When Sprowl galloped his sorrel mare across the bridge and up to the O’Hara house, he saw a man and a younggirl seated on the grass of the river-bank, under the shade of an enormous elm.
Sprowl dismounted heavily, and led his horse towards the couple under the elm. He recognized Munn in the thin, long-haired, full-bearded man who rose to face him; and he dropped the bridle from his hand, freeing the sorrel mare.
The two men regarded each other in silence; the mare strayed leisurely up-stream, cropping the fresh grass; the young girl turned her head towards Sprowl with a curious movement, as though listening, rather than looking.
“Mr. Munn, I believe,” said Sprowl, in a low voice.
“The Reverend Amasa Munn,” corrected the Prophet, quietly. “You are Peyster Sprowl.”
Sprowl turned and looked full at the girl on the grass. The shadow of her big straw hat fell across her eyes; she faced him intently.
Sprowl glanced at his mare, whistled, and turned squarely on his heel, walking slowly along the river-bank. The sorrel followed like a dog; presently Munn stood up and deliberately stalked off after Sprowl, rejoining that gentleman a few rods down the river-bank.
“Well,” said Sprowl, turning suddenly on Munn, “what are you doing here?”
From his lank height Munn’s eyes were nevertheless scarcely level with the eyes of the burly president.
“I’m here,” said Munn, “to sell the land.”
“I thought so,” said Sprowl, curtly. “How much?”
Munn picked a buttercup and bit off the stem. With the blossom between his teeth he surveyed the sky, the river, the forest, and then the features of Sprowl.
“How much?” asked Sprowl, impatiently.
Munn named a sum that staggered Sprowl, but Munn could perceive no tremor in the fat, blank face before him.
“And if we refuse?” suggested Sprowl.
Munn only looked at him.
Sprowl repeated the question.
“Well,” observed Munn, stroking his beard reflectively, “there’s that matter of the title.”
This time Sprowl went white to his fat ears. Munn merely glanced at him, then looked at the river.
“I will buy the title this time,” said Sprowl, hoarsely.
“You can’t,” said Munn.
A terrible shock struck through Sprowl; he saw through a mist; he laid his hand on a tree-trunk for support, mechanically facing Munn all the while.
“Can’t!” he repeated, with dry lips.
“No, you can’t buy it.”
“Why?”
“O’Hara’s daughter has it.”
“But—she will sell! Won’t she sell? Where is she?” burst out Sprowl.
“She won’t sell,” said Munn, studying the ghastly face of the president.
“You can make her sell,” said Sprowl. “What is your price?”
“I can’t make her sell the title to your club property,” said Munn. “She’ll sell this land here. Take it or leave it.”
“If I take it—willyouleave?” asked Sprowl, hoarsely.
Munn smiled, then nodded.
“And will that shut your mouth, you dirty scoundrel?” said Sprowl, gripping his riding-crop till his fat fingernails turned white.
“It will shutmymouth,” said Munn, still with his fixed smile.
“How much extra to keep this matter of the title quiet—as long as I live?”
“As long as you live?” repeated Munn, surprised.
“Yes, I don’t care a damn what they say of me after I’m dead,” snarled Sprowl.
Munn watched him for a moment, plucked another buttercup, pondered, smoothed out his rich, brown, silky beard, and finally mentioned a second sum.
Sprowl drew a check-book from the breast-pocket of his coat, and filled in two checks with a fountain pen. These he held up before Munn’s snapping, yellowish eyes.
“This blackmail,” said Sprowl, thickly, “is paid now for the last time. If you come after me again you come to your death, for I’ll smash your skull in with one blow, and take my chances to prove insanity. And I’ve enough money to prove it.”
Munn waited.
“I’ll buy you this last time,” continued Sprowl, recovering his self-command. “Now, you tell me where O’Hara’s child is, and how you are going to prevent her from ever pressing that suit which he dropped.”
“O’Hara’s daughter is here. I control her,” said Munn, quietly.
“You mean she’s one of your infernal flock?” demanded Sprowl.
“One of the Shining Band,” said Munn, with a trace of a whine in his voice.
“Where are the papers in that proceeding, then? You said O’Hara burned them, you liar!”
“She has them in a box in her bedroom,” replied Munn.
“Does she know what they mean?” asked Sprowl, aghast.
“No—but I do,” replied Munn, with his ominous smile.
“How do you know she does not understand their meaning?”
“Because,” replied Munn, laughing, “she can’t read.”
Sprowl did not believe him, but he was at his mercy. He stood with his heavy head hanging, pondering a moment, then whistled his sorrel. The mare came to him and laid her dusty nose on his shoulder.
“You see these checks?” he said.
Munn assented.
“You get them when you put those papers in my hands. Understand? And when you bring me the deed of this cursed property here—house and all.”
“A week from to-day,” said Munn; his voice shook in spite of him. Few men can face sudden wealth with a yawn.
“And after that—” began Sprowl, and glared at Munn with such a fury that the Prophet hastily stepped backward and raised a nervous hand to his beard.
“It’s a square deal,” he said; and Sprowl knew that he meant it, at least for the present.
The president mounted heavily, and sought his bridle and stirrups.
“I’ll meet you here in a week from to-day, hour for hour; I’ll give you twenty-four hours after that to pack up and move, bag and baggage.”
“Done,” said Munn.
“Then get out of my way, you filthy beast!” growled Sprowl, swinging his horse and driving the spurs in.
Munn fell back with a cry; the horse plunged past, brushing him, tearing out across the pasture, over the bridge, and far down the stony road Munn heard the galloping. He had been close to death; he did not quite know whether Sprowl had meant murder or whether it was carelessness or his own fault that the horse had not struck him and ground him into the sod.
However it was, he conceived a new respect for Sprowl, and promised himself that if he ever was obliged to call again upon Sprowl for financial assistance he would do it through a telephone.
A dozen women, dressed alike in a rather pretty gray uniform, were singing up by the house; he looked at them with a sneer, then walked back along the river to where the young girl still sat under the elm.
“I want to talk to you,” he said, abruptly, “and I don’t want any more refusals or reasons or sentiments. I want to see the papers in that steel box.”
She turned towards him in that quaint, hesitating, listening attitude.
“The Lord,” he said, more cheerfully, “has put it into my head that we must journey once more. I’ve had a prayerful wrestle out yonder, and I see light. The Lord tells me to sell this land to the strangers without the gates, and I’m going to sell it to the glory of God.”
“How can you sell it?” said the girl, quietly.
“Isn’t all our holdings in common?” demanded Munn, sharply.
“You know that I am not one of you,” said the girl.
“Yes, you are,” said Munn; “you don’t want to be because the light has been denied you, but I’ve sealed you and sanctified you to the Shining Band, and you just can’t help being one of us. Besides,” he continued, with an ugly smile, “I’m your legal guardian.”
This was a lie; but she did not know it.
“So I want to see those papers,” he added.
“Why?” she asked.
“Oh, legal matters; I’ve got to examine ’em or I can’t sell this land.”
“Father told me not to open the box until … I found an … honest man,” she said, steadily.
Munn glared at her. She had caught him in a lie years ago; she never forgot it.
“Where’s the key?” he demanded.
She was silent.
“I’ll give you till supper-time to find that key,” said Munn, confidently, and walked on towards the house.
But before he had fairly emerged from the shadow of the elm he met Lansing face to face, and the young man halted him with a pleasant greeting, asking if he were not the Reverend Doctor Munn.
“That’s my name,” said Munn, briefly.
“I was looking for Mr. Sprowl; I thought to meet him here; we were to speak to you about the netting of trout in the river,” said Lansing, good-humoredly.
Munn regarded him in sulky silence.
“It won’t do,” continued Lansing, smiling; “if you net trout you’ll have the wardens after you.”
“Oh! and I suppose you’ll furnish the information,” sneered Munn.
“I certainly will,” replied Lansing.
Munn had retraced his steps towards the river. As the men passed before Eileen O’Hara, Lansing raised his cap. She did not return his salute; she looked towards the spot where he and Munn had halted, and her face bore that quaint, listening expression, almost pitifully sweet, as though she were deaf.
“Peter, our head-keeper, saw you netting trout in that pool last night,” said Lansing.
Munn examined the water and muttered that the Bible gave him his authority for that sort of fishing.
“He’s a fake,” thought Lansing, in sudden disgust. Involuntarily he glanced around at the girl under the elm. The beauty of her pale face startled him. Surely innocence looked out of those dark-blue eyes, fixed on him under the shadow of her straw hat. He noted that she also wore the silvery-gray uniform of the elect. He turned his eyes towards the house, where a dozen women, old and young, were sitting out under the tree, sewing and singing peacefully. The burden of their song came sweetly across the pasture; a golden robin, high in the elm’s feathery tip, warbled incessant accompaniment to the breeze and the flowing of water and the far song of the women.
“We don’t mean to annoy you,” said Lansing, quietly; “I for one believe that we shall find you and your community the best of courteous neighbors.”
Munn looked at him with his cunning, amber-yellow eyes and stroked his beard.
“What do you want, anyway?” he said.
“I’ll tell you what I want,” said Lansing, sharply;“I want you and your people to observe the game laws.”
“Keep your shirt on, young man,” said Munn, coarsely, and turned on his heel. Before he had taken the second step Lansing laid his hand on his shoulder and spun him around, his grip tightening like a vise.
“What y’ doing?” snarled Munn, shrinking and squirming, terrified by the violent grasp, the pain of which almost sickened him.
Lansing looked at him, then shoved him out of his path, and carefully rinsed his hands in the stream. Then he laughed and turned around, but Munn was making rapid time towards the house, where the gray-clad women sat singing under the neglected apple-trees. The young man’s eyes fell on the girl under the elm; she was apparently watching his every movement from those dark-blue eyes under the straw hat.
He took off his cap and went to her, and told her politely how amiable had been his intentions, and how stringent the game laws were, and begged her to believe that he intended no discourtesy to her community when he warned them against the wholesale destruction of the trout.
He had a pleasant, low voice, very attractive to women; she smiled and listened, offering no comment.
“And I want to assure you,” he ended, “that we at the club will always respect your boundaries as we know you will respect ours. I fear one of our keepers was needlessly rude last night—from his own account. He’s an old man; he supposes that all people know the game laws.”
Lansing paused; she bent her head a trifle. After a silence he started on, saying, “Good-morning,” very pleasantly.
“I wish you would sit down and talk to me,” said the girl, without raising her head.
Lansing was too astonished to reply; she turned her head partly towards him as though listening. Something in the girl’s attitude arrested his attention; he involuntarily dropped on one knee to see her face. It was in shadow.
“I want to tell you who I am,” she said, without looking at him. “I am Eily O’Hara.”
Lansing received the communication with perfect gravity. “Your father owned this land?” he asked.
“Yes; I own it now, … I think.”
He was silent, curious, amused.
“I think I do,” she repeated; “I have never seen my father’s will.”
“Doubtless your lawyer has it,” he suggested.
“No; I have it. It is in a steel box; I have the key hanging around my neck inside my clothes. I have never opened the box.”
“But why do you not open the box?” asked Lansing, smiling.
She hesitated; color crept into her cheeks. “I have waited,” she said; “I was alone; my father said—that—that—” She stammered; the rich flush deepened to her neck.
Lansing, completely nonplussed, sat watching the wonderful beauty of that young face.
“My father told me to open it only when I found an honest man in the world,” she said, slowly.
The undertone of pathos in her voice drove the smile from Lansing’s lips.
“Have you found the world so dishonest?” he asked, seriously.
“I don’t know; I came from Notre Dame de Sainte Croix last year. Mr. Munn was my guardian; … said he was; … I suppose he is.”
Lansing looked at her in sympathy.
“I am not one of the community,” she said. “I only stay because I have no other home but this. I have no money, … at least I know of none that is mine.” Lansing was silent and attentive.
“I—I heard your voice; … I wanted to speak to you—to hear you speak to me,” she said. A new timidity came into her tone; she raised her head. “I—somehow when you spoke—I felt that you—you were honest.” She stammered again, but Lansing’s cool voice brought her out of her difficulty and painful shyness.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“I’m Dr. Lansing,” he said.
“Will you open my steel box and read my papers for me?” she inquired, innocently.
“I will—if you wish,” he said, impulsively; “if you think it wise. But I think you had better read the papers for yourself.”
“Why, I can’t read,” she said, apparently surprised that he should not know it.
“You mean that you were not taught to read in your convent school?” he asked, incredulously.
A curious little sound escaped her lips; she raised both slender hands and unpinned her hat. Then she turned her head to his.
The deep-blue beauty of her eyes thrilled him; then he started and leaned forward, closer, closer to her exquisite face.
“My child,” he cried, softly, “my poor child!” And she smiled and fingered the straw hat in her lap.
“Will you read my father’s papers for me?” she said.
“Yes—yes—if you wish. Yes, indeed!” After a moment he said: “How long have you been blind?”
That evening, at dusk, Lansing came into the club, and went directly to his room. He carried a small, shabby satchel; and when he had locked his door he opened the satchel and drew from it a flat steel box.
For half an hour he sat by his open window in the quiet starlight, considering the box, turning it over and over in his hands. At length he opened his trunk, placed the box inside, locked the trunk, and noiselessly left the room.
He encountered Coursay in the hall, and started to pass him with an abstracted nod, then changed his mind and slipped his arm through the arm of his young kinsman.
“Thought you meant to cut me,” said Coursay, half laughing, half in earnest.
“Why?” Lansing stopped short; then, “Oh, because you played the fool with Agatha in the canoe? You two will find yourselves in a crankier craft than that if you don’t look sharp.”
“You have an ugly way of putting it,” began Coursay. But Lansing scowled and said:
“Jack, I want advice; I’m troubled, old chap. Come into my room while I dress for dinner. Don’t shy and stand on your hind-legs; it’s not about Agatha Sprowl; it’s about me, and I’m in trouble.”
The appeal flattered and touched Coursay, who had never expected that he, a weak and spineless back-slider, could possibly be of aid or comfort to his self-sufficient and celebrated cousin, Dr. Lansing.
They entered Lansing’s rooms; Coursay helped himself to some cognac, and smoked, waiting for Lansing to emerge from his dressing-room.
Presently, bathed, shaved, and in his shirt-sleeves, Lansing came in, tying his tie, a cigarette unlighted between his teeth.
“Jack,” he said, “give me advice, not as a self-centred, cautious, and orderly citizen of Manhattan, but as a young man whose heart leads his head every time! I want that sort of advice; and I can’t give it to myself.”
“Do you mean it?” demanded Coursay, incredulously.
“By Heaven, I do!” returned Lansing, biting his words short, as the snap of a whip.
He turned his back to the mirror, lighted his cigarette, took one puff, threw it into the grate. Then he told Coursay what had occurred between him and the young girl under the elm, reciting the facts minutely and exactly as they occurred.
“I have the box in my trunk yonder,” he went on; “the poor little thing managed to slip out while Munn was in the barn; I was waiting for her in the road.”
After a moment Coursay asked if the girl was stone blind.
“No,” said Lansing; “she can distinguish light from darkness; she can even make out form—in the dark; but a strong light completely blinds her.”
“Can you help her?” asked Coursay, with quick pity.
Lansing did not answer the question, but went on: “It’s been coming on—this blindness—since her fifth year; she could always see to read better in dark corners than in a full light. For the last two years she has not been able to see; and she’s only twenty, Jack—only twenty.”
“Can’t you help her?” repeated Coursay, a painful catch in his throat.
“I haven’t examined her,” said Lansing, curtly.
“But—but you are an expert in that sort of thing,” protested his cousin; “isn’t this in your line?”
“Yes; I sat and talked to her half an hour and did not know she was blind. She has a pair of magnificent deep-blue eyes; nobody, talking to her, could suspect such a thing. Still—her eyes were shaded by her hat.”
“What kind of blindness is it?” asked Coursay, in a shocked voice.
“I think I know,” said Lansing. “I think there can be little doubt that she has a rather unusual form of lamellar cataract.”
“Curable?” motioned Coursay.
“I haven’t examined her; how could I— But—I’m going to do it.”
“And if you operate?” asked Coursay, hopefully.
“Operate? Yes—yes, of course. It is needling, you know, with probability of repetition. We expect absorption to do the work for us—bar accidents and other things.”
“When will you operate?” inquired Coursay.
Lansing broke out, harshly: “God knows! That swindler, Munn, keeps her a prisoner. Doctors long ago urged her to submit to an operation; Munn refused, and he and his deluded women have been treating her by prayer for years—the miserable mountebank!”
“You mean that he won’t let you try to help her?”
“I mean just exactly that, Jack.”
Coursay got up with his clinched hands swinging and his eager face red as a pippin. “Why, then,” he said, “we’ll go and get her! Come on; I can’t sit here and let such things happen!”
Lansing laughed the laugh of a school-boy bent on deviltry.
“Good old Jack! That’s the sort of advice I wanted,” he said, affectionately. “We may see our names in the morning papers for this; but who cares? We may be arrested for a few unimportant and absurd things—but who cares? Munn will probably sue us; who cares? At any rate, we’re reasonably certain of a double-leaded column in the yellow press; but do you give a tinker’s damn?”
“Not one!” said Coursay, calmly.
Then they went down to dinner.
Sprowl, being unwell, dined in his own rooms; Agatha Sprowl was more witty and brilliant and charming than ever; but Coursay did not join her on the veranda that evening, and she sat for two hours enduring the platitudes of Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent, and planning serious troubles for Lansing, to whose interference she attributed Coursay’s non-appearance.
But Coursay and Lansing had other business in hand that night. Fortune, too, favored them when they arrived at the O’Hara house; for there, leaning on thedecaying gate, stood Eileen O’Hara, her face raised to the sky as though seeking in the soft star radiance which fell upon her lids a celestial balm for her sightless eyes.
She was alone; she heard Lansing’s step, and knew it, too. From within the house came the deadened sound of women’s voices singing:
“Light of the earth and sky,Unbind mine eyes,Lest I in darkness lieWhile my soul dies.Blind, at Thy feet I fall,All blindly kneel,Fainting, Thy name I call;Touch me and heal!”
“Light of the earth and sky,Unbind mine eyes,Lest I in darkness lieWhile my soul dies.Blind, at Thy feet I fall,All blindly kneel,Fainting, Thy name I call;Touch me and heal!”
“Light of the earth and sky,Unbind mine eyes,Lest I in darkness lieWhile my soul dies.Blind, at Thy feet I fall,All blindly kneel,Fainting, Thy name I call;Touch me and heal!”
In the throbbing hush of the starlight a whippoorwill called three times; the breeze rose in the forest; a little wind came fragrantly, puff on puff, along the road, stirring the silvery dust.
She laid one slim hand in Lansing’s; steadily and noiselessly they traversed the dew-wet meadow, crossed the river by the second bridge, and so came to the dark club-house under the trees.
There was nobody visible except the steward when they entered the hall.
“Two rooms and a bath, John,” said Lansing, quietly; and followed the steward up the stairs, guiding his blind charge.
The rooms were on the north angle; Lansing and Coursay inspected them carefully, gave the steward proper direction, and dismissed him.
“Get me a telegram blank,” said Lansing. Coursaybrought one. His cousin pencilled a despatch, and the young man took it and left the room.
The girl was sitting on the bed, silent, intent, following Lansing with her sightless eyes.
“Do you trust me?” he asked, pleasantly.
“Yes, … oh, yes, with all my heart!”
He steadied his voice. “I think I can help you—I am sure I can. I have sent to New York for Dr. Courtney Thayer.”
He drew a long breath; her beauty almost unnerved him. “Thayer will operate; he’s the best of all. Are you afraid?”
She lifted one hand and held it out, hesitating. He took it.
“No, not afraid,” she said.
“You are wise; there is no need for fear. All will come right, my child.”
She listened intently.
“It is necessary in such operations that the patient should, above all, be cheerful and—and happy—”
“Oh, yes, … and I am happy! Truly! truly!” she breathed.
“—and brave, and patient, and obedient—and—” His voice trembled a trifle. “You must lie very still,” he ended, hastily.
“Will you be here?”
“Yes—yes, of course!”
“Then I will lie very still.”
He left her curled up in an easy-chair, smiling at him with blind eyes; he scarcely found his way down-stairs for all his eyesight. He stumbled to the grill-room door, felt for the knob, and flung it open.
A flood of yellow light struck him like a blow; throughthe smoke he saw the wine-flushed faces of Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent staring at him.
“Gad, Lansing!” said the Major, “you’re white and shaky as a ninety-nine-cent toy lamb. Come in and have a drink, m’boy!”
“I wanted to say,” said Lansing, “that I have a patient in 5 and 6. It’s an emergency case; I’ve wired for Courtney Thayer. I wish to ask the privilege and courtesy of the club for my patient. It’s unusual; it’s intrusive. Absolute and urgent necessity is my plea.”
The two old gentlemen appeared startled, but they hastily assured Lansing that his request would be honored; and Lansing went away to pace the veranda until Coursay returned from the telegraph station.
In the grill-room Major Brent’s pop eyes were fixed on the Colonel in inflamed inquiry.
“Damme!” snapped the Colonel, “does that young man take this club for a hospital?”
“He’ll be washing bandages in the river next; he’ll poison the trout with his antiseptic stuffs!” suggested the Major, shuddering.
“The club’s going to the dogs!” said the Colonel, with a hearty oath.
But he did not know how near to the dogs the club already was.
It is perfectly true that the club and the dogs were uncomfortably close together. A week later the crisis came when Munn, in a violent rage, accused Sprowl ofspiriting away his ward, Eileen O’Hara. But when Sprowl at last comprehended that the girl and the papers had really disappeared, he turned like a maddened pig on Munn, tore the signed checks to shreds before his eyes, and cursed him steadily as long as he remained within hearing.
As for Munn, his game appeared to be up. He hurried to New York, and spent a month or two attempting to find some trace of his ward, then his money gave out. He returned to his community and wrote a cringing letter to Sprowl, begging him to buy the O’Hara land for next to nothing, and risk the legality of the transfer. To which Sprowl paid no attention. A week later Munn and the Shining Band left for Munnville, Maine.
It was vaguely understood at the club that Lansing had a patient in 5 and 6.
“Probably a rich woman whom he can’t afford to lose,” suggested Sprowl, with a sneer; “but I’m cursed if I can see why he should turn this club into a drug-shop to make money in!” And the Colonel and the Major agreed that it was indecent in the extreme.
To his face, of course, Sprowl, the Colonel, and the Major treated Lansing with perfect respect; but the faint odor of antiseptics from rooms 5 and 6 made them madder and madder every time they noticed it.
Meanwhile young Coursay had a free bridle; Lansing was never around to interfere, and he drove and rode and fished and strolled with Agatha Sprowl until neither he nor the shameless beauty knew whether they were standing on their heads or their heels. To be in love was a new sensation to Agatha Sprowl; to believe himselfin love was nothing new to Coursay, but the flavor never palled.
What they might have done—what, perhaps, they had already decided to do—nobody but they knew. The chances are that they would have bolted if they had not run smack into that rigid sentinel who guards the pathway of life. The sentinel is called Fate. And it came about in the following manner:
Dr. Courtney Thayer arrived one cool day early in October; Lansing met him with a quiet smile, and, together, these eminent gentlemen entered rooms 5 and 6.
A few moments later Courtney Thayer came out, laughing, followed by Lansing, who also appeared to be a prey to mirth.
“She’s charming—she’s perfectly charming!” said Courtney Thayer. “Where the deuce do these Yankee convent people get that elusive Continental flavor? Her father must have been a gentleman.”
“He was an Irish lumberman,” said Lansing. After a moment he added: “So you won’t come back, doctor?”
“No, it’s not necessary; you know that. I’ve an operation to-morrow in Manhattan; I must get back to town. Wish I could stay and shoot grouse with you, but I can’t.”
“Come up for the fall flight of woodcock; I’ll wire you when it’s on,” urged Lansing.
“Perhaps; good-bye.”
Lansing took his outstretched hand in both of his. “There is no use in my trying to tell you what you have done for me, doctor,” he said.
Thayer regarded him keenly. “Thought I did it forher,” he remarked.
Instantly Lansing’s face turned red-hot. Thayer clasped the young man’s hands and shook them till they ached.
“You’re all right, my boy—you’re all right!” he said, heartily; and was gone down the stairs, two at a jump—a rather lively proceeding for the famous and dignified Courtney Thayer.
Lansing turned and entered rooms 5 and 6. His patient was standing by the curtained window. “Do you want to know your fate?” he asked, lightly.
She turned and looked at him out of her lovely eyes; the quaint, listening expression in her face still remained, but shesawhim, this time.
“Am I well?” she asked, calmly.
“Yes; … perfectly.”
She sat down by the window, her slender hands folded, her eyes on him.
“And now,” she asked, “what am I to do?”
He understood, and bent his head. He had an answer ready, trembling on his lips; but a horror of presuming on her gratitude kept him silent.
“Am I to go back … tohim?” she said, faintly.
“God forbid!” he blurted out. With all his keen eyesight, how could he fail to see the adoration in her eyes, on her mute lips’ quivering curve, in every line of her body? But the brutality of asking for that which her gratitude might not withhold froze him. It was no use; he could not speak.
“Then—what? Tell me; I will do it,” she said, in a desolate voice. “Of course I cannot stay here now.”
Something in his haggard face set her heart beating heavily; then for a moment her heart seemed to stop. She covered her eyes with a swift gesture.
“Is it pain?” he asked, quickly. “Let me see your eyes!” Her hands covered them. He came to her; she stood up, and he drew her fingers from her eyes and looked into them steadily. But what he saw there he alone knows; for he bent closer, shaking in every limb; and both her arms crept to his shoulders and her clasped hands tightened around his neck.
Which was doubtless an involuntary muscular affection incident on successful operations for lamellar or zonular cataract.
That day they opened the steel box. She understood little of what he read to her; presently he stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentence and remained staring, reading on and on in absorbed silence.
Content, serene, numbed with her happiness, she watched him sleepily.
He muttered under his breath: “Sprowl! What a fool! What a cheap fool! And yet not one among us even suspected him ofthat!”
After a long time he looked up at the girl, blankly at first, and with a grimace of disgust. “You see,” he said, and gave a curious laugh—“you see that—thatyouown all this land of ours—as far as I can make out.”
After a long explanation she partly understood, and laughed outright, a clear child’s laugh without a trace of that sad undertone he knew so well.
“But we are not going to take it away from your club—are we?” she asked.
“No,” he said; “let the club have the land—yourland! What do we care? We will never come here again!” He sat a moment, thinking, then sprang up. “We will go to New York to-morrow,” he said; “and I’ll just step out and say good-bye to Sprowl—I think he and his wife are also going to-morrow; I think they’re going to Europe,to live! I’m sure they are; and that they will never come back.”
And, curiously enough, that is exactly what they did; and they are there yet. And their establishment in the American colony is the headquarters for all nobility in exile, including the chivalrous Orleans.
Which is one sort of justice—the Lansing sort; and, anyway, Coursay survived and married an actress a year later. And the club still remains in undisturbed possession of Eileen Lansing’s land; and Major Brent is now its president.
As for Munn, he has permanently retired to Munnville, Maine, where, it is reported, he has cured several worthy and wealthy people by the simple process of prayer.
Contents
Open quote
Do you desire me to marry him?” asked Miss Castle, quietly.
“Let me finish,” said her uncle. “Jane,” he added, turning on his sister, “if you could avoid sneezing for a few moments, I should be indebted to you.”
Miss Jane Garcide, a sallow lady of forty, who suffered with colds all winter and hay-fever all summer, meekly left the room.
Miss Castle herself leaned on the piano, tearing the pink petals from a half-withered rose, while her guardian, the Hon. John Garcide, finished what he had to say and pulled out his cigar-case with decision.
“I have only to add,” he said, “that James J. Crawford is one man in a million.”
Her youthful adoration of Garcide had changed within a few years to a sweet-tempered indifference. He was aware of this; he was anxious to learn whether the change had also affected her inherited passion for truthfulness.
“Do you remember a promise you once made?” he inquired, lighting his cigar with care.
“Yes,” she said, calmly.
“When was it?”
“On my tenth birthday.”
He looked out of the heavily curtained window.
“Of course you could not be held to such a promise,” he remarked.
“There is no need toholdme to it,” she answered, flushing up.
Her delicate sense of honor amused him; he lay back in his arm-chair, enjoying his cigar.
“It is curious,” he said, “that you cannot recall meeting Mr. Crawford last winter.”
“A girl has an opportunity to forget hundreds of faces after her first season,” she said.
There was another pause; then Garcide went on: “I am going to ask you to marry him.”
Her face paled a trifle; she bent her head in acquiescence. Garcide smiled. It had always been that way with the Castles. Their word, once given, ended all matters. And now Garcide was gratified to learn the value of a promise made by a child of ten.
“I wonder,” said Garcide, plaintively, “why you never open your heart to me, Hilda?”
“I wonder, too,” she said; “my father did.”
Garcide turned his flushed face to the window.
Years before, when the firm of Garcide & Castle went to pieces, Peter Castle stood by the wreck to the end, patching it with his last dollar. But the wreck broke up, and he drifted piteously with the débris until a kindly current carried him into the last harbor of all—the port of human derelicts.
Garcide, however, contrived to cling to some valuableflotsam and paddle into calm water, and anchor.
After a few years he built a handsome house above Fiftieth Street; after a few more years he built a new wing for Saint Berold’s Hospital; and after a few more years he did other things equally edifying, but which, if mentioned, might identify him.
Church work had always interested him. As a speculation in moral obligation, he adopted Peter Castle’s orphan, who turned to him in a passion of gratitude and blind devotion. And as she bade fair to rival her dead mother in beauty, and as rich men marry beauty when it is in the market, the Hon. John Garcide decided to control the child’s future. A promise at ten years is quickly made, but he had never forgotten it, and she could not forget.
And now Garcide needed her as he needed mercy from Ophir Steel, which was slowly crushing his own steel syndicate to powder.
The struggle between Steel Plank and James J. Crawford’s Ophir Steel is historical. The pure love of fighting was in Crawford; he fought Garcide to a standstill and then kicked him, filling Garcide with a mixture of terror and painful admiration.
But sheer luck caught at Garcide’s coat-tails and hung there. Crawford, prowling in the purlieus of society, had seen Miss Castle.
The next day Crawford came into Garcide’s office and accepted a chair with such a humble and uneasy smile that Garcide mistook his conciliatory demeanor and attempted to bully him. But when he found out what Crawford wanted, he nearly faintedin an attempt to conceal his astonishment and delight.
“Do you think I’d buy you off with an innocent child?” he said, lashing himself into a good imitation of an insulted gentleman.
Crawford looked out of the window, then rose and walked towards the door.
“Do you think you can bribe me?” shouted Garcide after him. Crawford hesitated.
“Come back here,” said Garcide, firmly; “I want you to explain yourself.”
“I can’t,” muttered Crawford.
“Well—try, anyway,” said Garcide, more amiably.
And now this was the result of that explanation, at least one of the results; and Miss Castle had promised to wed a gentleman in Ophir Steel named Crawford, at the convenience of the Hon. John Garcide.
The early morning sunshine fell across the rugs in the music-room, filling the gloom with golden lights. It touched a strand of hair on Miss Castle’s bent head.
“You’ll like him,” said Garcide, guiltily.
Her hand hung heavily on the piano keys.
“You have no other man in mind?” he asked.
“No, … no man.”
Garcide chewed the end of his cigar.
“Crawford’s a bashful man. Don’t make it hard for him,” he said.
She swung around on the gilded music-stool, one white hand lying among the ivory keys.
“I shall spare us both,” she said; “I shall tell him that it is settled.”
Garcide rose; she received his caress with composure. He made another grateful peck at her chin.
“Why don’t you take a quiet week or two in the country?” he suggested, cheerfully, “Go up to the Sagamore Club; Jane will go with you. You can have the whole place to yourselves. You always liked nature and—er—all that, eh?”
“Oh yes,” she said, indifferently.
That afternoon the Hon. John Garcide sent a messenger to James J. Crawford with the following letter: