands, Connover was in no wise
restricted. Perhaps the offer of the funds in his pocket might compass
his release if he could find means to intimate this delicate
proposition. Treherne waited till he heard the shuffling gait of
Jorrocks and the swift assured step of Binnhart die away in the
distance before he would seek to communicate his desire by means of
winks and such significant grimaces as the gag would permit. Before the
others were clear of the house Connover had come and stood beside him
gazing down at him with a sort of vacant curiosity on his weak,
dissipated face, unmeaning and without intention. But he immediately
turned away, and, repairing to a long hall hard by, began to tramp idly
back and forth to while away the time of waiting.

It was likely to be a considerable time, he began to reflect
discontentedly, and he had no particular liking for his commission. The
other fellows would get their feed in Caxton, he argued. Jorrocks would
not go without his breakfast for the United States Treasury. They would
also get drinks, good and plenty. At this thought he took an empty flask
from his pocket and lugubriously smelled it. He was a fool, he said to
himself, and perhaps that was the only true word he had spoken that day.
But, in his opinion, it applied specifically to his consent to remain
here, as if he, too, were bound and gagged.

Once more he sniffed the departed delights of the empty flask. Suddenly
Captain Treherne heard no more the regular impact of his steps as he
tramped the long length of the vacant hall. There was a livery stable at
a way-station of the railroad some eight miles distant, a goodish tramp
on an empty stomach, but the odor of the flask endued him “with the
strength of ten.” He was known there as an ex-jockey of some success, he
was appreciated after a fashion by its employees; he could count on
their hospitality and conviviality, and perhaps borrowing a rig he could
return before Binnhart and Jorrocks would be here accoutered with their
tools. The prisoner could not report his defection, even when liberated,
for he could not know where in that great building he had seen fit to
bestow himself to enjoy, perchance, what he was pleased to call, “a nap
of sleep.”

Thus silence as of the tomb settled on the deserted building. The shades
of night gradually wore away and the pale gray light of a sunless and
melancholy day pervaded the dreary vistas of the bare uninhabited ruin.




CHAPTER V


In his inexorable view of the sanctity of his promise Colonel Kenwynton
had no impulse to confide the details of the revelation he had received
or to take counsel thereon. Still, he could but look with an accession
of interest at Adrian Ducie when he met him at the breakfast table, the
passengers of the _Cherokee Rose_ dallying over the meal, prolonging it
to the utmost in the dearth of other interest or occupation.

Although Ducie seemed to have mustered the philosophy to ignore the
serious aspects of this most irksome and dolorous detention, it had
darkened all the horizon to Floyd-Rosney’s exacting and censorious mood.
“I can’t imagine, Captain, how you should not have been on the lookout
for the formation of an obstruction capable of grounding the boat,” was
his cheerful matutinal greeting.

“Oh, Miss Dean says he knew it was there all the time, and only wished
to entertain us,” his wife interposed, with a view of toning down her
lord’s displeasure, but her sarcastic chin was in the air, and her
clipped, quick enunciation gave token only of one of her ironic
pleasantries.

“Well, I intend to eat him out of house and home while I am about it,”
said Ducie, with an affectation of roughness. “This table is not run _à
la carte_. You can’t charge more than the passage-money, Captain, no
matter how long we abide with you in this pleasance of a sand-bar--and I
really think, waiter, I can get away with the other wing of that fried
chicken.”

“You think you can get away; _can_ you?” Mrs. Floyd-Rosney fleered.

The queer little roughness he affected was incongruous with the delicate
elegance of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s presence. The polish of his own
appearance and ordinary manner warranted it as little, and the
contrariety of his mental attitude was like that of a bad child “showing
off” in the reverse of expectation or desire. Between the heavy sulking
of her husband in the troublous _contretemps_ of the detention of the
boat, and the peculiar tone that Adrian Ducie had taken, in which,
however, offense was at once untenable and inexplicable, it might seem
that Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had much ado to preserve her airy placidity and
maintain the poise of the delicate irony of her manner. This became more
practicable when Ducie’s attention was diverted to a little girl of
twelve who had boarded the packet with her father at the landing of a
fashionable suburban school some distance up the river, evidently
designing to spend the week-end at home. She was a bouncing little girl,
with liquid black eyes, and dark red hair, long and abundant, plaited on
either side of her head and tied up with black ribbon bows of
preposterously wide loops. While she was as noisy and as active as a
boy, she was evidently constantly beset with the realization that her
lot in life was of feminine restrictions, and miserably repented of
every alert caper. Her memory, however, was short, as short, one might
say, as her very abbreviated skirts, and the monition of the staid
gait, appropriate to her sex, always struck her after the fantastic
gallopade or muscular skip on her long, handsome, black-stockinged legs,
and never by any chance earlier. She had a most Briarean and centipedal
consciousness in Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s presence, which she instinctively
appraised as critical, and she was covered with confusion as she came
flustering out of her stateroom to the breakfast table to realize that
she had banged the door behind her. By way of disposing of one
superfluous foot at least she crooked her leg deftly at the knee, placed
its foot in the chair and sat down upon it, turning scarlet as she did
so, realizing all too late that the maneuver was perfectly obvious, and
wondering what Mrs. Floyd-Rosney must think of a girl who sat on her
foot. For the opinion of the score of other persons at the tables she
had not a thought or a care, doubtless relying on their good nature to
condone the attitude, curiously affected and prized by persons of her
age and sex. An agile twist had got the foot down to the floor again,
and now with restored composure and rebounding spirits her gushing
loquacity was reasserted, and she was exchanging matutinal greetings
with her traveling companions; her father, a tall, lean, quiet man, who
had marked her entrance with raised eyebrows and a concerned air, having
resumed his talk on the tariff with his next neighbor at table.

“Have compassion on our dullness, Miss Marjorie,” said Adrian Ducie,
suavely smiling at her from across the board. In his contrariety he
seemed to have divined Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s covert disapproval and made a
point of according his own favor. Marjorie’s heart, however, was in no
danger from his fascinations. To her he seemed a man well advanced in
years, quite an old bachelor, indeed. “Tell us your dreams.”

“Dreams? oh, mercy!” How often had she been warned against rising
inflections and interjections? “My dreams are all mixed up. I don’t know
now what they were.”

“I will disentangle them for you,” he said, blandly; then in parenthesis
to the waiter, “Give the cook my compliments and tell him to send up
another omelette, which I will share with Miss Ashley.”

“Oh, I don’t like eggs,” Marjorie blurted out, then stopped short. How
often had she been admonished never to say at table that she disliked
any article of diet. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, she was sure, must have noticed
that lapse.

“Then I will eat it all by myself--mark me now, Captain! While awaiting
its construction I will tell your dreams, and interpret their mystery.”

“Oh, oh,” gurgled Marjorie. What a nice old man was this Mr. Adrian
Ducie! Her blithe young eyes were liquid and brilliant with expectation.

“You dreamed that you and I went hunting, with some others who don’t
matter and who shall be nameless,” he glanced slightingly up and down
the row of passengers at the table. “We went ashore in the yawl, and I
borrowed the Captain’s rifle, and----”

“No, you didn’t,” said the Captain, from the next table, “for I haven’t
got one.”

“You don’t mean it?” said Ducie, stopping short. “Then what would become
of us if pirates should board this gallant craft of ours? Depend wholly
on the pistol pockets of the passengers?”

“Oh, oh, Mr. Ducie,” cried Marjorie, quite losing her hold on herself,
“you are so funny!”

“Thank you, oh, very much, I can be funnier than that when I try.”

Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s unseeing eyes perceived no interest apparently in
this conversation. Now and then, with an absorbed air, she recurred to
her tea and toast as if naught were going forward, while her husband ate
his breakfast as silently and with as much gruff concentration as a
hound with a bone.

Their persistent expression of a lack of interest seemed to stimulate
Mr. Ducie to a further absorption of the attention of the company. “Are
there really no shot-guns, no fowling-pieces aboard, nothing to shoot
with deadlier than the darts of Miss Marjorie’s bright eyes?”

“Oh, oh,” she squealed, enchanted at this turn, and laid down her knife
and fork to put her hands before her lips apparently to suppress a
series of similar shrillnesses, for this old man’s funniness was of a
most captivating order.

“I notice that there is a swamper’s cabin over there on the bank; I’ll
bet he has got a rifle; but what is the nearest plantation house,
Captain? Mansion, I should say,” he corrected the phrase with the
satiric flout of the younger generation at the mannerisms of yore.

The Captain seemed to resent it. “You may very safely call it a
‘mansion,’ sir, it has twenty-five rooms, exclusive of ball-room,
billiard-room, picture-gallery, and the domestic offices, kitchen,
laundry, dairy, and quarters for servants, and so forth. The Duciehurst
plantation-house is the nearest mansion. It is really a ruin, now, and
uninhabited, I suppose, but it was good enough in its day.”

A sudden portentous gravity smote the countenance of Adrian Ducie.
Although the risible muscles and ligaments still held the laughing
contour, all the mirth was gone out of it. His face was as if stricken
into stone, as if he had suddenly beheld the Gorgon Head of trouble. The
change was so marked, so momentous, that Colonel Kenwynton, forgetting
for the moment whence came the association of ideas, suddenly asked:

“You have the same name as the former owner, Mr. Ducie, though I suppose
you don’t hold the title to the mansion?”

“Oh, I hold the title fast enough,” replied Ducie, with his wonted
off-hand manner, “though it’s like my ‘title to a mansion in the skies,’
I can’t read it clear.”

Floyd-Rosney’s mood was already lowering enough, but for some reason,
not immediately apparent, his averse discontent was fomented by the
change of the subject. He paused with his tea-cup poised in his hand.
His deep voice weighed more heavily than usual on the silence.

“It seems to me a mis-statement to say that you have a title to the
property,--a title is a right. There are certainly some forty years’
adverse possession against any outstanding claim, of which I have never
heard.”

Ducie was eyeing Floyd-Rosney with a look at once affronted and amazed.
“And where do you derive your information as to my title to
Duciehurst?”

“I have no information as to your _title_ to Duciehurst, which is the
reason that I could not remain silent when such title was asserted,
though the discussion cannot be edifying to this goodly company.” He
waved his hand at the rows of breakfasting passengers with an unmirthful
smile and his courtesy was so perfunctory as obviously to have no root.
“The title is mine, it comes to me within the year from the will of my
Uncle Horace Carriton, who held it for forty years. But,” with his sour,
condescending smile at the company, “the courts and not the breakfast
table are the proper place to assert a right that is not barred by the
lapse of time.”

“The remedy may be barred, but not the right,” Ducie retorted angrily.

Captain Disnett’s voice sounded with pacifying intonations. He did not
seek to change the subject but to steer it clear of breakers. “I never
could understand why Mr. Carriton let the old mansion go to wreck and
ruin, fine old place as there is on the river. Though he rented out the
lands the house has always remained untenanted.”

Mr. Floyd-Rosney’s dignity was enhanced by the composure which he found
it possible to maintain in this nettling discussion. “The house was much
injured by the occupancy of guerillas and military marauders during the
Civil War,” he rejoined. “After it came into the possession of my uncle,
when peace was restored, it was left vacant from necessity. My uncle,
who was a non-resident,--lived in Tennessee,--would not cut up the
plantation into small holdings; many tenants make much mischief, so he
preferred to lease the entire place to some man of moderate means for a
term of years, as no person of fortune appeared as a purchaser of the
house, which it would cost largely to restore. None of the successive
lessees was able or willing to furnish or maintain the mansion in a
style suitable to its pretensions, yet they were too proud to live in a
corner of it like a mouse in a hole. Such a man would prefer to live in
a neighboring villa or cottage while farming the lands as better suited
to his comfort and credit than that vacant wilderness of architecture.”

“Strange visitors it must have at odd times,” meditated the Captain.
“Once in a while in our runs I have seen lights flitting about there at
night, quite distinct from the pilot-house. And in wintry weather a
gleam shows far over the snow.”

“Tramps, gipsies, river-pirates, I suppose,” suggested Colonel
Kenwynton.

Ducie was glowering down at his spoon as he turned it aimlessly in his
empty cup, a deep red flush on his cheek and his eyes on fire.

“Yes, yes. There is a tradition of hidden treasure at Duciehurst, one of
the wild riverside stories as old as the hills,” said the Captain, “and
I suppose the water-rats, and the shanty-boaters, and the river-pirates
all take turns in hunting for it when fuel and shelter get scarce, and
the pot boils slow, and work goes hard with the lazy cattle.”

For one moment Colonel Kenwynton’s head was in a whirl. Had he dreamed
this thing, this story of family jewels and important papers stowed in a
knapsack and hidden on Duciehurst plantation? So sudden was the
confirmation of the war-time legend, so hard it came on the revelation
of last night in the turbulent elements on the verge of the sand-bar
that it scarcely seemed fact. He had not had time to think it over, to
canvass the strange chance in his mind. Treherne had declared that for
forty years he had been an inmate of an insane asylum. Without analyzing
his own mental processes Colonel Kenwynton was aware that he had taken
it for granted that the story was a vain fabrication of half-distraught
faculties, an illusion, a part of the unreasoning adventure that had
summoned him forth from his bed in the midnight to stand knee-deep in
the marsh to hear a recital of baffled rights and hidden treasure. In
all charity and candor he had begun to wonder that Hugh Treherne should
find himself now beyond the bounds of detention. In these corroborative
developments, however, his opinion veered and he made a plunge at
further elucidation of the mystery.

“Mr. Ducie, I should be glad to know what relation you are to Lieutenant
Archibald Ducie, who died of typhoid in a hospital in Vicksburg during
the war?”

Ducie answered in a single word, “Nephew.”

“Then you are George Blewitt Ducie’s grandson.”

“Grandson,” monosyllabic as before.

The old man thought himself a strategist of deep, elusive craft. For the
sake of his friend, Captain Treherne, and his plaintive disability; for
the sake of the implied trust accepted in the fact that he had received
this confidence, he must seek to know the truth while he screened the
motive. “Well, since these old world clavers are mighty interesting to
an ancient fossil such as I am--I must look backward having, you know,
no future in view,--wasn’t there some talk of a lost document, a deed
of trust missing, mislaid,--what was it about--a Duciehurst mortgage?”

“A _release_ of a mortgage,” replied Ducie, his words coming with the
impetus and fury of hot shot. “The lost paper was a release of a
mortgage, a quit-claim, signed and witnessed, but not registered. There
were no facilities at the time to record legal papers, not a court nor a
clerk’s office open in the country, which was filled with contending
armies.”

Mr. Floyd-Rosney had finished his breakfast and seemed about to rise.
The vexation of this discussion was beyond endurance to a proud and
pompous man. But it was not his temperament to give back one inch. He
stood his ground and presently he began to affect indifference to the
situation, placing an elbow on the table and looking with his imperious
composure first at one speaker and then at the other. He was not so
absorbed, however, that he did not note how his wife loitered over the
waffles before her, spinning out the details of the meal that no point
of the conversation might escape her.

“I remember now, I remember,” said Colonel Kenwynton, nodding his white
head. “It was claimed that the mortgage was lifted, the debt being paid
in gold, and that a formal release was executed here in Mississippi and
delivered with the original paper, though not noted in the instrument of
registration.”

“There being no courts in operation,” interpolated Ducie, obviously as
restive as a fiery horse.

“And by reason of the intervention of the Federal lines and the sudden
deaths of the two principals to the transaction the promissory notes,
thus secured on the plantation, were not returned to the maker, but
remained in Tennessee, where Mr. Carroll Carriton had deposited them in
a bank for safekeeping.”

“Is this a fairy-story, Colonel Kenwynton?” sneered Floyd-Rosney, his
patience wearing thin under the strain upon it, and beginning to
deprecate and doubt the effect on his wife.

“No, it is a story of the evil genii,” said Ducie, significantly.

“You mean War and Confusion, and Loss,” said Floyd-Rosney, in bland
interpretation, and apparently in excellent temper. “They are, indeed,
the evil genii. But you will please to observe, Colonel Kenwynton, that
the executors of the mortgagee, Mr. Carroll Carriton, could not accept
this unsupported representation of an executed release of the mortgage.
The executors had the registered mortgage, with no marginal notation of
its satisfaction, and they had the promissory notes. They sued the
estate of George Blewitt Ducie on the promissory notes and foreclosed on
Duciehurst.”

“I remember, I remember,” said Colonel Kenwynton, “and although at the
period when the mortgage was made it was for a sum inconsiderable in
comparison with the value of the property Duciehurst went under the
hammer in the collapsed financial conditions subsequent to the war for
less than the amount of the original indebtedness, plantations being a
drug on the market, and the executors of the mortgagee bought it in for
the Carriton estate.”

“The executors proceeded throughout under the sanction of the court,”
said Floyd-Rosney. “Of course, I would have the utmost sensitiveness to
the position of an interloper or usurper, but in this instance there
can be no such suggestion. No papers could be produced by the defendant,
and a wild legend of the loss of such documents could not withstand the
scrutiny of even the least cautious and strict chancellor. The fact that
Carroll Carriton happened to be in Mississippi at that time and that
George Blewitt Ducie was known to have aggregated a considerable sum in
gold by a successful blockade-running scheme of selling cotton in
Liverpool was dwelt upon by the counsel for the Ducie heir as
corroborative evidence that the two principals to the transaction met
expressly to lift the incumbrance, but this contention was not admitted
by the court.”

He paused for a moment. Then he turned directly upon Ducie. “While I
should be sorry, Mr. Ducie, if you should grudge me my rightful holding,
I observe that your brother does not share your view. He acquiesced in
the existing status by renting certain of these lands while in my
uncle’s possession before I succeeded under the will.”

“By no means, by no means,” cried Ducie, furiously. “He is no tenant of
yours. He only purchased the standing crop of cotton from your uncle’s
tenant, who was obliged to leave the country for a time--shot a man.
But, as I understand it, you could not plead that acquiescence, even if
it existed, in the event that the release could be found,--take
advantage of your own tort in the foreclosure of a mortgage duly paid.”

“Oh, if you talk of ‘torts,’ this ‘knowledge is too excellent for me, I
cannot attain unto it.’” Floyd-Rosney retorted, lightly.

His wife still held her fork in her hand, but he significantly placed
her finger-bowl beside her plate. Then he rose. “Any rights that you can
prove to my estate of Duciehurst, Mr. Ducie, will be gladly conceded by
me. Kindly remember that, if you please.”

His wife was constrained to rise and he stood aside with a bow to let
her pass first down the restricted space between the tables and the
wall. They were out on the guards when she lifted her eyes to his and
laid her hand on his arm.

“Why did you never tell me that the property which has lately come to
you really belongs to the Ducies?”

He stared down at her, too astonished to be angry.

“Why? Because it is a lie. The Ducies have not a vestige of a right to
it.”

“Oh, no, no. The Ducies would never seek to maintain a lie. Only they
can’t substantiate their claim on account of the disastrous chances of
war.”

She put her hands before her face and shook her head. When she looked up
again there were vague blue circles beneath her eyes. The nervous stress
of the incident and some unformulated association with the idea were
obviously bearing on her heavily.

“It seems to me that we ought not to keep it,” she faltered.

“Keep it!” he thundered. “Why, we, that is our predecessors, have owned
it for the last forty years, without a question. Why, Paula, are you
crazy? The whole affair went through the courts forty years ago. ‘_Ought
not to keep it!_’ The Ducie heir, this man’s father, who was then a
minor, had not a scrap of paper nor one material witness, only the
general understanding in the country that as Carroll Carriton happened
to be in Mississippi at the time, and George Blewitt Ducie had a lot of
specie from running his cotton through the blockade to England, he paid
off the mortgage in gold. But that was mere hearsay, chiefly rumor of
the gabble of the men who, it was claimed, had witnessed the execution
of the quit-claim, and who took occasion to die immediately thereafter.”

“There is some inherent coercive evidence, to my mind, of the truth of
those circumstances,” she declared. “It is too hard that the Ducies
should have paid the money owed on the mortgage and then lose the place
by foreclosure, and, oh, for less than the amount of the original debt.”

“But, Paula, can’t you see there is not a grain of proof that they ever
paid the money? How, when, where? We held the promissory notes and the
registered deed of trust and the court did not even take the matter
under advisement.”

“But you know the confusion of the times,--no courts of record, no mail
facilities or means of communication.”

“Much exaggerated, I believe. But at all events we had the promissory
notes and the registered mortgage and they had their cock-and-bull
story.”

“Oh, I should like to give it back,--it would be so noble of you. I
cannot bear that we should own what the Ducies claim is theirs, and I
feel sure that if it is not theirs in law it is by every moral sanction.
And for such a poor price!--to lose the whole estate for the little
amount, comparatively, of the debt! It is too sharp a bargain for us.
How much was the amount for which the executors bought it in?”

His face changed and he did not answer. It had not been a pleasant
morning, and his imperious temper had been greatly strained. “I
remember,” he said, satirically, losing his self-control at last, “that
you once entertained a tender interest in one of these Messieurs Ducie.
I must say that I did not expect it to last so long or to go so far,--to
propose to denude me of my very own, one of the finest properties in
Mississippi, and vest him with it!”

Her face flushed. Her eyes flashed. “You have broken your promise! You
have broken your promise!” She looked so vehement, so affronted, so
earnest, that her anger tamed him for a moment.

“It was inadvertent, dear. The circumstances forced it.”

“It was solemnly agreed between us that we would never mention this man,
never remember that he existed. When I promised to marry you I told you
frankly that I had been engaged to him, and had never a thought, a hope,
a wish, but that I might marry him, until I met you.”

“I know, dear, I remember.” His warm hand closed down on her trembling
fingers that she had laid on the railing of the guards as if for
support.

“It is a matter of pride with me. I have no idea that I should feel so
about it if it were any one else. But, of course, I know that he must
reproach me for my duplicity, my inconstancy--”

“But you do not reproach yourself,” with a quick, searching glance.

“No, no, I was not inconstant. Only then I had not met you. But I have
caused him unhappiness, and a sort of humiliation among his friends,
who consider that I threw him over at the last minute, and I cannot bear
to own anything that he accounts his. I don’t want _his_ land. I don’t
want _his_ house. I wish you would deed it all back to him.”

“You tiresome little dunce!” he exclaimed, laughing. “It is one of the
largest plantations in acreage, cleared and tillable, in Mississippi,
and I really should not like to say how much it is worth, especially now
with the price of cotton on the bounce. People would think I was crazy
if I did such a mad thing as to deed it back. I should be unfitted for
any part in the business world. No one would trust me for a moment. And
apart from my own interest, consider our son. What would he think of me,
of you, when he comes to man’s estate, if we should alienate for a whim
that fine property, of which he might one day stand in dire need. Change
is the order of the times. Edward Floyd-Rosney, Junior, may not have a
walk over the course as his father did.”

“But, Edward, we are rich--”

“And so would the Ducies be, by hook or by crook, if they knew what is
comfortable.” He laughed prosperously. He was tired of the subject, and
was turning away as he drew forth his cigar-case. He was good to
himself, and fostered his taste for personal luxury, even in every
minute manner that would not be ridiculously obtrusive as against the
canons of good taste. The ring on the third finger of his left hand
might seem, to the casual glance of the uninitiated, the ordinary seal
so much affected, but a connoisseur would discern in it a priceless
intaglio. The match-box which he held as he walked away along the
guards was of solid gold, richly chased. His clothes were the
masterpieces of a London tailor of the first order, but so decorous and
inconspicuous in their fine simplicity that but for their enhancement of
his admirable figure and grace of movement their quality and cost might
have passed unnoticed.

Paula looked after him with an intent and troubled gaze, her heart
pulsing tumultuously, her brain on fire. It would never have been within
her spiritual compass to make a conscious sacrifice of self for a point
of ethics. She could not have relinquished aught that she craved, or
that was significant in its effects. To own Duciehurst would make no
item of difference in the luxury of their life,--to give it up could in
no way reduce their consequence or splendor of appointment. To her the
acquisition of a hundred thousand dollars, more or less, signified
naught in an estate of millions. They were rich, they had every desire
of luxury or ostentation gratified,--what would they have more? But that
this prosperity should be fostered, aggrandized by the loss of the man
whom she had causelessly jilted, wounded her pride. It was peculiarly
lacerating to her sensibilities that her husband should own Randal
Ducie’s ancestral estate, bought under the disastrous circumstances of a
forced sale for a mere trifle of its value, and that she should be
enriched by this almost thievish chance. She could not endure that it
should be Randal Ducie at last from whom she should derive some part of
the luxury which she had craved and for which she had bartered his
love--that he should be bravely struggling on, bereft of his
inheritance, in that sane and simple sphere to which she had looked
back last night as another and a native world, from which she was exiled
to this realm of alien and flamboyant splendor, that suddenly had grown
strangely garish and bitter to the taste as she contemplated it. What,
indeed, did it signify to her?--She had no part, no choice in dispensing
her husband’s wealth. Everything was brought to her hand, regardless of
her wish or volition, as if she were a puppet. Even her charities, her
appropriate pose as a “lady bountiful,” were not spontaneous. “I think
you had better subscribe two hundred dollars to the refurnishing of the
Old Woman’s Home, Paula,--it is incumbent in your position,” he would
say, or “I made a contribution of five hundred in your name to the
Children’s Hospital,--it is expected that in your position you would do
something.” Her position--this made the exaction, not charity, not
humanity, not generosity. But for the mention in the local journals the
institutions of the city would never have known the lavish hand of one
of its wealthiest and most prominent citizens. The money would,
doubtless, do good even bestowed in this spirit, but the gift had no
blessing for the giver, and she felt no glow of gratulation. Indeed, it
was not a gift,--it was a tax paid on her position. More than once when
she had advocated a donation on her own initiative he had promptly
negatived the idea. “No use in that,” he would declare, or the story of
destitution and disaster was a “fake.” These instances were not
calculated to illustrate her position. She could not endure that it
should levy its tribute on Randal Ducie’s future, and she noted the
significant fact that always hitherto in mentioning the recent
acquisition under his kinsman’s will her husband had avoided the name of
the estate which must have acquainted her with its former ownership.




CHAPTER VI


The weather had been vaguely misting all the dreary morning. Through a
medium not rain, yet scarcely of the tenuity of vapor, Paula had gazed
at the tawny flow of the swift river, the limited perspective of the
banks, the tall looming of the forests, the slate-tinted sky, all dim
and dull like a landscape in outline half smudged in with a stump.
Suddenly this meager expression of the world beyond was withdrawn from
contemplation. In the infinitely dull silence the fall of tentative
drops on the hurricane deck was presently audible, and, all at once,
there gushed forth from the low-hung clouds a tremendous down-pour of
torrents beneath which the _Cherokee Rose_ quivered. Paula turned
quickly to the door of the saloon, which barely closed upon her before
the guards were swept by floods of water.

The whole interior resounded with the beat of scurrying footsteps
fleeing to shelter from this abrupt outbreak of the elements. Squads of
the passengers, or, sometimes, a single fugitive came at intervals
bursting into the saloon, gasping with the effects of surprise, and the
effort at speed, laughing, flushed, agitated, recounting their narrow
escapes from drenching or submergence. Two or three, indeed, had caught
a ducking and were repairing to their staterooms for dry clothing. There
was much sound of activity from the boiler deck as the roustabouts ran
boisterously in and out of the rain, busied in protecting freight or in
sheltering the few head of stock. The whole episode seemed charged with
a cheerful sense of a jolt of the monotony.

A group of gentlemen who did not accompany ladies or who were not
acquainted with those on board gathered in the forward cabin, but Ducie
sat silent and listless in one of the arm-chairs in the saloon.
Apparently, he desired to show the Floyd-Rosneys that he perceived no
cause for embarrassment in their society and had no intention by
withdrawing of ameliorating any awkwardness which his presence might
occasion to them. There were very acceptable and cozy suggestions here.
Hildegarde Dean sat at the piano with the two old soldiers beside her.
The blind Major, who had a sweet tenor voice, albeit hopelessly
attenuated now, some tones in the upper register cracked beyond repair
in this world, would sing _sotto voce_ a stanza of an old war song,
utterly unknown to the girl of the present day, and Hildegarde,
listening attentively, would improvise an accompaniment with refrain and
_ritornello_ in a vague tentative way like one recalling a lost memory.
Suddenly she would throw up her head, her hands would crash out the
confident _tema_, Colonel Kenwynton’s powerful bass tones would boom
forth, and the old blind Major’s tremulous voice would soar on the wings
of his enthusiasm, and his memories of the days of yore. Meantime, the
girl’s fresh young face, between the two old withered masks, would glow,
the impersonation of kindly reverent youth and sweet peace and the
sentiment of harmony.

It was pleasant to listen as song succeeded song. Hildegarde’s mother,
soft-eyed, soft-mannered and graceful, still youthful of aspect, smiled
in her sympathetic accord. Two or three of the more elderly passengers
now and again recognized a strain that brought back a long vanished day.
An old lady had taken out her fancy work and, as she plied her deft
needle in the intricate pattern of the Battenberg, she nodded her head
appreciatively to the rhythm of the music, and looked as if she had no
special desire for her journey’s end or a life beyond the sand-bar.

When the répertoire was exhausted and silence ensued the blank was
presently filled by childish voices and laughter. Marjorie Ashley had
begun to lead little Ned Floyd-Rosney about, introducing him to the
various passengers disposed on the sofas and rocking-chairs of the
saloon. In this scion of the Floyd-Rosney family seemed concentrated all
its geniality. He was a whole-souled citizen and not only accepted
courtesies with jovial urbanity but himself made advances. He had,
indeed, something the tastes of a roisterer, and his father regarded,
with open aversion, his disposition to carouse with his
fellow-passengers. In his arrogant exclusiveness Floyd-Rosney revolted
from the promiscuous attentions lavished on the child. He resented the
intimacy which the affable infant had contracted with Marjorie Ashley,
the two children rejoicing extremely when the old nurse had been
summoned to her breakfast, thus consigning him in the interval to the
care of his mother, and rendering him more accessible to the
blandishments of his new friend. Floyd-Rosney felt that it was not
appropriate that he should be thrust forward in this unseemly publicity
thus scantily attended. It was the habit of the family to travel in
state, with Floyd-Rosney’s valet, the lady’s maid, a French bonne for
the boy, in addition to the old colored nurse in whom Mrs. Floyd-Rosney
had such confidence that she would not transfer the child wholly to
other tendance. The occasion of this journey, however, did not admit of
such a retinue. It was a visit of condolence which they had made to an
aunt of Mr. Floyd-Rosney who had lost her son, formerly a very intimate
friend of his own. She was an aged lady of limited means and a modest
home. To descend upon a household of simple habitudes, already
disorganized by recent illness and death, with a troop of strange
servants to be cared for and accommodated, was manifestly so
inappropriate that even so selfish a man as Floyd-Rosney did not
entertain the idea, although his wife received in his querulous asides
the full benefit of all the displeasure and inconvenience that he
experienced from “having to jaunt about the world with no attendant but
the child’s nurse.” The nurse, “Aunt Dorothy,” as in the southern
fashion she was respectfully called, had, perhaps, found company at
breakfast agreeable to her of her own race and condition, and her
absence was prolonged, which fact gave Marjorie Ashley the opportunity
to make again the round of the group of passengers in the saloon,
cajoling little Ned Floyd-Rosney to show them how he pronounced Miss
Dean’s Christian name. At every smiling effort she would burst into
gurgles of redundant laughter, so funny did “Miff Milzepar’” for “Miss
Hildegarde” sound in her ears. He was conscious of a very humorous
effect as he repeatedly made the attempt to pronounce this long word
under Marjorie’s urgency, gazing up the while with his big blue eyes
brimful of laughter, his carmine tinted lips ajar, showing his two rows
of small white teeth, his pink cheeks continually fluctuating with a
deeper flush, and his beguiling dimples on display. All the ladies and
several of the gentlemen caught him up and kissed him ecstatically; so
enticing a specimen of joyous, sweet-humored, fresh-faced childhood he
presented. His mother’s maternal pride glowed in her smile as she noted
and graciously accepted the tribute, but Floyd-Rosney fumed indignant.

“Why don’t you stop that, Paula?” he growled in her ear as he cast
himself down on the sofa beside her. “All that kissing is dangerous.”

“It has been going on since the beginning of the world, _accelerando_,
as the opportunities multiply,” she retorted with her satiric little
fleer.

“Be pleased to notice that I am serious,” he hissed in his gruff
undertone.

“You can easily make me serious,--don’t over-exert yourself,” she said
with a sub-current of indignation.

She deprecated this public display of his surly mood toward her. There
is no woman, whether cherished or neglected, loving or indifferent,
gifted or deficient, who does not arrogate in public the scepter in her
husband’s affections, who is not wounded to the quick by the slightest
suggestion of reproof, or disparagement, or even the assertion of his
independent sentiment when brought to the notice of others. This is
something that finds, even in the most long-suffering wife, a keen new
nerve to thrill with an undreamed of pain. Paula’s cheek had flushed,
her eyes were hot and excited,--indeed, she did not lift them. She
could not brook the indignity that the coterie, most of all, Adrian
Ducie, should see her husband at her side with a stern and corrugated
brow, whispering in her ear his angry rebukes, commands, comments,--who
could know what he might have to say to her with that furious face and
through his set teeth. The situation was intolerable; her pride groped
for a means of escape.

Then she did a thing that she felt afterward she could never have done
had she not in that moment unconsciously ceased to love her husband. She
shielded him no more as heretofore. She did not sacrifice herself, as
was her custom in a thousand small preferences. She did not assume his
whim that he might be satisfied, yet incur no responsibility or
ridicule. On the contrary, she led the laugh,--she delivered him, bound
hand and foot, to the scoffer.

She suddenly rose, and, with her graceful, willowy gait, walked
conspicuously down the middle of the saloon. “Ladies and gentlemen,
fellow travelers and companions in misery,” she said, swaying forward in
an exaggerated bow, “the heir to the throne must not be kissed. Mr.
Floyd-Rosney is a victim of the theory of osculatory microbes. You can
only be permitted to taste how sweet the baby is through his honeyed
words and his dulcet laughter. Why, he might catch a tobacco-bug from
these human smoke-stacks, or the chewing-gum habit from Marjorie Ashley.
Therefore, you had better turn him over to me and the same old germs he
is accustomed to when his muzzer eats him up.”

Forthwith she swung the big child up lightly in her, slender arms and,
with gurgles of laughter, devoured him with her lips, while he
squealed, and hugged, and kicked, and vigorously returned the kisses.
Then she held him head downward, with his curls dangling and apparently
all the blood in his body surging through the surcharged veins of his
red face as he screamed in delight.

“Why, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” said the wondering Marjorie volubly,
“everybody on the boat has been kissing Ned ever since he came aboard.
The mate says he is so sweet that he took Ned’s finger to stir his
coffee with and declared it needed no other sweetening, either long or
short. And little Ned believed him and sat on his knee while he ate his
breakfast waiting to stir his second cup for him. Ned has got a whole
heap of microbes if kissing gives ’em. Why, even that big deer-hound
that is freighted to Vicksburg and has been sitting the picture of
despair and home-sickness, refusing to eat,--dog-biscuit, or meat, or
anything,--just tumbled little Ned over on the deck and licked his face
from his hair to his chin. And when he let Ned up at last Ned just
hugged the dog, and they kissed each other smack in the mouth. Then they
raced up and down the deck among the freight, playing hide and seek till
little Ned could hardly stir. Then the deer-hound ate his breakfast, and
is sitting down there right now, begging the leadsman for more.”

“Oh, well, then, let him go to his nurse and get his mouth washed out
with a solution of carbolic acid or some other anti-toxin,--perhaps that
may be a staggerer for the microbes.”

She let the child slide to the floor and then followed the tousled
little figure as it sped in a swift trot to her stateroom. He paused for
her to turn the bolt of the door, and as it opened he slipped under her
arm and disappeared, microbe-laden, within.

Her husband sat silent, dismayed, amazed, scarcely able to believe his
senses. He was of the type of human being who, subtly and especially
fitted to cause pain, was not himself adjusted to stoical suffering. He
had a thousand sensitive fibers. His pride burned within him like an
actual fire. While it was appropriate that in public appearances a wife
should seem to be the predominant consideration, there being more grace
in a deferential affectation than in a sultan-like swagger, this pose
had such scant reality in the domestic economy that when Paula presumed
upon it in this radical nonchalance, he was at once astounded,
humiliated, and deeply wounded. He found it difficult to understand so
strange a departure from her habitual attitude toward him, his
relegation to the satiric methods with which she favored the world at
large, the merciless exposure to ridicule of his remonstrance, which
was, indeed, rather the vent of fretful ill-humor than any genuine
objection or fear of infection. The least exertion of feminine tact in
response to his wish would have quietly spirited the child away and
without comment ended these repugnant caresses of the little fellow by
strangers. Floyd-Rosney began to experience a growing conviction that it
all was the influence of the presence of Ducie. He had had some queer,
not unrelished, yet averse interest in studying in another man the face
of the lover whom he had supplanted. He could scarcely have brooked the
sight of the man she had loved, to tranquilly mark his facial traits, to
appraise his mental development, to speculate on his social culture and
worldly opportunities. But this was merely his image. Here was his twin
brother, his faithful facsimile. Floyd-Rosney had been surprised to note
how handsome he was, how obviously intelligent, how dashing. He had been
flattered as well,--this was no slight mark of honest preference on the
part of Paula, no mean rival he had put aside. He had felt a glow of
added pride in the fact, an accession of affection. He had noted the
studied calm, the inexpressive pose, the haughty simulation of
indifference with which Ducie had sustained the awkward _contretemps_ of
their meeting, the strain upon _savoir faire_ which the conventions
imposed upon the incident.

And now, as he met Ducie’s eyes again, he perceived elation in them,
disproportionate, futile, but delighted. It was the most trivial of
foolish trifles, Floyd-Rosney said to himself, but this man had seen him
set at naught, put to the blush, held up to ridicule by his wife, airily
satiric, utterly unmindful of his dignity, nay, despising its tenuity,
and leading the laugh at his discomfiture.

Ducie caught himself with difficulty. He was so conscious of the
unguarded expression of his face, the look of relish, of triumph, of
contempt surprised in his eyes, that he made haste to nullify the
effect. The whole affair was the absent Randal’s, and he must take heed
that he did not interfere by word or look or in any subtle wise in what
did not concern him,--it was, indeed, of more complicated intent than
heretofore he was aware. He was a man of very definite tact but he had
hardly realized the extent of the endowment until that moment. He
appreciated the subtle value of his own impulse, as if it had been
another’s, when he said, directly addressing Floyd-Rosney, as if there
had been only the element of good-natured joviality in the episode, “I
think we are all likely to encounter dangers more formidable than
microbes.--Have you any experience of cloud-bursts, Mr. Floyd-Rosney?
This fall of water is something prodigious, to my mind.”

In his personal absorptions Floyd-Rosney had not noticed the rain. “Is
it more than a ‘season,’ do you think?--the breaking up of this long
drought?” Floyd-Rosney quickly adopted the incidental tone.

He was so essentially a proud man that he would fain think well of
himself. His credulity expanded eagerly to the hope that to others the
episode of the morning might seem, as apparently to this man, only a bit
of gay badinage, the feminine insolence of a much indulged wife to her
lenient lord and master. To himself it could not bear this
interpretation, nor to her. He could never forget nor forgive the
impulse that informed it. But he was quick to seize the opportunity to
reinstate his self-possession, nay, the only possibility to “save his
face” and hold up his head. Such demands his assuming dignity made on
the deference of all about him that taken in this wise the incident
could hardly appear serious.

“If there were thunder and lightning it might seem the equinoctial,”
said Ducie, “although it is something late in the year.”

They had walked together down the saloon and to the forward part of the
cabin where they stood at the curving glass front looking out on
vacancy. The rain fell, not in torrents now, but in unbroken sheets of
gray crystal, opaque and veined with white. As the water struck the
guards it rebounded with the force of the downfall in white foam more
than a foot high, while sweeping away over the edge with the impetus and
volume of a cataract. But for the list of the boat, for the _Cherokee
Rose_ had not grounded fair and square on the sand-bar, this flood would
have been surging through the saloon, but the rain drove with the gusts
and, the windward side being several inches lower than the other, the
downpour struck upon it and recoiled from the slant. The sound was
something tremendous; the savagery of the roar of the columns of rain
falling upon the roof was portentous, sinister, expressive of the
unreasoning rage of the tempestuous elements and of the helplessness of
human nature to cope with it. Suddenly, whether the turmoil had in some
sort abated, or alien sounds were more insistently apparent, a new
clamor was in the air,--a metallic clanking, repetitious, constantly
loudening, was perceptible from the lower deck. Then ensued a deep,
long-drawn susurrus. The engines were astir once more. Obviously, an
effort was in progress to get the _Cherokee Rose_ off the bar under her
own steam. A babel of joyous, excited comment in the saloon, at the
extreme pitch of the human voice, could hardly be heard in the midst of
the turmoil without. All agreed that a vast flood must have fallen to
raise the river sufficiently to justify the attempt.

“We are below the junction of several tributaries in this vicinity that
bring down a million tuns a minute in such weather as this,” commented
one of the passengers.

Another, of the type that must have information at first hand, rushed to
the door to secure a conference with the Captain, regardless, or,
perhaps, unconscious, of the remonstrance of the others. As the door
opened in his hand a torrent of water rushed in, traversing the length
of the saloon over the red velvet carpet, and a blast of the wind
promptly knocked him off his feet, throwing him across the cabin against
a huddle of overturned chairs. The other men, with one accord, sprang
forward, and it was only with the united strength of half a dozen that
the door could be forced to close, although its lock seemed scarcely
able to hold it against the pressure from without. For the wind had
redoubled its fury. This region is the lair of the hurricane, and there
was a prophetic anxiety in every eye.

It is, indeed, well that these great elemental catastrophes are as
transient as terrible. Human nerves could scarcely sustain beyond the
space of a minute the frightful tumult that presently filled the air.
The wind shrilled with a keen sibilance, and shouted in riotous menace
that seemed to strike against the zenith and rebound and reëcho anew.
The sense of its speed was appalling. The thunderous crashing of the
forests on the river bank told of the riving of timber and the
up-rooting of great trees laid flat in the narrow path of the hurricane.
For in the limitations of the track lies the one hope of escape from
this sudden frenzy of the air. Its area of destruction may be fifty
miles in length, but is often only a hundred yards or so in width, cut
as straight as a road and as regular, when this awful, invisible foe
marches through the country. Perhaps this was the thought in the mind
of every man of the little coterie, the chance that the _Cherokee Rose_
might be outside the path of the hurricane. The next moment a hollow
reverberation of an indescribably wide and blaring sound broke forth
close at hand, as the smoke-stacks of the _Cherokee Rose_ crashed down
on the texas and rolled thence on the hurricane deck, the guy wires
jangling loose and shivering in keen, metallic tones. The boat yawed
over, suddenly smitten, as it were, by one fierce stroke. The furniture,
the passengers, all were swept down the inclined plane of the floor of
the saloon and against the mirrored doors of the staterooms. An aghast
muteness reigned for one moment of surprise and terror. Then cries broke
forth and futile and frantic efforts were made to reach the upper
portion of the cabin. A wild alarm was heard that the boat was on
fire,--that the boat had slipped off the sand-bar and was sinking.
Reiterated shouts arose for the officers, the Captain, the clerks, the
pilot, the mate, and the tumult without was reflected by the confusion
and terror within.

Ducie’s brain seemed awhirl at the moment of the disaster. As he
regained his mental poise he saw Mrs. Floyd-Rosney on her knees
frantically struggling with the door of her stateroom, the lock
evidently having somehow sprung in the contortions of the steamer under
the blast. She looked up at him for an instant, but her tongue was
obviously incapable of framing a word in the excitement of that
tempestuous crisis. Ducie suddenly remembered, what everyone else but
the mother had forgotten, that the little boy had scarcely five minutes
earlier gone to the stateroom to be dealt with for the kissing
microbes. Observing the inadequacy of her efforts Ducie rushed to her
assistance and sought, by main strength, to force open the twisted and
warped door. It was so difficult to effect an entrance that he began to
doubt if this could be done without an axe, when he succeeded in
splintering it a trifle where it had already showed signs of having
sustained a fracture. Into the aperture thus made he thrust his foot and
then wedged in his knee, finally shattering a panel from the frame, to
the horror of the prisoners within, whose voices of terror found an echo
in Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s anguished exclamations.

Ducie triumphantly lifted out little Ned and then the old colored nurse
was dragged through the aperture, scarcely sufficient for the transit.

“There you are, good as new,” cried Ducie genially.

Some of the doors of the staterooms had burst from their fastenings, and
were sagging and swaying inward, offering pitfalls for the unwary, and,
in that wild and excited group, Ducie alone bethought himself of
precaution. “Look out for the boy, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,--he may fall
through one of those open doors into deep water or into the furnace,--I
don’t know what is now beneath this part of the saloon,--the boat seems
twisted and broken to pieces.”

The suggestion of danger to the child was like a potent elixir to Paula.
Her eyes, strained and set, recovered their normal look of perception,
wild and haggard though they were. She caught the child in her arms and,
although trembling and occasionally staggering under his weight, she
would not relinquish him to Ducie as he desired, but carried him
herself safely along the precarious way. Ducie aided her to clamber up
the steep incline where the doors ceased and the wall was unbroken,
there being here the barber-shop and the office, and the large space
utilized as a smoking-room. Through the windows streamed a deluge of
rain, and broken glass lay scattered all about.

Most of the passengers had gathered here in an attitude of tense
expectancy. A man stood at a speaking-tube and, with a lordly urgency,
was insisting that the Captain should take immediate measures to put the
passengers ashore in the yawl. It was no moment to relish a conspicuous
pose, and Floyd-Rosney was too well habituated to the first place to
give it undue value, but he was obviously in his element and carrying
all before him. It was a one-sided conversation, but the comprehension
of his listeners was quickened by their personal interest in its
progress and result.

“No danger?” a sarcastic laugh. “We take the liberty of differing as to
that. The boat may go to pieces on the sand-bar.”

“A shelter? yes,--as long as she lasts, but how long will that be? The
boat not much injured except in the furnishings and glass? You think
not?” very sarcastically.

“Oh, you guarantee? Now what is your guaranty worth to people drowned in
one hundred feet of water?”

“No, we won’t wait to be taken off by the next packet. The river is
rising, and the sand-bar might be covered. We demand it,--the passengers
_demand_ to be set ashore in the yawl.”

“Well, then, we will hold you and the owners liable.”

“We are not prisoners. What’s that? Responsibility? humanity?--shelter?
I’ll take care of the shelter. Duciehurst mansion is scarcely ten miles
down the river. I own it, and the yawl could put us in it in a trice.”

“Yes,--we will risk it,--we will risk the wind and the current. _All_
right. All _right_.”

He had carried his point against every protest according to his wont. As
he turned, triumphant and smiling, to the anxious, disheveled, drenched
group, he had all the pomp and port of a public benefactor. Absorbed in
himself and the prospect of his speedy extrication from this
uncomfortable and dangerous plight he was utterly unaware that his wife
and only child had had urgent need of the succor that they had received
from a stranger.

Paula gazed enlightened at Floyd-Rosney as if she saw him for the first
time as he was. The scales had fallen from her eyes. His glance met
hers. He had no sense of gratulation that she and the boy were safe. He
had not known they had encountered special danger. He thought they only
shared the general menace which it was his privilege to render less, to
annul. He objected to her pose with the boy in her arms. He deemed it
inelegant,--as little Ned was much too stalwart for the artistic
presentment of the babe in the bosom of graceful maternity,--and the
backward cant of her figure thus extremely plebeian. It was not this
personal disapproval, however, that informed the coldness in his eyes.
The incident of the ridicule to which she had subjected him among these
passengers still rankled in every pulsation. He was glad of the
opportunity to confer benefits upon them, from his high position to
rescue them from imminent danger, to be reinstated, in their opinion, as
a man of paramount influence and value,--a fleer at him should be
esteemed, indeed, a self-confessed folly.

“I dare say the old house leaks like a riddle,--I know it is in ruins,”
he said, in a large, off-hand, liberal manner, “but it is on solid
ground, at any rate, and I shall be glad to entertain this worshipful
company there as best I may till we can get a boat that can navigate
water and not tow-heads. I know we can’t spend the night here. In fact,
the Captain proposes to set us ashore as soon as he is convinced that no
boat is coming down,--but, of course, every craft on the river is tied
up in such weather as this. If he will set us ashore at Duciehurst with
some bedding and provisions I will ask no more.”

There was a murmur of acquiescence and acceptance,--then a general
acclaim of thanks, for the wind was still so high that communication was
conducted almost in shouts. Nevertheless, Ducie heard very distinctly
when Mrs. Floyd-Rosney turned toward him a pale, pained, troubled face.

“You will come, too? You will have no scruple about--about the
ownership?” she faltered.

Adrian Ducie laughed satirically. “Not the least scruple in the world. I
have the best right there from every point of view,--even his own!--for
if my brother is only a lessee, and not the rightful owner, as he
contended this morning, Randal is in possession and my welcome is
assured in a house of which he is the host.”

“I only thought--I wanted to say----”

The big child was very big in her arms, and had had his share of the
suffering from the general tumult and excitement. He was fractious,
hungry, and sleepy, although he could not sleep. But he burrowed with
his head in her neck and tried to put his cheek before her lips that she
might talk to no one but him, and began to cry, although he forgot his
grievance midway and attempted to get down on his own stout legs.

“I wanted to say,--you have been so good to me and the baby,--don’t Ned,
be quiet, my pet,--that I could not bear for you to remain in danger or
discomfort on the boat because of any sensitiveness about our presence
at Duciehurst.”

“Don’t you believe it,” he responded cavalierly. “I am not subject to
any sensitiveness about Duciehurst. I shall have the very best that
Duciehurst can afford and be beholden to nobody for it.”




CHAPTER VII


A diminution in the floods of rain began to be perceptible, and the
extreme violence of the wind was abated. Now and then a gust in
paroxysmal fury came screaming down the river, battering tumultuously at
the shattered doors and windows of the wreck, setting all the loose
wires and chains to clattering, and showing its breadth and muscle by
tearing up some riverside tree and carrying it whirling as lightly as a
straw through the air above the tortured and lashed currents of the
stream. The clouds, dark and slate-tinted, showed occasionally a white
transparent scud driving swiftly athwart their expanse, which gave
obvious token of the velocity of the wind, for, although the hurricane
was spent, the menace of the stormy weather and the turbulent, maddened
waters was still to be reckoned with. It was scarcely beyond noon-day,
yet the aspect of the world was of a lowering and tempestuous darkness.
The alacrity of the Captain in getting them afloat argued that he now
accorded more approval to the plan than when it was first suggested, and
that, although he would not have assumed the responsibility of the
removal of the passengers at such imminent risk, he was glad to forward
it when it was of their own volition, indeed insistence. A fact that his
long riparian knowledge revealed to him was not immediately apparent to
the passengers until the yawl was about to be launched,--the sand-bar
was in process of submergence. The rise of the river was unprecedented
in so short an interval, due to the fall of the vast volume of rain.
During the last ten minutes the Captain began to realize that it was
beyond the power of prophecy to judge what proportion of the tow-head
would be above water within the hour. It was not difficult to launch the
yawl from the twisted timbers of the deck. It swung clear and slipped
down with a smart impact, rocking on the tumultuous current as if there
were twenty feet of water beneath it.

“Where the yawl is now was bare sand ten minutes ago,” commented
Floyd-Rosney.

This fact imparted courage to the weak-hearted who had held back at the
sight of the weltering expanse of the great river, the sound of the
blasts of the strong wind, and the overwhelming downpour of the rain.
They were disposed now to depend upon Mr. Floyd-Rosney, who was so
masterful and knowing, and who shared all their interest, rather than
the Captain, whose conservative idea seemed to be to stick to the boat
at all hazards, and to what might be left of the tow-head.

“This is the season of dead low water,” he argued. “This rain is
local,--the rise of the river is only temporary.”

But he had the less influence with them, because they felt that he was
complicated by his duty to the owners of the boat and the shippers of
freight, and also the traditions that forbid the Captain’s abandonment
of his deck till the last moment.

He did not resent the discarding of his opinion, but was quite genial
and hearty as he stood on the guards and himself directed the men who
were handling the yawl.

“It may be the best thing,--if she doesn’t capsize,” he
admitted,--“though I wouldn’t advise it.”

Whereupon the weak-hearted again began to demur.

“Don’t discourage us, Captain,” said Floyd Rosney, frowning heavily, “we
have no other resource.”

“I shall use my best judgment, Mr. Floyd-Rosney,” the Captain retorted.
“I am not here to encourage you in fool-hardy undertakings. We know
where we are now,--and we have the yawl and the other boats as a last
resource. The weather, too, may clear. It can’t rain and blow forever.”

“I shall show my opinion by taking to the boat and carrying my family
with me,” said Floyd-Rosney loftily. “Any one who wishes to go with us
will be very welcome at Duciehurst.”

He already had on his overcoat and hat and the other passengers, with
their suit-cases or such other possessions as could be handed out of
their almost inverted staterooms by the grinning roustabouts, began to
make their precarious descent to the lower deck on the reeking and
slippery stair, all awry and aslant.

“Take care of the Major,--oh, take care of the Major,” cried Hildegarde
Dean, almost hysterically, as the old man was lifted by his colored
servant, who had been with him as a “horse-boy” in the army, and who,
though grizzled, and time-worn, and wrinkled, was still brawny and
active. In fact, he had lived in great ease and competence owing to his
special fidelity and utility in the Major’s infirmities, since “Me an’
de Major fout through de War.” In fact, if old Tobe might be believed,
the majority of the deeds of valiance in that great struggle were
exploited by “Me an’ de Major.”

“Sartainly,--sartainly,” his big voice boomed out on the air, responsive
to the caution, “Me an’ de Major have been through a heap worse
troublements dan dis yere.”

And, indeed, surely and safely he went down the stair, buffeted by the
wind and drenched by the rain and the spray leaping from its impact on
the surface of the water.

Hildegarde herself descended as easily as a fawn might bound down a
hill, to Colonel Kenwynton’s amazement, accustomed to lend the ladies of
his day a supporting arm. She sprang upon the gunwale of the yawl in so
lightsome a poise that it scarcely tipped beneath her weight before she
was seated beside the old blind soldier, joyous, reassuring and hopeful.

“It is hard to be in danger and unable to help others or even to see and
judge of the situation,” he said meekly, bending forward under the
down-pour, his face pallid and wrinkled, its expression of groping
wistfulness most appealing.

“Yes, indeed,” she assented, her voice sounding amidst the rain like the
song of a bird from out a summer shower. “But I think all this hubbub is
for nothing,--the sky is going to clear, I believe, toward the west.
Still, the next packet can take us off at Duciehurst as well as from the
_Cherokee Rose_.” “And, Major,” with a blithe rising inflection, “I can
see a veritable ante-bellum mansion, and you can go over it with me and
explain the life of the old times. You can refurnish it, Major! You can
tell me what ought to stand here and there, and what sort of upholstery
and curtains the ‘Has-Beens’ used to affect.”

His old face was suddenly relumed with this placid expectation; his
brain was once more thronged with reminiscences. He lifted his aged head
and gazed toward the clearing west and the radiant past, both beginning
to relent to a gentle suffusion of restored peace.

In this transient illumination the great dun-tinted forests that lined
the banks showed dimly, as well as the vast river swirling intervenient,
tawny, murky, but with sudden mad whorls of white foam where the current
struck some obstruction flung into its course by the storm. The wreck of
the _Cherokee Rose_ was very melancholy as a spectacle since, but for
the hurricane, she would have been floated in five minutes more of the
deluge of rain. The yawl seemed a tiny thing, painfully inadequate, as
it rocked with a long tilt on the swaying undulations of the current.
The preparations for departure were going swiftly forward; another boat
was in process of loading with material comforts, cots, bedding, all
under tarpaulins, boxes and hampers of provisions, and the trunks and
suit-cases of passengers. Since escape was now possible and at hand, one
or two of the faint-hearted began to experience anew that reluctance to
removal, that doubt of an untried change so common to the moment of
decision. “It is a long way--ten miles in this wind,” said one, “how
would it do for a few of us to try that swamper’s shack on the bank? The
yawl is overloaded, anyhow.”

“Now, I _can_ advise you,” said the Captain definitely. “It won’t do at
all to trust river-side rats. You might be robbed and murdered for your
watch or the change in your purse. I am not acquainted with that
swamper,--I speak from precedent. And how can you judge if the shack is
above water now,--or whether it has been blown by the hurricane down the
river?”

“Still, the yawl _is_ overloaded,” said Floyd-Rosney, with a trifle of
malice. He was bent on exploiting the situation to his own commanding
credit, and the proposition, reiterated anew, to withdraw for a
different course, nettled his troublous and sensitive pride.

The next man who stepped into the yawl was the one who had advanced this
divergent theory, and Floyd-Rosney flashed a glance of triumph at his
wife, who still stood with the child in her arms at the warped rail of
the promenade deck. She was pale, anxious, doubtful, in no frame of mind
to furnish her wonted plaudits, the incense of wifely flatteries on
which his vanity lived. These others had admired his initiative, had
gladly adopted his plans, were looking to him with a unanimity of
subservience that had quite restored the tone of his wonted arrogance.
He could ill brook to see her with that discouraged questioning in her
face, gazing forth over the forbidding gray water, letting first one,
then another pass her to a place in the yawl. She should have been the
first to board it,--to show her faith by her works.

He approached her with a rebuking question.

“Why do you lug that child around, Paula?” he demanded. “He will break
your back.” He stepped forward, as if to lift the little fellow from
her arms, but she precipitately moved a pace backward. Paula’s grisly
thoughts were of the dungeon, the trap of the warped stateroom,--whence
the boy was liberated by a stranger, while his father, unthinking and
unnoting, was absorbed in his own complacence, in his busy and arrogant
pose. No,--she would not let the child go again, she would hold him in
her arms if his weight broke every bone in her body till they were all
in safety.

“I don’t want to risk that yawl,” she said querulously. “I think the
Captain knows best,--he has had such long experience. The yawl looks
tricky, and the water is fearful. We ought to take to the yawl as a last
resort, when the steamer can’t house us. That is always the custom. It
is only in cases of absolute necessity that the yawl is used.”

It would be difficult to say whether he were more surprised or incensed,
as for a moment, with short breaths and flashing eyes, he gazed at her.
He was of an impetuous temper, yet not beyond schooling. He had had a
lesson, he had felt the keen edge of her ridicule this morning, and he
would not again lay himself liable to a public exhibition.

“Why, you must be a graduated pilot to know so much about the river,” he
cried with a rallying laugh. “The kid and I are going in the yawl at all
events. Unloose your hold,” he added in a furious undertone. “He is
mine,--he is mine,--not yours.”

He had laid his hand on both hers as they clasped the child.
Floyd-Rosney was still smiling and apparently gracious and good-humored,
which might have seemed much, thus publicly withstood in this moment of
excitement and stress. He was resolved that he would not lower his
pride by an open and obvious struggle. He did not consider her pride. He
forced her fingers apart, invisibly under the folds of the child’s
cloak, by an old school-boy trick of suddenly striking the wrist a sharp
blow. The muscles must needs relax in the pain, the hold give way, and,
as the boy was about to slip from her clasp, his father called for the
nurse, placed the child in the arms of the old servant and consigned
them both to a stout roustabout who had them in the yawl in a trice.
Without a word of apology, of justification, of soothing remonstrance,
Floyd-Rosney turned away from his wife with brisk cheerfulness and once
more addressed himself to the matter in hand.

Paula felt that if this had been her husband of yesterday it would have
broken her heart. But that identity was dead,--suddenly dead. Indeed,
had he ever lived? She wondered that the revulsion of feeling did not
overpower her. But she was consciously cool, composed, steady, without
the quiver of a muscle. She made no excuses to herself in her
introspection for her husband,--gave him no benefit of doubt,--urged no
palliation of his brutality. Yet these were not far to seek. The
hurricane had come at a crisis in his mental experience. He had been
publicly held up to ridicule, even to reprehension, by his own
subservient wife. He had been released from this pitiable attitude by
some unimaginable impulse in the brother of the man whom she had jilted
at the last moment, and thus confused, absorbed, scarcely himself at the
instant of the stupendous crash, he had lost sight of the fact, if he
had earlier noticed, that the child was not with her, and in the
saloon,--his latest glimpse of the boy was in her arms. It was natural
that he did not witness the rescue by Ducie, for he was planning an
escape for them all, and, surely, it was her place to defer to his
views, his seniority, his experience, and be guided by him rather than
take the helm herself. Naught of this had weight with her. She only
remembered the provocation that had elicited her fleer, his furious
whisper of objection, his censorious interference, the humiliation so
bitter that she could not lift her head while his rebukes hissed in her
ears before them all. Then, in that terrible moment of calamity, he had
not thought of her, of their son,--had not rushed to gather them in his
arms, that they might, at least, die together. Doubtless, he would have
said they could die together in due time,--it was not yet the moment for
dying--and he was preparing to postpone that finality as far as might
be.

And thus it was Adrian Ducie,--Randal’s brother--who had saved the
child, shut up in the overturned stateroom like a rat in a trap. She
knew, too, how lightly Floyd-Rosney would treat this if it were brought
to his knowledge--he would say that not a drop of water had touched the
child; he had sustained not an instant’s hurt. That he and his nurse had
for a few moments been unable to turn the bolt of a door was only a
slight inconvenience, as the result of a hurricane. One of the
passengers had a badly bruised arm, on which a chandelier had fallen,
another was somewhat severely cut about the head and face by the
shattering of a mirror. The baby was particularly safe in the restricted
little stateroom, where naught more deadly fell upon him than a pillow.

But it mattered not now to her what Floyd-Rosney said or thought. All
dwindled into insignificance, was nullified by the fact of the covert
blow, on the sly,--how she scorned him--that these men might not see and
despise him for it!--dealt in the folds of the child’s cloak, their
child, his and hers! She wondered that he dared, knowing how she had
surrendered him to scorn in their earlier difference. Perhaps he knew,
and, indeed, she was sure, instinctively, that none would believe; the
blow would be considered unintentional, the incident of the struggle to
wrest the child from her grasp.

If a moment ago she had seemed pale, haggard, a flaccid presentment of
an ordinary type, that aspect had fallen from her like a mask. Her
cheeks burned, and their intense carmine gave an emphasis to the luster
and tint of her redundant yellow hair. Her eyes were alert, brilliant,
not gray, nor brown, nor green, yet of a tint allied to each, and were
of such a clarity that one could say such eyes might well gaze unabashed
upon the sun. All her wonted distinction of manner had returned to her
unwittingly, with the resumption of her normal identity, the reassertion
of her courage. The necessity to endure had made her brave, quick to
respond to the exigencies of the moment.

As the child’s voice came to her through the torrents in a plaintive
bleat of reluctance and terror, full of the pain and fear of parting
from her, who was his little Providence, omnipotent, all-caring,
infinitely loving, she nerved herself to call out gaily to him and wave
her hand, and exhort him in the homely phrase familiar to all infancy,
“to be a good boy.” The tears started to her eyes as she noted his
sudden relapse into silence, and saw, through the rain, how humbly and
acquiescently he lent himself to the bestowal of his small anatomy in
the corner deemed fit by the imperious paternal authority.

Little Marjorie Ashley had been almost stunned into silence for a time.
The terrors of the experience, the exacerbation of nerves in the
tempestuous turmoils, the suspense, the agitation, the fear of injury or
even of death, all seemed nullified now in the expectation of rescue and
under the protective wing of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney. Her father, going within
to the office for some valuable which he had deposited in the safe of
the boat, had charged Marjorie to stand beside Mrs. Floyd-Rosney till
his return. The little girl utilized the interval more acceptably to
that lady than one might have deemed possible, by her extravagant
praises of baby Ned and her appreciative repetition of his bright
sayings.

Catching sight of him as he looked up from the yawl, she called out in
affected farewell,--“So long, partner!”--her high, reedy voice
penetrating the down-pour with its keenly sweet and piercing quality,
and she fell back against Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, laughing with delight and
gratified mirth, when the response came shrill, and infantile, and
jubilant,--“So long, Mar’jee! So long, Mar’jee!”

Floyd-Rosney’s look of inquiry as the business of embarkation brought
him near his wife was so marked as to be almost articulate. He could not
understand her changed aspect. He was prepared for tears, for
reproaches, even for an outbreak of indecorous rage. He had intended
that, in any event, she should feel his displeasure, his discipline,
and it was of a nature under which she must needs writhe. Anything that
affected the boy, however slightly, had power to move her out of all
proportion to its importance. In this signal instance of danger, almost
of despair, her conduct, her accession of beauty, seemed inexplicable.
Her manner of quiet composure, her look, the stately elegance so in
accord with her slender figure, her attitude, her gait, peculiarly
characteristic of her personality, seemed singularly marked now, and out
of keeping with the situation, challenging comment.

“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney has got the nerve!” said the Captain admiringly. “She
is fit for the bridge of a man-of-war. Are you going to stand by the
deck till the last passenger has taken to the boats, madam?”

For Floyd-Rosney, knowing full well that he was imposing on her no
danger that the others did not share, had made it a point to pass her by
in summoning the ladies to descend to the yawl. In fact, a number of men
were seated on the thwarts by his orders. He had only intended to
impress her with a sense of his indifference, his displeasure, his
power. But he had given her the opportunity to assert her independence,
and, incidentally, to levy tribute on the admiration of the whole boat’s
company.

“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney doesn’t care for a living thing but little Ned,”
cried the voluble Marjorie. “If little Ned is safe she had just as lief
the rest of us would go to the bottom as not.”

Mr. Floyd-Rosney took his wife by the elbow. “Come on,” he said, “why
are you lagging back here,--afraid to get in the yawl?” Then he added
in a lower voice, “Can you do nothing to stop that miserable girl’s
chatter?”

But the voice, even hissing between his set teeth, was not so low that
Marjorie, being near, did not hear it. At all events, _she_ had had no
schooling in self-repression, in the humiliation of a politic deference.
She flamed out with all the normal instincts of self-asserting and
wounded pride.

“No, there isn’t any way to stop my chatter,”--she exclaimed hotly, “for
I have as good a right to talk as you. I am _not_ a ‘miserable girl.’
But I don’t care what _you_ say. I don’t train with your gang, anyhow!”

“Why, Marjorie,” cried Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, and her husband had a moment’s
relief in the expectation that the indignity offered to him would be
summarily, yet tactfully rebuked. But his wife only said, “What slang!
Is that the kind of thing you learn at Madame Gerault’s?”

She passed her arm about the girl’s shoulder, but Marjorie had as yet
learned no self-control at Madame Gerault’s or elsewhere, and burst into
stormy tears. Even after she was seated in the yawl, beside Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney, she wept persistently, and sobbed aloud. The
grief-stricken spectacle greatly affected little Ned Floyd-Rosney at the
further end of the yawl. After staring, in grave and flushed dismay and
amaze for a few moments, he made one or two spasmodic efforts to cheer
his boon companion from the distance. Then he succumbed to sympathy and
wept dolorously and loudly in concert.

Mrs. Floyd-Rosney made no effort to reach him by word or look. Her
husband, whose nerves a crying child affected with such intense
aggravation that he was seldom subjected to this annoyance, was
compelled to set his teeth in helpless discomfort, and endure the
affliction, intensified by the difference in age, and the variance in
pitch and vocal volume of the two lachrymose performers.

Thus freighted, the yawl pushed off, at length, into the steely rain,
the white foam, and the surging, tawny currents of the river. All looked
back at the sand-bar, doubtless, with some apprehensive regret. The
sight of the stanch Captain on the deck waving his farewell was not
calculated to dispel anxiety. The sand-bar, too, was big,--on board they
had scarcely realized its extent. In comparison with the yawl it seemed
very solid, continental. They sheered off cautiously from it lest the
yawl, too, go aground on some submerged and unsuspected process of land
building. It was obviously safer in the middle of the river, despite the
menacing aspect of the swift tumultuous current, lashed into foaming
swirls by the blast. The tremendous impetus of the flow was demonstrated
by the speed of the yawl; in one moment the steamer had disappeared, its
great white bulk, lifted high on the sand-bar, showed like a mirage
through a sudden parting of the dashing torrents, then fell astern to be
glimpsed no more. When the yawl began to run precipitately toward the
bank there was a general outcry of fear, but the mate, who was
navigating the little craft, explained that it must needs go with the
sweep of the current, which now hugged the shore, for the strength of
his crew could not make headway against it, heavily laden as the yawl
was.

From this proximity to the land the voyagers could mark the evidences
of the fury of the hurricane. Its track through the woods was near a
hundred yards wide, in almost a perfectly straight line, and in this
avenue the trees were felled, the ground cleared, the levee laid flat.
It was impossible to say what dwellings or farm-buildings shared the
disaster, for no vestige was left to tell the tale. As the yawl fared
onward it encountered one of the great monarchs of the woods, tossed
into the river by the gusts that had uprooted it and now borne swiftly
on by the combined force of the wind and the current. It required all
the strength of the oarsmen to hold back and give precedence to this
gigantic flotsam, lest some uncovenanted swirl of the waters fling it
with all its towering intricacies of boughs upon the boat, and,
hopelessly entangling it, thrash out the life of every creature on
board. For the wind was rife in its branches and thus contorted its
course. It tossed them high; whistled and screamed madly among them, and
the yawl, following reluctantly in the rear, was witness of all the
fantastic freaks of these wild gambols of the gusts. This unlucky
blockade of their course gave rise to some discussion between the mate
and the passengers, and Floyd-Rosney would fain seek to pass the
obstruction by a spurt of rowing to one side.

“I am not well acquainted with the current just along here,” said the
mate, “but if it should make in toward the land with us between it and
the bank we would be flailed alive and drowned besides.”

There was a general consensus of opinion with the mate’s position, and
one of the elderly ladies openly remonstrated against Floyd-Rosney’s
risky proposition, but his wife said never a word.

Suddenly the mate called out in a startled voice: “Back
oars,--back,--back,” and every roustabout put his full force against the
current, but their utmost strength only sufficed to retard the progress
of the boat. The tree had been struck by a flaw of wind which almost
turned it over on the surface of the water, and then went skirling and
eddying down the river. The whirling foliage gave an effect as of a
flash of iridescent light through the sad-hued landscape; the leaves all
green and yellow, as in a blend of some gorgeous emblazonry, showed now
against the white foam and now against the slate-tinted sky. The myriad
wild waves, surging to and fro in the commotion, leaped in long, elastic
bounds, and shook their tawny manes. In the tumultuous undulations of
the waters it required all the skill of the experienced boat-hands to
keep the yawl afloat.

“Give it up,” said Floyd-Rosney, at length. “We must go back to the
_Cherokee Rose_.”

“Impossible,--against the current with this load,” said the mate.

“We can try, at least,” urged Floyd-Rosney. “If we don’t turn back the
current will carry us down into the midst of that cursed tree in case we
have another gust.”

“Isn’t there a bayou about half a mile further?” suggested Adrian Ducie.
“Does the current make in?”

“I am not sure whether it’s a creek or a bayou,” said the mate, “but the
current does make in along there.”

“As if it matters a _sou marqué_ whether it is a creek or a bayou,”
fleered Floyd-Rosney contemptuously.

“It makes all the difference in the world,” retorted Ducie. “If it is a
creek it flows into the Mississippi,--a tributary. If it is a bayou the
Mississippi flows into it, for it is an outlet. If the current sets that
way it may carry the tree into the bayou, provided it is wide enough,
and, if it is narrow, the boughs may be entangled there.”

It was one of the misfortunes under which the voyagers labored that
these consultations of the leaders must needs be made in the hearing of
the others, owing to the restricted space which they occupied. Several
had begun to grow panicky with the suggestion that progress was so
environed with danger, and yet that return was impossible. Perhaps the
mate was skilled in weather-signs not altogether of the atmosphere when
he said, casually,

“You seem to be well acquainted with the river hereabouts, Mr. Ducie.”

“Not the river itself, but I have made a study of a plot of survey of
the Duciehurst lands. Bayou Benoit touches the northwestern
quarter-section just where it leaves the river. We cannot be far now.”

And, indeed, a sudden rift in the sullen cypress woods on the eastern
shore revealed, presently, a stream not sluggish as was its wont, when
one might scarce have discerned the course of the water, whether an
inlet or an outlet of the river. Now it was flowing with great speed and
volume obviously directly from the Mississippi. As the mate had said,
the current hugged the shore. The oarsmen made as scant speed as might
be while the great tree, in its rich emblazonment of green and gold,
went teetering fantastically on the force of the river. Its course grew
swifter and swifter with the momentum of the waters, seeking liberation,
until, all at once, it became stationary. As Ducie had thought probable,
its boughs had entangled themselves with the growths on one side of the
narrow bayou. It was effectually checked for the nonce, although, at any
moment, the force of the stream might break off considerable fragments
of the branches and thus compass its dislodgment.

“Give way, boys,” cried the mate in a stentorian voice. “Give way.” The
crew stretched every muscle, and the yawl skimmed swiftly past the
great, flaring obstruction, swinging and swaying as if at anchor in the
mouth of the bayou. Now and again anxious, frightened glances were cast
astern. But a pursuit by the woodland monster did not materialize.




CHAPTER VIII


The aspect of the Duciehurst mansion gave no token of its ruinous
condition when first it broke upon the view. Its stately portico, the
massive Corinthian columns reaching to the floor of the third story of
the main building, impressively dominated the scene, whitely glittering,
surrounded by the green leaves of the magnolia grandiflora, ancient now,
and of great bulk and height. The house was duplicated by the reflection
in water close at hand, whether some lake or merely a pool formed by the
rain, Paula could not determine. A wing on either side expressed the
large scope of its construction, and from a turn in the road, if a
grass-grown track could be so called, came glimpses, in the rear of the
building, of spacious galleries both above and below stairs, shut in by
Venetian blinds, so much affected in the architecture of Southern homes
in former years. A forest of live oak, swamp maple, black gum closed the
view of the background, and cut off the place from communication with
the cotton lands appurtenant to it, but at a very considerable distance.
For the region immediately contiguous to the house had become in the
divagations of the great river peculiarly liable to overflow, and thus
the forest, known, indeed, as the “open swamp,” continued uncleared,
because of the precarious value of the land for agricultural
operations. In fact, the main levee that protected the fields now lay
far in the rear of the old Duciehurst mansion. Doubtless in times of
specially high water seeping rills effected entrance at door and
casement and ran along the floors and rose against the walls, and
brought as tenants crayfish and frogs, water-snakes and eels, and other
slimy denizens of the floods, who explored the strange recesses of this
refuge, and, perhaps, made merry, thus translated to the seat of the
scornful.

Paula paused on the crest of the old levee. It had been in its day a
redoubtable embankment, and despite the neglect of a half century, it
still served in partial efficiency, and its trend could be discerned far
away. She gazed at the place with emotions it was difficult for her to
understand. She could not shake off the consciousness of the presence of
Adrian Ducie, nor could she cease to speculate how it must affect him to
see his ancestral estate in the possession of the usurper, for thus he
must consider her husband. Ducie had grown silent since they had
disembarked, and walked a little apart from the cluster of tramping
refugees. She dared not look at his face.

But law is law, she argued within herself. It was not the fiat of her
husband or of his predecessors, but the decree of the court that had
given the property to them. Nevertheless, there was to her mind an
inherent coercive evidence of the truth of the tradition of the released
mortgage, duly paid and satisfied, and she looked at the old place with
eyes rebuked and deprecatory, and not with the pride or interest of the
rightful owner.

It was still raining as the group reached the pavement of heavy stone
blocks. These had defied the growths of neglect and the wear of time,
and were as they had always been save that one of them had scaled and
held a tiny pool of shallow water, which reflected the sky. Her husband
walked beside her, now and again glancing inquiringly at her. Never
before in all their wedded life had so long a difference subsisted
between them. For, even if she were not consciously at fault, Paula had
always hitherto made haste to assume the blame, and frame the apology,
for what odds was it, in good sooth, who granted the pardon, she was
wont to argue, so that both were forgiving and forgiven. Now, she recked
not of his displeasure. She seemed, indeed, unusually composed,
absorbed, self-sufficient. She did not even glance at him, yet how her
eyes were accustomed to wait upon him. She looked about with quiet
observation, with obvious interest. One might suppose, in fact, that she
did not think of him at all, as she walked so daintily erect and
slender, with such graceful, sober dignity beside him. He had acquitted
himself well that day, he thought, had certainly earned golden opinions,
but he was beginning to miss sadly the most adroit flatterer of all his
experience, the woman who loved him. As together they ascended the broad
stone steps he suddenly paused, took her hand in one of his and with
ceremony led her through the great arched portal, from which the massive
doors had been riven and destroyed long ago.

“Welcome to your own house, my wife,” he said with his fine florid smile
and a manner replete with his conscious importance and his relish of it.

At that moment there came a sound from the ghastly vacancy glimpsed
within, a weird, shrill sound, full of sinister suggestion. The group,
peering in from behind them, thrilled with horror, broke into sudden
frightened exclamations, before its keen repetition enabled them to
realize that it was only the hooting of an owl, roused, doubtless, from
his diurnal slumbers by the tones of the echoing voice and the
vibrations of the floor under an unaccustomed tread. Some sheepish
laughter ensued, at themselves rather than at Floyd-Rosney, but at this
moment any merriment was of invidious suggestion and he flushed deeply.

“Here, you fellow,” he hailed one of the roustabouts, “get that owl out
of here, and any other vermin you can find,” and he tossed the darkey a
dollar.

The roustabout showed all his teeth, and he had a great many of them,
and with a deprecatory manner ran to pick up the silver coin. He was
trained to a degree of courtesy, and he fain would have left it where it
had fallen on the pavement until he had executed the commission. But he
knew of old his companions of the lower deck, now busied in bringing up
the luggage of the party. Therefore, he pocketed the gratuity before he
went briskly and cheerfully down the long hall to one of the inner
apartments whence proceeded the sound of ill-omen.

While they were still making their way into the main hall they heard a
great commotion of hootings and halloos, and all at once a tremendous
crash of glass. It is a sound of destruction that rouses all the
proprietor within a man.

“Great heavens,” cried Floyd-Rosney, “is the fool driving the creature
through the window without lifting the sash, little glass as there is
left here.”

It seemed that this was the case, for a large white owl, blinded by the
light of day, floundering and fluttering, went winging its way clumsily
scarcely six feet from the ground through the rain, still falling
without, and after several drooping efforts contrived gropingly to perch
himself on a broken stone vase on the terrace, whence the other
roustabouts presently dislodged him, and with gay cries and great
unanimity of spirit, proceeded to dispatch him, hooting and squawking in
painful surprise and protesting to the last.

Paula had caught little Ned within the doorway to spare his innocence
and infancy the cruel spectacle. And suddenly here was the roustabout
who had been sent into the recesses of the house, coming out again with
a strange blank face, and a peculiar, hurried, dogged manner.

“Did you find any more owls? And why did you break the glass to get him
out?” Floyd-Rosney asked, sternly.

“Naw, sir,” the man answered at random, but loweringly. He bent his head
while he swiftly threaded his way through the group as if he were
accustomed to force his progress with horns. He was in evident haste; he
stepped deftly down the flight to the pavement and, turning aside on the
weed-grown turf, reached the shrubbery and was lost to view among the
dripping evergreen foliage.

As it is the accepted fad to admire old houses rather than the new, a
gentleman of the party who made a point of being up-to-date began to
comment on the spacious proportions of the hall, and the really stately
curves of the staircase as it came sweeping down from a lofty
_entresol_. “It looks as if it might be a spiral above the second story,
isn’t that an unusual feature, or is it merely the attic flight?” he
interrogated space.

For Floyd-Rosney, all the host, was looking into the adjoining rooms and
giving orders for the lighting of fires wherever a chimney seemed
practicable.

“Listen how the old rattle-trap is leaking,” said one of the elderly
ladies, ungratefully.

Paula made no comment. She was hearing the melancholy drip, drip, drip
of the rain through the ceilings of the upper stories. As the drops
multiplied in number and increased in volume they sounded to her like
foot-falls, now rapid, now slow, circumspect and weighty; sometimes
there was a frenzied rush as in a wild catastrophe, and again a light
tripping in a sort of elastic tempo, as of the vibrations of some gay
dance of olde. The echoes,--oh, the echoes,--she dropped her face in her
hands for a moment, lest she should see the echoes materialized, that
were coming down the stairs, evoked from the silence, the solitude, the
oblivion of the ruined mansion. Neglected here so long, who would have
recked if the old memories had taken wonted form--who would have seen,
save the moonbeam, itself wan and vagrant, or the wind of kindred
elusiveness, going and coming as it listed.

Yet there had been other and more substantial tenants. “The damned
rascals have pulled up nearly every hearth in the house,” Floyd-Rosney
was saying, as he came forging back through the rooms on the right. Then
once more among the ladies he moderated his diction. “Destroying the
hearths, searching for the hidden treasure of Duciehurst--idiotic
folly! River pirates, shanty-boaters, tramps, gipsies, and such like
vagrants, I suppose.”

Paula, seated on one of the steps of the stair, cast a furtive glance at
Adrian Ducie, who had followed Floyd-Rosney from the inner apartments.
His face was grave, absorbed, pondering. Doubtless he was thinking of
the persistence of this tradition to endure, unaided, unfostered for
forty years. It must have had certainly some foundation in fact.

“Perhaps the vagrants discovered it and carried it off,” suggested the
up-to-date man.

“Not in the chimney-places,” fretted Floyd-Rosney, “which makes it all
the more aggravating. The solid stone hearths are laid on solid masonry,
each is constructed in the same way, and you couldn’t hide a hair-pin in
one of them. Why did they tear them _all_ up?”

But fires were finally started in two of the rooms on the ground floor
where the hearths were found intact. They were comparatively dry,
barring an occasional dash of the rain through the broken glass of one
of the windows, the ceilings being protected from leakage by the floor
of the upper story. Floyd-Rosney began to feel that this was sufficient
accommodation for the party under the peculiar difficulties that beset
them. The scarcity of wood rendered the impairment of the fire-places
elsewhere of less moment. The sojourners were fain to follow the example
of the lawless intruders hitherto, who tore up the flooring of the rear
verandas, the sills of the windows, the Venetian blinds for fuel. This
vandalism, however, in the present instance, was limited, for its
exercise required muscle, and this was not superabundant. True, the
Captain’s forethought had furnished them with an axe, and also a cook,
in the person of one of the table waiters, understood to be gifted in
both walks of life. There was present, too, the Major’s negro servant,
who, although sixty years of age, was still stalwart, active and of
unusual size. But neither of these worthies had hired out to cut wood.

The crisis was acute. Floyd-Rosney offered handsome financial
inducements in vain and then sought such urgency as lay in miscellaneous
swearing. His language was as lurid as any flames that had ever flared
up the great chimney, but ineffective. The group stood in a large
apartment in the rear, apparently a kitchen, of which nearly half the
floor was already gone, exhaled in smoke up this massive chimney. It
occupied nearly one side of the room, and still a crane hung within its
recesses and hooks for pots. There was also a brick oven, very quaint,
and other ancient appurtenances of the culinary art, hardly understood
by either of the modern claimants of ownership, but of special interest
to the up-to-date man who had followed them out to admire the things of
yore, so fashionable anew.

“Naw, sir,” said the Major’s retainer. “I can’t cut wood. I ain’t done
no work since me an’ de Major fought de war, ’cept jes’ tend on him.
Naw, sir, I ain’t cut no wood since I built de Major’s las’ bivouac
fire.” He was perfectly respectful, but calm, and firm, and impenetrable
to argument.

The other darkey, a languid person with an evident inclination to high
fashion, perceived in the demand an effort at imposition. With his
spruce white jacket and apron, he lounged in the doorway leaning
against its frame in a most negative attitude. His voice in objection
took on the plaint of a high falsetto. “The Cap’n nuver mentioned nare
word to me ’bout cuttin’ wood. I’ll sure cook, if I have got a fire to
cook with.”

“You black rascal, do you expect me to build your fire?” sputtered
Floyd-Rosney.

“The Cap’n nuver treated me right,” the provisional cook evaded the
direct appeal. “He nuver tole me that I was gwine to be axed to cut
wood.”

“How were you going to cook without a fire?” demanded Ducie.

“I ’spected you gemmen had a fire somewhere.”

“In my coat-pocket?” asked Floyd-Rosney.

The waiter would not essay the retort direct. He, too, was perfectly
polite. “I ain’t gwine to cut wood,” he murmured plaintively.

“I wish we had kept one of those roustabouts to cut wood instead of
letting them all go with the yawl back to the _Cherokee Rose_,” said
Floyd-Rosney, in great annoyance. “They are worth a hundred of these
saloon darkies.”

“Don’t name _me_ ’mongst dat triflin’ gang, Mr. Floyd-Rosney,” the
Major’s retainer said, in dignified remonstrance. “But I jes’ come along
to wait on de Major, an’ cuttin’ wood is a business I ain’t in no wise
used to. Naw, sir.”

“I never was expectin’ to cut wood,” plained the high falsetto of the
saloon darkey.

“Pshaw!” exclaimed Ducie. “If this keeps up I’ll split some fool’s head
open.”

He threw off his coat, seized the axe, heaved it up and struck a blow
that splintered a plank in the middle. Floyd-Rosney, his coat also on
the floor, inserted the blade of a hatchet edgewise beneath it and
pried it up, then began to chop vigorously while Ducie prepared to rive
another plank.

The two negroes looked on with sulky indifference.

Suddenly the Major’s servant grinned genially, without rhyme or reason.
“You two gemmen git out of yere. Make yerselfs skeerce. You think I’m
gwine to stand yere an’ let you chop wood. I know de quality. I have
always worked for de quality. I’m gwine to l’arn dis yere little coon,
dat dunno nuthin’ but runnin’ de river, how to behave hisself before de
quality. Take up dat hatchet, boy, an’ mind yer manners.”

Floyd-Rosney surrendered the implement readily and with all the grace of
good-will, but Ducie continued to deal the stanch old floor some
tremendous blows and at last laid the axe down as if he did not half
care.

“We had best run as few fires as possible,” Ducie commented as they left
the room, “change of heart might not last.”

Thus it was that only two of the many spacious apartments were put into
commission. One, the walls of which betokened in the scheme of their
decoration its former uses as a music-room, was filled with the effects
of the ladies of the party, while the gentlemen were glad to pull off
their shoes and exchange for dry hose and slippers before the fire of an
old-time smoking-room, that must have been a cozy den in its day. The
house had long ago been stripped of all portables in decoration as well
as furnishing. A few mirrors still hung on the walls, too heavy or too
fragile to be safely removed, wantonly shattered by the vandal hands of
its occasional and itinerant inmates. Several of these had been a
portion of the original construction, built into the walls, and in lieu
of frames were surrounded by heavy mouldings of stucco-work, and this,
too, had given opportunity to the propensity of destruction rife
throughout the piteous wreck of a palace. In the smoking-room, the haunt
of good-fellowship and joviality, Bacchus seemed doubly drunk, riding a
goat of three legs and one horn, at the summit of the mirror, and
really, but that the figure in half relief was too high to be
conveniently reached all semblance of the design might have been
shattered. Only here and there was it possible to follow the rest of the
rout of satyrs and fauns, the tracery of bowls and beakers and gourds,
and bunches of grapes, the redundant festoons of tobacco leaves and
replicas of many varieties of pipes, all environed with the fantastic
wreathing of smoke, and the ingenious symbolism in which the interior
decorator had expended a wealth of sub-suggestion.

There was only a “shake-down” on the floor for the men, and two or three
were already disposed upon it at length, since this was a restful
position and there were no chairs available. Floyd-Rosney stood with his
back to the fire, his hands behind him, his head a trifle bent, his eyes
dull and ruminative. He had much of which to think. Adrian Ducie sat
sidewise on the sill of a window and looked out through the grimy panes
at the ceaseless fall of the rain amidst the glossy leaves of the
magnolias which his grandmother,--or was it his great-grandmother?--had
planted here in the years agone. Was that the site of her
flower-garden, he wondered, seeing at a distance the flaunting of a
yellow chrysanthemum. How odd it was that he should sit here in his
great-grandfather’s den, smoking a cigar, practically a stranger, a
guest, an intruder in the home of his ancestors. He and his brother, the
lawful heirs of all this shattered magnificence, these baronial tracts
of fertile lands, were constrained to work sedulously for a bare living.
He, himself, was an exile, doomed to wander the earth over, with never a
home of his own, never a perch for his world-weary wings. His brother’s
fate was to juggle with all those vicissitudes that curse the man who
strives to wrest a subsistence from the soil, to pay a price of purchase
for the rich products of the land which his forbears had owned since the
extinction of the tribal titles of the Indians. A yellow
chrysanthemum,--a chrysanthemum swaying in the wind!

There had begun to be strong hopes of dinner astir in this masculine
coterie, and when the door opened every head was turned toward it. But
melancholy reigned on the face of the cook, and it was a dispirited
cadence of his falsetto voice that made known his lack.

“Mr. Floyd-Rosney,” he plained, “I can’t dress canned lobster salad
without tarragon vinegar. This yere cruet has got nuthin’ in it in dis
world but apple vinegar. The Cap’n nuver done me right.”

“God A’mighty, man, ‘_lobster_!’ I could eat the can,” cried one of the
recumbents, springing up with such alacrity that his bounce awakened
Colonel Kenwynton, who had been able to forget his fatigue and hunger in
a doze.

“Get that dinner on the table, or I’ll be the death of you,” cried
Floyd-Rosney. “We are hungry. It is nearly five o’clock and we have had
nothing since breakfast.”

The door closed slowly on the disaffected cook, who was evidently a
devotee to art for art’s sake, for he presently reappeared in his
capacity of table servant, as if he had been rebuked in an altogether
different identity as cook. He drooped languidly between the door and
the frame and once more in his high falsetto plaint he upbraided the
Captain.

“The Cap’n nuver done me right. He oughter have let _me_ pack that box,
instead of the steward. There ain’t no fruit napkins, Mr. Floyd-Rosney.
Jes’ white doilies,” he was not far from tears, “white _doilies_ to
serve with o’anges!”

The mere mention was an appetizer.

“Let me get at ’em, whether they are served with doilies or
bath-towels!” cried the recumbent figure, recumbent no longer. “Call the
ladies. Ho, for the festive board. If you don’t want scraps only, you
had better not let me get there first. Notify the ladies. Does this vast
mansion possess nothing that is like a dinner-bell, or a gong, or a
whistle, that may make a cheerful sound of summons. Ha, ha, ha!”

“It compromises on something like the crackling of thorns under a pot,”
said Floyd-Rosney, sourly. Then with gracious urbanity, “Major, let me
give you my arm, perhaps our presence at the festive board may hasten
matters.”

The ladies had already surged out into the great, bare, echoing hall,
Hildegarde Dean, freshly arrayed in an Empire gown, as blue as her eyes,
protesting that she was as hungry as a hunter. Ducie offered his arm
ceremoniously to her mother, and Floyd-Rosney, who had intended his
attention to the old blind Major as a bid for his wife’s notice and
approval, was not pleased to see the procession, stately and suggestive,
by reason of the lordly expansiveness of the place, headed by the heir
of the old owners in the guise of host. It was an idea that never
entered Ducie’s mind, not even when whetting the carving knife on the
steel in anticipation of dispensing shares of the saddle of mutton from
his end of the table. At this table, in truth, his grandfather had sat,
and his great-grandfather also, and dispensed its bounty. So heavy it
was, so burdensome for removal, that in the various disasters that had
ravaged the old house, war and financial ruin, marauders and tramps,
wind and rain, lightning and overflow, it had endured throughout.
Mahogany was not earlier the rage as now, and the enthusiasm of the
up-to-date man could scarcely be restrained. There were no chairs;
planks from the flooring elsewhere had been hastily stretched benchwise
on the boxes that had held the provisions and bedding, but even this
grotesque make-shift did not detract from his keen discernment of the
admirable in the entourage. The size and shape of the room, the
old-fashioned bow-window, the ornate mantel-piece, the cabinets built
into the walls for the silver and choice show of old china, now without
even a shelf or a diamond-shaped pane of glass, the design of the paper,
the stucco ornaments about the chandelier, or rather the rod which had
once supported it, for the pendants had been dismembered in wanton
spoliation and now lay in fragments on the lawn without, the pantry, the
china-closet, the storeroom contiguous all came in for his
commendation, and much he bewailed the grinning laths looking down from
the gaps in the fallen plaster, the smoke-grimed walls, the destroyed
hearth, half torn out from the chimney-place. The stream of his talk was
only stemmed by the reappearance of the cook, now with his white jacket
and apron in the rôle of waiter. Every eye was turned apprehensively
toward him lest he was moved to say that the Cap’n had ordered no dinner
to be put into the box. He dolorously drooped over Ducie’s shoulder in
the place of host, and at once disclosed the melancholy worst. “Dere
ain’t no soup, sir. While I was speakin’ to you gemmen in de--de--in de
library, sir, de soup scorched. I had set dat ole superannuated mule of
de Major’s ter watch de pot an’ he didn’t know enough to set it off de
fire when it took to smokin’. Hit was ’p’tage Bec’mul, sir.”

Ducie laughed and called for the roast, and the company, as soon as the
functionary had disappeared, addressed their wits to the translation of
the waiter’s French to discover what manner of soup they had lost.

Paula was not sorry to see Adrian Ducie in his hereditary place; somehow
it would have revolted her that she and hers should sit in the seat of
the usurper. Accident had willed it thus, and it was better so. She had
noted the quick glance of gauging the effect which her husband had cast
at her as he made much ado of settling the old Major at the table. Even
without this self-betrayal she would have recognized the demonstration
as one of special design. How should she now be so discerning, she asked
herself. She knew him, she discriminated his motives, she read his
thoughts as though they were set forth on the page of an open book. And
of this he was so unconscious, so assured, so confident of her attitude
as hitherto toward him, that she had the heart to pity while she
despised him, while she revolted at the thought of him.

She wished to risk not even a word aside with him. She was eager to get
away from the table, although the dinner that the Captain had ordered to
be packed made ample amends for the delay. It had its defects,
doubtless, as one might easily discern from the disconsolate and
well-nigh inconsolable port of the waiter at intervals, but these were
scarcely apparent to the palates of the company. It was, of course,
inferior to the menus of the far-famed dinners of the steamboats of the
olden times, but there is no likelihood of famishing on the Mississippi
even at the present day, and the hospitable Captain Disnett had no mind
that these voluntary cast-a-ways should suffer for their precipitancy.
It was still a cheerful group about that storied board as Paula slipped
from the end of the bench and quietly through the door. If her
withdrawal were noted it would doubtless be ascribed to her anxiety
concerning little Ned, and thus her absence would leave no field for
speculation. She did not, however, return to the room devoted to the use
of the feminine passengers of the _Cherokee Rose_, where the child now
lay asleep. She walked slowly up and down the great hall, absorbed in
thought. She was continually surprised at herself, analyzing her own
unwonted mental processes. She could not understand her calmness, in
this signal significant discovery in her life, that she did not love her
husband. She would not rehearse his faults, retrace in her recollection
a thousand incidents confirmatory of the revelation of his character
that had been elicited on this unhappy voyage. How long, she wondered,
would the illusion have continued otherwise,--to her life’s end? Somehow
she could not look forward, and she felt a sort of stupefaction in this,
although she realized that her faculties were roused by her perception
of the truth. The spirit-breaking process, of which she had been
sub-acutely aware, was ended. She could not be so subjugated save by
love, the sedulous wish to please, the tender fear of disapproval, the
ardent hope of placating. Suddenly she was aware that she was laughing,
the fool, to have felt all this for a man who could strike her, cruelly,
painfully, artfully, on the sly that none might know. But even while she
laughed her eyes were full of tears, so did she compassionate the self
she ridiculed with scorn as if it were some other woman whom she pitied.

She felt as if she must be alone. All the day since that crisis the
presence of people had intruded clamorously upon her consciousness. She
would fain take counsel within herself, her own soul. Above all, she
wished to avoid the sight of her husband, the thought of him. Whenever
the sound of voices in the dining-room broke on her absorption as she
neared the door in her pacing back and forth, she paused, looking over
her shoulder, tense, poised, as if for flight. And at last, as the
clamor of quitting the table heralded the approach of the company, with
scarcely a realized intention, the instinct of escape took possession of
her, and she sped lightly up the great staircase, as elusive, as
unperceived as the essence of the echoes which she had fancied might
thence descend.

She hesitated, gasping and out of breath, at the head of the flight,
looking about aghast at the gaunt aspect of the wrecked mansion. The
hall was a replica of the one below, save that there were three great
windows opening on a balcony instead of the front door. The glass was
broken out, the Venetian blinds were torn away, and from where she stood
she could see the massive Corinthian columns of the portico rising to
the floor of the story still above. A number of large apartments opened
on this hall, their proportions and ornate mantel-pieces all visible,
for the doors, either swung ajar or wrenched from their hinges, lay upon
the floors. Paula did not note, or perhaps she forgot, that the wreck
expressed forty years of neglect, of license and rapine and was the
wicked work of generations of marauders. She felt that the destruction
was actuated by a sort of fiendish malice. It had required both time and
strength, as well as wanton enmity, a class hatred, one might suppose,
bitter and unreasoning, the wrath of the poor against the rich, even
though unmindful and indifferent to the injury. It seemed so strange to
her that the house should be left thus by its owners, despite its
inutilities in the changed conditions of the world. It had a dignity, as
of the ruin of princes, in its vestiges of beauty and splendor, and the
savor of old days that were now historic and should hold a sort of
sanctity. Even the insensate walls, in the rifts of their shattered
plaster, their besmirched spoliation, expressed a subtle reproach, such
as one might behold in some old human face buffeted and reviled without
a cause.

She had a swift illumination how it would have rejoiced the Ducies to
have set up here their staff of rest in the home hallowed as the harbor
of their ancestors. They were receptive to all the finer illusions of
life. They cherished their personal pride; they revered their ancient
name; they honored this spot as the cradle of their forefathers, and
although they were poor in the world’s opinion, they held in their own
consciousness that treasure of a love of lineage, that obligation to
conform to a high standard which imposed a rule of conduct and elevated
them in their own esteem. Their standpoint was all drearily out of
fashion, funny and forlorn, but she could have wept for them. And why,
since the place had no prosaic value, had not Fate left it to those whom
it would have so subtly enriched. Here in seemly guise, in well-ordered
decorum, in seclusion from the sordid world, the brothers who so dearly
loved each other would have dwelt in peace together, would have taken
unto themselves wives; children of the name and blood of the old
heritage would have been reared here as in an eagle’s nest, with all the
high traditions that have been long disregarded and forgotten. It seemed
so ignoble, so painful, so unjust, that the place should be thus
neglected, despised, cast aside, and yet withheld from its rightful
owners. She caught herself suddenly at the word. Her husband, her son,
were the rightful owners now, and it was their predecessor who did not
care.

As she stood gazing blankly forward the three windows of the upper hall
suddenly flamed with a saffron glow, for they faced a great expanse of
the southwestern sky, which, for one brief moment, was full of glory.
The waters of the Mississippi were a rippling flood of molten gold; the
dun-tinted, leafless forests on either bank accentuated in somber
contrast this splendid apotheosis of the waning day. The magnolia trees
about the house shone with every glossy leaf, an emerald for richness of
hue, and all at once, far beyond, Paula beheld the solution of the
mystery that had baffled her, the answer to her question, the Duciehurst
cotton fields, as white as snow, as level as a floor, as visibly
wealth-laden as if the rich yield of the soil were already coined into
gold. Here was the interest of the sordid proprietors; the home was no
home of theirs; they had been absentees from the first of their tenure.
The glimmering marble cross, the lofty granite shaft that showed when
the wind shifted among the gloomy boughs of the weeping willows in the
family graveyard, marked the resting place of none of their kindred.
Their bones were none of these bones, their flesh sprung from none of
these dead ashes. The Duciehurst lands made cotton, and cotton made
money, and the old house, built under other conditions, was suited to no
needs that they could create in the exigencies of a new day. Therefore,
it was left to shelter the owl, the gopher, the river-pirate, the
shanty-boater, the moon in its revolutions, and when the nights were
wild the wind seemed to issue thence as from a lair of mysteries.

Paula suddenly turned from the revelation, and gathering the lustrous
white skirt of her crêpe dress, freshly donned, in one jewelled hand
with a care unconsciously dainty, as was her habit, she noiselessly
slipped up the great dusty spiral of the stair leading to the third
story, lest curiosity induced some exploring intrusive foot thus far,
ere she had thought out her perplexity to its final satisfaction. She
was aware that the day dulled and darkened suddenly; she heard the wind
burst into gusty sobs; the clouds had fallen to weeping anew, and the
night was close at hand. She was curiously incongruous with the place as
she stood looking upward, the light upon her face, at a great rift in
the roof. The rain-drops dripped monotonously from smaller crevices down
upon the floor with a sort of emphasis, as if the number were registered
and it kept a tally. There were doubtless divisions and partitions
further to the rear, but this apartment was spacious above the square
portion of the mansion, and the ceiling had a high pitch. She thought
for a moment that they might have danced here in the old times, so fine
were the proportions of the place. Then she remembered that third-story
ball-rooms were not formerly in vogue, and that she had heard that the
one at Duciehurst was situated in the west wing on the ground floor.
This commodious apartment must have been a place of bestowal. The walls
betokened the remnants of presses, and she could almost fancy that she
could see the array of trunks, of chests, of discarded furniture, more
old-fashioned than that below, the bags of simples, of hyacinth bulbs
which were uprooted every second year to be planted anew. There was an
intensification of the spirit of spoil manifested elsewhere as if the
search for the hidden treasure here had been more desperate and radical.
The chimneys seemed to have been special subjects of suspicion, for
several showed that the solid masonry had been gouged out, leaving great
hollows. As she stood amidst the gray shadows in her lustrous white
crêpe gown with the shimmer of satin from its garniture, she was a
poetic presentment, even while engrossed in making the prosaic deduction
that here was the reason these chimneys smoked when fires were kindled
below.

The solitude was intense, the silence an awesome stillness, her
thoughts, recurring to her own sorry fate, were strenuous and troublous,
and thus even her strong, elastic young physique was beginning to feel
very definitely the stress of fatigue, and excitement, and fear, that
had filled the day as well as the effects of the emotional crisis which
she had endured. She found that she could scarcely stand; indeed, she
tottered with a sense of feebleness, of faintness, as she looked about
for some support, something on which she might lean, or better still,
something that might serve as a seat. Suddenly she started forward
toward the window near the outer corner of the room. The low sill was
broad and massive in conformity with the general design of the house,
and she sank down here in comfort, resting her head against the heavy
moulding of the frame. Her eyes turned without, and she noted with a
certain interest the great foliated ornaments, the carved acanthus
leaves of the capitals of the Corinthian columns, one of which was so
close at hand that she might almost have touched it, for the roof of the
portico here, which had been nearly on a level with the window, was now
in great part torn away, giving a full view of the stone floor below.
This column was the pilaster, half the bulk of the others, being
buttressed against the wall. The size of the columns was far greater
than she had supposed, looking at them from below, the capitals were
finished with a fine attention to detail. The portico was indeed an
admirable example of this sort of adapted architecture which is usually
distinguished rather by its license than its success. But she had scant
heart to mark its values or effect. Her reflections were introspective.
She looked out drearily on the wan wastes of the skies, and the somber
night closing in, and bethought herself of the woeful change in the
atmosphere of her soul since the skies last darkened. She said to
herself that illusions were made for women, who were not fitted to cope
with facts, and that it was better to be a loving fool, gulled into the
fancy that she, too, is beloved, than to see clearly, and judge justly,
and harbor an empty aching heart. For there was no recourse for her. It
was not in her power to frame her future. Her husband had, and he knew
he had, the most complete impunity, and doubtless this gave him an
assurance in domineering that he would not otherwise have dared to
exert. He was cognizant of her delicate pride, the odium in which she
would hold the idea of publicity in conjugal dissension. She would never
have permitted, save under some extreme stress like that of the single
instance of the morning, others to look in upon a difference between
them, yet there had been from the first much to bear from his
self-absorbed and imperious temper, and she had borne it to the extent
of self-immolation, of self-extinction. In fact, she was not, she had
not been for years, herself. She could not say, indeed, when her old
identity had asserted itself before to-day. It was the aspect of the
Ducie face, the associations of the past that had recalled her real self
to life, that had relumed the spark of pride which had once been her
dominant trait, that had given her courage to revolt at rebuke in
Adrian’s presence, to hold up her head, to speak from her own
individuality, to be an influence to be reckoned with. But of what
avail? Life must go on as heretofore, the old semblance of submission,
of adulation, the adjustment of every word, every idea, every desire, to
the mould of her husband’s thought, his preference. She wondered how she
would be enabled to maintain the farce of her love, that had hitherto
seemed capable of infinite endurance, of limitless pardoning power, and
the coercive admiration for him that she had felt throughout all these
five years. He was aware, and this fact was so certain that she was sure
he had never given the matter even a casual, careless thought, that for
the sake of their son, his precious presence, his comfort and care, his
future standing before the world, no recourse was possible for her, no
separation, no divorce. Floyd-Rosney might beat her with a stick if he
would, instead of that deft, crafty little blow he had dealt on her
wrist with his knuckles, and she would hide the wales for her child’s
sweet sake. No law was ever framed comprehensive enough to shield her.
She was beyond the pale and the protection of the law. And as she
realized this she held down her head and began to shed some miserable
tears.

Perhaps it was this relaxation that overpowered her nerves, this
cessation of resistance and repining. When she opened her eyes after an
interval of unconsciousness her first thought was of the detail of the
Scriptures touching the young man who slept in a high window through the
apostle’s preaching and “fell down from the third loft.” She had never
imagined that she should do so reckless, so wild a thing. Her methods
were all precautionary, her mental attitude quiet and composed. She
still sat in the window, looking out for a little space longer, for she
was indisposed to exertion; her muscles were stiff, and her very bones
seemed to ache with fatigue. The sky had cleared while she slept; only a
few white, fleecy lines, near the horizon, betokened the passing of the
clouds. It had that delicate ethereal blue peculiar to a night of lunar
light, for the stars were faint, barring the luster of one splendid
planet, the moon being near the full and high in the sky. The beams fell
in broad skeins diagonally through the front windows, while the one at
the side gave upon the dark summits of the great magnolias, where the
radiance lingered, enriching the gloss of their sempervirent foliage.
The weeping willows in their leafless state were all a fibrous glister
like silver fountains, and in their midst she could see glimpses in the
moonlight of the white gleam of the marble cross, the draped funereal
urn, the granite shaft where those who had once rested secure beneath
this kindly roof of home now slept more securely still within the shadow
of its ruin. A broken roof it now was, and through the rift overhead the
moonlight poured in a suffusive flood, illuminating all the space
beneath. She heard the plaintive drip, drip, drip, from some pool among
the shingles where the rain had found a lodgment. The river flashed in
myriad ripples, as steadily, ceaselessly it swept on its surging way to
the Gulf. She was familiar with its absolute silence, concomitant with
its great depth, save, of course, in the cataclysmal crisis of a
crevasse, and as she heard the unmistakable sound of a dash of water,
she bent a startled intentness of gaze on the surface to perceive a
rowboat steadily, but slowly, pulling up the current. She wondered at
her own surprise, yet so secluded was the solitude here that any sight
or sound of man seemed abnormal, an intrusion. She knew that a boat was
as accustomed an incident of a riverside locality as a carriage or a
motor in a street. It betokened some planter, perhaps, returning late,
because of the storm, from a neighboring store or a friend’s house. Any
waterside errand might duplicate the traffic of the highway.

How late was it, she wondered, for her interest in the boat had dwindled
as it passed out of sight beneath the high bank. The idea that perhaps
she alone was waking in this great, ruinous house gave her a vague chill
of fear. She began to question how she could nerve herself, with this
overwhelming sense of solitude, to attempt the exit through the
labyrinth of sinister shadows and solemn, silent, moonlit spaces among
the unfamiliar passages and rooms to the ground floor. She remembered
that the railing of the spiral staircase had shaken, here and there,
beneath her hand as she had ascended, the wood of the supporting
balusters having rotted in the rain that had fallen for years through
the shattered skylight. Her progress had been made in the daylight, and
she had now only the glimmer of the moon, from distant windows and the
rift in the roof. She began to think of calling for assistance; this
great empty space would echo like a drum, she knew, but unfamiliar with
the plan of the house she could not determine the location of the rooms
occupied by the party from the _Cherokee Rose_. If the hour were late,
as she felt it must be, and their inmates all asleep, she might fail to
make herself heard. And then she felt she would die of solitary terror.

Paula could not sufficiently rebuke her own folly that she should have
lingered so long apart from the party, that she should have carried so
far her explorations,--nay, it was an instinct of flight that had led
her feet. She dreaded her husband’s indignant and scornful surprise and
his trenchant rebuke. She realized why she had not been already missed
by him as well as by the others. Doubtless the ladies who were to occupy
the music-room as a dormitory had retired early, spent with fatigue and
excitement. Perhaps Hildegarde Dean might have sat for a time in the
bow-window of the dining-room and talked to Adrian Ducie, and Colonel
Kenwynton, and Major Lacey, as they ranged themselves on one of the
benches by the dining-table and smoked in the light of a kerosene lamp
which the Captain had furnished forth, and watched the moon rise over
the magnolias, and the melancholy weeping willows, and the marble
memorials glimmering in the slanting light. But even Hildegarde could
not flirt all day and all night, too. Paula could imagine that when she
came into the music-room, silent and on tip-toe, she stepped out of her
blue toggery with all commendable dispatch, only lighted by the moon,
gave her dense black hair but a toss and piled it on her head and
slipped into bed without disturbing the lightest sleeper, unconscious
that the cot where little Ned should slumber in his mother’s bosom was
empty, but for his own chubby form. The men, too, as they lay in a row
on the shake-down in the smoking-room with their feet to the fire, might
have chatted for a little while, but doubtless they soon succumbed to
drowsiness, and slumbered heavily in the effects of their drenchings and
exhaustion, and it would require vigorous poundings on their door to
rouse them in the morning.

Obviously there was no recourse. Paula perceived that she must compass
her own retreat unaided. She rose with the determination to attempt the
descent of the stairs. Then, trembling from head to foot, she sank down
on the broad sill of the window. A sudden raucous voice broke upon the
spectral silence, the still midnight.




CHAPTER IX


Paula looked down through the broken roof of the portico supported by
the massive Corinthian columns. A group of men stood on the stone floor
below, men of slouching, ill-favored aspect. She could not for one
moment confuse them with the inmates of the house, now silent and
asleep, although her first hopeful thought was that some nocturnal alarm
had brought forth the refugees of the _Cherokee Rose_.

The newcomers made no effort at repression or secrecy. They could have
had no idea that the house was occupied. Evidently they felt as alone,
as secluded, as secure from observation, as if in a desert. They were
not even in haste to exploit their design. A great brawny, workman-like
man was taking to task a fellow in top-boots and riding-breeches.

“Why did you go off an’ leave Cap’n Treherne?” he asked severely.

The ex-jockey seemed somewhat under the influence of liquor, not now
absolutely drunk, although hiccoughing occasionally--in that dolorous
stage known as “sobering up.”

“If you expected me to stay here all that time, with no feed at all, you
were clear out of the running,” he protested. “I lit out before the blow
came, an’ after the storm was over I knowed you fellers couldn’t row
back here against the current with the water goin’ that gait. So I took
my time as you took yourn.”

The next speaker was of a curiously soaked aspect, as if overlaid with
the ooze, and slime, and decay of the riverside, like some rotting log
or a lurking snag, worthless in itself, without a use on either land or
water, neither afloat nor ashore, its only mission of submerged malice
to drive its tooth into the hull of some stanch steamer and drag it
down, with its living freight, and its wealth of cargo, and its
destroyed machinery, to a grave among the lifeless roots. His voice
seemed water-logged, too, and came up in a sort of gurgle, so defective
was his articulation.

“You-all run off an’ lef’ me las’ night, but Jessy Jane put me wise this
mornin’, an’ I was away before the wind had riz. I stopped by here to
see if you was about, but I declar’ if I had knowed that you had lef’
Cap’n Treherne in thar tied up like a chicken, I’m durned if I wouldn’t
hey set him loose, to pay you back for the trick you played me. But I
met up with Colty,” nodding at the jockey, “an’ we come back just now
together.”

Binnhart’s brow darkened balefully as he listened to this ineffective
threat while old Berridge chuckled.

Another man with a sailor-like roll in his walk was leaning on an axe.
Suddenly he cast his eyes up at the pilaster. Paula on the shadowy side
of the window sat quite still, not daring to move, hoping for
invisibility, although her heart beat so loud that she thought they
might hear its pulsations even at the distance.

“Durned if I got much sense out of that fool builder’s talk to you,
Jasper,” he said. “I think you paid out too much line,--never held him
to the p’int. You let him talk sixteen ter the dozen ’bout things we
warn’t consarned with, pediments, an’ plinths, an’ architraves, an’
entablatures, an’, shucks, I dunno now what half of ’em mean.”

“I had to do that to keep him from suspicionin’ what we were after,”
Binnhart justified his policy. “All I wanted to know was just what a
‘pilaster’ might be.”

“An’ this half column ag’in the wall is the ‘pilaster’ the Crazy talked
about?” And once more the shanty-boater cast up a speculative eye. “But
I ain’t sensed yit what he meant by his mention of a capital.”

“Why, Jackson, capital of Miss’ippi, ye fool you, fines’ city in the
Union,” exclaimed a younger replica of the old water-rat, coming up from
the shrubbery with a lot of tools in a smith’s shoeing-box, from which,
as he still held it, Binnhart began with a careful hand to select the
implements that were needed for the work.

“How do you know the plunder is in the ‘pilaster’?” asked Connover, the
dejected phase of the “after effects” clouding his optimism.

“Why, he talked about it in his sleep. He may be crazy when he is awake,
but he talks as straight as a string in his sleep. Fust chance, as I
gathered, that he has ever had to be sane enough to make a try for the
swag,” explained Berridge. “But I dunno why you pick out this partic’lar
pilaster,” and he, too, gazed up at its lofty height.

“By the way he looked at it when we was fetchin’ him in from the skiff,
that’s why, you shrimp,” exclaimed the shanty-boater.

“I don’t call _that_ a straight tip,” said Connover, discontentedly.

“Why, man, this Treherne was with Archie Ducie when they hid the
plunder. This is the column he says in his sleep they put it in, an’, by
God, I’ll bring the whole thing to the ground but what I s’arches it,
from top to bottom. I’ll bust it wide open.”

With the words the shanty-boater heaved up the axe and smote the column
so strong a blow that Paula felt the vibrations through the wall to the
window where she sat.

“What are ye goin’ to do with Crazy?” demanded old Berridge with a
malicious leer.

“Better bring Cap’n Crazy out right now an’ make him tell, willy nilly,
exactly where the stuff _is_ hid,” urged the disaffected Connover.

“Oh, he’ll tell, fas’ enough,” rejoined old Berridge. He began to dwell
gleefully on the coercive effects of burning the ends of the fingers and
the soles of the feet with lighted matches.

“Lime is better,” declared his son, entering heartily into the scheme.
“Put lime in his eyes, ef he refuses to talk, an’ he won’t hold out.
Lime is the ticket. Plenty lime here handy in the plaster.”

“Slaked, you fool, you!” commented Binnhart. Then, “I ain’t expectin’ to
git the secret out’n Cap’n Treherne now, I b’lieve he’d die fust!”

“He would,” said the shanty-boater, with conviction. “I know the cut of
the jib.”

“We had to keep him here handy, though, or he might tell it to somebody
else. But, Jorrocks, can’t you see with half an eye that there has
never been an entrance made in that pillar. Them soldier fellows were
not practiced in the use of tools. The most they could have done was to
rip off the washboard of the room, flush with the pilaster. They must
have sot the box on the top of the stone base inside the column. This
base is solid.”

He was measuring with a foot-rule the distance from the pilaster to the
nearest window. It opened down to the floor of the portico and was
without either sash or glass. As the group of clumsy, lurching figures
disappeared within, Paula, with a sudden wild illumination and a
breathless gasp of excitement, sprang to her feet. The capital, said
they? The pilaster! She fell upon the significance of these words. The
treasure, long sought, was here, under her very hand. She caught up a
heavy iron rod that she had noticed among the rubbish of broken plaster
and fallen laths on the floor. It had been a portion of a chandelier,
and it might serve both as lever and wedge. The rats had gnawed the
washboard in the corner, she trembled for the integrity of the storied
knapsack, but the gaping cavity gave entrance to the rod. As she began
to prize against the board with all her might she remembered with a
sinking heart that they builded well in the old days, but it was
creaking--it was giving way. It had been thrust from the wall ere this.
She, too, took heed of the fact that it was the clumsy work of soldier
boys which had replaced the solid walnut, no mechanic’s trained hands,
and the thought gave her hope. She thrust her dainty foot within the
aperture, and kept it open with the heel of her Oxford tie, as more and
more the washboard yielded to the pressure of the iron rod, which, like
a lever, she worked to and fro with both arms.

In the silence of the benighted place through the floor she heard now
and then a dull thud, but as yet no sound of riving wood. The washboard
there--or was it wainscot?--had never been removed, and the task of the
marauders was more difficult than hers. She was devoured by a turbulent
accession of haste. They would make their water-haul presently, and then
would repair hither to essay the capital of the pilaster. Was that a
step on the stair?

In a wild frenzy of exertion she put forth an effort of which she would
not have believed herself capable. The board gave way so abruptly that
she almost fell upon the floor. The next moment she was on the verge of
fainting. Before her was naught but the brickwork of the wall. Yet,
stay, here the bricks had been removed for a little space and relaid
without mortar. She gouged them out again after the fashion of the
marauder, and behind them saw into the interior of the pilaster. The
cavity was flush with the floor. She thrust in her hand, nothing! Still
further with like result. She flung herself down upon the floor and ran
her arm in to its extreme length. She touched a fluffy, disintegrated
mass, sere leaves it might have been, feathers or fur. Her dainty
fingers tingled with repulsion as they closed upon it. She steadily
pulled it forward, and, oh, joy, she felt a weight, a heavy weight. She
thrust in both arms and drew toward her slowly, carefully--a footfall on
the stair, was it? Still slowly, carefully, the tattered remnants of an
old knapsack, and a box, around which it had been wrapped. A metal box
it was, of the style formerly used, inclosed in leather as jewel-cases,
locked, bound with steel bands, studded with brass rivets, intact and
weighty.

Paula sprang up with a bound. For one moment she paused with the burden
in her arms, doubting whether she should conceal the chest anew or dare
the stairs. The next, as silent as a moonbeam, as fleet as the gust that
tossed her skirts, she sped around the twists of the spiral turns and
reached the second story. She looked over the balustrade, no light, save
the moonbeams falling through the great doorless portal, no sign of
life; no sound. But hark, the gnawing of a patient chisel, and presently
the fibrous rasping of riving wood came from the empty apartments on the
left. Still at work were the marauders, and still she was safe. She
continued her descent, silently and successfully gaining the entresol,
but as she turned to essay the flight to the lower hall she lost the
self-control so long maintained, so strained. Still at full speed she
came, silent no longer, screaming like a banshee. Her voice filled the
weird old house with shrill horror, resounding, echoing, waking every
creature that slept to a frenzied panic, and bringing into the hall all
the men of the steamboat’s party, half dressed, as behooves a
“shake-down.” The women, less presentable, held their door fast and
clamored out alternate inquiry and terror.

“I have found it! I have found it!” she managed to articulate,
wild-eyed, laughing and screaming together, and rushing with the box to
the astonished Ducie, she placed it in his hands. “And, oh, the house is
full of robbers!”

The disheveled group stood as if petrified for a moment, the moonbeams
falling through the open doorway, giving the only illumination. But the
light, although pale and silvery, was distinct; it revealed the intent
half-dressed figures, the starting eyes, the alert attitudes, and
elicited a steely glimmer from more than one tense grasp, for this is
preëminently the land of the pistol-pocket. The fact was of great
deterrent effect in this instance, for if the vistas of shadow and sheen
within the empty suites of apartments gave upon this picture of the
coterie, wrought in gray and purple tones and pearly gleams, it was of
so sinister a suggestion as to rouse prudential motives. There were ten
stalwart men of the steamboat’s passengers here, and the marauders
numbered but five.

A sudden scream from the ladies’ dormitory broke the momentary pause. A
man, nay, three or four men, had rushed past the windows on the portico.

“I hear them now!” cried Hildegarde Dean; “they are crashing through the
shrubbery.”

“Nonsense,” Floyd-Rosney brusquely exclaimed. “There are no robbers
here.” Then to his wife, “Is this hysteria, Paula, or are you spoiling
for a sensation?”

She did not answer. She did not heed. She still stood in the attitude of
putting the heavy box into Adrian Ducie’s grasp and while he
mechanically held it she looked at him, her eyes wild and dilated,
shining full of moonlight, still exclaiming half in sobs, half in
screams, “I have found it! I have found it!--the Duciehurst treasure.”

Floyd-Rosney cast upon the casket one glance of undisciplined curiosity.
Then his proclivity for the first place, the title rôle, asserted
itself. He did not understand his wife. He did not believe that she had
found aught of value, or, indeed, that there was aught of value to find.
Beyond and above his revolt of credulity was his amazement at his wife’s
insurgent spirit, so signally, so unprecedentedly manifested on this
trip. He connected it with the presence of Adrian Ducie, which in point
of facial association was the presence of his twin brother, her former
lover. The mere surmise filled him with absolute rage. His tyrannous
impulse burned at a white heat. A wiser man, not to say a better man,
would have realized the transient character of the incident, her natural
instinct to assert herself, to be solicitous of the judgment of the
Ducies on her position, to seem no subservient parasite of the rich man,
but to hold herself high. Thus she had resented too late the absolute
dominion her husband had taken over her, and she felt none the lack of
the manner of consideration, even though fictitious, which was her due
as his wife.

He took her arm that was as tense as steel in every muscle. “You are
overwrought, Paula,--and this disturbance is highly unseemly.” Then,
lowering his voice and with his frequent trick of speaking from between
his set teeth, “you should be with the other ladies, instead of the only
one among this gang of men.”

“Why not?” she flared out at full voice, “we don’t live in Turkey.”

“By your leave I will ask Mrs. Floyd-Rosney to witness the opening of
this box, which she has discovered,” said Ducie gravely, “and you also
in view of your position in regard to the title of the property.”

“Certainly I will,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, defiantly forestalling her
husband’s reply, “by his leave, or without it. I am no bond-slave.” Her
eyes were flashing, her bosom heaved, she was on the brink of tears.

“Beg pardon,” stammered Ducie. “It was a mere phrase.”

“Foolish fellow! He thought you had promised to love, honor and _obey_!”
said Floyd-Rosney, ill-advised and out of countenance.

“Foolish fellow!” she echoed. “He thought you had promised to love,
honor and cherish.”

But she was dominated by the excitement of the discovery. She ran to the
door of the ladies’ dormitory. “No danger! No danger!” she cried, as it
was cautiously set ajar on her summons. “The robbers are gone. We have
more than twice as many men here, and the Duciehurst treasure is found.
Come out, Hildegarde, and give me that lamp. They are going to open the
box. Oh, oh, oh!” She was shrilling aloud in mingled delight and
agitation as she came running down the hall in the midst of the silvery
moonlight and the dusky shadows, the wind tossing her white skirt, the
lamp in her hand glowing yellow, and flaring redly out of the chimney in
her speed, to its imminent danger of fracture, sending a long coil of
smoke floating after it and a suffocating odor of petroleum.

Paula placed the lamp on the table in the dining-room, where the box
already stood. Around it the men were grouped on the boards which had
hitherto served as benches. Several were shivering in shirt-sleeves,
the suspenders of their trousers swinging in festoons on either side, or
hanging sash-wise to their heels. Others, more provident, with the
conviction that the sensation was not so ephemeral as to preclude some
attention to comfort, left the scene long enough to secure their coats,
and came back with distorted necks and craned chins, buttoning on
collars. Hildegarde obviously had no vague intention of matching her
conduct to the standards of Turkey, for she joined the party
precipitately, her blue eyes shining, her cheeks flushed with recent
sleep, her hair still piled high on her head and her light blue crêpe
dress hastily donned. The elderly ladies, mindful of the jeopardy of
neuralgia in the draughty spaces without, had betaken themselves again
to bed. The Duciehurst treasure had no possibilities for their
betterment and they did not even affect the general altruistic interest.

There was ample time for the assembling of the party for no key among
them would fit or turn the rusted lock. The box on the table held its
secret as securely within arm’s length as when hidden for more than
forty years in the capital of the pilaster. Hildegarde suggested a
button-hook, which, intended seriously, was passed as an ill-timed jest.
Mr. Floyd-Rosney had a strong clasp-knife, with a file, but the lock
resisted and the lid was of such a shape that the implement could not be
brought to bear.

“The robbers were working with a lot of tools,” said Paula, suddenly.
“Perhaps they left their tools.”

The gentleman who was testing his craft with the lock looked up at her
with a significant, doubtful inquiry. “The robbers?” he drawled,
slightingly.

They possibly number thousands in this wicked world. Their deeds have
filled many court records, and their reluctant carcasses many a prison.
But the man does not live who credits their proximity on the faith of a
woman’s statement. “The robbers?” he drew in his lower lip humorously.
“Where do you think they were working?”

“Come, I can show you exactly.” Paula sprang up with alacrity.

He rose without hesitation, but he took his revolver from the table and
thrust it into his pistol-pocket. While he did not believe her, perhaps
he thought that stranger things have happened. They did not carry the
lamp. The moon’s radiance poured through all the shattered windows of
the great ruin with a splendor that seemed a mockery of the imposing
proportions, the despoiled decorations, the lavish designs of the
fresco, the poor travesties of chandeliers, making shift here and there
to return a crystal reflection where once light had glowed refulgent.

Floyd-Rosney had sat silent for a moment, as if dumfounded. Then he
slowly and uncertainly threw his legs athwart the bench and rose as if
to follow. But the two had returned before he could leave the room, the
“doubting Thomas” of an explorer with his hands full of tools and an
expression of blank amazement on his face.

“Somebody _has_ been working at that wall,” he announced, as if he could
scarcely constrain his own acceptance of the fact. “The wainscot has
been freshly ripped out, but there is nothing at all in the hollow of
the pilaster. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney examined it herself.”

“You were looking for another find, eh?--like a cat watching a hole
where she has just caught a mouse,” said Floyd-Rosney to his wife with
his misfit jocularity.

No one sought to reply. Every eye was on Adrian Ducie, who had found a
cold chisel among the tools and was working now at the hinges and now at
the lock, wherever there seemed best promise of entrance. The hinges
were forced apart finally, the lock was broken, and once more the box
was opened here where it was packed forty-odd years ago. A covering of
chamois lay over the top, and as Adrian Ducie put it aside with
trembling fingers the lamplight gloated down on a responsive glitter of
gold and silver, with a glint here and there, as of a precious stone.
There was obviously insufficient room in the box for the vanished table
service of the family silver, but several odd pieces of such usage were
crowded in, of special antiquity of aspect, probably heirlooms, and thus
saved at all hazards. The method of packing had utilized the space
within to the fraction of an inch. Adrian drew out a massive gold goblet
filled with a medley of smaller articles, a rare cameo bracelet, an
emerald ring, an old seal quaintly mounted, a child’s sleeve-bracelets,
a simple ornament set with turquoise, and a diamond necklace, fit for a
princess. None of these were in cases, even the protection of a wrapping
would have required more space than could be spared.

“You know that face?” Ducie demanded, holding a miniature out to
Floyd-Rosney, catching the lamplight upon it.

“Can’t say I do,” Floyd-Rosney responded, cavalierly and with apparent
indifference.

“Perhaps Colonel Kenwynton will recognize it,” said Ducie, with
composure.

“Eh, what? Why certainly--a likeness of your grandfather, George Blewitt
Ducie,--an excellent likeness! And this,” reaching for a small oval
portrait set with pearls, “is his wife--what a beauty she was! Here,
too,” handling a gold frame of more antiquated aspect, “is your great
grandfather--yes, yes!--in his prime. I never saw him except as an old
man, but he held his own--he held his own!”

The miniatures thus identified and his right to the contents of the box
established, Ducie continued to lift out the jammed and wedged treasures
as fast as they could be disengaged from their artful arrangement. An
old silver porringer contained incongruities of value, a silver mug of
christening suggestions, a lady’s watch and chain with a bunch of
jeweled jangling “charms,” a filagree pouncet-box, a gold thimble, a
string of fine and perfect pearls with a ruby clasp, a gold snuff-box
with an enameled lid. The up-to-date man thrust his monocle in his eye
to better observe, with a sort of æsthetic rapture, the shepherds
dancing in the dainty workmanship. There was an array of spoons of many
sorts and uses, soup ladles, salt ladles, cream ladles, and several gold
and silver platters. These had kept in place one of the old-fashioned
silver coasters, which held contents of value that the least æsthetic
could appreciate. It was nearly half full of gold coin, worth many times
its face value in the days when thus hidden away from the guerrilla and
the bushwhacker. Every man’s eyes glittered at the sight except only
those of Ducie. He was intent upon the search for the papers, the
release of the mortgage that he had believed all his life was stowed
away here.

To every man the knowledge that he has been befooled, whether by foible
or fate, is of vital importance. In many ways he has been influenced to
his hurt by the obsession. His actions have been rooted in his mistaken
persuasions. His mental processes issue from false premises. He is not
the man he would otherwise have been.

All his life Adrian Ducie had raged against the injustice that had
involved in absolute oblivion the release of the mortgage, that had
wrested from his father both the full satisfaction of the debt and the
pledged estate as well. Otherwise he would have inherited wealth,
opportunity, the means of advancement, luxury, pleasure. He was asking
himself now had he made less of himself, the actual good the gods had
doled out, because he had bemoaned fictitious values in case there had
never been a release and the lands had gone the facile ways of
foreclosure, the imminent, obvious, almost invariable sequence of
mortgage. Ah, at last a paper!--carefully folded, indorsed. His
grandfather’s will, regularly executed, but worthless now, by reason of
the lapse of time. An administrator had distributed the estate as that
of an intestate, and defended the action of foreclosure. The incident
was closed, and the sere and yellow paper had not more possibility of
revivification than the sere and yellow leaves that now and again came
with sibilant edge against the windowpane, or winged their way on an
errant gust within the room through a rift in the shattered glass.

As Ducie flung the paper aside he chanced to dislodge one of the gold
pieces, a sovereign, the money being all of English coinage. It rolled
swiftly along the table, slipped off its beveled edge, and was heard
spinning somewhere in the shadows of the great dusky room. More than one
of the gentlemen rose to recover it, and Paula, with unbecoming
officiousness, her husband thought, joined in the search. It was she who
secured it, and as she restored the coin she laid a glittering trifle
before the box, as if it, too, had fallen from the table. “Here is one
of the Ducie jewels,” she said.

“Why, it is a key, how cute,” cried Hildegarde.

Ducie had paused, the papers motionless in his hand. He was looking at
Paula, sternly, rebukingly. Perhaps his expression disconcerted her in
her moment of triumph, for her voice was a little shrill, her smile both
feigned and false, her manner nervous and abashed, yet determined.

“Oh, it is a thing of mystic powers,” she declared. “It commands the
doors of promotion and pleasure, it can open the heart and lock it, too;
it is the keynote of happiness.” She laughed without relish at the pun
while the up-to-date man thrust his monocle in his eye and reached out
for the bauble. There was a moment of silence as it was subjected to his
searching scrutiny.

“A thing of legend, is it?” he commented. “Well, I must say that it does
not justify its reputation--it has a most flimsy and modern aspect,
nothing whatever in conformity with those exquisite examples of old
bijouterie.” He waved his hand toward the Ducie jewels blazing in
rainbow hues, now laid together in a heap on the table. “Its value, why
I should say it could not be much, though this is a good white diamond,
and the rubies are fair, but quite small; it is not worth more than two
hundred dollars or two hundred and fifty at the utmost.”

Adrian Ducie had finally remitted his steady and upbraiding gaze, but
Paula was made aware that he still resented unalterably and deeply her
conduct to his brother. It was Randal’s option to forgive, if he
would,--Adrian Ducie held himself aloof; he would not interfere. His
hands were occupied in opening a paper as the up-to-date man tendered
him the jeweled key, and this gave him the opportunity to decline to
receive it without exciting curiosity. His words were significant only
to Paula when he said, “Excuse me, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, perhaps, will
kindly take charge of this article.”

With unabated composure, with extreme deliberation, he opened this, the
last paper in the box, which held an enclosure. The yellow glow of the
lamp at one end of the table was a rayonnant focus of light amidst the
gloom of the great, lofty apartment, and showed the variant expressions
of the faces grouped about it. Floyd-Rosney, seated with one side toward
the table, resting an elbow on its surface, had an air of tolerant
ennui, his handsome face, fair, florid, and impressive, was imposed with
its wonted fine effect against the dun, dull shadows which the lamplight
could not dissipate, so definite that they seemed an opaque haze, a
dense veil of smoke. The countenances of the others, less conscious,
less adjusted to observation, wore different degrees of intelligent
interest. Hildegarde’s disheveled beauty shone like a star from the
dark background of the big bow-window where she sat--through the
shattered glass came now and then a glittering shimmer when the magnolia
leaves, dripping and lustrous in the moonlight, tossed in some vagrant
gust. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s aspect was of a conventional contrast, as
point-device as if she sat at table at some ordinary function. The sheen
of her golden hair, the gleam of her white dress, her carmine cheeks,
her elated and brilliant eyes, her attentive observation of the events
as they deployed, were all noted in turn by her domestic tyrant, with a
view to future reference. “I’ll have it out with Paula when we get away
from here, if ever,” he said grimly within his own consciousness.

The next moment he had incentive for other thoughts. Ducie scanned the
caption of the paper in his hand, turned the page to observe its
signature, then lifted his head. His voice, although clear, trembled.

“Here is the release of the mortgage, duly executed and with the
original deed of trust inclosed.”

There was a moment of tense silence. Then ensued a hearty clapping of
hands about the table.

Floyd-Rosney satirically inclined his head to this outburst of
involuntary congratulation. “Thank you, very much,” he said with an
ironical smile.

The group seemed somewhat disconcerted, and several attempted
justification.

“Always gratifying that the lost should be found,” said one. “Nothing
personal to you, however.”

“I am sure you, too, would wish the right to prevail,” said a priggish
gentleman, who looked as if he might be a Sunday-school superintendent.

“Well, I hate to see an old family kept out of its own on a legal
quibble,” said one fat gentleman uncompromisingly; he knew better how to
order a dinner acceptably than his discourse.

“It will be difficult to prove an ouster after forty years of adverse
possession,” said Floyd-Rosney, “even if the release or quit-claim, or
whatever the paper is, shall prove to be entirely regular.”

“You surely will not plead the prescription in bar of the right,” the
broker seemed to remonstrate.

“Of the remedy, you mean,” Floyd-Rosney corrected with his suave,
unsmiling smile. “I should, like any other man of affairs, act under the
advice of counsel.”

“Why, yes, of course,” assented the broker, accessible to this kind of
commercial logic. However, the situation was so contrary to the general
run of business that it seemed iniquitous somehow that the discovery of
the papers restoring the title of this great estate to its rightful
owners, after forty years of deprivation of its values, should be at
last nullified and set at naught by a decree of a court on the
application of the doctrine of the statute of limitations. There was a
pervasive apprehension of baffled justice even before the paper was
examined.

Ducie was disposed to incur no further Floyd-Rosney’s supercilious
speculations as to the contents of the paper. Instead, he spread it
before Colonel Kenwynton.

“Read it, Colonel,” he said, moving the lamp to the old gentleman’s
elbow.

It seemed that Colonel Kenwynton in his excitement could never get his
pince-nez adjusted, and when this was fairly accomplished that he would
be balked at last by an inopportune frog in his throat. But finally the
reading was under way, and each of the listeners lent ear not only with
the effort to discriminate and assimilate the intendment of the
instrument, but to appraise its effect on a possible court of equity.
For it particularized in very elaborate and comprehensive phrase the
reasons for the manner, time, and place of its execution. It recited the
facts that the promissory notes secured by the mortgage were in bank
deposit in the city of Nashville, State of Tennessee, that the said city
and State were in the occupation of the Federal army, that since the
said notes could not be forwarded within the Confederate lines, by
reason of the lack of mail facilities or other means of communication,
the said promissory notes were herein particularly described, released
and surrendered, the several sums for which they were made having been
paid in full by George Blewitt Ducie in gold, the receipt of the full
amount being hereby acknowledged, together with a quit-claim to the
property on which they had been secured. For the same reason of the
existence of a state of war, and the suspension of all courts of justice
in the county in which the mortgage was recorded, and the absence of
their officials, this release could not at that time be duly registered
nor the original paper marked satisfied. Therefore the party of the
first part hereunto appeared before a local notary-public and
acknowledged the execution of this paper for the purposes therein
contained, the reasons for its non-registration, and the lack of the
return of the promissory notes.

Colonel Kenwynton took careful heed of the notarial seal affixed, and
the names of five witnesses who subscribed for added security.

“Every man of them dead these forty-odd years and both the principals,”
he commented, lugubriously.

“Great period for mortality, the late unpleasantness,” jeered
Floyd-Rosney. With a debonair manner he was lighting a cigar, and he
held it up with an inquiring smile at the tousled Hildegarde on the sill
of the bow-window, her dilated blue eyes absorbed and expressive as she
listened. She gave him a hasty and transient glance of permission to
smoke in her presence and once more lapsed into deep gravity and
brooding attention.

The incident was an apt example of the power of Fate. With the best
mutual faith, with one mind and intention on the part of both principals
in the procedure, with every precaution that the circumstances would
admit, with the return of the original deed of trust, with a
multiplicity of witnesses to the execution of the quit-claim and
release, which would seem to preclude the possibility of misadventure,
the whole was nullified by the perverse sequence of events. The papers
were lost, and not one human being participating in the transaction
remained to tell the tale. The solemn farce of the processes of the
courts was enacted, as if the debt was still unsatisfied, and the
rightful owner was ejected from the lands of his ancestors.

“But for the casual recollection of your father, Julian Ducie, who was a
child at the time his mother quitted Duciehurst, and this box of
valuables was hidden here to await her return, there would not have been
so much as a tradition of the satisfaction of this mortgage,” Colonel
Kenwynton remarked in a sort of dismay.

“I have often heard my father describe the events of that night, the
examination of my grandfather’s desk by my Uncle Archie and Captain
Treherne, and their discussion of the relative importance of the papers
and valuables they selected and packed in this box; one of the papers
they declared was in effect the title to the whole property. He was a
little fellow at the time, and watched and listened with all a child’s
curiosity. But he did not know where they hid the box at last, although
he was aware of their purpose of concealment, and, indeed, he was not
certain that it was not carried off with the party finally to Arkansas,
his uncle, Archie, and Captain Hugh Treherne rowing the skiff in which
he and his mother crossed to the other side.”

“Ah-h, _Captain Hugh Treherne_”--Colonel Kenwynton echoed the name with
a bated voice and a strange emphasis. He had a fleeting vision of that
wild night on the sand-bar, all a confused effect of mighty motion, the
rush of the wind, the rout of the stormy clouds, the race of the surging
river, and overhead a swift skulking moon, a fugitive, furtive thing,
behind the shattered cumulose densities of the sky. He started to speak,
then desisted. It was strange to be conjured so earnestly to right this
wrong, to find this treasure, to visit this spot, and within forty-eight
hours in the jugglery of chance to be transported hither and the
discovery accomplished through no agency of his, no revelation of the
secret he had promised to keep.

“Yes, Captain Hugh Treherne,” assented Ducie. “He was known to have been
severely wounded toward the end of the war, and as he could never
afterward be located it is supposed he died of his injuries. Every
effort to find him was made to secure his testimony in the action for
the foreclosure of the mortgage.”

“But he was not dead,” said Paula, unexpectedly. “‘Captain Treherne,’
that’s the very name.”

“Why, Paula,” exclaimed Floyd-Rosney, astounded. “What do you mean? You
know absolutely nothing of the matter.”

“The robbers spoke of him,” she said, confusedly. “I overheard them.”
Then with more assurance: “They derived their information from him as to
the hiding-place. That’s how I found it out. Not that he disclosed it
intentionally. They spoke as if--as if he were not altogether sane. They
said that he could not remember. But in his sleep he talked ‘as straight
as a string.’”

“Oh, stuff and nonsense! You heard no such thing!” exclaimed
Floyd-Rosney. “You are as crazy as he can possibly be.”

The ridicule stimulated self-justification, even while it abashed her,
for every eye was fixed upon her. Colonel Kenwynton looked at once
eager, anxious, yet wincing, as one who shrinks from a knife.

“They did not understand the meaning of his sleeping words,” Paula
persisted. “He spoke of pillar and base and pilaster and capital----”

“Oh, oh,” exclaimed Floyd-Rosney, in derision.

Paula had the concentrated look of seeking to shake off this
embarrassment of her mental progress and to keep straight upon a
definite trend. “They spoke, indeed, as if they had Captain Treherne in
reach somewhere,--I wish I had remembered to mention this earlier,--as
if he were to be forced to further disclosures if they should fail to
find the treasure.”

“Oh, this is too preposterous,” cried Floyd-Rosney, rising. He threw
away the stump of his cigar into the old and broken fireplace. “I must
beg of you, Paula, for my credit if not your own, to desist from making
a spectacle of yourself.”

Colonel Kenwynton lifted a wrinkled and trembling hand in protest. “I
ask your pardon; Mrs. Floyd-Rosney will do no one discredit. I must hear
what she has to say of this. The gentleman is my dear, dear friend. I
had lost sight of him for years.” Then turning toward Paula: “Did I
understand you to say, madam, that they spoke as if he were in their
power?”

The old man was gasping and his agitation frightened Paula. Her face had
grown ghastly pale. Her eyes were wide and startled. “I wonder that I
did not think of it earlier,” she said, contritely. “But it did not
impress me as real, as the actual fact, I was so excited and alarmed. I
remember now that they said they had gagged him,--I don’t know where he
was, but they spoke as if he were near and they could produce him and
force him to point out the spot. They had ‘brought him down,’--that was
their expression,--for this purpose. Did they mean,--do you suppose,--he
could have been near, in this house?”

Colonel Kenwynton rose, the picture of despair.

“Oh, my God!” he exclaimed, holding up his hands and wringing them hard.
“That man saved my life at the risk of his own. And if, by blindness
and folly, I have failed him at his utmost need, may God do as much to
me and more when I call from out of the deep. The lamp! The lamp! Bring
the lamp! Search the house--the grounds!”

Captain Treherne had endured many hours of duress, of the torture of
bonds and constraint, of dread, of cold, of hunger, but the terror of
ultimate doom filled his heart when he heard the approach of roving
footsteps, the sound of voices unnaturally loud and resonant, echoing
through the bare rooms, when he saw a flickering glimmer of yellow light
wavering on the ceiling but lost presently in gloom as the party
wandered hither and thither through the vacant place. The miscreants who
had overpowered and bound him were returning, he thought. In the
impaired mental condition from which he had so long suffered, one of his
great sorrows lay in his incapacity at times to differentiate the fact
from hallucination. He could not be sure that the whole scene of ghastly
violence through which he had passed was not one of the pitiable
illusions of his mania, and he lay here bound and gagged and famished as
treatment designed to mend his mental health. He sought to recall the
aspect of the men who, as perhaps he fancied had brought him here,--his
flesh crept with repulsion at the thought of them. One had the rolling
walk of a sailor. Another was garbed like a jockey,--some brain-cell had
perchance retained this image from the old half-forgotten associations
of the race course. So much of the jargon of pathology he had picked up
in his melancholy immurement in the sanatorium. But these impressions
were so definite, so lifelike that if they should prove illusory and
this experience another seizure of his malady it was worse than those
that had beset him hitherto, when he had often had a lurking doubt of
their reality, even while he had acted as if they were demonstrable
fact. It was a terrible thing to harbor such strange discordant fancies.
He remembered that during the day, he could not be sure of the time, he
awoke from a sleep or swoon to find himself here (or, perchance, he had
dreamed), bound and gagged, and the great rough figure of a gigantic
negro standing in the doorway of the room gazing upon him with an
expression of stupid dismay, and then of horrified fright. The negro
disappeared suddenly,--many of the images present to the diseased brain
of Captain Treherne were subject to these abrupt withdrawals. Afterward
he saw, or, as he stipulated within himself, he thought he saw, through
an open door, this swart apparition again, chasing and beating with a
boat-hook a large white owl. Now and then, throughout the afternoon, he
imagined he heard sounds, faint, distant; footsteps, voices and again
silence. Deep into the weary night the hapless prisoner watched the
moonlight trace the outline of the leafless vines outside upon the
ceiling and wall. This was the only impression of which he was certain.
He could not be sure what this seeming approach might mean; whether a
fact, direful and dangerous, to which the helpless must needs submit; or
whether a fantasy of merely seeming menace.

Suddenly a voice--resonant, yet with a falling cadence; hearty and
whole-souled, yet quavering with trouble. “Hugh Treherne! Hugh
Treherne!” it was calling, and a thousand echoes in the bare and
ruinous building duplicated the sound.

A rush of confidence sent the blood surging through the veins of Captain
Treherne, almost congested with the pressure of the cords. He gave a
start that might have dislocated every bone in his body, yet the bonds
held fast. He could not stir. He could not reply. He had recognized the
voice of Colonel Kenwynton, his old commander,--he felt that he could
take his oath to the reality of this fact. There were other
voices,--many foot-falls; it was a searching party with lights, with
arms,--he heard the familiar metallic click as one of the men cocked a
revolver. But what was this? They were taking the wrong turn in the maze
of empty apartments; the steps of their progress had begun to recede,
sounding farther and farther away; their voices died in the distance;
the light had faded from the wall.

He thought afterward that in the intensity of his emotions he must have
fainted. There was a long gap in his consciousness. Then he saw a
well-remembered face bending over him, but oh, so changed, so venerable.
He knew every tone of the voice calling his name, amidst sobs, “Oh,
Hugh, my dear, dear boy!” He felt the eager hands of younger, strong men
deftly loosening the bonds, and the sound of their voices in muttered
imprecations, not loud but deep, filled him with a surging sense of
sweet sympathy. It was swearing, doubtless, but the sentiment that
prompted it was pious. It is not of record that the good Samaritan swore
at the thieves, but it is submitted that, in the fervor of altruism, he
might have done so with great propriety. Treherne felt the taste of
brandy within his aching jaws. These profane wights were lifting him
with a tenderness that might have befitted the tendance of a sick
infant. He could not restrain the tears that were coursing down his
cheeks, although he had no grief,--he was glad,--glad! for now and again
Colonel Kenwynton caught his hand in his cordial grasp and pressed it to
his breast.




CHAPTER X


Day was breaking. The luster of the moon had failed. Gaunt and grisly
the old ruin began to increase in visibility. The full, gray, prosaic
light emphasized details, whether of workmanship or wreck, which the
silver beams had been inadequate to show. It was difficult to say if the
fine points of ornamentation had the more melancholy suggestion in the
wanton spoliation where they were within easy reach, or in those heights
and sequestered nooks where distance had saved them from the hand of the
vandal. The lapse of time itself had wrought but scant deterioration.
The tints of the fresco of ceilings and borders were of pristine
delicacy and freshness in those rooms where the destroyed hearths had
prevented fires and precluded smoke, save that here and there a cobweb
had veiled a corner, or a space had gathered mildew from exposure to a
shattered window, or a trickling leak had delineated the trace of the
falling drops down the decorated wall.

All exemplified the taste of an earlier period, and where paper had been
used in great pictorial designs it fared more hardly than had the
painting. The vicissitudes of the voyage of Telemachus, portrayed in the
hall, were supplemented by unwritten disaster. His bark tossed upon seas
riven in gaps and hanging in tatters. The pleasant land where he and
his instructive companion met the Island goddess and her train of
nymphs, laden with flowers and fruit for their delectation, was
cataclysmal with torrential rains and broken abysses. The filial
adventurer was flung from the storied cliffs into a Nirvana of blank
plaster.

It had required some muscular force and some mental energy to destroy
the marble mantel-pieces. Here and there bits of the carving still lay
about the floor, the design thus grossly disfigured, showing with
abashed effect above the gaping cavity of the torn-out hearth.

The up-to-date man with his glass in his eye, one hand always ready to
readjust it, the fingers lightly slipped into the pocket of his
trousers, his attitude a trifle canted forward after the manner of the
critical connoisseur, was going about, exploring, discriminating and
bemoaning. Now and again he was joined by one of his fellow-passengers,
who stood with his hat on the back of his head, and gazed with blank,
unresponsive eyes, and listened in uncomprehending silence. The interior
decoration of the old house represented several periods. The salient
fact of wreck and ruin was apparent, however, to the most limited
discernment, and the knots of refugees from the _Cherokee Rose_
discussed its woeful condition as they wandered restlessly about. They
expressed a doubt whether repair would not cost more than the house was
worth, argued on the legal effect of the belated discovery of the
quit-claim papers, and contemned the spirit of the men in possession in
the last forty years to allow so fine a thing in itself to fall into
such a desperate condition, while the lands appurtenant were worked to
the extremest capacity of money-making. There was a disposition to
deduce from the fact a suspicion on the part of the holders that their
title was vulnerable, and a sordid desire to make the most possible out
of the property while it was still in possession. It was always
Floyd-Rosney’s fate to be in a measure justified of circumstances, yet
to seem at fault. The question of mesne profits in case of the recovery
of property did not suggest itself for some time, and when it did arise
it was submitted that mesne profits were mighty hard to get and often
could not be made from the interloper.

“They can make the money out of Floyd-Rosney, though,--he has got money
to burn. For one, I don’t care if he does lose. It would be outrageous
for him to defend the suit for recovery and plead the statute of
limitations,” said the fat man, who did not mince his opinions.

“But he may win out,” said the broker. “Possession is nine-tenths of the
law,--and for forty years under a decree of the Chancery court.”

“Forty thousand years would do him no good in the face of that release,”
protested another. “It was wrongful possession from the beginning.
Floyd-Rosney is a trespasser here and nothing more.”

“But can you call a man a ‘trespasser’ who holds under color of title?
His is an adverse possession,” argued the broker.

And the wrangle began anew with revived spirit. It was well, perhaps,
that the refugees had a subject of discussion so charged with immediate
and general interest, since they had no resource but to roam the old
place until breakfast should be announced. After this meal they would
resume their fitful wanderings till a boat should be sighted. They had
turned out of their comfortable quarters when Captain Treherne had been
brought to the restricted inhabited space of the old building,
relinquishing the shake-down and the fire to him and his special
ministrants.

Now and again a speculation concerning breakfast agitated the group of
men, and one venturesome spirit made a journey down the quaking old rear
verandah to the kitchen, stepping over gaps where the flooring had been
torn up for fuel and walking the rotting sills when the hiatus was too
wide to be leaped. His errand to expedite breakfast was, apparently,
without result.

“Yes, sah,” said the waiter-cook, into whose gloomy soul morning had yet
cast no illuminating ray. “I gwine ter dish up when de breakfast is
cooked,--nuver knowed you wanted it raw. Cap’n nuver treated me
right,--no range, no cook-fixin’s,--nuthin’--an’ breakfast expected to
be smokin’ on de table ’fore de fog is off de river. Naw, Sah,--ef you
kin cook it any quicker, why cook it yourself, Sah. I ain’t got no
dijections to your cookin’ it.”

Upon his return from his tour of discovery, being earnestly interrogated
as to the prospects by his fellow-refugees, the gentleman gave this sage
advice: “If you don’t want to have to knock an impudent nigger down you
will stay here and eat breakfast when he has a mind to serve it.”

The fog clung to the face of the river. It stood blank and white at the
great portal of the house, and sifted through the shattered windows, and
silence dominated it. One felt infinitely removed from all the affairs
of life. The world was not even a neighbor. Time seemed annihilated. It
could not be that yesterday, at this hour, they stood on the stanch deck
of the _Cherokee Rose_, or that only the week before they trod the
streets of Memphis, or Vicksburg, or Helena. That white pall seemed to
shut off all the possibilities of life, and there was a sort of shock,
as of a revulsion of nature, when there came through this flocculent
density the sound of a horse’s hoofs on the graveled drive, and then, on
the portico, the ponderous measured tread of a man of weight and bulk.

He was in the hall before the group was aware of his entrance. Hale and
strong, although of advanced years, well dressed in a sober fashion,
grave, circumspect, reticent of manner, he had turned toward the second
door before a word of his intent could be asked. A gesture had answered
his inquiry for Captain Hugh Treherne. He entered, without knocking, and
the door closed on silence. The group in the hall stared at one another,
aware, in some subtle way, of a crisis which the simple facts did not
explain.

Suddenly a wild cry of defiance rose from within,--a quivering, aged
voice full of rancor and of rage.

“I will resist to the death,--begone, begone, sir, before I do you a
mischief.”

It was the voice of Colonel Kenwynton, furious, fierce, beyond
placation, beyond argument, beyond self-control.

A murmur of remonstrance rose for a moment. Then the group outside
followed the example of the stranger and, without ceremony, burst in at
the door.

The stranger stood in quiet composure with his back to the fire while
the old Colonel, his bushy white eyebrows bent above eyes that flashed
all the lightnings of his youth, waved his hand toward the door,
exclaiming with an intonation of contempt that must have scathed the
most indurated sensibilities, “Begone, sir,--out of the door, if you
like, or I will throw you out of the window.” He stamped his foot as if
to intimidate a cur. “Begone! Rid us of your intolerable presence.”

Captain Treherne, who had lain all the early morning hours on the rugs
and blankets on the floor, seeking to recuperate from his terrible
experience of constraint, had arisen with an alertness scarcely to be
expected. He laid a restraining hand on the old man’s arm. Colonel
Kenwynton placed his own trembling hand over it.

“Captain Treherne is among his friends who will revenge it dearly if you
attempt the least injury. Insane! He is most obviously, most absolutely
sane, and on that fact I will stake my soul’s salvation. Any attempt at
his incarceration,--you despicable trickster, I have no doubt you turn
your penny out of this burial alive,--before God, sir, I’ll make you rue
it. I will publish you throughout the length and the breadth of the
land, and I will beat you with this stick within an inch of your life.”

He brandished his heavy cane, and, despite his age and his depleted
strength, he was a most formidable figure as he advanced. Once more
Treherne caught at his arm. So tense were its muscles that he could not
pull it down, but he hung upon it with all his weight.

The stranger eyed Colonel Kenwynton with the utmost calm, a placidity
devoid alike of fear and of the perception of offense. He spoke in a
quiet, level tone, with an undercurrent of gentle urgency.

“Sane or insane, Hugh Treherne never intentionally deceived a friend,”
he remarked composedly. “Tell him the facts, Captain Treherne,--he
deserves to know them.”

He met at the moment Treherne’s eye. A long look passed between them,--a
terrible look, fraught with some deep mystery, of ghastly intendment,
overwhelming, significant, common to both, which neither would ever
reveal. There was in it something so nerve-thrilling, so daunting, that
Colonel Kenwynton’s bold, bluff spirit revolted.

“None of your hypnotism here!” he cried, again brandishing his stick. “I
will not stand by and see you seek to subjugate this man’s mind with
your subtle arts. So much as cast your evil eye upon him again and I
will make you swallow a pistol-ball and call it piety. (Where is that
damned revolver of mine?)” He clapped his hand vainly to his
pistol-pocket.

“Hugh,” the stranger’s tone was even more gently coercive than before.
“Tell him, Hugh. He is not a man to delude.”

“Colonel,” cried Treherne, still hanging on the old man’s arm, “this
gentleman means me nothing but kindness. He would not,--he could
not,--why, don’t you know he was a surgeon in the Stones’ River
campaign? For old sake’s sake he would do me no harm.”

Colonel Kenwynton himself looked far from the normal, his white hair
blowsing about his face, fiery red, his blue eyes blazing with a bluer
flame, his muscles knotted and standing out as he clutched his stick
and brandished it.

“I don’t care if he was commander-in-chief, he shall not mesmerize you,
if that is what he calls his damnable tricks. Hugh,--forty years! Oh, my
dear boy, that I should have lost sight of you for forty years, what
with my debts, and my worries, and my shifts to keep a whole roof over
my head, and a whole coat on my back. Forty years,--I thought you were
dead. I had been told you were dead,--that is your Cousin Thomas’s
work,--I’ll haul _him_ over the coals. And you as sane as I am all the
time! Begone, sir!” and once more he waved his stick at the stranger. “I
will see to it that every process known to the law is exhausted on you!
The vials of wrath shall be emptied! Oh, it is too late for apology, for
repentance, for sniveling!”

For still the stranger’s manner was mild and gravely conciliatory. “Oh,
Hugh,” he said reproachfully, “why don’t you tell him?”

Once more their glances met.

“Colonel,” said Treherne falteringly, “I am not sane. I admit it.”

“I know better,” Colonel Kenwynton vociferated, facing around upon him.
“You are as sane as I am, as any man. This is hypnotism. I saw how that
fellow looked at you. I marked him well. Why, sanity is in your every
intonation.”

Treherne took heart of grace. “But, Colonel, this is a lucid interval.
Sometimes I am not myself,--in fact, for many years I was _absent_.” He
used the euphemism with a downcast air, as if he could not brook a
plainer phrase. Then, visibly bracing himself, “It was the effects of
the old wound,--the sabre cut on the skull. It injured the brain. I
have persuasions--obsessions.” His words faltered. His eyes dilated.
There was a world of unexpressed meaning in his tone, as he lowered his
voice, scarcely moving his lips. “Sometimes I am possessed by the
Devil.”

“We will not speak of that to-day,” said the stranger suavely.

“It is impossible!” exclaimed the Colonel dogmatically. “Look at the
facts,--you come to me out on that sand-bar to induce me to aid you in
the search for the Ducie treasure and title papers, their recovery is
due to your effort and, in all probability, the restoration of this
great estate to its rightful owners.”

“Ah,” exclaimed the stranger with intense interest. He look elated,
inordinately elated.

“And because you had forgotten in the lapse of time--forty years,--the
exact spot where you and Archie Ducie hid the box away, and the wind was
blowing, and the rain imminent, I put it off--like a fool--and these
fiends of river pirates, or gipsies, or what not, got the information
from you when you were asleep,--talking in your sleep.”

“Subconscious cerebration,” murmured the alienist.

“And because they did not exactly understand the terms of architecture
you used they brought you down here to force you to point out the spot,
and bound and gagged you,--oh,--Hugh, my heart bleeds for you!”

“But can’t you think for him a little, Colonel--can’t you advise him?
Forty years of seclusion does not fit a man to cope with the world
without some preparation for the encounter,--he was in danger of his
life, in falling among these thieves. He incurred a jeopardy which I
know he esteems even greater. He is on the verge of a most extraordinary
cure,--in all my experience I have never known its parallel. Any
disastrous chance might yet prevent its completion. Now that he has
accomplished all that he so desired to do, can’t you advise him to go
back with me to treatment, regimen, safety.”

“Not unless I know what ails him,” said the Colonel stoutly.

Once more the eyes of Treherne and the stranger met, with that dark and
dreadful secret between them. Colonel Kenwynton appraised the glance and
its subtle significance, and fell to trembling violently.

“It is something that we cannot mention this day,--this day is clear,”
said the alienist firmly.

“I cannot go back,--I cannot go back,--and meet it there,” cried
Treherne wildly. “It is waiting for me,--where I have known it so long.
I shall pass the vestibule, perhaps,--but there in the hall”--he paused,
shivering.

“You see that, as yet, you cannot protect yourself in the world, even
now, when you are as sane as the Colonel. But, for the accident that
brought these people here, you might have been murdered by those
miscreants for the secret hiding-place that had slipped your memory. You
might have been heedlessly left on the floor bound and gagged to die. It
was the merest chance that I happened to think you might be at
Duciehurst.”

Treherne was trembling in every fiber. Cold drops of moisture had
started on his brow. His eyes were dilated and quickly glancing, as he
contemplated this obsession to which neither dared to refer openly, lest
the slight bonds that held the mania within bounds, the exhaustion of
the spasm of insanity, called the lucid interval, be overstrained and
snap at once.

“I believe I would not meet it here, in the world,--away from where it
has been so long,” he said doggedly.

“What would you do if you should? You might hurt yourself,--and Hugh,
and this you would deplore more, you might injure some one else,” said
the doctor.

Treherne suddenly turned, throwing his arms about Colonel Kenwynton in a
paroxysm of energy.

“Colonel, lead the way. Go with me, for I would follow you to hell if
you led the charge. God knows I have done that often enough. Lead the
charge, Colonel!”

“Yes, come with us, Colonel,” said the alienist cordially,--it could but
seem a sinister sort of hospitality. “We should be delighted to
entertain you for a few days, or, indeed, as long as you will stay. It
is not a public institution, but we have a beautiful place,--haven’t we,
Hugh?--something very extra in the way of conservatories. Hugh has begun
to take much interest in our orchids. It is a good distance, but Mr.
Ducie drove me down here from Caxton with his fast horse in less time
than I could have imagined.”

“Mr. Ducie?” said Adrian Ducie, with a start. “Where is he? Has he
gone?”

The doctor stared as if he himself had taken leave of his senses. “You
remember,” he said confusedly, blending the reminder with an air of
explanation to the group generally, “that when we had that game of
billiards at your hotel in Caxton last evening I asked you a question or
two about the Duciehurst estate; I didn’t like to say much, but your
replies gave me the clew as to where Captain Treherne had gone after his
escape from the Glenrose sanatorium. He had inquired about Duciehurst as
soon as he began to recover his memory, and seemed to recur to the
subject and to brood upon it. The idea stayed with me all night, for I
was very anxious, and about daybreak I took the liberty of rousing you
by telephone to ask if the roads here from Caxton were practicable for a
motor-car. You remember, don’t you?”

He paused, looking in some surprise at Adrian.

“You told me,” he continued, “that the roads would be impracticable
after these rains, and as I disclosed the emergency, in my great
perturbation for Captain Treherne’s safety, you offered to drive me
down, as you had an exceptionally speedy horse which you kept for your
easy access from Caxton to the several plantations that you lease in
this vicinity.”

Captain Treherne, the possession of his faculties as complete at the
moment as if he had never known the aberrations of a mania, listened
with an averse interest and a lowering brow to these details of the
preparations made for his capture and reincarceration. The alienist did
not seem to observe his manner but went on, apparently at haphazard. “I
regretted to put you to so great an inconvenience at this hour, but you
relieved my mind by saying that you knew that Captain Treherne had been
a valued friend of your uncle’s, and that you not only felt it
incumbent on you to be of any service possible to him, but esteemed it a
privilege.”

“But where,--where is Randal Ducie now?” asked Adrian, turning hastily
to the door.

The doctor’s face was a picture of uncomprehending perplexity. “Why,
isn’t this you?” he asked.

“Oh, no. It is my brother,” exclaimed Adrian, amidst a burst of laughter
that relieved the tension of the situation. Several followed from the
room to witness, at a distance not very discreet, the meeting of the
facsimile brothers.

Randal Ducie had hitched the horse and the four-seated phaeton which
they had had the precaution to provide to the old rack, and, awaiting
the return of the physician, had strolled aimlessly up the pavement
through the rolling fog to the steps of the portico. There he was
suddenly confronted by the image of himself. He looked startled for a
moment; then, with a rising flush and a brightening eye, ascended the
flight with an eager step.

“Hello,” said one brother cavalierly.

“Hello yourself,” responded the other.

“Let me show you how the fellows kiss the cheek in old France,” said
Adrian.

“Let me show you how the fellows punch the head in old Mississippi,”
said Randal.

There was a momentary scuffle, and then, arm in arm and both near to
tears, they strolled together down the long portico of their ancestral
home with much to say to each other, after their separation, and much to
hear.

The group of men at the door, looking laughingly after them, might
readily have discriminated the moment of the disclosure of the discovery
of the Duciehurst treasure with the release of the mortgage foreclosed
so long ago. Randal paused abruptly, facing round upon his brother and
apparently listening in stunned amaze. They were too distant for words
to be distinguished, but his voice came on the air, loud and excited, in
eager questioning. He was, evidently, about to turn within the house,
possibly to have the evidence of his eyes to the intendment and validity
of this paper, when Adrian, by a gesture, checked him. The fog was
beginning to lift, and the figures of the two men were imposed on a
vista of green, where the sunlight in a delicate clarity after the
rains, in a refined glister of matutinal gold, was beginning to send
long glinting beams among the glossy foliage of the magnolias, and to
light with reverent tapering shafts the solemn aisles of the weeping
willows where the tombstones reared unchanged their mortuary memorials,
unmindful of sheen or shadow, of fair weather or foul, even of time, as
the years came and went, a monition only of death and a prophecy of
eternity.

“There is one thing I must tell you, Ran,” Adrian said, laying both
hands on his brother’s shoulders.

Randal threw up his head, excited, expectant, apprehensive.

“_She_ is here,--one of the passengers of the _Cherokee Rose_.”

“She?” exclaimed Randal in blank mystification. “Who?”

Adrian was embarrassed. It seemed as if even an old love could hardly be
of so sluggish a divination,--as if Randal must have probed his
meaning. He reflected that it might be some keenly sensitive
consciousness that could not yet bear the open recognition of the facts.
Between them the subject of the sudden jilting had never been mentioned,
save in Randal’s one letter apprising his brother that the engagement
was off, by reason of the lady’s change of mind, which came, indeed,
later than the item in the Paris journals, chronicling news of interest
to Americans sojourning abroad, and giving details of a new betrothal in
a circle of great wealth and position. He himself had never known such
frenzy of emotion, of rage, and humiliation, and compassion, and pride.
The event had racked him with vicarious woe. It had dealt him a wound
that would not heal, but now and again burst into new and undreamed of
phases of anguish. Even yet he shrank from taking her name on his
lips--and to Randal himself, of all people. Yet Randal must be told,--he
must not meet her unaware. The pause of indecision continued so long as
they stood thus, Adrian’s hands on his brother’s shoulders, that
Randal’s eyes dilated with a surprise obviously unaffected. He lifted
his own hands to his brother’s elbows, and thus facing each other he
said: “What of it? I am in a hurry,--I want to see that release. Who is
this ‘she’?”

“Why, Randal,--it is Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,--Paula Majoribanks, that was,
and her husband and child.”

There was still a pause, blank of significance.

“Well,” said Randal, meditatively, at length, “they won’t like that
quit-claim paper one little bit of a bit.” There was a laugh in his
brilliant hazel eyes, and it touched the finely cut corners of his
lips. His fresh face was as joyous, as candid, as full of the tender
affection of this reunion as if no word of a troubled past had been
spoken to jar it.

Oh, that she should come between them on this day when they were so
close to each other, Adrian reflected, when absence had made each so
dear, when there was so much to say and to do, when separation impended,
and time was so short. He felt that he could hardly endure to have their
mutual pleasure marred, that he could not brook to see Randal abashed in
her presence, and conscious, disconcerted and at a disadvantage before
her husband. Above all, and before all, he winced for Randal’s pain in
the reopening of these poignant old wounds to bleed and ache anew.

His arms tightened and slipped up from his brother’s shoulders and
around his neck. “Oh, Randal, will it hurt you much?”

Randal looked grave. “A lawsuit is always a troublesome, long-drawn-out
bother; I shrink from the suspense and the expense. But I am mighty glad
to have the chance to be hurt that way.”

“Oh, I meant will it give you pain to meet Paula again as Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney?”

“_What?_” Randal’s hearty young voice rang out with a note of amazement.
“Not a bit. What do you take me for?”

“I was afraid--you would feel,” faltered Adrian.

“Is that what’s the matter with you? You look awfully muffish.”

“Well,--as you loved her once,--I thought----”

“That was a case of mistaken identity,” said Randal. “Can’t you realize
that it is just because she _could_ prefer another man; that she could
think a thought of change; that her plighted faith could be broken; that
her love,--or what we called love,--could take unto itself wings and fly
away; that she was only an illusion, a delusion, a snare. I never loved
the woman she is.”

“She is very beautiful,” hesitated Adrian.

“When I thought her mind and heart matched her face she seemed beautiful
to me, too,” said Randal.

“You will think so still.”

“Kid, you know nothing about love. A man truly in love may have been
attracted by beauty, but it is not that which holds him. It is a unity
of soul; he finds a complement of mind; he has a sense of sympathy and,
through thick and thin, a partisan, constant faith in a reciprocal
heart. He gets used to the prettiest face and it makes little impression
on him,--just as he wouldn’t notice, after a time, a fine costume. She
is nothing that I imagined. She is not now, and she never was the ideal
I loved. I don’t regret her. Don’t grieve for me, little boy. And now
will you be so kind as to take those paws off my neck,--you are half
strangling me with your fraternal anxiety. Behold, I will smite you
under the fifth rib.”

There was once more a brief, boyish scuffle. Then the two turned and
came walking decorously back to the group on the portico. The exterior
aspect of the old ruin had an added majesty by daylight, despite the
more obvious injuries of wreckage. Its fine proportions, the blended
elegance and stateliness of its design, the richness even in the
restraint of its ornamentation, all showed with telling effect, apart
from the wild work within of the marauders. These details the rude
usage it had received could not affect. It might have stood as an
imposing architectural example of a princely residence of the date of
its erection, and it was impossible to gaze upon it with a sense of
possessing it, and feel no glow of gratulation.

“Why, the item of glass alone would be a corker,” a practical man was
saying, walking backward down the stone pavement and surveying the great
black gaps of the shattered windows.

The two brothers cast a meaning glance at each other, the discussion, of
which this was obviously a fragment, evidently looked to a
rehabilitation of the mansion under a change of owners, for, certainly,
it would seem that Floyd-Rosney had neither the interest nor the
associations to induce him to set up his staff of rest here. It was only
a straw, but it showed how the wind of opinion set, and the brothers
were in the frame of mind to discern propitious omens. The sun was
bright on the over-grown spaces of the lawn. The Cherokee rose hedge
that divided it from the family graveyard, and continued much further,
had spread with its myriad unpruned sprangles beyond the space designed
for a boundary, growing many feet wide. Beneath the great arch it
described stretched a long tunnel-like arbor, throughout its whole
extent, dark, mystic, in the shadow of its evergreen leaves. By reason
of some natural attraction which quaint nooks have for children,
Marjorie and little Ned had discovered this strange passageway, and were
running in and out of the darksome space, with their shrilly sweet cries
of pretended fright and real excitement, each time venturing a little
farther than before. The mists had lifted from the river, which spread
a broad, rippling surface of burnished copper in the sunshine under an
azure sky. There was no sign of approaching craft, no curl of smoke
above the woods beyond the point to herald deliverance by a steamboat.
One of the old ladies had established herself on her suitcase on the
topmost step of the flight from the portico, and it would, indeed, have
been a swift steamer that could have escaped her vigilance and passed
without being signaled.

Adrian paused good-naturedly. “You need give yourself no uneasiness,
madam,--it will require half an hour’s time at least for a steamboat to
pass this place from the moment that she is sighted,” he said, in polite
commiseration.

But the old lady sat tight. “They tell me there is a crazy man in
there,” she declared lugubriously. She would leave by the first
opportunity.

“He is going presently in a phaeton across the country,” Adrian
explained. “There is no possible danger from him, however,--he has only
occasional attacks. He is perfectly at himself to-day. But he will not
be going on the boat.” This remark was unlucky, as it increased her
anxiety to embark.

Randal had lifted his hat after a moment’s pause, and passed on without
his brother. He hesitated, looked back, then entered the vestibule, and
came suddenly face to face with Paula.

It had been five years since they had met and then it was as lovers. She
had not dreamed of seeing him here. She thought him ten miles away at
Caxton. She had never been more brilliantly, more delicately beautiful.
Her burnished redundant hair that was wont to resemble gold, and to seem
so elaborately tended, had now a luminous fibrous effect at the verges
of the smooth pompadour roll that had been hastily tossed up from her
forehead. She even appeared taller, more slender than usual, since she
wore a clinging gown of princess effect, in one piece, and, obviously,
of matutinal usage, in more conventional surroundings. The flowing
sleeve showed her bare arm from the elbow, exquisitely white and soft.
The V-shaped neck gave to view her delicate snowy throat rising from a
mist of lace. The strange large flower-pattern cast over a ground of
thick sheeny white was an orchid with a gilded verge, and in the mauve
and pearl tones she, too, looked like some rare and radiant bloom. Her
eyes were sweet and expectant--her step swift. She was on her way to
call back the child. She paused suddenly, dumfounded, disconcerted,
confronted with the past.

She recognized Randal in one instant, despite his resemblance to his
brother, and for her life she could not command her countenance. It was
alternately red and white in the same moment. She felt that his
confusion would heighten hers, yet she could not forgive his composure,
his well-bred, graceful, gracious manner, his clear, vibrant, assured
voice when he exclaimed, holding out his hand: “Mrs. Floyd-Rosney--this
is an unexpected pleasure. I have this moment heard that you are here.
Is that your husband?” For Floyd-Rosney had just issued from the
dining-room and was advancing down the hall toward her with an
unmistakable, connubial frown. “Will you kindly present me?”

It seemed for a moment as if Floyd-Rosney had never heard of the simple
ceremony of an introduction. Paula could not secure and hold his
attention. He passed Randal over with a casual, unnoting glance, and
began to take her to task in no measured terms.

“Why do you allow the child to chase back and forth in that dark tunnel
under the Cherokee rose hedge? He will be scratched to pieces by the
briars, the first thing you know. Why is he with that madcap tom-boy,
Marjorie Ashley? Where is his nurse, anyhow?”

“Why, she is completely knocked out by the fatigue and excitements,--she
is quite old, you remember,” said Paula meekly, seeking to stem his tide
of words. “I was just coming out to play nurse myself. But stop a
minute. I want to----”

“I won’t stop a minute,--I don’t care what you want,”--her aspect
suddenly seemed to strike his attention. “And why do you trick yourself
out in such duds at such a time?”

“Because this is so easy to put on,--and I had to dress the baby,” Paula
was near to tears. “But I want to----” she mended the phrase,--“This is
Mr. Ducie; he wishes to meet you.”

Floyd-Rosney turned his imperious gaze on Ducie with a most unperceiving
effect. “Why, of course, I know it is Mr. Ducie,--have you taken leave
of your senses, Paula? Mr. Ducie and I have seen enough of each other on
this trip to last us the rest of our natural existence. I can’t talk to
you now, Mr. Ducie,--if you have anything to say to me you can
communicate it to my lawyers; I will give you their address.”

“It is not business. It is an introduction,” explained Paula, in the
extremity of confusion, while Randal, placid and impassive, looked on
inscrutably. “Mr. Ducie wishes to make your acquaintance.”

“Well, he has got it,--if that is any boon,” Floyd-Rosney stared at her,
stupefied.

“But this is the brother,--Mr. Randal Ducie,--the one you have never
met.” In Paula’s haste to elude her husband’s impatient interruption she
could scarcely speak. Her mouth was full of words, but they tripped and
fell over each other in her agitation with slips and grotesque
mispronunciations.

“Hoh!” said Floyd-Rosney, permitting himself to be enlightened at last.
“Why this thing of twin brothers is no end of a farce.” He shook hands
with Randal with some show of conventionality. He, too, was mindful of
the past. But so impatient was his temperament with aught that did not
suit his play that he was disposed to cavil on the probabilities. “Are
you sure,”--then he paused.

“That I am myself,--reasonably sure,” said Randal, laughing. And now
that Adrian was coming in at the door Floyd-Rosney surveyed them both as
they stood together with a sort of disaffected but covert arrogance.

“Well--I can see no sort of difference,” he declared.

“Oh, the difference is very obvious,” said Paula, struggling to assert
her individuality.

“I should thank no man for taking the liberty of looking so much like
me,” said Floyd-Rosney, seeking to compass a casual remark. Indeed, but
for the pressure of old associations, the necessity of taking into
consideration the impression made upon the by-standers, all conversant,
doubtless, with the former relations of the parties, for several
passersby had paused, attracted by the opportunity for the comparison
of the twins side by side, Floyd-Rosney would have dismissed the Messrs.
Ducie and their duplicate countenance with a mere word.

“I didn’t expect we should keep up the resemblance,” remarked Adrian.
“While I was abroad I did not know what Randal was getting to look like,
and, therefore, I didn’t know which way to look myself. But now that we
are together we each have the advantage of a model.”

The broker seemed to gravely ponder this strange statement, the others
laughed, and Paula saw her opportunity to terminate the _contretemps_.
“I’ll call the baby in,” she said, and slipped deftly past and out into
the sunshine.

Paula’s instinct was to remove the cause of her husband’s irritation,
not because she valued Floyd-Rosney’s peace of mind or hoped to
reinstate his pose of dignity. But she could not adjust herself to her
habitual humility with him in Randal Ducie’s presence,--to listen to his
instruction, to accept his rebukes, to obey his commands, to laugh at
his vague and infrequent jests, to play the abased jackal to his lion.
She would efface herself; she would be null; she would do naught to
bring down wrath on her devoted head,--but beyond this her strength was
inadequate. So she hustled the two children into the house and up the
stairs, and out of the great front windows of the hall where she told
them to stand on the balcony above the heads of the group below and
watch for the appearance of a boat.

Now and then their sweet, reedy tones floated down as they conversed
with each other at the extreme limit of their vocal pitch, breaking,
occasionally, into peals of laughter. Their steps sounded like the
tread of half a dozen pairs of feet, so rapidly and erratically they ran
back and forth. At intervals they paused and stood at the iron
balustrade, surveying the scene from every point of view, up the river
and down the river, and again across, in the zealous discharge of their
delegated duty to watch for a boat. Below reigned that luxurious sense
of quiet which ensues on the cessation of a turbulent commotion. Groups
strolled to and fro on the portico, or found seats on the broad stone
sills of the windows that opened upon it. Paula, in her white and lilac
floriated house-dress, walked a little apart, pausing occasionally and
glancing up to caution the two children on the balcony to be wary how
they leaned their weight on the grillwork of the iron balustrade, as
some rivet might be rusted and weakened.

Hildegarde had found her rough gray suit impracticable because of the
drenching rains of yesterday and was freshly arrayed in a very chic
street costume of royal blue broadcloth, trimmed with bands of
chinchilla fur, with a muff and hat to match. She was standing near a
window, on the sill of which the Major, wrapped in a rug and his
overcoat, was ensconced, having been brought forth for a breath of air.
He had a whimsical look of discovery on his pallid and wrinkled face.
She was recalling to him a world which he had forgotten so long ago that
it had all the flavor of a new existence.

“I can’t give you any idea of the scenery _en route_, Major,”--she was
describing a trip to the far west,--“in fact I slept the whole way. You
see, my social duties were very onerous last spring. Our club had
determined to give twelve dinner dances during the season, and the
weather became hot unusually early, and so many people were leaving town
that as we were pledged to twelve we were compelled to give four of the
dinner dances during the last week and my head was in a whirl. There was
the Adelantado ball, too, and several very elaborate luncheons, and two
or three teas every afternoon, and what between the indigestion and the
two-step lumbago I was in a state of collapse on the journey west.”

“That was a novel campaign,” remarked the old soldier.

“It was a forced march,” declared Hildegarde. “I didn’t revive until I
heard dance music again in the Golden City. Let me prop your head up
against the window frame on my muff, Major. Oh, yes, it is very
pretty,--all soft gray and white.” She made a point of describing
everything in detail for his sightless vision. “You might get a nap in
this fresh air,--for it is a ‘pillow muff.’ Yes, indeed,” watching his
trembling fingers explore its soft densities, “it is very fine, but I
won’t mention the awful sum it cost my daddy lest such a conscienceless
pillow give you the nightmare.”

The air had all that bland luxurious quality so characteristic of the
southern autumn. A sense was rife in the sunlit spaces of a suspension
of effort. The growths of the year were complete; the inception of the
new was not yet in progress. No root stirred; there was never a drop of
sap distilled; not a twig felt the impetus of bourgeonning anew. Naught
was apposite to the season save some languorous dream, too delicate, too
elusive even for memory. It touched the lissome grace of the
willow-wands, bare and silvery and flickering in the imperceptible
zephyrs. It lay, swooning with sweetness, in the heart of a late rose
which found the changing world yet so kind that not a petal wilted in
fear of frost. It silvered the mists and held them shimmering and
spellbound here and there above the shining pearl-tinted water. It was
not summer, to be sure, but the apotheosis of the departing season.
Those far gates of the skies were opening to receive the winged past,
and, surely, some bright reflection of a supernal day had fallen most
graciously on all the land.

“For my part, since that deal is over and done with by this time, I
don’t care how long I have to wait for a boat,--it can neither mar nor
make so far as I am concerned,” said the broker, as he puffed his cigar
and walked with long, meditative strides up and down the stone pavement.

Floyd-Rosney did not concur in this view. He had expected all the early
hours that some of the neighboring negroes would come to the house,
attracted by the rumors of the commotions enacted there during the
night. Thus he could hire a messenger to take a note or a telephone
message to the nearest livery establishment and secure a conveyance for
himself and family to the railroad station some ten miles distant. He
feared that hours, nay a day or so, might elapse before one of the
regular packets plying the river might be expected to pass. Those
already in transit had, doubtless, “tied up” during the storm, and now
waited till the current should compass the clearance of the débris of
the hurricane floating down the river. The steamers advertised to leave
on their regular dates had not cast off, in all probability, but lay
supine in their allotted berths till the effects of the storm should be
past, and thus would not be due here for twelve or twenty-four hours,
according to the distance of their point of departure.

As, however, time went on and the old house stood all solitary in the
gay morning light as it had in the sad moon-tide, Floyd-Rosney reflected
that no one had gone forth from the place except the robbers and the
roustabouts who had rowed the party down from the _Cherokee Rose_,
returning thither immediately. It was, therefore, improbable that any
rumor was rife of the temporary occupation of the Duciehurst mansion.
Hence the absence of curiosity seekers. Moreover, even were the
circumstances known, every human creature in the vicinity with the
capacity to stand on its feet and open and close its fingers was in the
cotton fields this day, for the sun’s rays had already sufficiently
dried off the plant, and the industry of cotton-picking, even more than
time and tide, waits for nobody. For “cotton is money,--maybe more,
maybe less, but cotton is money _every time_,” according to the old
saying. These snowy level fields were rich with coin of the republic.
The growing staple was visible wealth, scarcely needing the transmuting
touch of trade. No! of all the wights whom he might least expect to see
it was any cotton-picker, old or young, of the region.

There being, evidently, no chance of a messenger, he had half a mind, as
his impatience of the detention increased, to go himself in search of
means of telephonic communication. But, apart from his spirit of leisure
and his habit of ease, his prejudices were dainty, and he looked upon
the miry richness of the Mississippi soil as if it were insurmountable.
To be sure, now and again he affected a day of sylvan sport, when, with
dog and gun, he cared as little as might be for mud, or rain, or sleet,
or snow; but then, he was caparisoned as a Nimrod, and burrs and briers,
stains and adhesive mire, were all the necessary accessories, and of no
consideration. In his metropolitan attire to step out knee deep in a
soil made up of river detritus, the depth and blackness of which are the
boast and glory of the cotton belt, was scarcely to be contemplated if
an alternative was possible.

Suddenly a cry smote the air with electrical effect. “A boat! A boat!”




CHAPTER XI


The auspicious announcement came first from the balcony. Then the cry “A
boat! A boat!” was taken up by the group on the portico, and echoed by
those within, pouring out in eager expectation through the vestibule or
the windows that opened to the floor. Floyd-Rosney experienced a moment
of self-gratulation on his prudential hesitation. He might have
otherwise been half a mile off, plunging through slough and switch-cane,
or the sharp serrated blades of the growths of saw-grass that edged the
lake, before he could gain the smooth ways of the turn-rows of the
cotton fields. All knew that considerable time must needs elapse from
the moment the boat was sighted, far up the river, before it could pass
this point. But shawls were strapped, gloves, wraps, hats, gathered
together, toilet articles tumbled hastily into Gladstone bags, trunks
and suitcases. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, with incomparable quickness, had
shifted into a gown of taupe cloth, with a coat to match, and with a
large hat, trimmed with ostrich plumes of the same shade, on her golden
hair, in lieu of the rain-drenched traveling attire of yesterday.

After a few moments of this pandemonium of preparation all eyes were
turned toward the river. Vacant it was, sunlit, a certain play of the
swift current betokening the added impetus of the recent heavy rainfall
and the influx of its swollen tributaries from the region to the
northward. Not even a coil of smoke showed above the forest where the
river curved.

“The packet must be rounding the point,” said Floyd-Rosney hopefully.

“Did you see the smoke above the trees, darling?” Paula called out to
the eager little man, now racing joyfully about the balcony, now pausing
to point at an object in the offing with his tiny forefinger.

“No, mamma; the boat; the boat!”

Marjorie, leaning on the iron rail, was gazing with eager eyes in vain
search.

“It seems to me that we ought to be able to see the boat from the
portico as soon as he can from the balcony,” said the broker.

An adequate reason was presently presented for the advantage of the
balcony as an outlook, lifted so high above the portico.

The boat lay very flat on the surface,--a shanty-boat!

“Why, Eddie,” cried Marjorie, with an inflection of poignant
disappointment,--she, too, had been looking for the towering chimneys,
the coil of black smoke, backward blown in the smooth progress of a
packet, the white guards, the natty little pilot-house, and only
casually she had chanced to descry the tiny flat object drifting with
the current that carried it far in toward the point. “That is a
shanty-boat,--we don’t travel on that kind of boat.”

The child’s pink and white face was crestfallen in a moment. Language
seemed to fail him as he gazed disconsolate. Then he sought
reassurance. “Him _is_ a boat,” he declared with his pointing
forefinger, so small in contrast with the vast spaces he sought to
index. “Him _is_ a boat, _ain’t him_, mamma?”

“Him is, indeed, a boat,” cried out Paula. “Never mind,” for little
Ned’s head was drooping, “we shall get a bigger boat presently. And it
was you that saw the first one!”

“Get him down from there, Paula,” said Floyd-Rosney, greatly
discomposed. “Set him at some other mischief, for God’s sake,--anything
but this.”

“He is coming now,” she answered, glimpsing the rueful little face
through the balusters of the stairs within, and, presently, the whole
diminutive figure came into view as he descended, always the right foot
first, and only one step at a time, so high were the intervals for his
fat baby legs.

“The poor child,” Paula suddenly exclaimed, the tears springing. “There
just seems to be no place for him.”

Floyd-Rosney obviously felt the rebuke. He winced for a moment. Then he
justified himself.

“To have twenty people on the _qui vive_ for a boat and then disappoint
them with that silly prank,--it is out of the question.”

“It was no prank,--he meant no harm,” said Paula in abashed
discomfiture. “I had told him to watch for a boat merely to keep him out
of the way. I didn’t think to explain that it was to be a steamboat for
us to board.”

“Then you ought to have more consideration for other people,”
Floyd-Rosney fumed.

His strong point was scarcely altruism, but he probably felt the
misadventure even more sensibly than any of the others, for he was
accustomed to lording it in a fine style and in a fine sphere. There was
no lack of indicia of displeasure among the thwarted travelers as they
strolled in baffled irritation up and down the stone floor of the
portico, and gazed along the glittering river at the slow approach of
the shanty-boat, now drifting as noiselessly and apparently as aimlessly
on the lustrous surface as a sere leaf on a gust of wind, and now, with
its great sweeps, working to keep the current from carrying it in and
grounding it on the bank. The old lady who had entertained fears of the
insane man was both peevishly outspoken and addicted to covert innuendo.

“I declare it has given me a turn,--I am subject to palpitation.” She
put her hand with a gingerly gesture to the decorous passamenterie on
her chest that outlined her embroidered lawn guimpe. “Shocks are very
bad for any cardiacal affection. Oh, of course,” a wan and wintry smile
at once of acceptance and protest as Paula expressed her vicarious
contrition, “the child didn’t intend any harm, but it only shows the
truth of the old saw that children should be seen and not heard.” She
could not be placated, and she sighed plaintively as she once more sat
down on her suitcase on the steps of the portico.

The men had less to say, but were of an aspect little less morose. Even
the broker, whose heart had warmed to the sunshine, felt it a hardship
that he should not have the boon at least of knowing how the deal had
gone. A grim laugh, here and there, betokened no merriment and was of
sarcastic intimations that touched the verge of rudeness. The business
interests of more than one were liable to suffer by prolonged absence,
and the ruefulness of disappointment showed in several countenances
erstwhile resolutely cheerful.

Paula, to escape further disaffected comment, had turned within,
perceiving, at a distance, Hildegarde coming down the hall, gazing
intently on a little forked stick, carried stiffly before her in both
hands, the eyes of a group hard by fixed smilingly upon her mysterious
progress. Randal Ducie suddenly entered from one of the rooms on the
left, where he and his brother had been examining the rescued papers.

Was it because Paula was so accustomed to the vicarious preëminence
which her husband’s wealth and prominence had conferred upon her that
she should experience a sentiment of revolt upon discerning the surprise
and accession of interest in Randal Ducie’s face as his eyes passed from
her and fixed themselves on Hildegarde--or was it because she still
arrogated instinctively her quondam hold upon his heart? Had she never
consciously loosed it?--or, while he had escaped its coercions, were
they still potential with her? Why should she wince and redden as, with
his hat in his hand, he advanced instantly to meet Miss Dean, who seemed
not to see him and to cavalierly ignore his presence.

“Why, won’t you speak to me?” he demanded, smiling.

Her casual glance seemed to pass him over. She was intent upon the
little forked stick. “What do you want me to say to you?” she asked, not
lifting her radiant blue eyes, half glimpsed beneath her lowered black
lashes.

“Good morning, at least,” replied Randal.

“How many greetings do you require? Upon my word, the man has forgotten
that he has seen me earlier to-day. I wished you a ‘good morning’ at
that very delectable breakfast table.”

“Oh, that must have been my brother,” said Randal, enlightened. “This is
I, myself, Randal Ducie.”

“You had better beware how you try your fakes on me. You don’t know what
magic power I have in this little divining-rod. I will tell you
presently to go and look into your strong box and find all your jewels
and gold turned to pebbles, and your title-deeds cinders and blank
paper.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Floyd-Rosney unpleasantly. “The blind goddess will
undertake that little transformation.” His imperious temper could
scarcely brook the perception that the coterie regarded the Ducies as
restored to the ownership of their ancient estates, even while he stood
in the hall of the house he held by the decree of the courts.

But Hildegarde did not hear or heed. Bent on her frivolous fun, she
brushed past Ducie, holding her divining-rod stiffly in her dainty
fingers. Her eyes were alight with laughter as she exclaimed in a voice
agitated with affected excitement, “Oh, it’s turning! It’s turning! I
shall find silver in one more moment. Oh, Major, Major,” she brought the
twig up against the old soldier’s breast. “Here it is--silver--in the
Major’s waistcoat pocket!”

She fell back against the great newel of the staircase, laughing
ecstatically, while all the idle group looked on with amused sympathy,
save only the two Floyd-Rosneys. The wife’s face was disconcerted,
almost wry, with the affected smile she sought to maintain, as she
watched Ducie’s glowing expression of admiration, and the husband’s
gravity was of baleful significance as he watched her.

“I have found silver! I have found silver! Now, Major, stand and
deliver.” As the trembling fingers of the veteran obediently explored
the pocket and produced several bits of money, they were hailed with
acclamations by the discoverer, till she suddenly espied a coin with a
hole in it. “Oh, Major,” she cried, in genuine enthusiasm. “Give me this
dime!”

“Oh, Hildegarde,”--Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s face assumed an expression of
reprehension, but Mrs. Dean only laughed at the childish freak.

“I will have it,--it won’t make or break the Major--I want it--to wear
as a bangle, to remind me of this lovely trip, and all that the Major
and I have plotted, and contrived, and conspired together. Eh, Major?
Oh,--thanks,--thanks,--muchly. You may have the rest, Major.” And she
tucked the remaining coins back into his pocket, smiling brightly the
while up into his sightless eyes.

Randal Ducie, with an air of sudden decision, turned about, seized his
brother by the arm and together they stood before the joyous young
beauty, who was obviously beginning to canvass mentally the next
possibility of amusement under these unpropitious circumstances.

“Now, Miss Dean, be pleased to cast your eyes over us. I am not going to
allow this fellow to deprive me of your valuable acquaintance.”

“Oh, pick me out, Miss Dean,” cried Adrian plaintively. “I am all mixed
up. I don’t know if I am myself or my brother.”

Miss Dean stared from one to the other, her brilliant eyes wide with
wonder.

“How perfectly amazing!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, how did
you distinguish and recognize one of them Thursday afternoon?”

Paula’s mind was so engrossed that, quick as she was always to discern
the fluctuations of favor in her husband’s disposition toward her, she
had not observed his peculiar notice of the fact of her retentive memory
and keen perception in distinguishing the veiled identity of the man who
had once been dear to her,--once?

“Oh, I saw the difference instantly,” she declared, with what her
husband considered an undignified glibness, and an interest especially
unbecoming in a matter so personal, which should be barred to her by the
circumstances. “This is Randal, and this is Mr. Adrian Ducie.”

Indeed, they all noticed, with varying sentiments, the familiar use of
the Christian name, but only Adrian spoke in his debonair fashion.

“Right-o! I begin to breathe once more. I was afraid I was going to have
to be Randal.”

Miss Dean was still studying the aspect of the two brothers. “I believe
you are correct, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” she said slowly. “For this one, Mr.
Adrian Ducie, is just from France, and he has on Paris-made shoes,--I
know the last. It is the _dernier cri_.”

There was a general laugh.

“Blessed Saint Crispin! I’ll make a votive offering!” cried Adrian.
“Now, Randal, you stay away from me,” with a vigorous push of his
brother at arm’s length, “so that this mix-up can’t happen again.”

“I’ll borrow his shoes when he is asleep and he will never know himself
any more!” said Randal vindictively.

There was a sudden cheerful acclaim from the portico without. A boat had
been sighted, slowly rounding the point, a packet of the line this time,
and all was bustle preparatory to embarkation. Even now the whistle,
husky, loud, widely blaring, filled the air, signaling the approaching
landing, the Captain having received information when passing the
_Cherokee Rose_ of the plight of the refugees. The next moment they were
sheepishly laughing, for the steamer, the _Nixie_, was sending forth a
second blast, a prolonged whining shriek, the signal known on the river
as a “begging whistle” by which boats solicit patronage in passengers or
freight, and which is usually sounded only when there is a doubt whether
a stoppage is desired.

Humoring the joke at their expense, the refugees made a vigorous reply,
waving handkerchiefs, raising hats on umbrellas and canes, hallooing
lustily, as they wended their way down the pavement, over the ruined
embankment of the old levee, along the grass-grown road and to the brink
of the bank, seeming high and precipitous at this stage of the river.
They were well in advance of the stoppage of the steamer, although, as
she came sweeping down the current, the constantly quickening beat of
her paddles on the water could be heard at a considerable distance in
that acceleration of speed always preliminary to landing. They watched
all her motions with an eagerness to be off as if some chance could yet
snatch the opportunity from their reach,--the approach, the backing, the
turning, the renewed approach, all responsive to the pilot-bells
jangling keenly on the air. Then ensued the gradual cessation of the
pant of the engines, the almost imperceptible gliding to actual
stoppage, as the _Nixie_ lay in the deep trough of the channel of the
river, the slow swinging of the staging from the pulleys suspended above
the lower deck. The end of the frame had no sooner been laid on the
verge of the high bank than the refugees were trooping eagerly down its
steep, cleated incline to the lower deck as if the steamer would touch
but a moment and then forge away again.

The _Nixie_ was sheering off, thus little delayed, to resume her
downward journey and the passengers had begun to gather on the promenade
deck when Miss Dean encountered Adrian Ducie. She stopped short at the
sight of him. “Why, where is the other one of you?” she exclaimed.

“He remained at Duciehurst. I have pressing business in Vicksburg,--my
stoppage, as you know, was involuntary. I shall return later.”

“Oh, I don’t like to see you apart.”

“If you would take a little something now,” he said alluringly, “you
might see double. Then the freak brothers would be all right again.”

“But the parting must be very painful after such a long separation,” she
speculated.

“We shed a couple of tears,” and Adrian wagged his head in melancholy
wise.

“Oh, you turn everything into ridicule,--even your fraternal affection,”
she said reproachfully.

“Would you have me fall to weeping in sad earnest? Besides, the parting
is only for a day or so. I shall take the train at Vicksburg and rejoin
him.”

“And where is Mrs. Floyd-Rosney?” she asked, looking about.

“She, too, remained at Duciehurst,” said one of the sour old ladies.

Adrian rose precipitately. The boat, headed downstream, was now in the
middle of the channel, and he gazed at the rippling, shimmering expanse
as if he had it in mind to attempt its transit. Here, at all events, was
something which he did not turn into ridicule. The great house beyond
its ruinous levee rose majestically into the noontide sunlight, all its
disasters and indignities effaced by the distance. The imposing,
pillared portico, the massive main building with its heavy cornice, the
broad wings, the stone-coped terraces, all were distinct and
differentiated, amidst the glossy magnolias that, sempervirent, aided
its aspect of reviviscence, with a fain autumnal haze softening its
lines, and the brilliant corrugated surface of the river in the
foreground.

He stood gazing vainly upon it, as it seemed to recede into the
distance, till, presently, the boat rounded a point and it vanished like
an unsubstantial mirage, like a tenuous mist of the morning.




CHAPTER XII


It was through no will of her own that Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had remained at
Duciehurst. She had been eager and instant in the preparations for
departure as soon as the approach of the boat was heralded. She had
aided the old nurse with convulsive haste by hustling the baby’s effects
into his suitcase, jamming his cap down on his head and shaking him into
his coat with little ceremony. She had seen from the broken windows of
the deserted music-room the Ducie brothers, the last of all the
procession of travelers, wending down toward the great white shell in
the river slowly approaching, throwing off the foam in wreaths on each
side. The two men walked shoulder to shoulder; now and again they paused
to confer; then going on; and there was something so affectionate in
their look and attitude, almost leaning on one another, so endearing in
the way in which one would lay his hand on the other’s arm that tears
sprang to her eyes, and, for the moment, she felt that nothing was worth
having in the world but the enduring affection of a simple heart, which
asks naught but love in return.

The momentary weakness was gone as it had come. She could feel only
elation--to be going, to get out of the house of Randal Ducie, which she
had entered with reluctance, even when she had doubted his claim, and
now that it had been proved valid in fact, if not in law, she could
scarcely wait to be quit of it.

In the hall, as she flustered forth--as Floyd-Rosney would have
described her agitated movements--she was astonished to come upon her
husband, placidly pacing up and down, his deliberate cigar between his
lips, his hands clasped behind him.

“Why, dear,”--she used the connubial address from force of habit, for
her voice was crisp and keenly pitched--“aren’t you ready?”

“Seems not,” he said, looking at her enigmatically.

“But we shall be left!” she exclaimed.

“Exactly.” He took his cigar from his mouth and emitted a puff of
fragrant nicotian.

He was wont to consult his own whims, but hitherto her supine
acquiescence had been actuated less by a realization of helplessness
than endorsement of his right of mastery, his superior and prevailing
will. She thought of her submissiveness at the moment.

How she had loved money! His money, of which she had enjoyed such share
as he saw fit to dole forth. All the stiffness, the induration of long
custom was at war with her Impulse as she cried:

“But I want to go! What do you mean by staying here?”

“But I want to stay,” he said imperiously, “and that is what I mean, and
all I mean.”

This was hardly comprehensive. He could scarcely control the rage that
from the first of this ill-omened detention had possessed him upon the
discovery of her lingering interest in the face of her old lover--a
simple matter and explicable; without latent significance it would have
been in the mind of any other man. Had it involved no sequence of
subsequent events even he, perhaps, would have brought himself to let it
pass unconsidered. He could not expect her to forget the fashion of
Randal Ducie’s features, and the presence of the twin brother conjured
up his face anew--his face which she had subtly distinguished from its
counterpart. That revolted his pride. His wife must have no thought, no
care, no memory, even, for aught save him! But her protest as to his
ownership of Duciehurst, her revolt against owing any phase of her
prosperity to the misfortunes of the Ducies, argued latent
sensitiveness, an unprobed wound that he had not suspected, thoughts
that he could not divine, memories that he did not share. Never, in all
his experience of her, had her individuality, or even a question of his
authority, been asserted save since that remembered face reappeared,
affecting their matrimonial accord--he, imperious to command, from his
plenitude of wealth and power, she eager to fawn and obey.

“You don’t consider me at all. You don’t consult my wishes.”

“I do better, my love. I consult our mutual interests.”

“You treat me like a child, an idiot! You let me know nothing of our
plans. Why should we not leave this battered old ruin with the rest of
the passengers? How and when are we to leave? If, for nothing but to
make a decent response to Aunt Dorothy’s questions, I ought to be told
something. I hardly know how to face her.”

“Well _I_ am not posing for that old darkey’s benefit,” he said,
satirically smiling.

There was a pause full of expectancy.

“This battered old ruin!” he exclaimed. “It will be the finest mansion
in Mississippi by the time I am through with it.”

He cast his imperative eyes in approval over the great spaces of its
open apartments. “And you, my dear, will be proud to be its chatelaine,
and dispense its hospitalities.”

“Never,” she cried impetuously--“an abasement of pride for me!”

He changed color for a moment, and then held his ground.

“The ante-bellum glories will be revived in a style that has not been
attempted in this country.”

“The ante-bellum glories--that were the Ducies’,” she said, with a
flushed face and a flashing eye.

He was of so imperious a personality that he seldom encountered rebuke
or contradiction. He was of such potential endowments that effort was
unknown and failure was annihilated in his undertakings. He scarcely
understood how he should deal with this unprecedented insolence, this
revolt on the part of the being who had seemed to him most devoted, most
adoring. The incense of worship had been dear to him,--and now the
worshiper had lapsed to revilings and sacrilege!

“Paula, you are a fool absolute,” he said roughly.

“Ah, no--not I--not I!” she cried significantly. She lifted her head
with a quick motion. The boat at the landing was getting up steam. She
heard the exhaust of the engines, then the sonorous beat of the paddles
on the water, and the swishing tumult of the waves as the wheels
revolved.

“They are going,” she cried, “and we are left!”

She turned to him in agitation. He stood, splendid in his arrogant
assurance, in his unrelenting dominance, his fine presence befitting the
great hall which he would so amply grace in its restored magnificence.
It was well for him that he was so handsome. Such a man, less graciously
endowed, would have been intolerable in his arrogance, his selfishness,
his brutality.

He showed no interest in the departure at the landing; he knew, by the
sound, that the steamboat was now well out in midstream, and he secretly
congratulated himself upon the termination of this ill-starred revival
of old associations with the Ducies. Never again should they cross his
wife’s path. Never again should he submit to the humiliation imposed
upon him by the revival of old memories which had incited in her this
strange restiveness to his supreme control. She had been wont to hug her
chains--not that he thus phrased the gentle constraints he had imposed,
rather wifely duty, conjugal love, admiration, trust.

The steamboat was gone at length, and his wife, standing in the hall and
looking through the wide doorless portal, had seen the last of the
passengers. Looking with a strange expression on her strained face which
he could not understand,--what series of mysteries had her demeanor set
him to interpret during these few hours, she who used to be so
pellucidly transparent! Looking with frowning brow and questioning
intent eyes, then with a suddenly clearing expression and a vindictive
glance like triumph, she turned away with an air of bridling dignity,
as if the steamer and its passengers had no concern for her, and, the
next moment, Randal Ducie ascended the steps and entered the hall.




CHAPTER XIII


Edward Floyd-Rosney in some sort habitually confused cause and effect.
In his normal entourage he mistook the swift potencies of his wealth,
waiting on his will, like a conjurer’s magic, for an individual
endowment of ability. He had great faith in his management. In every
group of business men with whom his affairs brought him in contact his
financial weight gave him a predominance and an influence which
flattered his vanity, and which he interpreted as personal tribute, and
yet he did not disassociate in his mind his identity from his income.
His wealth was an integral part of him, one of the many great values
attached to his personality--he felt that he was wise and witty, capable
and coercive. He addressed himself to the manipulation of a difficult
situation with a certainty of success that gave a momentum to the force
with which his money carried all before him. So rarely had he been
placed on a level with other men, in a position in which wealth and
influence were inoperative, that he had had scant opportunities to
appraise his own mental processes--his judgment, his initiative, his
powers of ratiocination.

He did not feel like a fool when Randal Ducie walked deliberately into
the hall of his fathers, staring in responsive surprise to see the
Floyd-Rosneys still lingering there. That admission was impossible to
Floyd-Rosney’s temperament. He felt as if contemplating some revulsion
of nature. He had seen this man among the crowd, boarding the steamer,
and lo, here he was again, on dry land and the boat now miles distant.

He stood stultified, all his plans for the avoidance of Ducie strangely
dislocated and set at naught by the unexpected falling out of events.

He was not calculated to bear tamely any crossing of his will, and the
blood began to throb heavily in his temples with the realization that
his wife had understood his clumsy maneuver, of which she was the
subject, and witnessed its ludicrous discomfiture. His pride would not
suffer him to glance toward her, where she sat perched up on the grand
staircase, in the attitude of a coquettish girl. He curtly addressed
Ducie:

“Thought you were gone!”

“No,” said Ducie, almost interrogatively, as to why this conclusion.

Floyd-Rosney responded to the intonation.

“I saw you going down to the landing.”

“To see my brother off.”

“Oh,--ah----”

What more obvious--what more natural? The one resumed his interrupted
journey, and the other was to take up his usual course of life. That is,
thought Floyd-Rosney, if this one is Randal Ducie. But, for some reason,
they might have reversed the program, and this is the other one.

Floyd-Rosney struggled almost visibly for his wonted dominance, but
Ducie had naught at stake on his favor, naught to give or to lose, and
his manner was singularly composed and inexpressive--too well bred to
even permit the fear of counter questions as to why they lingered here
and let the steamer leave without them. Perhaps, he felt such inquiries
intrusive, for, after a moment, he turned away, and Floyd-Rosney still
confronted him with eyes round and astonished and his face a flushed and
uneasy mask of discomfiture.

Momentarily at a loss how to dispose of himself, Ducie looked about the
apartment, devoid of chairs or any furniture, and, finally, resorted to
the staircase, taking up a position on one of the lower steps. Perhaps,
had he known that the Floyd-Rosneys were within he would have lingered
outside. But dignity forbade a retreat, although his disinclination for
their society was commensurate with Floyd-Rosney’s aversion to him and
his brother. For his life Floyd-Rosney, still staring, could not decide
which of the twain he had here, and Paula, with a perverse relish of his
quandary, perceived and enjoyed his dilemma. Although he was aware she
could discern the difference her manner afforded him no clew, as she sat
silent and intentionally looking very pretty, to her husband’s
indignation, as he noted the grace of her studied attitude, her face
held to inexpressive serenity, little in accord with the tumult of
vexation the detention had occasioned her.

Floyd-Rosney could not restrain his questions. Perhaps they might pass
with Ducie as idle curiosity, although with Paula he had now no
disguise.

“You are waiting----?”

“For my horse,” returned Ducie, with the accent of surprise. “There was
no room in the phaeton for me, as Colonel Kenwynton and Major Lacey
concluded to accompany the doctor and his patient to the sanatorium.”

So this was Randal Ducie, and the brother had resumed his journey down
the river.

“The doctor promised to send the horse back for me----” he paused a
moment. “I hope he will send the phaeton, too, for if you have made no
other arrangements----” Once more he paused blankly--it seemed so
strange that Floyd-Rosney should allow himself to be marooned here in
this wise. “If you have made no other arrangements it will give me
pleasure to drive you to the station near Glenrose.”

“We are due at the sanatorium for the insane, I think,” cried Paula,
with her little fleering laugh, her chin thrust up in her satirical
wont.

Floyd-Rosney, sore bestead and amazed by her manner, made a desperate
effort to recover his composure.

“Oh, I sent a telegram by one of the passengers to be transmitted when
the boat touches at the landing at Volney, and this will bring an
automobile here for my family.”

“If the passenger does not forget to send it, or if, when the boat
touches he is not asleep, after his vigils here, or if he is not taking
a walk, or eating his lunch, or, like Baal of old, otherwise engaged,
when we, too, may cry Baal, Baal, unavailingly. For my part, I accept
your offer, Mr. Ducie, if your vehicle comes first; if not I hope you
will take a seat in the automobile with us.”

“That is a compact,” said Ducie graciously.

Floyd-Rosney felt assured that this was Randal. He was more suave than
his brother--or was it that old associations still had power to gentle
his temper? He could not understand his wife’s revolt. Now and again he
looked at her with an unconscious inquiry in his eyes. So little was he
accustomed to subject his own actions to criticism that it did not occur
to him that he had gone too far. The worm had turned, seeming unaware
how lowly and helpless was its estate. He had all the sentiment of
grinding it under his heel, as he said loftily:

“We shall have no need to impose upon you, Mr. Ducie. Our own conveyance
will be here in ample time,”--then, like a jaw-breaker--“Thanks.”

“I march with the first detachment,” declared Paula hardily. “I shall
accept your offer of transportation, Mr. Ducie, if the auto does not
come first.”

Floyd-Rosney thought this must surely be Adrian Ducie, and not his
brother. For some reason of their own they _must_ have exchanged their
missions, and Randal had gone down the river, leaving his brother here.
For she--a stickler on small points of the appropriate--could never say
this if it were her old lover. Her sense of decorum, her respect for her
husband, her habitual exercise of good taste would alike forbid the
suggestion. Doubtless, it was Adrian Ducie.

“I don’t think an automobile will come,” remarked Ducie. “The roads are
very rough between here and Volney.”

Paula’s next words seemed to mend the matter a trifle in Floyd-Rosney’s
estimation.

“I think we have all had enough of Duciehurst for one time! I would not
risk remaining here, as evening closes in, for any consideration. All
the riverside harpies will be flocking here when this story of treasure
trove is bruited abroad. The old place will be fairly torn stone from
stone, and there will be horrible orgies of strife and bloodshed. There
ought to be a guard set, though there is nothing now to guard.”

“Do you suppose Captain Treherne’s story of the river pirates was all
fact or was partly the effect of his hallucination?” Ducie asked.

“The cords he was bound with were pretty circumstantial evidence,” said
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, not waiting, as usual, for her husband’s word, but
taking the lead in the conversation with aplomb and vivacity--he
remembered scornfully that before her marriage she had been accounted in
social circles intellectual, a _bel esprit_ among the frivols.

“The gag failed of its function of silence,” she continued, “it told the
whole story. You would have known that it was stern truth if you had
seen it.”

Floyd-Rosney vacillated once more.

“This _must_ be Randal Ducie,” he thought, “for Adrian was present at
the liberation of Captain Treherne--indeed, he was with the group
searching among the series of ruined vacant apartments when the prisoner
was discovered.”

“The finding of the box was very singular,” speculated Ducie, “the
closest imaginable shave. It was just as possible to one of the parties
on the verge of discovery as the other.”

He was in that uneasy, disconcerted state of mind usual with a stranger
present at a family discord which he feels, yet must not obviously
perceive and cannot altogether ignore.

“It seems the hand of fate,” said Paula.

“I went up to the third story this morning and looked at the place,”
remarked Randal. “I really don’t see how, without tools, you contrived
to wrench the heavy washboard away, and get at the bricks and the
interior of the capital of the pilaster.”

“It seems a feat more in keeping with Miss Dean,” suggested
Floyd-Rosney, “she has such a splendid physique.”

“Hilda is as strong as a boy,” declared Paula. “She does ‘the
athletic’--affects very boyish manners, don’t you think?” she added,
addressing Ducie directly.

There were few propositions which either of the Floyd-Rosneys could put
forth with which Randal Ducie would not have agreed, so eager was he to
close the incident without awkward friction. To let the malapropos
encounter pass without result was the instinct of his good breeding.
But, upon this direct challenge, he felt that he could not annul his
individuality, his convictions.

“Why, not at all boyish,” he said. “On the contrary, I think her manners
are most feminine in their fascination. Did you notice that the old
blind Major was having the time of his life?”

Floyd-Rosney, without the possibility of seating himself unless he, too,
resorted to the stair, was pacing slowly back and forth, his head bent
low, his hands lightly clasped behind him. Now and again he sent forth a
keenly observant glance at the two disposed on the stair, like a couple
of young people sitting out a dance at a crowded evening function.

“Hildegarde will flirt with anything or anybody when good material
cannot be had,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, with a manner of vague
discomfiture.

“Well, that is scarcely fair to my brother,” said Randal. He would not
let this pass.

“Oh, I should judge his flirting days are over,” cried Paula, wilfully
flippant. “He is as crusty as a bear with a sore head.”

“Or a sore heart,” said Randal, thinking of Adrian’s long exile, and his
hard fate, ousted from his home and fortune; then he could have bitten
his tongue out, realizing the sentimental significance of the words.
Still one cannot play with fire without burning one’s fingers, and there
are always embers among the ashes of an old flame.

For her life Paula could but look conscious with the eyes of both men on
her face.

“He doesn’t seem an exponent of a sore heart.” She stumbled inexcusably
in her clumsy embarrassment. There was an awkward silence. The
implication that Adrian might be representative passed as untenable, and
the subject of hearts was eschewed thereafter.

“Miss Dean has been quite famous as a beauty and belle in her brief
career,” Mr. Floyd-Rosney deigned to contribute to the conversation.

“She is wonderfully attractive--so original and interesting,” said Ducie
warmly.

“It seems to me Hilda carries her principal assets in her face,” said
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney. “They say she wouldn’t learn a thing at the
convent--and what is worse, she feels no lack.”

“What does any woman learn?” demanded Floyd-Rosney iconoclastically,
“and what does any woman’s education signify? A mosaic of worthless
smattering, expensive to acquire, and impossible to apply. Miss Dean
lacks nothing in lacking this equipment.”

Paula sat affronted and indignant. In her husband’s sweeping assertion
he had not had the courtesy to except her, and it was hardly admissible
for Ducie to repair the omission. He could only carry the proposition
further and make it general, and his tact seized the opportunity.

“I think that might be said of the youth of both sexes. The fakir, with
his learning made-easy, is the foible of the age and its prototype
extends to business methods--the get-rich-quick opportunities match the
education-while-you-wait, and the art, reduced to a smudge with a thumb,
and the ballads of a country--the voice of the heart of the people,
superseded by ragtime.”

But Paula would not be appeased.

“If women are constitutionally idiots and cannot be taught,” she cried,
“they ought not to be responsible for folly. That is a charter wide as
the winds.”

“Not at all--not at all,” said her husband dogmatically. But how he
would have reconciled the variant dicta of incapacity and accountability
must remain a matter of conjecture, for there came suddenly on the air
the iterative sound of the swift beat of hoofs and, through the open
door in another moment, was visible a double phaëton drawn by a glossy,
spirited blood bay, brought with difficulty to a pause and lifting
alternately his small forefeet with the ardor of motion, even when the
pressure on the bit in his mouth constrained his eager activity and
brought him to a halt.

“I have won out,” said Ducie genially. Since it had awkwardly fallen to
his lot to offer civilities to these people he did it with a very
pretty grace. “I shall be glad to see you and your family to the
station, Mr. Floyd-Rosney.”

Floyd-Rosney’s eyes were on the space beyond the portico.

“That’s a good horse you have,” he remarked seriously.

“Yes--before I bought him he was on the turf,--winner in several
events.”

“You don’t often see such an animal in private use,” said Floyd-Rosney,
unbending a trifle. He, too, loved a good horse for its own sake.

“True, but I am located at a considerable distance from the plantations
I lease, and going to and fro he is of special use to me. I can’t stand
a slow way of getting through the world, and the roads won’t admit of an
auto.”

The two men were quite unconstrained for the moment in the natural
interest of a subject foreign to their difficult mutual relations.
Randal Ducie’s head was thrown up, his eyes glowed; he was looking at
the horse with a sort of glad admiration--an expression which Paula well
remembered. Floyd-Rosney’s eyes narrowed as they scanned successively
the points of the fine animal, his own face calm, patronizing,
approving. Neither of them, for the moment, was thinking of her. She had
followed them out upon the wide stone portico and stood in the sun, her
head tilted a trifle that her broad hat of taupe velvet might shade her
eyes. She brought herself potently into the foreground, seizing the fact
that Randal was unincumbered with baggage of any sort.

“Where is the treasure trove?” she cried. “Surely you are not going to
leave it in the ruins of this old mansion!”

Her husband flashed at her a glance of reproof which would once have
silenced her, abashed to the ground. Now she repeated her words,
wondering to feel so composed, so possessed of all her faculties.
Without a conscious effort of observation the details of the scene were
registered in her mind unbefogged by her wonted bewilderment in her
husband’s disapproval. She even noticed the groom who had driven the
vehicle back from the livery stable--no colored servant, but a
carrot-headed youth, with jockey boots, riding breeches, a long freckled
face, and small red-lidded eyes, very close together, gazing at Ducie
with a keen intentness as she asked the question. The fame of the
discovery must have been bruited abroad already, and she vaguely
wondered at this, for, as yet, no one on land knew the facts, except the
alienist and his party, safely housed at the sanatorium.

“The chest of valuables found here last night?” replied Ducie. “Why, I
haven’t it. My brother took it on the boat in his suitcase, and, before
nightfall, it will be in one of the banks in Vicksburg.”

Floyd-Rosney, thrown out of all his reckonings by the unaccountable
behavior of his wife, spoke at random, more to obviate its effects than
with any valid intendment.

“I saw the box opened,” he said; “only family jewels and a lot of gold
coin and papers, but I should think, from the pretensions of this place,
there must have been elaborate table services of silver, perhaps of gold
plate. Were any such appurtenances hidden, do you know, and recovered?”

Ducie shook his head. “I know nothing of such ware. It may be, or it may
not be here. The absence of the papers brought out the story of the
hiding of the family diamonds, else the box would have remained in the
capital of the pilaster, where my uncle left it, till the crack of
doom.”

Paula never understood the impulse that possessed her. Boldly, in the
presence of her husband, she took from her dainty mesh bag a small key
set with rubies and one large diamond.

“Your brother carelessly left one of the Ducie jewels on the table and I
picked it up. I am so glad I remembered to restore it to you. It should
have been in your possession long ago.”

Floyd-Rosney was watching her like a hawk, and she began to quail before
his eyes. Oh, why had she not remembered that he was a connoisseur in
bijouterie and bric-à-brac of many sorts and would detect instantly, at
a glance, the modern fashion and comparatively slight value of the
trinket. More than all, why had she not reckoned on the fact that Randal
Ducie was no actor. Who could fail to interpret the surprised
recognition in his eyes, his gentle upbraiding look before the
associations thus ruthlessly summoned? It was as if some magic had
materialized all the tender poignancy of first love, all his winged
hopes, all the heartbreak of a cruel disappointment crystallized in this
scintillating bauble in his hand. He glanced from it to her, then back
at the flashing stones, red as his heart’s blood. He looked so wounded,
so passive, as if content to succumb to a blow which he was too
generous, too magnanimous to return in kind.

And he said never a word.

She felt that her face was flaring scarlet; the hot tears were smitten
into her eyes. She could not speak, and, for a long moment neither of
the two men moved, although the horse, restive and eager to be off,
plunged now and again, almost lifting from his feet the groom at his
head, still swinging at the bit, but staring, as if resolved into eyes,
at the group on the piazza.

“It is the key to something of value”--she found her voice suddenly--“or
it would never have been so charmingly decorated. I hope it will unlock
all the doors shut against you,” she concluded with a little bow.

“Thank you,” he said formally. And he said no more.

“And now shall we go?” asked Floyd-Rosney curtly.

There being only four places, the gentlemen occupying the front seats,
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, the nurse and the baby the others, there was no room
for the groom, and Ducie, gathering up the reins preparatory to driving,
directed him to return to the livery stable on one of the cotton wagons
which would be starting in an hour or so. The ill-looking fellow touched
his cap, loosed the bit and the horse sprang away with an action so
fine, so well sustained, that Floyd-Rosney’s brow cleared. The pleasure
of the moment was something.

“What will you take for him?” he asked, quite human for the nonce.

“Not for sale. Couldn’t spare him,” Ducie responded, the reins wound
about his forearms, all his strength requisite to hold the abounding
vitality and eagerness of the animal to the trot, the hoofs falling
with the precision of machinery, mile after mile.

Only once did the pace falter. Suddenly the animal plunged. A man dashed
out from the Cherokee rose hedge that bordered the high-way and clutched
the bit. With the momentum of his pace the horse swung him off his feet,
and frightened and swerving from the road, reared high. As the forefeet
crashed to the ground once more with a sharp impact the man was thrown
sprawling to the roadside, and the horse was a mile away before the
occupants of the vehicle knew exactly what had happened.

“Oh,--oh----” cried Paula, “was the man hurt? What did he want?”

“No good,” said her husband grimly.

“Oh, oughtn’t we go back and see what we have done?” She could scarcely
speak with the wind of their transit blowing the words down her throat.
“Oh, I know Mr. Floyd-Rosney won’t, but, Randal, don’t you think we
ought?”

“Hardly,” said Randal.

Floyd-Rosney’s head slowly turned, and his slumberous eyes, with a bated
fury smoldering in their depths, looked their sneering triumph at his
wife.

“That crack,--was it----?” he asked of Randal.

“A pistol ball, I think. I saw--I thought I saw a puff of smoke from the
Cherokee hedge. My head feels hot yet. For simple curiosity look at my
hat.”

Floyd-Rosney removed the hat from the head of the man by him. He turned
it in his hand and his eyes glittered. Then he held it out for Ducie’s
observation.

There was a small orifice on one side, and a corresponding rift,
higher, on the other. Evidently, the ball had passed through.

“Thirty caliber, I should judge,” Floyd-Rosney ventured.

“Looks so?” Randal assented.

“But why--_why_----” exclaimed Paula, “should Randal be shot at--he
might have been killed--oh, any of us might have been killed!”

“The story of the treasure trove--out already, I suppose,” suggested
Floyd-Rosney.

“And it is believed that I have it now in my possession, carrying it to
a place of safety,” said Ducie.

“Just as well for you to get to town as speedily as possible,” remarked
Floyd-Rosney.

To have escaped an attempt at highway robbery is not an agreeable
sensation, however futile and ill advised the enterprise. This
possibility had not occurred to Floyd-Rosney, yet he perceived its
logic. It was obvious that the rich find of gold and jewels must be
removed from Duciehurst, and by whom more probably than their owner?
Doubtless, the miscreants had expected Ducie to be accompanied only by
the groom, perhaps a party to the conspiracy, and albeit this
supposition had gone awry, there was only one unarmed man beside himself
to contend against a possible second attack. Floyd-Rosney would be glad
to be rid of Ducie on every account. No such awkward association had
ever befallen him, significant at every turn. But, when actual physical
danger to himself and his family was involved in sitting beside him, he
felt all other objections frivolous indeed, and it was in the nature of
a rescue when the fast horse drew up beside the platform of the little
station near Glenrose, where the train was already standing.

The _congé_ was of the briefest, although Randal omitted no observance
which a courteous voluntary host might have affected. He left the horse
in charge of an idler about the station, assisted Mrs. Floyd-Rosney into
the coach, where, to her husband’s satisfaction, the stateroom was
vacant and they might thus be spared the presence of the vulgar horde of
travelers. He shook hands with both husband and wife, only leaving the
train as it glided off. Paula, looking from her window, had her last
glimpse of him, standing on the platform, courteously lifting his hat in
farewell. She had a wild, unreasoning protest against the parting, her
eyes looked a mute appeal, and she felt as if delivered to her fate.




CHAPTER XIV


The ex-jockey, left standing alone on the drive in front of the old
mansion, had watched, with glowing eyes, the departure of the phaëton
from Duciehurst.

“Ai-yi, Ran Ducie,” he jeered, “ridin’ for a fall you are, if you did
but know it!”

The vehicle was out of sight in a moment. He thrust his cap on the back
of his head, sunk his hands deep in his pockets and strode up the flight
of steps to the broad stone-floored portico. He stood for a moment,
watching the great shining, rippling expanse of the silent river, vacant
save for a small steamer of the government fleet, whisking along in
haste on the opposite side, with a heavy coil of smoke and a fluttering
flag. Then he strolled into the house, looking about keenly and
furtively as he went. The place was obviously familiar to him, doubtless
from many secret explorations, and, without hesitation, he took his way
up two flights of stairs, threading the vacant apartments, coming, at
last, to the third story which gave access to the interior of the
capital of the pilaster where the treasure had been found.

He stood, his hands still in his pockets, gazing into the cavity, the
washboard left where it had been prized away from the wall. He stooped
down presently and sought to explore the interior of the pillar,
pulling out first the rotten fragments of the ancient knapsack. He gazed
at these remnants with great scorn of their obsolete fashioning, then
set to work to ransacking them, deftly manipulating the flaps lest
something hidden there should escape his scrutiny. The search resulted
in naught, save a handful of crumbs of desiccated leather. He even
paused to examine the quality of the fabric and the stitching of the
construction.

“Sewed by hand, by jinks!” he muttered. But the article had evidently
been used merely as protection, or concealment, perhaps, for the box it
had contained. He made a long-armed lunge into the depths of the cavity
in hopes of further booty, realizing that he was the first intruder into
the place after the departure of the refugees from the _Cherokee Rose_,
and might make prize of whatever they had possibly overlooked. His heart
quickened its beats as his fingers touched straw, but when he dragged
forth a bundle holding persistently together he discovered that it was
but one of the well-woven, enormous nests of the tiny sparrow, creeping
in through a crevice without, and, like some human builders, having a
disproportionate idea of suitable housing for its station. He spat a
flood of tobacco juice upon the cunning work of the vanished architects,
and, with a curse as grotesque as profane, made a circuit of the
interior of the cavity in the pillar with his bare palms. Nothing--quite
empty. The treasure had lain here for forty years, the fact bruited
throughout the traditions of the country. Hundreds, of whom he was one,
had made vain search--“and Randal Ducie had found it first go! Some
people have _all_ the luck!” He had ventured to the window of the great
dining-room last night, after his confederates had fled, and had gazed
with gloating eyes on the pile of gold and jewels on the table before
Adrian Ducie, whom he mistook for the man familiar to the neighborhood.
The sight had maddened him. He had urgently sought to stimulate his
confederates to an attack on the place while the money lay undefended,
openly on the table. He thought that in the tumult of surprise a rich
capture might be effected.

“To snatch jes’ a handful would have done me a heap o’ good,” he
meditated.

But no! Binnhart had declared they were too far outnumbered, that the
enterprise was impracticable. And Binnhart had seemed slow and dazed,
and himself the victim of surprise. Colty’s loose lips curled with
bitter scorn as he recalled how owlishly wise Binnhart had looked when
he had declared that he would try first the inside and then the outside
of this pilaster from the ground floor, instead of at once essaying the
capital,--but he did not know what a “capital” was,--nor, indeed, did
the jovial “Colty” until he heard the word from Randal Ducie a few
minutes ago. In fact, Binnhart did not know the difference between a
“pillar” and a “pilaster,” except as the builder in Caxton had expounded
the terms. Indeed, Binnhart, assuming to be a leader of men, should be
better informed. Leader! He would lead them all to the penitentiary if
they followed him much farther. It was an ill-omened association of
ideas. Colty Connover began to wonder if any of the refugees from the
_Cherokee Rose_ had acquired any knowledge of the search for the
treasure prosecuted from without. He remembered how suddenly the sound
of a woman’s screams had frightened the marauders from their occupation
in what they had deemed the deepest solitude. If some woman had been
sitting at this window she could easily have heard their unsuspecting
talk. He looked down speculatively. Through the broken roof of the
portico he could discern some of their abandoned tools still beside the
base of the column. “Pilaster,” he sneered. The word had for him the
tang of an opprobrious epithet. She could have heard everything. Had
she, indeed, heard aught? Could she remember the names? She could
doubtless recall “Colty.” That was within the scope of the meanest
intelligence. He began to quail with the realization of disastrous
possibilities. What woman was it, he wondered. The one in the phaëton?
He hoped Binnhart might shoot her in the hold-up planned on the road. A
pistol ball would tie her tongue if--if she had not already told all she
knew! Yet what would his name signify? Only that he was one of the
seekers who from time immemorial had ransacked the house for its
treasure. Robbery, perhaps, in a way, yet what was so definitely
abandoned to the will of the marauder could scarcely be esteemed in the
pale of ownership. If only the gang had not left their insane victim
bound and gagged, as evidence of their brutality. “Colonel Kenwynton
will never rest till he ferrets out who done that job.” He winced and
lifted one foot high, and let it down with a stamp. “I’d hate for the
old Colonel to git on my track, sure,” he muttered.

He reflected that this was what had queered the whole run, through
Binnhart’s self-sufficiency, though that fellow, Treherne, did tell, in
his sleep, where the money was hid. If they had known--if they had only
known--what constituted the capital of a pillar. It had been
mismanaged--mismanaged from the beginning, and once more he declared
that it was Captain Hugh Treherne who had queered the whole run.

He walked slowly down the stairs into the broad hall, and then,
threading the vacant apartments with the definite intention of
familiarity, he came into the room where poor Hugh Treherne had lain for
hours bound and gagged, not knowing whether his sufferings were actual
or the distraught illusions of his mental malady.

Connover stood looking at the many footprints in the dust on the floor,
clustered about the clear space where the man had lain. In the corners
of the apartment the dust was thick and gray and evidently had not been
disturbed in years. Here it was that the refugees of the _Cherokee Rose_
had found Captain Treherne. But _he_ could not have informed his
rescuers where the swag was hidden. He himself did not know,--he could
not say when he was awake. By reason of his distorted mental processes
only in dreams did his memory rouse itself; only his somnolent words
could reveal the story of the hiding of the treasure in the capital of
the pilaster. As, in his ignorant fashion, Connover sought to realize
the situation he groped for the clew of its discovery. How had they
chanced to find it? Could the woman have overheard the talk of the gang
from the window of the attic, and, knowing the signification of the
terms “pilaster” and “capital,” could she have fallen like a hawk upon
her prey? Oh, Binnhart was distanced by the whole field,--a fool and a
fake. And if he should botch this hold-up that he had planned for Randal
Ducie---- Suddenly a nervous thrill agitated Connover. He was conscious
that an eye was upon him, a fixed, furtive scrutiny. He gazed wildly
about the desolate, empty room. Almost he could see a vague figure at
the door withdrawing abruptly as he glanced toward it, but when he ran
into the hall there was naught for sixty feet along which any spy upon
him must have passed. Still, as he returned, reassured, he felt again
that covert gaze. Nothing was visible at the window on one side of the
apartment. On the other side the room was lighted by a glass door
opening on a veranda, in which the panes had recently been shattered,
and broken glass lay about. When he pulled it ajar loose bits fell from
the frame and crashed upon the floor, setting astir keen shrill echoes
through the empty desolation that put every quivering nerve to the
torture. Outside he heard a vague, silly laugh even before he perceived
Mrs. Berridge standing close against the wall in her effort to escape
observation, her head, with its towsled copper hair, all bare, but an
apron pinned shawl-wise around her shoulders in lieu of a wrap.

“I’m cotched,” she exclaimed deprecatingly. “I thought I’d peek in and
find out what’s going on, though I reckon I ain’t wanted.”

“Not much you ain’t,” he declared, recovering his composure with
difficulty. “How’d you come?”

“In the dug-out,” she explained. “I tied Possum in his bunk, and locked
him up, and took out. He’s safe enough.”

“Oh, that’s all right. He’ll spend most of his days locked up, ennyhow,”
Colty roughly joked.

“He won’t nuther.” She struck at him with an affectation of retaliation.
But her face was not jocose, and a tallowy pallor accented the freckles.

“Colty,” she lowered her voice mysteriously, “I have heard shootin’.”

“Naw!” he cried remonstrantly, as if the reluctance to entertain the
fact could annul it.

“Whenst on the ruver I heard shootin’,” she declared again.

“Oh, shucks, gal,” he exclaimed. “You couldn’t hear it so fur off.”

“On the water!” she cried, lifting her eyebrows. “The water fetches the
sound.”

“He _said_ he wouldn’t shoot,” cried Colty Connover, his lip pendulously
drooping. “He said on no account.”

“You b’lieve his gab? Well, you _are_ a softy!” she flung at him. Then,
with one end of the apron string in her mouth, she ejaculated
murmurously: “I heard shootin’,” looking doubtfully and vaguely over her
shoulder.

“Then he’ll swing for it ef he’s killed Ran Ducie. There ain’t a more
pop’lar man in the county, nor a better judge of horseflesh.”

“I ain’t carin’ fur Binnhart arter the way he made me trick that crazy
loon out’n his secrets an’ then declared he’d gimme nuthin’ thout he
found the truck.”

“Pulled the horse an’ lost yer pay, too,” grinned Colty.

“But all the rest will be tarred with the same stick----”

“Not me nor you,” interrupted Colty Connover,--“’cause he said he
wouldn’t shoot. He swore he wouldn’t.”

Suddenly she pushed back her tousled red hair as she stood near the
glass door, and looked up with a startled apprehension on her face.

“Listen, Colty, listen----! What is that sound--what is that sound?”

Then a strange thing happened. The sun, low in its circuit, was already
westering on the October day. Even now its radiance fell through the
great windows and open doors all aslant, and lay in deep orange tints
athwart the bare, dusty floors. Many a skein-like effulgence was
suspended from the panes, and on these fine and fiery lines illuminated
motes were scattered like the notation of music on an immaterial cleff.
There was no wind, no rustle of the magnolia trees glimpsed without. The
river was silent as always. The stillness was intense, indescribable,
and, suddenly, with a long drawn sigh, a creaking dissonance, the old
house gave forth one loud moan, voicing its sorrows, its humiliation,
its inanimate woe.

The two looked at each other with aghast, white faces. Then, with a
common impulse, they fled from--they knew not what. The woman sprang out
of the shattered glass door and sped through the shrubbery, across the
ruined levee to her dug-out, swinging at the old landing. The groom
dashed down the hall, the echoes of his steps hard on his heels like
swift pursuers, out into the road, and thence, scarcely relaxing his
pace, ran along the rugged ground till he was in the turn-row, where his
speed was aided by the smooth hard-beaten earth. The cotton was breast
high, and glittering in the afternoon sun--a famous crop. He could
scarcely see the pickers, although he noted here and there their big
cylindrical baskets, filled as the bags, suspended from their necks,
overflowed from time to time. A great wagon was drawing up at one side
where the road struck the turn-row, and this notified him that the
weigher, with his steelyards, had arrived to pay off the laborers
according to the weight of the contents of their baskets, and to convey
the product to Ran Ducie’s gin. He welcomed the sight of another white
man, for he desired more credible testimony, in case it should be
needed, than the haphazard observation of the darkey cotton pickers that
he was miles distant from the scene of Binnhart’s hold-up at the time of
the shooting. Hence he attached himself to the society of the weigher,
and made himself unpleasantly conspicuous, and was officious and
obstructive during the weighing process, as much from latent intention
as maladroit folly. When, at last, the wagons were heaped and he and the
weigher took their seats behind two of the big mules, the pickers,
trailing on foot contentedly in the rear, his companion observed: “I’m
goin’ to tell Mr. Ducie that the nex’ time he treats you to a ride he
may pervide a coach and four, for durned if I’ll have you monkeying in
the cotton fields along of me another time.” Colty Connover had made the
desired impression and on this score he was content. Nevertheless, again
and again during the afternoon, throughout the process of the weighing,
and on the road to the town, and in the midst of his duties at the
livery stable there recurred to him a stupefied, stunned realization of
some uncomprehended crisis, and again and again he asked himself
helplessly: “What was that strange sound in the old house? What was it?”

And on the river bank, in the little amphibious cabin upon its grotesque
high-water stilts, through all the afternoon and deep into the night,
the woman with a vague thrill of terror futilely wondered, “What was
that strange, strange sound in the old house? What was it?”




CHAPTER XV


Certainly no institution of its type ever had such cheerful inmates as
the Glenrose Sanatorium could boast so long as Colonel Kenwynton and the
blind Major sojourned within its gates, the guests of the alienist and
Captain Hugh Treherne. The patient experienced no recurrence of his
malady during the visit. Indeed, the beneficial influence, with the
incident change of thought, conversation, and occupation, was so obvious
that the physician acceded to Colonel Kenwynton’s earnest urgency to
allow the Captain to go home with him and spend a few weeks at his
plantation, in a neighboring county. They made a solemn compact for the
conservation of his safety and the promotion of his mental health.

“Captain,” said the Colonel the first evening that they spent together
over the wood fire in the old plantation house, “I don’t know what is
the particular devil that you say possesses you at times, and I don’t
want to know. He is an indignity to you and an affront to me. Never
mention the nature of the obsession to me for I won’t hear it. Never let
me have so much as a glimpse of his horn or his hoof. But if you,
unhappily, ever feel again the clutch of his claw fastening on you, just
report to me, and we’ll both strike out in a dog-trot for that insane
asylum, and let the doctor exorcise him a bit. And I swear to you before
God on our sacred bonds as comrades in the Lost Cause I will stay there
with you till you are ready to come home with me. Shake hands on it,
dear old fellow--shake hands on it.”

Perhaps because the topic was interdicted in conversation it was the
less intrusive in thought. Hugh Treherne maintained an observance of the
Colonel’s mandate as strict and as soldierly as if it had been read in
general orders at the head of the regiment. He found an interest in the
Colonel’s affairs in the ramshackle old place, which was but a meager
remnant of his former princely domain. Colonel Kenwynton had brought
down from the larger methods of the old times a constitutional disregard
of minutæ. Hence men, “indifferent honest,” otherwise would overreach
him in negotiation. Servants filched ruthlessly his minor possessions.
His pastures, fields, barns, orchards, were plundered with scarcely a
realization of the significance of robbery, the facile phrase, “The old
Cunnel won’t care,” or “The old Cunnel won’t ever know the difference,”
sufficient to numb any faint prick of conscience.

And thus it was that his home had fallen to decay; his barns and fences
rotted; his gin was broken and patched and deteriorated in common with
all his farm machinery; his hedges of Cherokee rose, widened, unpruned
and untended, becoming veritable land grabbers, rather than boundaries,
and yearly more and more of his acres must needs be rented for lack of
funds to pay a force of laborers. Colonel Kenwynton lived on in his
mortgaged home and “scuffled up the money,” as he phrased the process,
to meet the interest year by year, and kept but sorry cheer by a bleak
and lonely fireside. Nevertheless, he twirled up the ends of his white
mustachios jauntily and faced the world with a bold front.

From his own account it seemed wonderful that he had any income at all,
and as if much business tact must be requisite to hold his mortgages
together in such shape that they should assume all the enlightened
functions of a fortune. The age of some of these obligations was a
source of special pride with him, although sometimes with an air of
important dismay he would compute the amount of interest he had paid in
the course of years on their several renewals aggregating more than the
property would sell for in the present collapsed condition of such real
estate values. When he came to speak of the interest he had promised to
pay, he would pause with an imperative shake of the head, as if to abash
the futurity which was fast bringing about the maturity of these notes.

“Why, Colonel, this is not good business,--you have practically bought
your own property twice over,” Treherne attempted to argue with him one
day when his mood waxed confidential. “You should have given up the
fight long ago and let them foreclose.”

“Foreclose on my home place, sir,--the remnant of my father’s
plantation?” he replied in amaze. “Why, what would the snail do without
the shell he was born with? I shall need a narrower one before that day
comes, I humbly trust in Providence.”

Colonel Kenwynton could scarcely imagine existence without a mortgage. A
deed of trust seemed as natural and essential an incident of a holding
in fee simple as the title papers.

Treherne discovered as time went on opportunities for betterment in the
Colonel’s affairs, small it is true, pitiful in comparison with the
ideals of the old gentleman, who lifted his brows in compassionate
surprise when the subject was broached, and, but that he could not
contravene the common sense of the proposition, he might have thought it
an insane impulse, manifesting itself in schemes of domestic economy on
a minute scale.

“Colonel, this place ought to make its own meat. There is plenty of corn
in that rearward barn. I put a padlock on its door to-day. Those young
shoats will be as fine a lot of meat as ever stepped by hog-killing
time. I had them turned into the oak woods to-day,--to give them a
chance at the mast,--makes the meat streaked lean and fat, you know.”

“You surprise me,” said the Colonel, looking blankly over his
spectacles. “I didn’t know there was any corn left. And a few hogs
didn’t seem worth wasting time about. I don’t go into such matters, dear
boy,--cotton is my strong suit. Cotton is the only play.”

“You spent your time in the war mostly on the firing line, Colonel.
Somebody ought to be mighty thankful you were not in the quartermaster’s
office. That ham we cut to-day came from the store, and the cook tells
me so does every pound of lard that goes into your frying pan, and all
the bacon you furnish to your force of hands. And yet you have here an
ample lot of bacon on the hoof and abundance of good feed to fatten it.”

The Colonel appraised the logic and sat humiliated and silent.

“I had the shoats all marked and sent the mark to the county court to be
registered. And now you’ll eat your own meat after January or go
without,” said Treherne sternly, in command of the situation.

By some accident, searching in the Colonel’s desk for an envelope or
some such matter, Treherne chanced to discover a receipt for a bill
which the old gentleman had carelessly paid twice.

“I took his word, of course,” said the Colonel in vicarious abasement,
“as the word of a gentleman and an old soldier.”

“An old soldier on the back track generally. I remember him well,” said
Treherne uncompromisingly. “He shall refund as sure as my name is
Treherne.”

And he did refund, protesting that the matter was an accident, an
oversight, which excuses the Colonel accepted in good faith and brought
back to the skeptical Hugh Treherne.

“So queer those mistakes never happen to your advantage, Colonel,” he
snarled, and although his contention was obviously logical, the Colonel
listened dubiously.

In truth, Colonel Kenwynton was of a different animus, of a dead day, of
a species as extinct as the Plesiosaurus. He could not even adapt
himself to the conditions of his survival. He could neither hear nor
speak through the telephone, although all his faculties were unimpaired.
He held himself immune from diseases of modern diagnosis; for him there
was no microbe, no appendicitis, no neurasthenia. His credulity revolted
against the practicability of wireless telegraphy and aviation. He clove
to his old books, and, except for the newspapers, he read nothing that
had been printed within the last fifty years. His ideas of amusement
were those of previous generations. He was a skilled sportsman, a dead
shot, indeed; his play at billiards held the record at his club; he was
versed in many games of chance and had the nerve to back his hand or his
opinion to the limit of his power.

He was a shrewd judge of horseflesh, and, as he often remarked since he
could no longer own and race a string, he took pleasure in seeing the
fine animals of other men achieve credit on the turf. Despite his early
gambling and racing proclivities he had always been esteemed a man of
immaculate honor and held a high social position. This ascendancy was
supplemented by certain associations of special piety incongruously
enough. As long as his wife had lived he accompanied her to church every
Sunday morning; he drew the line, it is true, at the evening service. He
carried a large prayerbook, and his notable personality rendered his
presence marked. He read the responses with a devotional air and a
solemn voice and listened to the sermon with an appearance of unflagging
interest and absorption; as he seemed to take it for granted that he
could go to heaven on the footing of an honorary member, his persuasion
was in a manner accepted, and it might have been a source of surprise to
his friends to realize that, after all, he was not a professedly
religious man.

For some weeks the two incongruous companions lived on in great peace
and amity in the seclusion of the old plantation house, a rambling frame
structure far too large for the shrunken number of its inmates. The
broad verandas surrounding it on three sides scarcely knew a footfall;
the upper story was unoccupied save for the Colonel’s bedroom, for
Treherne had selected a chamber among the vacant apartments on the
ground floor that, through a glass door opening on the veranda,
permitted his egress betimes to take up his self-arrogated supervisory
duties on the place hours before his host, always a late riser, was
astir.

One night,--a memorable night,--a dreadful thing happened. The Colonel
lay asleep in his big mahogany four-poster; the placidity of venerable
age on his face was scarcely less appealing than the innocence of
childhood; his snowy hair on the pillow gave back a silvery gleam to the
red suffusions from the hearth. If he dreamed, it was of some gentle
phase of yore, for his breathing was soft and regular, his consciousness
far away adown the misty realms of the past, irrevocable save in these
soft and sleeping illusions. The old house was still and silent. At long
intervals an errant gust stole around a corner and tried a window. Then
it skulked away and, for a time, a mute peace reigned.

Suddenly a sound,--not of the elements, not from without. A sound that
in the deep peace of dreams smote no fiber of consciousness. It came
again and again. It was the sound of a step ascending the stair. A
slender shaft of light preceded it--the dim radiance showed first in a
line under the door. Then the door slowly swung ajar, and Hugh Treherne
entered, his candle in his hand--not the officer that the old Colonel
had known and trusted in the years that tried men’s souls, who never
broke faith or failed in a duty; not the piteous wreck whom he had met
on the tow-head where the _Cherokee Rose_ lay aground, who wept on his
neck and besought his aid; not the earnest altruist, who planned and
contrived his escape from durance, through suffering and dread, to
retrieve the injustice done to an old comrade’s heirs, and with his
first recall of memory to reveal hidden treasure to enrich other men.
This was Hugh Treherne, of the obsession, a man who believed himself
possessed of the devil.

Colonel Kenwynton, gazing wincingly up with eyes heavy with sleep, and
dazed by the glare of the candle held close to his face, hardly
recognized the lineaments bent above him--wild, distorted, with a
sinister smile, a queer furtive doubt, as if some wicked maniacal
impulse debated with the vanishing instinct of reason in his brain.

The Colonel feared no man. The instinct of fear, if ever it had existed
in him, was annulled, atrophied. But in this lonely house, in the
presence of this strange and inexplicable possession, in all that this
change, so curiously wrought, so radical, so sinister, intimated, his
blood ran cold.

“He has come, Colonel,” hissed the strange man, for the Colonel could
hardly make shift to recognize him, “the Devil has come!”

There was an aghast pause. Then Colonel Kenwynton understood the
significance of the catastrophe. He plunged up in the bed, throwing off
the cover, and gazed wildly around the room.

“The Devil has come?--Then skirmish to the front, Hugh! Hold him in
check, while I get on my clothes, and I’ll flank him. By George, I’ve
led a forlorn hope in my time, and I’m not to be intimidated by any
little medical fiend like this!”

It was not long, however, that they sojourned at the sanatorium, but the
doctor, who had heard of the suddenness of the seizure, warned Colonel
Kenwynton that he had always best have help at hand in case of a
relapse as sudden.

“You might be in danger of violence from him,” the doctor explained,
seeing that Colonel Kenwynton stared in blank amaze.

“In danger of violence, sir, _from my own officer_,” he exclaimed,
flouting the obvious absurdity, as if the Confederate army were in
complete organization, the loyal submission to a superior in rank at
once the dearest behest and the instinct of second nature with the
soldier.

And, indeed, Hugh Treherne justified the trust. He wrought Colonel
Kenwynton nothing but good. His mental health was so far restored to its
normal strength that when they had returned together to the old home he
took the lead in all those practical little affairs of life which bored
the Colonel, and which he at once misunderstood and despised. He shrank
from society, in which, indeed, he was more feared than welcomed, and
the Colonel, in compassion for his infirmity and loneliness, had given
up most of his cronies. The Colonel suffered from this deprivation more
than Treherne, who took an intense and almost pathetic interest in
trifling improvements; the fences were mended; the farm buildings were
repaired; various small peculations ceased, for the servants and the
hands whose interests brought them about the place were afraid of the
“crazy man,” and were alert and capable in obeying his orders,--the
anger that flashed in his wild dark eyes was not reassuring. He pottered
in placid content about these industrial pursuits till chance led to a
greater utility.

He displayed unexpected judgment in advice which saved the Colonel from
taking a financial step that would, indeed, have bereft the simple snail
of his rickety old shell in his defenseless years, and certain
financiers of a dubious sort, baffled in the expectation of gain at the
old man’s loss, looked askance at Hugh Treherne and his influence with
his former commander which promised in time to remove him altogether
from their clutches. They made great talk of having considered his
interest rather than their own, and in set phrase withdrew the sun of
their favor to shine on his shattered affairs no more. But his affairs
were on the mend. Through Treherne’s urgency he devoted the returns from
the bulk of his cotton crop, unusually large this year, to the lifting
of a mortgage on a pretty tract of land nearer the county town than his
plantation, almost in the suburbs, in truth, and which was thus left
unencumbered. In this matter he was difficult of persuasion, and yielded
only at last to be rid of importunacy.

“Lord, Hugh, how lonesome I do feel without that money,” he said
drearily, lighting his candle one night.

“But you have got the land free of all encumbrance, Colonel,--dead to
rights,--within two miles of the town, right out there in the night.”

“It is a cold night and dark,” said the Colonel, toying with the
snuffers. “It seems cruel to leave it there, bare and bleak, with no
sort of a little old mortgage to cover it.”

But then he laughed and took himself upstairs to his rest.

A similar application of funds betided his later shipments of bales, the
receipts from which were formerly wont to vanish in driblets he hardly
knew how.

“Hugh, this way of paying debts that I thought would last through my
time and be discharged by my executors almost takes my breath away,” he
said half jocosely, half upbraiding. “You scarcely leave me a dollar for
myself,--to buy me a little ‘baccy.’” And then they both laughed.

In the forty years of Hugh Treherne’s incarceration such independent
means as he had possessed had barely sufficed for his maintenance at the
sanatorium, constantly dwindling until now becoming inadequate for that
purpose. His relatives greatly disapproved of the course that events had
taken and were also solicitous for his safety while at large and the
possibility of injury to others at his hands. One of them, a man of
ample fortune, by way of coercing acquiescence in their views, notified
Colonel Kenwynton that they would not be responsible for any expenses
which Captain Treherne might incur during his absence from the asylum,
where he had been placed with the sanction of his kindred, and where the
writer of this communication was prepared to defray all the costs of his
sojourn and treatment. Colonel Kenwynton, in a letter as formal and
courteous as a cartel and as smoothly fierce, expressed his ignorance
that any moneys had been asked of Captain Treherne’s relatives, and
begged to know when and by whom such requests had been made. Then a
significant silence settled on the subject.

The old Colonel felt that he had routed the enemy, but Hugh Treherne, to
whom he detailed the circumstances, for he treated his friend in every
respect as a sane man and kept nothing from him, did not share his
host’s elation. A deep gloom descended upon his spirits and a furtive
apprehension looked out of his eyes. He cautiously scanned the personnel
of every approach to the house before he ventured to appear and greet
the newcomers, and in his small interests about the place he kept within
close reach of refuge. The negroes began to notice that he discontinued
his supervisory errands to the fields where the picking of cotton was
still in progress and where he had shown himself exceedingly suspicious
of the accounts of the weigher and the bulk of the cotton delivered as
compared with the distribution of the money furnished by Colonel
Kenwynton for paying the cotton pickers. “The ole Cunnel’s crap will
sho’ly turn out fur all hit is worf’ dis time,” the grinning darkeys
were in the habit of commenting.

The old gentleman was constitutionally and by training incapable of
detecting this deviation from the established routine, but affection
whetted his wits and he observed the change in Hugh Treherne’s
appearance when it began to be so marked as scarcely to be imputed to
fluctuations in his malady.

“Why are you looking so down-in-the-mouth, Hugh?” he demanded one
morning after breakfast as he sprawled comfortably with his pipe before
the crackling fire, agreeable in the chill of the early December day
despite the bland golden sunshine of the southern winter. Treherne cast
at him a glance helplessly terrified, like a child in the face of
danger, and said not a word. “You are losing your relish for country
life, I am afraid,” the Colonel went on. “Why, you haven’t put your foot
in stirrup for a week. Why don’t you take your horse out for a canter?”

The hearty genial tones opened the floodgates of confidence. It was
impossible for Treherne to resist the look of affectionate solicitude,
of kindly sympathy in those transparently candid eyes.

“Colonel,--I’m--I’m--afraid.”

“Zounds, sir. Afraid of what?”

“Capture,” the hunted creature replied succinctly.

“Why, look here, man,” the Colonel rallied him, “I really think you have
been captured before this time. How long were you in prison at Camp
Chase?”

“But, Colonel, this is different. I think my friends--my unfriends,--are
bent on restoring me to seclusion.”

“Doctor Vailer won’t receive you,--professional pride much lacerated by
the criticism of his course expressed by your precious relative, Tom
Treherne,--excuse me if I pause here to particularly curse him--and you
know when you touch a really learned technician of any sort on his
professional pride, you have got hold of his keenest susceptibility,
where he feels most acutely and most high-mindedly, the very nerves of
his soul, so to speak, his spiritual essence. Doctor Vailer won’t have
you.”

“But there are other alienists, other asylums in Mississippi.”

“And under your favor there is _me_ in Mississippi,--and there is the
law of the land. I tell you, Hugh, that Tom Treherne might as well try
to bottle up the Mississippi River as to incarcerate you again without
Doctor Vailer’s sanction, of course, so long as I am out of the
ground.”

Hugh Treherne stirred uneasily and crossed and uncrossed his legs as he
sat opposite the Colonel in a big mahogany chair before the frowsy
hearth where the ashes of nearly all the fires since fall set in were
banked behind the big tarnished brass dogs--the Colonel was no dainty
housekeeper, and deserved the frequent declaration that “de Cunnel don’t
know de diffunce.”

“People generally, Colonel, will approve the course of my relations,”
Treherne argued. “It will seem the proper thing as long as I
am--am--occasionally--absent.”

“Well, you are all here, now, in one piece,” declared the old man,
wagging his head with vehement emphasis.

“It will seem very generous of Tom Treherne to offer, to desire to
maintain me at his own expense at a high-priced private sanatorium,
since I have no means of my own.”

He paused, a bitter look of repulsion on his face. All these
years--these long years, the men of his own age, the compeers of his
youth, had been at work restoring their shattered fortunes, after the
terrible cataclysm of war that had wrecked the financial interests as
well as the face of the southern country, achieving eminence and
distinction in their varied lines of effort, life signifying somewhat of
attainment even to those of meanest ability, while he was gone to waste,
destroyed by his own gallant exploit; the blow of the sabre, the jeering
accolade of Fate, when he had triumphantly led his troop to the capture
of a strong battery, had consigned him to forty years of idleness,
helplessness, imprisonment, in effect. “Be brave, loyal, and
fortunate,” quotha.

He was silently revolving these reflections so long that Colonel
Kenwynton, puffing his pipe with gusto, declared:

“I’ll make Tom Treherne’s liberality look like thirty cents before I am
done with him. He can’t choke you off and hide you out because he is
afraid you might be troublesome to _him_ in the future,--dispose of you
for good and all,--not while I am alive. Why, damme, man, you commanded
a troop in my regiment.”

“If he should once more lay hands on me I could never get away from him
and his precautions and anxieties, and considerations for the safety of
the public and open-handed generosity. And, Colonel, you might not know
where he had stowed me away next time.”

“Hoh,” snorted the Colonel, “I never lose sight of you longer than
between breakfast and dinner. I’d be on his track with every detective
in the State before dark. Why, Hugh, I’m a moneyed man. I’d take
advantage of your absence to mortgage that little tract of land out
yonder bare of all encumbrance, and I’d spend the last nickel of it
making publicity for Tom Treherne. _He_ isn’t going to spend any money
except for his own objects. Now, boots and saddles! Time for you to be
on the march!”

In two hours Treherne was back again, with a flush on his face and a
light in his eyes, bearing the mail, for which he had ridden to the
nearest town, and this contained matters of interest both for him and
the Colonel. It was, indeed, a rare occurrence when he received a
letter--in forty years he could count the missives on the fingers of
one hand. To-day the post brought him one addressed directly to him by
Adrian Ducie, although the counsel for the two brothers wrote instead to
Colonel Kenwynton. In common with all people of advancing years,
Treherne was continually impressed with the superiority of the methods
of the past in comparison with those of to-day. He noted the courtesy,
the consideration of the tone of the letter, and at once likened it to
the manner of the writer’s boy uncle, who had been his chum and comrade
in the ancient days. His heart warmed to the perception of tact which
had induced this one of the brothers to write who had been present at
the finding of the box and the valuable papers, that it was hoped would
return to the Ducie heirs the estate which had been so long wrested from
them. Adrian and Randal had both taken care on that occasion to express
their deep appreciation of the efforts of Archie Ducie’s friend to
restore to them their rights, although they had been the victims of his
disqualified memory. But now Adrian repeated their realization of the
extreme and friendly interest which had caused this object to so
persistently cling to the mind and intention of Captain Treherne, and
asked if he would object to giving testimony in a sort which the counsel
recommended, immediately after the filing of the bill for the recovery
of the property, a proceeding _de bene esse_, to be used in case of
death or a recurrence of a malady which would prevent the taking of his
deposition in the regular proceedings in the cause.

It was a difficult letter to write, a delicate proposition to make, and
it was done with a simple directness, a lack of circumlocution which
might imply that Adrian Ducie thought it a usual matter that gentlemen
could be seized with a recurrence of acute mania, obstructing the course
of business, and tending to impede justice. Treherne declared that it
was exactly the sort of letter that Archibald Ducie would have written,
and he was eager to comply with the request.

“Only,” he began, and paused abruptly.

“Only what?” asked the Colonel, looking up with grizzled eyebrows drawn.

“You don’t know how--how baffling it is to talk, to speak, when you are
aware that everybody is all the time disparaging every word as insanity.
Even you could scarcely hold your own under such circumstances.”

“I could,” declared the Colonel hardily. “I’d know that nine out of
every ten men are crazy anyhow, with no lucid intervals,--natural fools,
born fools--fools for the lack of sense,--only,” with a crafty leer,
“the rest of the fellows are so looney themselves that nobody has found
it out.”

Treherne laughed, and the Colonel went on with his prelection.

“Never stop to consider what people will think, Hugh. They will think
what they damn please. It is the root of most of the troubles that beset
this world,--trying to square our preferences and duty to what people
will think.”

Thus the testimony _de bene esse_ was taken, Captain Treherne’s story
from the beginning;--his part in the concealment of the treasure at
Duciehurst, assisting his friend and comrade Archibald Ducie; his
knowledge of the nature of the papers among the jewels; the early death
of his friend; his own wound and his consequent mental disability; his
incarceration for forty years in an insane asylum; his recent recovery
of memory, and his resolve to right this wrong which impelled him to
make his escape from Glenrose; his meeting with Colonel Kenwynton; the
strange attack he sustained from unknown miscreants after quitting the
sand-bar; the transit, bound and gagged, to Duciehurst, supplemented by
the circumstances of his liberation by Colonel Kenwynton and Adrian
Ducie. The affidavit of the alienist as to his lucid condition at the
time and his present mental reliability completed the proceedings.

This was merely a precautionary measure, designed to guard against a
relapse of Captain Treherne into his malady. The Ducie heirs had already
made formal demand for the restoration of their ancestral estate,
alleging the full satisfaction of the indebtedness, recording the
release of the mortgage and the quit-claim deed, and bringing suit
against all in interest.




CHAPTER XVI


Floyd-Rosney could scarcely restrain his fury when the papers were
served upon him. The whole subject had grown doubly distasteful because
of its singular connection with his domestic concerns. He could not fall
to so poor spirited a plane as to imagine that his wife preferred
another man--he was too ascendant in his own estimation to harbor the
thought. Logic, simple, plain common sense, forbade the conclusion. She
had thrown this man over for him years ago at the first summons. He did
not esteem his wealth as the lure; it was only an incident of his other
superlative advantages. She had not seen the discarded lover since, yet
from the moment of the appearance of the facsimile brother was
inaugurated a change in her manner, her conversation, the very look in
her eyes, which he could not explain, except as the result of old
associations which he did not share, antagonistic to his interest and
his domestic peace.

She had very blandly explained on the first opportunity, volunteering
the communication, indeed, the mystery of the return of the key--an old
_gage d’amour_, a trifle--the slightness of which he mentally conceded,
for he had large ideas in _bijouterie_. She did not wish to keep it, nor
to send it back without explanation; in fact, she was not willing to
return it at all except in her husband’s presence.

“Dear me, you need not have been so particular,” he declared
cavalierly. “A matter of no importance.”

She had magnified it in her fear of him till it loomed great and
menacing. She felt cheapened and crestfallen by his manner of receiving
the disclosure. Yet he had marked the occurrence, she was sure; he had
resented it--though he now flouted it as a trifle. This added to her
respect for him, and it riveted the fetters in which he held her.

The inauguration of the suit to rip up and annul the ancient
foreclosure, the many irritating questions as to whether the lapse of
time could be pleaded in bar of the remedy, whether disabilities could
be brought forward to affect the operation of the statute of
limitations, what line of attack would be pursued by the Ducie brothers,
all wrought him almost to a frenzy. He could scarcely endure even
canvassing with his lawyers the points of his adversary’s position. Any
intimation of the development of possible strength on their part
affected him like the discovery of disloyalty in his counsel. More than
once the senior of these gentlemen saw fit to explain that this effort
to probe the possibilities, to foresee and provide against the maneuvers
of the enemy, to weigh the values in their favor, was not the result of
conviction, but merely to ascertain the facts in the case.

The counsel, in closer conference still, closeted together, canvassed in
surprise and disaffection the difficulty of handling their client, and
the best method of avoiding rousing from his lair the slumbering lion of
his temper. It was a case involving so much opportunity of distinction,
of professional display, as well as heavy fees, that they were loath to
risk public discomfiture because Mr. Floyd-Rosney was prone to gnash his
teeth at a mere inquiry which bore upon one of the many sensitive points
with which the case seemed to bristle. He was as prickly as a porcupine,
and to stroke him gently required the deftness of a conjurer. At the
most unexpected junctures this proclivity of sudden rage, of
unaccountable discomfiture broke forth, amazing and harassing the
counsel, who, with all their perspicacity, could not perceive, lurking
in the background of Floyd-Rosney’s consciousness, the mirage of his
wife’s ancient romance, more especially as he himself could not justify
its formulation on the horizon.

As Floyd-Rosney was accustomed to handle large business interests and
was ordinarily open to any proposition of a practical nature,
conservative in his views, and close and accurate in his calculation of
chances, his attitude in this matter mystified his co-adjutors, who had
had experience hitherto in his affairs and were versed in his peculiar
characteristics. The legal firm had come to avoid speaking of any point
that might redound to the advantage of the opponent, unless, indeed,
there was some bit of information necessary to secure from Floyd-Rosney.
Thus matters had been going more smoothly, save that he was wont to come
to the conferences with his counsel bearing always a lowering brow and a
smoldering fire in his surly, brown eyes. It flared into open flame when
one day Mr. Stacey, the senior counsel, observed:

“They will, doubtless, call Mrs. Floyd-Rosney.”

The client went pale for a moment, then his face turned a deep purplish
red. Twice he sought to speak before he could enunciate a word.

“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” he sputtered at length. “As their witness? It is
monstrous! I will not suffer it! It is monstrous!”

“Oh, no; not at all.”

Mr. Stacey had a colorless, clear-cut face of the thin, hatchet-like
type. His straight hair, originally of some blonde hue, had worn sparse,
and neither showed the tint of youth nor demanded the respect due to the
bleach of age. It seemed wasted out. He was immaculately groomed and was
very spare; he looked, somehow, as if in due process of law he had been
ground very sharp, and had lost all extraneous particles. There seemed
nothing of Mr. Stacey but a legal machine, very cleverly invented, and,
as he sat in his swivel chair, his thin legs crossed, he turned a bit
from his desk, intently regarding Mr. Floyd-Rosney, who was thrown back
in a cushioned armchair beside him, flanked by the great waste-paper
basket, containing the off-scourings of the lawyer’s desk. Mr. Stacey’s
light gray eyes narrowed as he gazed,--he was beginning to see into the
dark purlieus of his client’s reasonless conduct.

“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney is perfectly competent to testify in the case.” Mr.
Stacey wore a specially glittering set of false teeth which made no
pretense to nature, but gave effect to his clear-clipped enunciation.
“Her deposition will certainly be taken by them.”

“As against her husband?” foamed Floyd-Rosney in vehement argument. “She
can be introduced _by_ her husband to testify in his behalf, but not
_against_ him, except in her own interest, as you know right well.”

“That incompetency is limited to the Mississippi law as regards third
persons, in the case of husband and wife. But in the proceedings in
reference to the Tennessee property the local statutes will obtain,--she
can testify against her husband’s interest and, in my opinion, will be
constrained to do this.” After this succinct, dispassionate statement
Mr. Stacey paused for a moment; then, in response to Floyd-Rosney’s
stultified bovine stare, as in speechless amazement, he went on with a
tang of impatience in his tone. “Why, you know, of course, there is a
bit of Tennessee property involved,--that small business house in South
Memphis,--I forget, for the moment, the name of the street. You are
aware that in the foreclosure proceedings nearly forty years ago the
plantation and mansion house of Duciehurst were bid in for the estate of
the mortgagee, but as the amount of the highest bid at the sale did not
equal the indebtedness in the shrunken condition of real estate values
at that time, the executors pursued and subjected other property of the
mortgagor for the balance due, this Tennessee holding being a part of
it, and the Ducies now contend that the debt having been previously
fully satisfied and paid in full, this whole proceeding was null and
void from the beginning. They bring suit for all in sight. Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney can testify in their interest under the Tennessee
statutes.”

Floyd-Rosney sprang up and strode across the room, coming flush against
the waste-paper basket as he threw himself once more into his chair,
overturning the papers and scattering them about the floor. He took no
notice of them, but the tidy Stacey glanced down at the litter, though
with an inscrutable eye.

“Oh, I’ll get her out of the country. They shall not have her testimony.
They shall not call her as their witness. She has been wanting a trip to
the Orient--she shall go--at once--at once!”

Mr. Stacey very closely and critically examined a paper knife that had
been lying on the table. Then, putting it down, he rejoined, without
looking at Floyd-Rosney, who was scarcely in case to be seen, the veins
of his forehead swollen and stiff, his face apoplectically red, his eyes
hot and angry: “They can have her deposition taken in a foreign
country.”

“If they can find her,” said Floyd-Rosney in prophetic triumph. “But
they would not take the time for that.”

“Why, you don’t reflect,” said the lawyer very coolly, “the cause may
not come to trial for two or three years. In view of the usual delays,
continuances and the like, you could not expatriate her for that length
of time.”

Floyd-Rosney’s face was a mask of stubborn conviction as he replied:

“The Ducies will want to race the matter through. They claim that they
and their predecessors have been wrongfully kept out of their own for
forty years. They will think that is long enough. _I_ won’t make delays.
The question is a legal one, and can be decided on the jump--yes or no.
The case can come to trial at the April term of the court, and by that
time Mrs. Floyd-Rosney will be in Jerusalem or Jericho.”

“This will damage your position in the case, Mr. Floyd-Rosney,” urged
the lawyer. “I think, myself, that it is a particularly valuable point
for you that it should be your wife, who, at considerable risk and in a
very dramatic manner, discovered and secured these family jewels and
papers, knowing what they were and that they threatened the title of her
husband, and restored them to the complainants. It proves your good
faith in your title--the foreclosure of the mortgage in ignorance of the
outstanding release. Your wife as their witness is a valuable witness
for us, and the motives of your contention being thus justified there
remains nothing but the question of title to come before the court.”

“All that rigamarole can be proved by other witnesses,” said
Floyd-Rosney doggedly. “There were twenty people who saw her come
bouncing down the stairs with the box and give it to Adrian Ducie.”

There is a species of anger expressed in unbecoming phraseology. Mr.
Stacey made no sign, but the words “rigamarole,” applied to his own
lucid prelection, and “bouncing” to the gait of the very elegant Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney, did not pass unnoted.

“I am sure the case on neither side can be ready for the April
term,--the docket is crowded and there is always the possibility of
continuances.”

“There are to be no continuances on our side,” declared Floyd-Rosney,
both glum and stubborn; “I don’t choose that my wife shall testify in
their interest. She goes to the Orient, and stays there till the
testimony is all in and the case closed.”




CHAPTER XVII


The season had opened in a whirl of social absorption for Paula, once
more established in their city house for the winter. She had never known
her husband so interested in these functions nor so solicitous that her
entertainments should be characterized by a species of magnificence that
would once have dazzled and delighted her, but that now seemed only to
illustrate his wealth and predominance. He was critical and fretful
because of small, very small, deficiencies, as--some flower being
unattainable that one less costly should be used in decoration, or a
shade of an electrolier being broken that another, dissimilar to the
rest in design, should be temporarily substituted. Her own toilets were
submitted to his scrutiny and preference, and when she revolted, saying
that she knew far more of such matters than he did, he lapsed into surly
dissatisfaction. Once he spoke of a costume of delicate, chaste elegance
as “common”--“nothing on it.” Then he added significantly, “You ought to
have married a poor man, Paula, if that is your taste.”

She held the gown up when she was disrobing afterward and examined its
points. She saw that the effect could have been duplicated in simple
materials costing a trifle; thus beautifully and gracefully could she
have gowned herself if she _had_ married a poor man as once she had
thought to do.

Of her own initiative she could not have given the series of dinners of
which the lavish richness astonished, as was intended, the guests, and
of which, strangely enough, she was tired before they began. More than
once, as she took up her position beside her husband in the glittering
drawing-room, hearing the approach of the first of the guests, he said
to her in a low voice, the tone like a pinch: “Don’t seem so dull,
Paula--you have gone off awfully in your looks lately, and that gown is
no good. For Heaven’s sake be more animated, and not so much like a rag
doll.” It was poor preparation to meet the coterie of men and women
keyed to a high pitch of effort toward charm and brilliancy, as doing
honor to the occasion, their hosts, and themselves. A large ball was
also among the functions he planned, to be given in compliment to
Hildegarde Dean, whose beauty he affected to admire extravagantly. He
had remembered his wife’s obvious jealousy of her attractions when
Randal Ducie had seemed interested and delighted, and it did not soothe
his unquiet spirit to note that now she had no grudging, but joined
ardently in making the festivity a great success and an elaborate
tribute to the reigning belle and beauty. She was required to invite the
wives of certain men whom he desired to compliment,--yet who were not of
his list of dinner guests,--to luncheons, and teas, and afternoon
receptions, till she was tired out with the meaningless routine and sick
at heart. Yet this was what she had craved--all her dream come true,
pressed down and running over. Why had it no longer an interest for her?
Was it sheer satiety, or was it that naught is of value when love has
flown. And it had gone--even such poor semblance as had worn its name
had vanished. She could not delude herself, though she might make shift
to masquerade in such wise that he should not know. She hoped for this,
for she had begun to fear him. He was so arrogant, so self-sufficient,
so dominant, so coercive. She feared his frown, his surly slumbrous
eyes, his hasty outbursts of gusty temper.

One evening in this arid existence, this feast of dead-sea fruit, there
was on hand no social duty--the pretty phrase for the empty
frivolity--and she was glad of it. It was a gala night at the opera, for
a star of distinction was to sing in a Wagnerian rôle, and the
Floyd-Rosneys would occupy their box, according to their habit when
aught worth while was billed. She was dressed for the occasion and
awaiting him in the library, but he had not yet come in. She was more
placid than her wont of late, for she realized that it would rest her
nerves to be still and listen, a respite, however brief, from the
tiresome round; and she had just come from the nursery where the baby
was being put to bed--very playful, and freakish, and comical. She had
been laughing with him, and at him, and the glow of this simple
happiness was still warm in her heart when the door opened and her
husband entered. He was not yet dressed for the evening, and, as she
looked her surprise, he responded directly:

“No,--we are not going.”

He often changed his plans thus, regardless of her preferences, and she
had grown so plastic to his will that she was able to readjust her
evening or her day without regard to her previous expectations.

The spacious room might have seemed the ideal expression of a home of
culture and affluence. The walls were lined with books from floor to
ceiling, unbroken save where a painting of value and distinction was
inserted, special favorites of their owner, and placed here where his
eyes might constantly rest upon them, rather than consigned to the
gallery of his art treasures. The furniture was all of a fashion
illustrating the extremity of luxury,--such soft cushions, such elastic
springs, such deep pile into which the feet sunk treading the Oriental
rugs. Not a sound from the street nor from any portion of the house
could penetrate this choice seclusion, and over the fireplace, where the
hickory logs flared genially, the legend “Fair Quiet, have I found thee
here?” was especially accented by a finely sculptured statue of Silence,
her finger on her lip, which stood on its pedestal at a little distance
from the deep bay of a window.

The beautiful woman, in the blended radiance of the electric light and
the home-like blaze, seemed as one of the favored of the earth. She had
dressed with great care, and her gown of lavender gauze over satin of
the same shade, with a string of fine pearls about her throat and
another in her fair hair, could scarcely have incurred his unfavorable
criticism. Her gloves of the same tint lay ready on the table and an
evening cloak of white brocaded satin hung over a chair. Great pains and
some time such a toilette cost; but she had learned never to count
trouble if peace might ensue.

She was prepared to be left in ignorance of his reason for a change of
plans, but he seemed, this evening, disposed to explain. He came and
stood opposite to her, one hand lifted on the shelf of the massive
mantel-piece, while he held his hat with the other. He was still in his
overcoat, its collar and lining of fur bringing out in strong relief
the admirable points of his handsome face, its red and white tints, the
brilliancy of his full lordly eyes, the fine shade of his chestnut hair.
He was notably splendid this evening, vitally alert, powerful of aspect,
yet graceful, all the traits of his manly beauty finished with such
minutely delicate detail. She noticed the embellishment of his aspect,
as if the evident quickening of his interest in some matter had enhanced
it, and she remembered a day--long ago, it seemed, foolish and transient
when she had had a proud possessory sentiment toward this fair outer
semblance of the identity within, so little known to her then, so
overwhelming all other attributes of his personality.

She did not ask a question--she was too well trained by experience. He
would tell her if he would; if not, it was futile to speculate as to his
intentions.

“Well, the Oriental tour is _un fait accompli_,” he said, smiling. “You
sail within the week.”

She started in surprise. She had definitely been denied this desire,
which she had once harbored, on the score of all others most seemingly
untenable--expense. But it was her husband’s habit to make everything
inordinately costly. He would not appear in public except _en prince_,
nor travel abroad save with a most elaborate and extensive itinerary and
a suite of attendants.

“This week--why--I don’t know----” she hesitated. “I suppose--I can get
ready.”

“Oh, you will scarcely need any preparation,” he said cavalierly. “Any
old things will answer.”

This was so out of character with his wonted solicitude in small
matters that she was surprised and vaguely agitated. She saw a quiver in
the tip of her dainty lavender slipper, extended on a hassock before her
in the relaxed attitude she had occupied, and she withdrew it that the
disquietude of her nerves might not be noticed. She raised herself to an
upright posture in her chair before she replied in a matter-of-fact
tone.

“I wasn’t alluding to dress. What I am wearing here will answer, of
course--but I was thinking of the arrangements for the nurse. Will we
take his old colored nurse, or do you suppose she would not be equal to
the requirements of the trip? Had Elise better go in her place?”

“Oh, that cuts no ice. For the baby won’t go at all,” he replied, as
simply as if this were an obvious conclusion.

She sat petrified for one moment. Then she found her voice--loud and
strong and definite.

“The baby won’t go!” she exclaimed. “Then I won’t go--not one foot! What
do you take me for?”

“For a sensible woman,” he retorted.

He looked angry, as always, when opposed, but not surprised. He had
evidently anticipated her objection, and he controlled himself with care
unusual to his ungoverned temper. “Who wants to go dragging a child
three years old all around Europe and the Holy Land! You won’t be gone
more than a year!”

“A year! Why, Edward--are you crazy? To think I would leave the baby for
a year! No--nor a month! No--nor a day! He has scarcely been out of my
sight for two hours together since he was born.”

“How many women leave their children to take a trip abroad,” he argued,
and she began to feel vaguely that he would much prefer that she should
agree peaceably--he was even willing to exert such self-control as was
necessary to persuade her.

“Never--never would I,” she declared, “and he would be miserable without
me.”

“Not with me here,” her husband urged. “He is pleased to regard me with
considerable favor.” And he bent upon her his rare, intimate,
confidential smile.

For, unknown to him, she had been at great pains to build up a sort of
idolatry of his father in the breast of the little boy, such as children
usually feel without prompting. He was taught to disregard
Floyd-Rosney’s averse, selfish inattention, to rejoice and bask in the
sun of his favor, to run to greet him with pretty little graces, to
admire him extravagantly as the finest man in all the world, to regulate
his infantile conduct by the paternal prepossessions, being stealthily
rewarded by his mother whenever his wiles attained the meed of praise.

Paula looked dazed, bewildered.

“You know, dearest, I am held here by the pressure of that villainous
lawsuit, and as it will absorb all my leisure I thought that now is your
chance for your Oriental tour--for I really don’t care to go again, and
you may never have another opportunity.”

He paused, somewhat at a loss. She was leaning forward, gazing at him
searchingly.

“What _can_ possess you to imagine for one moment that I would go
without the boy! What is the Orient to me--or my silly fad for Eastern
travel! I wish my tongue had been withered before I ever spoke the
word!”

“Why, you talk as if I were proposing something amazing--abnormally
brutal. Don’t other women leave their children?”

“But with their mothers, or some one who stands in that tender,
solicitous relation,--and I have no mother!” Her words ended in a wail.

“But he will be with me--and surely I care for him as much as you do,”
he argued, vehemently.

“But why can’t I take him with me,” she sought to adjust the difficulty,
“even though the pleasure of the trip is lost if you don’t go?”

“Because--because,” he hesitated. “Because I cannot bear the separation
from him,” he declared bluntly. “I am afraid something--I don’t know
what--might happen to him. I know I am a fool. I couldn’t bear it.”

His folly went to her heart in his behalf as nothing else could have
done. This evidence of his love for the child, his son and hers, atoned
for a thousand slights and tyrannies which she forgave on the spot. Her
brow cleared, her face relaxed, her cheek flushed.

“Aha!” she cried jubilantly, “you know how it feels, too!” She gleefully
shook her fan at him. “We will let the trip to the Orient drop, now and
forever. I can’t go without little Edward, and you”--she gave him a
radiant, rallying smile--“can’t spare him, so we will just stay at home
and see as much of each other as the old lawsuit will let you. And what
I want to know,” she added, with a touch of indignation, “is, why do
those lawyers of yours allow the matter to harass you? It is their
business to take the care of it off your shoulders.”

He stood silent throughout this speech, changing expressions flitting
across his face, but it hardened upon the allusion to the lawsuit and
his vacillation solidified into resolve.

“Come, Paula, this talk is idle; the matter is arranged. The Hardingtons
start for New York to-morrow, and sail as soon as they strike the town.
Mrs. Hardington says she will be enchanted to have you of her party, and
I have telegraphed and received an answer engaging your stateroom on the
ship. Your section in the Pullman is also reserved,--couldn’t get the
stateroom on the train--already taken, hang it.”

She had risen to her feet and was gazing at him with a sort of averse
amazement, once more pale and agitated, and with a strange difficulty of
articulation. “Why, Edward, what do you mean? Why should you want to get
me out of the country? There’s something behind all this, evidently.”
She noted that he winced by so slight a token as the flicker of an
eyelash. “You know that I would not consent to go without my child for
any earthly consideration.”

“I know no such thing, as I have told you,” he retorted hotly. “The
arrangements are all made. Your passage is taken. I have ready your
letter of credit. I do think you are the most ungrateful wretch alive,”
he exclaimed, his eyes aglow with anger. “A beautiful and costly trip,
that you have longed for, planned out for you in every detail, and
you----” he broke off with a gesture of repudiation.

“I wouldn’t be separated from my child for one night for all the
jauntings about the globe that could be devised,” she declared.

Floyd-Rosney suddenly lost all self-control. “Well, you certainly will
be separated from him for one night--for many nights,--for he is gone!”

“Gone?” She sprang forward with a shriek and started toward the door.
Then with a desperate effort to compose herself she paused even in the
attitude of flight. “For God’s sake, Edward, where has he gone? What do
you mean?”

“He has been sent to the place where I propose to have him cared for in
your absence. Knowing that your time is short I tried to smooth the
way.”

“But where?--where?”

“Where you shall not know,--you shall not follow. You may as well make
up your mind to take the trip.”

She seemed taller, to tower, as she drew herself up in her wrath,
standing on the threshold in the ghastly incongruity of her festival
evening gown and her tragic face. “Oh, you brute!” she shrilled at him.
“You fiend!”

Then she turned and fled through the great square hall and up the
massive staircase to the nursery that she had quitted so lately, that
had been so full of cheer and cosy comfort and infantile laughter and
caresses.

The room was empty now. The fire was low in the grate, seen through the
bars of the high fender that kept the little fellow from danger of
contact with the flames. The dull, spiritless, red glow of the embers
enabled her to discern the switch to turn on the electric light, and
instantly the apartment sprang into keen visibility. The bed was
vacant, the coverlets disarranged where the child had been taken thence,
doubtless after he had fallen asleep. The drawers of the bureau, the
doors of the wardrobe stood ajar, the receptacles ransacked of all his
little garments, his hats and shoes. Evidently a trunk had been packed
in view of a prolonged absence while she had sat downstairs in the
library, all unconscious of the machinations in progress against her in
her own home. She was numb with the realization of the tremendous import
of the situation. She could not understand the motive--she only
perceived the fact. It was her husband’s scheme to get her out of the
country, and he had fancied that he could force her to go without her
child. She took no account of her grief, her fears, the surging anguish
of separation. She was saying to herself as she turned into her own room
adjoining that she must be strong in this crisis for the child’s sake,
as well as her own. She must discern clearly, and reason accurately, and
act promptly and without vacillation. If she should remain here she
might be seized and on some pretext coerced into leaving the country on
that lovely trip which he had planned for her. She burst into a sudden
bitter laugh, and the sound startled her into silence again. When had
her husband ever planned aught for her save to serve some purpose of his
own? She would not go--she would not, she said over and over to herself.
Her determination, her instinct were to ascertain where the child had
been hidden, and if possible to capture him; if not to be near, on the
chance of seeing him sometimes, to watch over him, to guard him from
danger. In her self-pity at this poor hope the tears welled up and she
shook with sobs. But on this momentary collapse ensued renewed strength.
It might be, she thought, she could appeal to the law. She knew that her
husband’s was the superior claim to the child, but in view of his tender
years, his delicate health in certain respects, might not a court grant
his custody to his mother? At all events his restoration to her care was
henceforward her one object, and if she allowed herself to be forced out
of the country, to serve this unknown, unimagined whim of her cruel
husband’s, she might never see the child again.

A knock at the door startled her nerves like a clap of thunder. A maid
had come to say that dinner had been served--indeed the butler had
announced it an hour ago--and should it still wait?

“Have it taken down,” Paula said with stiff lips. “Mr. Floyd-Rosney will
not dine at home.”

For Paula had heard the street door bang as she fled up the stairs, and
she knew that he was not in the house. The girl gazed at her with a
sharp point of curiosity in her little black eyes as she obsequiously
withdrew. Despite the humility of the manner of her domestics Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney had not the ascendency in her household due a chatelaine so
magnificently placed. It was his wealth--she was an appendage. It was
his will that ruled, not hers. As the servants loved to remark to each
other, “She has got no more say-so here than me,” and the insecurity of
her authority and the veneer of her position affected unfavorably the
estimation in which she was held. The girl perceived readily enough that
a clash had supervened between the couple and sagely opined that the
master would have the best of it. Below stairs they ascribed to it the
strange removal of the child at this hour of the night and the change
in their employer’s plans for the evening. Their unrestrained voices
came up through doors carelessly left ajar, along with the clatter of
the dishes of the superfluous dinner, and Paula, with some unoccupied
faculty, albeit all seemed burdened to the point of breaking with her
heavy thoughts, realized that this breach of domestic etiquette could
never have chanced had the master of the house been within its walls.

As she hastily divested herself of her dainty evening attire, with
trembling fingers her spirits fell, her courage waned. No one would heed
her, she said to herself. What value would a court attach to her
representations as against the word and the will of a man of her
husband’s wealth and prominence? And how could she expect aught of aid
from any quarter? She had literally no individual position in the world.
She had no influence on her husband, no real hold on his heart. She
could command not one moment’s attention, save as his wife. Bereft of
his favor and countenance she would be more of a nullity than a woman,
poor but independent, working for a weekly wage. Truly Floyd-Rosney
could ship her out of the country as if she were a mare or a cow.
Decorum would forbid open resistance, for indeed if she clamored and
protested she could be sent with a trained nurse as the victim of
hysteria or monomania. She must get away. Her liberty was threatened.
Her will had long been annulled, but now she was to be bodily bound and
in effect carried whither she would not. Her liberty, her free agency
were at stake--not her life. Never, she thought, would he do a deed
that would react upon himself. She must be gone--and swiftly.

Perhaps Paula never realized the extent of her subjection until when
dressed in her dark coat suit with hat and gloves, her suitcase packed
with a few indispensable articles, she stood at her dressing table and
opened her gold mesh-bag with a sudden clutch at her heart to ascertain
what money she might have. Her white face, so scornful of herself,
looked back from the mirror, duplicating her bitter smile. She had not
five dollars in the world. Floyd-Rosney never gave money to his wife in
the raw, so to speak. All her extravagant appointments came as it were
from his hand. She could buy as she would on his accounts; she could
subscribe liberally to charities and public enterprises which he
countenanced, and he made her signature as good as his, but she could
never have undertaken the slightest plan of her own initiative. She had
no command of money. She could not go--she could not get away from under
his hand. She was as definitely a prisoner as if she were behind the
bars. Still looking scornfully, pityingly, distressfully at her pallid
image in the mirror, a strange thought occurred to her. She wondered if
she were Ran Ducie’s wife could she have been as poor as this. But she
must go--and quickly. For one wild moment she contemplated borrowing
from the servants the sum she needed. As she revolted at the degradation
she realized its futility. Their place in his favor was more secure than
hers--her necessity attested the tenuity of her position. They would not
lend money to her in order to thwart him. She looked at the strings of
pearls, the gold mesh-bag, and remembered the pawnbroker. Once more she
shivered back from her own thought. They were not hers, for her own.
They were for her to wear, to illustrate his taste, his liberality to
his wife, his wealth. She knew little of law, of life. This might be an
actual theft. But she must go--and go at once.

With her suitcase in her hand she stole down the stairs and softly let
herself out of the massive front door, closing it noiselessly behind
her, never for a moment looking up at the broad, tall façade of the
building that had been her home. She crossed the street almost
immediately, lest she encounter her husband returning with his plans
more definitely concluded and with a more complete readiness to execute
them.

The night was not cold, but bland and fresh, and she felt the vague stir
of the breeze like a caress on her cheek. The stars--they were strangers
to her now, so long it had been since she had paused to look upon
them--showed in a dark, moonless heaven high above the deep canyon of
the street. She walked rapidly, despite the weight of the suitcase, but
so long had it been since she had traversed the thoroughfares on foot
that she had forgotten the turnings--now the affair of the
chauffeur--and once she was obliged to retrace her way for a block. She
deprecated the loss of time and the drain upon her strength, but she was
still alert and active when she paused in the ladies’ entrance of a
hotel and stood waiting and looking about with her card in her hand. Oh,
how strange for her, accustomed to be so considered, so attended, so
heralded! She did not for the moment regret the coercion her splendors
were wont to exert. She only wondered how best to secure her object, if
she could not win the attention of the supercilious and reluctant
functionaries dully regarding her in the distance.

The lobby of the ladies’ entrance opened upon the larger space of the
office of the hotel, and here in a delicate haze of cigar smoke a number
of men were standing in groups about the tessellated marble floor, or
seated in the big armchairs placed at the base of the tall pillars. As
fixing her eyes on the clerk behind the desk she placed her suitcase on
the floor and started forward, he jangled a sharp summons on a hand
bell, and a bell-boy detached himself from the coterie that had been
nonchalantly regarding her, and loungingly advanced.

“Will you take that card to Mr. Randal Ducie?” she said, controlling her
voice with difficulty.

“Ain’t hyar,” airily returned the darkey. He was about to turn away from
this plainly dressed woman, who had no claim on any eagerness of service
when his eyes chanced to fall on a token of quality above her seeming
station. He suddenly noted the jeweled card case as she returned the
card to it, and the gold mesh bag, and he vouchsafed pleasantly:

“I noticed myse’f the announcement in the evenin’ paper, but it is his
brudder stoppin’ hyar.”

That moment her eyes fell upon Adrian Ducie standing in one of the
groups of men smoking in the office. Her impulse was like that of a
drowning creature clutching at a straw. Without an instant of
hesitation, without even a vague intention of appropriately employing
the intermediary services of the limp bell-boy, with a wild, hysteric
fear that a moment’s waiting would lose her the opportunity, she dashed
into the midst of the office, and, speechless, and pallid, and
trembling, she seized Adrian by the arm.




CHAPTER XVIII


Adrian Ducie looked in startled amazement down into her white, drawn
face with its hollow, appealing eyes, and quivering lips that could not
enunciate a word. He did not recognize her for one moment. Then his
expression hardened, and his gaze grew steady. With dextrous fingers he
took his hat from his head and his cigar from his lips with one hand,
for she held the other arm with a grip as of steel. The moony luster of
the electric lights shone down upon a scene as silent and as motionless
as if, Gorgon-like, her entrance had stricken it into stone; the groups
of men who had been smoking standing about the floor, the loungers in
the armchairs, the clerks behind the counter were for the moment as if
petrified, blankly staring.

“What can I do for you?” Adrian asked courteously, and the calm, clear
tones of his voice pervaded the silence like the tones of a bell.

In her keen sensitiveness she noted the absence of any form of greeting
or salutation. He would not call her name for the enlightenment of these
gazing strangers in this public place, in the scene she had made. Oh,
how could she have so demeaned herself, she wondered, as to need such
protection, such observance on his part of the delicacy she had
disregarded. She despised herself to have incurred the necessity, yet
with both her little gloved hands she clung to his arm with a convulsive
strength of grasp which he could not have shaken off without a struggle
that would have much edified the gazing crowd, all making their own
inferences as to the unknown significance of the scene. Such good
breeding as it individually possessed had begun to assert itself against
the shock and numbing effects of surprise, and there was the sound of
movement and the murmur of resumed conversation which induced Adrian
Ducie to hope that the one word she suddenly gasped had not been
overheard.

“Randal,” she began in a broken voice, and the look in his eyes struck
her dumb. They held a spark of actual fire that scorched every delicate
sensibility within her. But it was like the ignition of a fuse--it set
the whole train of gunpowder into potentiality. With sudden intention he
looked over his shoulder and signaled to a gentleman at a little
distance, staring, too, but not in the least recognizing Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney.

“We will go into the reception room and talk the matter over,” he said
decisively. “Colonel Kenwynton will give us the benefit of his advice.”

Colonel Kenwynton had been trained in the school of maneuvers and
strategy. Off came his hat from his old white head, and with a resonant
“Certainly! Certainly!” he advanced on the other side of Paula, who
noticed that he followed Ducie’s example and did not speak her name.
“Good evening, good evening, madam, I trust I see you well!” was surely
salutation enough to satisfy the most exacting requirements of
etiquette.

Scarcely able to move, yet never for one instant relaxing her hold on
Ducie’s arm, she suffered herself to be led, half supported, to the
reception room, where she sank into an armchair while Ducie stood
looking down at her.

“Oh, Mr. Ducie,” she cried plangently, “I had hoped to find Randal
here--his arrival was in the paper. I am in such terrible trouble, and I
know my old friend would feel for me. Oh, he loved me once! I know he
would help me now!”

“I will do whatever Randal could,” said Ducie. His voice was suave and
kind, but his face was stern, and doubtful, and inquiring.

“Oh, you look so like him--you might have a heart like his. But you are
not like him. Oh, I have not another friend in the world!”

Adrian thought she had not deserved to account Randal Ducie her friend.
But this was no occasion to make nice and formal distinctions. He only
said:

“Randal is not in town. But if you will give me the opportunity to be of
use to you, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, I will do anything I can.”

Both her auditors thought for a moment that she was insane when she
replied:

“I want you to lend me ten dollars.”

The two men exchanged a glance. Then Ducie heartily declared:

“Why, that is very easily done. But may I ask, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, what
use you wish to make of it?”

He was thinking the trifling sum was yet sufficient to work mischief if
she were under some temporary aberration.

“I want to go to my aunt’s place in the uplands of Mississippi--my old
home! Oh, how I wish I had never left it!”

She threw herself back in the chair and pressed her handkerchief to her
streaming eyes. “Mr. Ducie, I have fled from my husband’s house. He has
taken my child from me--spirited him away--and I don’t know where he is,
nor how he will be cared for. He is only three years old--oh, just a
little thing!”

“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, you must control your voice,” said Ducie,
embarrassed and reluctant. “I hate to say it--but you will bring the
whole house about us.”

Once launched on a recital of her woes she had acquired a capacity to
arrange her ideas, and was keenly noting the effect of her words. There
was no alacrity to produce the money she had requested as a loan,
corresponding to the prompt acquiescence of Adrian Ducie a moment or so
ago. She marveled in humble anxiety, not knowing that the two men
doubted her mental responsibility, and feared to trust her with money.

Her griefs, once released, strained for expression, and she went on in a
meek, muffled tone that brought the tears to the old Colonel’s pitying
eyes--his heart had grown very soft with advancing years--but Adrian
Ducie held himself well in hand and regarded her with critical
dispassionateness.

“My husband desires, for some reason which he does not explain, but
which I suspect, to get me out of the country.”

Once more Colonel Kenwynton and Ducie exchanged a covert glance of
comment.

“He has arranged an extensive European and Oriental tour for me--without
my child--leaving my child for a year at least. Why, Colonel Kenwynton,
tell me what would all the glories of foreign capitals and all the
associations of Palestine count for with me when the one little face
that I care to see is far away, and the one little voice I cannot hear!”

“Oh, my dear madam”--the Colonel had a frog in his throat--“surely Mr.
Floyd-Rosney would not insist. You must be mistaken!”

“Oh, it is all arranged--my passage taken; my letter of credit ready; my
party--such a gay party--made up and prepared to start to-morrow, the
Hardingtons----”

The Colonel’s face bore a sudden look of conviction.

“I recollect now--it had slipped my memory--Mr. Charles Hardington was
telling me this evening of the tour his family have in contemplation,
and he mentioned that they were to have the great pleasure of your
company, starting to-morrow.”

“Oh, but I will not go! I will not!” cried Paula, springing from her
chair and frantically clasping her hands. “I will not go without my
child! If you will not help me I will hide in the streets--but he could
find me and--as I have not one friend--he could lock me up as insane!”
She turned her wild eyes from one to the other. Then she broke into a
jeering laugh. “It would be very easy in this day to prove a woman
insane who does not prefer the tawdry follies and frivolities of gadding
and staring through Europe with a party of fashionable empty-pates to
the care and companionship of her only child. But I will not! I will not
be shipped out of the country!”

Adrian Ducie’s face had changed. He believed that Floyd-Rosney was
capable of any domestic tyranny, but however he moved the
responsibility involved in her appeal was great. He could not consign
her to whatever fate might menace her. Still, he dared not trust her
with money. She might buy poison, she might buy a pistol.

“Colonel, we must do something,” he declared. Then he turned to her.
“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” he said, “will you permit us, instead of handing
you the small amount you mentioned, to buy your ticket for your aunt’s
home and see you aboard the train?”

In one moment her face was radiant.

“Oh, if you only would! If you only would! I should bless and thank you
to the end of my days!”

Adrian Ducie, with a clearing brow, crossed the room and touched the
bell. The summons was answered so immediately as to suggest the
prompting of a lurking curiosity.

“Time-table,” said Ducie, and when it was brought he rid himself of the
officious bell-boy by commanding: “Taxi, at the ladies’ entrance.”

“We must be starting at once,” he said to Paula. “We have barely time to
catch the train. Bring the lady’s suitcase,” to the returning servant;
and to the veteran: “Come, Colonel, you will kindly accompany us.”

Then they took their way out into the night.

Paula felt as if she trod on air. It had been so long since she had done
aught of her own initiative, so little liberty had she possessed, even
in trifles, that it gave her a sense of power to be able to carry any
plan of her own device into successful execution. She was suddenly
hopeful, calm, confident of her judgment, and restored to her normal
aspect and manner. As they stood for a moment on the sidewalk, while
the cab came chugging to the curb, she looked as with the eyes of a
restored vitality upon the familiar surroundings--the electric street
lights, the brilliant, equidistant points far down the perspective, the
fantastic illuminated advertisements, the tall canyon of the buildings,
the obstructive passing of a clanging, whirring street car, and then she
was handed into the vehicle by Adrian Ducie. The next moment the door
banged, and she was shut in with the two who she felt were so
judiciously befriending her. The taxicab backed out into the street and
was off for Union Station at a speed as rapid as a liberal construction
of the law would allow.

There was no word said, and for that she was grateful. Her eyes stung as
if blistered by the bitter tears she had shed, but not for one moment
would she let the restful lids fall, lest the face of the man before her
vanish in the awakening from this dream of rescue. She watched the
fluctuations of light on Ducie’s countenance as the arc lamp at every
street intersection illuminated it, for she found a source of
refreshment in its singular likeness to the one friend, she told
herself, she had in the world. Adrian would not have lent himself as he
had done to her aid, she felt sure, were he not Randal’s brother. She
had been vaguely sensible of a reluctance that was to her inexplicable,
of a reserve in both the men before her, that seemed to her inimical to
her interest. She would venture no word to jar the accord they had
attained.

When the taxicab drew up at the Union Station the glare of lights, the
stir of the place enthused her. She was here at last, on her way,
success almost attained. She did not share Ducie’s sudden fever of
anxiety in noting the great outpouring of smoke from the shed where the
train stood almost ready to start, the resonance of its bell and the
clamors of the exhaust steam of the engine already beginning to jar the
air. He ran swiftly up the stair to the ticket office, leaving her with
Colonel Kenwynton, and was back almost immediately, taking her
protectively by the arm as he urged her along into the great shed. At
the gate she was surprised to see that he presented three tickets, but
he voluntarily explained, not treating her as an unreasoning child, as
was Floyd-Rosney’s habit, that he thought it best that he and the
Colonel should accompany her to the first station, to see her fairly
clear of the city. He was saying this as they walked swiftly down
between the many rows of rails in the great shed where a number of cars
were standing, and the train which she was to take was beginning to move
slowly forward.

Her heart sank as she marked its progress, but Ducie lifted his arm and
signed eagerly to the conductor just mounting the front step of the
Pullman. The train slowed down a bit; the stool was placed by the alert
porter, but the step passed before she could put her foot upon it. Ducie
caught her up and swung her to the next platform as it glided by, and
the two men clambered aboard as the cars went on.

They were laughing and elated as they conveyed her into its shelter.
Then a deep shade settled on the face of the Colonel.

“Why, my dear madam, you have no luncheon!” He regarded the suitcase
with reprobation, as affording no opportunities of refreshment, save of
the toilette.

“But, Colonel, I don’t lunch throughout the night,” she returned, with a
smile. “I shall be glad to sleep,” she added plaintively.

The Colonel looked disconsolate for a moment. Then he took a handsome
little flask from his pocket. “With my best compliments,” he said.

“But I don’t drink brandy, either,” she declared, strangely flattered,
“and I have no pistol pocket.”

“Tuck it in your suitcase,” he insisted seriously. “Something might
happen. You might--might--see fit to faint, you know.”

“Oh, no, I never faint,” she protested. “If I haven’t fainted so far I
shall hold my own the rest of the way.”

As they sat in the section which Ducie had reserved for her the Colonel
eyed him enigmatically, as if referring something for his approval. Then
he said bluffly:

“I am sorry I haven’t the ten dollars which you did us the honor to wish
to borrow. I have nothing less than a twenty, that you can get changed
by the conductor and return to me at your good pleasure. I’m getting
rich, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” he laughed gaily, at the incongruity of the
jest. “And I never carry anything but large bills.”

He took the little empty mesh bag from her hand and slipped the money in
it, despite her protest that she had now no need of it.

“It is never prudent to travel without an emergency fund,” he opined
sagaciously. “My affairs are managed by Hugh Treherne now, for a share
of the proceeds. He did not want any compensation at all, but I
insisted on it. Wonderful head for detail he has, Ducie. I’d go to the
asylum and stay there a term or two if it would educate me to make every
edge cut as he can.”

When they had alighted on the platform of the first station and stood
lifting their hats, as her pale face looked out of the window while the
train glided on, Colonel Kenwynton spoke his mind.

“She is as sane as I am, and a fine, well-bred woman. She has married a
brute of a husband, and if I were not such an excellent Christian,
Ducie, I don’t know what I wouldn’t wish might happen to him.”

Ducie said nothing. Floyd-Rosney was a distasteful subject that he was
averse to discuss. They took their places in the electric street car
which would whisk them back to town speedily, and, as the train slowly
backed on the switch, she saw them through the window, as yet the sole
occupants on the return run.




CHAPTER XIX


If Floyd-Rosney’s temper were less imperious, if he had had less
confidence in the dictates of his will, which he misconstrued as his
matured judgment, he could not have so signally disregarded the feelings
of others; if only in obedience to the dictates of policy, he could not
have been so oblivious of the possibility of adverse action,
successfully exploited.

Maddened by his wife’s revolt against his plans, futile though he deemed
it, he would not await her return from the nursery whither she had
hurried to verify his words. He burned with rage under the lash of her
fiery denunciation--“Brute!--Fiend!” How dared she! He wondered that he
had not beaten her with his clenched fists! He had some fear of being
betrayed into violence, some doubt of his own self-restraint that
induced him to rush forth into the street and evade her frenzied
jeremiad when she found the child was indeed gone.

What a fool of a woman was this, he was arguing before the banging of
the front door behind him had ceased to resound along the street. What
other one would turn down such a beautiful opportunity! As to leaving
the child--why, it would have been to any except the perverse vixen he
had married one of the special advantages of the outing--to be free for
a time of domestic cares, of maternal duties. Had he not over and over
heard women of her station congratulate themselves on a “vacation”--the
children loaded off on somebody, Heaven knows whom, or where, a matter
of minor importance. It was absolutely fantastic, the idea of dragging a
child of Edward’s age around Europe and the Orient for a year’s travel.
The very care of him, the necessary solicitude involved at every move,
would destroy all possibility of pleasure. The mere item of infantile
disorders was enough in itself to nullify the prospect. And he might die
of some of these maladies in a foreign country, deprived of his father’s
supervision and experience in the ways of the world.

Floyd-Rosney’s contention in the matter seemed to him eminently right
and rational. It was desirable that she should not testify in the suit,
he could not leave at this crisis, and she could not well take the child
with her. He would not risk his son and heir to the emergencies, the
vicissitudes of a year of foreign travel under the guidance merely of an
inexperienced and careless woman. Paula herself was like a child. He had
kept her so. Everything had been done for her. In any unforeseen,
disastrous chance she would be utterly helpless to take judicious action
and to protect the child from injury.

Floyd-Rosney was not more willing to be separated from the boy than the
mother herself. He had, indeed, no unselfish love for the child, but his
son’s beauty and promise flattered his vanity; the boy would be a credit
to his name. His prospects were so brilliant that in twenty years there
would be no young man in the Mississippi Valley who could vie with him
in fortune and position. Floyd-Rosney had gloated on the future of his
son. He was glad, he often said, that he was himself a young man, for he
would be but in the prime of life when Edward would come to his
majority. No dependent station would be his--to eat from his father’s
hand like a fawning pet. With an altruistic consideration,
uncharacteristic of him, the father had made already certain investments
in his son’s name, and these, though limited in character, by a lucky
stroke had doubled again and again, till he was wont to say proudly that
his son was the only capitalist he knew who had an absolutely safe
investment paying twenty per cent. He had a sort of respect for the boy,
as representing much money and many inchoate values. His infancy must be
carefully tended, his education liberal and sedulously supervised, and
when he should go into the world, representing his father’s name and
fortune, he should be worthy of both. Turn him over to Paula, in his
tender callowness, to be dragged about from post to pillar for her
behoof--he would not endure the idea.

As the cool air chilled his temper and the swift walk and change of
scene gave the current of his thoughts a new trend he began to be more
tolerant of her attitude in the matter. The truth was, he said to
himself, they each loved the child too dearly, were too solicitous for
his well being, to be willing to be separated from him, and, but for the
peculiar circumstances of this lawsuit, he would never have proposed it.
It was, however, necessary, absolutely necessary, and he would take
measures to induce Paula to depart on this delightful journey without
making public her disinclination. He had taken her, perhaps, too
abruptly by surprise. She was overcome with frenzy to discover that the
child was actually gone!--he should overlook her hasty words--though to
his temperament this was impossible, and he knew it; they were burned
indelibly into his consciousness. Never before, in all his pompous,
prosperous life had he been so addressed. But he would make an
effort--one more effort to persuade her; with a resolute fling he turned
to retrace his way, coming into the broad and splendid avenue on which
his palatial home fronted, he walked up the street as she was walking
down the opposite side.

He let himself in with his latch-key, closing the door softly behind
him. The great hall and the lighted rooms with their rich furnishings,
glimpsed through the open doors, looked strangely desolate. For one
moment silence--absolute, intense. Then a grotesque, unbecoming
intrusion on the ornate elegance--a burst of distant, uncultured
laughter from below stairs, and a clatter of dishes. Floyd-Rosney was
something of an epicure, and it was a good dinner that went down
untouched. The master of the house frowned heavily. He lifted his head,
minded to ring a bell and administer reproof. Then he reflected that it
well accorded with his interests that he should be supposed to be out of
the house while the interview with his wife was in progress. She had a
way of late of raising her voice in a keen protest that advertised
domestic discordances to all within earshot. “Let the servants carouse
and gorge their dinner; I’ll settle them afterward!” he said to himself
grimly, as he noiselessly ascended the stairs.

Once more silence--he could not hear even his own footfall. He had a
vague sense of solitude, of uninhabited purlieus. With a sudden rush of
haste he pushed open the door of the nursery, flaring with lights, but
vacant, and strode through to his wife’s room, to find it vacant, too.
He stood for a moment, mystified, anger in his eyes, but dismay, fear,
doubt clutching at his heart. What did this mean? He went hastily from
one to another of the suite of luxurious rooms devoted to her especial
use, but in none save one was any token of her recent presence. He stood
staring at the disarray. There was the gown of lavender gauze that she
had donned for the opera, lying on a chair, while the silk slip that it
had covered lay huddled on the floor. The slippers, hastily thrust off,
tripped his unwary step as he advanced into the room. On the dressing
table, glittering with a hundred articles of toilet luxury, lay the two
strings of costly pearls “where anyone might have stolen them”; he
mechanically reproved her lack of precaution. He strove to reassure
himself, to contend against a surging sense of calamity. What did this
signify? Only that the festivity of the evening relinquished she had
laid aside her gala attire. Her absence--it was early--she might have
gone out with some visitor; she might have cared to make some special
call, so seldom did they have an evening unoccupied. Despite the
incongruity of the idea with the recollection of her pale, drawn,
agonized face, the frenzy of her grief and rage, he took down the
receiver of the telephone and called up Hildegarde Dean. The moment the
connection was completed he regretted his folly. Over the wire came the
vibrations of a string-orchestra, and he recalled having noticed in the
society columns of the papers that Miss Dean was entertaining with a
dinner dance to compliment a former schoolmate. He had lost his poise
sufficiently, nevertheless, to make the query, “Is Mrs. Floyd-Rosney
there?” and had the satisfaction to be answered by the butler, in the
pomp and pride of the occasion: “No, sah. Dis entertainment is
exclusively for unmarried people.”

“The devil it is!” Floyd-Rosney exclaimed, after, however, cautiously
releasing the receiver.

His fuming humor was heightened by this _contretemps_, although a great
and growing dismay was vaguely shadowed in his eyes, like a thought in
the back of the mind, so to speak, too unaccustomed, too preposterous,
to find ready expression. He endeavored to calm himself, although he
lost no time in prosecuting his investigations. With a hasty hand he
touched the electric bell for his wife’s maid and impatiently awaited
the response. To his surprise it was not prompt. He stood amidst his
incongruous surroundings of gowns, and jewels, and slippers, and laces,
and revolving panels of mirrors, frowning heavily. How did it chance
that her service should be so dilatory? He placed his forefinger on the
button and held it there, and the jangling was still resounding below
stairs when the door slowly opened and the maid, with an air of
affronted inquiry, presented herself. Her face changed abruptly as she
perceived the master of the house, albeit it was like pulling a cloak of
bland superserviceableness over her lineaments of impudent protest.

“What do you mean by being so slow to answer this bell?” he thundered,
his angry eyes contemptuously regarding her.

“I came as soon as I heard it, sir. I think there must be something
wrong with the annunciator.”

“What do you mean by leaving your mistress’s gowns lying around, and her
room in this disorder?”

The girl’s beady eyes traveled in bewilderment from one article to
another of the turmoil of toilet accessories scattered about the
apartment. She had looked for a moment as if she would fire up at the
phrase “your mistress,” and she said with a slight emphasis on the
title:

“I didn’t know that Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had changed.”

“Where has she gone?”

Once more a dull and genuine bewilderment on the maid’s face.

“I am sure, sir, I don’t know--she didn’t ring for me.”

“I reckon you didn’t answer the bell,” Floyd-Rosney sneered. “She
couldn’t wait forever. She hasn’t my patience.”

The girl glowered at his back, but, mindful of the mirrors, forbore the
grimace so grateful in moments of disaffection to her type.

Floyd-Rosney was speaking through the house telephone.

“Have the limousine at the door--yes--immediately.”

The ready response of the chauffeur came over the wire.

“Now see what gown she wore, so that I can guess where to send for her.
A nice business this is--that Mrs. Floyd-Rosney can’t get hold of her
maid to change her dress and leave a message. I don’t doubt there is a
note somewhere, if I could find it.”

He affected to toss over the _mélange_ on the dressing-table. He even
looked at the evening paper lying on the foot-rest, which she had read
while her hair was being dressed for the opera.

As he did so an item of personal mention caught his attention. Mr.
Randal Ducie was in the city, doubtless in connection with the gathering
of planters to consult with the Levee Commission in regard to river
protection. A meeting would be held this evening at the Adelantado
Hotel.

This was the most natural thing in the world. Half the planters in the
river bottom were in active coöperation seeking to influence the Levee
Commission, or the State Legislature, or the Federal Government to take
some adequate measures to prevent the inundation of their cotton lands
by a general overflow of the great Mississippi River, according to the
several prepossessions relative to the proper plans, and means, and
agency to that end.

But as he read the haphazard words of the paragraph the blood flared
fiercely in Floyd-Rosney’s face; a fire glowed in his eyes, hot and
furious; his hand was trembling; his breath came quick. And he was well
nigh helpless even to conjecture if his wife’s absence had aught of
connection with this ill-starred appearance of the lover of her
girlhood. He--Edward Floyd-Rosney, baffled, hoodwinked, set at naught!
Could this thing be!

For one moment, for one brief moment, he upbraided himself. But for his
tyranny in sending off the child without her consent, without even
consulting her, but for his determination that, willing or no, she
should expatriate herself for a year, and, with neither husband nor
child, tour a foreign country in company of his selection they might
already be seated in their box at the opera, rapt by the concord of
sweet sounds in the midst of the most elegant and refined presentment of
their world, at peace with each other and in no danger of damaging and
humiliating revelations of domestic discord.

He heard the puffing of the limousine at the curb below the windows, and
he turned to the maid.

“I can find no scrape of a pen--no note here. Do you know what gown she
wore?”

The girl had made a terrifying discovery. As she fingered the skirts
hanging in the wardrobe, for she had thought first of the demi-toilette
of usual evening wear, she was reflecting on the gossip below stairs,
where it was believed that Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had not known of the
departure of her little son till he was out of the house, and where it
was surmised she would be all “tore up” when she should discover his
absence--so much she made of the boy. Aunt Dorothy had been given
permission to spend the night with her granddaughter who lived on the
opposite side of the river, a favorite excursion with the ancient
colored retainer. She was not popular with the coterie below stairs,
and, being prone to report what went amiss, would certainly have
notified her young mistress if any attempt had been made to spirit away
the child while in her charge. The maid had found naught missing from
among the dresses most likely to be worn on any ordinary occasion in the
evening, and she was turning away reluctantly to examine the boxes in
the closet where were stored those gowns of grander pretension,
designed for functions of special note. She had a discontented frown on
her face, for they were enveloped, piece by piece, in many layers of
tissue paper; she could not ascertain what was there and what was gone,
from the wrappers, save by actual investigation; among them were sachets
of delicate perfumes that must not be mixed; they had trains and
draperies difficult to fold, and berthas and sashes that must be laid in
the same creases as before--a job requiring hours of work, and useless,
for no gown of this sort could have been worn without assistance in
dressing, and for an occasion long heralded. As she closed the wardrobe
with a pettish jerk it started open the other door, and she paused with
an aghast look on her face. She was afraid of Mr. Floyd-Rosney when he
was angry.

“She has worn her coat-suit of taupe broadcloth,” she said in a bated
voice, and with a wincing, deprecatory glance at him, “and the hat to
match.”

Floyd-Rosney received this information in silence. Then--“Why do you
look like that, you fool?” he thundered.

“’C--c--cause,” stuttered the girl, “she has taken her suit-case--it was
always kept on the shelf here, packed with fresh lingerie, so she might
be ready for them quick little auto trips you like to go on so often,
and her walking boots is gone”--holding up a pair of boot-trees,--“and,”
opening a glove box, “the suède taupe gloves is gone.” Her courage
asserted itself; her temper flared up. “And it seems to me, Mr.
Floyd-Rosney, that if there’s any fool here, ’taint me!”

“You will be paid your wages to-morrow,” foamed Floyd-Rosney, dashing
from the room. “Clear out of the house.”

“Just as well,” the girl said to the gaping servants downstairs, who
remonstrated with her for her sharp tongue, reproaching her with
throwing away a good place, liberal wages and liberal fare. “Just as
well. If there’s to be no lady there’s no use for a lady’s maid.”

“To the Union Station,” Floyd-Rosney hissed forth as he flung himself
into the limousine. In the transit thither he took counsel within
himself. Where could Paula be going?--Only on some fantastic quest for
her child. He ran over, in his mind, any hint that he might have let
drop as to the locality where he had bestowed him, and she, putting two
and two together, had fancied she had discovered the place. If, by any
coincidence, she had hit upon the boy’s domicile, he told himself, he
would make no protest; he would let her have her way; he would give the
world for all to be between them as it was this afternoon. As to the
lawsuit--let come what might! If only he could intercept her in this mad
enterprise; if he could reach her before she took the train! He called
through the speaking tube to the chauffeur to go faster.

“Never mind the speed limit--do all you know how!”

Presently the great vehicle slowed up, panting and sizzling as if winded
in the race. He sprang out before it had ceased to move and rushed up
the stairs, patrolling the various apartments, the ladies’ waiting room,
the refreshment room--he remembered that she could have had no
dinner--the general ante-room, with its crowd of the traveling public.
He was a notable figure, with his splendid appearance, his fur-lined
overcoat, his frowning, intent brow, his long, swift stride.

All in vain--she was not there. The clamor of the train that was making
ready for departure struck his absorbed attention. The place was full of
the odor of the bituminous smoke from the locomotive; he heard the
panting of the steam exhaust.

Floyd-Rosney rushed down the stairs and into the great shed which
seemed, with its high vaulted roof, clouded with smoke dull and dim,
despite the glare here and there of electric lights. He was stopped in
the crowd at the gate. He had no ticket--money could not buy it here. He
explained hastily that he wished to see a friend off. The regulations
were stringent, the functionary obdurate; the crowd streaming through
the gate disposed to stare, and a burly policeman, lounging about,
regarded the insistent swell with an inimical glare. For there are those
dressed like swells that are far from that puffed-up estate.

The suggestion calmed Floyd-Rosney for the nonce. It needed but this, he
felt, to complete his folly--to involve himself in a futile fracas with
a gateman and a cop. Moreover, he had no justification in fancying that
Paula was likely to take a train--in fact, and he smiled grimly, she
would not have the cash to buy a ticket. The whole theory that she might
quit the city was a baseless fabrication of his fears, of the disorder
of his ideas induced by the vexatious and unexpected _contretemps_.
Doubtless, by this time she had returned from the stroll or the call, or
whatever device she had adopted to quiet her spirit and divert her mind,
he argued--he himself had found refreshment in a brisk walk in the
night air--and was now sitting before the fire at home, awaiting his
coming, possibly willing to discuss the matter in a more amicable frame
of mind.

He was about to turn aside when suddenly down the line of rails within
the shed and between the train standing still and the one beginning to
move, the metallic clangor of its bell insistently jarring the air, he
saw the figure of Paula, visible in the glare of the headlight of the
locomotive beside her. Every detail was as distinct, as illuminated as
in the portrayal of a magic lantern--her taupe gown, her hat with a
plume of the same shade, her face flushed, laughing and eager. A man was
assisting her to mount the platform of the coach and in him Floyd-Rosney
was sure he recognized Randal Ducie, whose arrival in the city he had
noted in the evening paper. The whole maneuver of boarding the
train,--the placing of the stool by the porter, Paula’s failure to reach
from it to the step of the car, the swift muscular effort by which Ducie
seized her, swung her to the platform, and then sprang upon it
himself,--was all as plain to the frenzied man watching the vanishing
train from between the palings of the gate as if the scene had been
enacted within ten feet of him.




CHAPTER XX


Paula reached her destination early the next morning. She had not slept
during the night and as soon as the light began to dawn she raised the
blind at her window and lay in her berth looking out drearily at the
face of the country, growing constantly more familiar, but yet dimly
descried and colorless as a scene in sepia, with the lagging night still
clinging to the earth. Belts of white vapor lay in every depression; the
forests along the horizon made a dark circumference for the whole; the
stars were wan and sad of aspect and faded from the sky, one by one, as
the eye dwelt upon them. The characteristic features of the swamp region
had vanished. In many places the land was deeply gullied, showing as the
day waxed a richly tinted red clay that made the somber landscape glow.
Everywhere were the hedges of the evergreen Cherokee rose, defining the
borders of fields, often untrimmed and encroaching in a great green
billow on spaces unmeet for a mere boundary mark. The trees were huge;
gigantic oaks and the spreading black-gum; and she was ready, her hat
on, her wrap and furs adjusted, looking out eagerly at these dense bosky
growths when the red wintry sun began to cast long shafts of quiet dull
sheen adown their aisles, showing the white rime on the rough bark of
the boughs, or among the russet leaves, still persistently clinging.
More than once the conductor came in to consult her as to the precise
point of stoppage, and, when a long warning whistle set the echoes astir
in the quiet matutinal atmosphere and the train began to slow down, she
was alertly on her feet.

“You are sure of the place, ma’am?” said the conductor, helping her
descend the step; he was new to the road, and there seemed to him
nothing here but woods.

She reassured him as she lightly ran down the steep incline, and then
she stood for a moment, mechanically watching the train, epitome of the
world, sweeping away and leaving her here, the dense forest before her,
the smoke flaunting backward, the sun emblazoning its convolutions, the
wondering faces of the passengers at the windows.

She remembered the time when this wonder would have nettled her. She had
wanted a station platform built here, but her uncle had utilitarian
theories, and, somehow, “never got round to it,” as he was wont to
phrase it. So seldom, indeed, they boarded the train, so seldom it
brought a visitor, that it seemed to him the least and last needed
appurtenance of the plantation. She wondered if the stoppage had been
not noted at the house. The woods were silent, as with mystery, as she
took her way through “the grove.” The frost lay white on the grass, and
there was even a glint of ice in the water lurking in the ruts of a
wagon wheel in the road. She walked on these frozen edges after a
fashion learned long ago to keep her feet dainty when not so expensively
shod as now. Suddenly she heard the deep baying of a hound.

“Oh, old Hero!” she exclaimed pettishly. “He will tell them all I have
come!”

For she had wished to slip in unobserved. The humiliation of her return
in this wise seemed less when the kindly old roof should be above her
head. But the dog met her, fierce and furious, at the fence of the door
yard--how she had hated that fence; she had wanted the grove and yard
thrown together like some fine park. As the old retainer recognized her
the complication of his barks which he could not forego, in view of her
capacity as stranger, with his wheezes and whines of ecstasy, as
greeting to an old friend, while he leaped and gamboled about her,
brought her uncle and aunt, every chick and child, the servants from the
outhouses, and all the dogs on the place to make cheerful acclaim of
welcome.

So long had it been since she had heard this hearty, genuine note of
disinterested affection that it came like balm to her lacerated heart,
and suddenly there seemed no more need for pride, for dissimulation, for
self-restraint. She broke down and burst into a flood of tears, the
group lachrymose in sympathy and wiping their eyes.

She had planned throughout the night how best and when to tell her
story, but it was disclosed without preface or method, before she had
been in the house ten minutes, her aunt cautiously closing the door of
the sitting-room the instant Mr. Floyd-Rosney’s name was mentioned and
her uncle looking very grave.

“You were quite right in coming at once to us, my dear,” he said kindly.
“Be sure you shall not be shipped out of the country.”

He was a tall, heavy man, somewhat spare and angular, and his large
well-formed features expressed both shrewdness and kindness. He had
abundant grizzled hair and his keen gray eyes were deeply set under
thick dark eyebrows. He was a fair-minded man one could see at a glance,
a thoroughly reliable man in every relation of life, a gentleman of the
old school.

“Some arrangement will surely be made about the baby; I shall love to
see the little fellow again. Set your heart at rest. I will communicate
at once with Mr. Floyd-Rosney, as your nearest relative, standing in
_loco parentis_.”

“And give me some breakfast,” said Paula, lapsing into the old childish
whine of a spoiled household pet. “I have had nothing to eat since
yesterday at lunch.”

The husband and wife exchanged a glance over her head.

“And before I forget it----” she raised herself to an upright position
and took from her bag the twenty dollar bill. “Please write and return
this to old Colonel Kenwynton. I should be ashamed to sign my name to
such a letter. He _would_ lend it to me--though I didn’t need it after
he and Adrian Ducie--Randal Ducie’s brother--had lent me the money to
buy my ticket.”

Mrs. Majoribanks was a stern-faced woman with rigid ideas of the
acceptable in conduct. Her dark hair, definitely streaked with gray,
banded smoothly along her high forehead, her serious, compelling, gray
eyes, the extreme neatness and accuracy of adjustment of her dress, her
precise method of enunciation, intimated an uncompromising personality,
possessing high ideals religiously followed,--somewhat narrow of view,
perhaps, and severe of judgment, but unfalteringly, immovably upright.

“But, Paula, why didn’t you buy your own ticket with your own money? To
allow another to buy it was inappropriate.”

“I had no money,” Paula explained humbly. “Mr. Floyd-Rosney lets me buy
anything I want on account, but he never gives me any money to spend as
I like.” Once more the husband and wife looked significantly at each
other. All that they possessed was his, but the privileges of ownership
were exercised in common, the expenditures a matter of mutual confidence
and agreement, and it may be doubted if he ever took a step in business
affairs without consultation with her.

The spare, sober decorum of the aspect of the house appealed to Paula in
her present state of mind, her taste for magnificence glutted, and she
remembered, with a sort of wonder, her intolerance of the stiff old
furniture of the sitting-room covered with hair-cloth; the crimson
brocade, well frayed, of the parlor glimpsed through the open door, with
the old-fashioned lambrequins at the windows and carefully mended lace
curtains, and the family portraits in oil on the walls; the linoleum on
the floor of the hall that had been there seeming indestructible since
she could remember; the barometer hanging over the long sofa; the
grandfather’s clock in the corner, still allotting the hours, however
lives might wax or wane; the dining-room, with the burly sideboard and
the peacock fly-brush, and the white-jacketed waiter, and the brisk
little darkey that ran in and out with the relays of hot buttered
waffles. It all seemed so sane, so simple, so safe. Here and there,
conspicuously placed, were gifts which she and Mr. Floyd-Rosney had
made, ostentatiously handsome. She thought them curiously out of accord
with the tone of the place, and, oddly enough, she felt ashamed of them.

She asked herself how and why had such an obsession as had possessed her
ever come to her--the hankering for the empty life of show, and fashion,
and wealth. Had she not had every reasonable wish gratified, enjoyed
every advantage of a solid and careful education, had every social
opportunity in a circle, limited, certainly, but characterized by
refinement, and dignity, and seemliness, that was the gentility of long
traditions of gentlefolks--not pretty manners, picked up the day before
yesterday. She had come back to it now--her wings clipped, her feathers
drooping.

She could not enter into the old home life as of yore--it seemed
strangely alien, though so familiar. She would look vaguely at her young
cousins, each altered and much more mature in the five years that had
passed since she was an inmate of the household--well grown, handsome,
intelligent boys they were, instead of the romping children she had
left. They spent the mornings with a tutor who came from the neighboring
town to read with them, and the eldest was much given to argument with
his father, insisting vivaciously on his theories of government, of
religion, of politics, of the proper method of construing certain Latin
verses; the two younger were absorbed in their dogs, their rabbits,
their games--the multitudinous little interests of people of their age,
so momentous to them. Always their world was home--she wondered what
the real world would seem to them when they should emerge into it, what
the theories of government, the phrasing of Latin verses, the home
absorptions would prove as preparation for life as she knew it.
Certainly they did not formulate it. She said to herself that a more
secluded existence could hardly be matched outside a monastery. She did
not believe any of the three had ever seen a game of football or
baseball; the life of cities, of travel, of association with their
fellows was as a sealed book to them. In their minds Ingleside was a
realm; their father was their comrade; their mother was the court of
last resort.

But Paula’s absorbed thoughts refused all but the slightest speculation
upon the subject of their future and she could urge herself to only the
shadow of interest in her aunt’s pursuits and absorptions. Even the room
of her girlhood--she could not enter there, she could not sleep there,
for dreams--dreams--dreams! They might have there faculties of
visualization or unseen they could stab her unaware. Never again should
her spirit encounter these immaterial essences. She asked her aunt to
give her her grandmother’s room. It was small comfort in laying her head
on that pillow which had never known a selfish thought, an unsanctified
desire, to feel the difference, the distance. But here all good
influences abode, and she was consoled in a sort for the unappreciated
affliction of that saintly death, to whisper into the downy depth--“I
have come back--scourged--scourged!”

How she remembered that that good grandmother had so grievously
deprecated the course toward Randal Ducie; that she had declared the
greatest of all disasters is a marriage without love, and that a promise
is a promise; many times she shook her head, and shed some shy, shy
tears over Randal’s dismissal, though Paula wrote the letter in a frenzy
of careless energy, without erasing a word or troubling to take a copy.

She would note with a sort of apologetic affection the details of this
familiar room that she had early learned to stigmatize as old-fashioned,
and in her schoolgirl phrase “tacky”--the chintz curtains with their big
flowers; the hair-cloth covered rocking chairs; the four-poster mahogany
bedstead with its heavily corniced tester, the red cloth goffered to the
center to focus in a big gilt star; the mahogany bureau, so tall that
the mirror made good headway to the ceiling; the floriated Brussels
carpet so antique of pattern that she used to say she believed it was
manufactured before the flood and so staunch of web that it was destined
to last till doomsday; the little work-table, with its drawers still
filled with spools, and buttons, and reels of embroidery silk, and balls
of wool for knitting and crochet--doubtless some piece of her
grandmother’s beautiful handiwork still lay where her busy fingers had
placed it, with the needle yet in the stitch.

The rose curtained window gave on no smiling scene--it was one of the
few outlooks from the house that was not of bosky presentment. But the
grove had ceased ere these precincts were reached and the view was of a
dull bit of pasture and beyond a dreary stretch of cornfields, in which
the stalks still stood, stripped of the ears, pallid with frost and
writhen into fantastic postures by wind and weather. It was but a
dreary landscape, trembling under slanting lines of rain, and later of
sleet, for the halcyon weather had vanished at last, and winter had come
in earnest. A mist hung much of the time between the earth and a leaden
sky, and the woods that lay along the low horizon were barely glimpsed
as a dull, indistinct smudge.

Nothing, she said to herself, could ever rehabilitate the universe for
her. This crisis was so comprehensive, so significant. She clenched her
hands when she reviewed the past few years with a nervous fury so
intense that the nails marked the palms. Her memories and her
self-reproach seared her consciousness like hot iron. Whelmed in the
luxury of wealth, proud of her preëminence of station, sharing as far as
might be her husband’s domineering assumptions toward others, cravenly
submitting when his humor required her, too, to crook the knee, she had
subverted her every opinion, her inmost convictions, to theories of life
she would once have despised, to estimate as of paramount value the
things she had been taught to hold as dross. She had cast aside all her
standards of intrinsic worth. Sometimes she would spring from sleep and
walk the floor, the red glow of the embers on the wall, the shadows
glooming about her, the events of those tumultuous years, in the fierce
white light of actuality rather than the glimpses of memories, deploying
before her. Resist his influence----? She had flattered, she had
surrounded him with an atmosphere of adulation. She had loved so much
his possessions and her realized ambitions that she had imbibed the
theory that she had loved him. True, she had admired him--his impressive
presence, his domineering habit of mind, his expensive culture, his
discrimination in matters of art and music, the cringing attitude toward
him of his employees, his humble friends, and now and then a man on his
own plane, unable to sustain his individuality before that coercive
influence. Bring tribute--bring tribute! In every relation of life that
fiat went forth. And she had permitted herself to believe that her
craven acquiescence in this demand was--love! And, doubtless, the
tyrant, unabashed by the glaring improbability, had believed it too.

The phases of fashionable life are never so minimized as in the presence
of some great and grave actuality of human experience--she looked back
upon them now with a disgusted wonder and an averse contempt. The world
for which she had longed in her quiet rural home, which had opened its
doors so unexpectedly, so beatifically, to her trembling entrance,
seemed to her now full of dull and commonplace people, all eagerly
pursuing some sordid scheme of advancement, regardful of their fellows
only to envy values which they do not share, to cringe before
consequence and station which only belittle them, to pull down, if
occasion permit, those who are on the up-grade, to alternately court and
decry their superiors, and to revile and baffle the humble. And for a
share in this world, this outlook, this atmosphere, she had bartered her
happiness, had destroyed her identity, as nearly as she might, had
achieved the lot of a lifelong victim to intolerable tyranny.

In all her beclouded spiritual sky there had glowed the radiance of one
single star, one pure and genuine emotion, her maternal love, bought by
no price, asking naught, giving in an ecstasy of self-abnegation that
made sacrifice a luxury and suffering a joy.

And now this light of her life was obscured by dense clouds, and who
could say how and when it would emerge.

The change of place, the sense of escape acted in some sort as a
respite, but there was possible no surcease of anguished solicitude. Her
uncle began almost immediately the concoction of a letter to Mr.
Floyd-Rosney, which should be a triumph of epistolary art to accomplish
its ends. He desired to remonstrate against the enforced expatriation of
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, to insist on the propriety of restoring her son to
her care, and to condemn the cruelty of the separation, all expressed in
such soft choice locutions as to give no offense to the gusty temper of
her husband and to make no reflections on the justice of his conduct. He
wished to take a tone of authority and seniority as being the nearest
and eldest relative of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, and thus entitled to offer his
views and advice in her behalf, yet to avoid seeming intrusive and
guilty of interference between husband and wife.

As he wrote at his desk in the sitting-room, his intent grizzled head
bent over the repeated drafts of this effort, Paula, passing in the hall
without, catching a glimpse of his occupation, had space in her
multifarious anguish for a sense of deep humiliation that this should be
going forward in her interest. How she had flaunted the achievement of
her great marriage in this her simple home, in the teeth of their
misgivings, their covert reservations, their deprecation of her
treatment of Randal Ducie. She had piqued herself on the fact that not
many girls so placed, so far from the madding crowd, could have made
such a ten-strike in the matrimonial game. Her standards were not
theirs; her life was regulated on a plane which did not conform to their
ideals, but as time went on they had ventured to hope for the best, and
when Geoffrey Majoribanks had been asked occasionally if his niece had
not made a very rich marriage he would add “and a very happy one.” This
he had believed, although in view of Floyd-Rosney’s imperious
temperament and the process of his wife’s evident subjugation, it must
seem that the wish had constrained his credulity. Now the illusion was
dispelled, the bubble had burst, and it devolved upon him to patch up
from its immaterial constituent elements some semblance of conjugal
reconciliation and the possibility of a degree of happiness in the
future.

He was a ready scribe, as were most men of his day, and had a neat gift
of expression. But he called for help continually in this instance, now
from his wife, and throwing ceremony to the winds, in view of the
importance of the missive, once his hearty, resonant voice summoned the
party most in interest, Paula herself.

“Our object is to get the child restored to your care and to compass a
cessation of this insistence that you shall go abroad,--not to win in an
argument. Now do you think this phrasing could offend Mr. Floyd-Rosney,
or wound his feelings?”

Paula, standing tall, pale, listless, beside the desk, leaning on one
hand among the litter of discarded papers of the voluminous epistle,
looked down into his anxious, upturned face, beneath his tousled,
grizzled hair, pitying the limitations of his perceptions.

“Any phrasing will offend Mr. Floyd-Rosney if he wishes to be offended,”
she replied languidly, “and he has no feelings to wound.”

She went slowly out of the room, leaving him meditatively biting the
handle of his pen.

The letter bade fair to become a permanent occupation. He worked at it
late at night and all the forenoon of the next day, and when, at the two
o’clock dinner, his wife suggested that he should take Paula out for a
drive about the country,--she would be interested in seeing how little
it had changed since she was a resident here--he shook his head doggedly
over the big turkey that he was deftly carving.

“No,--no,” he said, “I must get back to that--that document. You and one
of the boys can take her to drive.”

The “document” was duly finished at last and duly mailed. Then
expectation held the household to fever heat. The return mail brought
nothing; the next post was not more significant; nor the next; nor the
next. A breathless suspense supervened.

One Monday morning Major Majoribanks came into the sitting-room with a
sheaf of newspapers in his trembling hand, a ghastly white face and eyes
of living fire. He could not speak; he could scarcely control his
muscles sufficiently to open a journal and point with a shaking finger
to a column with great headlines. He placed the newspaper in the hands
of his wife, who was alone in the room, then he went softly to the door,
closed it, and sank down in an armchair, gasping for breath. His wife,
too, turned pale as she read, but her hand was steady.

Mr. Edward Floyd-Rosney, the paper recited, to the great amazement of
the city, had brought suit against his wife for divorce. The allegations
of the bill set forth that she had fled from her home with Randal Ducie,
who was named as co-respondent, and the husband made oath that in
seeking to intercept and reclaim her, following her to the station as
soon as he discovered her absence, he had witnessed her departure in
company with Randal Ducie just as the train moved out of the shed.

Major Majoribanks presently hirpled, for he could scarcely walk, across
the room, and laid his finger on another column in a different portion
of the paper, and treating of milder sensations.

“I didn’t need this to prove that--that--a base lie----” his stiff lips
enunciated with difficulty.

This paragraph treated of the current cotton interests, giving extracts
from an address made by Randal Ducie in New Orleans at a banquet of an
association interested in levee protection, on the evening and also at
the hour when he was represented in Floyd-Rosney’s bill as fleeing with
his neighbor’s wife in a city five hundred miles distant. He had made
himself conspicuous as an advocate of certain methods of levee
protection, and his views were both ardently upheld and rancorously
contested even at the festive board. The occasion was thus less
harmonious than such meetings should be, and the local papers had much
“write-up” besides the menu and the toasts, in the views of various
planters and several engineer officers, guests of the occasion, lending
themselves to a spirited discussion of Randal Ducie’s recommendations.




CHAPTER XXI


Colonel Kenwynton, now at his home on his plantation on the bayou, also
gazed with starting eyes and dumfounded amazement at the excerpt from
the legal proceedings, within his own knowledge so palpably false. He
read it aloud under the kerosene lamp to Hugh Treherne on the other side
of the old-fashioned marble-topped center table.

“What do you think of that, sir?” and the Colonel gave the newspaper a
resounding blow.

Treherne smiled significantly.

“I am impressed all the time, Colonel, with the insanity of the people
outside the asylum in comparison with the patients under treatment.”

“Good God, sir,” cried the Colonel in great excitement, “this is a
shotgun business, and Floyd-Rosney is the man of all others to brazen it
out on a plea of the ‘unwritten law.’ He will shoot one or the other of
the Ducies on sight, and they are as much alike as two black-eyed
peas,--they really ought to wear wigs,--he is as likely to pot one as
the other. And the poor lady! My heart bleeds for her. I must clear this
matter up,” concluded the all-powerful. “I will send a communication to
the newspapers.”

Now Colonel Kenwynton had, in his own opinion, the pen of a ready
writer. It was not his habit to mince phrases or to revise. He wrote a
swift, legible hand, for he was a relic of an age when gentlemen prided
themselves on an elegant penmanship, in the days when the typewriter was
not. He had no sort of fear of offending Floyd-Rosney, nor care for
wounding his feelings. He recited in great detail the facts of Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney’s entrance into the Adelantado Hotel, her disclosure of her
husband’s desire that she should tour the Orient with the Hardingtons,
who had already acquainted the writer that she was to be of their party,
and her grief because of her separation from her child, who had been
secretly removed from her home as a preparation for her departure. Now
and then the Colonel cast his eyes upward for inspiration and waved his
pen at arm’s length.

“Not too much hot shot, Colonel,” remonstrated Hugh Treherne, a little
uneasy at these demonstrations.

“Attend to your own guns, sir,” retorted the Colonel.

With no regard for the awkwardness of the incident, he stated that the
poor lady, although the wife of a millionaire, had not command of ten
dollars in the world with which to defray the expenses of her journey to
the home of her youth, and to her uncle who stood in the relation of a
father to her, for his advice and protection against being shipped out
of the country.

“It is my firm belief,” and the Colonel liked the words so well he read
them aloud to his comrade, “that we do not live in Turkey, that the
honored wives of our Southland do not occupy the position of inmates of
a harem, and I could not regard Mrs. Floyd-Rosney as the favorite of a
sultan. Therefore it afforded Mr. Adrian Ducie and me great pleasure to
advance the money for her tickets to the home of her uncle, Major
Majoribanks, and to see her on the train.” He explained, at great
length, that the departure of the train was so imminent and immediate
that Adrian Ducie bought tickets to the first station for himself and
Colonel Kenwynton, in order that they might not be detained by any
question at the gate, and, at the moment of boarding the cars, Mr.
Floyd-Rosney, “hunting down the persecuted fugitive,” had mistaken
Adrian Ducie for his brother, Randal Ducie, who at this moment was in
New Orleans, making an address to the Mississippi River Association,
giving them the benefit of his very enlightened views, which the whole
country would do well to study and adopt, thereby saving many thousands
of dollars to the cotton planters of the jeopardized delta.

Restraining himself with difficulty from pursuing this attractive
subject, Colonel Kenwynton explained that while Randal Ducie was an old
acquaintance of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s, Adrian Ducie was a stranger to her,
and had met her only on one previous occasion. The undersigned and
Adrian Ducie had accompanied the poor lady so far as the first station,
and taking farewell of her they had returned to town in the interurban
electric. He furthermore informed the public that in view of some
possible unforeseen emergency he had taken the liberty of pressing upon
this poor lady, absolutely unprovided with money for her necessities, a
twenty dollar bill, to be returned at her pleasure, and had since
received a letter from her uncle, inclosing that sum, and thanking him
for his consideration. At the home of this uncle--the home of her
girlhood--she was now domiciled with him and her aunt, who was formerly
the charming Miss Azalia Thornton, whom many elder members of society
would well remember.

The Colonel was enjoying himself famously, and now and again Hugh
Treherne looked anxiously over the top of the newspaper at him as he
tossed the multiplying pages across his left hand, and took a fresh
sheet.

The Colonel, with keen gusto, then entered on the subject of
Floyd-Rosney, whom he handled without gloves. There ought to be some
adequate criminal procedure, he argued, for a man who had offered such
an indignity to the wife of his bosom as this. If an equivalent insult
could have been tendered to a man Mr. Floyd-Rosney would have been shot
down in his tracks--or, at the least, have been made to pay roundly for
his brutality. But the wife, whom he has sworn to love, honor, and
cherish, is defenseless against his hasty, groundless conclusions. She
can only meekly prove her innocence of a guilt that it is like the
torments of hell-fire to name in connection with her. Colonel Kenwynton
solemnly commended to our lawmakers the consideration of this subject of
a penalty of unfounded marital charges. The converse of the proposition
never occurred to him. In his philosophy the women were welcome to say
what they liked about the men.

If, he maintained, the gentleman accompanying Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had been
Randal Ducie instead of his brother, the circumstance would have
signified naught with a lady of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s character, which the
good people of this city would uphold against her husband even backed
by all his filthy lucre. But Randal Ducie was in New Orleans making an
address on levee conditions, on which subject his brother Adrian was
peculiarly uninformed, and it did seem to Colonel Kenwynton that almost
any man would have learned more from sheer observation, even though he
had been absent from the country for the past six years. He was now in
Memphis, where, being singularly like his twin brother, he was mistaken
for Randal Ducie, well known here, and his arrival thus chronicled in
the papers. Adrian Ducie was not widely acquainted in Memphis, having
spent the last six years in the south of France, where he was interested
in silk manufacture.

If Mr. Floyd-Rosney’s course, declared the Colonel, pursuing the
subject, in forcing a ghastly round of pleasure on his wife, sighing for
her absent child, was typical of his domestic methods, his wife was a
martyr. When she would insist on having her child restored to her arms
one could imagine his saying--“Go to, woman, where is your pug!” Colonel
Kenwynton ardently hoped that the pressure of public opinion would force
Mr. Floyd-Rosney to disregard no longer the holy claims of motherhood,
and give back this child to the aching arms of his wife. The heart of
every man that ever had a mother was fired in revolt against him,
despite his wealth, that cannot buy sycophancy, and abject acquiescence
and pusillanimous silence from us.

The Colonel admired the rolling periods of his production so much that
he read aloud with relish the whole effort from the beginning.

“What do you think of it, Hugh?” he demanded.

“I think the paper won’t publish it,” said Hugh Treherne.

The paper, however, did publish it. The position of Floyd-Rosney in the
affair, as the incontestable facts began to be elicited, took on so
sorry an aspect that he was hardly in case to bring an action for libel,
and the Colonel’s letter was good for the sale of a double edition.
People read it with raised eyebrows and deprecation, and several said
the Colonel was a dangerous man and ought to have his hands tied behind
him. But the plain truth, so plainly set forth, the old traditions which
he had invoked, which they had all imbibed more or less, went far to
reinstating Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s position, and to exhibit her husband’s
character in a most damaged and disastrous disparagement. He was advised
by his counsel, who were disconcerted in the last extreme by being
connected in so disreputable a proceeding, that the only course open to
policy and prudence and the prospect of conserving any place in public
esteem, was to retract absolutely and immediately, frankly confessing a
mistake of identity, and to restore the child to the custody of his
mother.

“Even that won’t mend the matter,” said Mr. Stacey--his face corrugated
with lines unknown to his placid sharpness when he and his firm had no
personal concern. He had nerves for his own interest, though not an
altruistic quiver for his client.

“All the world thinks,” he continued, “that you are as jealous as a
Turk, and that will add a sensational interest to the Duciehurst suit,
of a kind that I despise”--he actually looked pained--“when it is
developed that your wife found and restored the Ducie papers. I wish
you had taken my advice; I wish you had taken my advice.”

And Floyd-Rosney said never a word.

He had come to be more plastic to counsel than of yore, and in a few
days thereafter the train made its infrequent stoppage at Ingleside, and
deposited Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s favorite old colored servant and her
little charge, who sturdily trudged through the grove of great
trees--vast, indeed, to his eyes--and suddenly appeared in the hall
before his mother, with a tale of wonder relating to the bears, which he
believed might be skulking about among the giant oaks.




CHAPTER XXII


Floyd-Rosney had expected that the restoration of the child to the
mother would effect an immediate reconciliation with his wife.
Therefore, he attained a serenity, a renewal of self-confidence which he
had not enjoyed since the humiliating _contretemps_ at Union Station. In
the dismissal of his bill for divorce--the _retraxit_ craftily worded
and expressing with a dignity that might have seemed impossible under
the circumstances his contrition for the hasty and offensive assumptions
of his mistake, a sweeping recantation of all his charges and a complete
endorsement of his wife’s actions in every relation of life,--he
considered he had offered her an ample apology for his conduct and had
held out a very alluring olive branch. He had a relish, too, of the
surprise he had planned, partly to avoid a more personal method to court
her forgiveness, in sending the child in charge of her favorite servant,
old Aunt Dorothy, to alight unheralded from the train at Ingleside. He
imagined her delight and gratitude and awaited, in smiling anticipation,
altogether devoid of anxiety, her ebullient letter, brimming with thanks
and endearments, and taking the blame, as she was wont to do in their
differences, in that she had so misunderstood him and precipitated this
series of perverse happenings that had exposed him to such cruel public
misconstruction.

But this letter did not come.

He began to frown when the mail was brought in, and to sort the missives
with a hasty touch for something that he did not find. The servants,
always on the alert to observe, and agog about the successive phases of
the scandal which they had witnessed at such close quarters, collogued
over the fact that he laid the rest of the mail aside unopened for
hours, while he sat with a clouded brow and a reflective, unnoting eye
in glum silence, unsolaced even by a cigar. It was not good to speak to
him at these crises, and the house was as still as a tomb.

Floyd-Rosney’s ascendency in life had been so great, so fostered by his
many worldly advantages, that he could make no compact with denial,
defeat. He had not yet reached the point where he could write to his
wife and beg her forgiveness, or even reproach her with her agency in
the disasters that had whelmed their domestic life in this unseemly
publicity. He developed an ingenuity in devising reasons for her
silence. She was too proud; he had let her have her head too long. She
would not write--she would not verbally admit that she condoned his
odious charges, which he often declared he had a right to make, if he
were to believe the testimony of his eyes, witnessing her flight with
her old lover, Randal Ducie, as he was convinced, boarding the train
together. She would simply return unheralded, unexplained,--and that was
best! He had himself inaugurated this method in restoring the child
without a word. It was a subject that could not be discussed between
them, with all its sensitive nerves, with its open wounds quivering with
anguished tremors. No! She would come to her home, her hearthstone, her
husband, as she had every right to do, even paying all tribute to her
pride, to her sense of insulted delicacy. He saw to it that the papers
containing the text of his full retraction and explanation of the
circumstances were mailed to her, and then adjusted himself anew to
waiting and anticipation.

He had been spared in the details of his life all the torments of
suspense which harass men less fortunately placed. It may be doubted if
ever before he had had cause to anticipate and await an event, and hope,
and be deferred and denied. He could scarcely brook the delay. He began
to fear that he should be obliged to write and summon her home. Once he
even thought of going in person to escort her back, and but that he
shrank from meeting her eye, all unprepared as she would be, he would
have followed little Ned to Ingleside. Something might be said on the
impulse of the moment to widen the breach. He could not depend upon
her--he could not depend upon himself. She knew the state of his mind,
he argued. Those papers, most astutely, more delicately than any words
of his might compass, had depicted his whole mental status. Doubtless,
after a seemly diplomatic interval she would return. The sooner the
better, he felt in eager impatience. He had hardly known how dearly he
loved her, he declared to himself, interpreting his restiveness under
the suffocations of suspense and anxiety as symptoms of his revived
affection. He became so sure of this happy solution of the whole cruel
imbroglio that he acted upon it as if he had credible assurance of the
fact. He caused certain minor changes, which she had desired, to be made
in the house--changes to which he had no objection, but he had never
taken thought to gratify her preference. He ordered the suite of rooms
that she had occupied to be thoroughly overhauled in such a fever of
haste that the domestic force expected to see the lady of the mansion
installed in her realm before a readjustment was possible. At last
everything was complete and exquisite, and Floyd-Rosney, patrolling the
apartments with a keen and critical eye, could find no fault to
challenge his minute and censorious observation. A new lady’s maid was
engaged, of more skill and pretensions than the functionary he had
driven from his service, and had already entered upon her duties in the
rearrangement of her mistress’s wardrobe, and the chauffeur took heedful
thought of the railroad timetables, that he might not be out of the way
when the limousine should be ordered to meet Mrs. Floyd-Rosney at Union
Station.

Under these circumstances the filing of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s bill for
divorce and alimony fell like a bombshell upon the defenseless head of
her husband. It was a genuine and fierce demonstration, evidently
calculated to take advantage of every point that might contribute to the
eventuation of a decree. The allegations of cruelty and tyranny, of
which there were many instances that Floyd-Rosney, in his marital
autocracy had long ago forgotten, including the crafty blow which he had
given her under the cloak of the child in her arms, were supplemented
and illustrated by the secret removal of her child from her care, and
the determination to ship her out of the country against her will. Thus
she had been constrained in defense of her personal liberty to flee to
the home of her uncle, her nearest relative, although she was obliged to
borrow the money for the railroad fare from a mere stranger whom she had
met only once before. Notwithstanding the fact that her husband was
several times a millionaire, he permitted her no command of money, her
fine clothes and jewels and equipages being accorded merely to decorate
the appurtenances of his wealth and ostentation. She recounted the
indignity she had causelessly suffered in the allegations of his bill
for divorce, all baseless and unproved as was evidenced by their
complete retraction under oath in the precipitate dismissal of the bill.
Her petition concluded by praying for an absolute divorce with alimony
and the custody of the child.

This document was not filed without many misgivings on the part of Major
Majoribanks and of horrified protest from his wife. Ingleside was remote
from modern progress and improvements, and such advantages as might
accrue from successfully prosecuting a suit for divorce won but scant
consideration there. The worthy couple were firm in their own conviction
that marriage should not be considered a temporary connection. It was,
to their minds, a lifelong and holy joining together, and should not be
put asunder. Mrs. Majoribanks made some remarks so very old-fashioned as
almost to excite Paula’s laughter, despite the seriousness of the
subject. It was a wife’s duty to put up with her husband’s foibles, to
overlook little unkindnesses; the two should learn to bear and forbear
in their mutual imperfections. Had she ever remonstrated gently, with
wifely lovingness, with Mr. Floyd-Rosney’s harshness?

“I didn’t dare,” said Paula. And the mere phrase was an instance in
point.

A woman’s craft in reading hearts is a subtle endowment. Mrs.
Majoribanks had not kept step with the onward march of the world, but
she struck a note that vibrated more in accord with Paula’s temperament
when she said:

“It is often a hardship in point of worldly estimation to be a divorced
woman.”

She looked cautiously at Paula over her spectacles, for in the old days
no one had been more a respecter of the opinions of smart people than
her husband’s niece.

“Oh, that isn’t the case any more,” said Paula lightly, with a little
fleering laugh, “it is quite fashionable now to have a divorce decree.”

“You may depend upon it,” Mrs. Majoribanks said in private to her
husband, “Paula is reckoning on winning back Randal Ducie! And, to my
mind, that is the worst feature of the whole horrible affair.”

Major Majoribanks did not altogether concur in his wife’s views of the
possible efficacy of gentle suasion on Mr. Floyd-Rosney’s
irascibilities. Perhaps he knew more of the indurated heart of that type
of man. The Major had been greatly impressed by the attempt upon his
niece’s personal liberty, as he interpreted the insistence on the
Oriental tour and, although he welcomed little Ned with an enthusiasm
that might have befitted a grandfather, he was apprehensive concerning
the child’s return as an overture of reconciliation. He felt his
responsibility in the situation very acutely. He did not favor the plan
of seeking merely a legal separation and maintenance, which his wife
advocated, because it was not conclusive; it would be regarded by
Floyd-Rosney as temporary and would render Paula liable to pressure to
recur to their previous status. He did not consider his niece safe with
her arrogant and arbitrary husband, as the attempt to enforce a tour
alone with casual acquaintances to the Orient amply proved. The extreme
measure of secretly removing the child from her companionship and care
as means of subjugation might be repeated when circumstances of public
opinion did not coerce his restoration. Mrs. Majoribanks had not a more
squeamish distaste for divorce than her husband, nor did she entertain a
deeper reverence for the sacredness of the bonds of matrimony. But he
reflected with a sigh of relief that it was not his duty to seek to
impose his own views on his niece. Paula was permitted by law to judge
and act for herself, and she had had much experience which had aided in
determining her course. He could not bring himself to urge her to
condone the insupportable allegations in the bill of divorce which
Floyd-Rosney had filed and allowed to be made public, and to trust
herself and the child once more in his clutches. She had now the wind of
public favor in her sails. Her husband had committed himself so openly
and so irretrievably that it was probable that the custody of the child
would be awarded to her in view of his tender years. Later, when time
should have somewhat repaired the tatters of Floyd-Rosney’s status in
the estimation of the world, when the inevitable influence and
importance of so rich a man should begin to make themselves felt anew,
it might be more difficult for her to contend against him. If ever she
could hope to free herself from him and his tyrannies, and his
unimaginable machinations in the future, now was the opportunity and
this the cause of complaint. He might not again give her so palpable and
undeniable an occasion of insupportable affront. Major Majoribanks, even
in the seclusion of Ingleside, took note of the penniless estate of the
wife of the millionaire as she fled from her richly appointed home, and
gave due weight to the fact that the decree would assure her future
comfort by requiring alimony in proportion to the husband’s means. There
was no obligation on him to deprive her of her due maintenance and
protection by the urgency of his advice, although his wife goaded him
with her strict interpretations of his duty, and his brow clouded
whenever she mentioned her belief of the influence of the expectation of
winning back Randal Ducie upon Paula’s determination.

Paula had thus the half-hearted support of her relatives in her
proceedings, and she was grateful even for this, saying to herself that
with their limitations she could hardly have expected more. She was
eager and hopeful, and, to Mrs. Majoribanks’s displeasure, not more
sensitive to the mention of the proceedings than if they had involved a
transaction concerning cotton or corn. The three Majoribanks boys were
excited on the possibility of an attempt to kidnap little Edward, since
the filing of the bill, and they kept him, in alternation, under close
and strict surveillance night and day.

“It would be impossible to spirit him away from Ingleside,” they
bluffly contended, and to their mother’s great though unexpressed
displeasure their father did not rebuke their bluster.

“We all talk of getting the decree,” she said in connubial privacy, “as
if it were a diploma.”

He nodded ruefully. But he was the more progressive of the two.

And in this feeble and sorry wise the influence of modern civilization
began to impinge on the primitive convictions and traditions of
Ingleside.




CHAPTER XXIII


Adrian Ducie was affronted beyond measure by the unseemly notoriety
given to his part in the Floyd-Rosney incident, in the subsequent
publications emanating from various sources. The serious menace,
however, that the circumstances held for Randal moderated for a time his
indignation. He thought it not improbable that Floyd-Rosney would shoot
Randal Ducie on sight, and he greatly deprecated the fact that his
brother was chronicled by the New Orleans papers as having quitted that
city, on his way to Memphis, returning by boat.

“Why didn’t the fellow stay where he was until matters should have
developed more acceptably?” Adrian fumed in mingled disgust and
apprehension. His anxiety was somewhat assuaged in the meantime when
Colonel Kenwynton’s letter appeared, and more especially when
Floyd-Rosney withdrew his petition for divorce--a definite confession of
his clumsy mistake. Still in Adrian’s opinion latent fires slumbered
under the volcanic crust, as this sudden eruption had proved. This city
was no place for the bone of contention between husband and wife. The
season for the preparations for cotton planting was already well
advanced. Assuredly it was seemly and desirable for Randal to repair to
his plantation and supervise the operations of his manager and his
laborers. Adrian found his own stay in the city harassing to his
exacerbated nerves. The questioning stare of men whom he passed on the
streets, who looked as if they expected salutation, in default of which
surmised that this was the twin brother, hero of the Floyd-Rosney
_esclandre_, annoyed him by its constant repetition, and gave his face a
repellant reserve which the countenance of the gentle and genial Randal
had never known. A dozen times he was more intimately assailed, “Hey,
Ran, old man, how goes it?” with perhaps a quizzical leer, or an eager
hopefulness that some discussion of the reigning sensation of the day
might not be too intrusive. When the stranger was enlightened, not
abruptly, however, for Adrian was cautious to refrain from alienating
Randal’s friends, the comments on the wonderful likeness implied an
accession of interest in the significant incident in Union Station, and,
doubtless, many a surmise as to what had betided heretofore to arouse
the lion in the husband’s breast. Obviously, both the brothers for every
reason should be removed from the public eye till the story was stale;
but, although Adrian felt this keenly, he himself could not get away in
view of the interests of his firm in an important silk deal with a large
concern desiring to treat directly with the representative of the
manufacturers.

He had never cared so little to see his brother as one day when the door
of his bedroom in the hotel unceremoniously opened and Randal entered.
He had deprecated the effect of all this publicity on the most sensitive
emotions of that high-strung and spirited nature. He was proud, too, and
winced from the realization that all the world should be canvassing the
fact of Randal’s rejection by Mrs. Floyd-Rosney in her girlhood days.
She had treated him cruelly, and had dashed her plighted troth, his
love, his happiness to the ground with not a moment’s compunction, for a
marriage of splendor and wealth--“and,” said Adrian grimly to himself,
“for it she has got all that was coming to her.”

He felt for Randal. His heart burned within him.

“Why, who is this that I see here?” cried Randal gaily, as he entered.
“Not myself in a mirror surely, for I never looked half so glum in all
my life.”

There was a hearty handclasp, and a sort of facetious fraternal hug,
after the fashion of men who humorously disguise a deeper emotion, and
they were presently seated in great amity before the glowing fire.

“This is imported Oriental tobacco,” said Adrian, handing his brother a
cigar.

“Imported from where--the corner drugstore?” demanded Randal, laughing,
his face illumined by the flicker of the lighted match.

“Genuine Ladikieh,” protested Adrian.

“It’s like carrying coals to Newcastle to pay duty on tobacco in
America.”

“I didn’t say I paid any duty, did I?”

“Oh, you haven’t the grit to smuggle anything through, and if you had
you would have brought enough to generously divvy up with me.”

He sent off a fragrant puff, stretched out luxuriously in his armchair,
and turned his clear eyes upon his brother.

There was a momentary silence.

“I read the report of your address in the papers. It was very able and
convincing.”

“I’d care more for your compliments if you understood the subject,”
declared Randal cavalierly. Then, roguishly, “Is that _all_ you have
read about me in the papers lately?”

Adrian stared, dumfounded. And he had so wincingly deprecated the effect
of this limelight of publicity upon the shrinking heart of the rejected
lover.

“I think it very hard you should be subjected to this,” he began
sympathetically.

“Who--I? Why,--I was never so pleased in my life!”

“Why--what do you mean, Randal? It is a very serious matter; it might
have had a life-and-death significance.”

“Serious enough for Floyd-Rosney,” Randal laughed bluffly. “Did ever a
fellow so befool himself, and call all the world to witness! Of course,
I deprecate the publicity for the lady, but everybody understands the
situation. It does not injure her position in the least. That is the
kind of husband she wanted--and she has got him.”

Adrian silently smoked a few moments.

“I never was so affronted in my life,” he said.

Once more Randal laughed. “I was simply enchanted,” he declared.

“Honestly, Randal, I don’t understand you,” said Adrian, holding his
cigar delicately in his fingers.

“Oh, I am very simple, quite transparent, in fact.”

Adrian shook his head, restoring his cigar to his lips. “Don’t make you
out, old man.”

“Because you have never been told by a lady to take foot in hand, and
toddle! Discarded--rejected--despised! Therefore”--with a strong
puff--“you can’t know what a keen joy it is to realize that you are
still important enough to be the cause of domestic discord between
husband and wife, when you haven’t seen the lady but once in five years,
and then in his presence, besides, being five hundred miles away, meekly
babbling about levee protection.”

Adrian stared. “And you like that?”

“Like it? It goes to the cockles of my heart.”

“Randal, I should never have thought it of you,” said Adrian rebukingly.

“Because, kid, I am older than you and know many things that you haven’t
learned. I got a little bit the start of you in life and I have kept
ahead of you ever since,” Randal declared whimsically.

“I can’t comprehend how you like to be mixed up in that miserable
misunderstanding.”

“Why, it flatters me to death. She couldn’t put me out of her heart,
although she could and did lacerate terribly my heart. Floyd-Rosney is
jealous of my very existence. But for that he would have inferred no
more from seeing me, as he thought, assisting her to board the train
than any incidental acquaintance tendering that courtesy. He is not
disturbed that _you_ boarded the train with her.”

“You are jealous of Floyd-Rosney,” said Adrian abruptly.

Randal thrust his cigar between his lips and spoke indistinctly with
this obstruction. “Not I,” he laughed. “Not under these circumstances.”

Adrian was frowning anxiously. The two faces, so alike in feature, were
curiously dissimilar at the moment, the one so genially confiding, the
expression of the other, alert, expectant, with a grave prophetic
rebuke.

“Look here, Randal,” Adrian said seriously, “you perturb me very much.
You speak actually as if you are still--still sentimentally interested
in this woman--another man’s wife--because you discover----”

“That both she and her husband are sentimentally interested in me; ha!
ha! ha!” Randal interrupted.

“I could never imagine such a thing,--it perturbs me,” Adrian persisted
seriously.

“It perturbs me, too,” declared Randal quizzically, “to have you gadding
about in my likeness, escorting other men’s wives,--the gay Lothario
that you are!--and getting _me_ into the papers, the public prints. Oh,
fie, fie.”

“And she _is_ another man’s wife,” remonstrated Adrian.

“She won’t be long if she has a spark of spirit left,” declared Randal
boldly. “She will bring suit for divorce herself.”

“But I doubt if she can get it,” said Adrian in dismay.

The difference of mood made itself manifest in the tones of their
voices--Adrian’s crisp, imperative, even tinctured with sternness,
Randal’s careless, musical, drawling.

“Oh, she can get it fast enough. I should think from what I observed of
his manner to her she could prove enough instances of cruelty and
tyranny to melt almost any trial judge.”

Adrian reflected silently upon the episodes on the _Cherokee Rose_, but
kept his own counsel, while the smoke curled softly above the duplicate
heads.

“When I saw them together,” observed Randal, “he impressed me as being a
veritable despot, and in a queer way, too. I can’t understand his
satisfaction in it. He arrogated the largest liberty to criticize her
views and actions, as if his dictum were the fiat of last resort. I tell
you now, kid, criticism and cavil in themselves are incompatible with
love. No man can depreciate and adore at the same time the same object.
When he thinks the feet of his idol are of clay the whole structure
might as well come down at once. He seemed to have a certain perversity,
and this is a connubial foible I have seen in better men, too; a
tendency to contradict her in small, immaterial matters for the sheer
pleasure of contrariety, I suppose,--to oppose her, to balk her, merely
because he could with impunity. I imagine he has enjoyed a long lease of
this impunity because his perversity has attained such unusual
proportions, and her plunges of opposition had the style of sudden
revolt rather than the practiced habit of contention. She has lived a
life of repression and submission with him. Her identity is pretty much
annihilated. The Paula of her earlier days is nearly all disappeared.”

For a few moments Adrian said nothing in response to this keen analysis
of character, which corresponded so well to his longer opportunity of
observation, but sat silently eyeing the fire in serious thought.

Suddenly he broke out with impassioned eagerness.

“Randal, you are my own twin brother----”

“I am obliged to admit it,” interpolated Randal flippantly.

“--my other self. The tie that binds us seems to me closer than with
other brothers. We came into the world together; we have lived hand in
hand almost all our lives; we even look alike.”

“And make a precious good job of it too,” declared Randal gaily.

“We feel alike; we believe alike; we have been educated in the same
traditions; we respect the sanctities of the old fireside teachings; we
have not strayed after strange gods.”

Randal had taken his cigar from his lips and in his half recumbent
position was gazing keenly at his brother.

“What are you coming to, kid?”

“Just this--you are not looking forward to this divorce in the hope--the
expectation of marrying this woman? Are you? Tell me.”

Randal’s eyes flashed. “What do you take me for?” he said angrily
between his set teeth. “She could never again be anything to me,--not
even if Floyd-Rosney were at the bottom of the Mississippi River.”

“Oh, how this relieves my mind,” cried Adrian.

“You may set it at rest,--for I could never again love that woman.”

“I know that I have no right to interfere or even to question--but you
always appreciate my motives, Randal. You are the best fellow in the
world.”

“I always thought so,” said Randal, smoking hard.

“I believe she will expect it,” suggested Adrian, still with some
anxiety.

“She will be grievously disappointed, then,--and turn about is fair
play.”

“I want you to guard against any soft surprise,” said Adrian. “She
seemed so sure of you. She said you were the only friend she had in the
world. She came to the Adelantado Hotel to find you--that you should
lend her ten dollars for the railroad fare to Ingleside!”

“The liberal Floyd-Rosney!”

“I want you to look out for her. She is a designing woman. She is
heartily tired of her bargain, and with reason, and she wants to pick up
the happiness she threw away five years ago----”

“With me and poverty.”

“She has enjoyed an artful combination of real poverty and fictitious
splendor. I want you to be frank with me, Randal, and confide in me,
and----”

“Take that paw off my arm.”

“--and,” continued Adrian, removing his hand, “not make an outsider of
your own, only twin brother.”

“Heaven protect me from two twin brothers like unto this fellow,”
laughed Randal. “Make yourself easy, Adrian; when I am finally led to
the altar I shall countenance an innovation in the marriage
ceremony--the groom shall be given away by his own only twin brother.”

“She broached the matter herself when she had an opportunity to speak
aside to me on the _Cherokee Rose_,” said Adrian, his reminiscent eyes
on the fire.

“What? Divorce and remarriage?”

“Oh, no--no. The course she had pursued with you.”

Randal’s eyes glowed with sudden fire; his face flushed deeply red.

“That was very unhandsome of her,” he said curtly, “and by your leave it
was very derogatory to both you and me for you to consent to discuss
it.”

“Why should _I_ decline to discuss it when she introduced the
subject,--as if I felt that _you_ were humiliated in the matter or had
anything to regret?”

“It would seem that neither of you were hampered with any delicacy of
sentiment or sensitiveness.”

“She spoke to me of a gift of yours that she had failed to return. She
wished me to convey it to you. But I referred her to the registered mail
or the express.”

“That was polite, at all events.”

“I told her that the relations between my brother and myself were
peculiarly tender, and that I would not allow her to come between us.
And, with that, I bowed myself away.”

Randal’s eyes gloomed on the fire, with many an unwelcome thought of an
old and shattered romance. But when he spoke, it was of the present.

“Adrian, I am sorry I was so short with you. Of course I know you could
not openly avoid the topic forced upon you in that way. I am sure, too,
that you did not fail to take full cognizance of my dignity, as well as
your own. I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for a million dollars.”

“Well, you did it,” retorted Adrian, “and nobody that I know of has
offered you so much as fifty cents. It was a gratuitous piece of
meanness on your part. And you can take that paw off me,” glancing down
with affected repugnance at Randal’s caressing hand laid on his sleeve.

“Well,” said Randal, with a long sigh, “she closed the incident herself.
She gave me the trinket in her husband’s presence--and you can imagine
Floyd-Rosney was all eyes.”

“She placed it on the table among the Ducie jewels the previous night,”
said Adrian; “and, as I was occupied in reading the papers, I asked her
pointedly to take charge of it. And she looked most awfully cheap as she
repossessed herself of it.”

“Adrian, you really have a heart of stone in this connection,” smiled
Randal, “and after she had been chiefly instrumental in restoring to us
the Duciehurst papers and jewels!”

“What else could she do--commit a felony and keep them? I certainly
entertain no fantastic magnanimity on that score.”

Randal laughed, but the solicitous Adrian fancied this phase of the
subject might develop a menace to the future, and hastened to change the
topic. “I wish you would come with me and confer with our lawyers
to-day, Randal,” he suggested. “It is better to have both principals in
interest present at any important consultation. I have an engagement
with them at three,” drawing out his watch for a hasty glance.

“Agreed,” said Randal, springing up alertly. “Where’s your
clothes-brush?--but no, I suppose there is not a speck of the dust of
travel on me, for, when I tipped the man on the boat, he practically
frayed all the nap off my clothes to show his gratitude. I am
presentable, eh?”

He stood for a moment before the long mirror, then broke forth
whimsically in affected alarm. “Adrian, who is this in the mirror, you
or I? I am all mixed up. I can’t tell us apart. What are we going to do
about it?” he continued, as if in great agitation, while Adrian, with a
leisurely smile--for he had often taken part in this _gambade_, a
favorite bit of fooling since their infancy--looked about for his hat.

“Let’s go downstairs and get somebody to pick us out,” suggested Randal,
“for, really, I don’t want to be you, Adrian. You are too solemn and
priggish; why, this must be I, for, if it were you, you would have said
‘piggish.’ You are so dearly fraternal. Don’t come near me, I don’t want
to get mixed up again. I begin to know myself. This is I.”

But, notwithstanding this threatened peril of proximity, they walked
down the street together, arm in arm, to the office of the counsel,
followed by many a startled glance perceiving the wonderful resemblance,
and sometimes a passing stranger of an uncultured grade came to a full
halt in surprise and curiosity.

There were many consultations with the legal advisers in the days that
ensued, which Randal Ducie found very irksome, accustomed as he was to
an active outdoor life and a less labyrinthine species of thought than
appertains to the purlieus of the law. Unexpected details continually
developed concerning the interests involved. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s bill
for divorce was filed in the meantime, and because it had a personal
interest paramount to its importance in the Duciehurst case it brought
up again the matter of taking her deposition in these proceedings which
had been pretermitted by reason of affairs of greater magnitude.

The decision was reached on a day when to Randal’s relief he was able to
dub facetiously the counsel “the peripatetic philosophers” by reason of
a journey which they thought it necessary to take in the company of
their clients and which he found much more tolerable than the duress of
their offices and their long indoor prelections. The four men boarded a
packet leaving the city at five o’clock; it being deemed advisable that
the lawyers should make a personal examination of the locality and the
hiding place of the Ducie papers and other valuables, before conferring
with the Mississippi counsel retained in the case. The question of
summoning Mrs. Floyd-Rosney was discussed as they sat on the hurricane
deck in the approaching dusk between the glitter of the evening sky, all
of a clear pink and gold, and the lustrous sheen of the expanse of the
river, reflecting a delicate amber and rose. The search-light apparatus
was not illumined and looked in the uncertain half twilight as if it
might be some defensive piece of artillery of the mortar type, mounted
on the hurricane deck. The great smoke-stacks, towering high into the
air, had already swinging between them the green and red chimney lamps,
required by law, but as yet day reigned and all the brilliancy of the
evening bespoke a protest against the coming night.

Adrian Ducie doubted the availability of summoning Mrs. Floyd-Rosney in
their interest. The proof could inferentially be made without her, by
those who saw her deliver the box and witnessed its opening and
contents. Besides, here were the papers to speak for themselves. But
Randal Ducie urged the deposition. It would seem conscious not to call
her. Why should she not give her testimony. It was disrespectful to
imply that Mrs. Floyd-Rosney would be reluctant to do this.

“Mr. Floyd-Rosney is a mighty touchy man,” suggested the junior counsel.
This practitioner was about forty years of age, thin, wiry, eager, even
fidgetty. He had a trick of passing his hand rapidly over his
prematurely bald head, of playing with his fob chain, of twisting a
pencil, or his gloves, or his eyeglasses--these last also, perhaps, a
prematurely acquired treasure. Apparently he had burned a great deal of
midnight oil to good purpose, for he was admittedly an exceedingly able
lawyer, destined to rise very high in his profession.

His associate in the case was in striking contrast, in many respects, to
Mr. Guinnell. He was a portly man, with a big head, and a big frame, and
a big brain. It was his foible,--one of them, perhaps,--in moments of
deep thought to close his eyes; it may have been in order to commune the
more closely and clearly with the immanent legal entity within; it may
have been more definitely to concentrate his ideas; it may have been to
shut out the sight of Mr. Guinnell’s swiftly revolving pencil or
eyeglasses; whatever his reason, the habit had a most unnerving effect
on clients in consultation, suggesting the idea that their
affairs--always of vital importance to the parties in interest--were of
slight consequence to their adviser and of soporific effect. Both
gentlemen were serious-minded, and, which is more rare in their
profession, abysmally devoid of a sense of humor.

“The filing of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s bill for divorce and alimony
complicates the situation,” continued Mr. Guinnell, “although I have
thought since the Union Station incident,” he hesitated slightly,
glancing toward Randal,--“you will excuse me for mentioning it in
professional confidence.”

“Certainly; I often mention it myself as a mere layman,” said Randal,
debonairly.

“I have thought that Mr. Floyd-Rosney will make a stiff fight on the
hard letter of the law,--_à l’outrance_, in fact,--with no contemplation
of such concessions as would otherwise present themselves to litigants,
looking to compromise, settlement of antagonistic interest by equitable
adjustment. In the present development of his domestic affairs he will
find it quite intolerable for his wife to give testimony in the interest
of Mr. Randal Ducie and his brother. Mr. Floyd-Rosney will wince from
it.”

“It is a good thing that something can make him wince,” declared Randal
hardily. “A stout cowhide is evidently what he needs.”

“I hope, Mr. Ducie,” said Mr. Harvey, the senior counsel in alarm and
grave rebuke, “that you will not take that tone in testifying. All the
circumstances in the case render the situation unusual and perilous, and
we want to do and say nothing that will place either you or your brother
in personal danger from Mr. Floyd-Rosney.”

“The only cause for wonder is that your brother was not shot down at
Union Station, being mistaken for you,” Mr. Guinnell added the weight of
his opinion to his partner’s remonstrance. “If Floyd-Rosney had chanced
to wear a revolver Adrian Ducie would not be here to-day to tell the
tale.”

“Count on me; I am yours to command,” declared Randal, lightly. “I am a
very lamb, when necessary, and you may lead me through the case with a
blue ribbon and a ring in my nose. I’ll eat out of any man’s hand!”

The ponderous senior counsel looked at him soberly. The junior twirled
and twirled his fob-chain.

“We wish to conduct this case to the best advantage,” said Mr. Harvey,
“and leave no stone unturned that can contribute to success. But we wish
to be conservative--we must keep that intention before us, to be
_conservative_, and give Floyd-Rosney no possible opportunity for
outbreak at our expense, either in regard to the interests of the case
or the personal safety of our clients.”

“I will order my walk and conversation as if on eggs,” declared Randal,
with a wary look.

“I do not apprehend any unseemly measures or conduct on the part of the
opposing counsel,” continued Mr. Harvey. “They are gentlemen of high
standing. But Mr. Floyd-Rosney has a most unruly and unreasoning temper
and he has placed himself at a deplorable public disadvantage in this
matter, which, be sure, he does not ascribe to himself. We will go
slowly and safely--coming necessarily into contention with him. But we
shall take Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s deposition by all means.”

And thus the matter was settled.

On the third day the boat made the Duciehurst landing, and some hours
were spent in exploring the ruins of the mansion. Later the party
separated, the lawyers repairing to the inland town of Caxton for a
conference with the local legal firm who would prosecute the interests
of the case in Mississippi, and the two Ducies making a prearranged
excursion to a plantation which Randal had leased at some distance
higher up the river. As the residence on this plantation was comfortable
and in good repair he had quitted his quarters at the hotel in Caxton
and had taken up his abode here. It had been a wrench to him to
relinquish the operations on the Ducie estate; but he was advised that
his claim to rightful possession might be jeopardized by consenting to
hold under Floyd-Rosney, which course, indeed, he had never
contemplated. As the two, mounted on the staid farm horses, rode through
the fields and speculated on their possibilities, Randal would often
pause in the turn-rows--the cotton of last year a withered stubble--in
systematic lines, with here and there a floculent “dog-tail,” as the
latest wisp of the staple is called, flaunting in the chill spring
breeze, and would descant on the superior values of the Duciehurst lands
compared to these, illustrating sometimes by the fresh furrows near at
hand, showing the humus of the soil, for the plows were already running.
Now and again he turned his eager, hopeful eyes on his brother as he
declared, “This time next year, old man, I shall have the force busy
getting ready to bed up land for cotton at Duciehurst.” Or “When the
estates of our fathers are restored to us I shall live in formality at
our ancestral mansion, and if you dare go back to France I shall revenge
myself by marrying somebody.”

“Anybody in view?”

“Apprehensive, again? Well, to set your mind at rest, I was thinking,
pictorially merely, how stately Hilda Dean looked walking down the
grand staircase with her head up. How beautifully it is poised on her
shoulders.”

“She is truly beautiful,” Adrian said heartily, “and during all that
trip down the river I was impressed with her lovely character, and her
sterling qualities of mind and heart. Her beauty, great as it is, really
is belittled by the graces of her nature. Pray Heaven your visions of
Hildegarde as your chatelaine at Duciehurst may materialize.”

“One more year,--one more year of this toilsome probation, and then,”
Randal’s face was illumined as if the word radiated light, “Duciehurst!”

Adrian, looking over the river which was now well in view from the
fields, began to speculate on the approach of a skiff heading down
stream, and running in to the bank. “I wonder if that is the boat that
your manager was to send for me for my trip to Berridge’s?”

For, although the terror of the fierce pursuit of the riverside harpies
inaugurated by Colonel Kenwynton had swept the others in flight from the
country, not a foothold of suspicion had been found against Berridge and
his son. It was known that Captain Treherne had spent the night at their
amphibian home, and had gone thence to his conference with Colonel
Kenwynton on the sand-bar; so much he himself had stated, but he
declared positively that neither of the Berridges was with the
miscreants who had waylaid him on his return and conveyed him bound to
Duciehurst. It was beyond his knowledge, indeed, that this choice twain
had later joined his captors at the mansion. Their strength of nerve,
however, failed them when they were notified that the Ducie counsel
desired an interview with them on this visit to the vicinity to
ascertain if their testimony would be at all pertinent in the matters
preliminary to the discovery of the documents. Even their non-appearance
this afternoon did not excite unfavorable comment. It was supposed that
in the depths of their illiteracy they had not understood the nature of
the communication, if indeed they had received it, and Adrian Ducie
promised the counsel to see old Berridge or his son personally and
explain the matter in order to have them present in Caxton the following
day when the lawyers should be in conference.

“Oh, I will go instead,” cried Randal; “I really ought not to let you go
on this errand, for,” with a quizzical smile, “you are ‘company,’ you
know.”

“Not very formal ‘company.’ You ought to see to the placing of that new
boiler in the gin-house,--and I have nothing to do. Yes,” continued
Adrian, still regarding the approach of the skiff, “that is your man
Job, and he can take this horse back to the stable.”

He dismounted hastily and throwing the reins to Randal, he ran lightly
up the slope of the levee. He paused on the summit to wave his hand and
call out cheerily, “Ta, ta--see you later,” and then he threw himself in
the skiff, which was dancing on the floods close below, the boatman
holding it by the painter as he stood on the exterior slope of the
embankment.

The river was at flood height and running with tremendous force. But for
the aid of the current Adrian’s strength plying the oars would have made
scant speed. It was only a short time before he sighted the little
riverside shanty which no longer showed its stilts, but sat on the water
as flush with the surface as a swimming duck. Adrian was able from his
seat between the rowlocks to knock on the closed door without rising.
There was no response for a few minutes, although the building was
obviously inhabited, the sluggish smoke coiling up from the stove-pipe
into this dull day of late winter or early spring, whichever season
might be credited with its surly disaffection. A child’s voice within
suddenly babbled forth, and but for this Adrian fancied a feint of
absence might have been attempted. With a slight motion of the oars he
kept the skiff in place at the entrance, and at length the door slowly
opened and the frowsy, copper-tinted hair and freckled face of Jessy
Jane was thrust forth.

She was one of that type of woman to whom without any approach to moral
delinquency a handsome man is always an object of supreme twittering
interest, however remote of station and indifferent of temperament;
however crusty or contemptuous. That he should obviously concern himself
in no wise with her existence did not in any degree minimize the
intensity of her personal absorption in him. Her face, sullen and
lowering, took on a bland and mollifying expression, and with a fancied
recognition of the rower she broke forth with a high, ecstatic chirp:

“Why, Mr. Ran, I never knowed ’twas you hyar!” though she had never
spoken to Randal Ducie, and knew him only by sight.

“This is not Mr. Randal Ducie, but his brother,” said Adrian, and as
she stared silently at him, noting the wonderful resemblance, he
continued:

“I want to speak to Joshua Berridge,” he consulted a paper in his hand.
“He lives here, doesn’t he?”

“My dad-in-law,” she explained, suavely; “but he ain’t at home just now,
though”--with a facetious smile, “’twon’t be long ’fore he comes--most
supper time, ye know. Won’t ye kem in an’ wait?”

Ducie declined this invitation and sat meditatively eyeing the waste of
waters, for the river was now at its full scope, barring inundation, and
stretched in great majesty to a bank scarcely visible on the farther
shore.

“I ain’t sure, but what ye mought find him over on the old _Che’okee
Rose_,” she said, speculatively, for Ducie was very comely and she had a
special impulse to be polite to so worthy an object of courtesy.

“Is the old steamboat there yet?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at
the murky swirls of the swift current. There was now no sign of the
sand-bar on which the ill-fated craft had stranded. The foaming waves
raced past and submerged its whole extent. None might know where it lay.
A deep-water craft, drawing many feet, might have unwittingly plied
above its expanse. Only a fraction of the superstructure of the
steamboat--the pilot-house and texas, and the upper part of the cabin,
showed above the waste of waters to distinguish the spot where the
steamer had run aground and the pitiless storm had flayed out all its
future utility.

“The wreckers have been down time and again,” she went on with a note of
apology. “They tuk off all the vallybles before the water riz,--the
kyarpets, an’ funnicher, an’ mirrors, an’ sech--even the big chimbleys.
The water got the rest, but wunst in a while ef us pore folks wants
somethin’ that be lef’ fur lost--like some henges, or somthin’ we jest
tries to supply ourse’fs ez bes’ we kin.”

Adrian was still silently looking at the wreck that he had such cause to
remember, with all that had since come and gone.

“Well, I reckon Dad is over there now, hunting fur them henges,” said
the woman, speculatively. “Leastwise,” holding her palm above her eyes,
“’pears like I kin see a boat on the tother side, a-bobbin at the e-end
of a painter!”

Adrian moved with a sudden resolution. The oars smote the water, and
with curt and formal thanks for the information, he began to row
strongly across the current that despite his best endeavors carried him
continually down and down the river, and required him to shape his
course diagonally athwart the stream to counteract its impetus.

The woman stood for a time aimlessly watching him, as the rhythmic oars
plied, and the skiff, shadowless this dull day, kept on its way. At last
she turned within and shut the door.




CHAPTER XXIV


The effect on Floyd-Rosney of his wife’s legal proceedings was deep and
radical. His counsel constantly noted in him a sort of stunned surprise,
as if contemplating some fantastic revulsion of the natural course of
events. He had fashioned this result as definitely as if he had planned
its every detail, yet he regarded it with an affronted amazement that he
should be called upon to experience events so untoward. He had a
disposition to belittle the efficiency of the demonstration. He
perceived with a snort of rage and contempt the seriousness with which
his counsel regarded it and declared violently that she could never get
a decree.

“You mean to defend the suit, then?” Mr. Stacey asked, very cool, and
pallid, and dispassionate.

“What else?” thundered Floyd-Rosney, the veins in his forehead blue and
swollen, his face scarlet, his hands quivering.

“I can’t see upon what grounds, in view of the terms of _retraxit_.”

“_You_ dictated the terms of that precious performance,” declared
Floyd-Rosney, with vindictive pleasure in shifting the blame.

But Mr. Stacey easily eluded the burden.

“Under your specific instructions as to the facts to which you made
affidavit,” he said, coldly.

It was perhaps evidence how Floyd-Rosney was beginning to acquire a
modicum of prudence under the fierce tuition of circumstance that he
avoided a breach with his lawyers. He heartily cursed them in his heart,
recollecting the many large fees they had received at his hands,
minimizing altogether the arduous work and professional learning that
had earned them. He broke off the consultation, which he postponed to a
future day, and left them with a stunned realization that these men,
whose capacity and experience he had so often tested, were of opinion
that he had no defense against the preposterous suit of his wife, that
she would receive her decree and be awarded the custody of the child and
ample alimony which it would be adjudged he should pay.

He set his teeth, gritting them hard when he remembered how these
lawyers had sought to induce him to defer filing his bill, to mitigate
his allegations, to investigate the circumstances more closely. Their
judgment had been justified in every particular, and though showing no
triumph--Mr. Stacey was too completely a legal machine for such
manifestation--he gave attestation of his human composition by the cold
distaste, which he could not disguise, for the subsequent developments.

“Damned if _he_ is not ashamed to be concerned with _me_,” Floyd-Rosney
said to himself, fairly staggered by the preposterous climax of the
situation.

He began to have a great desire to get out of the country, to be quit of
all the sights and associations of his recent life, but he had pressed
the preparations for the Duciehurst suit, and his absence now as the
date of the trial approached would have the aspect of a pusillanimous
retreat, specially obnoxious to him in view of the fact that the Ducies
were his opponents. The overthrow of his plans and expectations of his
wife’s return to him and the rehabilitation of their life together was
like the demonstration of some great earthquake or cataclysmal disaster;
it had destroyed all the symmetry and purpose of his life; his outlook
was as upon a blank desert of despair, an “abomination of desolation.”
That human heart of his, despite its overlay of selfish aims and
turbulent pride, had depths seldom stirred of genuine feeling; he
yearned for sympathy; he poignantly lacked the touch of his absent
child’s hand; the adoring look in the limpid infantile eyes; he felt at
every turn the loss of the incense of adulation that his wife had been
wont to burn before him. It had made sweet the atmosphere of his life,
and until it ceased he had never known how dependent upon it his very
respiration had grown to be--it was as the breath of his life. While he
sat in his solitary library, brooding and silent, reviewing in his
enforced leisure and loneliness the successive steps by which the
destruction of his domestic happiness had been compassed, his brow
darkened and grew fierce as he fixed the date of its inception to the
meeting with Adrian Ducie on the _Cherokee Rose_, and the discovery that
his wife could subtly distinguish between these facsimile faces of the
two brothers the lineaments of her former lover. Even now his logic
strove to reassert itself. Of course, the man’s face was intimately
familiar to her; there must be tricks of expression, the lift of an
eyebrow, the curl of a lip, methods of enunciation peculiar to one and
alien to the other, distinctive enough to a keen and habituated
observer. But, alack! this was not all, offensive as were its
suggestions to his pride of monopoly. He said to himself that from the
moment of the presentation of this vivid reminder of her old lover’s
face was inaugurated the recurrence of the Ducie influence in her life.
Here began that strange, covert revolt against him and all his theories
and plans, which had grown inch by inch till it possessed her. She had
never been the same, and he--fool that he was--through his magnanimity
in withdrawing the allegations of his bill, had furnished her with the
certainty of gaining a decree in her counter suit for divorce, of
securing an ample fortune in the belittling name of alimony, and the
opportunity of marrying and endowing with this wealth, derived from him,
the penniless Randal Ducie, whose baleful influence had destroyed for
him all that made life worth living.

Floyd-Rosney had never been an intemperate man, but in this grim
seclusion he began to drink heavily. He had piqued himself upon his
delicate taste, his acumen as a judge of fine wines, but the Chambertin
and Château Yquem remained untouched during his hasty dinners, while the
brandy decanter had taken up a permanent position on the library table,
and he had ordered up from the cellar an old and rich whisky that had
been laid down by his father before he was born, and that he had, so far
as the butler knew, never yet tasted.

It was difficult for the lurking magnate, in his sullen seclusion, to
face the eyes of his own domestic staff; he could not bring himself to
confront the questioning, speculative gaze of the streets, the club, the
driving park. Even such _rencontres_ as chanced when he went to consult
his counsel, whom, but for very shame he would have summoned to him, he
found an ordeal. He had grown poignantly sensitive and keenly perceptive
as well, and was discriminating in minute points of facial expression
and gradations of manner. He could differentiate embarrassment,
commiseration,--and how pity stung him!--reprobation, and oftenest of
all, a sort of covert relish, an elation, that with any personal
relation would have meant triumph. “They are nearly as well pleased as
if I were broken,” he would say cynically to himself. But there was no
breach of courtesy, no abatement of the deep respect usually tendered to
a magnate and millionaire. He was keenly alive to detect the insignia of
a diminution of consideration, but his little world salaamed as
heretofore, for he was by no means broken, not even if he should have to
pay heavy alimony, and lose Duciehurst into the bargain. The experience
of these encounters, however, weighed heavily on his nerves, now all
a-quiver and jangling with the effects of his deep potations.

His home was odious to him; his covert speculations as to the deductions
of the servants, whom ordinarily he would have disregarded as mere worms
of the earth, afflicted him. He was keenly conscious of his humiliated
position in their eyes, cognizant as he knew them to be of his
expectation of his wife’s return, and the elaborate preparations he had
made and personally supervised for her reception. He found a greater
degree of privacy and comfort on his yacht, which he ordered up from New
Orleans, where she had been lying for a month past, refitted and
revictualed, awaiting his summons. He steamed down the river to the
Gulf on one occasion, but finding himself out of touch with his counsel
in the Duciehurst case, and realizing that some final decision must be
reached as to his course in the divorce suit, he confined his wanderings
to idly cruising up and down the river, stopping at prearranged points
for mail or telegrams.

In this resource he experienced a surcease of the harassments that
infested his life on shore. His skipper knew little and cared less of
land-lubber interests--as maritime an animal as a crab. He had, indeed,
with a brightening eye and a ready courtesy, asked, when Floyd-Rosney
came over the side of the _Aglaia_, if the madam was not going to favor
the ship’s company with her presence. Being answered shortly in the
negative he heartily protested his regret.

“The best sailor she is of any lady I ever saw,” he declared, and added
that if they were to do some deep-sea stunts they need not consult the
barometer for weather signs. She cared no more for weather than a stormy
petrel. He always looked on the madam’s presence as a good omen, he
said; he had a bit of the blarney and a bit of poesy in his composition,
his ancestry hailing from the Emerald Isle.

“She has brought no good luck to her husband,” Floyd-Rosney reflected,
grimly.

It was grateful to him, however, to perceive that the man knew naught of
his recent discomfitures and humiliation; of very meager consequence
such an opinion would have been ordinarily, but the evident ignorance of
the skipper enabled him to hold his head higher. The skipper read
nothing in the newspapers but the shipping news, and but for the change
in Floyd-Rosney’s bibulous habit he might never have been the wiser.

“He’s drinking like a fish,” he said in surprise to the second officer.
“That’s new with him.”

“Seems to me,” responded the subordinate, meditatively, “I heard
something when we was in port in Boloxi about him and the madam havin’
had some sort o’ row.”

“I hate to trust him with the brand new dinky skiff,” said the skipper.
“He ain’t a practiced hand; I seen him run her nose up on a drift log
lying on the levee with a shock that might have started every seam in
her.”

But the yacht, with all that appertained to it, was Floyd-Rosney’s
property, and the skipper could only enjoy his fears for the proper care
of its appurtenances.

For Floyd-Rosney had contracted the habit of scouting about in the
skiff, while the yacht swung at anchor, awaiting his pleasure. The
solitude was soothing to his exacerbated nerves. He could, indeed, be
alone, for he took the oars himself, and as he was a strong, athletic
man the exercise was doubtless beneficial and tonic. The passing of the
congestion of commerce from the great river to the railroads had brought
the stream to an almost primitive loneliness. Thus he would often row
for hours, seeing not a human being, not the smoke of a riverside
habitation, not a craft of any of the multifarious species once wont to
ply the waters of this great inland sea. The descriptive epithet was
merited by its aspect at this stage of the water. Bank-full, it
stretched as far as the eye could reach. Only persons familiar with the
riparian contours could detect in a ruffled line on the horizon the
presence of a growth of cottonwood on the swampy Arkansas shore.

One of these days, when he was thus loitering about, the sky was dull
and clouded; the river was dark, and reflected its mood. The tender
green of spring was keen almost with the effect of glitter on the bank,
and he noted how high the water stood against the levees of plantations,
here and there, menacing overflow. When a packet chanced to pass he bent
low to his oars, avoiding possible recognition from any passenger on the
guards or officer on deck, but he uncharacteristically exchanged
greetings with a shanty boat, now and again propelled down the stream
with big sweeps; none of the humble amphibians of the cabins had ever
heard, he was sure, of the great Floyd-Rosney. Sometimes he called out a
question, courteously answered, or with a response of chaff, roughly
gay. Once, being doubtful of the locality, he paused on his oars to ask
information of an ancient darkey, who was paddling in a dug-out along
the margin of the river.

“You are going to have an overflow hereabout,” added Floyd-Rosney.

The old darkey, nothing loath, joined in the dismal foreboding, keeping
his craft stationary while he lent himself to the joys of conversation
with so aristocratic a gentleman.

“Dat’s so, Boss; we’se gwine under, shore, ef de ribber don’t quit dis
foolishness.”

“Whose plantation is that beyond the point, where the water is standing
against the levee?”

“Dat, sah, is de Mountjoy place, but hit’s leased dis year ter Mr. Ran
Ducie. I reckon mebbe you is ’quainted wid him. Mighty fine man, Mr.
Ran is, an’ nobody so well liked in the neighborhood.”

Without another word Floyd-Rosney bent to his oars. Was there no escape
from this ill-omened association of ideas?

The old darkey, checked in the exploitation of his old-time manners and
balked in the opportunity of polite conversation, gazed in amazed
discomfiture after Floyd-Rosney’s skiff, as it sped swiftly down the
river, then resumed his progress, gruff and lowering, ejaculating in
affront:

“White folks is cur’ous, shore; ain’t got no manners, nor no raisin’,
nor no p’liteness, nohow.”

Floyd-Rosney’s equipoise had been greatly shaken by the strain upon his
nerves and mental forces, this depletion of his powers of resistance
supplemented by constant and inordinate drinking, contrary to his usual
custom. Thus he had become susceptible to even the slightest strain on
his self-control. He noticed that with the renewal of the mental
turmoils that he had sought to elude--conjured up by the chance mention
of the man’s name that meant so much to him in many ways--his stroke
grew erratic and uncertain; once one of the oars was almost wrenched
from his grasp by a swirl of the current. He was well in mid-stream, in
deep water, and he realized that should he lose his capacity to handle
the little craft he would be in immediate danger of capsizing and
drowning, for his strength in swimming could never enable him to breast
that tumultuous tide at flood height. The yacht was out of sight, lying
at anchor in the bight of a bend, that cut him off from all chance of
being observed and rescued by the skipper. He summoned his presence of
mind and let the boat drift for a few moments while he took from his
pocket a brandy flask, and drank deeply from its undiluted contents. The
potent elixir rallied his forces--steadied his nerves. With its
artificial stimulus his hand was once more firm, his eye bright and
sure. But its stimulus was not lasting, as he knew, and fearing an
incapacity to handle the boat in this swirling waste of waters he
directed his course toward an island, as it seemed, thinking that thence
he would signal the _Aglaia_ and wait for her to steam up and take him
off. There he would be in full view from the yacht.

As he neared his destination he perceived--as he had not hitherto,
because of the potency of the brandy--that the island of his beclouded
mirage was the wreck of the _Cherokee Rose_, still aground on the
sand-bar, although waters swirled around her, and fish swam through her
cabin doors and the slime and ooze of the river had befouled the
erstwhile dapper whiteness of her guards and saloon walls. He lay on his
oars for a space, regarding with meditative eyes the ruin, analogous, it
seemed to the far-reaching ruin that had its inception here and that had
trailed him so ruthlessly many a day. In his dreary idleness he was
sensible of a species of languid curiosity as to the extent of the
ravages of water and decay in comparatively so short a time. Only a few
months ago, in the past October, he had been aboard the packet, when
trim and sound, and immaculately white and fully equipped, she had run
aground on this treacherous bar, where her bones were destined to rot.
He wondered that the wreckers had left so much, unless, indeed, their
operations were frustrated by the sudden impending rise of the waters.
The craft lay listed to one side, the hull evidently smashed like an
egg-shell by the furious onslaught of the storm, but a part of the
superstructure--the texas and the pilot-house--was still above water,
though canted queerly askew.

Floyd-Rosney rowed briskly to the stair that formerly served to ascend
to the hurricane deck, the skiff running up flush with the flight. He
sprang out--first trying the integrity of the wood with a cautious foot,
and tied the painter firmly to one of the posts that supported the
hurricane deck, leaving the boat leaping on the ripples, as if seeking
to break away from some ponderous creature of its own kind that would
fain drag it down into the hopeless devastations of a lair in the
depths.

With a deep sigh Floyd-Rosney slowly ascended the few steps of the stair
above the current, and stood looking drearily down upon the structure
wherein were lived those scenes so momentous in his fate so short a time
ago. As he walked along the canted floor, his white cap in his hand, his
head bared to the breeze, he glanced now and again through the shattered
cabin lights down into the saloon, seeing there the water continuously
swirling in the melancholy spaces, once full of radiance and cheer and
genial company. All the doors of the staterooms had been removed, both
those opening on the guards and the inner ones, of which the panels were
decorated with mirrors and which gave upon the saloon. A vague jingle
caught his attention; a fragment of an electrolier still clung to the
ceiling and sometimes, shaken by the ripples, its glass pendants sent
forth a shrill, disconsolate vibration, like a note of funereal keening.
Suddenly from amidst that weird desolation of shifting waters a face
stared up at him. It was unmistakable. He saw it distinctly. But when he
looked again it was gone.

Floyd-Rosney was trembling from head to foot. He had turned ghastly
pale. But for the wall of the texas against which he staggered he might
have fallen. He did not question the reality of his impression. It was
as definite as the light of day,--a face strangely familiar, yet
sinister, seen in the murky depths. He wondered wildly if it could be
the drowned face of some victim of the wreck, or if this were now
impossible, some curious explorer such as himself, meeting here more
serious mystery than any he had sought. The next moment he broke into a
harsh laugh of scorn. It was his own reflection! At the end of the
saloon, where the craft lay highest on the bar, one of the mirrored
doors, shattered doubtless in careless handling in process of removal,
had been left as useless. In this fragment he had seen his face for one
moment, and then the ripples played over the glass and the semblance was
gone, returning now again. But Floyd-Rosney had no mind to watch these
weird, illusory antics. It was horrible to him to see his face mirrored
anew, distorted in those foul depths where he had been once well and
happy and full of exuberant life and hope, with wife and child and
fortune, every desire of his heart gratified, both hands full and
running over.

As he turned away he was surprised to note how the shock had shaken his
composure, his nerves. He was loath to quit his posture against the wall
of the texas that had supported him. His long, intent gaze into the
swirl of the waters had induced a tendency to vertigo, and he looked
about for something that might serve for a seat. The pilot-house was but
two or three steps above, and there were seats built into the wall, he
remembered.

He made shift to clamber up the short flight. The door was still on its
hinges, but so defaced and splintered as to be not worth removing, and
so askew as to be difficult to open. With one strong effort, for
Floyd-Rosney was a powerful man, he burst it ajar, although it swung
back to its previous position, implying a like difficulty in opening it
again.

He sat down on the farther side, on the bare bench, the upholstery
having disappeared, and waited to regain his composure. Once more he had
recourse to the brandy flask, now nearly empty. Once more the fires
streamed through nerve and fiber, revivifying his every impulse. He felt
that he was himself again, as he gazed through the blank spaces where
the glass was wont to be, at the vast expanse of the great river, now a
glittering sheen under a sudden cast of the sun. Beautiful chromatic
suggestions were mirrored back from the sky; a stretch of illuminated
lilac, an ethereal hue touched the vivid green of the opposite bank. A
play of rose and gold was in the westward ripples, and one bar, athwart
the tawny reach, of crude, intense vermillion betokened a cloud of
scarlet, harbinger of sunset in the offing. He could see the little
house on stilts to the left hand, now like a boat on the water. In the
enforced stay here, when aground on the sand-bar, he had time to
familiarize himself with even unvalued elements of the landscape. To
the right was a bayou, the current running with great force down its
broad channel, as wide as an ordinary river, and on the other side of
the bight of the bend, lay the _Aglaia_. He wondered if the _Cherokee
Rose_ was an object of the scrutiny of the skipper’s binocle.
Floyd-Rosney thought that he should be on the watch for his employer’s
return, which was doubtless the fact, as he had no other duties in hand.

Floyd-Rosney was still eyeing the craft, meditating how best to signal
his wish to be taken back to the _Aglaia_, when a sudden sound caught
his attention--a sound of swift steps. They came rapidly along the
hurricane deck, where he himself had found footing, mounted the short
stair to the texas, and the next moment the door of the pilot-house was
burst ajar and the face and form of Adrian Ducie appeared at the
entrance.

Floyd-Rosney staggered to his feet.

“What does this mean, sir?” he cried, thickly, the veins of his forehead
swollen stiff and blue, his face scarlet, his eyes flashing fire.

The newcomer seemed surprised beyond measure. He stared at Floyd-Rosney
as if doubting his senses and could not collect his thoughts or summon
words until Floyd-Rosney blustered forth:

“Why this intrusion! Leave this place instantly!”

“It is no intrusion, and I will go at my own good pleasure. I came here
thinking to find a man with whom I have business.”

“Well, you have found him. A business that should have been settled
between us long ago!” He advanced a step, and he had his right hand in
his pocket.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’ll find out, as sure as your name is Randal Ducie,” hissed
Floyd-Rosney.

“That’s exactly what it is not. I am Adrian Ducie.”

“You can’t play that game with me. I know your cursed face well enough.
I will mark it now, so that there will never be any more mistakes
between you.”

Adrian had thought he had a pistol, but it was a knife--a large clasp
knife which he had opened with difficulty because of the strength of its
spring as he fumbled with it in his pocket. He thrust violently at
Ducie’s face, who only avoided the blow by suddenly springing aside; the
blade struck the door with such force as to shiver off a fragment of the
wood.

Taken at this disadvantage it was impossible for Adrian to retreat in
the precarious footing of the wreck and useless to call for help. He
could only defend himself with his bare hands.

“I call you to observe, Mr. Floyd-Rosney,” he exclaimed, “that I am
unarmed!”

“So much the better!” cried Floyd-Rosney, striking furiously with the
knife at the face he hated with such rancor.

But this time Adrian caught at the other man’s arm to deflect the blow
and there ensued a fierce struggle for the possession of the knife, the
only weapon between them. While Floyd-Rosney was the heavier and the
stronger of the combatants, Adrian was the more active and the quicker
of resource. He had almost wrested the knife from Floyd-Rosney’s grasp;
in seeking to close the blade the sharp edge was brought down on
Floyd-Rosney’s hand, and the blood spurted out. The next moment he had
regained it and he rushed at his adversary’s face--the point held high.
Pushing him back with one hand against his breast Adrian once more
deflected his aim from his eyes and face, but the point struck lower
with the full force of Floyd-Rosney’s terrific lunge, piercing the
throat and severing the jugular vein.




CHAPTER XXV


As his antagonist fell heavily to the floor, the force of the impact
shaking the crazy, ruinous superstructure of the boat with a sinister
menace, Floyd-Rosney’s first emotion was the stirring of the impulse of
self-preservation. Not one moment was wasted in indecision. He stepped
deftly across the prostrate body, wrenched the door open with a violent
effort and with satisfaction heard the dislocated spring slam it noisily
behind him. There the corpse would lie indefinitely, unless, indeed, the
man whom Ducie had professed to seek should come to keep an appointment;
probably he had already been here, and had gone, for the mustering
splendors of the evening sky betokened how the hours wore on to sunset.
As Floyd-Rosney took his way with a swift, sure step to the stair where
his boat still struggled at the end of the painter attached to the post,
he noted that Ducie had followed his example and secured his own skiff
in like manner. A sudden monition of precaution occurred to Floyd-Rosney
even in his precipitation, and in loosing his own craft he set the other
adrift, reflecting that to leave it here was to advertise the presence
of its owner aboard the _Cherokee Rose_; the current, sweeping as if
impelled by some tremendous artificial force as of steam or electricity,
set strongly toward the shore, and the boat, swiftly gliding on the
ripples, would ultimately ground itself on the bank, affording evidence
that Ducie had landed. As without an instant’s hesitation he busied
himself in putting his plan into execution he did not think once of the
powerful lenses of the binocle of the skipper, at watch for his return
on the bow of the beautiful _Aglaia_, lying there in the bend of the
river, not two miles away, like a swan on the water, between the radiant
evening sky, and the irradiated stream, reflecting her white breast as
she floated, a vision suspended in soft splendors.

He had a momentary doubt of the wisdom of his course, as he took up his
oars, and the possibility of this observation occurred to him. Then he
endeavored to reassure himself. It was the only practicable procedure,
he argued. He took the chance of being unobserved, while otherwise the
boat, swinging at the stairway, would unavoidably excite curiosity and
allure investigation. Still, he would have preferred to have had that
possibility in mind, before taking incriminating action,--to have had
his course a matter of choice instead of making the best of it.

From this moment circumstances seemed contorted and difficult of
adjustment. He had not noticed in his absorption that the cut inflicted
upon him from his own knife was bleeding profusely, and beginning to
sting and smart violently. He must have unwittingly scattered drops of
blood all along the deck and stairs as he came. It was a marvel, he
reflected, still optimistic in instinctive self-defense, that none had
fallen on his suit of white flannel. He held the wounded hand in the
water, hoping to stanch the flow, but the red drops welled forth with
an impetuous gush, as of a burst of tears. The cut was not deep, but it
was clear and clean, for the blade had been as sharp as a razor. With a
little time it would dry in the cicatrix and close the wound. His back
toward the _Aglaia_, he felt sufficiently free of espionage to tear his
linen handkerchief to shreds, using his teeth to start the rent, for
with that hand dripping not only with blood, but with bloodguiltiness,
he dared not search his pockets for his knife. He bound up the wound,
carefully, his plans forming in his mind with all minute detail as he
adjusted the bandages. He would loiter about the river, he said to
himself, till the bleeding ceased, which must be in half an hour’s time,
and the hand would then not be liable to notice. With his splendid
physical condition any wound would be swift in healing. It would be
close on nightfall, he meditated, and this was all the better, for he
would board the yacht under cover of the darkness and give orders to
drop down the river to the Gulf, thence to the open sea--his ultimate
destination being some port beyond the reach of extradition, for he had
lately tested his hold on public favor, and was resolved to risk nothing
on its uncertain tenure. He could perfect his plans when in mid-ocean.
Meantime, the present claimed all his faculties.

With the fast plying oars and the strong sweep of the current the skiff
shot along with a speed that suggested a winning shell in a ‘varsity
race. When he approached within ear-shot of the _Aglaia_ he hailed the
skipper, who promptly responded from the deck, and still at a
considerable distance, well in mid-channel, Floyd-Rosney shouted out his
intentions to proceed in the skiff a few miles further, as he wished to
investigate the old Duciehurst mansion, and ordered the _Aglaia_ to drop
down at six o’clock and pick him up there.

As his excitement and the fever of his fury began to subside, the flow
of blood slackened perceptibly. He noticed that the saturated portion of
the bandage was growing stiff and dry; that the blood no longer
continued to spread on the fabric. He would throw it away presently and
wash his hands clear of the traces in the river.

He looked up at the massive walls of Duciehurst with a deep rancor as he
approached the old mansion. The braided currents, making diagonally
across the river, were carrying him toward it as if he were borne
thither by no will of his own, and indeed this was in some sort true.

He loathed to see it again. He wished he had never seen it. Yet in the
same instant he upbraided his attitude of mind as folly. What man of
business instincts, he argued, would revolt against a great and
substantial accession to his fortune, coming to him in regular course of
law, because it was coveted by its former owners, ousted forty years
before. He felt hard hit by untoward fate. All had been against him,
from the beginning of this accursed imbroglio. He had done what he had
thought right and proper,--what any sane and just man would endorse--and
he had lost wife, child, and heavily in estate, and was possibly
destined to exile for life,--if--if that ghastly witness on the stranded
steamer should take up its testimony against him. But no! it was
silenced forever! It could not even protect the man whom Ducie had
expected to meet should that unlucky wight persist in keeping his
appointment, finding more than he bargained for, Floyd-Rosney said
grimly.

The boat was running cleverly in to his destination. The landing was
under water already, and the skiff glided over its location with never a
sign suggesting its submergence. The old levee was indicated in barely a
long ripple, washing continually above its summit, and this, too, the
skiff skimmed, undulating merely to the tossing of the waters about the
obstruction. The relative height of the ground on which the deserted
mansion stood alone protected it from inundation, although as yet the
disaster of overflow had nowhere fallen upon the land. But evidently the
water would soon be within the fine old rooms, and Floyd-Rosney, looking
with the eye of a wealthy as well as thrifty proprietor upon the scene,
not only willing but able to protect, felt with a surly sigh of
frustration that but for the impending lawsuit he would have built a
stanch levee to reclaim the old ruin, even though there was a
serviceable embankment protecting the lands in the rear.

The large arrogance of the massive cornice of the main building, the
wide spread of the wings on either side, appealed to his taste of a
justified magnificence. This structure was erected in the days of
princelings who had the opulence to sustain its pretensions, and of his
acquaintance he knew no man but himself who could afford the waste of
money on its restoration. There was something appealing to an esthetic
sense in the forwardness of the neglected vegetation about the glassless
goggle-eyed ruin. In the magnolias on either side of the wings he caught
sight of the white glint of blooms, so early though it was! the pink
wands of the almond blossoms waved here and there in the breeze. The
grass of the terraces was freshly springing. Vines draped the broken
pedestals that had once upheld stone vases, and on the façade of the
tall structure the sun crept up and up as suavely benign, as loath to
leave as in the days when its splendors dominated the Mississippi, the
“show place” of all the river.

Floyd-Rosney walked slowly along the broad pavement and up the long
flight of steps to the wide doorless portal. Within shadows lurked, and
memories--how bitter! He hesitated to go in--the influence of the place
was like the thrall of a fate. He wished again he had never seen it. But
he could hear, so definitely the water transmitted the sound, the
engines of the _Aglaia_ getting up steam, and he was conscious of the
scrutiny of the skipper’s powerful lenses.

Through all the vacant vastness swept the fresh breath of the river, so
close at hand. The light from the sinking sun, broadly aslant, fell
through the gaping windows and lay athwart the rooms in immaterial bands
of burnished gold. The illusion of motion was continuous on the grand
staircase where the motes danced in ethereal, hazy illumination. The
contrasting dun-gray shadows imparted a depth and richness to the flare
of ruddy gold, reddening dreamily as the day slowly tended to its close.
All was silence, absolute silence. As he wandered aimlessly from room to
room, his step loud in the quietude, the delicate scent of a white
jessamine, early abloom, bringing its vernal tribute of incense to the
forlorn old ruin year after year, despite half a century of neglect,
thrilled his senses and smote some chord of softer feeling. A sentiment
of self-justification rose in his breast. How was it that all had gone
with him so strangely awry! Wherein had he erred? He had but exerted his
prerogative to order the affairs of his family according to his best
judgment in its interest, as any man might and should do, and--behold,
this tumult of tortures was unloosed upon him. His wife had utilized the
opportunity as a pretext to flee to Randal Ducie, and but for this day’s
work the deserted and divorced would have been fleeced by the courts to
finance the new matrimonial venture. He had done right, he said,
thrusting his white cap back from his heated brow. He had done well.

It had not been his intention to kill an unarmed man; the fatality of
the blow had been an accident, but it was irrevocable, and it behooved
him to look to the future. No one but the skipper of the _Aglaia_ could
have known of his entrance upon the derelict, and if he had chanced to
observe it, a word in his employee’s ear, that he had discovered the
body there--murdered probably--and did not wish to be called as witness
would be sufficient for the present; the skipper would have forgotten
the whole incident before he had entered the first day’s run at sea in
the log of the _Aglaia_. There was no reason to connect him with the
tragedy except that the two were on the river the same day. He had
retracted, and exonerated, and handsomely eaten all manner of humble
pie, and it was to be supposed that relations had been established as
friendly as could exist between rival claimants of an estate now to be
adjudicated by the courts.

He looked down at his hand. The wound that had so perversely bled showed
only pallid lips, but no sign of red. He could not remember if he had
thoroughly wiped the gory knife and began apprehensively to search his
pockets. Not here--not there. He grew ghastly pale. His breath came
quick in suffocating gasps as he realized the truth. He had failed to
repossess himself of the knife at that supreme moment of tragedy. He had
an illuminating recollection, as if he beheld the scene anew, that the
blade had caught on some strong ligament or cartilage in the man’s
throat and as the victim swayed and fell heavily he had not sought to
secure it.

“Fool! Fool!” the empty building rang with the sound, and a score of
frantic echoes shouted opprobrium upon him. He clasped his quivering
hands above his head and sought to command his thoughts. He had been too
drunk at the time to realize the fact, but the knife was a witness which
would indubitably fix the crime upon him. Like all his personal
accessories it was the handsomest thing of the kind that could be
bought, and on the silver plate on the handle was engraved, according to
his wont, his monogram. He started violently toward the hall. He must go
back,--but he could never row the distance, exhausted, as he was,
against the current. He would have the _Aglaia_ to steam up on some
pretext, and in company with the skipper they would discover the body,
when unperceived he could repossess himself of the knife. He was
terrified at the prospect of the attempt. He felt himself already in
toils. He tossed his hands above his head and wrung them wildly. A
hoarse cry of agony burst from his lips, suddenly dying in his throat,
for--was that an echo in the resounding vacancy? A strange sound, a
great pervasive sound was filling all the air, as if the old house
quavered, and groaned, and cried out in long endured anguish. There was
a rush upon the staircase; he saw through the open doors of the
drawing-rooms shadowy, flitting figures descending in crowds as if the
ancient ghosts that had found harbor here were fleeing their refuge.

Nay, only coils on coils of dust. As he rushed forth into the hall he
perceived at the end of the long perspective the great Mississippi
River, as in some strange dislocation of the angle of vision,
reaching--illuminated and splendid--to the flaunting evening sky.

And from the Mississippi River the lenses of the steam yacht _Aglaia_,
focused on the old mansion of Duciehurst, saw it at one moment still and
silent, majestic even, in its melancholy ruin, the sun lingering on its
massive cornice and columnated portico. The next it slid as softly from
vision as an immaterial mirage. The caving bank had gone down into the
unimaginable depths of the river, carrying on its floods a thousand
acres of disintegrating land and the turbulent waters of the liberated
Mississippi were flowing deep over the cotton fields of Duciehurst
plantation, two miles inland.

In the widespread commotion of the flood it was fortunate for the
_Aglaia_, even though so far up stream--distant in the bight of the
bend--that steam was already up in the boilers. Forging up the river,
against the current, at her maximum speed, the yacht in the seething
turmoil found no safe anchorage till near the bar where the derelict
lay. Here she swung round and the officers sought to inaugurate measures
to recover if it were possible the body of Floyd-Rosney, who had
indubitably perished in the submergence of the mansion. The whole region
was aroused and aghast at the magnitude of the disaster. From the deck
of the yacht were visible hurrying groups as the population pressed
toward the ill-fated scene. The skipper’s megaphone was in constant
requisition as being an eye-witness of the calamity he alone could give
authentic information. Randal Ducie, hastening down to his levee, was
met on the summit by the information that his ancestral estate had
ceased to exist, swept from the face of the earth as completely as if it
had never been. Its restoration had long been the object nearest his
heart, its sequestration in alien possession was the hardship of his
life. But he showed scant emotion. Some subtle, inexplicable premonition
of catastrophe infinitely heart-rending annulled the sense of loss.

“Where’s my brother?” he demanded irrelevantly, and despite the
remonstrances of the by-standers he threw himself into a skiff at the
landing and pulled out on the tossing, turbulent tide. As the rage of
the river subsided the search was joined by others, and a wild rumor of
some disaster to Adrian Ducie quickly pervaded the vicinity. The finding
of his rowboat on the Arkansas shore did not prove his landing,
according to Floyd-Rosney’s forecast, for the craft was caught in a
tangle of saw-grass in a marshy swamp where footing was impracticable.
The old negro to whom Floyd-Rosney had spoken in the afternoon was now
returning from his errand down the river, which was gray with a slowly
gathering mist, and melancholy with a cast of the silent and pallid
moon. He hove near the little fleet of rowboats that roved the shadows
and asked a question concerning the appearance of the missing man, with
whom he thought it possible he had had some conversation an hour or so
ago.

“He looks like me,” said Randal Ducie, throwing his face into high
relief with an electric flashlight, and turning with poignant hope
toward the boatman.

“Oh, no, sah! No, sah!” disconsolately admitted the old darkey, blinking
in the glare. “Nebber saw two folks more onsimilar. Mr. Ran Ducie, I
knowed you, Sah, from way back. Knowed yer daddy. Dis man looked like he
thunk I war de wum o’ de yearth, an’ de yearth war built fur him, though
I never p’sumed ter talk ter him. ’Twar him fust p’sumed ter talk ter
me. He war dressed beautified, too, with white flannel suit, an’ a white
cap, an’ handsome ter kill.”

“Floyd-Rosney,” Randal muttered through his set teeth. “And where did he
go?”

“Ter de ole _Cher’kee Rose_, sah,” the negro pointed at the derelict,
lying on the bar, visible amidst the shadows thronging the river in the
ghostly gleams of the moon that was wont to patrol the deck, and seek
out the dark recesses of the cabin where the rise and subsidence of the
water registered its fluctuations, and to look through the windows of
the pilot-house where the steersman at the wheel once took his bearings.

It was a stupendous moment in a man’s life when Randal Ducie stood in
the shattered old pilot-house and looked down into his own dead face, as
it were, ghastly pale and silent, under the moon’s desolate light. The
tie between the brothers had been more than the love of women, and the
heart of the whole countryside bled for Randal’s grief. The
extraordinary resemblance of the two, their fraternal devotion, their
exile from the home of their fathers, and its wrongful detention in the
possession of others, the destruction of the property by the caving
bank, the greatest disaster the country had known for a half century,
when its restoration to its rightful heirs seemed imminent, all appealed
with tender commiseration to the heart of the world, albeit not easily
touched, and a flood of condolence poured in unregarded upon Randal
where he sat in his solitary home with bowed head and bated pulses,
scarcely living himself, admitting no business, seeing no friend,
opening no letter.

The knife that Floyd-Rosney had left piercing the dead man’s throat had
fixed the crime upon him, together with the testimony at the inquest of
the old negro boatman, who had seen him take his way to the derelict,
and that of the skipper who had watched him through the binocle of the
_Aglaia_ descend the steps, unloose both the boats that swung on the
tide, secured to a post, and set one adrift while he rowed the other,
the appurtenance of the _Aglaia_.

It was well, Randal felt, taking in these proceedings the only interest
he could scourge his mind to entertain, that he was not called upon to
prosecute on circumstantial evidence some forlorn water rat, or some
friendless negro for the millionaire’s crime, as doubtless Floyd-Rosney
had contemplated. Though the death of the gentle and genial Adrian went
unavenged, save by the heavy hand of Heaven itself, it wrought no
calamity to others, except in his incomparable loss.




CHAPTER XXVI


One evening, late in the summer, the melancholy recluse, who might have
forgotten, so seldom did he speak, the sound of his own voice, strolled
out to evade the intensity of the heat in the hope of a breath of air
from the river. But no, it lay like a sheet of glass, blank of
incident--no breeze, no cloud, a pallid monotony of twilight. He had
passed through the lawn and came out upon the levee which in the dead
levels of that country seems of considerable elevation. He loitered
along the summit, finding in the higher ground some amelioration of the
motionless atmosphere, for it ceased to harass him, and with his heavy
brooding thoughts for company he walked on and on, till at length he was
aroused by the perception that in his absorption he had passed the
limits of his own domain, and was trespassing on the precincts of a
neighboring plantation. This fact was brought to his notice by seeing a
bench on the levee which he had not caused to be placed there, and
behind it was a mass of Cherokee rose hedge, the growth of which he did
not approve on these protective embankments. On it were many waxy white
blooms, closing with the waning day, amidst the glossy, deeply green
foliage, and seated on the bench was a lady gowned in fleecy white.

He scarcely gave her a glance, and with a sense of intrusion he gravely
lifted his hat as he was turning away. But she sprang up precipitately
and came toward him.

“Oh, Randal, _Randal_,” she exclaimed in a voice of poignant sympathy,
and said no more. She had burst into a tempest of sobs and cries, and as
he came toward her and held out his hand, he felt her tears raining down
on it as she pressed it between both her soft palms.

“Oh, I know you don’t--you _can’t_--care for my sympathy,” Hildegarde
sobbed out brokenly. “It is nothing to you or to _him_, but Randal, he
was not a man for _one_ friend, one mourner. Everybody loved him that
knew him.”

She had collapsed in her former place on the bench, her arm over its
back, her head bent upon it, her slender figure shaken by her sobs.

“But he would care for your sympathy, he would value your tears, shed
for his sake,” Randal said, suddenly. He walked to the bench and sat
down beside her. “Only a few hours before--before--he was speaking to me
of you. How lovely----”

He paused in embarrassment, remembering Adrian’s protest how gladly he
would see his brother make her the chatelaine of Duciehurst,--oh,
dreams, dreams!--all shattered and gone!

“Did he--did he, really?”

She lifted her eyes, swimming with tears and irradiated with smiles,
that seemed to shine in the dull twilight.

“Oh, how I treasure the words!” Then after a long pause--“I was afraid
to speak to you, Randal. I do everything wrong!”

“You? You do everything right,” he declared.

“I am all impulse, you know,” she explained.

“Which is so much better than being all design,” he interpolated.

“And so I speak without consideration, and might--might hurt people’s
feelings.”

“Never--never in the world,” he insisted.

“I am so glad you forgive it, if it is intrusiveness. But I am staying
down here at my aunt’s; she has been very ill. And I have so longed to
say just one word to you--to call you by telephone--or,--something. I
would see your solitary light burning across the lake, so late, so
late--you know we have been watchers here, too,--and I would think of
you, shut in with your sorrow, and no human pity can comfort you. So I
could only send my prayers for you. Did you feel my prayers?”

They were very real to her in her simple faith, very important,
necessarily efficacious.

“No,” he said, honestly. But as her face fell he added: “Perhaps they
will be answered.”

“Oh, assuredly,” she cried, tremulously, and her sincerity touched him.

“Whenever your light shines late from your east window remember that I
am praying that you may have the grace to turn your thoughts joyfully to
the blessed memories you have of your brother, and the happy hours that
were in mercy vouchsafed to you, and what he was to you, and what you
were to him, and what you will be to each other on the day of the great
Reunion. So that you may have strength to take up your duties in life
again, in usefulness and contentment--like the man you were born to be,
and the man you are. Then shall my prayers be answered, and the memory
of your brother will become a blessing, and not a blight.”

There was some responsive chord in that manly heart of his vibrating
strongly to this appeal. Only the next day, struggling with an averse
distaste and wincing from the sights and sounds of the former routine,
he went out to supervise the weighing of the cotton in the fields, now
beginning to open with a fair promise. He felt strangely grateful for
the hearty greetings of the laborers, and an humble appeal to right some
little injustice only within his power made his hands seem strong, and
renewed his sense of a duty in the world.

The next day, collapsing on his resolution, it was difficult to force
himself to take out his fine horse and drive as of yore to the
neighboring town, attending a meeting of the planters of the vicinity,
all agog, always, on the subject of the operations of the levee board.

When Sunday came, with, oh, how faint a spirit, he took his downcast way
to the little neighborhood church, built in a dense grove, full of
shadows and the sentiment of holy peace, called St. John’s in the
Wilderness, and his broken and contrite heart seemed all poignantly
lacerated anew and bleeding, and found no comfort. It had all the agony
of renunciation to think of his brother--his own other self, his twin
existence--as translated to that far, spiritual sphere, which we cannot
realize, or formulate aught of its conditions. His brother, alive, well,
strong, loving and beloved, fighting his way dauntlessly through
inadequate resources and restrictions, making and building of his own
inherent values a place for himself in the world--that vital presence
quenched! That loyal, generous, gentle heart to beat never again. It was
a thought to make the senses reel. He wondered that reason did not fail
before its contemplation. He felt his eyes grow hot and burn in their
sockets, and only mechanically and from force of habit could he follow
the service. Once, as his unseeing gaze turned restlessly from the
chancel they fell upon Hildegarde, seated in her uncle’s pew. Her eyes
were downcast, her face was sweetly solemn. A sense of calm radiated
from her expression, her look of aloofness from the world. There arose
in his mind the thought of Adrian’s faith in her genuine graces of
character, which belittled even her charm and beauty, his wish that she
might share the splendor of Ran’s restoration to fortune, when it should
come full-handed to them, that she might grace the high estate of the
lady of Duciehurst--oh, poor Duciehurst! He could but look upon her with
different eyes for the thought. It was as a bond between them.

He had regained his composure, grave and dejected--all unlike his former
self--by the time the sermon was ended, and he waited for her at the
door; together they walked silently to her uncle’s home under the deep
rich shadows of the primeval woods.

Even trifles are of moment in the stagnation of interest in a country
neighborhood. Some vague rumor of the little incident that these two had
been thus seen publicly together penetrated beyond the purview of the
parishioners of St. John’s in the Wilderness. The association of names
came thus to the ears of Paula Floyd-Rosney, and urged her to an action
which she had been contemplating, but had relegated to a future
propitious opportunity. It forced precipitancy upon her. If she intended
to move at all time must be taken into account, and the untoward chance
of interference with her plans. She was now indeed the arbiter of her
own destiny, she told herself. Her suit for divorce had been abated by
reason of the death of Floyd-Rosney, and she was in the enjoyment of
one-half of his princely estate in Mississippi--where the right of dower
has been annulled and a child’s part substituted as the share of the
wife--and also the “widow’s third” in Tennessee, for he had died
intestate. She was young, and her spirits rebounded with the prospect of
the rehabilitation of her happiness. Her heart bore, it is true, some
sorry scars which it would carry to the judgment day. But she could not
feel, she could not even feign, grief for her husband’s fate; she knew
it was liberation for her and his child. She had donned, in deference to
the urgency of Mrs. Majoribanks, a fashionable version of widow’s weeds,
and she had intended to allow the traditional time of mourning to expire
before she made haste to gather the treasures of youth and love that she
had so recklessly thrown away. She had not even regret for the disaster
of Duciehurst. She regarded its destruction as the solution of a
problem. She would not have wished to win in the lawsuit the estate she
felt was morally and equitably the property of her former lover. It was
delightful to her to be in the position to bestow, and not to receive.
She was in case to make brave amends for her fickle desertion of Ran
Ducie at the summons of wealth and splendor. She would go back to him a
prize beyond computation--the woman he loved and had always loved, but
endowed like a princess and looking like a queen. The expectation
embellished her almost out of recognition; her closest friends and
casual guests--for she had returned to her own home, from which she had
fled--could but exclaim as her beauty expanded. “How I loved him!” she
would whisper to herself, and sometimes she wondered if those five dread
years under the yoke were not heavy payment for the fortune she was
bringing him. The consciousness of this great wealth made her the more
confident, the more plausible in the letter she wrote him. Though she
had feared supplantation, it was only because he might be in ignorance
of her attitude toward him.

It took the form of a letter of condolence. She declared she yearned to
express her deep sympathy for him, although she had felt he might not
care to hear from her on account of her connection with the hand that
struck the blow which had so sorely afflicted him. But she conjured him,
by their love for each other, so precious in the days that were past, to
forbear thinking of her in that wise. The villain who had gone had no
hold on her heart. He had destroyed her life. She could confess to
Randal now that every day of the years and every hour of the days had
been one long penance for her faithless desertion of him, her casting
away his precious heart, worth more than all the gold of Ophir. She had
never regretted it but once, and that was always, and unceasingly. She
was possessed, she supposed,--or rather, consider that she was so young,
so unsophisticated, so blinded by the glare of wealth and dizzy with the
specious wiles of the world. Oh, to live the old days over again! But he
must not hate her--he must not associate her with the name as detestable
to her as to him. He must remember, instead, how sweet was the simple
story of their love, and date his thoughts of her from its emotions. One
thing she begged of him--let her hear from him, and soon.

In all her formulations of the possible result of this letter she never
anticipated the event. She had been prepared for delay. Some little time
he must have to decide upon his course, his phrases, complicated as the
whole incident was with the memory of the murderous Floyd-Rosney. When
by return mail she noted the large white missive, with her name in his
well-remembered, decided, dashing chirography, her heart plunged, and
for a moment she almost thought it had ceased to beat. Her hands
trembled violently as she tore open the envelope. Within was her own
letter and on the reverse side of the last sheet were penned these
words:

“This letter should be in your own possession. The story to which you
allude I read to the last page, and the book is closed.”




CHAPTER XXVII


As the months wore on into winter Randal Ducie, in the pursuance of the
effort to rehabilitate his broken and maimed life, was often in Memphis.
His old associates had an eager welcome for him, for his candid and
genial nature was supplemented by a tireless energy and some special
acumen and active experience in the line in which these endowments were
now needed. The levee crisis was acute, and the planters were eager to
formulate an adequate and practical defense against the encroachments of
the river, with State or Federal aid, rather than have the Delta serve,
as they claimed, as an experiment station for the Government. Cotton was
their objective,--not science.

Sometimes a poignant pang smote the heart of the lonely man as some
absorbed and eager acquaintance greeted him, from force of habit, with
the old look of inquiry as to his identity, one of those who used
formerly to ask inadvertently, “Is this you, or your brother?” eliciting
in those happy days the delighted response “Of course, it is my
brother.”

Alas, how Randal wished now that it was his brother,--to be himself
lying in that quiet grave to which he was sure their ill-fated
resemblance had consigned Adrian in the flower of his youth, and that it
was he who was here among these streets of busy men with many a long
year of life before him.

“But you should thank God that you are privileged to suffer in his
stead,” Hildegarde would argue with him. “He would have had all this
torture to endure if you had been the one called away.”

Shortly after his arrival in Memphis he had gravitated to her father’s
house, where he often sat for hours in the library in the quiet
atmosphere of the books, her face pensive, illumined by the flash and
sparkle of the fire as she worked with dainty, deft fingers on a bit of
embroidery. Informal visits these, and often other members of the family
gathered around the hearth,--her father, talking levee-board, and the
stage of the river, the price of cotton and the dangers of
overproduction; her college-boy brother, a football expert, a famous
halfback with the latest sensations of the gridiron on Thanksgiving-day;
her mother, soft and sweet, with that frank look of Hildegarde in her
duller eyes, for which Randal loved her. He found the only comfort he
knew in this group. Once, however, the young girl’s unthinking candor
almost stunned him.

“Such an odd thing,” she said one day when all were present; she was
evidently coming from far reaches of her reverie; she had been carefully
matching the skeins for the embroidered gentian blooming under the
benison of her touch, and he had a fleeting thought that she might have
rivaled nature had she compared them to the tint of her eyes. “I met
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney yesterday at the Jennison reception, and she asked me
such a strange question.”

She paused, but he would not inquire, and the others, realizing the
malapropos subject, could not sufficiently command their embarrassment.
But the transparent Hildegarde needed no urgency.

“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney asked me,” she said, laying all the skeins together
in her right hand while she looked up with bright interest, “if you had
ever told me of the contents of the letter she wrote to you some months
ago.”

“And what did you answer?” asked Randal, breaking the awkward silence.

“Why, of course I told her that you had never mentioned the letter,”
replied Hildegarde, with a flash of surprise. “I told her the truth.”

“You did! Why, you amaze me!” exclaimed Randal, with a touch of his old
gayety, and with the laugh that rippled around the circle the incident
passed.

Yet this incident put him on his guard. He had long since lost every
trace of the sentiment he had once felt for this woman. From the moment
he had received his rejection, years ago, he had realized that he had
been mistaken from the first in her nature. With many men the
contemplation of the magnitude of the temptation, the splendor of the
opportunity as Floyd-Rosney’s wife, might have served to condone in a
degree her defection. Not so with Randal Ducie. He had a very honest
self-respect. He had been trained at his mother’s knee to reverence the
high ideals of life. To him, Love was a sacred thing, Marriage was the
ordinance of God, and a mercenary motive a profanation. He had been
poignantly wounded in the disappointment, humiliated, in some sort, yet
he looked upon the discovery that she was vulnerable to this specious
lure of gain as an escape, and he set all the strong will of his
stanchly endowed nature to recover from the influence she had exerted
in his life. Now, so long afterward, when he had not only reason to
condemn and resent her part in his own past, but to detest the very
sight of her, the sound of the name she bore, he could not imagine how
she could be the victim of the obsession that she was aught to him but a
hateful living lie, a presentment of avarice. He wondered at the
persuasion of a woman, perceived by him only in this instance, but often
noticed elsewhere by the observant in such matters, as to the unlimited
power of her attractions. She can never believe no ember burns amidst
the ashes of a former attachment, dulled by time perhaps, covered from
sight, but smouldering still, and with fresh fuel ready to flame forth
anew. He could not understand on what was based her conviction of the
permanence of his attachment. On her true faith to bind them together
till death?--it had been tested and found wanting. On her gifts of
intellect?--the supposition was an absurdity; she was indubitably a
bright and a cultivated woman, but Randal had been educated too
definitely in the masculine American methods to think of sitting at the
feet of any woman. On her beauty?--where was the traditional delicacy of
the feminine perceptions! Did she imagine him a Turk at heart? Her
beauty might attract--it could never hold. In the old days of his fond
affection if she had been visited by some disfiguring, defacing
affliction she would have been the same to him, equally dear, and but
that she herself had stripped off the mask and proclaimed the disguise
that had befooled him she would have been the lady of his heart, the
cherished treasure of his life to the day of his death.

Now he could but wish that she would withhold her withering hand from
such poor values as she and hers had left him in life. He did not
understand her latest demonstration. But for Hildegarde’s pellucid
candor he might never have dreamed of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s covert
interest in a proposition made to him by the senior partner of a firm of
prominent jewelers, looking to the purchase of the diamond necklace
found among the jewels at Duciehurst, now lying in a safety deposit
vault. Ducie curtly refused to entertain an offer. Then he as curtly
asked:

“But why should you think I would wish to sell it?”

Mr. Dazzle was visibly embarrassed, but still rational.

“The idea was suggested to me, as the stones are of
great--well--ahem--considerable value, and you have no ladies in your
family.”

“Not at present,” said Randal, stiffly.

“True--true; you might care to retain them if you should marry. But as
they are so far beyond the pretensions of present-day ornaments,
something more suitable--and--and your being extensively interested in
cotton planting where money can be used to advantage----”

“And lost to disadvantage, too,” said Ducie, grimly.

“True--true--but the diamonds being wholly unproductive--they are cut in
the old style, too, which tends to reduce their value----”

“You wouldn’t have an antique necklace with diamonds cut in the present
style?”

“No--no; I was considering them as disassociated from their setting,
which is very rare of workmanship--that is--I thought--the idea was
suggested to me”--Mr. Dazzle did not intend to imperil his soul by lying
in anybody’s interest--“the idea was suggested to me that perhaps you
might care to sell.”

“Not at all. The necklace is reserved as a bridal gift,” said Ducie,
precipitately.

“And a most magnificent one,” declared Mr. Dazzle, his face beaming with
the enthusiasm befitting his vocation. “I hope you will give us the
commission to clean and put the necklace in order, see to the clasp,
which should be renewed, possibly, as a precaution against loss,--all
those details. It will appear to twice the advantage that it did when I
saw it at the time you and your brother had it appraised with a view to
dividing the valuables found at Duciehurst.”

Ducie got rid of the man without further committing himself. Then in
surprise he demanded of himself why he had said this thing, when nothing
was further from his thoughts. In fact it had been thrown off on the
spur of the moment, to be quit of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s suspected
interference in his affairs. She wear the revered Ducie heirlooms! He
would work his fingers to the bone before the jewels should go on the
market. And the offensive suggestion that something simpler, cheaper, in
the manner of the present day, might suffice for his bridal gifts when
he should be called upon to make them, in order that the difference
might go to forwarding his business, and ease the struggle for meat and
bread, was so characteristic of the Floyd-Rosney methods of considering
the affairs of other people that Randal could but ascribe it to her. But
why had his ungoverned impulse broached the idea of a bridal present?
he wondered. Her interest, her espionage in his most intimate personal
concerns seemed sinister, and he would fain be rid of the very thought
of her.

The reaction had been great when Paula had received back her crafty
letter of condolence with the characteristic endorsement on the final
page. Her pride was humiliated to the ground, and her heart pierced. She
could not realize, she would not believe that he no longer loved her.
She could but think that were not other considerations held paramount he
would have flown to her arms. She became ingenious in constructing a
mental status to justify his course on some other theory--any other
theory--than a burned-out flame. He was in the thrall of public opinion,
she argued. He fancied it would not sustain him in his devotion to the
widow of the man who had murdered his brother. He was ready to sacrifice
himself and her also that he might stand unchallenged by the world--the
careless unnoting world, rolling on its own way, that would not know
to-morrow a phase of the whole episode. What was a gossip’s tongue
clacking here and there in comparison with their long deferred
happiness. How should a censorious frown or a raised eyebrow outweigh
all that they were, all that they had been to each other--their human,
pulsing hearts! If she could only have speech of him--yet no! She could
not say of her own initiative what had been most difficult to intimate
in writing. She must wait, and plan, and watch, and be as patient as she
might.

Her spirits had worn low in the process. She had begun to feel the keen
griefs of a martyr. Through her love for this man, what had she not
suffered? From the moment on the _Cherokee Rose_ that she had seen his
brother’s face, so nearly a facsimile of his own, her old love for him
reasserted itself and would not be denied. Had not Adrian been of the
passengers of the packet, had not so keen and intense a reminder of the
old days risen before her, life would have gone on as heretofore. She
would have continued to adjust her moods to the exactions of her
arbitrary husband, as she had been well content to do. No jealousy would
have inflamed his causeless suspicions. He would have been still in his
lordly enjoyment of his rich opportunities and Adrian Ducie alive and
well. She had been pilloried before the public gaze; her child had been
torn from her bosom; her husband had made his name, the name she bore,
infamous with a revolting crime, and was dead in his sins; and the man
for whose sake--nay for the sake of a mere sweet memory of a boyish
worship, a tender reciprocation of a pure and ardent attachment--this
coil of events was set in motion, writes that he has read the story to
the end of the page, and the book is closed. Ah, no--Randal Ducie, there
is somewhat more, reading between the lines, for your perusal, and the
book may be reopened. Her heart was full of reproach for him, and yet
she believed that he loved her and secretly upbraided him that he did
not love her more than the frown of the world,--that world to which she
had in her fresh youth been glad to do homage on her bended knees,
sacrificing him to it, and her plighted troth.

She was restless; she could not be still. She was out every day. More
than once in her limousine she caught sight of him on the sidewalk. She
had fancied, she had feared he might not speak, but he raised his hat
with a grave dignity and a look wholly devoid of consciousness, and she
could hang no thread of a theory on the incident. Once he chanced to be
strolling with Hildegarde Dean, and with the recollection of her fresh,
smiling, girlish face Paula went home in a rage, as if she had received
some bitter affront, as if her tenure on his affections precluded his
exchange of a word with any other woman, the tender of a casual
courtesy. Then it was that she projected the purchase of the necklace.
If he should--but oh, he could not! That girl should not wear the
gorgeous gewgaw, which she herself had rescued at such pains and risk,
and restored to his possession. He was as poor as poverty--she had
adopted her husband’s habit of scorn of small means--and she would buy
it secretly through an agent, at any price.

When the answer came from the jeweler she was stunned. It was reserved
as a bridal gift, quotha. She had crystallized the very thought she had
sought to preclude. The mischance tamed her. She caught her breath and
took counsel with sober conservatism. She must be wary; she must make no
false move. Indeed, she told herself she must be utterly quiescent; she
must, in prudence, in self-respect, make no move at all. Then by degrees
her persistent hopefulness, her vehement determination, were reasserted.
She argued that no immediate bridal was foreshadowed, nor with whom. She
herself might wear these jewels,--which she had discovered and
restored,--on a day that would be like a first bridal, for her wedding
seemed to her now as a sacrifice to Moloch.

Some time later she chanced, while driving, to meet Hildegarde, walking
alone. Paula joyously signaled to her and ordered the limousine to be
drawn up to the curb. “Come with me,” she said, genially, “let’s have a
long drive and a good talk. I was just thinking of you!”

She looked most attractive as she smiled at the girl. Her ermine furs,
including the toque--for she had cast aside even the perfunctory weeds
she had worn--added an especial richness and daintiness to a wintry
toilette of black, adhering to the convention of second mourning, it
being now almost a year since Floyd-Rosney had startled the world by his
manner of quitting it. Her eyes were bright and kindly, her cheek
delicately flushed. She had an increased authority or autocracy in her
manner, which might have come about from unrestrained control of her
fortune and her actions, but which seemed to the girl in some sort
coercive. Hildegarde felt that she could scarcely have refused if she
would, yet indeed she did not wish to decline, and soon they were
skimming along the smooth curves of the speedway in the driving park,
the river, though lower than at this season last year, glimpsed in
burnished silver now and again through the trees.

“I have a good scheme for you and me, Hildegarde,” said Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney, and as the two sat together she slipped one hand into
Hildegarde’s chinchilla muff to give her little gloved fingers an
affectionate pressure. “I want you to go with me as my guest to New
Orleans for Mardi Gras,--doesn’t Lent come early this year? The yacht
is quite ready and we will make a list of just a few friends for
company. And afterward to my house on Saint Simon’s Island.”

“Oh, ideal,” cried Hildegarde joyously. “I shall be delighted to go.”

“I think Saint Simon’s Island is the choice location for the penitential
season,” said Paula flippantly,--“savors least of sackcloth and ashes.”

Hildegarde’s face fell.

“Oh, did I tell you,” the quick Paula broke off suddenly, “that as a
Lenten offering I am going to furnish a room and endow a bed in the new
Charity Hospital?”

“Oh, how lovely,” cried Hildegarde, radiant once more.

“But to return to our outing,” resumed Paula, “of course, under the
circumstances,” with a slanting glance at the presumably grief-stricken
ermine and velvet, “I can’t make up a party of pleasure for myself,--it
must be complimentary to my dear young friend, and its personnel must be
selected with that view.” Once more her hand crept into Hildegarde’s
muff.

She paused reflectively for a moment, while her mood seemed to change,
and when she went on it was in a different tone and with a crestfallen
look.

“To be quite frank with you, dear, I have a strong personal interest in
the occasion. I really want an excuse to get out of the town myself.
There’s a man here whom I want to avoid, and I’m forever meeting him.”

“I wonder,” commented the guileless girl.

“It is always easier to run away from a thing like that than to bring it
to a crisis, and really in this instance circumstances will not admit
of any canvassing of the matter.”

Hildegarde’s face was eloquent of interest, but she decorously forbore
inquiry.

“If I mention the name you won’t repeat it, though I don’t see why I
should, but Heaven knows I am so lonely I long to confide my troubles to
some sympathetic soul.”

And now it was Hildegarde’s hand that stole into the ermine muff with an
ardent little clasp which was convulsively returned.

“You can say anything you wish to me, dear Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, and rely
on my silence.”

She turned such pellucidly clear azure eyes on Paula. She looked so
docile and ingenuous, that for one moment the heart of the schemer
almost misgave her. And indeed in the old days, before Paula ever met
Floyd-Rosney, she would have been incapable of the duplicity which she
now contemplated. But when sordid worldly motives are permitted to enter
the soul of a woman and to dominate it they work its ultimate
disintegration, despite the presence of worthier traits which otherwise
might have proved cohesive. As, however, she spoke the name already on
her lips she detected a quiver in the little hand she held, and that
vague tremor served to renew her purpose and nerved her to go on. “It is
Randal Ducie,” she said.

For she had deliberately planned at whatever sacrifice of truth to
implant distrust and aversion toward Randal Ducie in the mind of this
girl of high ideals; to remove her for a time from the sphere of his
influence and the opportunity of explanation; in the interval to
supplant him in her estimation with others of carefully vaunted
attributes. By the time Hildegarde Dean should return from Saint Simon’s
Island she would not tolerate his presence, and in the humiliation of
her contempt Randal Ducie might find a solace in recurring to the page
of that sweet old story, albeit he had so hardily declared the book was
closed.

“It is Randal Ducie,” Paula repeated. “You know long ago,--is that front
window closed--these chauffeurs hear everything if one is not
careful,--well, long ago when I was with my grandmother,--we lived at
Ingleside, Ran Ducie and I were engaged. Did you know that?”

“I have heard it,” said Hildegarde, her face tense and troubled, her
eyes unseeing and dreamily fixed.

“You have heard, too, that I threw him over, having the opportunity to
make a wealthy match.”

“Ye-es,” admitted Hildegarde, embarrassed, “people say anything, you
know. They gossip so awfully.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, looking out pathetically at the budding
trees of the similitude of a forest as the car swung down the broad,
smooth curves, “it was the other way about. It was _he_ who changed his
mind. Then I had the opportunity of the grand match, the first time I
ever was in New Orleans--and I took it out of pique. A girl is such a
poor, silly, little fool.”

Hildegarde was silent. There was so strong an expression of negation, of
condemnation, of doubt on her face that Paula went on precipitately.

“Of course, I wasn’t in the least justified.”

“And you realized that?” said Hildegarde.

“You see, I didn’t love my husband. You don’t understand these things,
child. He was kind, in his way, and rich, and talented, and
handsome----”

“Oh, yes, he was splendid looking,” said Hildegarde, sustaining her pose
of interest, but her lips were white.

“But I didn’t love him--and I loved Randal. A girl, though, Hildegarde,
cannot remonstrate against inconstancy. Randal came to me and said he
had mistaken the state of his feelings, that the interest he had felt
for me was merely because we happened to be the only two young people in
the neighborhood and were thrown together so often; that he realized
this as soon as he was again in the world, and that it was foolish for
him to think of taking a wife in view of his limited resources. He asked
to be released. So there was nothing for me to say but ‘Good day, Sir,’
with what dignity I could muster,--for, my dear girl, ‘Good day’ had
already been said by him. Oh, kind Heaven, why do women have such keen
memories? It wasn’t yesterday, surely.”

Paula threw her face suddenly into its wonted pretty and placid and
haughty contour, and bowed and smiled to a passing car, filled with
bowing and smiling faces.

“I couldn’t help feeling a bit triumphant that such a notable catch as
Mr. Floyd-Rosney--so cultivated, and talented, and wealthy--should
single me out as his preference as soon as he saw me.”

“I think your feeling was very natural,” said Hildegarde, “but I don’t
see why you should leave town on Randal Ducie’s account.”

What made her lips so dry, she wondered. They fumbled almost
unintelligibly on the words.

“Oh, my dear, that isn’t the end of it. He is all for taking it back
now; for renewing the old romance. He has a thousand reasons for his
defection, the chief being--and it was really true--that he couldn’t
afford to marry and was pushed to the wall by some debts that he had
contrived to make. But, Hildegarde, the real fact is not the revival of
his love for me--very warm it is now, if he is to be believed--but--you
would never realize it, you are such an unworldly, uncalculating little
kitten--but, I have at my disposal a great fortune, with nobody to say
me nay. I am one of the largest taxpayers in the county, and that does
make a man’s heart so tender to his old love; the girl who adored him,
who told him all her little, foolish heart, and let him kiss her
good-by, always, and lied to her grandmother, and told the unsuspecting
old lady she never did. Oh, why are women’s memories weighted to
bursting with trifles! Now, Hildegarde, haven’t you noticed how much Ran
Ducie has been in town all last fall and this spring?”

Hildegarde had, indeed, noticed it. She nodded assent. She was beyond
speech.

“That’s his errand, my dear, making up for lost time. Here we are at
your home. Thank you so much for giving me the chance to go. I’ll make
it lovely for you. The yacht casts off at five to-morrow afternoon, and
the limousine will call for you at four.”




CHAPTER XXVIII


Hildegarde passed a wakeful night of troubled thought. Only after the
tardy dawn of the early spring was in the room did she fall into the
dull slumber of exhaustion, from which she roused at last, unrefreshed
and languid. Before she broke her fast she dispatched a note to Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney, declining on second thoughts the invitation to make the
trip to New Orleans and St. Simon’s Island, which she had welcomed so
enthusiastically when it was broached the previous day. She gave no
reason for her change of mind, but expressed her thanks very prettily
and courteously; the conventional, suave phrases exacted by decorum
incongruous with the pale, stern, set face that bent above them. Her
mother cried out in surprise and solicitude when she came into the
library, with this mask, so to speak, alien to the joyous countenance
she was wont to wear, so soft and glowing, so bland and gay, but she
petulantly put aside all inquiries, declaring that she was quite well
and only wanted to be left alone. To be quit of the family she escaped
into the solitary sun-parlor, and sat there in a wicker chair among the
palms, and watched the blooms in the window-boxes that illumined the
space with their vivid glintings. For there was no sun to-day--a hazy,
soft, gray day, and but for the gleam of her white dress in the leafy
shadows Randal Ducie might not have seen her there when he was ushered
into the library; after somewhat perfunctory greetings to her father and
mother he strode, with the freedom of an acknowledged friend of the
family, through the room into the sun-parlor and sat down beside her.

She was wearing a house dress of white wool, sparsely trimmed with only
a band of Persian embroidery about the sleeves and belt and around the
neck, which was cut in a high square, showing her delicate throat. She
looked up embarrassed as he came in, conscious that she had on no
guimpe, and no lace on the sleeves, and murmured something about not
being fit to be seen. But in his masculine inexperience he perceived no
lack in point of the finish of her attire, though the change of her
countenance instantly struck his attention.

“Oh, what has happened?” he cried, solicitously. “What is the matter?”

“Nothing--nothing at all,” she replied, scarcely lifting her heavily
lidded eyes. “I wish everybody would quit asking me that.”

“I can see that something is troubling you dreadfully,” he protested.
“Won’t you let me help you? I could brush it away with one hand.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she declared, irritably.

For a few moments there was silence between them as he sat gazing at her
pallid and listless face, with its downcast and dreary eyes, her
languid, half-reclining attitude, her idle, nerveless hands clasped in
her lap. The change in her was pathetic,--appealing.

“See here, Miss Dean, trust me; if you have stolen a horse, I will hide
him for you.”

An unwilling smile crept to the verge of her drooping lips, but she
ejaculated impatiently:

“Oh, nonsense!”

“I don’t want to intrude on your confidence, but,--but”--with deep
gravity and a lowered voice, “have you allowed yourself to become
involved in some--conspiracy against the government?”

The unwelcome laugh had crept into her eyes as she lifted her heavy lids
and glanced at him.

“Oh, you know I haven’t!”

Then the contending emotions were resolved into tears, and slowly and
painfully they overflowed her sapphire eyes, coursing one by one down
her white cheeks.

“I should not have spoken,” he said, contritely, “I only add to your
distress. Forgive me. I’d better go.”

“No--no--don’t. But I can’t explain. I’ve promised--only this I know--I
can’t _say how_ I know, but I _know_ that my best friend has told me a
lie--a wicked, defamatory, deliberate lie--and I can’t forgive it.”

“Why should you forgive it?” he asked. “It is the limit, the
unforgivable.”

There was a momentary pause. The tears welled up anew in the blue eyes
and the white cheeks were all wet with them; however, she mopped them
with her handkerchief rolled into a little ball for the purpose.

“It was such a cruel lie, deliberately planned, so circumstantial,” she
sobbed, “so plausible, apparently confirmed by facts. I do believe it
would have deceived anybody, everybody, but me. I can’t controvert
it--the circumstances are out of my scope. But I _know_--I know--I
_know_ of my own accord,--I can’t say how,--but every breath I draw,
every fiber in me is a witness of the truth--the eternal truth!”

She burst into a tempest of sobs, and Ducie was carried beyond bounds.

“Oh, you must not, you shall not, give yourself so much pain for this
vile liar, whoever it is. Have some mercy on me, if not on yourself. I
can’t endure to see you so distressed--it breaks my heart. I have loved
you too long, too devotedly----”

He paused abruptly; he had not intended to broach the subject thus, to
put his fate to the touch while she was hardly herself, overwhelmed by
the agony of some poignant, covert grief which he could not share.
Surely this was not the moment to decide the course of his future life
and hers. He had had his grave misgivings as to her preference. She was
joyous and lovely, and sweet and congenial to many alike who basked in
the radiance of her charm. She was the reigning belle of the winter, and
doubtless her relatives entertained high ambitions as to her settlement
in life. Since the loss of Duciehurst from his material hopes and
prospects he had scarcely felt himself justified in asking her to share
his restrictions and limited resources. He lived on the look in her
eyes, a chance word among all the others, and he had not had hope
enough, encouragement enough of her preference to urge his suit upon
her. He felt as if he stood in an illumination of heaven and earth when
she turned her face suddenly, and asked:

“How long?”

He had both her little hands in his when he strove to differentiate for
her just when and how he first recognized the unfolding of this flower
of love to irradiate his life with bloom and fragrance and then to urge
upon her some word of promise to set his plunging heart at rest.

Her face, all fluctuating with happy smiles and flushes, grew affectedly
grave as she seemed to consider.

“I am not much like a parched flower,” she said, “but I have been
waiting some time for this dewdrop.”

“Oh, if I had only known, how much I could have saved myself,” exclaimed
Randal, voicing the sentiment of many an accepted lover.

“I expected this--remark--of yours,” she declared, her blue eyes archly
glancing, “at the De Lille reception--’way back, ’way back in the Middle
Ages, when you said in such an impassioned voice, ‘Will you--will you
have some more frappé?’”

Then they both laughed out joyously, and her father in the library,
turning over the journal in his hand to get at the river news, had a
vague realization of the instability of the moods of women and
especially of girls, and was pleased that Hildegarde had recovered her
equanimity since her tiff against Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, as he interpreted
it, had induced her to forego her charming springtide outing.

The cruise, though somewhat delayed, that the party of guests might be
selected anew and assembled, took place according to the plans of Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney, at once the most discriminating and lavish of hostesses;
but before the _Aglaia_ weighed anchor the news of the engagement was
sown broadcast in the town and it became the subject of conversation one
day as the yacht steamed down the Mississippi on her mission of
pleasure. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, whose experience and training had developed
great powers of self-control, hearkened with special interest to the
details of the gossip, and often commented characteristically. The
bride-elect, it was surmised, would receive splendid presents, in view
of her many wealthy relatives and friends and her great popularity, but
none could compare with the necklace of Ducie diamonds, the gift of the
groom, which it was said she would wear with her wedding dress of white
satin.

“And how ridiculous for people of their limited means,” cried Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney. Her late husband himself could hardly have seemed more
scornful of moderate circumstances.

“Except that the necklace is an heirloom,” said Colonel Kenwynton.

“A man in love thinks nothing is _too_ fine,” suggested one of the
ladies.

“Randal Ducie is not and never was in love with Hildegarde,” said Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney with an air of much discernment. “She is not of the type
that would appeal to him; but she was very instant in bringing herself
to his notice and diverting his mind, and taking him out of himself
after his bereavement and so became a sort of consolatory habit.”

“That is a beautiful idea,” said Colonel Kenwynton warmly,--“to add to
the blessed relation of a wife the sacred mission of a ministering
angel.”

This was not in the least what Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had intended to
intimate, as was abundantly manifest by the thinly veiled anger and
repugnance on her face, which was now beginning to have need of all the
suavity and grace she could command. It was growing perceptibly hard in
these days, and its incipient angularities were more definitely
asserted. There was a recurrent expression of bitter antagonism in her
eyes that gave added emphasis to the satiric fleer in the occasional
upward lift of her chin. People were already commenting on the strange
deterioration in her beauty of late, and although Colonel Kenwynton was
in no degree aware of the reason for her state of mind, he felt vaguely
depressed by her look and manner.

He rose presently and strolled away from the group on the deck, smoking
his cigar and scanning the weather signs of the coming evening. The
stress of the subject of Randal Ducie’s bereavement weighed heavily on
his nerves in this vicinity. If, under all the circumstances, it could
be so easily and openly mentioned here he was not sure of his ability to
listen with discretion. The world was growing strange to him,--he felt
himself indeed a survival. He did not understand such views as seemed to
possess this woman, such standards of right, such induration of
sensibilities. Man and soldier though he was, he could look only with
glooming and averse eyes at the wreck of the _Cherokee Rose_, where a
dread deed was wrought, lying white and stark, skeleton-wise, like
bleaching bones on the sand-bar in that immaterial region between the
pallid mists of the evening and the gray sheen of the river. Very
melancholy the aspect of the forlorn craft, he thought in passing, and
he scarcely wondered at the prevalence of the riverside legend that
strange presences were wont to revisit the glimpses of the moon on this
grim, storied wreck of the Mississippi.

He could not imagine how Mrs. Floyd-Rosney in pursuit of pleasure could
endure to pass this poignantly ghastly reminder, and still further down
the stream to approach the site of Duciehurst under its swirling
depths,--the packets now made a landing called by the name a mile to the
rearward of the spot where the old mansion had stood. But presently the
graceful yacht was steaming swiftly down this glamourous reach of the
river, and beneath its gliding shadow in inconceivable depths lay this
epitome of the past,--the demolished home altar, with its spent incense
of domestic affection, the lost hopes, with their lure of tenuous
illusions; the futile turmoils of grief; the transient elation of joy;
the final climax of death,--all the constituent elements of human
experience. Now they were naught, nullified, while the world swept on
uncaring, typified by the swift yacht, leaving astern the site of
oblivion.

                   *       *       *       *       *
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