That drive was not a happy experience for the unfortunate horse. Urged to his utmost speed, over endless miles of dusty way, in the heat and glare of an August afternoon, Ralph suffered him not to flag, though his sides were wet with foam and his ears drooped with fatigue. Heedless of all else, Ralph strove to escape or outstrip the dull oppression that had fallen on his spirit, the dismay which, like a shadow, stood by his shoulder and at his ear, whispering in the rushing river's voice, and pointing him to the shimmer of waters closing on the swimmer's head, turn his eyes whithersoever he might. Martha sat pensively and silent by his side. In his miserable pre-occupation he forgot her presence, and spoke to her not a word, bent on urging the horse forward, in feverish merciless impatience.
"Ralph!" Martha cried at last in genuine alarm. She had known him in feverish moods before, which violent motion and exertion had been able to relieve, but she never before had seen him act and look as now. She feared for his sanity, and kept silence while she could, trusting to his out-wearing the fit; but in time it seemed to her that their lives were in danger, they were liable to be thrown out at any moment, and succour was miles away. "Ralph!" and she laid her hand on his sleeve. "Where are you going? Where do you want to take us? You will break down the horse and throw us out upon the road, if you do not mind. Look at him!--he seems fit to drop."
Ralph started, and but for his wife the reins would have slipped from his hand. He was like one awakened from a horrid dream, roused to what is going on around him. He checked the horse, brought him to a walk, and shortly stopped. The relief he experienced at the moment he was disturbed was inexpressible, he could have laughed and babbled with delight; but then, too quickly, he recollected. There was something to conceal as well as to forget; he must guard his every word and movement. By-and-by unheeded incidents might be re-called, and pieced together into a web of circumstantial evidence from which it would be impossible to escape. He must command himself.
"It's the heat, Martha, the heat. My head has been turning round all day. Wonder if I can have had a slight sunstroke? It was well you spoke; I must have been asleep--sleeping with my eyes open, and driving like mad. Poor Catchfly! I've nearly killed him. What will Gerald say to me for ruining his nag? Too bad! Really I did not know what I was doing. You should have spoken an hour ago, Martha."
"How could I, Ralph? You have not spoken a word since we came out. I did not know what might be the matter. It was only when Catchfly began to look as if he must drop, and the road got stony, and I saw the gravel pits by the wayside, that I began to fear for our necks and spoke. Where are you going? Where are we?"
"I do not know where we are. As to where I am going, it can only beback again, if we can find the way."
"We must 'light then, and give the poor beast an hour or two's rest, at any rate. See how used up he is! It will be no wonder if he goes lame; and see, he has lost a shoe!"
"We must get out of this sun-beaten road, at any rate, into the shade. There is a grove by the road-side, a mile on the way back. See it? A sugar-bush[1]it looks like from here. There must be a homestead not far from it. We may hire a fresh horse there, perhaps, and let them bring home Catchfly to-morrow."
In time the sugar-bush was reached, and by-and-by, the farmer's house. The way seemed long, they traversed it so slowly, for Catchfly fell lame as he began to cool; and they had to alight and lead him ere the end.
In consideration of money paid, the farmer complied with their wishes. Catchfly was liberated from the shafts, and another horse took his place--a horse which had toiled all day in the turnip field, and at his best was not remarkable for speed. They were condemned to sit up helplessly behind, while this patient beast trudged wearily along the road. The day waned into twilight, and Martha's patience died out with the light.
"Say! Ralph, you can go home and have your dinner. I've had enough of buggy-riding for one day. Let me out here, at Miss Stanley's gate, she'll give me a cup of tea. After dinner you can send up Gerald to bring me home."
"I don't feel hungry either," answered Ralph. "It will be dull without you. I'll go in, too, and bring you home myself by-and-by."
The ladies were sitting in the dusk without candles. Penelope drowsed over some knitting by the window, while Matilda and Muriel played old duets from memory; the former seemingly without much interest or attention, though she still kept on playing, notwithstanding Muriel's frequent exclamations that she had gone astray. The window was darkened for an instant, but the music still went on, hurrying just a little, perhaps, to reach its close. It was only a lady who had come and sat down by Penelope, speaking softly, as if unwilling to interrupt. And then, through the other window there entered a man, the dark outline of whose figure alone was seen against the dimly-lighted garden, and the music ceased, for Matilda had risen.
"Mr. Considine--at last. And we have been looking for you since two o'clock. The horses harnessed, lunch baskets packed, everything ready. What an apology you have got to make us! I really do not think Penelope can bring herself to forgive you, whatever you say."
Ralph gasped and started, stopped short, looked wildly behind him, and catching hold of a chair to steady himself, dropped into it in a momentary palsy of fright.
"Mr. Herkimer!" Matilda corrected herself, "What a ridiculous mistake!" and she coloured, perhaps, but it was growing dark, and no inquisitive eye was near. "You seem quite faint with the heat. Muriel, get him some wine and water. And Martha! I did not observe you come in. Mr. Herkimer seems quite poorly."
"He has been out of sorts all day. Biliousness and the heat combined. No! You did not observeme. It was impossible to mistakemyshadow for Considine's."
Ralph started and stamped his foot. That man's name again; andhestriving so strenuously to forget!
"Are you worse? Ralph," asked Martha, noticing his movement. "I wonder, Matilda, you should mistake Ralph for Considine. They are both men, that is all the resemblance I can see between them." And Martha smiled.
"We expected Mr. Considine, that is all. We have been looking for him since two o'clock. He has not come, and he has not sent. I never knew him serve us so before. He is so very particular in general."
"I should think so. Depend upon it there is some good reason, or a message has miscarried."
Ralph writhed. Whywouldthey speak of the man? It seemed as if they could speak of no one else. And yet they did not know, and they must not know. Nobody must know; and he must exert a vigorous control upon himself. How was it that control should be needed at all? What weakness was this that had fallen on him? He did not understand it. About a man already dead--done with; non-existent; wiped like a cipher from a slate--vanished and disappeared?
The wooded islands which closed the river view from St. Euphrase, shut out from sight the homestead of Farmer Belmore lower down the stream. Only the unreclaimed outskirts of his land could be seen from the village, repeating the shaggy bush of the islands upon the farther shore, and carrying it backward and upward to the sky line. A dense umbrageous bush it was, containing much choice timber, a resort of game, and also, in the warm weather, of tramps, at times, and specimens of the rougher dwellers in the city, who sought in its leafy recesses temporary change of abode, to the loss of neighbouring gardens and hen-roosts. The farmer, however, was safe while the depredators dwelt upon his land, by tacit understanding; and therefore he made a point of closing his eyes, and never was cognizant of their presence.
At this moment a gang of gypsies[2]were encamped in Belmore's bush. Their waggons, tents, and children had lain there for a week or two, while the men scoured the surrounding country, selling horses, and picking them up, the screws in honest trade, the others as might happen: for strays were certainly not unfrequent about the time of their visits, though none were ever traced into their hands, which is not remarkable, as who would look for a Canadian colt in New York State, or a New York one in Ohio or Kentucky?
These people, like other European products transported to America, have thriven luxuriantly. They have ceased to be tinkers, though fortune-telling is still practised by the women; their donkeys have been exchanged for waggons and horses, and they traverse the settled States from the Gulf of Mexico to the St. Lawrence, following the warm weather northward, as the red-birds and wild canaries do, and returning South again when summer is over, in time to avoid the cold. Their native love of wandering finds a wider range in their new country, and they are comparatively wealthy, though still, as ever, they live in the open air and apart from their fellow men.
The morning fires were alight in the gypsy camp near the river bank. The meal was over, but the children and the dogs still brawled and scrambled for the scraps. The women, and such young men as were not away, had dispersed themselves along the woody banks to fish or bathe; and old Jess, the mother of the gang, sat smoking her corn-cob pipe upon a fallen pine which stretched far out, dabbing its humbled plumage in the current, and raising murmurs for its downfall in the lapping of the water among its boughs. Jess sat and smoked in the pleasant morning air, so full of warmth and sunshine and gentle sound, watching the smoke-rings vanish into air and thinking the passive unconscious thoughts of physical well-being, the thoughts which want no words because they call for no expression. The ox knows them, ruminating in his meadow; and mankind, innocent of printed lore, and under no stress to act or say, must know them too, in their harmonious vagueness, bringing the luxury and refreshment of perfect sleep, without the diminishment of sleep's unconsciousness.
The even movement of the glancing water called up in a day-dream the images of bygone things--her childhood and youth in England, her voyage across the sea, her husband and her sons; and then her husband's death, as he was fording Licken River in a freshet, riding an unruly horse. The current before her seemed to swell and darken and grow turbid as she recalled the affrighted beast plunging and floundering through the swirling flood, swerve suddenly aside, losing his footing, and roll over, disappearing in a vortex, and by-and-by emerge alone and struggle up the bank. It was a long time since it all had happened; the very recollection had ceased to be present in her daily life, with its cares and enjoyments so completely of the present--the affairs of her numerous descendants and their hangers-on, over whom she would fain retain authority as much as might be; and its equivalent, the money, in her own hands.
This morning it felt different, the long ago seemed more actual than the present as she sat and smoked, her grizzled hair hanging in wisps upon her shoulders, and her sun-bonnet of yellow gingham pushed back upon her head. A something in the water, surging up through the surface and sinking again, leaving rings upon the current coming down, caught her eye as she sat gazing up stream. It might only be a log, but yet, how it carried back her thoughts to her old man hurried down on that Licken freshet into the muddy Ohio, and rolling on and on for hundreds of miles through the yellow oozy water, till the body stuck fast in a clay-bank and was hid for ever. It might be a log; but no, it was not, for now she saw white hair, which spread and shrank again, as it sank and rose in the water. A horse, was it? or an ox, with a hide worth stripping off to sell? but no--it was a man! She could see it plainly now, as it drifted near, and she felt the thud as it struck against the branches of her tree, branches which caught it and blocked its forward course. A man! and still alive, perhaps, for there was a redness as from oozing blood around. She threw her pipe away, and shouting to those within hail, she leaped into the water and waded out with the assistance of her tree. A youth had hurried to her aid, the water did not reach above his chest, and their united efforts drew the body ashore.
"A fine clean-limbed man," sighed Jess, comparing him with her own old man, whom partial hap, alas, had carried away for ever. "A fine strapping man, but never so spry as thy own grandfer. Will.He wasthe man, but he's away; let's see to this coon. Hm----" a smothered exclamation, and a suspicious glance at Will, to see if he had observed her pull a diamond ring from the drowned man's finger; but Will's attention was drawn to something else at the moment.
"He ain't come by's end fair, granny," he said; "see to the blood on's back--running still, by gum! The man maybe ain't dead, granny."
Granny slipped the ring into her mouth for safety, till she should find leisure and privacy to conceal it elsewhere, and then resumed her interest in the drowned man.
"Runnin' sure, the blood is, Will. And shot he's been. I heard the crack of a gun up stream the now, I reckon, but I gave no heed. Lay down his head, lad, and lift his feet. Help shake the water out of him, and roll him round. There was none by to roll thy poor grandfer the day he fell in Licken River. Never fear to hurt him, lad! The man can't feel, and more's the pity. Shake him well and roll him round, keep down his head, and let the filthy water run off his stommick." There was little of that same fluid ever privileged to enter Jess's anatomy, or, indeed to come near her person, save in the inevitable form of rain or a fordable stream.
It was a rough and uncouth process of resuscitation, in which the others, as they gathered about, joined with energy, chafing the limbs, rubbing, rolling, and kneading; but fortunately for himself Considine was unconscious of the liberties which the gypsies were taking with his person; a brown skinned black-eyed rabble, pawing, and pulling, and fingering him all over, without diffidence or any respect.
The warm sun and the vigorous handling had their effect at last, a sigh escaped from the inactive chest, and by-and-by another, and then old Jess had him carried into the bush and laid on her own bed in one of the waggons, where she practised such surgery as she knew in the way of binding up his wound, poured a quantity of whisky down his throat, and left him to sleep.
Just then some of the gypsies, who had come on the boat lying grounded among the weedy shallows round the island, brought it ashore; and Considine's towels and clothing were appropriated and divided among the gang, who then pushed the boat back into the stream and let it drift. When this was done, the camp sank back into rest and leisure. The people wandered off into the bush, to spend the summer day as liked them best, some to stretch themselves in the shadow, others to bask in the sun, while the children picked berries or snared birds, a happy and unsophisticated crew, till the lengthening shadows of afternoon warned the women to prepare supper against the return of their men.
The men returned earlier than was expected. A shrill whistle rang through the bush as they appeared, which brought in the stragglers from every direction to hover round the fire and snuff in expectancy the savoury odours which issued from the bubbling pots.
Reuben, the chief man, led Jess aside, muttering to her a rambling story of his troubles during the day, which she listened to with impatience and disgust.
"As usual, Reuben, al'us getting in a row along of them strays you pick up and let join us. Thou'lt have the hull country raised agin us ere long, and we shan't know whar to go--us as were so well liked every whar a while back."
"It was yourself let him wive with Sall, mother; and you've no call to cast it up to me. A fine thing it would have been to let the pore wench go off with her lad, all alone; and her the handiest gal to tell a fortn' 'twixt here and Allegany. Needs must when the devil drives, so we let the coon stay. And there's no harm in the lad as I kin see, 'cep' that he's kind o' soft like, and not peart. He's cl'ar off the now, and he's makin' for the Lines, but, like's not, they'll be down here the morrow to look for him, and there's a many thing's round this camp as wuddn't be good for sheriff's men to see. We mun cl'ar out, mother; cl'ar out the night."
"I have a half-drownded man in the waggon wi' me, lad--I pulled him out o' th' water myself, for the love o' your old dad as is drownded and gone this many a year--and what am I to do with 'n, think you?"
"Let him slide. Put him back whar you brought 'n from. I wants no stranger wi 's this night."
"We cud not leave him here for the sheriff to find. They'd say we did for him. He has a gunshot in's body as it is, and I hain't a rag to cover him wi' when we leave him. You'd not be for givin' him your own coat, I reckon, and I know of nowt else, for I need my blanket to keep my own old bones warm o' nights. The lads have his pants, and boots, and things among them, the gals have the shirt and the towels, and I have the gold ticker for yourself, Reuben, and you wouldn't be for hanging it round's neck, I reckon, to show we didn't rob him, if we tote him to Belmore's place afore we start."
Reuben took the watch, opened it, held it to his ear, bit the chain with his teeth, tested it in such ways as occurred to him, and finally, satisfied of its value, slipped it into his pocket.
"We'll have to take him, I s'pose. Keep him quiet, and keep the duds away from him. He'll be bound to stay then, cuddn't make off ye know wi' nothin' but's own pelt on's back. He'll kin pay for's liberty and new duds afore long. And willin' too. But you'll have to keep dark."
There was no light in the gypsy camp that night. The fires had smouldered out, and the shadows of the trees excluded every glance of the moonlight. There was no sound either; no yelp of cur or cry of wakeful infant; only the hooting of a solitary owl overhead, blinking at the moon through the leaves, or the rustle of a fox stealing away through the underbush, making off with a half-picked bone. A mile away a creaking of wheels labouring through deep encumbered ruts, and the cracking of branches might have been heard in the stillness, while dusky figures shone momentarily in the moonlight as they passed from one obscurity of shadow to the next.
Ere morning the gang was encamped again in another quiet corner, twenty miles distant from Belmore's bush, and next day they resumed their retreat to the Vermont Line, journeying calmly through a neighbourhood which knew nothing of the misdoings of Sall's husband.
Old Jess rode in the waggon with her charge, nursing and caring for him with much skill, but unable to extract the bullet from his wound. That was now growing fevered and inflamed, the jolting must have caused him pain, and might have elicited a groan liable to be overheard at an inconvenient moment; but she contrived to keep him in a drowse with strange drinks of her own devising, which she administered to him, and it was a whole day from the time of his rescue before he was able to take note of his situation. Even then his head was dizzy, his shoulder ached; his body was so wretched, and his mind so confused, that he was glad to turn round and court sleep and unconsciousness again.
It was a day or two before Ralph's nerves recovered their tone. It mortified him to discover that such things formed part of his internal economy, for he had supposed himself to resemble the strong and successful men of history and finance, who march straight forward to their purpose, looking neither behind nor to either side, careless alike of the downtrodden and the overthrown who mark their onward path, conquering and to conquer. It was a day or two before he calmed down, or, as his wife expressed it, "got over that little turn, which, now it was over, she was free to confess, had made her feel real anxious." The cares of business had been too much, she thought, and she was sure he wanted a change. "Why would he not take her for a few weeks to the sea; or to the White Mountains she was so fond of? Why keep a dog and be always barking himself? Had he not made Gerald a partner? Then why not leave him in charge of the business? She was sure her boy, with his inherited smartness and fine education, could manage very well for a week or two; and at the worst there was always the telegraph, and he could recall his father if he found the responsibility too much for him. Is he not a fine young man, Ralph? Own up for once, though he is your own son."
"Yes, my dear, certainly!--Very fine indeed, and very nice--and a good lad to boot; but he knows no more of my business than you do, and I do not wish that he ever should."
Martha sighed. She had her misgivings that there were depths and recesses in her husband's thoughts and his affairs, which she had never sounded or peered into, and which might yield up skeletons and unwelcome truths to an over-inquisitive search. She had never attempted to know more than was disclosed, therein manifesting her wisdom. "Why should she, indeed?" as she asked herself. Ralph had always been kind; once upon a time, at least, he had been more, he had been really fond of her; and, for herself, she knew that she still loved him very dearly, and therefore it was wisdom to keep disturbing considerations out of sight. It is so always. There is much in life to make the moral perceptions jar. Good and evil are linked in such close relations--concurrent streams which occupy one channel amicably, and with mutual convenience, but without mingling--the wheat and tares growing up together, and both contributing to the luxuriance of the scene, however the strictly moral eye may disapprove. Still, Martha had her misgivings; or rather, if she would have heeded them, her intuitions. They started from the most trivial grounds, an inadvertent phrase, a laugh, or even a shrug of scorn, at something good or noble, which betrayed that there were things, and not so far either from the gates of speech, which, if they came forth, would raise a barrier between them which could never be pulled down; and so, as the guardian of her own happiness and peace, she resolutely turned her observation the other way, rather than see what it would cost her far too dear to know, as leading to an alienation worse than widowhood; for there could be mingled with it no tender regret, no hope, or even wish for reunion.
"Then is Gerald to have no holidays this year?" said Martha, by way of resuming the talk. "If you will not go away yourself you may surely sendhim."
"I don't think he wants to travel farther
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was finished. No, sir-ree! Not if I know it."
"But, my dear fellow, I really do not know whom you are talking about. I assure you. I have not seen or heard of him since the other evening when we called on him together."
"Whohasseen him since then, I should like to know? But it is clear you know well enough what I'm driving at. Now, tell me, for we have little time to act in, have you taken any steps towards getting hold of his papers yet?"
"What steps would you wish me to take? or rather, what steps would be possible? Podevin--his host, remember, and the man has no one belonging to him, or more nearly interested in him, in this country--thinks he must have gone to New York by the early train the other morning; that he went straight from his room to the station without going into the hotel. You see the train stops for breakfast at that small station, fifty miles down the line. So he is no way disturbed at his guest's absence, who has taken his room for the season, and goes and comes as he likes."
"But the man is drowned! I saw him sink with my own eyes."
"If you will report that to the authorities, it will both simplify and hasten matters. Only the first question which they will ask is sure to be why you waited so many days before saying a word. The heat, no doubt, may be made to account for a good deal, but you had better have medical advice before committing yourself."
"But there is the boat. He undressed in the boat. That will tell the whole story. One of Podevin's boats, too."
"Ha! Yes; I think I remember, now you mention it, Randolph's telling us at dinner, yesterday, that Podevin's boat-house had been broken open and a boat carried off--yes, and the boat was picked up far down the river, and brought back all safe. And the old man has been fretting himself to make out which of his servants could have given it, for he is sure the boat-house has been opened from the inside. Not a word about clothes, though, and you see there is no anxiety whatever about his disappearance. We must wait. The body may be found."
"But I am going off--off to the White Mountains with my wife, for the rest of the warm weather, and there is no saying when I shall get back."
"No; I suppose not."
"And I want to take those securities, or whatever they are--you don't seem to know yourself? a pretty trustee!--along with me. Can I depend on you to send them after me?"
"Youshould know. Would you do it yourself?" and Jordan, braced into self-assertion by the overbearing tone of the other, looked defiantly in his face. "In a year and ten months from now your son will have a right to dictate, if, as Considine phrased it the other evening, he shall then prove to be the heir. In the meantime, I am accountable only to my fellow-trustee, and if he does not call me to account I know of no one else in the position to do so. At the same time, your assistance in unloading my copper shares might be of vast benefit to me, and I am willing to pay for that, and pay handsomely, though it is idle to discuss at present what I may see my way to doing if ever I become sole trustee."
Ralph turned away with a shrug to buy his morning newspaper. "Brag is a good dog, but Hold-fast is a better," was all he said to himself as he seated himself in the railway carriage, and began to look over the news. It was a truism he had long been familiar with, but one which came pleasanter when he happened to own Hold-fast, instead of poor Brag. However, one must fight the dog he happens to have, there are chances, always, only one need not lament when what might have been expected comes to pass. It did seem to him, however, that he had very needlessly befouled himself with crime; he was going to make nothing out of it, that was pretty clear, and, as he cynically expressed it, the devil was picking him up a bargain, dirt cheap. His hide, however--his moral hide, that is--was tough and callous, and he congratulated himself on the circumstance. So long as the "untoward incident" was not known, it should not interfere with his appetite or his spirits. Already he had become accustomed to that ugly word "murderer" in his mind; it was bearable he found, so long as it carried no external mark; though he regretted it, undoubtedly, now that it had turned out so utterly useless. As there was every prospect of its never being known, he would survive it well enough, he felt; but he would take precious good care next time that there should be no mistake about thequid pro quo, before again running the risk of so many ugly possibilities.
He reached town busied with these reflections, and hurried to his office, where he soon was deep in the correspondence of the days he had been absent, with Stinson behind his chair contributing condensed verbal information by way of commentary as he went along.
"Yes, Stinson, you'll do," he said, when he had laid down the last letter. "You've been a good clerk, and an apt pupil. You have feathered your nest nicely, I make no doubt, and when the house goes up, as it must, in three weeks at the outside--I think I can keep it standing till then--you will be in a good position, no one better, to start for yourself; and, with what I have taught you, to make your fortune right off. You will be able to start at once, I say, but if you take the advice of an old friend--who has not been a bad friend to you either, though I say it--you will wait on here and wind up the business. The creditors will be only too glad to have you. In fact, there is no one else who ever will unravel things. You will, and can, make your own terms with them, I doubt not; and the only favour I have to ask of you is that you will do what you can to let that boy Gerald down easy, and get him his discharge as soon as possible. It is well for him now, that he should have been so unfit for business--financial business, I mean, or rather, perhaps, our special application of the science of finance. He would have done well in some steady, old-fashioned, respectable concern, I make no doubt, for he is not a fool; but he wants enterprise, vim, go, and he has too many scruples for a rising man. His mother, good woman, has spoiled his prospects for life in this walk; but, as he will probably be independent, perhaps it is best so. There's nothing like high-souled honour to keep a man's head up in the world--when he can afford it, that is--I never could, not till after my road was chosen, at least, when it would have been too late; so broad views in economics and morals were the only ones for me, and I fancy some of my admirers will find them to have been even broader than they thought, after I have cleared out, and they find their money scattered past picking up again. But this is digression, Stinson; never mindme, only keep the boy's name clean. It would break his spirit and kill his mother--the truest woman alive--if any reproach fell on him. Fling everything on me, I shall have so much to carry that a trifle more or less will make no matter. And, after all, when Pikes Peak and Montana comes up to par, I shall be back again with a pocketful of money big enough to make them all keep quiet. If anybody strong enough to carry on a lawsuit for years has a colourable claim, I can settle with him out of court; and as for the small fry, I shall snap my fingers at them, and they will think me a finer fellow than ever for being able to over-ride them. They're like dogs, they reverence the man who can hide them soundly. But I talk discursively this morning. Eh, Stinson? I hope you will impress upon the lad, what, indeed, is the fact, and what the books of the firm show conclusively, and that is, that thefirmis solvent--almost, that is; ninety-eight cents to the dollar they show, and there would be a surplus, if the firm's funds had not been diverted to my private operations, with which he has no concern, and which it would be casting a reflection on me for him now to touch. There is the Bank, the Copper Company, and the St. Lawrence and Hudson's Bay, in which he has absolutely no interest whatever. If the creditors of these come to him with representations, and claims of honour--I know how they will put it--asking him to promise a payment out of my uncle's fortune when he gets it, tell him from me, that I expect him as a good son to close his ears to every slanderous story, and to have nothing to do with those who tell it, and never to admit the possibility of such claims having a foundation, by attempting to settle them. It will not surprise me much if that inheritance of his turns out to be no great thing after all. It has not been in the most judicious keeping, and----But see, who is that at the door. Tell him, whoever he is, I am engaged, and can't see him. There are several drawers full of papers in the safe--the accumulation of years--I shall need your memory to help me, perhaps. We will tackle them to-day in case of accidents."
"Engaged most particularly," cried Stinson, unbolting the door and holding it ajar. "Can see nobody, Mr. Jordan. Indeed, sir--you cannot come in--no, indeed!"
"Stand back, you fool. Don't I tell you I must?" and Jordan, looking red and white in patches, hot and cold at once, his hat on his head askew, and his waistcoat torn open, struggled in, pushing Stinson aside, closing the door again, and locking it himself.
"See here! Herkimer. Haveyoubeen served with this?--I have got one as solicitor, but you as president should be served also, and so should each individual director, I hold, and I mean to push the point as to their being served individually; but there can be no question about the necessity of serving the president."
"What is it? Let me see. Hm! Webb v. St. Euphrase Mining Association. Motion to show cause--pay dividend. Don't know, I'm sure. It may be in the outer office. Have been busy this morning--let nobody in but you--and that was only because Stinson failed to keep you out. Ask in the office as you go out, they will tell you--if you think it of consequence."
"Consequence? If they have not served you I can certainly get the hearing postponed, and secure time to unload."
"Time to unload? Who wants to unload?Idon't. I unloaded long ago."
"ButIdo."
"And pray, Mr. Jordan, what of that?Youare not a director of this company--only the solicitor, its paid professional adviser. Send in your bill, it will be filed with the rest of the claims, and rank as the law prescribes when we go into liquidation."
"Good God! Ralph. It will ruin me!" Jordan had grown all white now, and beads of moisture were standing on his forehead. "Wemuststave off this argument in court. The shares will be unsaleable at a cent in the dollar. As it is, my brokers have been able to get off none for three days back--some inkling of this, no doubt. But if I can stave off the argument in court for a fortnight, there will be time for us to circulate encouraging rumours."
"Us?What have I to do with it? I will have no hand in circulating false reports. Understand that clearly, Mr. Jordan. I wonder what I can have done"--turning to Stinson, who stood by the door enjoying the comedy--"to give any one the right to approach me with such a proposal," and he blew his nose loudly, grinning the while under cover of his pocket-handkerchief.
"Do you want to ruin me, Herkimer? I have all the shares I ever took up still on my hands, not only those I subscribed for, but all Rouget's, and I was to have given him up his mortgage in payment of them; but I had already realized that, and bought more of your infernal shares with the money; and now, the fat's in the fire! If I can't unload I am a ruined and a dishonoured man. Everything I have will go, and then the Law Society will come down on me for irregularities, when I have lost the ability to square the benchers, and I shall be disbarred. Ralph!" and he clasped his hands, "I shall be ruined if you do not help me at this pinch. You must!"
"I don't seem to see it. I fear it is impossible. Unfortunate, of course; but just what happens constantly, when a man leaves the groove of his own profession, and ventures into fields of enterprise he does not understand, and has no experience in. You lawyers are so very superior to the rest of us. You go into court and talk so glibly of our affairs, and so much more knowingly than we can do ourselves, that by-and-by you persuade yourselves that you really understand them. Then you try a hand at them yourselves, and then you cut your fingers. It is droll, my dear fellow. Forgive my saying so, but as a man of the world you must see it yourself; and if only it had been some one else you would have appreciated the humour of the situation thoroughly."
"Keep your jesting, Mr. Herkimer, for a more seemly opportunity," cried Jordan, rallying into something like manhood under the sting of the other's gibes. "It will prove no very amusing jest for yourself if I am ruined. Your son's inheritance is involved with my fortune, and both must sink or swim together. Remember that! I have something inmypower, too, so beware!"
"I know. You seem to have forgotten our conversation this morning very quickly. You then defined your position with a frankness which left nothing more to say. You made it perfectly clear that you would never leave hold on my uncle's fortune till we compelled you, and we cannot do that at present. If you saved your money at the present pinch, you would lose it again next opportunity; or, at least, you would make sure that we should not get at it. No! Mr. Jordan. I shall put in no rejoinder, or whatever may be the proper name for it. Mr. Webb may have his order, and welcome, for any obstruction from me. In fact, as I am taking my wife on a tour through the White Mountains, it would be inconvenient for me to be detained watching a lawsuit. If I might suggest, change of scene will be beneficial to your own health, as a relief from the worries of share-jobbing. Meanwhile, let me wish you good-bye. No saying how long it may be before we meet again. Stinson! Let's get on with those papers. I think I may be able to get away to the White Mountains to-morrow."
The very next morning Martha, escorted by Ralph, set out on a journey of pleasure through the White Mountains; and a day or two later, Amelia Jordan, tantalized out of patience by her husband's continued procrastination as to their summer holiday, went off to Long Branch alone, and it was not many days later that Jordan himself did not appear at his office, though where he had gone nobody knew. Some said he had followed his wife to the fashionable seaside resort, others, that he had joined Herkimer in his travels. The latter view became the popular one; it kept the two names conjoined, which seemed best, they came up together so often now in the talk on 'Change; for the great house in the Rue des Borgnes--Ralph Herkimer & Son--had come down, and great was the fall of it, the Banque Sangsue Prêteuse was involved in the ruin, so was the Mining Association of St. Euphrase, and so were other important concerns. They had all tumbled together in one confusion of ruin which set the ears of the public ringing, and filled their eyes with so much dust that they could see nothing clearly; but Jordan having been heard to anathematize "that fellow Webb," it was universally held during the worst days of the excitement that he had originated or precipitated the calamity for his own base ends. In truth, Webb was one of the severest sufferers, his fellow-directors having taken the hint to save themselves in time, and even to make money out of it; while he, good man, found all his savings and all his ready money evaporated in smoke or converted into scrip fit for nothing but pipe-lights, with impending possibilities of litigation, should any victimized shareholder be tempted to throw good money after bad and relieve his indignation with a lawsuit. But then he had the high moral satisfaction of having vindicated his superior probity in his own eyes--the world's, I fear, were so busy with its own affairs that they took no heed. He lay down at night with an easy conscience and a light pocket, if sometimes a heavy heart, for it must be confessed that his neighbours' non-appreciation of his virtuous conduct was afflicting. But he was young still, and strong, and sanguine, and his farm and stock were fairly good. He would make money yet, he vowed, if only Providence would spare him in the land of the living; and that--money-making, I mean--is, as all the world knows, the whole duty of man.
Webb realized, however, that he must now have a woman in his household, to help him to make it quickly; not a hireling, as heretofore, in his days of bachelorhood and prosperity, to be courted and considered at every turn, lest she should go off and leave him, but a lawful wife; tied to his homestead by the institutions of God and man, to churn his butter, fatten his poultry, and look after his comfort; and do it, too, for life, without other wage than her keep, and the dignity of being a married woman.
He had had dreams, like other young men, of a being with golden hair and wonderful eyes, a human bird of paradise, for whom he was to build a delightful bower, and live happy with her in it for ever after; but the day for fantastic dreaming was gone by; birds of paradise are expensive, and he had no money. He must content himself with less, with a serviceable work-a-day barn-door fowl, content to roost anywhere, and for whom a nest of wholesome straw would be as meet as a gilded aviary for the other--and such a one rose before his mind's eye in the person of Betsey Bunce. "A homely girl," as he told himself, "but active and handy, able to bake and mend, and willing to do it"--forhimat least, he flattered himself. She was "awful homely," he confessed as he mused; "and a fool about her clothes, but if he looked after the spendings, as he 'allowed' to do, he would have her dressed sensibly enough, he flattered himself, so soon as her wedding finery wore out."
He did not feel as if he could ever come to be foolishly fond of her, but he thought he had descried tokens that she was not indisposed to attach herself tohim. So there would be a certainmodicumof love to furnish out their board, and if it was not he who provided it, at least he would be its object, which was the next best thing, and as much, perhaps, as a man could look for, after losing his money. Wherefore he made up his mind, and the very next Sunday after church he put his resolve in practice.
Betsey was one of the last to come out of church on a Sunday morning now. She hung behind while her aunt lingered to exchange the news with her neighbours. Since the day when she had hastened to give the Misses Stanley "a bit of her mind," relative to Muriel's parentage and rearing, a something more than coldness had sprung up. Miss Matilda's words on that occasion had been few, but scorching, and the look of withering disgust, which accompanied them, had been more than even her obtuse conceit and forwardness could bear up against. She had not dared to face the ladies since, and, they being in the heart of the group of lingerers, Betsey felt constrained to remain outside the circle, a sort of martyr to the truth, ruminatmg in silence on the consequences of proclaiming it, at least when the proclamation is ill-timed or ill-natured.
The circle melted away in time, beginning with Muriel and Gerald Herkimer--who, in his bankruptcy and the absence of his family, partook of many dinners and a great deal of delightful sympathy at the ladies' residence--and ending with Penelope and Matilda, the latter of whom, though she exhibited fitful outbursts of vivacity, appeared depressed, and far from in good form. It was observed by those who saw them drive from the church door that, instead of taking the reins herself, she let the servant drive, quite contrary to her usual custom; but then Mr. Considine had been in the habit of returning with the ladies from church, and his presence at Matilda's elbow may have been necessary to give her confidence.
Betsey reached the open air at last, feeling unusually meek and chastened under the lack of notice she had been experiencing; and in the revulsion of feeling which ensued when Mr. Joe Webb stepped forward, and, after ceremoniously inquiring for her health, asked if she would not favour him with her company for a buggy-ride down the road, while her dinner was "dishing up" at home, it is not remarkable if she "enthused a little," to cull a flower of speech from the English column of theJournal de St. Euphrase.
"Oh! Thank you, Squire! that will be nice"--I fearbullywas the word she used, this sweet Western flower, but it means much the same thing, only a little more so.
"Then come along! In with you! And we'll be stepping," which was perhaps a more free-and-easy mode of address than Mr. Joe's wont, for he prided himself on his fine manners with the ladies; but he was trying to get up his courage by a little premature audacity for what was to follow.
Proposing matrimony in cold blood--did you ever try it, my reader?--is a serious matter, or so Joe Webb thought. His mind had been made up on the point, the night before; in the morning he saw no reason to change it, but he observed that the sky looked heavy. If it had drawn to rain he would not have been sorry, for he could, without loss of self-respect, have remained at home, and postponed his undertaking. The weather kept up however, and he went to church; but very few, I fear, were the prayers he joined in.
What he was intending to do would keep continually rising before his mind; not as it had done overnight in the comfortable after-phases, when My Lord Benedict should have entered on his domestic felicity, with slippers toasting inside the fender against his return from the field, pipes filled, and tobacco fetched, without his needing to leave the lounge where he reposed, but in the onerous stage of how to do it. What should he say? and how would she take it? Should he take her hand before beginning? It would be establishing a sort of hold upon her attention. But if she objected to that by an unauthorized individual?--yet the very objection would give the opening to explain, which he desired. Only--how about getting hold of the hand? It might be holding up her parasol. To snatch at it would bring down the article with a flap, which would frighten the horse! Weil, he did not mind that. He could quiethimwell enough with a cut of the whip. But how about the lady? How to quiether?The whip would not do there, yet a while; though later, he had been credibly informed that Blackstone authorizes such doings on the part of husbands, provided the stick be no thicker than their thumbs. But the lady might refuse to be reassured; she might insist on being let down, or worse, she might actually say. No. No! The word whistled through his mind like a gust of icy wind, it was so new and so unexpected an idea. He must feel tremulous, no doubt, till he should be answered "yes," but he could not bring himself to contemplate the opposite. It would be so utter a quencher to--well, if not to love forher, which was an eventuality he could contemplate with some tranquillity, at least to his self-love, which was too near his heart to be thought of without dismay. He would be, like a railway guard standing on the roof of a carriage, and sweeping through space at forty miles an hour, when unexpectedly there comes a bridge which he has not looked for, or bowed his head to in time, it catches him between the eyes with a blow irresistible and swift, which snuffs him out of existence, and casts him away, and leaves him a lifeless wreck upon the track.
Altogether Joe had not a happy or an edifying service of it that day in church. A man's own fancies can fret and worry him worse than the words of others, they hit all the raw places so much more surely. He hastened from the sacred fane with the very earliest to go, and stood and watched and waited till Betsey should appear among the other dispersing worshippers, she was long of appearing, and by-and-by he began to think, with a very distinct sense of relief, that she was not there and he must defer the task he had set himself to another day, when, behold! the very last to come out, she appeared; and, seizing himself by the collar, as it were, he marched himself into her presence, and solicited the honour of a drive. Betsey was gracious and compliant, and did not take long to mount into the buggy; he sprang in after, and away they went.
The pace was good; Joe kept fast cattle, and knew how to drive them; but the conversation flagged. How can a man with a purpose--so deadly to himself, at least--be at his ease, and alive to the trifles which lead up to untrammelled talk? How can he be otherwise than distraught? There is a purpose at his breast hanging heavy as lead, and he feels, poor creature, as though cold water were running down his neck. "Had it been a dance," he thought, "to which he was leading the girl out, it would have been different." The music and the rhythm and the motion of a waltz bring on a gentle enthusiasm, and the sense of support and protection conduce to the tenderness which a man should feel at such a moment; but this was only a buggy-ride; the two were perched up together behind a horse in heat and dust, and for the life of him he could not make up his mind what he ought to say. He had heard of fellows proposing in a buggy, but now when he tried it, it was not the place it was cracked up to be; and he sat in perturbed silence.
Betsey was at her ease, however; she suspected nothing, and she was elated at being borne off in a cloud of dust before the eyes of the women who had slighted and ignored her five minutes before. Some people it seemed--men people, too--thought her worthy of notice. She felt exultant, and she prattled. She wriggled, too, just a very little, which is scarcely dignified, perhaps, but comes natural to some people in moments of exuberance. She talked of the weather till some other subject should arise, like the rest of us who are born to speak English, but he answered nothing; and then she asked him if a shower would not do good to his turnips.
He answered "yes," to that, which is not an easy rejoinder to build the next observation upon; but then he was busy with his horse at the moment, for he hit him a cross cut with the whip, and twitched his nose and eyebrows impatiently. And then there was a lull, and silence disturbed only by the steady pounding of the horse's feet, and the rasping of a wheel against an occasional stone.
"We were so sorry to hear," Betsey said at last, after the silence had lasted some time, and was beginning to grow oppressive; "so very sorry to hear that you have lost money by those Herkimers. Do you remember, I told you the very last time we met what I thought of them, and that it was not much? But that warning came too late to benefit you, I suppose. Is it not absurd the way that young Gerald goes fooling around Muriel up the way? It is just what might be expected from a girl like her, who don't belong to anybody, for all her airs; but I confess I am sorry to see his infatuation, though perhaps it only serves the Herkimers right--the stuck-up lot. I always saw through them--insincere, and all show; though of course I would not have said it, on account of their relationship to Aunt Judy; but now, really, it seems downright wrong to hold one's tongue, and looks like countenancing their on-goins," and Betsey stopped to take breath.
Joe availed himself of the stoppage to take up his parable. "Yes, Miss Betsey," he said, "it is quite true. I have lost the savings of ten years, and all the ready money my father left. Quite true."
"Ah!" sighed Betsey very softly.
"But I'm to the fore still; and you just wait and see if I don't make some more--and more than I have beeneuchredout of."
"I like to hear a man speak like that! It sounds so strong and capable."
"Do you think you could like the man himself. Miss Betsey? Mind you, it ain't all talking with me! It's going to be real, hard, downright doing--livin' off what my own farm raises, and wearin' homespun off the backs of my own sheep, like ahabitant; freezing on to every copper cent I can scrape, and laying it all by. It will be a hard and a dull life for the first year or two; but it's a good farm, and well-stocked, and in three or four years' time, when I have bought a new reaper, and a few such tricks, and brought in another hundred acres of useless bush, with my own hard work and the hired boys, I believe things will be on the road to grow better than ever; for, though maybe you would not think it, I have thrown away a deal of money on nonsense in my time. But that's over now. What do you think of it yourself. Miss Betsey?"
Betsey turned and looked at him with opening eyes, and met a steadfast gaze more bewildering still, which made her drop them again, and look away. "Think? I think it sounds brave in you to speak like that. A man should never lose heart!"
"But it's yourself, I mean. Would you like it yourself?"
"If I were a man, that's how I'd like to be. I'd love to play the man so."
"But it ain't themanyou'd be expected to play. Miss Betsey. It would be thewife."
Betsey coloured and looked a little hurt. "It's too serious a subject to play with, Mr. Webb."
"But it ain't play. It's good, downright, honest earnest I mean."
"I don't understand you."
"Could you bring yourself to marry a fellow who has lost his money, and is hard up?"
"I don't know, Mr. Webb," she laughed uncomfortably, and a little inclined to take offence at such a catechism being pressed on her, while she sat helpless in the hurrying "trap." "It would depend altogether on who the 'fellow' was."
"It's me! Miss Betsey. Will you take me? I'm no great match for any girl now, I know that; butwillyou take me?"
"I don't like foolin' on such subjects, Mr. Webb; and it wasn't gentleman-like of you to bring me away in your buggy to talk like this." Her face was scarlet, as she said it, and looked in his; but there was no bantering smile there,--and a catch came in her throat, which sent the blood throbbing down to her finger-tips, as the idea crossed her mind that the man was in earnest. In that case, however, he would speak again, so she said no more.
"But this ain't foolin'. Miss Betsey, and I don't know what right you have to accuse me of sich. Did any one ever know me, man or boy, to tell a lie? I ask you plainly, Betsey Bunce, will you marry me?"
"Oh, laws! Joe Webb--I never--let me out here! I never--oh! you've took me all of a heap. Stop the buggy."
Joe drew rein, and stopped the equipage in the middle of the road, just where the shadow of a tall poplar by the wayside would shelter them from the sun; and there he sat, looking hot about the temples, and trying to settle his eyes on the tips of his horse's ears, because these could not return the look, while he dared not turn elsewhere for fear a mocking glance should meet him and complete his discomfiture, as he sat there awaiting his answer, feeling like a fool who has surrendered his shoulders to the smiters--a trapped animal awaiting the arrival of the hunters--the man who has put it in a girl's power to say she refused him. It was a moment of dread and suspense for Joe.
Betsey fanned herself vehemently--what a privilege a fan must be, sometimes. Since their stoppage she had become less eager to alight. She made no move, sat perfectly still, and let the perturbation of her spirits expend itself in fanning. She was coming to herself again. And, oh! so pleasantly. "What apussshe had been! And that--most wonderful of all--without suspecting it herself. And there he was on his knees before her! or what was just the same thing, perched at her elbow in infinite discomfort, looking all the colours of the rainbow in his misery." "And should she have him? that was the point. If she had snared him without knowing it, might there not be others sighing in secret?" She glanced at him over her fan--that precious fan!--glanced over it as the timid fawn does over a park paling, and then is off to hide its head in a bush when the keeper comes in sight. "And how handsome he was! and how foolish he looked, poor fellow, getting himself into a state about poor she! It was delightful. And he so broad-shouldered and manly! She could not find it in her heart to cause him pain--especially when he had made herself so--happy. And those old maids she had parted from at church, how she pitied them! How she should continue to pity them all the rest of her life--her married life!" She peeped over the fan again, and there was poor Joe fidgeting worse than ever--for all the world, like a bull at a bull-baiting--tied to the stake, unable to get away, amid fears and fancies at his own absurd position, like the yelping curs, which plague the noble brute. Then she glanced along the road. A cloud of dust was approaching, a waggon within it, for already she could hear the rattle of wheels and the clank of harness. Already Joe was rousing himself and gathering up his reins for a start. Time was up. If she let this opportunity pass, and allowed matters to fall back into everyday life, how would she ever bring them up again to this point? It was provoking, the dalliance was so pleasant, but she could not risk a slip; so, shutting her eyes, and shutting up her fan, she took the leap--and just in time, for the buggy was already in motion.
She said it very softly. What she said Joe could not hear for the noise of the wheels, very likely she did not know precisely herself what it was; but they both took it to mean consent, and Joe, so soon as that lumbering waggon was fairly past, stooped down and sealed it on her lips, as in duty bound.
Then there was a silence of some duration, though both were too busy with their own thoughts to notice it; till at length Joe remembered that the purpose of their expedition was fulfilled, and asked his companion if she did not think they had better return. Betsey was ready to think whatever her Joe thought, leaning up with an undesirable closeness that warm day, and softly fanning their joint countenances with a fond and lingering motion of her fan. In time she heaved a sigh, deep and full of overflowing enjoyment, and then she spoke.
"Do you know, Joe dear, you have given me a great surprise to-day?"
Joe's tight-strained feelings had run themselves down now. He felt--"tired in his inside," I fear, would have been his inelegant expression, and longed for a glass of beer. He felt incapable of conversation, and even a little grumpy, perhaps. Such strange and inconsistent creatures are the men.
Betsey's over-wroughtness was quite of another kind. Her nervous excitement, once fairly past the turn of the tide, was inclined, as Hamlet would have had his solid flesh incline, to "melt and dissolve itself into a dew"--of verbiage and watery talk. It was of a soliloquizing tendency, too, which, though prone to questionings, passed on from one to the next, indifferent to non-reply.
"This has been all a great surprise; I never thought that you really cared for me. Was it not strange?" and she looked up in his face grown stolid, and beginning to show unmistakable signs of crossness, and fanned him fondly, smiling into dimples, like the rapturous maidens in "Patience," when they enthral their poet with garlands.
"I thought it would have been the pretty Miss Savergne, you were so attentive to----"
"She would not marry a poor man, and a poor man, could not afford to marryher," and then Joe stopped. He would have liked to kick himself for an unmannerly brute; for alas! the soft impeachment was all too true. He coughed and spluttered. Fortunately, Betsey was too full of her own pleasant reflections to heed anything, but he felt he must get away and calm down, or something worse might escape him which would not pass unnoticed, so he pulled up by the road-side just on the outskirts of the village.
"Would you mind if I set you down here, Betsey? It is getting late. The calves should have been watered an hour ago, and Baptiste and Laurent are both away."
"To be sure, Joe! A farmer's wife must take an interest in the calves, and I mean to do my duty," and she sprang gaily out, and stood looking after the man and outfit as they trotted off, with a sense of proprietorship which was new and very pleasant.