CHAPTER XXIIIANOTHER ARRIVAL
Now that was the train by which Ran had expected Gentleman Geff and his suit, and this was about an hour beyond the time when they were due at Haymore. So his next question was the inevitable one:
“Did any other passengers leave that train for Haymore?”
Then John Legg stopped to laugh a little before he answered:
“Oh! yes, sir. There were two gentlemen and a lady. I didn’t see their faces nor hear their names, but they seemed to belong to some seat in the neighborhood, for the tallest of the gentlemen seemed to have expected the family carriage to be there on the spot to meet the party. And when he found that it was not, well, sir, I don’t think as in all my long life I ever heard such a vast amount and choice variety of cursing.”
“Gentleman Geff all over!” muttered Dandy to himself.
“What became of them?” inquired Ran.
“Don’t know, sir. We left him there cursing land and water, sun, moon and stars, so to speak, and threatening thedestruction of the earth, or words to that effect, if his carriage and servants failed to appear within the next five minutes. We walked to the Tawny Lion Inn and secured the only conveyance to be found and came on here while the gentleman waited for his coach and four, or whatever it might have been.”
“And is waiting there still, probably, and will have to wait until your ‘conveyance’ returns.”
“Well, sir, that will not be long. Julia and myself are about to say good-night,” said John Legg respectfully.
“‘Good-night,’ indeed! By no means! What do you mean? Come two hundred miles or so to see your uncle here at Haymore Hall, and after an hour’s visit say good-night? Not at all! You and Mrs. Legg will, I hope, give us the pleasure of remaining with us during your stay in Yorkshire,” said Ran heartily.
“You are very kind, sir, and we thank you very much, but——”
John Legg paused and looked at his wife, who did not help him by a word or a glance.
“But I will take no denial. Where shall I send for your luggage?” inquired Ran.
“We have nothing but hand-bags, sir, and they are in the carryall outside. You see, we came directly from the Chuxton station to this house, and have all we carried in the vehicle with us. We intended to return in it, and to put up at the Red Fox Inn in your village here.”
“But you will do no such thing. You will get your hand-bags out of the carriage, send it back to Chuxton—where the swearing gentleman is waiting, swearing harder than ever, no doubt—and you will remain here with us.”
“What do you say, Juley?” said John Legg, appealing to his wife. “Come, woman, can’t you help a fellow a little?”
“What do you say, Uncle Dandy?” inquired Julia, appealing in turn to her old relative.
“You stop here! Both on you stop! You take Mr. Hay at his word! Ran Hay means every word that he speaks. If he says he wants you to stop here he does want you to stop here! And as he does, you ought to do it to please him as well as yourselves, which you will be sure to do, I know. That’s all I have got to say!”
While Dandy was speaking and his niece and nephewlistening, Ran beckoned a footman to follow him, and stepped out of the front door and went up to the driver of the carryall, who stood by the horses’ heads, clapping his thickly gloved hands and stamping his heavily shod feet to keep warm.
“You came from Chuxton?”
“Yes, sir, and been waiting here for more’n an hour for the parties I fotch, and myself near frozen, spite of my piles of clothes and——”
“Charles,” said Hay, turning his head and speaking in a low voice to the footman, “go in and get a large mug of strong ale and bring it out to this man.”
The footman vanished on his errand.
The driver continued as if he had not been interrupted:
“Horses like to catch their death of cold, spite o’ two heavy blankets apiece laid o’ top of them.”
“I am sorry I can do nothing for your horses, but if you think any of the grooms might, just let them do it,” said Ran.
“No, sir. There can’t nobody do nothing for ’em here. And nothing will help them but a brisk trot back to Chuxton and a warm mash and good bed when they get there.”
The footman came out with a pewter quart measure of strong, foaming ale and handed it to the driver.
The latter took it with a “thanky” to the server and a bow to the master, and said:
“Thank you, sir. This saves my life. Here’s to a long and happy one for you and yours. Is the party inside ready to go back, if you please, sir?” inquired the driver after he had taken one long draught of the ale and stopped to draw a deep sigh of satisfaction.
“They are not going back. Charles, get the bags and other effects out of the carriage and carry them into the house.”
The footman obeyed, loading himself with two heavy bags, two rugs and a large umbrella, and took them into the hall while the driver was taking his second long pull at the ale.
“How much is your fare?” inquired Hay.
The man stopped to recover breath with another devout inhalation of enjoyment, and then answered:
“Ten shillings, sir.”
Ran took out his purse and gave the man half a sovereign and half a crown.
“Thank you, sir,” said the driver, touching his hat, not for the fare, but for the “tip.”
Then he took the blankets off his horses, folded and put them under his box and mounted to his seat.
“You had better drive as fast as you can, not only for the sake of warming the blood of the horses, but for that of cooling the temper of the gentleman who is waiting for you with his party at the station.”
“Another fare to-night, sir?”
“Yes, so I hear from the people you have just brought.”
“Then the master won’t only have to find fresh horses, but a fresh driver, sir; for I’m just dead beat. Any more commands, sir?”
“Not any.”
“Good-night, then, sir.”
“Good-night.”
The driver took up his “ribbons” and started his horses in a brisk trot.
Ran turned to re-enter the house.
He was met by John Legg running out bareheaded.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Ran.
“The man has gone off without his fare.”
“Well, go in the house—you will catch your death of cold; but you can’t stop him now. He is through the lodge gates by this time,” said Ran, playfully taking John Legg by the shoulders and turning him “right face forward” to the ascending steps.
They re-entered the house together.
Mrs. Legg had already taken off her heavy shawl and bonnet, and had arranged her hair before the hall mirror, and stood in her neat plain dress, with freshcrêpe lisruches—which she had taken from the flap pocket outside her bag—around neck and wrists, and her only ornaments a gold watch and chain and a set of pearls, consisting of brooch and earrings, which had been her husband’s wedding present to herself and which she always carried about her when traveling for fear, if left at home, they might be stolen. These she had now taken from her pocket and put on.
Altogether she was quite presentable in that drawing-room. And as, with all, she was a “comely” matron, herhusband looked upon her with pardonable pride as well as love.
But while furtively glancing at his wife he was putting off his ulster and speaking to his host all at the same time.
“I hadn’t a notion what you were about,” he was saying, “until your man came in loaded down with our luggage. As soon as I saw that and found out what you had done I hurried out to pay the fare, but the carryall had gone.”
“It is all right,” said Ran. “Come in now and let me introduce you to my friends.”
“Please, Mr. Hay, let me brush his hair and put a clean collar and bosom on him first. I won’t be two minutes,” pleaded Mrs. Legg.
Ran yielded, and the man’s toilet was made in the hall, as the woman’s had been a few minutes previous.
Then Ran took Mrs. Legg on his arm and led the way into the drawing-room, followed by old Dandy and John Legg.
Hay presented his new visitor first to his wife and then to all his guests. And the plain pair, it is almost needless to say, were as cordially received by the cultured people from the English rectory as they were by the border men from the Californian mining camp.
When this little ripple in the circle had subsided all settled again into small groups.
The four women found themselves temporarily together, and fell to talking of the weather, servants, children and the approaching Christmas holidays.
Mrs. Campbell and her daughter sat one on each side of Julia and made much of her. No word from Hetty or Jennie revealed the fact that Mrs. John Legg had once been in their service.
But Julia made no secret of it.
“I was housekeeper at the rectory of Medge, ma’am, in the old lady’s time, three years before his reverence was married.”
“She means in my grandmother’s days,” put in Mr. Campbell.
“And for eighteen years afterward; making twenty-one years in all that I lived with the Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell. I held that child, Miss Jennie—Mrs. Montgomery that now is—on my lap when she wasn’t twenty-four hoursold. And nursed her and took care of her from the time of her birth until that of her marriage,” said Julia.
And Jennie, who was holding her hand, raised and pressed it to her own breast.
“Yes; and I have lived with them ever since, up to the time when they left to come up here to Yorkshire. Then I took Mr. Legg’s offer and married him.”
“I hope you have been very happy,” said Jennie.
“I am as happy, dear, as I can be parted from you all. We came to Haymore to see Uncle Dandy. And we intended to go to-morrow and see you. We little expected to find you here. I haven’t seen his reverence since the day he married John and me.”
“That was the last ceremony he ever performed in Medge parish church,” said Mrs. Campbell.
While they talked in this manner of strictly personal and domestic matters, the rector himself was one of a group gathered around Mr. Will Walling, who was another Gulliver or Munchausen for telling fabulous adventures of which he himself was the hero.
The inevitable subject of mining had suggested to Mr. Will the story of the horrors of penal serviture in the silver mines of the Ural Mountains, and he was telling it as if the false charge, the secret conviction, the exile, the journey, the life in the mines, the escape and flight through the snow and ice of Siberia, and all the attendant awful sufferings had been in his own personal experience. And all his audience listened with the fullest faith and deepest interest—that is, all except two—Ran, who had heard the story told before to-night, and John Legg, who had very recently read it in a dilapidated old volume bought for threepence at a second-hand book stand.
Ran was bored, and could hardly repress the rudeness of a yawn; and he saw, besides, that John Legg looked incredulous and sarcastic.
Then he thought of the party of sinners who were by this time on their way to Haymore and to judgment. And then that their coming would bring pain and shame to more than one of that party. But all—even poor Jennie—had been prepared for the event except John Legg. Then it occurred to him that he must warn the poor father of the shock that might otherwise overwhelm him.
He stopped and said:
“Mr. Legg, will you favor me with a few minutes’ conversation in the library?”
“Surely, sir,” replied the greengrocer with alacrity as he arose to accompany his host.
“Friends, will you excuse us for a few moments?”
“Yes, if we must,” replied Will Walling, answering for the company; “but, really, you know, it is a shame to go before you have heard the end of the story.”
“Oh, I have heard you tell it many times,” said Ran.
“Yes; but Mr. Legg hasn’t.”
“Oh, I have done better than that. I have been through it. Why, man, I was the very Enokoff who helped Wallingski to make good his flight across the frontier. Only my real name was not Enokoff, but Legginoff, or Legenough, if you like it better,” said the greengrocer as he followed Ran from the drawing-room.
Will Walling started, but could make nothing of the answer; yet to his circle of listeners he said in explanation:
“Too bad of Hay to have anticipated me and told that old fellow the end of the story while they were pretending to listen.”
Meanwhile Ran had led his companion to the library, where both sat down on a leathern armchair, on opposite sides of a narrow table, on which they leaned their arms, facing each other.
“Now, then, sir, I am at your service,” said Legg.
“Do you smoke?” inquired Ran.
“Only occasionally; when I need a sedative and philosophy.”
“Exactly. I smoke semi-occasionally for the same reasons. Will you take an exceptionally fine cigar now? It is an Isabella Regina.”
“Thank you.”
Ran produced a case and matches. They lighted their weeds and began to smoke.
Ran let a few minutes elapse to allow the sedative to take some effect upon his guest, and then broke the subject for which he had brought the old man there.
“Mr. Legg, I hope you will pardon me for asking a question that may seem to be an unpardonable liberty,” he said in a low voice.
“Ask me what you please, sir. I am sure it will not be an offensive liberty, since you could not possibly take one,” gravely replied the old man.
“Then, when did you hear from your son and your daughter?”
“I have no son or daughter, sir. The young man and woman to whom you may allude forsook our humble way of life as soon as we had finished educating them above their position, each taking his or her way. Yet I am often sorry for them and anxious about them, for they were once my children, though they discard and despise me, for I know that for that very reason they must come to grief and shame in this world as well as in the next, if they do not repent and reform. For, look you, Mr. Hay, I am an old man, and all my long life I have noticed this one thing—that a man may break every commandment in the decalogue, except one, and he may escape punishment in this world, whatever becomes of him in the next. I say he may, and he often does. But if he breaks the Fifth Commandment—called the Commandment with Promise—his punishment, or his discipline of pain and failure, comes in this world. However, upon repentance, he may be forgiven in the next. This is the fruit of my observation and experience of men. I cannot answer for those of other people.”
“Well, Mr. Legg, I fear your opinion is about to be sustained in the fate of the young people. They are both about to come to grief; and I am glad for the girl’s sake that you are here to-night, for I am sure you would stand by your daughter in her trouble,” said Ran.
The old man stared at the earnest young speaker and then said:
“So it was for this, Mr. Hay, that you made old Andrew Quin bring me here by telegraph.”
“No! Heaven knows I had nothing whatever to do with bringing you to Haymore. That was entirely Mr. Quin’s own idea.”
“Then it was old Andrew that worked to bring about my visit here in the interest of my undutiful daughter.”
“No! Again you are wrong. Andrew Quin knew nothing whatever of your chance of meeting your son or daughter at Haymore.”
“Then the present crisis is accidental.”
“Providential, rather.”
“I stand corrected. Where are these people now?”
“They are on their way to this house. They will be here in one hour from this time.”
“My wretched son and daughter?”
“Yes, Mr. Legg. Your son and daughter, and the man that she believes to be her husband.”
“The man that she believes to be her husband! Believes only! Heaven and earth! has she fallen as low as that?” groaned the father.
“Not knowingly. Not guiltily. Neither state, church nor society will hold her guilty of a deep wrong that she has suffered, not committed. Hers was not an elopement. Not a clandestine marriage. Her courtship was open. Her engagements approved by all her friends. Her wedding was public, and the reception that followed was the social event of the season.”
“Yet the man is not her husband?”
“No.”
“How so?”
“Because he was and had been a married man for two years previous to his meeting with your daughter. Because he was and is a bigamist. More than that, he is a forger, a perjurer, a swindler, a highway robber and a midnight assassin!”
“Great Heaven! Great Heaven!” groaned the wretched father, covering his face with his hands.
“In a word, this man may be called the champion criminal of his age,” continued Ran, unmercifully “piling up the agonies.”
“And how is it that he is at large?”
“Because his crimes have only recently been brought to light.”
“And this man has betrayed my poor girl!”
“It was not her fault.”
“Yes—ah, me!—it was. Her pride, beauty and ambition have brought her to ruin.”
“No! You may still help and save her.”
“I doubt it. But tell me all about it,” said poor John Legg, sinking back in his chair and covering his working features with his open palms.
Ran began and told the whole story of the connection ofGentleman Geff, Lamia Leegh, Jennie Campbell and himself, comprised within the last year.
“And in the room there,” he concluded, “gathered to meet and confound the great criminal are the witnesses of his crimes, the testifiers to his identity, and, more terrible than all, his victims, raised as it were from the dead against him. Among them Jennie Montgomery, the daughter of James Campbell, the girl who was nursed and brought up for sixteen years by your good wife, and who was married, then deserted, and finally stabbed by that felon. Among them, too, myself, Ran Hay, the friend who shared his cabin and his crust—nay, his heart and soul—with him, and yet whom he shot down from behind at midnight in the Black Woods of California. Among them, too, will be the wronged father of that unhappy girl——”
“No! no! No! no! Oh, Mr. Hay! I cannot be present at that scene! The sight of me would add to her suffering. No! When it is all over, and the man who has spoiled her life has been exposed, then take care of her for a few hours and afterward let her know of her father; that, however his heart may have been hardened against his vain, haughty, disdainful daughter, it is softened by his humbled, grieved and suffering child. Let her know that her father’s arms and her father’s home are ever opened to his daughter. But I cannot see her to-night, Mr. Hay. I am very grateful to you, sir. I understand you now. But please leave me and send Julia to me. She knows how to deal with me better than any one else.”
“I will do so at once. And, Mr. Legg, please use this house and the servants just as if they were entirely your own. Call for anything you may like, and do exactly as you choose,” said Ran as he took the old man’s hand, pressed it kindly, and left the library.
Then John Legg dropped his head upon his folded arms on the table and burst into tears.
Other arms were soon around him.
He looked up.
Julia stood there.
He told her all in fewer words than Ran had taken to tell the story.
She drew a chair and sat down beside him, took his hand and held it while she said:
“Well, don’t cry no more. The girl has had her lesson; but the shame of her marriage is not hern or ourn. We will take her home and give her love and comfort and peace, if we cannot give her happiness. I will be as true and tender a mother to her as if she were my own hurt child. And her own mother looking down from heaven will see no cause to blame me. At Medge her story need never be known. She will be the Liddy Legg of her youth. She went for to be a governess in a rich American family—she has come home now for good. That is true, and it’s all of the truth that need be known at Medge. The writing between the lines need not be read there. And there is Uncle Dandy, who is just as kind as he is rich. He will surely be good to the poor gal.”
Suddenly Julia paused and fell into deep thought.
While she had been comforting her husband in his sorrow over his miserable daughter her own better nature was aroused, and when finally she had occasion to allude to her old uncle she felt ashamed of the selfish and avaricious spirit that had inspired her to run after him for his imaginary wealth and to covet its inheritance, and she secretly resolved to try, with the Lord’s help, to put away the evil influence and think of the old relative as a lonely old man whose age and infirmities it should be not only her duty but her pleasure to cherish and support.
And then the spirit of avarice departed for the time being, at least; for a devil cannot endure the presence of an angel.
While this change was silently passing within her she still held her husband’s hand.
At length she spoke again, slightly varying the subject.
“What about the boy?” she inquired, referring to his son.
“The man, you mean; for he is twenty-eight years old. I don’t know! I hope he will never get a pulpit, for I know this much, that he is totally unfit for one; yes, and the bishops, whose boots he is always licking in the hope of preferment, know it, too! He got the promise of the living here at Haymore from the fraudulent claimant who has ruined us all, or tried to do so; but that goes for nothing at all, for Mr. Randolph Hay has already given it to the Rev. Mr. Campbell, a good man and worthy minister. So my vagabond will also have to meet with humiliating disappointmentalong with his felonious patron and wretched sister.”
“Think no more on it, except to do the best you can and leave the rest to the Lord,” said Julia.
At this moment the door opened and a footman entered with a large tray laden with tea, bread and butter, game pie, cakes, sweetmeats and other edibles. He put it down on the tables between the two people and said:
“My mistress thought, sir, that you might like refreshments after your journey. And would you prefer a bottle of wine, sir?”
“No, thank you; nothing more whatever. You need not wait,” replied Mr. Legg.
The man touched his forehead and left the room.
Judy had remembered what Ran, with all his goodness of heart, had forgotten.
But, then, it is almost always Eve, and seldom or never Adam, who is
“On hospitable thoughts intent,”
“On hospitable thoughts intent,”
“On hospitable thoughts intent,”
“On hospitable thoughts intent,”
in the way of feeding at least.
Julia poured out tea for her husband and filled his plate with game pie and bread and butter, and made him eat and drink and set him a good example in that agreeable duty.
In the meantime the company in the drawing-room were getting a little weary of waiting.
Mr. Hay had contrived to draw the curate aside, where they could settle the affair of the living. It was but a short conference, for Mr. Campbell was glad and grateful to accept it. At the end of their talk the minister said very sincerely:
“The utmost that I dared to hope for was the curacy under the new rector, whoever he should be! But the living! It is more than I ever dreamed of or deserved! Yet will I, with the Lord’s help, do my utmost for the parish.”
What Ran might have replied was cut short with some sudden violence.
First by the heavy rumbling and tumbling of some clumsy carryall over the rough drive as it drew up to the front of the Hall and stopped; then by loud and angry tones ofvoice; then by a resounding peal of knocks on the door which seemed to reverberate through the entire building.
The arrival was an embodied storm that threatened to dash in the entire front of the house.
In the library John Legg sprang up and bolted the door against the uproar, and then sat down by his trembling wife.
In the drawing-room all was excitement and expectation.
“It’s him!” exclaimed old Dandy, with his few spikes of white hair rising on end around his bald crown. “It’s him! Straight from the pit of fire and brimstone, and possessed of the devil and all his demons!”
In the hall the frightened footmen hastened to throw open the front door.
Gentleman Geff burst in, cursing and swearing in the most appalling manner, and threatening every one in his house with instant discharge, death and destruction, for having kept him waiting at Chuxton so many hours and not having sent his coach and four and mounted servants to meet him!
So, raving like a madman whose frenzy is heightened bymania a potu, he broke into the drawing-room in the midst of the assembled company.
Ran Hay arose and advanced down the room to meet him.