HER WEIGHT IN GOLD
AND OTHER STORIES
By George Barr McCutcheon
1914
Nearly all of the stories presented in this volume appeared separately in various magazines. The author desires to acknowledge his thanks to the publications for courtesies extended by their editors: The National Magazine, Short Stories, the Saturday Evening Post, The Reader, The Woman's World, Good Housekeeping and The Illustrated Sunday Magazine.
CONTENTS
HER WEIGHT IN GOLD
"Well the question is: how much does she weigh?" asked Eddie Ten Eyck with satirical good humour.
His somewhat flippant inquiry followed the heated remark of General Horatio Gamble, who, in desperation, had declared that his step-daughter, Martha, was worth her weight in gold.
The General was quite a figure in the town of Essex. He was the president of the Town and Country Club and, besides owning a splendid stud, was also the possessor of a genuine Gainsborough, picked up at the shop of an obscure dealer in antiques in New York City for a ridiculously low price (two hundred dollars, it has been said), and which, according to a rumour started by himself, was worth a hundred thousand if it was worth a dollar, although he contrived to keep the secret from the ears of the county tax collector. He had married late in life, after accumulating a fortune that no woman could despise, and of late years had taken to frequenting the Club with a far greater assiduity than is customary in most presidents.
Young Mr. Ten Eyck's sarcasm was inspired by a mind's-eye picture of Miss Martha Gamble. To quote Jo Grigsby, she was "so plain that all comparison began and ended with her." Without desiring to appear ungallant, I may say that there were many homely young women in Essex; but each of them had the delicate satisfaction of knowing that Martha was incomparably her superior in that respect.
"I am not jesting, sir," said the General with asperity. "Martha may not be as good-looking as—er—some girls that I've seen, but she is a jewel, just the same. The man who gets her for a wife will be a blamed sight luckier than the fellows who marry the brainless little fools we see trotting around like butterflies." (It was the first time that Eddie had heard of trotting butterflies.)
"She's a fine girl," was his conciliatory remark.
"She is pure gold," said the General with conviction. "Pure gold, sir."
"A nugget," agreed Eddie expansively. "A hundred and eighty pound nugget, General. Why don't you send her to a refinery?"
The General merely glared at him and subsided into thoughtful silence. He was in the habit of falling into deep spells of abstraction at such times as this. For the life of him, he couldn't understand how Martha came by her excessive plainness. Her mother was looked upon as a beautiful woman and her father (the General's predecessor) had been a man worth looking at, even from a successor's point of view. That Martha should have grown up to such appalling ugliness was a source of wonder, not only to the General, but to Mrs. Gamble herself.
Young Mr. Ten Eyck was the most impecunious spendthrift in Essex. He lived by his wits, with which he was more generously endowed than anything in the shape of gold or precious jewels. His raiment was accumulative. His spending-money came to him through an allowance that his grandmother considerately delivered to him at regular periods, but as is the custom with such young men he was penniless before the quarter was half over. At all times he was precariously close to being submerged by his obligations. Yet trouble sat lightly upon his head, if one were to judge by outward appearances. Beneath a bland, care-free exterior, however, there lurked in Edward's bosom a perpetual pang of distress over the financial situation.
What worried him most was the conviction that all signs pointed toward the suspension of credit in places where he owed money, and, Young Mr. Ten Eyck's sarcasm was inspired by a mind's-eye picture of Miss Martha Gamble. To quote Jo Grigsby, she was "so plain that all comparison began and ended with her." Without desiring to appear ungallant, I may say that there were many homely young women in Essex; but each of them had the delicate satisfaction of knowing that Martha was incomparably her superior in that respect.
"I am not jesting, sir," said the General with asperity. "Martha may not be as good-looking as—er—some girls that I've seen, but she is a jewel, just the same. The man who gets her for a wife will be a blamed sight luckier than the fellows who marry the brainless little fools we see trotting around like butterflies." (It was the first time that Eddie had heard of trotting butterflies.)
"She's a fine girl," was his conciliatory remark.
"She is pure gold," said the General with conviction. "Pure gold, sir."
"A nugget," agreed Eddie expansively. "A hundred and eighty pound nugget, General. Why don't you send her to a refinery?"
The General merely glared at him and subsided into thoughtful silence. He was in the habit of falling into deep spells of abstraction at such times as this. For the life of him, he couldn't understand how Martha came by her excessive plainness. Her mother was looked upon as a beautiful woman and her father (the General's predecessor) had been a man worth looking at, even from a successor's point of view. That Martha should have grown up to such appalling ugliness was a source of wonder, not only to the General, but to Mrs. Gamble herself.
Young Mr. Ten Eyck was the most impecunious spendthrift in Essex. He lived by his wits, with which he was more generously endowed than anything in the shape of gold or precious jewels. His raiment was accumulative. His spending-money came to him through an allowance that his grandmother considerately delivered to him at regular periods, but as is the custom with such young men he was penniless before the quarter was half over. At all times he was precariously close to being submerged by his obligations. Yet trouble sat lightly upon his head, if one were to judge by outward appearances. Beneath a bland, care-free exterior, however, there lurked in Edward's bosom a perpetual pang of distress over the financial situation.
What worried him most was the conviction that all signs pointed toward the suspension of credit in places where he owed money, and, as he owed without discrimination, the future seemed hard to contemplate.
Prudent mothers stood defiantly between him and what might have been prosperity. He could win the hearts of daughters with shameful regularity and ease, but he could not delude the heads of the families to which they belonged. They knew him well and wisely.
The conversation between him and General Gamble took place in the reading-room of the Town and Country Club. There was a small table between them, and glasses.
"What is the market price of gold to-day, General?" asked Eddie impudently, after he had watched the old man's gloomy countenance out of the corner of his eye for the matter of three minutes or more.
The General regarded him with deep scorn. "Gold? What do you know about gold? You seldom see anything more precious than copper."
"That's no joke," agreed Eddie with his frank smile. "I am the only, original penny limit. That reminds me, General. I meant to speak of it before, but somehow it slipped my mind. Could you lend me—"
The General held up his hand. "I've been waiting for that, Eddie. Don't humiliate yourself by asking for a small amount. I haven't the remotest idea how much you already owe me, but it doesn't matter in view of the fact that you'll never pay it. You were about to request the loan of ten dollars, my boy. Why not ask for a respectable amount?—say, fifty dollars."
Eddie's heart leaped. "That's just the amount I meant to ask you to let me have for a week or two. 'Pon my word, it is."
"Well," said the General, taking a notebook from his pocket and carefully jotting down an entry with his gold-tipped pencil, "I cheerfully give it to you, Eddie. I shall credit your account with that amount. Fifty dollars—um! It is a new system I have concluded to adopt. Every time you ask me for a loan I shall subtract the amount from what you already owe me. In time, you see, the whole debt will be lifted,—and you'll not owe me a cent." Eddie blinked. A slow grin crept into his face as he grasped the irony in the General's scheme.
"Fine financing, General. It suits me to a dot. By the way, do you think you can spare another hundred or two?"
"The books are closed for the month," said the General placidly. He rang the bell on the table. "More ice, boy, and the same bottle. As I was saying, Eddie, I can't for the life of me see why you fellows are so blind when it comes to Martha. She is—"
"We are not blind," interrupted Eddie, not at all annoyed by his failure to negotiate the loan. "That's just the trouble. If a blind man came along, I've no doubt he could see something attractive in her."
"Damme! If she were my own daughter, I'd thrash you for that remark, sir."
"If she were your own daughter, you wouldn't be discussing her with a high-ball in your hand."
The General coughed. "Ahem! Eddie, I'd give a good deal to see that girl married. Leave the bottle on the table, boy. She will have money—a lot of it—one of these days. There are dozens of young men that we know who'd do 'most anything for money. I—By George!" He broke off to stare with glittering eyes at the face of the young man opposite. A great thought was expanding in his brain.
Eddie shifted nervously. "Why are you looking at me like that? I don't need it that badly."
"I'd never thought of you, Eddie,—'pon my word I hadn't. Not until this moment. You need money worse than any one I know. There isn't another girl in town who would marry you, and Martha WOULD. Believe me, she would! And let me tell you, sir, you couldn't find a truer wife than Martha. You—"
"She couldn't help being true," mused Eddie, rattling the ice in his empty glass. The General pushed the bottle toward him.
"She is a bit older than you, I'll admit," pursued the General reflectively. "Worth her weight in gold," he murmured with a sort of ecstasy in his voice.
Young Ten Eyck assumed an injured air. "I am poor, General Gamble, but I am NOT blind."
"She likes you," went on the older man, revelling in the new-found hope. "You don't amount to much,—and she knows it, I suppose,—but you can have her, my boy. She'll be the richest girl in Essex when I die. Take her, my boy; I gladly give my consent. Will you permit me to congratu—"
"One moment, if you please. In a case like this, you would NEVER die. It would be just my luck. No, I thank you. I decline the honour. If you could perform a miracle and transform her into REAL gold, I might consider the proposition, but not as it now stands."
"She weighs about one-eighty," said the General speculatively.
Eddie glanced at him sharply. "One hundred and eighty pounds in gold. Quite a pile, eh?"
The General was silent for a long time, permitting the vague idea to thrive in his harassed mind. His young companion was moodily trying to estimate the value of one hundred and eighty pounds of virgin gold.
At last the General reached a conclusion. It was a rather heroic effort. He relighted his cigar with trembling fingers.
"I suppose you haven't heard of the wedding present I intend to bestow upon the fortunate man who leads her to the altar!" said he, casting the fatal die.
"No; but a separate house and lot wouldn't be despised, I should say."
"Nonsense. By the way, Eddie, this must not go any farther. It's strictly entre nous. I don't want to have the dear girl pestered to death by fortune hunters. On his wedding day the man who marries Martha is to have the equivalent of her weight in double eagles. Isn't that ra—rather handsome?"
He sank back and waited for the seed to sink deeply into Ten Eyck soil. Eddie's eyelids flickered. The grin of a Cheshire cat came to his lips involuntarily and remained there without modification for the matter of an hour or two.
"Great!" he said at last.
"I must be on my way," observed the wily step-father, beating a retreat so hastily that Eddie missed the opportunity to scoff. But the contemplative smile remained just as he had left it.
Several days passed before the two met again. The General had sowed wisely, and he was reasonably certain of the harvest. He knew that it would be hard for young Ten Eyck to bring himself to the sacrificial altar; but that he would come and would bend his neck was a foregone conclusion. He went on the theory that if you give a man rope enough he'll hang himself, and he felt that Eddie was almost at the end of his rope in these cruel days.
As for Eddie, he tried to put the thought out of his mind, but as time went on he caught himself many times—(with a start of shame)—trying to approximate the worth of Martha Gamble on the basis set forth by her step-father. The second day after the interview he consulted a friend of his who happened to be a jeweller. From him he ascertained the present market value of twenty-four carat gold. So much for the start!
His creditors were threatening to sue or to "black-list" him; his friends long since had begun to dodge him, fearing the habitual request for temporary loans; his allowance was not due for several weeks. Circumstances were so harsh that even Martha appeared desirable by contrast. He felt an instinctive longing for rest, and peace, and—pecuniary absolution.
He was therefore deserving of pity when he finally surrendered to the inevitable. How he cursed himself—(and his creditors)—as he set out to find the General on that bright spring day when every other living creature on earth seemed to be happy and free from care. Kismet!
General Gamble was reading in a quiet corner of the Club. That is to say, he had the appearance of one reading. As a matter of fact, he had been watching Eddie's shy, uncertain evolutions for half an hour or more, and he chuckled inwardly. As many as ten times the victim strolled through the reading room, on the pretext of looking for some one. Something told the General that he was going to lose Martha.
At last Eddie approached him. He came with the swift impetuosity of a man who has decided and is afraid to risk a reaction.
"Hello, General," was his crisp greeting as he dropped into the chair which the astute old gentleman had placed, with premeditation, close to his own some time before. He went straight to the point. "I've been thinking over what you said the other day about Martha. Well, I'll marry her."
"You!" exclaimed the General, simulating incredulity. "You!"
"Yes. I'll be IT. How much does she really weigh?"
"Are—are you in earnest, my boy?" cried the other. "Why, she'll be tickled to death!"
"May I have her?"
"God bless you,—YES!"
"I suppose I ought to go up and see her and—and tell her I love her," said Eddie lugubriously. "Or," with a fine inspiration, "perhaps you wouldn't mind telling her for me. I—"
"Tell her yourself, you young rascal," cried the General in fine good humour, poking his prospective stepson-in-law in the ribs.
Eddie winced. "You can do that to me now, but if you jab me in the ribs after I'm married I'll jab you in the eye."
"Good! I like your spirit. Gad, I love a fighting-man! And now, my boy, it seems to me there's no sense in delaying matters. You have my consent. As a matter of form you ought to get Martha's. She'll take you, of course, but I—I suppose she would like the idea of being proposed to. They all do. I daresay you two can settle the point in a jiffy in some quiet nook up at the—But, there! I shall not offer suggestions to you in an affair of the heart, my son. Will you be up to see her this evening?"
Eddie drew a long breath. "If—if she has no other engagement."
"Engagement?" gasped the General, with popping eyes. "She hasn't sat up after eight o'clock in four years, except on Christmas Eve. You won't be disturbed; so come around."
"Perhaps, to be sure of finding her up, I'd better come to dinner."
"By all means. Stay as late as you like, too. She won't get sleepy to-night. Not a bit of it." He arose to depart.
"Just a moment, General," said Eddie curtly. "We've got a few preliminaries to arrange before I commit myself. Here is a paper for you to sign. Business is business, you know, and this is the first really business-like thing I've ever done. Be good enough to read this paper very carefully before signing."
General Gamble put on his glasses and read the brief, but ample contract which bound him to pay to Edward Peabody Ten Eyck, on the day that he was married to Martha Gamble, for better or for worse, an amount equivalent to the value of her weight in pure gold. He hesitated for one brief, dubious moment, then called for pen, ink, and paper. When these articles were brought to him, he deliberately drew up a second contract by which Edward Ten Eyck bound himself to wed Martha Gamble (and no other) on a day to be named by mutual consent at a later date—but not very much later, he was privately resolved.
"Now," said he, "we'll each sign one. You sha'n't get the better of me, my boy."
Each signed in the presence of two waiters, neither of whom knew the nature of the instruments.
"Troy weight," said the General magnanimously. "She is a jewel, you know."
"Certainly. It's stipulated in the contract—twenty-four carat gold. You said pure, you remember. You may have noticed that I take her at the prevailing market price of gold. It is now four cents a carat. Twenty-four carats in a pennyweight. That makes ninety-six cents per pennyweight. Twenty pennyweight in an ounce, and there we have nineteen dollars and twenty cents per ounce. We'll—we'll weigh her in by ounces."
"That's reasonable. The price of gold isn't likely to fluctuate much."
"It must be distinctly understood that you keep her well-fed from this day on, General. I won't have her fluctuating. She hasn't any silly notions about reducing, has she?"
"My dear fellow, she poses as a Venus," cried the General. "Good! And here's another point: pardon me for suggesting it, but you understand that she's to weigh in—er—that is to say, her clothing is to be weighed in with her."
"What's that?"
"You heard what I said. She's to be settled for—dressed." "Good Lord, she isn't a chicken!"
"Nobody said she was. It is fit and proper that her garments should be weighed with her. Hang it all, man, I'm marrying her clothes as well as anything else."
"I will not agree to that. It's preposterous."
"I don't mean her entire wardrobe. Just the going-away gown and hat. You can't very well ask her to weigh herself without any—But as gentlemen we need not pursue the matter any farther. You shall have your way about it."
"She has a fine pair of scales in her bedroom. She weighs herself every night for her own gratification. I don't see why she can't do it once or twice for my sake."
"But women are such dreadful liars about their own weight. She'll be sure to lop off fifteen or twenty pounds in the telling. Hang it, I want witnesses."
The General assumed a look of distress. "Remember, sir, that you are speaking of your future wife. You'll have to take her word."
Eddie slumped down in his chair, muttering something about niggardliness.
"I suppose I'll have to concede the point." His eyes twinkled. "I say, it would be a horrible shock to you, General, if she were to refuse me to-night."
"She sha—WON'T!" said the General, setting his jaw, but turning a shade paler. "She'll jump at the chance."
Eddie sighed dismally. "Doesn't it really seem awful to you?"
"Having you for a son-in-law? YES."
"You know I'm only doing this because I want to set up in business for myself and need the money," explained the groom-elect in an effort to justify himself. "Oh, another little point. I'd almost forgotten it. I suppose it will be perfectly convenient for us to live with you for a year or two, until I—"
"No!" thundered the General. "Not by a long shot! You go to housekeeping at once, do you understand?"
"But think of her poor mother's feelings—"
"Her mother has nothing whatever to do with it, sir. See here, we'll put that in the contract." He was visibly disturbed by the thought of what the oversight might have meant to him. "And now, when shall we have the wedding?"
"Perhaps we'd better leave that to Martha."
"We'll leave nothing to anybody."
"She'll want to get a trousseau together and all that sort of thing. I'm ready to go through with it at any time, but you know what girls are." He was perspiring.
"Yes," said the General with a reminiscent light in his eye. "I daresay they all enjoy a few weeks of courtship and love-making."
Eddie gulped suddenly and then shot a quick, hunted look toward the buffet door.
"Have a drink?" demanded the other abruptly. He had caught the sign of danger.
They strolled into the buffet, arm-in-arm, one loving the world in general, the other hating everybody in it, including the General. Before they parted Eddie Ten Eyck extracted a solemn promise from his future step-father-in-law that he would ascertain Martha's exact weight and report the figure to him on the following day.
"It will seem easier if I know just about what to expect," explained the young man.
That very afternoon the General, with a timidity that astonished him, requested his stepdaughter to report her correct weight to him on the following morning. He kept his face well screened behind his newspaper while speaking, and his voice was a little thick.
"What for, father?" asked Martha, looking up from her book in surprise. Her eyes seemed to grow even larger than the lenses of her spectacles.
"Why, you see—er—I'm figuring on a little more insurance," he stammered.
"What has my weight to do with it?"
"It isn't life insurance," he made haste to explain. A bright idea struck him. "It is fire insurance, my dear."
"I don't see what my—"
"Of course you don't," he interrupted genially. "It's this way. The fire insurance companies are getting absurdly finicky about the risks. Now they insist on knowing the weight of every inmate of the houses they insure. Has something to do with the displacement of oxygen, I believe. Your mother and I—and the servants, too—expect to be weighed to-night."
"Oh," she said, and resumed her reading.
He waited for a while, fumbling nervously with his watch chain.
"By the way, my dear," he said, "what have you been doing to that bully chap, Eddie Ten Eyck?"
"Doing to him? What do you mean?"
"Just what I say."
"I haven't seen the miserable loafer in months," she said. Her voice was heavy, not unlike that of a man. For some reason she shuffled uneasily in her chair. The book dropped into her capacious lap.
"You've been doing something behind my back, you sly minx," he chided. "What do you think happened to-day?"
"To Eddie Ten Eyck?"
"In a way, yes. He came up to me in the Club and asked my permission to pay—er—court to you, my dear. He said he loved you better than—Hey! Look out there! What the dev—Hi, Mother! Come here quick! Good Heaven, she's going to die!"
Poor Martha had collapsed in a heap, her arms dangling limply over the side of the chair, her eyes bulging and blinking in a most grotesque manner. At first glance one would have sworn she was strangling. Afterwards the General denounced himself as an unmitigated idiot for having given her such a shock. He ought to have known better.
Mrs. Gamble rushed downstairs in great alarm, and it was not long before they had Martha breathing naturally, although the General almost made that an impossibility by the ruthless manner in which he fanned her with the very book she had been reading—a heavy volume which he neglected to open.
The whirligig room reduced itself to a library for Martha once more, not so monotonous as it once had been, no doubt, but still a library. Out of the turmoil of her own emotions, she managed to grasp enough of what the General was saying to convince herself that this was not another dream but a reality, and she became so excited that her mother advised her to go to bed for a while before dinner, if she expected to appear at her best when Eddie arrived.
For the first time since early childhood, Martha blushed as she attempted to trip lightly upstairs. As a matter of fact, she DID trip on next to the top step and sprawled. Under ordinary circumstances she would have been as mad as a wet hen, but on this happy occasion she merely cried out, when her parents dashed into the hall below on hearing the crash:
"It's good luck to fall upstairs!"
The fires of life had been rekindled, and when such a thing happens to a person of Martha's horse-power, the effect is astonishing. At four o 'clock she began dressing for the coming suitor. When he arrived at seven, she was still trying to decide whether her hair looked better by itself or with augmentations.
Below, in the huge library, Eddie Ten Eyck sat disconsolate, nervously contemplating the immediate future. He was all alone. Not even a servant was to be seen or heard. It was as still as the Christmas Eve whose jingle we love so well.
Never in all his aimless existence had he felt so small, so unimportant, so put-upon as at this moment. His gaze, sweeping the ceiling of the library, tried to penetrate to the sacred precincts above. Even the riches and the stateliness of the Gamble mansion failed to reimburse his fancy for the losses it was sustaining with each succeeding minute of suspense. Dimly he recalled that General Gamble had spent nearly half a million dollars in the construction of this imposing edifice. The library was worth more than one hundred thousand dollars; the stables were stocked with innumerable thoroughbreds; the landed estate was measured by sections instead of acres; the stocks and bonds were—But even as he considered the question of assets, there surged up before him an overwhelming liability that brought the General's books to balance.
By this time, Eddie had become so proficient in the art of rapid calculation that he could estimate within a few ounces just what a person would have to weigh in order to be worth as much as the library, the mansion, or the bonds. The great Gainsborough that hung in the west end of the room corresponded in value (if reports were true concerning the price Gamble had asked for it) to a woman weighing a shade over two hundred and three pounds troy.
He lifted a handsome bronze figure from the library table and murmured: "It's worth a ten-pound baby, twenty-two hundred dollars and a fraction."
The General came in, followed closely by the butler, who bore a tray holding at least ten cocktails. After the greetings, Eddie glanced uneasily at the cocktails.
"Is—is it to be as big a dinner as all this?" he asked ruefully.
"Oh, no. Just family, my boy; we four. The women don't drink, Eddie, so help yourself."
Eddie gratefully swallowed three in rapid succession.
"I see you mean to make it absolutely necessary for me to take the gold cure," he said with a forlorn smile.
Martha put in an appearance at seven-thirty, having kept dinner waiting for half an hour, much to the amazement of those who had lived with her long enough to know her promptness in appearing for meals.
Mr. Ten Eyck, who was a rather good-looking chap and fastidious to a degree, did not possess the strength to keep his heart anywhere near the customary level. It went hurtling to his very boots. He shook hands with the blushing young woman and then involuntarily shrank toward the cocktails, disregarding the certainty that he would find them lukewarm and tasteless.
She was gotten up for the occasion. But, as it was not her costume that he was to embrace in matrimony, we will omit a description of the creation she wore. It was pink, of course, and cut rather low in order to protect her face from the impudent gaze of man.
Her face? Picture the face of the usual heroine in fiction and then contrive to think of the most perfect antithesis, and you have Martha in your mind's eye much more clearly than through any description I could hope to present.
She was squat. Her somewhat brawny shoulders sloped downward and forward—and perhaps a little sidewise, I am not sure about that. Her hair was straw-coloured and stringy in spite of the labour she had expended on it with curling-iron and brush. As to her face, the more noticeable features were a very broad, flat nose; a comparatively chinless under jaw, on which grew an accidental wisp of hair or two; a narrow and permanently decorated upper lip. When she smiled—well, the effect was discouraging, to say the least. Her eyes were pale and prominent. In spite of all this, practice in rouging might have helped her a little, but she had had no practice. Young men never came to the house, and it was not worth while to keep up appearances for the old ones who were content to dodder at the end of the way. You would say at a glance that she was a very strong and enduring person, somewhat along the lines of a suffragette ward politician.
The dinner was a genial one, after all. The General was at his best, and the wine was perfect. In lucid moments, Eddie found himself reflecting: "If I can drink enough of this I'll have delirium tremens and then I won't have to believe all that I see."
Martha had always called him Eddie. In fact, every one called him Eddie. He was that sort of a chap. To-night, he observed, with a hazy interest, she addressed him as Mr. Ten Eyck, and rather frequently, at that. It was: "Do you really think so, Mr. Ten Eyck?" or "How very amusing, Mr. Ten Eyck," or "Good gracious, Mr. Ten Eyck," until poor Eddie, unused to this distinction, reached a point where he muttered something in way of protest that caused the General to cough violently in order to give his guest a chance to recover himself before it was too late.
After dinner the General and Mrs. Gamble retired somewhat precipitously, leaving the young people alone.
Eddie heaved a tremendous sigh of decision and bravely crossed the room. Martha was seated upon the davenport, nervously toying with her fan. He saw with misgiving that she evidently expected something was going to happen. Her eyes were downcast.
He stood silent and somewhat awed before her for many minutes, taking the final puffs at an abbreviated cigarette. Then he abruptly sat down at the opposite end of the couch. As he did so, she thought she heard him mutter something about "one hundred and seventy, at the lowest."
"So many people have given up playing golf, Mr. Ten Eyck," she said. "I am surprised that you keep it up."
"Golf?" he murmured blankly.
"Weren't you speaking of your score for the eighteen holes?"
He gazed at her helplessly for a moment, then set his jaw.
"Say, Martha," he began, in a high and unnatural treble, "I am a man of few words. Will you marry me? Oh! Ouch! What the dickens are you doing? O—oh! Don't jump at me like that!"
The details are painful and it isn't necessary to go into them. Suffice it to say, she told him that he had always been her ideal and that she had worshipped him from childhood's earliest days. He, on the other hand, confessed, with more truth than she could have guessed, that he had but recently come to a realisation of her true worth, and what she really meant to him.
She set the wedding day for November the eleventh,—just seven weeks off.
Before leaving,—she kept him until nearly twelve,—he playfully came up behind her as she stood near the table, and, placing his hands under her elbows, said:
"Hold 'em stiff now."
Then, to her amazement, he tried to lift her from the floor. He couldn't budge her.
"It's all right," he exclaimed exultantly and refused to explain.
That night in his dreams an elephant came along and stood for a while on his chest, but he was used to it by that time, and didn't mind.
The next morning, General Gamble reported by telephone that Martha weighed one hundred and sixty-eight pounds and nine ounces. A minute later, Eddie was at his desk calculating.
On the twenty-third of September she weighed two thousand and twenty-five ounces troy. At nineteen dollars and twenty cents an ounce she was then worth $38,880. With any sort of luck, he figured, she might be expected to pick up a few pounds as the result of her new-found happiness and peace of mind. Her worries were practically over. Contented people always put on flesh. If everything went well, she ought to represent at least $40,000 on her wedding day. Perhaps more.
He haunted the Country Club by day and the town clubs by night, always preoccupied and figuring, much to the astonishment of his friends and cronies. He scribbled inexplicable figures on the backs of golf cards, bar checks, and menus.
By the end of the first week he had made definite promises to all of his creditors. He guaranteed that every one should be paid before the middle of November. Moreover, he set aside in his calculations the sum of $7,000 for the purchase of a new house. Early in the second week he had virtually expended $15,000 of what he expected to receive, and was giving thanks for increased opportunities.
He called at the Gamble house regularly, even faithfully. True, he urged Martha to play on the piano nearly all of the time, but to all intents and purposes it was a courtship.
When the engagement was announced, the town—in utter ignorance of the conspiracy—went into convulsions. The half-dozen old maids in upper circles who had long since given up hope began to prink and perk themselves into an amazing state of rejuvenation,—revival, you might say. They tortured themselves with the hope that never dies. They even lent money to impecunious gentlemen who couldn't believe their senses and went about pinching themselves.
Eddie Ten Eyck's credit was so good that he succeeded in borrowing nearly five thousand dollars from erstwhile adamantine sceptics.
One day the General met him in the street. The old soldier wore a troubled look. "She's sick," he said without preamble. "Got pains all over her and chills, too."
"Is it serious?" demanded Eddie.
"I don't know. Neither does the doctor. He's waiting for developments. Took a culture to-day. She's in bed, however."
"SHE MUST NOT DIE," said Eddie, a desperate gleam in his eye. "I—can't afford to have anything like that happen now. Can't she be vaccinated?"
At the end of the second day thereafter it was known all over town that Martha Gamble was ill with typhoid fever. She was running a temperature of 104 degrees and two doctors had come up from New York to consult with the Essex physician, bringing with them a couple of trained nurses. They said her heart was good.
After the consultation, the General and Eddie sat alone in the library, woebegone and disconsolate.
"They think they can pull her through," said the former vaguely.
"Curse 'em," grated Eddie; "they've GOT to do it. If there is the least prospect of her dying, General, I must insist that the wedding day be moved forward. I'll—I'll marry her to-day. By Jove, it might go a long way toward reducing her temperature."
"Impossible! We shall stick to the original agreement." "Confound you, I believe you are hoping she'll die before the eleventh of November. It would be just like you, General Gamble."
"I'm not hoping for anything of the sort, sir," thundered the other. "But, if it SHOULD happen—" He did not finish the sentence, but there was a green light in his eyes.
Eddie was silent for many minutes.
"And if she SHOULD die, where do I come in, or get off, or whatever is the proper thing to say in the circumstances? It wouldn't be fair to me, General Gamble. You know it wouldn't. It would be a damned outrage. Here am I, a devoted lover, eager to make her happy—to MAKE HER LAST MOMENTS happy ones, mind you, and you sit there and deny her the consolation of—"
"All's fair in love, my boy," said the General blandly.
"Rats!"
"Martha wasn't strong enough to stand the excitement. It was like a sudden and frightful change in the weather. Her constitution couldn't fight it off." "Constitution? Good Lord!"
"We ought to make allowances, my boy."
"I am in no position to make allowances. Are these doctors any good?"
"The best in New York City."
"And the nurses? Everything depends on good nursing."
"They are real Canadians."
"General, up to the time I was eleven years old I said my prayers every night. I'm going to begin again to-night," said Eddie solemnly, as he passed his hand across his brow.
The days went by with monotonous similarity. Bright or dark, wet or dry, they looked the same to Eddie Ten Eyck. At first he had been permitted to visit her once or twice a day, staying for a few minutes on each occasion. After a while the visits were stopped by the doctor's order. But still he haunted the Gamble mansion. He waylaid the doctor; he bribed or coerced the nurses; he watched the sick-room door with the eye of a hungry dog; he partook inordinately of the General's liquors. Martha was delirious, that much he was able to gather by persistent inquiry. She seemed obsessed with the idea that she and Eddie were to keep house in Heaven, with two cherubs and a hypodermic syringe.
Mrs. Gamble was deeply touched and not a little surprised by the devotion of her daughter's fiance. She turned to him in these hours of despair and gave to him a large share of her pity and consolation. She asked him to pray for Martha. He said he had been praying for some one else nearly all his life, but henceforth would put in a word for Martha.
The wedding day was near at hand when an unexpected and alarming complication set in. The doctors were hurriedly gathered in consultation. There was a crisis. One of the nurses confided to Mr. Ten Eyck that there was no hope, but the other declared that if the patient survived the eighth of November she would "be out of the woods." The eighth was three days off. Those three days were spent by Eddie in a state of fearful suspense. He implored Providence and Fate to stand by him until after the eleventh. He went so far as to add a couple of days to include the thirteenth, not being superstitious. The night of the eighth was a memorable one. No one in the Gamble house went to bed. The ninth came and then the doctors appeared with glad tidings. The crisis was past and there was every chance in the world for the patient to recover, unless of course, some unforeseen complication intervened.
Eddie staggered out to the stables and performed a dance of joy.
"What's her temperature?" he demanded of one of the grooms, absently repeating a question he had asked five thousand times during the past few weeks. "I beg your pardon, Smith." Then he hurried back to the house. Meeting one of the doctors he gripped him by the arm.
"Is she sure to live, doc—doctor?"
"Forever," said the doctor, meaning to comfort him.
"No!" gasped Eddie.
"Let me congratulate you, Mr. Ten Eyck. She is quite rational now and—pardon me if I repeat a sick-room secret—she declares that there shall be no postponement of the wedding. She is superstitious about postponements."
Eddie hesitated. "Ahem! Is—is she emaciated?"
"No more than might be expected."
"I—I hope she hasn't wasted very much."
"Skin and bones," said the doctor with the most professional bluntness.
Eddie mopped his brow. "You—you don't mean it! See here, doctor, you ought to advise very strongly against the—er—marriage at this time. Tell her it would kill her. The shock, I mean. I am willing to wait—GOD KNOWS, I am only too willing to wait—until she is strong and well and herself once more. Tell her—"
"Perhaps you would better talk it over with her father, Mr. Ten Eyck. I am not—"
"Her father—" began Eddie, but caught himself up.
"I would not answer for her safety if a postponement were even suggested. Her heart is set on it, my dear fellow. She will be strong enough to go through with it."
"But I want to be married in church."
"I daresay you will agree with me when I say that your feelings are not to be considered in a crisis of this kind," said the doctor coldly, and moved away.
At noon on the eleventh Martha awoke from a sound and restful sleep. Sweet lassitude enveloped her, but her mind went groping for something that had been troubling her in a vague sort of way for the last forty-eight hours.
"Is it the eleventh?" she whispered, stretching out her hand to the watchful nurse.
"Yes, my dear. Now try to go to sleep again—"
"Where is Mr. Ten Eyck?"
"Sh!"
"What time is it!"
"Now don't worry about the time—"
"Is it night or day?"
"It is noon."
"I am to be married at eight o'clock this evening, Miss Feeney."
"Yes, yes, I know," soothingly.
"You might send word to Mr. Ten Eyck that I shall be ready. He may forget the ring unless you tell him that—there—is—to be—no post—" She went to sleep in the middle of postponement.
While the nurses were preparing her for the ceremony, General Gamble sent word into the sick-room that the doctor desired her correct weight—for scientific purposes.
The patient, too weak to help herself, was lifted upon the scales, where she remained long enough for it to be seen that she weighed seventy-three pounds and eight ounces. She was then hustled into bed, but seemed to be in even better spirits than before, confiding to the nurses that she knew Mr. Ten Eyck was partial to slender women, and that if she had anything to do with it she'd never weigh more than one hundred and ten again, "as long as she lived."
"One hundred and ten is a lovely weight, don't you think, Miss Feeney!" she asked.
Miss Feeney was feeling her pulse. The other nurse was trying to stick a mouth thermometer between the patient's lips.
"It is a much lovelier weight than seventy-three," said Miss Feeney gently.
The General, in the privacy of his bed-chamber, reduced the pounds to ounces and found that Martha, in her present state, represented eight hundred and eighty-four ounces. He could not suppress a chuckle, even though he felt very mean about it. She was worth $16,972 in gold. Her illness had cost him approximately $2,000 in doctors' fees, et cetera, but it had cost Eddie Ten Eyck $21,911 in pure gold, with twenty cents over in silver.
It is said that the bridegroom almost collapsed when he looked for the first time upon his emaciated investment. It was worse than he had expected. She was literally "skin and bones."
Mechanically, semi-paralysed, he made the responses to the almost staccato words of the clergyman. The ceremony was hurried through at a lively rate, but to Eddie it seemed to take hours. Her fingers felt like a closed fan in his own pulseless hand. He replied "I do" and "I will" without really being aware of the fact, and all the time he was gazing blankly at her, trying to remember where he had seen her before.
Away back in the dim, forgotten ages there was a robust, squat, valuable figure; but—this! His brain reeled. He was being married to an utter stranger. His loss was incalculable.
We will speed over the ensuing months. It goes without saying that Martha became well and strong and abominably vigorous in the matter of appetite. Her days of convalescence—But why go into them? They are interesting only to the person who is emerging from a period of suffering and fasting. Why dwell upon the reflections of Eddie Ten Eyck as he saw an erstwhile stranger transformed into an old acquaintance before his very eyes? Why go into the painful details attending the stealthy payment of nearly $17,000 by the party of the first part to the party of the second part, and why tell of the uses to which the latter was compelled to put this meagre fortune almost immediately after acquiring it? No one cares to be harassed by these miserable, mawkish details.
One really needs to know but one thing: the bridegroom soon stood shorn of all his ill-gotten gains, unless we except the wife of whom no form of adversity could rob him.
A month after the wedding, Eddie was eagerly awaiting the fourth quarterly instalment of his allowance. He was out of debt, it is true, but he never had been poorer in all his life. The thing that appalled him most was the fact that he had unlimited credit and did not possess the courage to take advantage of it. He could have borrowed right and left; he could have run up stupendous accounts; he could have lived like a lord. But Martha, before she was really able to sit up in bed, began to talk about something in a cottage,—something that made him turn pale with desperation,—and bread and cheese and kisses, entirely with an eye to thrift and what Eddie considered a nose for squalor. He couldn't imagine anything more squalid than a subsistence on the three commodities mentioned. In fact, he preferred starvation.
Martha harped for hours at a stretch on how economically she could conduct their small establishment, once they got into the house he had bound himself to buy in his days of affluence. She seemed to take it for granted that she would be obliged to skimp and pinch in order to get along on what Eddie would be able to earn.
"Our meat and grocery bills will be almost nothing, Eddie dear," she said one day, with an enthusiasm that discouraged him. "You see, I mean to keep my figure, now that I've got it. I sha'n't eat a thing for days at a time. We'll have no meat, nor potatoes, nor sugar—"
"Just bread and cheese," said he wanly.
"And something else," she added coquettishly.
"Kisses are fattening," he said.
"Goodness! Who ever told you that?" she cried in dismay.
"A well-known specialist," he said, his mind adrift.
"Well, there is one thing sure, Eddie," she declared firmly; "we will not go into debt for anything. We positively must keep out of debt. I won't have you worrying about money matters."
"I'm not likely to," said he with conviction.
He then began to watch for signs of decrepitude in the General.
As soon as Martha was strong enough to travel, her step-father suggested that they go South for the winter instead of opening the little house down the street. He went so far as to offer to pay the expenses of the trip as a sort of belated wedding gift.
Eddie objected. He said that his real estate business was in such a state that he couldn't afford to leave it for a day.
"I didn't know you HAD a business," exclaimed the General.
"I am making arrangements to take up a Government claim in Alaska," said his son-in-law grimly.
"Great Scott!"
"I'm going to some place where I can DIG for gold."
"Are you in earnest?"
"Bitterly."
"And—and would you subject Martha to the rigours of an Alaskan winter in—"
"Inasmuch as we shall have to subsist on snowballs until you pass in your cheques, General, I think we'd better go where they are fresh and plentiful."
Fortunately for the bride and groom, everybody that was anybody in Essex gave them a wedding present. Not a few, in a fever of exultation, gave beyond their means, and a great many of them with unintentional irony gave pickle dishes. By the time they were ready to go into their new home, it was cosily, even handsomely furnished. The General, contrite of heart, spent money lavishly in trying to make the home so attractive for Eddie that he wouldn't be likely to desert it for something worse.
The groom's sense of humour was only temporarily dulled. He noted signs of its awakening when he assisted in the unpacking of four cheval mirrors, gifts to the bride from persons who may or may not have been in collusion but who certainly wanted Martha to see herself as others saw her, and, as it turned out, from all sides.
The glow of health—an almost superhuman health—increased in the countenance of Mrs. Edward Ten Eyck. Her hair was a bit slow in restoring itself, and a shade or two darker, but on the other hand, despite all she could do to prevent it, she resumed her natural proportions with a rapidity that was sickening.
It was not long before her figure was unquestionably her own.
Eddie tried to conceal his dismay. He even tried to drown it. Their first quarrel grew out of her objection to the presence of intoxicating liquors in the house.
"I don't approve of whiskey," she said flatly.
"But you had it at your house."
"You forget that he was only my stepfather."
"He isn't in the past tense yet," said he bitterly.
"I've always maintained that whiskey should be used for medicinal purposes only."
"Then please don't worry about it," said he curtly. "I've ordered a barrel of it."
"For—for medicinal purposes?" "Strictly."
She studied his face with uneasy alarm in her eyes.
"You—don't feel as though you were going to be ill, do you, dear?"
He moved to the opposite side of the table, involuntarily lifting his left elbow as if to shield himself. She stopped half-way. Then he laughed awkwardly and turned the subject.
One day he reached the startling conclusion, that she was getting heavier than she had ever been before. It required days of contemplation, scrutiny, and development of purpose before he could ask her to step onto the scales at the meat market.
A cold perspiration started on his forehead as he moved the balance along the bar and found it would be necessary to use the two-hundred pound weight instead of the one-hundred, the fifty, and divers small ones that had been sufficient in days of yore.
She weighed two hundred and three pounds.
At nine o 'clock that night some one took him home from the Essex Club, and Martha was in hysterics until the doctor, summoned with haste and vehemence, assured her that her husband was not dead.
The approach of springtime found Eddie in a noticeably run-down condition. Friends and acquaintances began to remark that he was "going to seed in a hurry," or "he's awfully run down at the heel," or "I've never seen such a change in a man."
He was no longer the gay, whilom, inconsequent man about town. The best proof of this was his utter lack of pride in the matter of dress and his carelessness in respect to his personal appearance. Once he had been the beau-ideal of the town. Nowadays he slouched about the streets with a cigarette drooping listlessly between his lips, his face unshaven, his clothes unpressed and dusty. There was always a hunted, far-away look in his eyes.
Habitues of the Club began to notice that he was once more making mathematical calculations on the backs of envelopes or the margins of newspapers and magazines. No one pretended to explain this queer habit of his, but they observed that his efforts represented sums in multiplication. Occasionally, as if to throw them off the track, he did a sum in subtraction, and there were frequent lapses into simplified addition.
It was noted, however, that the numerals one, nine, decimal, two and a cipher, invariably in that sequence, figured somewhere in every calculation.
General Gamble could have solved the mystery, but he maintained a rigid silence. In his heart, the old schemer nurtured a fear that sooner or later Eddie would commit suicide or run away, either of which would signify the return of Martha to the mansion she had deserted for a cottage. And he knew that if she ever came back it would be as a permanent visitor.
He encountered his son-in-law frequently at unexpected times and in unusual places, and was never without the feeling that the young man eyed him balefully. He could feel the intensity of that unwavering gaze for hours after meeting Eddie. It was an ardent, searching look that seemed to question his right to survive the day.
After such meetings, the General was wont to survey himself long and fearsomely in the first mirror or show window that presented itself. He began to wonder if he was in failing health. At times he thought he discerned signs of approaching decrepitude, but his doctor assured him that he was never healthier or happier than he appeared to be at this particular period in his life.
Still, he could not shake off the rather ghastly feeling that Eddie was secretly praying that his days were numbered.
One day at the Club he complained of a severe pain in his back, and the very next day he was shocked to find his son-in-law dressed in sombre black with a strip of crape around his arm. Immediately on seeing the General in his usual state of health, Eddie solemnly removed the band from his sleeve and, carefully rolling it up, stuck it into his waistcoat pocket.
"I'm saving it for a rainy day," said Eddie with a cold-blooded smile.
"Good Heaven!" said the General, and at once felt the pain return to his back.
"Have you seen Martha lately?" asked Eddie, tapping the bell on the table.
"Oh, yes," said the General, settling a little deeper into his chair. "She is looking remarkably well."
"Do you know what she weighs at present?"
"Of course not. She took the scales over to your house. Besides, I don't care a hang."
"Day before yesterday she weighed two hundred and ninety-eight pounds." His voice rose to a shrill screech. "It's a blamed outrage!" He dropped his chin into his hands and went on muttering vaguely, his eyes glued to the top button of the General's waistcoat.
"By Jove, she IS doing well."
"She can hardly walk. If she keeps on, she won't be able to see, either. Her eyes are almost lost. I screwed up the courage to take a long look at her to-day. She has lost her neck entirely and I haven't the remotest idea where her ears are."
"I—I DO feel sorry for you, Eddie," cried the General, moved by unexpected compunction.
Eddie rambled on. "Sometimes I sit down and actually watch her grow. You can notice, it if you look steadily for a given time."
The two sat stiff and silent for many minutes. Eddie stole a sly glance at his companion's ruddy face.
"You are a remarkably well preserved man, General," he ventured speculatively. "Would you mind telling me your age?"
"I am seventy-one, Eddie, if it is any encouragement to you," said the General eagerly.
"You look good for another ten years," said Eddie hopelessly.
"I am a little worried about my heart," prevaricated the General. He meant to be magnanimous. Eddie did not look up, but his eyes began to blink rapidly. "There is heart disease in the family, you know."
"Then maybe Martha has—er—has—"
"Has what, my son!"
"I forgot. She is only your step-daughter. I was worried for a moment, that's all."
In the fall of the year, Eddie announced to his father-in-law that Martha was tipping the beam at three hundred and fourteen pounds, three ounces, and increasing daily. The General gave vent to an uneasy laugh, whereupon Eddie, mistaking his motive, launched into a tirade that ended with the frantic wish that the old man would hurry up and die.
"Now, Eddie, don't talk like that! I have about made up my mind to do something handsome for you and Martha. I have practically decided to make her an allowance for clothing and so forth—"
"Clothing!" groaned Eddie. "She doesn't want clothes. What could she do with 'em? I am the one who needs clothes. Look at me. Look at the frayed edges and see how I shine in the back. There is a patch or two that you can't see. I put those patches on myself, too. Martha is so darned fat she can't hold a pair of trousers in her lap. Moreover, she can't sew with anything smaller than a crochet needle. Look at me! I am growing a beard so that people can't see my Adam's apple. That's how poor and thin I'm getting to be. Now just listen a minute; I'll give you a few figures that will paralyse you."
He jerked out his lead pencil and with the rapidity of a lightning calculator multiplied, added, and subtracted.
"She is worth $72,403.20 to-day. What do you think of that? Prove the figures for yourself. Here's the pencil."
"I don't care to—"
"The day of the wedding," went on Eddie wildly, "she weighed in at $16,972.80, I think. See what I mean? She's bulling the market and I can't realise a cent on her. She's gone up $55,430 in less than a year. Suffering Isaac! Why couldn't she have weighed that much a year ago?" He was so furious that he chopped off his words in such a way that they sounded like the barking of a dog.
The General pushed back his chair in alarm.
"Calm yourself, Eddie."
"Oh, I'm calm enough."
"Martha will be a very rich woman when I die, and you won't have to—"
"That sounds beautiful. But don't you see that she's getting so blamed fat that she's liable to tip over some day and die before I can find any one to help me set her up again? And if that should happen, will you kindly tell me WHERE I WOULD COME IN?"
"You are a heartless, mercenary scoundrel," gasped the General.
"Well, you would be sore, too, if this thing had happened to you," whined Eddie. He sprang to his feet suddenly. "By thunder, I can't stand it a day longer. Good-bye, General. I'm going to skip out."
"Skip out! Leave her? Is that what you mean?"
"Yes. She can always find a happy home with her mother and you. I'm off to the—"
"For Heaven's sake," cried the General hoarsely, "don't do that, Eddie. Don't you dare do anything like that. I—I—I am sure we can arrange something between us. I'm not a stingy, hard-hearted man, and you know it. You deserve relief. You deserve compensation. I am your father-in-law and, damme, I'll not go back on you in your time of need. I'll make up the amount you have already lost, 'pon my soul I will, Eddie. Stand by your guns, that's all I ask."
A seraphic expression came into Eddie's face. "When?" he demanded.
"Immediately. Can you come to my house this evening? Alone, of course."
"I should say I can!" shouted Eddie, growing two inches taller in an instant. He took the package of crape from his pocket and threw it into a cuspidor. Then he sighed profoundly. "Gad, have you ever felt like another man, General? It's great."
As the General was past the point where he could risk saying another word, he maintained a strenuous silence.
Eddie indulged in an expansive grin. "You asked if I could come alone. That's the only way I can come. If you ever expect to see Martha, General, you will have to come to my house to do so. Do you remember that saying about Mahomet and the mountain?"
THE MAID AND THE BLADE
Over two centuries ago. Virginia, fair Virginia, in her most rugged, uncouth state, yet queen of all the colonies, rich in the dignity of an advanced settlement, glorious in prophecies and ambitions; the favoured ward of England's sovereigns, the paradise of her royal pillagers, the birthplace of American Freedom.
Jamestown was in the throes of a savage struggle, confined not to herself alone, but spreading to the farthermost ends of the apparently unbounded state. The capital fight was on, the contest waging between the town in which grew Bacon's rebellion and Williamsburg, in which William and Mary College had just been born, an infant venture that seemed but a mockery in the wilds. Boisterous, boasting Jamestown, since the rule of Berkeley and the unfortunate overthrow of Bacon, had resumed a state of composure which she had not known in the five preceding decades, and was beginning to look upon herself as the undisputed metropolis of the wilderness. The impudence of Williamsburg, with her feeble scholastic claims, was not even condemned—it was ignored.
The crude fort at Jamestown held a merry garrison, the Governor having impressed upon royalty across the sea the importance of troops in a land where unexpected rebellions against authority might succeed the partially triumphant uprising against Sir William in 1676. Bacon's death in the October of that year had lost the fight which had been fairly won, and it was wisdom which told the new Governor that troops were essential, even in time of peace.
The commander of the garrison was Colonel Fortune. The number and quality of his troops are not important factors in this tale.
Among the men were a dozen or more subalterns, fresh from England, undergoing their first rough work in the forests of Virginia. In this fledgling crowd were young Grafton, afterward a general; Mooney, Vedder, Hoicraft and others, whose names, with those of their Virginia companions went into colonial history.
Near the fort were the homes of the officers, the Governor's residence being but a short distance down the rough, winding lane, which was dignified by the name of street. Colonel Fortune's home was the handsomest, the merriest of them all, a typical frontier mansion. A mansion of those days could be little more than a cottage in these, yet the Colonel's was far brighter, gayer than the palace of today. In his house gathered chivalrous subalterns from English homes, stalwart Virginians of inherited gallantry, the men and women from whom sprung the first families of that blue blood which all Americans cherish lovingly and proudly.
His board was more hospitable than that of the Governor, his favours were coveted more eagerly even than were those of his superior. Stern, exacting, yet affable and courteous, he was the idol of a people whose hatred for those who ruled them had wrought ruin more than once. Mrs. Fortune, a lady of gentle birth closely related, in fact, to a certain branch of nobility, shared the power of her husband.
But there was a colonial queen whose reign was of more consequence to the youth of Jamestown than was that of the august person across the sea. She was queen of hearts, this daughter of theirs, airy Kate Fortune. Daintiest maid in all the land, famed for her wit, her follies, her merry loveliness, her dimples and her sunshine, she was the wiliest tempter who ever laid unconscious siege against man's indifference. The English officers called her an angel, the more deferential Virginians moaned that she was a witch, yet would not have burned her for the whole universe. On the contrary, they sacrificed themselves to the worship of her craft. War and strife were forgotten, the treacheries of the Indians were minimised, and a score or more of dreamers, awake or asleep, found their minds so full of dainty Kate that thought of else could work no means of entrance. In that year of our Lord, Jamestown was a veritable cauldron of rivals, fair suitors all, some bold, some timid, none hopeful.
Strange as it may appear to those who live these two centuries later, there were no jealousies, no bitterness among them. In those good days the favoured man's best friends were his beaten rivals. Kate's kingdom was not large, was not glittering, but her sceptre was mighty. It was made of tenderness and beauty.
For two months the Governor's nephew had been her most ardent admirer, notwithstanding the fact that he had been in Virginia but sixty days. His surrender had been instantaneous.
Ordinarily the nephew of the Governor, who was a lord of the realm, might be considered a superior rival, but in this instance he was not even feared. He had come to Jamestown with exalted ideas. He dressed better, talked better and lived better, and he seemed to hold every man in the colony in disdain. Friendly, courteous even to the lowest soldier, he still gave forth the impression that he was condescending, not alone to those beneath, but to those above him. That this scion, this self-ordered perfect man, should have drifted to the colonies from the drawing-rooms of London only to fall in love with Kate Fortune seemed incredible.
Moreover, he had refused to wrestle in the contests at the fort, and had failed to fight the man who had warmly called him a coward in the presence of others.
Tales of his conduct in that and other exhibitions had been spread, and the good-looking young officer eventually became a laughing-stock. One day, however, he pulled the nose of an impudent lieutenant. When the red-faced lieutenant insisted upon satisfaction with swords he merely turned pale and ignored the challenge.
"I came here to fight the Indians, not to kill my comrades," he had said, and a disdainful laugh followed, bringing a flush to his face as he walked away.
Kate Fortune rather admired the easy elegance of the stranger, yet despised his lack of courage, the story having come to her promptly enough. She began to treat him coldly and he was at last driven to feel that he was her most unwelcome suitor. One day he bluntly asked her why she treated him so unkindly.
"Captain Studdiford, I will be frank with you," replied the girl. "How can you expect me to admire a man who submits to the ridicule of a whole company of men, not one of whom seems able to cope with him in strength or in the experience of arms? I am the daughter of an English soldier; that should be sufficient reason for my conduct. If I have mistreated you it was because I could not help it." She saw a look of pain come and go in his flushed face, hence the hasty apology, such as it was.
"So I am an object of derision to you, as well as to them," he observed, quietly. "I shall not intrude myself again, Miss Fortune. I am brave enough to tell you, for the first time, and in the face of your evident dislike, that I love you better than I ever dreamed I could love a woman." He was turning away in apparent indifference as he concluded this strange avowal.
Kate planted herself squarely before him, her pretty, perplexed face twitching between a smile and a frown, wonder fairly popping from her curious blue eyes.
"Isn't it cowardly to say that when you know how I feel? You are safe in confessing something that you already know I cannot consider," she said.
"I would rather not discuss it. You may treat it as a jest, as cowardice, or what you like. I cannot control your treatment of the best thing an honest man has to give a woman." It left the girl standing on the tips of her toes in sheer surprise. She was at no time a dignified queen, but she was an inquisitive one.
"But, Captain, you must not go away fearing that I—I shall treat lightly what you have said to me," she murmured.
"Fearing? Why should I fear your ridicule more than that of others? You are brighter, more bewitching, more tantalising than any woman I have ever known—you are maddening—do you hear? Ah, I crave your pardon for so far forgetting myself as to dwell upon a matter which I should have forgotten in your displeasure. By the way, I should like to tell you why I will not accommodate these young fools with a duel, why I have controlled my natural desire to resent their insults. I have fought one duel and I have killed a man. These men would have no more chance than that man had. You may tell them so. Farewell!"
She watched his tall figure move from her dooryard and disappear in the direction of the river. Then Kate sat down in the window and gazed half regretfully toward the opening in the timber through which he had passed.
It began to occur to her that Captain Studdiford was somehow the superior of any man she had ever seen. She felt a joy that he had fought a duel, although the thought that he had killed a man caused her to shudder. With the shudder, however, came the relieved feeling that he had not been the victim. Her face flushed faintly, too, as she recalled his strange avowal of love.
That same night a half dozen young men, with as many maids, dropped in to spend the chilly evening before the Colonel's roaring fires. They were toasting apples and chattering gaily when Kate suddenly turned to a young Virginian, and with taunting eyes, cried:
"Morton Trask, I know why Captain Studdiford would not fight a duel with you."
"So do I," responded Trask. "Because he feared me."
"'Twas no such reason. He says he does not choose to kill anything but Indians." A big laugh went up from the men.
"The fool! Did he say that to you?" cried Trask.
"He truly did; and, besides, he has fought and killed a man."
"Ho! Ho!" laughed Trask, disdainfully.
"Did he stab him in the dark?" questioned Farring.
"He lies if he says he fought aught save a boy," sneered Trask.
"Yet he pulled your valiant nose until it was red for near a week," said Kate, cheerily.
"Oh, would that I were at him—the coward!" cried Trask, white and trembling.
"You can pull his nose when next you meet him, Morton, it is your turn, you know," said Kate, laughingly, and Trask glared at the burning logs in angry silence.
"Please forgive me, Morton; I did not mean to hurt you by recalling a previous injury," cried Kate, and Trask's injury increased with her contrition.
"I cannot see why you defend the Captain, Miss Fortune," ventured Farring.
"Why not? He will not defend himself."
"But you surely cannot approve a coward?"
"Are you sure he is a coward?"
"I should consider myself one under the circumstances, I believe," he replied, evasively.
"Would it not be cowardly to fight Morton Trask if he knew he could kill him?"
"Bah!" came from the angry Trask.
"He could, at least, have given Trask satisfaction for an insult," said Varney. Kate wavered.
"That's true," she said; "he should have been a gentleman. Still, that does not prove him a coward."
"I'll wager that I can prove him a coward," observed Lieutenant Holmes. "And safely, too."
"'Twere wise to do it safely," supplemented Miss Fortune.
"One time at home we exposed a boasting captain, who would have had us think him the bravest man on earth—"
"But that does not seem to be Captain Studdiford's object," interrupted Kate.
"True," went on Holmes, "but that has nothing to do with it. This captain was one night approached by five of his fellow officers, disguised as highwaymen, and despite his declarations that he had fought dozens of such men, he ran like a hound, screaming murder all the way. Why not test your captain's courage as we tested ours, Miss Fortune?"
"In the first place, I could not be a very impressive highwayman, and in the second place, he might shoot."
"You have plenty of men at your command who would serve as Indians for such an experiment," speculated Varney.
"Egad! we all would!" exclaimed Holmes. "So you might!" she cried. "He would be willing to kill you if you were Indians."
"We might as well give up the plan, for we could not force him to leave town without a bodyguard," sneered Trask.
"Fie! That is easy. Miss Fortune could ask him to ride with her into the forest and he would go blindly enough," said Holmes.
"I?" cried Kate, blushing to think of herself in that position after Studdiford's proclamation. "I could not—would not do such a thing. Prove him a coward, but do not ask me to help you." "Holmes is right, and Miss Fortune should be willing to make the test. She is his defender; she cannot refuse to satisfy herself of her error in this harmless, yet effective way," announced big Farring, and every member of the party laid siege against Kate's faltering opposition. The fun of it all finally appealed to her and she rather timidly agreed to the proposition. How could she ask him to ride with her after what had passed between them? He would think her unwomanly and, strangely enough, with that thought she began to feel that she must have his good opinion. Yet she went, half dubiously, into the plot to prove a coward of the man she was beginning to admire.
The details of the scheme were submitted by the men, and were as follows: Kate was to ask him to ride horseback with her to "Big Fork," five miles through the forest, on some near afternoon, and the men were to bedeck themselves as Indians, attack them, take her from his custody and hurry her off into apparent captivity, whilst he trembled with fear and inaction.
"But suppose he should happen to be disappointing and shoot somebody," objected Lucy Gaines.
"Oh, he must have no chance to do that," said Varney. "Miss Fortune can induce him to discharge his pistols in some feat of marksmanship and we will swoop down before he can reload them."
"For shame!" cried Kate. "How could that be a fair test of bravery? An unarmed man against five brawny Indians! I'll have none of it. His pistols must remain undisturbed."
"But—good heavens!—he may kill us all," cried Trask.
"Well, how else is he to prove his courage? You must take your chances, gentlemen, with your coward. If he is a coward you need not fear his pistols, though he had a dozen; if he is not, then you may have to run from them."
"Allow us to capture you and offer him the privilege of fighting for your liberty, choosing his own weapons. If he agrees to fight for you, instead of taking his proffered freedom, we will leave the field to him and you may call him hero. That is fair, is it not?" proposed Farring.
"You will not hurt him?" asked Kate doubtingly.
"Hurt him? We shall not even catch him. He will leave you and fly for his life!" cried Trask.
"I tell you now, gentlemen, if he stands the test and disproves your taunts against his valour, my respect for him will be far more than you can ever hope to inspire. Yet, after all, it will be a diversion—it will be fun to see how he will act," mused the fair plotter.
It required all of Kate's courage and a dismal sacrifice of pride to suggest the ride to Captain Studdiford, but she did it the next morning, stopping him near the fort after having walked not thirty feet behind for more than two hundred yards. She was a trifle insecure as to her own valour in this preliminary step.
The rosiness of her cheeks might have been by others attributed to the chill of the December morn, but she knew they were the flames from an inward fire.
Captain Studdiford's heart thumped unusually fast as he looked down into the piquant face and big blue eyes, which for the first time since he had known her, wore a gleam bordering on embarrassment. They were very soft and timid this morning—there was something appealing in their tempting depths.
"May I not walk with you? I am going your way," were her first words as she reached his side.
"Whither, pray?"
"Oh, to—" and here she blushed, for in truth she had no destination—"to Anna Corwin's," she concluded in relief.
"But Mistress Corwin lives back yonder. How came you to be going this way?"
"Did I say Anna Corwin?"
"If I am not deaf."
"Then I must have meant some one else; to be sure I did—how queer of me. I am going to Lucy's. You cannot say, sir, that she does not live in this direction. I'll not walk with you if you are bound to be particular, though." Her little ears were very red.
"I beg you to forgive me and allow me to walk with you," cried the Captain eagerly.
"I like that much better. No matter if I were going to Anna's and chose a roundabout way, you should not be so impolite as to remonstrate. As a rule, Captain, the men prefer the roundabout way."
"Be it miles I would walk it with thee," cried he, smiling at her merry vanity.
"Oh, would you do that?" she asked, suddenly seeing her way clear. Yet, in spite of all, her composure deserted her and she blurted it out, turning red again. "I am dying to ride to 'Big Fork' tomorrow, but I have no one to accompany me. Would you like to go?" Then to herself, "What a fool he thinks me!"
"Gladly; but, are we sure there are no stray Indians about?" he asked, rather quickly.
"He is afraid," she thought, with strange disappointment. "If you are afraid, we will not go," she said a trifle coldly.
"Afraid? Not for myself, but for you. We will go if you like, and I should rejoice to meet all of the Indians in Virginia if it will please you."
So they made their plans, and she was so loth to leave him that he was forced to remind her that they had passed the home of Lucy Gaines a full furlong or more. He left her at the door, his heart exultant, hers all a-flutter.
The next afternoon the two rode forth from Jamestown and into the forest, following the well-made road which led to the westward beneath the red and yellowing oaks. Half an hour previous to their departure five young men had ridden from the home of Lucy Gaines, strange bundles strapped to their saddles. Above all things, they had cautioned Kate to demand the Captain's proof of marksmanship at a point near Big Fork.
It was with some consternation, notwithstanding all the plotting, that Kate observed the big pistols at the Captain's side and the heavy sword which jangled against his leg. That jangling sword gave her the tremors, and she cast many furtive glances toward its chain and scabbard. At last she was compelled to ask:
"How can you, I pray, use such a monstrous sword, Captain Studdiford? It must have been made for a giant." "It was; it was my great-great-grand-father's over a century ago. See! It is serviceable, even in my weak hand." He pulled the gleaming blade, long and heavy, from its scabbard, and swept it downward through the air so fiercely that it resembled a wide sheet of silver. Kate's blue eyes grew wide with apprehension, a cold chill seized upon her and her ruddy face paled. He returned the weapon to its sheath with such a forceful crash that she started violently in her saddle, her little teeth clicking in sheer affright.
"I could cleave a man's skull in twain as easily as you can cut an apple. Would that we could meet a warlike Indian that I could show you how it merits my praise."
"Goodness!" gasped Kate hopelessly. "You would not strike a—a—man with it, would you?"
"If he were an enemy. For you, loved one, I could cut down an army." Their horses drew more closely side by side and the fierce, strong hand was gently laid upon her trembling fingers. Tenderly clasping the little one the big one raised it until it touched the lips of him who leaned across to kiss it. Their eyes met as he raised his head. His were full of love, hers with a pleading dread, the uncertain quiver between love and fear. Without a word he dropped the hand, suddenly sick at heart.
"I could die for her and she despises me," he groaned to himself.
"Oh, what have I—have we done?" she thought, a thousand fears gathering in her heart. "He is no coward and he will kill one of them! How can I tell him—how can I save their lives? He will despise me! That awful sword! A man's skull! Oh, dear! He called me loved one! How big and strong he is! He called me—how can I keep him from using the sword? The pistols I can manage and—perhaps they will not be there. He will kill them all—horror upon horror! What have I done? Oh!" the last exclamation was so loud and so sudden that the pale Captain turned quickly.
"What is it? What is it?"
She laughed wildly, even gleefully, almost in the face of her companion.
"Nothing—nothing at all!" she cried.
"I am glad to have afforded you amusement, Mistress Fortune. You may tear my heart to shreds."
Her manner changed instantly. Tears flew to the blue eyes and her hand crept toward him.
"Forgive me, pray, Captain Studdiford, I—I did not mean to hurt you. I—I—am very foolish, very unkind. You must hate me," she faltered.
"Hate you! How could I? You do not love me—why should I have hoped? I can but blame myself." Her hand had fallen to her side because he had not touched it. "And it is our last afternoon together."
"Last?" she repeated, faintly.
"Yes; for I shall not see you again."
"Oh—you—you—do not mean that!"
"I have asked to be transferred to Willamsburg. I—I have not one friend in Jamestown; why should I stay here?" he cried bitterly.
"But you have," she exclaimed, eagerly; "you have. I am your friend."
"Friend! That is not what I ask of you," he said, almost gruffly.
Silence, broken only by the clatter of the hoofs upon the road followed his words. In her confusion she had forgotten the terrible sword, but it recurred to her, and, with it, the thought which had given birth to her untimely mirth, the thought that was to lead her from the chief predicament into which she had been cast. She would ask the Captain to turn back to Jamestown at once, avoiding the possibility of conflict.
"Captain Studdiford, I believe we had better turn back." Her face grew crimson beneath his calm gaze. "As you like. You will grant me time to adjust my saddle girth; it is slipping," he said coolly, dismounting without another word.
They were fully three miles from the village, and in a dense piece of forest. On either side of the narrow road grew the thickest of underbrush with the great, gaunt trees stretching above like silent sentinels. The girl's mind was chaos; her thoughts were changing and interchanging like leaves before the whirling wind. She knew that she admired this man, and that something even sweeter was beginning to throb its way into her heart. A half smile came to her troubled face as she thought of the war-painted plotters two miles away, waiting to make a coward of her hero. A touch of remorse came to her as she remembered her part in the play, and that the plot would have been carried out had she not seen the great swing of that fearful sword. What havoc it would have wrought! And he was to leave Jamestown! Without a friend, he had said. How could he say that?
In the midst of these varying thoughts she allowed her softening eyes to wander from him toward the trees above and the straggling brush beneath their knotty limbs. A suppressed scream called the Captain's attention to her staring eyes. They were blinking with consternation.
Deep in the underbrush she had seen the form of an Indian warrior! Horrors! The sword!
"What do you see?" cried he, staring toward the now deserted brush.
"Nothing—nothing!" she gasped. "Yes—I mean, that red bird! See? Do shoot it for me—I must have it! Isn't it beautiful?" She was excitedly pointing toward a red bird in the top branches of a big oak.
He drew his pistols and deliberately aimed with one of them. The shot missed and the bird darted away.
"Oh, goodness!" she cried. "Try the other one!"
"But the bird is gone."
"Is it? So it is—but, quick! See if you can cut off that twig up there—the one with three red leaves. I wager you cannot! Quick, and then we will ride for home."
"Why are you so excited?"
"I am not the least bit excited—I never am! Why do you not shoot at that twig?"
"You try it," he surprised her by saying, pushing a pistol into her hand. Without a word or aim she blazed away at the sky and his firearms were useless. She handed the smoking pistol to him with a laugh.
"Would it not be awful if Indians came upon us!" she cried, with strange exultation. "But mount, and race with me to the spring!"
As the Captain placed his foot in the stirrup a yell burst from the thicket, an arrow whizzed above their heads, and a half-a-dozen, fierce warriors were dashing toward them.
"Do not use your sword!" she screamed.
Before the bewildered soldier could catch his breath an ugly brave was in the road, not ten feet away, knife in hand. Out whizzed the sword!
Kate screamed in agony, clasping her hand over her eyes.
"They are friends! Do not strike!"
But it was too late. The streak of steel cut the air. A sickening thud, a gurgling howl, and the assailant fell, his head half severed from his body. An instant later the big Englishman was in his saddle. A second slash and an Indian at his side went down beneath the ancestral blade!
The two horses plunged forward as a brawny redskin grasped her arm and she felt herself being dragged to the ground. Then a hand clasped her other arm, a big form leaned over behind her, far across the back of her horse. She heard the hiss of something cutting the air, the crash as of splitting wood, a scream, of agony and the Indian's ruthless grasp was loosened. Her horse stumbled and seemed to totter beneath her, but again that arm from aloft exerted itself and it seemed as if she were being lifted to the tree tops. Almost before she could realise it she was upon another horse, clasped in the arm of its rider, and they were off like the wind.
Suddenly she felt the form of the man who held her so closely drop forward with a groan and then straighten again slowly. Exultant yells came from behind them, several arrows whizzed past, and then naught was heard but the thunder of the horse's hoofs upon the frozen road. As her eyes opened involuntarily, terror possessing them, they fell upon the scene far behind. Two hundred yards away her own horse lay struggling in the road, two human forms stretched near it, another dragging itself to the roadside. Three feathered Indians were some fifty yards nearer, gesticulating wildly. Her brain whirred and buzzed, and—consciousness was lost!
When she regained her senses she was lying upon the ground. With feeble eyes she glanced wonderingly about. To a tree near by a horse was hitched, beneath her body were the blankets from the horse and certain garments from the back of man. All was as a dream; she could account for nothing. Studdiford was leaning against the big oak, coatless and as pale as a ghost. Deep lines stretched across his brow and down his mouth; his eyes were closed, as if in pain.
An involuntary moan escaped her lips, and the Captain was at her side almost before it had died away. She was crying.
"Oh, what have I done! What have I done!"
"Calm, yourself, dearest! You are safe—entirely so. See, we are alone, far from those devils. It is but a mile to Jamestown. Be brave and we will soon be at home," he murmured hoarsely, kneeling at her side and lifting her to a sitting posture.
"Home! I can never go home! Oh, God, you do not know—you do not know!"
"There—there! Now, be quiet."
"How could you know? I am a murderess—I am the wretch! Kill me; I cannot live!" she wailed.
"Hush!" he cautioned, lovingly.
"You could not know—you did not know them, Captain Studdiford!" she cried, sitting bolt upright, glaring wildly about her, then shudderingly plunging her white face against his shoulder. "They were not Indians," she almost whispered.
"Not Indians!" he gasped.
"God forgive me—no! It was all a trick—to test your courage—forgive me—to test—to test—oh! and I allowed you to kill them!"
"Speak! Go on! What do you mean?" "They were our friends—not Indians! My dearest friends! Oh, how is it that I am not struck dead for this? Please heaven, let me die!" she wailed.
"My God!" he exclaimed, after the first bewildering shock. "A trick—and I have killed—oh, it cannot be true!" He leaped to his feet, allowing her to fall from his side to the ground, where she lay, a wretched, shivering heap. With a ferocious oath he snatched the big sword from the ground and turned upon her, with eyes blazing, muscles quivering.
She was looking up at him, those wide blue eyes gleaming piteously.
"Kill me!" she murmured, and closed the eyes to await the stroke.
His big arm relaxed, the sword fell from his nerveless grasp, clanging to the ground.
When she reopened her eyes after an age of suspense she saw him leaning against the tree, his body shaking with sobs. A second glance and she started to her feet alarmed.
His broad back was covered with blood. Near his left shoulder the clothing was torn and an ugly, gaping wound leered at her.
"Oh," she gasped; "you—you are hurt!"
"Hurt!" he groaned. "They have killed me! You have killed me—you and your friends. I hope you—are—satisfied—with—your—see?" As he sank to the ground, he pointed feebly to the cruel arrow which he had torn from his side. It lay not far away, grim and bloody.
The horrified girl glanced at it helplessly and then at the unconscious man, unable to realise. Then she cried aloud in her agony and threw herself upon the prostrate form, moaning:
"Dead! Dead! Speak to me, Ralph—look up! I love you—I worship you! You shall not leave me!"
She kissed the pallid face, caressed the chilling head, sobbing:
"Forgive me—forgive me!"
An hour afterward the clatter of hoofs upon the road aroused her from the semi-conscious condition into which her grief had thrown her. Through the gathering darkness she saw horsemen approaching—Indian riders! A moment later they were dismounting at her side, and well-known voices were calling to her:
"Are you hurt?"
"What has happened?"
"Killed? My God!"
It was Farring, Trask and the other plotters, reeking with excitement. Their horses were wet from the fierceness with which they had been ridden.
"Do not touch him! You have killed him!" she cried, striving to shield the body from Farring's anxious touch.
"Killed him? Good God, Kate! where did you meet them!" cried Farring, as Trask pulled her from Studdiford's side.
"Are you not dead?" she finally whispered to the men.
"We? He killed three of them—split their heads! But the wretches put an arrow into him, after all. What a dreadful thing we have done! Fairly tricked him to his death!" cried poor Trask.
"Then—then it was not you?" cried Kate.
"Heavens, no! We found the Indians dragging their dead from the road, three miles back, and knew that something terrible had happened.
"Thank God! I am spared that! But he must not die—he shall not! I love him. Do you hear? I love him!"
For three weeks the victim of that ill-fated trick hung between life and death. Surgery was crude in the colonies, and the first evidence of restoration was due more to his rugged constitution than to the skill of his doctors. The poor fellow rolled and tossed upon one of Mrs. Fortune's soft beds, oblivious to the kind offices of those about him. They had taken him there at Kate's command, and she had worn herself to a shadow with anguish, love and penitence. She watched him by day and by night—in her restless dreams; her whole existence was in the tossing victim of her folly. Every twitch of that pain-stricken body seemed to show her that he was shrinking from her in hatred. Her pretty face was white and drawn, the blue eyes dark and pitiful, the merry mouth, plaintive in its hopelessness.
And those jovial tricksters—those who had jeered over his lack of courage, the testing of which they had undertaken! They were smitten by their own curses, haunted by their own shame. The fiery Trask, the polished Farring, the ingenious Holmes, with all of Jamestown, prayed for his recovery, and spared no pains to bring to life and health the man who had won that which they had relinquished hope of having—Kate's love. They were tender, sympathetic, helpful—true men and good.
Kate could not forget the look of disgust she had seen upon Studdiford's face as he stood above her with the great sword in his hand. His first thought had been to kill her!
Sitting beside him, bathing the fevered brow, caressing the rumpled hair, holding his restless hands, she could feel her heart thumping like lead, so heavy had it grown in the fear of his awakening.
Finally the doctors told her that he would recover, that the fever was broken. Then came the day when he slept, cool and quiet, no trace of fever, no sign of pain.
It was then that Kate forsook him, burying herself in her distant room, guilty and heart-broken, fearing above all things on earth, the first repellent glance he would bestow upon her. Once, while he slept, she peered through his door, going back to her room and her spinning with tears blinding the plaintive blue eyes.
At last, one day, her mother came from the Captain's room and said to her gently:
"Kate, Captain Studdiford asks why you do not come to see him. He tells me that for three days he has suffered because you have been so unkind. Go to him, dear; he promises he will not plead his love if it is so distasteful to you!"
Distasteful! The girl grew faint with wonder. Her limbs trembled, her lips parted, her eyes blurred and her ears roared with the rush of blood from her heart.
"Mother!" she whispered, at last, steadying herself against the wall. "Are you sure, Mother?"
"That he wants you? My child, his eyes fill with tears when he thinks of you. I have seen them moisten as he lies looking from the window."
But Kate was gone.
When Mrs. Fortune opened the door to the sick man's room soon afterward she drew back quickly, closed it again, and, lifting her eyes aloft, murmured:
"God make them happy!"
MR. HAMSHAW'S LOVE AFFAIR
Mr. Hamshaw was short, bald, pudgy—and fifty-seven. Besides all this, he was a bachelor, and one jolly one, at the time when this narrative opens. He lived in apartments pretty well downtown, where he was looked after with scrupulous care by a Japanese valet and an Irish "cook-lady." Mr. Hamshaw was forever discharging his valet and forever re-engaging him. Sago persistently refused to leave at the hour set for his departure, and Mr. Hamshaw finally came to discharge him every evening in order that he might be sure to find him at his post in the morning. Regularly, he would call Sago into the den, very red in the face over some wholly imaginary provocation.
"This ends it, Sago! You go! I've stood it as long as I can—or will. You leave the place tonight, sir—bag and baggage. I don't want to see your face again. Understand?"
"Yes, sir; very well, sir" Sago would respond with perfect equanimity. Sago engaged to be very, very English at such distinguished times.
"You go tonight."
"Yes, Mr. Hamshaw. May I ask what I have done to displease you, sir!"
"Never mind, sir! I'll tell you tomorrow. Don't bother me about it today. And, say, if you don't press this dinner coat of mine before tomorrow night I'll discharge you without a recommendation."
"Very good, sir."
Once when Sago threatened to leave unless Ellen, the cook, was dismissed, poor Mr. Hamshaw had a most uncomfortable half-hour. Young Mr. Goodrich from the bank was dining with him at the time. Now it was quite as hard to get rid of Ellen, notwithstanding the fact that she was constantly on the verge of leaving of her own accord, as it was to discharge Sago. The host prayed down to his comfortable boots that the threats of Sago might not grow louder than confidential hisses as he passed behind his chair in the capacity of butler, but he was counting without Ellen. There was a long, painful interval between courses, and then Ellen marched in from the kitchen, majestically attired for the street.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Hamshaw, but this time I go for fair. It's aither me or the Chinee-"
"Blawst yer eyes!" snarled Sago in his very best English, mightily incensed.
"But, Ellen—" began Mr. Hamshaw, bowled over.
"Don't beg me to stay," she cried, glaring at Sago, who glared back safely from behind Mr. Goodrich's chair. "The dago has insulted me for the last toime. I'm sorry, sor, it had to come roight in the middle of dinner, sor, but it couldn't wait."
"Can't you subdue yourself till morning, Ellen? It is—"
"I can subjue meself, sor, but who the divil is to subjue the Malay? He's gone too far this—"
"I've only been doing my duty, sir," inserted Sago, drawing the salad spoon through his hand very much as a Samurai would have drawn a sword. "Ellen she—I mean her didn't—"
"Never mind, never mind," groaned Mr. Hamshaw, at bay. "You may both go. I fire—I discharge both of you! I'm sure, Mr. Goodrich, you will overlook this unfortunate—"
"Discharge me, sor?" half shrieked Ellen. "I never was discharged from a place in me loife. I won't stand for it! I'll lave, but I'll not be discharged. It's Sago that has to be discharged—not me."
"Discharge both of them, Mr. Hamshaw," advised Goodrich amiably. "I know where you can get an excellent cook and—"
"Oh, you do, eh? With recommindations, too, I suppose!" sniffed Ellen in a fine flare.
"The very best, my good woman."
"Well, I'd loike to see them," announced Ellen loyally. "No wan can cook for Mr. Hamshaw unless she gives the best of characters."
"She's a Japanese woman," explained Mr. Goodrich, "and they're said to be the best cooks in the world."
"The divil a step will I take out of this place to make way for a haythen Jap." Shebegan taking off her hat. "I'll have the squab on in a minute, Mr. Hamshaw, and I'll serve it, too." This last with a deadly look at Sago. "He says he'll quit if I don't. Well, I don't!"
"Will you make the dressing for the salad, sir, or shall I?" politely inquired Sago, ignoring Ellen completely.
"Have you decided to stay long enough for that purpose?" demanded Mr. Hamshaw.
"I have given notice, sir, that Ellen has to go," said Sago soberly.
"And I refuse to go for the loikes of you," retorted Ellen with great dignity.
"Then, Mr. Hamshaw, I shall remain until she does go. But go she must."
"I'll go when I get good and ready, Mr. Sago."
"We'll have the squab now, Sago," said Mr. Hamshaw.
"Very good, sir."
It was quite an old story among the members of the club, especially those who knew Mr. Hamshaw intimately, that he had once felt the inclination to take unto himself a wife. That, of course, was years and years ago, and it is hardly necessary to remark that the young woman, whoever she may have been, was not possessed of a responsive inclination. Result: Mr. Hamshaw not only refrained from marrying any one in all the subsequent years but astutely prevented any one from marrying him. It was quite true that at fifty-seven he was not a thing of beauty, but he had a heart of gold and was beloved by all the men and children who knew him. Certainly it is quite doubtful if he could have been all this had he married even the woman of his choice.
One day there came to the big apartment-house where lived Mr. Hamshaw and his two servants a most uncommon hullabaloo and sensation. It was an unheard-of proceeding for a tenant to move out of this amiable and exclusive establishment, and naturally, it was impossible for any one to move in. Of course, however, such contingencies as births, weddings, and funerals could not be provided against, and it was due entirely to the advent of a bride that the aforesaid uproar occurred. A widower on the second floor took unto himself a widow, and she was now being moved in with all her goods and chattels.
It would appear that the new Mrs. Gladding did not approve of her husband's furniture, his servants, or his own flesh and blood. As a consequence, they were departing jointly, and in their stead came substitutes from her former apartments in Eads Avenue. Mr. Gladding's two grown-up sons were shuffled off to bachelor quarters downtown and their rooms were turned over to Mrs. Gladding's two grown-up daughters—just out in society. The transfer was over at last, and, to the intense gratification of Mr. Hamshaw, the big building saw the last of its moving-vans, its plumbers and decorators, and the new Gladdings were as quietly ensconced as the old had been. It was not until the end of the second week thereafter that Mr. Hamshaw had his first glimpse of the two debutantes—the young Misses Frost.
But that one glimpse was his undoing.
All those years of constancy to his original inclination were blotted out as if by magic. His primeval affection was uprooted, turned over, and then jolted unceremoniously out of existence. One divided glimpse had restored vigour to his waning passion and it flamed with all the fury of coals that have smouldered long and lazily. The one distressing condition attached to this pleasant and refreshing restoration was the fact that he succumbed not to one, but to both of the Misses Frost—succumbed heartily and bodily, without the faintest hope of discrimination. He was in love with both at first sight. For the life of him he could not tell which he had seen first.
That very evening at the dinner hour he rode up and down in the elevator no less than a dozen times, and each time as he passed the second floor he hopefully but surreptitiously peered forth at the Gladdings' door. Once the car stopped to take some one on at this floor, and his dear old heart gave an enormous throb of anticipation, turning to disappointment an instant later when a messenger-boy slouched in.
"Find 'em at home?" asked the elevator-boy.
"Sure. Say, dey're wonders, ain't dey, dese society girls? I don't blame people for sendin' 'em violets."
Mr. Hamshaw could have slain No. 329 for his familiarity, but lost the opportunity in wondering what the young ladies would think if they received 10,000 violets from an unnamed sender. For days, be it said in all solemnity, Mr. Hamshaw waited and watched for glimpses of the young ladies—princesses he was calling them down in the neighbourhood of his rejuvenated heart. He neglected his business, ate at the most irregular hours, and finally gave himself up to the astonishing habit of walking up and down five flights of stairs. Sago and Ellen, united in worrying over these idiosyncrasies, were troubled deep down in their consciences.
The master took to standing out in front of the main entrance on bitterly cold days, smoking cigar after cigar. He said, in explanation, that it was unhealthy to smoke indoors. Twice in as many weeks he had glimpses of the young ladies. On both occasions they walked briskly past him with their pretty noses in the air. It was evident that they disdained carriages and street cars, for they struck off downtown with the stride of athletes.
"By Jove, they're fine specimens!" murmured Mr. Hamshaw, admiring their bonny figures from the doorway.
It is quite natural that he should have kept his secret from Sago and Ellen. Sooner would he have died than permit these staunch guardians to grasp the whole truth concerning his—he even felt guilty enough to call it "foolish"—infatuation. If the Misses Frost received frequent offerings of rare violets from an unmentioned source they were not so puzzled that they could find no one to thank even though it surprised the innocent young man in the extreme. If they took notice of the stout, bald old gentleman who shuffled his feet and looked conscious when they strode past it was not for him to know at that stage of the game. He felt so small after the weary weeks of watching that he went and had himself weighed, devoutly certain that he shrunk respectably. He even went in for a savage system of training, calculated to reduce his avoirdupois.
One day, while he was swinging along through the park, a mile and a half from home, trying to take off a few of the pounds that made him impossible to the willowy Misses Frost, he unexpectedly came upon his dual affinity. In his agitation he narrowly escaped being run down by a base and unsympathetic cab operated by a profane person who seldom shaved. As it was, he lost his hat. The wind whirled it over the ground much faster than he could sprint, with all his training, and brought it up against a bush in front of the young women. One of them sprang forward and snatched it up before it could resume its flight. Mr. Hamshaw came up puffing and confused, but radiant.
"Thank you, thank you, ever so much!" he panted. "Never mind the dust. It's been dusty before. Besides, it's an old one. I have a better one at home, and a silk—"
He brought himself up with a jerk, realising that he was jabbering like a fool. The young women were polite and respectful. Not a sign of derision appeared in their faces.
"Fierce wind, isn't it?" asked one of them, and it dawned instantly upon him that she was the one he loved. He jammed his hat far down upon his head, glancing, as he did so, at the other girl. She was smiling genially, her face rosy from the wind her sister condemned, and, with ruthless inconstancy, Mr. Hamshaw at once changed his mind. She was the one.
"Pardon me for the liberty," he said, "but I am Mr. Hamshaw. We are neighbours, you know. Live in the same building."
"Oh, is that so?" asked the taller of the two, and, to his dismay, he saw that her surprise was genuine.
"Yes; you are on the second—I am on the sixth."
"Where the Jap is?" asked the shorter one.
"He's my valet."
"Funny little thing, isn't it?"
"An excellent servant, Miss—"
"Look out, there goes your lid again! I'll get it—my legs are swifter than yours!" cried the tall athlete in petticoats, and off she sailed in pursuit.
"You need some one to chase your hat for you, Mr. Hamshaw," said the short one airily.
"Are you going our way?" asked the other, with a smile that could have led him to perdition.
"To the end of the earth," he murmured gallantly.
For the next ten minutes he walked on air. His heart was so light that it bobbed up and down like a fisherman's cork. He was not long in discovering that the tall one was Mame and the short one Lou—short for Marie and Louise, they explained on request!
"I see a good many boxes of flowers going up to your apartment," ventured Mr. Hamshaw, quite out of breath.
"Every day, and sometimes in between," said Marie.
"Ah, it's so nice to be popular!" he chirped. "And—and you can't blame the men, either, you know."
"You can't thank them, either, if they don't enclose their cards. Nearly every day there is a guessing match in the back parlour. It's poor form to send flowers without a card."
"By George, they're fine girls!" reflected Mr. Hamshaw. "Healthy, vigorous, full of life, and not a bit spoiled. Hang it all, I'm an ass to act like this! But I can't help it. A man is never too old to learn or to love. I'll play hob with some of these young dandies before I get through. Hamshaw, you've got to win one of these girls. But which one? There's the rub! It's awfully annoying!"
But it grew to be quite romantic. Mr. Hamshaw came to look upon himself as an up-to-date Romeo. The young ladies did not offer him any inducement to call upon them in their own home, but they frequently walked with him in the park of afternoons, and were astonishingly agreeable about candy, soda-water and matinees. Their reluctance to lunch or dine with him downtown stamped them in his mind as something most admirable. He quite understood. And their devotion to their sick friend was truly beautiful. He never saw them but they were going to visit her. Miss Louise naively informed him that they gave her some of the violets he sent to them, but that she knew he wouldn't mind.
"Do you think she'd like it if I sent her some good books to read?" asked he, quite delighted.
"Sure," replied Miss Marie.
"How very unconventional," beamed Mr. Hamshaw to himself. "Hang it all, I wish I could decide between them! I think I'd look better with the short one, but—"
One day his nephew, young Jimmy Sprang, met him on the street and proceeded to twit him about his second childhood.
"What do you mean, sir?" demanded Mr. Hamshaw with great dignity and a sinking heart.
"Who are the fairies you're trotting—"
"Stop, sir!" thundered Mr. Hamshaw. "Not another word, sir! They are ladies, and not to be discussed by such a bounder as you."
At last Mr. Hamshaw decided to take Louise. "I'll tell her tomorrow," he said to himself, quite sure that it was only necessary to tell and not to ask. But that evening, just after returning from the club, he saw something that troubled and harassed him not a little. He saw and heard Sago talking to the Misses Frost—not only talking but in a manner so familiar that it must have been extremely nauseating to the cultured young women. The three were standing under the electric light at the corner, and the young women instead of appearing annoyed at the heathen's twaddle, seemed to be highly amused. Only the greatest exercise of self-restraint kept Mr. Hamshaw from kicking Sago into the middle of the next block.
Mr. Hamshaw was on the point of intervening when, to his utter consternation, the two young women started off up the street with Sago. To add to his misery, Sago did not come in at all that night. In response to Mr. Hamshaw's savage inquiry, Ellen, who attended him the next morning, said that Sago had gone to a dance on the West Side and had not turned up. Mr. Hamshaw sat bolt upright in bed and then collapsed.
The next afternoon he went home early, haggard and with a headache. His confidence was not gone, however. After arranging himself carefully—he refused to call for Sago—he boldly descended to the second floor. Then he lost his nerve. Instead of ringing the Gladding door-bell he walked on downstairs and out into the open air. At the corner he came plump upon Mr. Gladding himself, the step-father of the two girls.
"How are you, Mr. Hamshaw? Fine weather we're having," greeted the man from the second floor.
"I've just been to your flat," said Mr. Hamshaw.
"Indeed! Any one at home?"
"I don't know—that is, I didn't go in. You see—are you going home now, Gladding, or downtown?"
"Home, of course. I've been downtown all day. Anything you wanted to see me about, Mr. Hamshaw?"
"Oh, no—nothing important."
"Well, won't you come up with me now? By the way, I'd like you to meet my wife and her daughters."
"I know your daughters, I believe."
"Ah!"
"It is about one of them that I wish to speak with you, sir." They were on the second-floor landing by this time. "May I come in?"
"Certainly," said Mr. Gladding.
Mr. Hamshaw sat stiff and uncomfortable on the divan while Mr. Gladding rang for a maid. He also called down the hall to ask Mrs. Gladding and the young ladies to come in and greet Mr. Hamshaw.
"Before they come," began the latter, fidgeting nervously, "I want to say that I expect to marry Miss Frost. It's been hard work to choose between them—"
"What are you talking about?" gasped the father.
"I know I've done a most reprehensible thing in courting them—I mean her—in this manner, but, you see—"
At this juncture Mrs. Gladding entered the room, followed by two strange young women—sleepy, tired, scrawny young women, who looked at Mr. Hamshaw as if he were a sofa-cushion and nothing more.
"My wife—er—Mr. Hamshaw, and the Misses Frost," mumbled Mr. Gladding, bowled over completely.
"What's that?" shouted Mr. Hamshaw, coming to his feet and toppling over backward again. The others stared at him as if he were mad. "How—how many have you—I mean, how many daughters are there?"
"Two!" exclaimed Mrs. Gladding, freezing up immediately. The society young women relaxed into a giggle.
"Then—who—is this a joke?" gasped Mr. Hamshaw, perspiration starting in torrents.
"What do you mean, sir?" demanded Mr. Gladding.
"Where are Marie and Louise?" murmured Mr. Hamshaw.
Just then a trim maid appeared in the doorway—white-capped and aproned.
"Did you ring, Ma'am?—Good Heavens!"
It was Marie!
Mr. Hamshaw fainted without more ado, and the apartment was in an uproar. Everybody thought he was dead, and the Misses Frost promptly duplicated his swooning act.
When Mr. Hamshaw opened his eyes, Marie was standing near by with ammonia and wet towels.
"Where is Louise?" he asked weakly.
"She's went and married that awful little Jap of yours last night. Here, take another sniff at this. Go on; don't be afraid of it. I've give it to the young ladies regular for the last five years. What's that, sir?"
"Nothing—nothing," he whispered.
"You said something, sir."
"And you're not Miss Frost?"
"One of them scrawny—I beg pardon, sir! Did you think I was—"
"Well, if that's the case, I can tell you what I said a moment ago. I said 'D—n it all!' Where am I?"
"At Mr. Gladding's, sir."
"Is Sago upstairs?"
"No, sir; they've gone to the matinee on their wedding trip, Mr. Hamshaw."
"Oh!"
It was not what Mr. Hamshaw said but the way he said it.
THE GREEN RUBY
He was a very good-looking chap—this Cannable who lived in the civilised city of New Orleans. It is quite true that he came from an island in the sea, but as that island is known to geographers, great and small, as England, it is scarcely worth while to mention his migration as an achievement of civilisation. Moreover, it was known that he had eaten of human flesh, but it was not with the gusto of those ancient Fijis who banqueted on salubrious sailors and munchable ministers whenever they had the simultaneous chance and appetite.
He was one of three survivors of the ill-fated Graceby polar expedition, and as such he had been obliged to subsist for some days on whatsoever was set before him by the cook, a discreet but overpowering person who certainly would have been the sole survivor if the relief expedition had been delayed a few days longer. But that portion of Mr. Cannable's history sounds much better in whispers and it does not look pretty in print. He never repeated it of his own accord. The newspapers told it for him when he was too weak and exhausted to deny or affirm.
His uncle, Sir John Bolingbroke, sent him out from London soon after his return from the frozen North to represent great financial interests on the Cotton Exchange at New Orleans. For two years the young man stuck manfully to his post in the southern city, but it was an irksome restraint to one whose heart was turbulent with the love of travel and adventure. Just at the time when he was ready to resign his position and hie himself into the jungles of the Amazon on an exploring expedition two things happened, either of which was in itself sufficient to stay him for the while. In the first place, his uncle died and left him two hundred thousand pounds in good English money, and in the second place he met Agatha Holmes.
The two hundred thousand pounds, it is but just to say, might not have kept him from the equator, but it is doubtful if all, much less any specific portion of the globe, could have induced him to leave Agatha Holmes. And so it was that Mr. James Cannable—for short "Jimmy"—remained in New Orleans for many months, estimably employed in the business of evolving a plan that might permit him to journey to the world's end with two hundred thousand pounds in one hand and a certain girl's future in the other.
The months and the plans were profitable, it seems, for one splendid evening saw him at the altar-rail beside the fairest girl in all the Southland, the queen of a thousand hearts. Agatha Holmes became Mrs. Cannable, and thereby hangs a tale. It would appear, from all the current but unpublished records of social Louisiana, that Agatha had gone about shattering hearts in a most unintentional but effective fashion up to the time Mr. Jimmy Cannable refused to be routed. Certainly it is no blot upon this fair young coquette's fame to admit that she had plighted herself to at least four ardent suitors in days gone by, and it was equally her own affair if she took every woman's privilege of shifting her fancy before she was ready to marry.
Unluckily for Agatha, however, she neglected to disengage herself properly from the most recent suitor next before Mr. Cannable. So far as that worthy was concerned the engagement still obtained, for he, poor chap, was down in Patagonia somewhere surveying for railroads and did not have the slightest means of ascertaining her change of affection. How was he to know that she had married Jimmy Cannable, and how was he to know that she had forgotten his very existence without a single pang of remorse? He only knew that he had starved himself to give her a diamond ring, to say nothing of the wonderful old ruby heirloom that had been in the family for centuries.
He told her at parting that no power on earth could keep him from some day reclaiming the heirloom and with it the hand of the girl who was to wear it all her life.
One day, out of the past and up from the wilds, came the word that Harry Green was on his way home after an absence of three years. Agatha Holmes had been Mrs. Cannable for three months and she had forgotten young Mr. Green as completely as if he never had been a part of her memory. A cablegram addressed to Agatha Holmes one day was delivered to Agatha Cannable. It simply said: "Am coming back at last for the ruby. Harry," and it was sent from London. She found herself wondering what he was doing in England and how long it would be before he could reach New Orleans, but it did not dawn upon her for three full days that he still imagined himself to be her tardy but accepted fiance. Then in the fulness of her joy she sat down and laughed over his amazement—perhaps his chagrin—when he learned that she was another man's wife.
At first thought she decided to tell Jimmy the news, permitting him to enjoy the fun as well, but the discretion which shapes woman's ends forestalled the impulse. There was much she could not explain in justice to herself, to say nothing of the other man who had gone away with her in his heart. True, it may not have been difficult to hold her immaculate in a heart surrounded by Patagonians, but there was something disturbing in the fact that he had been constant, after all. She recalled, with a slight shiver (which grew with time, by the way), that she had sworn to kill herself rather than to marry any one but Harry Green. It also came back to her memory that the hot-blooded Harry had promised faithfully, though fiercely, that he would accomplish that end for her in case she violated her oath.
It is sufficient to say that she was the most wretched young woman in New Orleans by the time Harry Green landed in New York. He telegraphed to her, announcing his arrival and his hasty departure for the Southern metropolis. Somehow the slip of paper read like a death-warrant to her peace of mind.
"How annoying it is to have an old affair revived like this," she wailed to herself. "Why couldn't he, too, have married some one else? How, in Heaven's name, will it end?" She thought of a thousand subterfuges through which she might avoid seeing him, but put them all aside with the recollection of his indomitable will. He would see her sooner or later; the inevitable could not be avoided.
She finally took to her bed with daily headaches, distractedly but stealthily studying a railroad time-table.
"He's leaving New York by this time. Good Heaven, he'll be in Mobile by one o'clock tomorrow, Pass Christian a few minutes later—oh, dear, I wonder if he will be terribly violent! Jimmy is noticing, too. He says I'm ill. He wants to take me to California, but I don't dare—I don't dare! Harry Green would be sure to follow. I know him—oh, how well I know him! He would—"
A servant came in to announce that Miss Carrithers was down stairs.
"Ask her to come up," sighed Agatha. "I'll tell her myself that I don't want to see her, but it won't mean anything to Betty. She'll stay all morning."
"Yes, ma'am," agreed the maid as she hurried away. A moment later Miss Carrithers fairly bounded into the darkened bed-chamber, her face full of excitement.
"Have you heard?" she gasped, dropping upon the side of the bed. "Harry Green's coming home. He's in New York now. Joe Pierce had a telegram."
"Yes, I know," said Agatha drearily.
"Have you heard from him—you?" demanded Miss Betty in amazement—and some little concern.
"Of course, Betty; why shouldn't I?" irritably.
"Oh, I suppose it's all right," said the other dubiously. "I was only thinking of the—of the old days."
"Betty," said Mrs. Cannable, sitting up suddenly and grasping her friend's hand, "I'm the most wretched creature on earth. I don't know what I'm to do."
"Is it about—about Harry Green?" "Yes. You see, dear, he—he doesn't know I'm married."
"Goodness, Agatha! You don't mean he—he still thinks you are engaged to marry him?"
"That's just it, Betty. I didn't tell him—in fact, I had forgotten all about him, away down there in Patagonia, wherever it is. He—"
"And, oh, he was so terribly in love with you—and you with him, too!"
"No, no; don't say that. It was so foolish. Besides, he's been gone nearly three years. How could he expect me to wait all that time? I haven't had a letter from him for more than a year. I counted it up today."
"Does Jimmy Cannable know about—him?"
"I don't know and I'm afraid to ask."
"Harry's a frightfully determined person," mused Betty Carrithers reflectively.
"He swore I should be his wife if we waited a thousand years."
"That's the one thing in your favour. When they swear such things as that they can't possibly mean all they say," said Miss Betty sagely. She was the prettiest and most popular girl in town, but she was a wise body for all that. Her trim little figure was surcharged with a magnetism that thrilled one to the very core; her brown eyes danced ruthlessly through one's most stubborn defences; her smile and her frown were the thermometers by which masculine emotions could be gauged at a glance. "It will be rather difficult to face him, won't it?"
"Betty, it's simply impossible! Think of Harry Green waiting all these years, believing in me, as constant as the sun—and then to find I've married some one else. You know I love Jimmy Cannable with all my heart. I can't bear the thought of what might happen if he and Harry quarrelled about—about those old days."
"Don't cry—don't be a goose! It's the commonest thing in the world. Every girl has had dozens of affairs."
"I know, but not just like this one. My husband wants to take me to California. I wish—oh, how I wish I could go! But Harry would follow—I know he'll be merciless."
Miss Carrithers was thoughtful for several minutes, paying slight heed to the doleful sobs from the bed.
"I'll tell you what, Agatha," she said at last; "I believe this affair can be managed easily enough if you will just leave town."
"Oh, Betty!" sitting up and looking at her friend hopefully.
"Of course, I never had a chance at Harry Green. You monopolised him. I liked him immensely—from a distance. You go away, and let me explain the situation to him."
It was the straw that the drowning person grasps, and Mrs. Cannable clutched it with a shriek of delight. She poured her story into the ears of her too loyal friend, who smiled confidently in response to her apprehensions.
Miss Carrithers did not exchange confidences, however; she merely gave promises to do her best. She was shrewd enough to know that if she confessed to Agatha that she had cared for Harry Green—from a distance—that capricious and perverse young person would have declined to retire from the field of strife. After all, Betty admitted to herself, it was not wholly a service of sacrifice she was granting her friend. There was something of a selfish motive in her loyalty.
"I'll love you forever if you will explain everything and send him away," said Agatha in the end.
"At least, I shall explain everything," agreed Betty complacently. Agatha blushed consciously as she drew a small diamond from among those on her fingers.
"I didn't know his address, so you see I couldn't send it back to him," she explained. "And, Betty, if you'll hand me my jewel box I'll ask you to return that—er—you remember my old ruby pendant!"
"Was—that—did he give it to you?"
"Yes. You don't know how I hate to give it up. Isn't it beautiful?" She reluctantly let the ruby slip from her fingers into those of her friend.
"Perfectly gorgeous," said Betty, fastening it about her neck and surveying herself in the cheval glass. "I'd give anything if it belonged to me."
"Now, excuse me a minute, dear. I'll telephone to Jimmy and tell him we'll start for California tonight. Harry gets here tomorrow at 4:45 on the limited."
"You can be well out of the way by that time," said pretty Miss Carrithers with a smile.
"And now, Betty, you will send him back to Patagonia, won't you?"
"I'll keep him away from California, my dear, that's all."
Miss Carrithers sat in her carriage outside the railroad station, waiting for the train that was to bring Harry Green into New Orleans. Outwardly she was cool, placid; inwardly she was a fever of emotions. He had telegraphed the time of his arrival to Agatha; Betty received and read the message. Mr. and Mrs. Cannable were miles westward, hurrying to California. It was one thing to say she would take certain responsibilities off the hands of the bride; it was altogether another proposition to sit there and wait for the man she had admired for four or five years with a constancy that surprised even herself. Her reflections at this specific hour were scarcely definable. Chief among them was a doubt—this doubt: Would Harry Green remember her? It seemed such an absurd doubt that she laughed at it—and yet cultivated it with distracting persistency.
The train was ten minutes late. A newsboy had made two trips to the train-board in quest of information. When the big locomotive finally thundered and hissed its way to a stand-still near the gates, Canal Street seemed to have become a maze of indefinite avenues, so dizzy had she grown of a sudden. Her eyes searched the throng that swept through the gates; at last she saw him approaching.
She had expected a tired, worn man, unfashionably dressed, eager-eyed and wistful. Instead, the tall fellow who came forth was attired in the most modern English garments; he was brown, fresh-faced, keen-eyed and prosperous looking. The same old Harry Green grown stronger, handsomer, more polished. His black eyes were sweeping the street anxiously as if in search of some one. He did not see Betty Carrithers, and her heart sank.
Behind him stalked two gigantic negroes. They were the centre of all observation. People stared at the blacks who carried Harry Green's bags as if they were looking upon creatures just out of an Arabian Night's tale. Nearly seven feet tall and of Herculean proportions were these giants. It is no wonder that the crowd gaped and felt something like awe mingling with curiosity.
Mr. Green, erstwhile Patagonian surveyor, started at the sound of a soft voice close at hand, a voice in which grateful surprise was uppermost.
"Why, Harry Green! How do you do!" He turned and beheld Miss Carrithers. She was leaning forward in her carriage, her little gloved hand extended toward him impulsively. She was amazed to see a look of relief flash in his eyes. His smile was broad and wholesome as he gripped the little hand in a mighty brown one.
"Betty Carrithers!" he exclaimed. "Now, this is like home! By George, you haven't changed a bit."
"Don't you think so!" She flushed. "It's been several years, you know. A woman can change terribly in—"
"Ah, but you've just changed into a woman."
"And what a man you've grown to be," admiringly.
"I hope so. Patagonia would make a man of any one. Are you expecting some one?"
"I was; but I see every one has come out. Won't you let me take you up town? Goodness, who are those awful giants that stand over there all the time like guards?"
"They're from Patagonia. Call them anything you like; they don't understand English. They are my men of all work. Thanks, I will ride up with you. Tell him to stop at the St. Charles." Then he turned and spoke to the giants, who solemnly nodded their heads and climbed into a cab close by. Green seated himself beside Miss Carrithers. There was a hunted look in his eyes and a nervous tremor in his voice. "A sort of bodyguard, as it were, Betty. By the way, you haven't seen Agatha Holmes, have you? I telegraphed to her."
Miss Carrithers had braced herself for this question and she also had prepared an answer. She could not look at his face, however, despite her determination.
"Agatha Holmes! Is it possible you haven't heard? Don't you know that—that she is married?"
She knew in her heart it was a cruel blow, but it was the best way, after all. Instinctively she felt that he had ceased breathing, that his body was stiffening under the shock, that his eyes were staring at her unbelievingly. Imagine her surprise, even consternation, when, after a breathless moment, his tremendous sigh of relief was followed by the most cheerful of remarks.
"Good Lord!" he fairly gasped, "that simplifies matters!"
She turned like a flash and found his face radiant with joy. It was hard for her to believe her own senses. He actually was rejoicing; she had expected him to groan with despair. It is no wonder that her plan of action was demolished on the instant; it is not surprising that every vestige of resourcefulness was swept away by this amazing reverse. She stared at him so pathetically, so helplessly, that he laughed aloud.
"I know what you're thinking," he said, and there was no mistaking the lightness of his heart. "I don't blame you for being shocked if you thought I had come back to such a fate as you evidently pictured. Betty, by Jove, you'll never know how happy you've made me!"
"I—I am surprised. Agatha told me that you—you—"
"And she's really married? Never mind what she told you. It doesn't matter now. Is she happy?"
"She adores her husband—young Jimmy Cannable. You know him. She will be crazy with joy, Harry, when she finds out that you, too, are happy. She was half mad with remorse and all that. It will—"
"Heavens, Betty, I thought I was the remorseful one. By George, I love you for telling me this!"
A shocking suspicion hurtled through her brain.
"You mean, there is—another woman?" she said with a brave effort. She even smiled accusingly.
"Some day I'll tell you all about it," he said evasively. "I—I suppose it would be all right for me to go round and call on Agatha this evening."
"She is not in town. California," said Betty.
"Great Scott! In California?" The dismay in his face was even greater than the relief of the moment before.
"Not exactly. She's on her way."
"By George, I wonder if I can catch her by wire? I must—I really must see her." He was so agitated that she observed beads of perspiration starting on his brow. She was mystified beyond description. Was he, after all, she found herself wondering, playing a part? Was it in his crafty heart to follow and kill Agatha Holmes!
"Oh, no,—you can't do that," she protested quickly. "Won't you—come out to dinner tonight?" she added somewhat confusedly. "We can talk over old times."
"Thanks, Betty, but I can't." At the same time he glanced uneasily at a cab which drove along close behind them.
"You were going to call upon Agatha," she pouted.
"But not at dinner-time," he said, mopping his brow. "I'll come up about nine, if I may."
He came at nine, a trifle out of breath and uneasy in his manner. The great Green ruby hung from the chain that encircled Betty's slim, pretty neck. Its soft red eye glowed like a coal against the white skin, but if she thought to surprise him with it, she was to be disappointed. He did not look at it.
She did not know at the time that a giant Patagonian stood beneath the gas lamp at the corner above the Carrithers mansion in St. Charles Avenue. His gaunt, dark face was turned toward her doorway and his fierce eyes seemed to bore holes through the solid oak.
"I can't stay very late," he said almost as he responded to the greeting. "Confounded business engagement. Where is Agatha to stay in California?"
"I don't know. It wasn't decided. Perhaps they'll go to Japan."
"Good Lord!"
"You seem terribly interested, for a man who doesn't care," she said.
"I should say I am interested—but not in the way you think." After a moment's reflection, as he stood looking down upon her, he went on excitedly, "I'll tell you something, Betty. You're a good sort, and you can keep a secret as long as any woman—which isn't long, of course. But it will be long enough for me to get out of town first. I must go to California tomorrow. Wait! Don't look like that! I'm not going to annoy Agatha. She'll understand when she hears what I have to say. Have you ever noticed the ruby pendant that she wears—or wore, perhaps?"
"The big one she called her 'coal of fire' because it burned her conscience so terribly? Yes."
"Well, I gave it to her. I've just got to have it back. That's the whole story. That's what I'm here for. That's why that awful black devil is standing out there on the corner. See him? Under the gas lamp?" He drew the curtains aside and she peeped out. "He's waiting for me."
"What does it mean?" she cried, with a nameless dread creeping over her.
"He is there in the interest of my father-in-law," said Mr. Green.
"You—-your father-in-law?" she gasped, staring at him wildly.
"Yes—my wife's father," he said somewhat plaintively. He sat down near her, a nervous unsettled look in his eyes. She felt her heart turn cold; something seemed to be tightening about her throat. The light of hope that had been fanning began to flicker its way to extinction.
"You are married?" came from her stiff lips.
"Yes," he replied doggedly. "A year ago, Betty. I—I did not write to Agatha about it because I—I hoped that she'd never know how false I was to my promise. But, she's done the same thing; that takes a terrible load off my mind. I feared that I might find her waiting, you know. It would have been hard to break it to her, don't you see?"
To his amazement, she laughed shrilly, almost hysterically. In the flash of a moment's time, her feeling toward Harry Green began to undergo a change. It was not due to the realisation that she had lost all hope of having him for her own; it was, instead, the discovery that her small girlish love for him had been the most trivial of infatuations and not real passion. She laughed because she had pitied Agatha and Green and herself; she laughed, moreover, in memory of her deliberate eagerness to assume Agatha's burdens for purely selfish reasons.
"I know it's amusing to you," he agreed with a wry smile. "Everything amused you, as I remember, Betty. Do you remember that night in Condit's conservatory when you and I were hiding from—"
"Don't, please!" she objected, catching her breath painfully. "I was a foolish girl then, Harry. But tell me all about your—your wife. I am crazy to know."
He looked involuntarily toward the window before replying; she observed the hunted look in his eyes and wondered.
"There isn't much to tell. She lives in Patagonia," he said, somewhat sullenly. Then he glanced at his watch.
"What! Is she a—a native?" she cried.
"She was born there, but—Good Lord, you don't think she's black?"
"Or even a giantess," she smiled.
"She's white, of course, and she's no bigger than you, Betty. She isn't as pretty, I'll have to say that. But let's talk about something else. How am I to catch Agatha? It's imperative. 'Gad, it's life or death, Betty."
"What do you mean?" she asked, startled.
He swallowed painfully two or three times as he scraped the edge of the rug with his foot, looking down all the while.
"Well, you see, it's this way. I've married into a rather queer family. My—my wife's most damnably jealous."
"That isn't very queer, is it?"
"She has a queer way of being jealous, that's all. Somehow she's got it into her head that there's another woman up here in North America."
"Oh, I begin to see. And, of course, there isn't?"
"Certainly not. I love my wife."
"Good for you, Harry. I didn't think it of you," she said with a smile which he did not understand.
"Oh, I say, Betty, you are making fun of me."
"On the contrary, I'm just beginning to treat you seriously."
"I suppose I owe some sort of an explanation in connection with my remark about jealousy. It's due my wife."
"May I ask where she is at present?"
"She's on the range in Patagonia. I—I couldn't bring her here, you know. Betty, I want you to help me with Agatha. She's got that ruby and I simply have to get it back again. I'll tell you all about—about my marriage. Perhaps you'll understand. You see, I meant to be true to Agatha. But it was so cursed lonesome down there—worse than Siberia or mid-ocean. We were surveying near the west coast—rotten country—and I met her at her father's place. You see, they raise cattle and all that sort of thing there. Her old man—I should say Mr. Grimes—is the cattle king of Patagonia. He's worth a couple of millions easy. Well, to make a long story short, we all fell in love with Pansy—the whole engineering corps—and I won out. She's the only child and she's motherless. The old man idolises her. She's fairly good-looking and—well, she's being educated by private tutors from Buenos Aires. I'm not a cad to tell you. She's pure gold in spite of her environment."
"No doubt, if she's surrounded by millions."
"Don't be sarcastic. Some day she'll come in for the old man's money. She'll be educated by that time and as good as anybody. Then we'll come back to the States and she'll—well, you'll see. The only trouble is that she thinks there's a woman up here that I loved before I loved her. One day, shortly after we were married, she found a photograph of Agatha which I'd always carried around in my trunk. It was the picture in which she wore the Green ruby. Don't you remember it? Well, you can't imagine how she carried on. She acted like a sav—but I won't say it. She has had no advantages—yet, and she's a bit untrained in the ways of the world. Of course, she hated Agatha's face because it was beautiful. She complained to the old man. The worst of it all is that I had already shown her a picture of the ruby, taken from that eastern magazine, and she recognised it as the one on Agatha's neck. "Well, you should have heard the old—my father-in-law! Phew!"
"What did he say?" asked Betty, pitying him.
"I can't repeat it. He went on at a fearful rate about fellows of my stripe having wives in other parts of the world, and he was in a condition to commit murder before he got through. It all ended with a monstrous demand from my wife. She commanded me to produce the pendant. By George, Betty, I was in a frightful mess!
"I could only say it was in New Orleans. The old man looked holes through me and said he'd give me four months in which to produce it. Anything that Pansy demanded he'd see that she got it, if he had to shoot his way to it. You ought to see him! And, incidentally, she can shoot like Buffalo Bill herself. She shot a gaucho through the neck half a mile away."
"A gaucho?"
"Yes—a cowherder. Hang it, everybody carries a gun down there. Now you know why I'm here. The old man said if I didn't bring that ruby to my wife in a given time he'd find me and shoot me full of holes. She loves me, but she said she'd do the same thing. I've just got to have that ruby. They mean it."
"You poor boy," said Betty scornfully. "And I was feeling so sorry for you because of Agatha."
"It's no joke, Betty. These big blacks are my servants for appearance's sake only. They are in reality my keepers. The old man sent them along to see that I did come back, one way or another. They'd just as soon throttle me as eat."
"It would be easy to lose them up here, I should say."
"Well, I reckon you don't know a Patagonian. They can scent like a bloodhound and they never give up. Those fellows are here to attend to me, and they'll do it, never fear. Either one of them could thrash half the police in New Orleans. They are terrible! There's no escape from them. I'd thought of something desperate but—but Grimes himself is to be reckoned with. Sometimes I—I almost wish I hadn't won out."
"But think of the millions."
"The only thing I can think of, Betty, is that miserable ruby. I've got to recover it and sail for South America inside of ten days. And she's in California! Did you ever hear of such luck?"
Betty Carrithers walked over and looked from the window. The giant black was still under the street lamp and she could not repress a shudder as she glanced from time to time to the man on the couch. A feeling of pity arose in her breast. Harry Green was unworthy, after all. He was not what he had seemed to be to her in those days of her teens. He was no longer an idol; her worshipful hours were ended. Instead, he was a weak, cringing being in the guise of a strong attractive man; he had been even more false than Agatha, and he had not the excuse of love to offer in extenuation. Pity and loathing fought for supremacy. Something was shattered, and she felt lonely yet relieved. Strangely, she seemed content in the discovery.
He was leaning forward, staring blankly at the rug, when she turned to resume her seat. A haggard face was raised to hers and his hand trembled as he jerked out his watch for the fourth time since entering the room.
"I'm a bit nervous," said he. "Time flies."
"Do you remember the fairy princesses of your childhood books?" she asked suddenly. "What would you say if one should quickly appear in real life?"
"What do you mean?"
"Outside stands the terrible ogre, ready to eat you up. Permit me to appear before you as the fairy princess. I can save you from death. My only regret is that I can not provide you with an enchanted tapestry, to waft you back to your lady love in the beautiful land of Patagonia. Here, behold! I restore to you the wonderful ruby!"
She unclasped the chain and dropped the great jewel into his shaking hand. He turned deathly white and then leaped up with a shout of incredulous joy. A hundred questions flew to his lips, faster than she could answer. She allowed him to babble on disjointedly for some time.
"Isn't it sufficient that I restore it to you? Why ask questions? It was my commission to do this thing. I'll confess it hasn't happened just as I anticipated, but what of that? Doubtless you recall this ring also. I think it signified an engagement. Take it. There may come a day when it will be ornamental as well as useful to your wife." He accepted the solitaire which she drew from her finger. His face was a study.
"Betty," he said, puzzled and helpless, "it—it isn't possible that it was you instead of Agatha that I gave these things to? I had typhoid fever down there. There are a lot of things I don't remember since then. It wasn't you, of course."
She laughed in his perplexed face—a good-humoured, buoyant laugh.
"If you can't remember, Harry, I shan't enlighten you. You have the ruby, isn't that enough?"
Ten minutes later he said good-bye to her and sallied forth into the night. She stood in the window and watched the huge sentinel stride off behind him like a gaunt shadow which could not be shaken off. That figure and another like it were to cling to his heels until he came to his journey's end. She smiled and shook her head pityingly as Harry Green passed out of her life at the corner below.
In her own room shortly afterward she took an old photograph from a drawer, looked at it a moment with a smile on her lips, and then tore it into many pieces.
"The strangest part of it is that I don't seem to mind," she said to herself, and that night she slept peacefully.
THE GLOAMING GHOSTS
PART I
Gloaming had been the home of the Gloames for two centuries at least. Late in the seventeenth century one of the forebears acquired the picturesque acres in Virginia and they have not been without a Gloame as master since that time. At the time when the incidents to be related in this story transpired, Colonel Cassady Gloame was the owner of the famous old estate and he was lord of the countryside. The power of the ancient Gloames was not confined to the rural parts of that vast district in southern Virginia; it was dominant in the county seats for miles around. But that is neither here nor there. The reader knows the traditional influence of every old Virginia family. It is like the royal household of an eastern monarchy. It leads, dominates, and sets the pace for all its little universe. No one cares to learn that the Gloames were the first family of them all; it does not matter especially that old Sir Henry settled there nearly a hundred years before the Revolution; it is simple history that some of the Gloames who followed after him fought like tigers for the country in one war and just as hard against it in another. Let it be understood that Gloaming was two centuries old and that there was no fairer, prouder name in all Virginia than that which had been handed down to Colonel Cassady Gloame, the last of the race.
The rambling old house that faced the river was known from one end of the state to the other, not only for its age, but for its hospitality. The Gloames, whether wild or sedate, had always been famous for the warmth of their hearts. The blood was blue and the hearts were true, is what the world said of the Gloames. The years had made but little change in the seat of the Gloames. The mansion, except for the repairs that time demanded, was virtually the same as in the days of old Sir Henry. Nine generations of Gloames had begun life in the picturesque old house and it had been the pride of each. It had borne good Americans and blue Virginians. The architecture, like its children, seemed perennial. Time made few inroads upon the character of its lines. Its furnishings and its treasures were almost as antique. Decrepit age alone was responsible for the retirement of historic bits of furniture. The plate was as old as the hills, the service as venerable. Gloaming looked to be the great-great-grand-parent of every other habitation in the valley.
Colonel Cassady Gloame was the last of the long and illustrious race. He was going to the grave childless; the name would end with him. True, he would doubtless leave a widow, but what is a widow when one figures on the perpetuation of a name? The Colonel was far past sixty, his wife barely twenty-five. He loved her devotedly and it is only just to say that she esteemed him more highly than any other man in all the world. But there would be no children.
Mrs. Gloame, beautiful, cultured, gay as a butterfly, was the daughter of Judge Garrison of New York. She had been married for five years and she was not yet tired of the yoke. Her youth was cheerfully, loyally given over to the task of making age a joy instead of a burden to this gallant old Virginian. She was a veritable queen in this little Virginia kingdom. Though she was from the North, they loved her in the South; they loved her for the same reason that inspired old Colonel Gloame to give his heart and honour to her keeping—because they could not help it.
The Christmas holidays were always a season of great merriment at Gloaming. There never had been a Christmas Eve without festivities in the good old home of the Gloames. Sometimes, in the long array of years, there may have been sorrow and grief and trouble in the hearts of the inmates, but all such was dissipated when the Christmas bells began to ring. Even that terrible tragedy in the winter of 1769 lifted its shadow long enough to permit the usual happiness to shine through all the last week of the dying year.
There was always a genial house party in holiday times, and Gloaming rang free with the pleasures of the light-hearted. The Colonel himself was the merriest of the merry-makers, second only in enthusiasm to the sunny young wife from the North. The night of December 24, 1897, found the old mansion crowded with guests, most of whom were spending the week with the Gloames. There had been dancing and music and games, and eleven o'clock brought fatigue for even the liveliest of the guests. It was then that pretty Louise Kelly, of the Major Kellys of Richmond, peremptorily commanded the Colonel to tell the oft-told tale of the Gloaming Ghosts.
"Come to order," she cried to the guests in the double parlours. "Colonel Gloame is going to tell us about those dear old ghosts."
"Now, my dear Louise, I've told that story times without number to every soul in this house," remonstrated the Colonel. "You, to my certain knowledge have been an attentive listener for one hundred and nine times. Even though it brings upon my head the weight of your wrath, I must positively decline to—"
"You have nothing to say about it, Colonel Gloame," declared Miss Kelly definitely. "The first thing required of a soldier is duty. It is your duty to obey when commanded by the officer of the night. In the first place, you've not told the story to every one here. Lieutenant King has just confessed that he never has heard of the Gloaming Ghosts and, furthermore, he laughed when I told him that you boasted of real, live ghosts more than a hundred years old."
"Oh, we are very proud of our ghosts, Lieutenant King," cried Mrs. Gloame.
"I imagined that people lived in some terror of ghosts," ventured King, a young West Pointer.
"You couldn't drag the Colonel into the south wing up-stairs with a whole regiment of cavalry horses," said old Mr. Gordon, the Colonel's best friend.
"Tush," remonstrated the Colonel.
"There's a real ghost, a white lady who walks on air, who spends her time in the room whose windows look out over the low lands along the river," piped up little Miss Gordon, a grand-daughter in very short dresses.
"How romantic," laughed the Lieutenant.
The Colonel, despite his customary remonstrances, would not have missed telling the story for worlds. He liked to be coaxed. He was in his element when the score or more of eager guests, old and young, crowded into the room about him and implored him to go on with the tale.
"It's a mighty threadbare sort of a ghost we have here, my dear Lieutenant," he admitted at last, and there was a sigh of contentment from the lips of many. They knew the story would be forthcoming. "Poor old thing, I've told about her so often I'm afraid she'll refuse to come and visit us any more."
At this juncture, young Mr. Gates Garrison strolled leisurely into the room, coming from the dining-room where he had lingered with the apples and cider and doughnuts. He was a tall, fair young fellow of twenty-four, a year younger than his sister, the pretty Mrs. Gloame, and a senior in Columbia College. The Colonel stood with his back to the blazing grate, confronting the crowd of eager listeners, who had dragged chairs and settees and cushions from all parts of the house to prepare the auditorium.
"Come here, Gates, and hear the ghost story," cried his sister, making room between herself and Miss Kelly.
"Same old story?" inquired the law student, stifling a yawn.
"Of course; come and sit between us."
"Oh, I'm not afraid of ghosts," replied Gates indifferently.
Miss Kelly looked daggers through her tender blue eyes.
"I wonder what that boy has on his mind?" murmured Mrs. Gloame anxiously.
"Nothing," responded Miss Kelly, sweetly. But the Colonel was beginning.
"Whatever you may think of this story," he began, "I can assure you that there is a very deep mystery attached to Gloaming and as I cannot offer the faintest explanation except to call your attention to the supernatural conditions which exist, I am obliged to admit that I, for one, firmly believe the house is haunted. For several generations the Gloame family, to an individual, has believed in the ghost of the south wing and our faith cannot be shaken. We have the evidence of our ears, our eyes, and of all who have undertaken to explode the theory. I'll be just as brief as possible, Major Harper, so you need not look at your wife's watch. My great-great-grandfather, Godfrey Gloame, was born in this house and he brought a beautiful bride here when he was married twenty-five years afterward. He was, as are all the Gloames, a Virginian of the old type, and he was a fire-eater, so the family records say. When he was married it was to a young lady of wealth and position in the North—a very gay and, if I must say it, a particularly—ah!—unsatisfactory mistress of a home." "What could you expect of a Yankee wife?" asked young Garrison, tantalisingly.
"They were different in those days," responded the grey old narrator, with a smile for his wife. "My great-great-grandmother was a beautiful woman, and she was well aware of that fact. Her husband was a jealous devil, as unreasonable as a jackass, and as stubborn as an ox. To make a long story short, after they had been married five years and had seen enough of the connubial hell to drive them both out of mind, he took a sudden fancy that she was false to him. A young Virginian, in fact, the very man who stood up with him at the wedding, was a frequent visitor at this house and was a decided favourite with my maternal ancestor. Godfrey went to drinking rather heavily, simply because he found it impossible to discover anything wrong in his wife's conduct—I may say that he had watched her, too, ladies and gentlemen. Being too honourable to accuse her of infidelity without having actual proof, he suffered in silence and his cups, all the time allowing the gap between them to grow wider and wider. One night he came home from Richmond late and saw his friend, Harry Heminway, leaving the place on horseback. Inflamed by jealousy, and drink, too, I reckon, he dashed up to his wife's room. I do not know what followed, for no one ever knew, but the next mornin' they found her dead on the bed, her throat cut from ear to ear in a most dreadful manner. He was dead on the floor, the same knife sticking in his breast. Their son, my great-grand-father, the famous General George W. Gloame, then a child of three, was lying on the bed with his mother, asleep."
"What beautiful nerves that kid must have had," muttered Gates.
"And did they never hang the murderer?" asked Lieutenant King.
"Good heavens, no! Didn't I say he had jabbed the knife into his own heart? How could they hang him? Well, all this happened in that room at the far end of the south wing—it's always locked now and has been for a hundred and thirty years. The furniture stands just as it was when that pair occupied the apartment. Now comes the strange part of the story."
"Ugh!" interrupted Miss Kelly, with a shudder. "Just hear how the wind whistles around the house. It positively gives me the shivers."
"Well, within a week after the murder queer things began to happen in that room," the Colonel went on. "Odd noises were to be heard, muffled screams came from behind the closed doors, and finally the people who lived here saw the white, ghostly form of my great-great-grandmother moving about in the room and in the halls. Ever since that time her spirit can be seen up there, for it comes around once in a while to see if anybody desecrates the room by trying to sleep in it. With my own eyes I have seen it—dozens of times. Since my marriage it has not been here, but I expect it almost any night."
George Washington appeared suddenly in the hall door and his stentorian though eminently respectable tones startled the entire assemblage, the Colonel included. There were a dozen little feminine shrieks and more than one man caught his breath sharply. George Washington was the butler at Gloaming.
"Majah Harpeh's kerridge, sah," he announced obsequiously.
"Oh, I'm so glad," gasped Miss Kelly, mightily relieved. Then, in confusion: "I mean, Mrs. Harper, that I'm glad it isn't the ghost, you know."
Half an hour later the parlours were deserted, except for the presence of a tall young man with a far-away, dissatisfied look in his eyes. In all the spare bed chambers guests were preparing for bed. Young Garrison had said good night to all of them and remained below stairs to commune with himself at the midnight hour.
For many minutes he sat before the fireplace, staring moodily at the flames. Gates Garrison admitted reluctantly that it was all very nice at Gloaming, that it was "a bully place to spend the holidays and all that, you know," but for a very well-defined reason he was wishing they were over and he was back in New York once more. He was in love. It is not unusual for a young man of his age to be desperately in love and it is by no means unusual that he should be in love with the most impossible of persons. Gates Garrison's affections at this period of his life were the property in fee simple of a very pretty and decidedly popular member of the chorus at Weber & Field's. After convincing himself that he was quite alone in the huge old parlour, the hopeless Mr. Garrison guiltily drew from the inside pocket of his coat a thick and scrawly letter. Then he did things to this letter that in after years he would blush to acknowledge, if they remained a part of his memory. He kissed the scribble—undeniably. Then, with rapt eyes, he reread the lengthy missive from "Dolly." It had come in the morning mail and he had read it a dozen times. The reader is left to conjecture just what the letter contained. Mr. Garrison's thoughts were running something like this:
"Lord, if my sister knew about you, Dolly, she'd have so many fits that you couldn't count them. They think I'm an absolute stick when it comes to girls. If they only knew! What the deuce did I do with that photograph—ah, here it is. Inside vest pocket, left-hand side—just where it belongs."
He pulled a small photograph from his vest pocket and sat gazing at it rapturously. It was the portrait of the fair Dolly in tights. After a long scrutiny of this rather picturesque product of nature and the photographer, he arose and, with a sigh, turned off all the lights in the room, still holding the picture in his hand. The fire in the grate was now the only means of illumination in the parlour and the halls were dark. Reconsidering his impulse to go to bed, he threw himself in a chair before the grate, his elbow resting on the mahogany table at its right. There he devoted himself to—dreams. A wave of cold air crossing his back brought him from dreamland.
"Some one must have left a door open," he grumbled. He looked up and down the hall and then resumed his seat before the fire. A moment later the chilly draft struck him again. "Confound it! There's a devil of a draft from somewhere. It goes clean through me. Must be a crack in the floor. That's the trouble with these shacks that somebody's grandfather built before the flood." He vigorously poked up the fire and drew his chair a little closer to the circle of warmth.
Had he turned his head for an instant as he sat down he could have seen that he was not alone in the room. A tall, shadowy woman in white was standing in the hall door, looking pensively in upon him. For a full minute she stood there, hesitating between modesty and curiosity, and then turned as if to glide away.
Reconsidering, she smiled defiantly and more or less nervously, and then turned back into the room. Of course, he did not hear her as she approached. The mere fact that her filmy white dress was of the fashion in vogue before the Revolution should prove her identity to the reader. She was the Gloaming Ghost.
Gates Garrison was softly, tenderly addressing the photograph of the airy but not ethereal Dolly. The words were not for the ears of others. Even the infatuated lover would have despised the strain of softness in his tones had he known there was a hearer.
"If you could but speak to me," he was saying to the picture, "you'd make me happy, I know. You'd tell me that you love me. You'd tell me that you hate that meddlesome old man Ellison. You've got it just as bad as I have, haven't you, Dolly?"
"What a real woman she seems to be," exclaimed a soft silvery voice at his shoulder. Garrison whirled and looked up into the beautiful face of the ghost.
"Great Heaven!" he gasped, struggling to his feet, his eyes riveted to the face of the wraith.
"Only a part of it, my dear sir," corrected the ghost, with a rare smile in which courage struggled with diffidence. "Dear me, why do you stare at me so rudely?"
She was standing directly before him now, tall and straight. He was hanging to the mantelpiece, almost speechless.
"Who—what in Heaven's name are you?" he cried.
"Why, don't you know me? I am Mrs. Godfrey Gloame," she replied, a touch of resentment in her voice.
"The—the ghost?"
"That's what they call me," she admitted sadly. "It's such a horrid thing to be called, too. In reality, I'm merely a visitor from another world. There are many more of my kind in this room at this instant, sir, but you cannot see them. They are visible to me, however. If it interests you in the least, I can tell you that you are surrounded by ghosts. Please don't run! They can not hurt you. Why should they, even if they could? What a big, strong man you are to be afraid of such perfectly harmless, docile beings as we. Over in that corner, looking from the window, stands my daughter-in-law, Mrs. George Gloame. I saw her husband, my son, sitting in the hallway as I came through. Judging from their attitudes, they've had another of those horrid quarrels. I hope you'll pardon me for disturbing you. You looked so lonely I couldn't resist the desire to come in and see you as I was passing."
Gates was regaining his composure rapidly. The first uncanny shock was wearing off and he was confessing to himself that there was nothing to fear in the spectral bit of loveliness.
"I—I'm sure I appreciate the honour," he said, bowing low.
"Permit me to introduce myself," she went on, and he marvelled at her charm of manner. "I am the great-great-grandmother of Cassady Gloame, and the daughter of Van Rensselaer Brevoort, of New York. He is a millionaire."
"He must be a pretty old millionaire by this time, isn't he?"
"Oh, poor papa has been dead for a hundred and one years."
"Indeed? He isn't here, is he? I'm getting so I don't mind you in the least but I'd rather not meet any male—er—ghosts, if you please." Mrs. Godfrey Gloame laughed unrestrainedly.
"Don't you know that we are nothing but spectral air?" she cried derisively.
"Ah, since you speak of it, I did feel your draft when you came in," he said. "But, if you will pardon me, Mrs. Gloame, there is something uncanny about you just the same. You'll admit that, I'm sure. How would you have felt when you were in the flesh to have had a horrible ghost suddenly walk in upon you?" "Oh, I am horrible, am I?" she said as she leaned toward him with an entrancing smile.
"Heavens, no!" he retracted. "You are a marvel of beauty. I don't wonder that your husband was jealous." She did not appear to have heard the last remark.
"How I used to live in terror of ghosts," she cried, looking about apprehensively. "Would you believe it, sir, up to the time I was married I could not bear the thought of being left alone in the house for a single minute of the night. The darkness, the mystic flicker of the lights, the stillness seemed to swarm with spirits—Oh, you don't know how I suffered with the fear of them."
"And after you got married—what then?"
"I soon had material spirits to contend with."
"How so?"
"That is an extremely personal inquiry, sir."
"I beg pardon if I have overstepped the bounds of politeness."
"I may as well tell you that my husband drank terribly. It's all over the country anyhow, I hear."
"The Gloame pedigree says that you drove him to it."
"I know that is what the Gloames claim, but it is a shameless slander. My poor, dear husband has told me since that he was wrong and he would give all he has on earth to set me aright in that hateful old pedigree. The poor fellow killed himself, you doubtless know. I was never so shocked in my life as when I heard that he had committed such a brutal act." Mrs. Gloame was looking sadly, reminiscently into the fire and there was a trace of tears in her voice.
"But, my dear madam, didn't he begin by slaying you?" exclaimed Gates in surprise.
"To be sure, he did destroy me first or I might have kept him from committing the awful crime of suicide," she said, despondently.
PART II
"But murder is so much worse than suicide," expostulated Garrison. "We hang men for murder, you know."
"I've a notion that it would be difficult to hang them for suicide. But you are quite wrong in your estimation of the crime. You do not know what it is to be murdered, I presume."
"Well, hardly."
"Nor what it is to commit suicide? Well, let me advise you, judging from what I know of the hereafter, get murdered in preference to committing suicide. I'd even suggest that you commit murder, if you are determined to do anything rash."
"And be hanged for it!" laughed Gates.
"You can be hanged or be d——d, just as you like," she said meaningly. "I wish you could talk to my husband if you are thinking of doing anything of the kind. I'm sure your young love affairs must be getting to the suicide stage by this time."
"But I don't want to kill anybody, much less myself. Oh, I beg your pardon," he cried suddenly. "Pray have a chair, Mrs. Gloame. It was unpardonable in me to let you remain standing so long. I've been a trifle knocked out, I mean disconcerted. That's my only excuse."
"You are not expected to know anything about ghost etiquette," she said sweetly, dropping into a chair at the side of the table farthest from the fire. Garrison had some fear that her vapoury figure might sink through the chair, but he was agreeably surprised to find that it did not. Mrs. Gloame leaned back with a sigh of contentment and deliberately crossed her pretty feet on the fender.
"Won't you sit nearer to the fire?" lie asked. "It's very cold tonight and you must be chilled to the bone. You are not dressed for cold weather." She was attired in a low-necked and sleeveless gown.
"I'm not at all cold and, besides, I did not bring my bones with me." He resumed his seat at the opposite side of the table. "Have you come far tonight?"
"From the graveyard a mile down the river. It is a beautiful cemetery, isn't it?"
"I am quite a stranger in these parts. Besides, I'm not partial to graveyards."
"Oh, dear me," she cried, in confusion. "The idea of my sitting here talking to a total stranger all this time. You must think me extremely bold."
"I am the bold one, madam. It's my first experience, you know, and I think I'm doing pretty well, don't you? By the way, Mrs. Gloame, my name is Gates Garrison, of New York, and my sister is the present Mrs. Gloame."
"The pretty young thing with the old Gloame husband?"
"Can't say she's pretty, you know. She's my sister."
"I passed her in the hall tonight."
"The dev—the deuce you did!" cried Gates, coming to his feet in alarm. "Then she must be lying out there in a dead faint." He was starting for the door when she recalled him.
"Oh, she did not see me. She merely shivered and asked a servant to close the door. An ill wind seems to be a north wind, so far as ghosts are concerned," she concluded pathetically. "So you are from New York. Dear New York; I haven't been there in a hundred and thirty-five years, I dare say. One in my position rather loses count of the years, you know. I suppose the place is greatly changed. And your lady-love lives there, too, I see."
"My lady-love?" demanded Gates, taken back.
"Yes, the girl who is so well dressed from her shoulders up," with a tantalising smile.
"You mean—this?" he asked, turning a fiery red as he tried to slip the picture of Dolly under a book.
"Let me see it, please. Who is she?" He was ashamed, but he held out the picture. A poorly disguised look of disgust crossed the startled features of Mrs. Godfrey Gloame.
"She's—a friend of the Colonel's," said Gates promptly.
"I should think his wife would do well to be on her guard. This is the first time I ever saw such a costume. In my day a woman would not have dared to do such a thing. Don't you know her?"
"Oh, casually," answered he, looking away.
"I'm glad to hear that. She is nothing to you, then?"
He shook his head in fine disdain.
"I don't care much for you men in these days, Mr. Garrison," she said.
"You're not complimentary."
"When I compare the men of my day—men like Godfrey—with the men of today, I thank Heaven I had the honour to be killed by a gentleman. You don't know how many unhappy wives I meet in the cemetery."
"Well, there are no women like you in this day, either. You are beautiful, glorious," he cried, leaning toward her eagerly. She shrank back with a laugh, holding her hands between his face and her own.
"How lovely," she sighed. "But keep away, please."
"Well, I should say," he exclaimed, his teeth almost chattering, so cold was the air that fanned his face. "I never got such a frost from a woman in all my life."
"If my husband had heard your words of flattery he would have created a terrible disturbance. He was fearfully jealous—a perfect devil when the spell came over him."
"A devil then and a devil now, I may infer."
"Oh, no; you do him an injustice. Godfrey really was an angel, and if he had not killed himself I think he would not now be in such an uncertain position. He is still on probation, you see."
"Between two fires, as it were."
"I think not. The last time I saw him he was shivering."
"I don't wonder," said Gates, ruefully, recalling the chill of a moment since. "Does he ever come here?"
"Not often. There are so many unpleasant associations, he says. It was here that the funeral took place and he has expressed very strong exceptions to the sermon of a minister who alluded to him as an unfortunate victim of his own folly. The idea! It would have been folly, indeed, for Godfrey to have lived after I was dead. Every woman in Virginia would have been crazy to marry him. And then one of the pall-bearers did not suit him. He had cheated Godfrey in a horse trade, I think."
"I should like to have known Godfrey Gloame."
"You would have admired him. He was the best pistol shot, the bravest man in all Virginia. Three times he fought duels, coming off victorious each time. He would have been an ideal husband if he had not been so indolent, so dissipated, and so absurdly jealous of Harry Heminway. I shall never forgive him for killing me on account of poor Harry."
"Is that why he killed you?" asked Gates eagerly.
"He said so at the time, but he was sorry for it afterward. That is usually the way with jealous men."
"Whew!" exclaimed the man, starting up. "There's another draft, didn't you feel it?"
"It is my husband coming, I know his footstep," she said delightedly, looking toward the door.
"Holy smoke!" cried Gates, in alarm.
"Don't let him hear you speak of smoke. He is very touchy about it just now. Ah, come in, Godfrey, dear."
She crossed to the door to meet the tall, grey young man in the eighteenth century costume, Garrison looking on with open mouth, and rising hair.
Godfrey Gloame was a handsome fellow, albeit he was as transparent as glass. His hair was powdered with all the care of a dandy and his garments hung properly upon his frame. He kissed his wife and then glared at young Mr. Garrison.
"Who is this man, Beatrice?" he demanded, his hand going to his sword hilt. Mrs. Gloame caught the hand and there was passionate entreaty in her eyes. "Speak, woman! What are you doing here with him at this time of night?"
"Now, don't be cross, Godfrey," she pleaded. "It's only Mr. Garrison."
"And who the devil is Mr. Garrison?"
"What a very disagreeable ghost," muttered Gates, remembering that ghosts are harmless.
Mrs. Gloame led the unruly Godfrey up to the table and, in a delightfully old-fashioned way, introduced the two gentlemen.
"Mr. Garrison is the brother of my successor, the present mistress of Gloaming," she said.
"And a devilish pretty woman, too. I've seen her frequently. By the way, I stopped in her bedchamber as I came through. But that's neither here or there. What are you doing here with this young whipper-snapper, Beatrice?"
"Let me explain, Mr. Gloame," began Gates hastily.
"I desire no explanation from you, sah," interposed Godfrey, towering with dignity. "You would explain just as all men do under like circumstances. Beatrice, I demand satisfaction."
"Be rational, Godfrey, for once in your life. It is beneath my dignity to respond to your insult," said Mrs. Gloame proudly.
"Good for you, Mrs. Gloame," cried Garrison approvingly. "You would be a bully actress."
"Sah, you insult my wife by that remark," roared Godfrey Gloame, and this time the sword was unsheathed.
"Oh, I'm not afraid of you, old chap," said Gates bravely. "You're nothing but wind, you know. Be calm and have a chair by the fire. Your wife says you have chills."
"I do not require an invitation to sit down in my own house, sah. I am Godfrey Gloame, sah, of Gloaming, sah."
"You mean you were—you are now his shade," said Gates. "Ah, that's the word I've been trying to think of—shade! You are shades—that's it—shades, not ghosts. Yes, Mr. Gloame, I've heard all about your taking off and I am sure that you were a bit too hasty. You had no license to be jealous of your wife—she assures me of it, and from what I've seen of her I'd be willing to believe anything she says."
"Ah, too true, too true! I always was and always will be a fool. It was she who should have slain me. Will you ever forgive me, Beatrice, forgive me fully?" said Godfrey, in deep penitence.
"I can forgive everything but the fact that you were so shockingly drunk the night you killed us," said she, taking his hands in hers.
"Oh, that was an awful spree! My head aches to think of it."
"It was not the murder I condemn so much as the condition you were in when you did it," she complained. "Mr. Garrison, you do not know how humiliating it is to be killed by a man who is too drunk to know where the jugular vein is located. My neck was slashed—oh, shockingly!"
"Yes, my dear sah, if I must admit it, I did it in a most bungling mannah," admitted her husband. "Usually I am very careful in matters of importance, and I am only able to attribute the really indecent butchery to the last few sups I took from General Bannard's demijohn. My hand was very unsteady, wasn't it, dearest?"
"Miserably so. See, Mr. Garrison, on my neck you can see the five scars, indications of his ruthlessness. One stroke should have been sufficient, a doctor told me afterwards. This one, the last,—do you see it? Well, it was the only capable stroke of them all. Just think of having to go through eternity with these awful scars on my neck. And it was beautiful, too, wasn't it, Godfrey?"
Garrison thought it must have been the prettiest neck ever given to woman.
"Divine!" cried Mr. Gloame warmly. "My dear sah, there never lived a woman who had the arms, the neck, and shoulders that my wife possessed. I speak reservedly, too, sah, for since my demise I have seen thousands. A shade has some privileges, you know."
"Godfrey Gloame!" cried his wife, suspiciously. "What have you been doing? Have you been snooping into the privacy of—"
"Now, my dear girl, do not be too hasty in your conclusions. You'll observe, Mr. Garrison, that I am not the only jealous one. I have merely seen some shoulders. Very ordinary ones, too, I'll say. Oh, I am again reminded that I want an explanation for your damnably improper conduct tonight, madam. This thing of meeting a man here at twelve o'clock is—"
"Goodness!" cried Mrs. Gloame anxiously. "It is not twelve, is it! I must hasten away by a quarter after twelve."
"It lacks considerable of that hour," said Gates. Turning to Godfrey Gloame, who was leaning against the mantel, he went on to explain: "You see, sir, I was reading here and your wife dropped in—blew in, I might say—all without my knowledge, very much as you did. She had had no invitation, we had made no date—I mean arrangement—and I was paralysed at first. Your wife is a perfect stranger to me. There is a disparity in our ages that ought to protect her. I am twenty-four and she is at least a hundred and fifty."
"Sir! I am but twenty-five!" exclaimed Mrs. Gloame indignantly.
"Madam, I must remind you that you have a great-great-grandson in Colonel Gloame the present, who, by the way, is very proud of his ancestry. But pardon my jesting, please. Would you like a little brandy or a glass of wine? It is a cold night, even for shades. Let me prepare a toddy—it won't take a minute, and I know how to get up a cracker-jack. New thing in all of the New York clubs."
After a moment of indecision the two Gloames sank into chairs beside the table. Godfrey waved his hand pleasantly, courteously, to the young New Yorker.
"My dear sah," he said, "your explanation of this rather unaccountable situation is entirely acceptable. I see the position clearly, just as it is, and I humbly apologise for afflicting you with an insinuation. Beatrice, I crave your forgiveness again. Your proffer of the toddy, Mr. Garrison, is timely and I should be happy to place my approval upon your particular concoction."
"Godfrey," cried his wife in distress, "you swore you would never drink another drop."
"But this shall be the last," he pleaded, "so help me—so help me—Moses."
Garrison set to work with the Colonel's decanters, concocting a brew over the spirit lamp, the two wraiths looking on in silent admiration.
"How like you Mr. Garrison is, Godfrey," said Mrs. Gloame.
"Except the water, my dear," agreed Godfrey, taking it for granted that she referred to his ability to mix drinks. "Do you use the water to cleanse the goblet, Mr. Garrison?"
"Chief ingredient, Mr. Gloame," explained Gates, and Godfrey's heart sank heavily.
"By the way, have a cigarette while I am busy with this."
He tossed his cigarette case to Godfrey, who inspected it and the contents curiously.
"Are they to smoke, sah?"
"Certainly, light up, if Mrs. Gloame doesn't object."
"It used to be we had nothing but tobacco to smoke," said Godfrey Gloame, lighting a cigarette from a coal in the grate.
"Will it make him ill?" asked Mrs. Gloame. "He has a very frail stomach."
"I think the smoke will mix very nicely with his stomach," said Gates. "For want of something better to say, I'll ask you how you spent the summer."
"For my part, I stayed at home with the old complaint: nothing to wear," said Mrs. Gloame. "I am curious to know where my husband was, however."
"Well, I didn't need anything to wear," said he, naively. "My summer was spent a long way from heaven, and I have just this much to say to you mortals: you did not know what you were talking about when you said that the past summer was hotter than—excuse me, Beatrice; I almost uttered a word that I never use in the presence of a lady."
"You don't mean to say you have gone to—to—oh, you poor boy!" cried Mrs. Gloame, throwing her arms about her husband's neck.
"Not yet, dearest," said Godfrey consolingly. "I was merely spending a season with an old friend, Harry Heminway. He asked about you and I told him you were so far above him that he ought to be ashamed to utter your name. Ah, Mr. Garrison has finished the toddy."
Garrison ceremoniously filled the goblets and handed them to his guests. Godfrey Gloame arose grandly, holding his glass aloft.
"Well, Mr. Garrison," he said, "I can only say to you that I am glad to have met you and that I am sincerely sorry we have not been friends before. You have given us a very pleasant evening, quite unexpectedly, and I drink to your very good health." "Hold, sir!" cried Gates. "I am sure you will allow me to suggest an amendment. Let us drink to the everlasting joy of the fair woman who is your wife. May her shadow never grow less."
"Thank you," said she, "I bid you drink, gentlemen, and share the joy with me. Ah!" as she set the goblet down, "that is delicious."
"Superb!" cried her husband. "My dear sah, it thrills me, it sends a warmth through me that I have not experienced in a hundred and thirty-five years. How long do you expect to remain at Gloaming?"
"One week longer."
"I shall come again if you will but prepare another like this."
"You swore that this would be your last, Godfrey; are you as vacillating as ever!" cried his wife.
"I—oh, dearest, a few of these won't hurt me—you know they won't," came earnestly from the other wraith.
"If you touch another I shall despise you forever and forever," she cried firmly. "Take your choice, Godfrey Gloame."
"It's plain that I am doomed to eternal punishment, whichever way you put it," mourned poor Godfrey. "Take away the glasses, Mr. Garrison. I'll no more of it if my wife so disposes."
"Noble fellow," said Gates. "Have another cigarette!"
"Stay! I have heard that they are worse than liquor," objected Mrs. Gloame.
"I don't know but you are right," supplemented Gates.
"But I must have some sort of a vice, dear," pleaded poor Godfrey.
"Vice may be fashionable on earth, but if that's the case it was fashion that ruined us, you'll remember, Godfrey," she reminded him.
"That's worth thinking about," mused Garrison. "There is something deep in that observation. You spooks are—"
"'Spooks!" cried the Gloames, arising in deep resentment.
"I mean shades," apologised Gates. "You do say—"
"Pardon me," interrupted Godfrey, nervously, "but can you tell me what time it is?"
"Ten minutes after twelve, sir." "Oh, we must be going," cried Mrs. Gloame.
"What's the rush?" demanded Gates.
"We cannot stay out after twelve-fifteen, sah. We get an extra fifteen minutes on Christmas Eve, you know," explained Godfrey.
"We are led to believe that you stay out till the cock crows," said Gates.
"Oh, these absurd superstitions," cried Mrs. Gloame merrily. "How ignorant the people are. Are you going my way, Godfrey?"
"Yes, dear, and I care not what the direction may be. Good-night, Mr. Garrison."
"Good-night," added the beautiful Mrs. Gloame, "and a Merry Christmas. I sincerely hope we have not annoyed you."