Theswirling, eddying wind drove with a silent, ghostly fury up the deserted High Street of Upper Medlock one winter’s evening in 1884, carrying with it into every crevice and corner, in its wild pirouette, great waves of heavy inch-square snowflakes.
“Oh, what lovely weather for Christmas time,” exclaimed Mrs. Cargill as she stood by her husband’s side looking out of the deep, broad, comfortable bow-window of their house on the rioting tempest in white outside.
“Do you know,” she continued, nestling so close to her husband’s side that he had to put his arm round her dainty little waist to maintain his equilibrium, “do you know, that a storm like this makes me think our new home doubly comfortable and beautiful. You see it is the first real home that I was ever able to call my very own or yours, dear,which is quite the same thing, is it not?” and she looked up into her husband’s face with bright, happy eyes.
By way of reply her husband imprinted a warm kiss on the tempting lips so near to his own, and his arm tightened lovingly round the slender form.
“For shame, sir, kissing me at the window, I’m sure Mr. Strangely over the way at the banks saw you; it is too public even in a snow-storm.”
But the husband dropped the arm which imprisoned her waist, and turned from the window with a sigh which only a strong effort kept from changing into a groan of despair.
“Ben!” exclaimed the anxious voice of his wife as she heard the sigh, “there is something wrong with you, tell me what it is, darling.”
“No, dear, there is nothing wrong; I was standing in an awkward position that was all,” and with this love-framed fiction the husband stroked his wife’s glossy brown hair, and looked tenderly into her eyes. But there was a shade of wistfulness in his own which the wife’s keen gaze noted with apprehension, and with womanly persistence she pressed her point.
At last, and not altogether unwillingly, for theload was a heavy one for a single heart to bear, the husband unbosomed his trouble, as, half an hour later, they sat round the bright fire, with the bleak storm barred and curtained out.
“You remember,” he began, “how your rejected admirer, Banker Strangely, returned good for evil, as we thought, by giving me an opportunity of going into the Longfellow mining deal with him, by which he said we both would make an enormous fortune.”
Mrs. Cargill nodded her head by way of reply, but kept silent. Her woman’s wit already saw trouble ahead, but she anticipated it by no word.
“Well,” her husband resumed, “you advised me not to have anything to do with the banker or his scheme; and, dear, you were so positive about it that when Strangely over-persuaded me by explaining that your objection arose only from a dislike to him, I felt averse to confessing what I had done until the money should have been made and I could bring it in my hand to you. You will recollect, dear,” almost pleaded the husband by way of excuse as he looked into the loving, patient eyes before him, “we were not very well off, and,” with a moist tenderness in his eyes, “I wanted sobadly to have a pretty cage for the bonny bird I had just caught.”
The hand on his own pressed it gently, and there was a soft mist rising in the corner of the brown eyes, but the mouth was set and firm.
“Tell me, dear.”
The words fell from her lips, and they almost startled the husband, they sounded so unlike her usual soft, flute-like notes.
“Well,” resumed the husband almost desperately, “the sum I was to put in was $10,000, which was just $5,000 more than I could command at the time. I told Strangely that, and he said he would let me have the other $5,000, on my note of hand, which, he said, could be paid out of the profits of the mine, which was then doing remarkably well. I hesitated about giving the note, but Strangely showed me a letter from the owner of the mine, a man named George Williams, of Denver, which stated that the preceding month’s profit had been $1,500 nett, and he thought that figure would be maintained and considerably increased. Well, if that was true—and Strangely vouched for Williams’ honesty—I could easily meet the note which he asked me to give, out of the profits, moreespecially as the banker said he would agree to let all the profits be put aside for that purpose, and would not himself draw anything until the note I was asked to give was paid.
“That same letter of Williams which I speak of showed me that since Strangely had paid $1,000 down to bind the purchase, he (Williams) had received an offer of $35,000 for the mine, which was $10,000 more than we were going to pay for it.
“So to cut a long and miserable story short, I gave the banker my note six months ago, and the purchase of the mine was completed, I contributing $10,000 and Strangely paying $15,000. Since that time we have had the hardest kind of luck with the mine. First of all the manager left; then the mine was flooded; then some of the wooden supports gave way, and one of the shafts was closed, and the end of it all is that we have not received a single cent from the mine since we took it over, and my note for $5,000 is due to-morrow, and all the money I have or can control is $200. Was there ever such hard luck?”
For a time the two sat in silence hand in hand, he, just a little bit averse to forcing a prematureexpression, she, with her soft velvety eyes staring unseeingly into the blazing coals, miles deep in thought. Presently she spoke, and her voice was sweet and even, but there was an icy air about it, as if the breath which uttered it partook of the chill of the dismal night outside.
“And Mr. Strangely, won’t he enable you to meet that note or let it stand over, or renew it?” There was a suspicion of contempt in the last words, but not contempt for the person she was addressing.
“No, dear, Strangely has been telling me all the month that he is very short himself and that his directors will insist on the note being paid when due. He says that they have made some losses lately and are in quite a bad mood over them.”
“Well, dear, but if youcannotmeet the note, what will they do then?”
“They will protest my note, get a judgment against me, and sell my property.
“What! this house—our home!” almost screamed his wife, as she sprang to her feet, her indignant eyes all ablaze and giving back flame for flame with the leaping sea-coal fire.
“Yes, darling,” murmured the weary, heart-brokenman, “everything down even to the baby’s cradle.”
“O, but theycannotdo it,” replied the wife, her bright head high in the air, and her eyes full of a lovely defiance. “Ben,” she resumed with a pitiful attempt at a cheery smile, “they cannot sellyou, can they?”
“No, sweetheart,” replied Ben with a duplicate of the same wintery heartbreaking mirth in his tone.
“Then never mind, my darling, love will find a way out of the difficulty. My poor, poor dear, to think that you have been bearing this burden all alone for these long, miserable months while I was so blindly, so foolishly happy. And, oh me! to think of a note falling due on Christmas eve; that must have been Mr. Strangely’s doing that, to spoil our Christmas, now wasn’t it dear?”
“Well, I tried to put it off till January, but he said he could not make the note for more than six months, although he could renew it. Now, of course, he says he cannot renew it.”
“Just so, Ben, dear; do you not remember it was last Christmas eve Mr. Strangely proposed, and I declined his suit? Does not this seem likewhat you call getting even with us, darling, just a little like that, eh? He is a vindictive, jealous man, and he has tried to ruin you, that is all, love; that mine was a complete fraud, just his way of wreckingyou. Depend on it, I am right. Did you send anyone to examine the mine? Do you know positively that he put $15,000 into it? No, my own honest, unsuspicious husband, I see you did not. Well, be assured it is as I say, and although he has spoilt our Christmas eve, he will not spoil our lives or our love. A woman always gets a keen insight into the character of the man who loves her; that is, provided she does not love him. When she returns his love, she is blind and can see none of his faults. I saw a good deal of Mr. Strangely, and I always disliked him, even when he was expressing the greatest devotion to myself; he is a bad, unprincipled man. That is probably not just what the commercial agencies say about him, but I know I am nearer the truth than they are.”
At this moment a ring was heard at the outer bell, and Mrs. Cargill rose hastily to her feet exclaiming—“Oh, that must be my brother Wilfred. I forgot to tell you that I had a dispatch from himthis afternoon saying that he had arrived in New York from Denver, and would be here by this evening to spend his Christmas with us. I have not seen Wilfred for more than five years, and am so glad he is come. He is awfully cheerful, and will keep us from moping, and he is so lucky to everybody but himself, poor boy. He is quite poor, and yet he has been the means of making many people rich. He always seems to bring me good luck; and have you not seen people, dear, who were, on the contrary, what is called ‘ill-fated,’ who were always trying to do people good, and always harming them quite badly. No!—oh I have, time and again; and don’t you remember, in Bulwer Lytton’s ‘Harold,’ the ill-fated Haco, who is always trying to do the king good with the most disastrous results, and is finally the means of his death? Oh, I am so glad Will has come, and he is such a good hypnotizer too;” and so the dear little wife rattled on inconsequently, as if eager to drive out all miserable thoughts from her husband’s mind. But with all her semblance of cheerfulness there was a certain hardness of outline about the rounded cheek and chin which was not noticeable before, and seemed out of place in one so young.
Presently her brother Wilfred was ushered into the room, and introduced to her husband. When the first hearty welcomes were over and the evening meal had been discussed, Wilfred entertained his host and hostess with a graphic account of his experiences in the far West. These exhausted, his sister inquired of him how he had prospered in his affairs.
“About the same as usual,” was his response. “Still a bachelor and likely so to remain, for I am never more than $500 ahead of the world. I take my pleasure as it comes, and don’t hoard up so that I may have it when I am older and less able to enjoy it.”
The new-comer was a man of the most acute perceptions, and he soon became aware of a heaviness or constraint in the social atmosphere which pained him more almost than words could tell. “Great heavens,” he murmured to himself, “I hope my sister Nell has not made an unhappy match; yet I cannot imagine Ben to be an unkind man. There is more here than meets the eye. I must get it out of him; it won’t do to receive any confidences from her, if I am to make any use of them.” He looked so abstracted in his musingsthat his sister, brightening up forcibly, said, “Why, Will, you are positively dull; are you busy hypnotizing someone now in the distance?”
“No,” replied the brother with a smile, “the fact is I am a kind of wild, unregenerate creature whose habits get away with him at times, having no wife to regulate them, and I am craving for a cigar with all the force of a weak and vicious nature. If you have a den where I can tame this wild beast within me—for I smoke weeds of the vilest strength—I will come back in an hour clothed and in my right mind.”
This was but a ruse to enable him to be alone with his brother-in-law, so that he might, if possible, induce or force a confession from him as to the cause of the domestic cloud. “Give me an hour with Auld Nick,” growled Wilfred to himself, “and I would wring the inside combination of the doors of Hades out of him.”
When the two men emerged an hour later from the cozy smoking-room, Wilfred knew all the facts of the domestic tribulation, and beyond an appearance of occasional absent-mindedness, bore the confession cheerily.
“What about Dick Strangely, who was formerlyteller in the bank over the way, and one of your numerous and most persistent admirers, Nell?” he inquired.
“Why,” hurriedly remarked his brother-in-law, “did I not tell you that he was president of the bank over the way who held my note.”
“No, you certainly did not. Now Nell, your good husband has told me all about his trouble, and I want your opinion about it. You used to be pretty clear-headed; perhaps, however, I ought to have said prettyandclear-headed.”
“And so he occupies the flat over the bank, does he?” was the inquiry which followed his sister’s opinion expressed in womanly fashion, but with a sense and directness which caused the listener to weigh well every word that fell from her lips.
As he made the inquiry, Wilfred rose from his seat, parted the heavy window curtains, and, undoing the wooden shutters, gazed across the street. The storm had abated, and for the time being, at least, the snow had ceased to fall. The bright lamp-light from the street fell full on the massive front of the bank and showed a white face and cruel merciless gaze turned on the house—the house the Cargills were occupying.
“Why that was Strangely himself, was it not?” remarked Will, and the other nodding his reply he added, “Not much of friendship in that glance, brother-in-law mine; what do you say?”
Half an hour later the new arrival begged permission to retire, on the plea of fatigue. He had previously urged his sister to give him a bedroom in the front of the house, if possible. “I want to study the banker,” he explained, “and I cannot think properly of anyone over my shoulder, or through a number of empty rooms.” In kissing his sister he whispered in her ear, “I think things will come all right in time for Christmas eve.” For a moment she brightened up and then with a little doleful sigh she replied, “Ah! you do not know how vindictive that banker is; he is working for revenge, not money.”
“I know, I know,” returned her brother with a touch of impatience. “Still you just believe what I say, and go to bed in peace. Leave things to me; I have straightened out worse tangles than this.”
When his sister had left the room he drew a chair in front of the clear wood fire that burned in the low grate, and drawing to his side a small table, he leaned his elbow on it with his outspreadfingers supporting his temples. For fully an hour he remained in that position, as immovable as if cast in bronze. At the end of that time he rose from his chair pale and almost ghostly in appearance, but with eyes that shone supernaturally large and bright against the white skin of his face. There was an air of set tension about the man, which a child would have recognized and a thick-hided crocodile of the Ganges have given the right of the road to.
The fire had faded away to smouldering, unnoticeable embers, and the lamp which had been turned down since his sister left the room was now blown out. Moving with a stride of extraordinary expression for the life and vigor the step conveyed, Wilfred stepped to the window, pulled back the curtains, drew up the blind, and swiftly but noiselessly raised the window. The bank across the way lay buried in repose. It was now 11.30, and to all appearances the inmates of the dwelling apartments over it were all in bed, and presumably asleep. The storm had abated, and only the dark unstarred sky above and the snow beneath recalled the storm which had so recently rioted through the street.
Wilfred’s air, as his burning eyes rested on the bank building—or rather pierced it, for that was the impression their fierce intensity conveyed—was one of the most imperious command. It was no lifeless brick and mortar which those compelling orbs transfixed, and which the moving but voiceless lips ordered to perform their behests. His was a face for the deadly breach or the forlorn hope, and it grew paler and paler beyond even the pallor of death; while in spite of the gusts of icy air which swept in through the open window, the dew gathered, beaded and broke on his forehead, and mounted the stiffened hair that rose from his scalp like a frozen crest.
It was evidently no ordinary creature with which this ghostly and fantastic struggle was being waged. After the first stern bout and victory, there was a cessation of action for a few minutes, but soon a new struggle commenced, in which the stern monitor’s visage became that of unbending command and insistence. There was threat, too, in the eye, threat of dangerous and instant action.
At this point the watcher seemed to look for some noticeable event in the house opposite, and surely enough, as if in instant obedience to his wish, theflicker of a lamp could be seen descending the stairs of the bank building.
Presently the light drifted into the bank itself and inside the railing of the president’s office. Then slowly, and as if in a dream, the bearer could be seen to open the great iron safe and take from thence a portfolio, from which he carefully selected a document and then returned it to the safe. At this juncture a night policeman saw the light in the bank and hurried across the street preparatory to sounding an alarm. Recognizing the President, however, by the light of his lamp, he desisted, and stood for a few minutes watching his movements. As he saw him enter his office and commence to write a letter at his desk he resumed his round, merely muttering to himself: “Pretty late for banking business, but I presume he forgot something.”
Returning on his beat half an hour later he saw the banker emerge from his house, walk across the way and drop a long envelope into the letter-box of the house opposite, and then slowly and wearily re-enter his house.
Ten minutes later and the light died out from the banker’s dwelling. Simultaneously a man,spent and exhausted beyond the possibilities of ordinary or even extraordinary fatigue, closed his window, sank into an arm-chair, and lay there with white upturned face, from which the perspiration dropped in big, round, ice-cold beads. Few would have recognized in the pallid face, carved by deeply hewn lines, the gay debonair countenance of Wilfred Wharton, the wit,bon vivantandbon camaradeof the plains and city alike.
The following morning Wilfred was up betimes notwithstanding his exhausting labors of the night before. As he descended to the breakfast-room he met his sister, to whose inquiry as to whether he had been able to devise any means of escape from their desperate situation, he nodded encouragingly. “But,” he continued, “you must get me the key of your letter-box at once before your husband comes down. It is necessary for the success of my plans that I control your correspondence for a few hours.”
Within the letter-box he found a long envelope bearing the printed name of the bank. This he promptly opened, and after carefully perusing its contents, nodded in a satisfied way, and placed it in an inner pocket of his coat. Then returningthe other letters unnoticed to the box, he carried the key upstairs to his sister.
At breakfast nothing was said of the subject of the note due that day, but as soon as the servant had left the room, Wilfred plunged into the subject.
“Now, Ben,” he began, “you have got to follow me blindly in this matter, or I cannot help you. If you agree to do that, I believe I can get you out of this mess all right. The first request I have to make is that you leave town for the day, without having any communication whatever with the bank. You may return in good time for dinner, and I will promise to report in full to you then. Now, as for you, Nell, if they send across for Mr. Cargill from the bank just say your husband is out of town for the day and will not be back till the evening; and tell them you know nothing about his business. I am going out of town myself and will not be back till five o’clock.”
As the morning wore on there might have been seen a look of vast perplexity and uneasiness on the face of Banker Strangely across the way—that is to say, while in the privacy of his own room. At ten o’clock, on going through his private portfolio, he was unable to find the $5,000 note ofhand of his “dear” friend Benjamin Cargill, due that day. He had spent an hour looking for it, and still finding no trace of it he sat down to consider the situation. The day before he recollected destroying some old private papers taken from the same portfolio, and although he had been exceedingly careful, he now came to the conclusion that he must have destroyed the note among those papers. The thought of being baffled of his revenge against Mrs. Cargill for her former slight—for, as the lady rightly surmised, itwas revengeand not friendship which inspired the banker—consumed his very soul with rage. Was he to be thus thwarted after tracking his victim down? Not while his brain performed its accustomed office.
Taking pen in hand he wrote the following letter to his “friend” Mr. Cargill:
“Dear Sir:—“I beg to remind you that your note for $5,000 in my favor is due here to-day. As I explained to you, if the amount is not paid by three o’clock the note will go to protest. I shall be very sorry indeed to have to resort to such measures, but for the reasons already given you, I have no alternative.”
“Dear Sir:—
“I beg to remind you that your note for $5,000 in my favor is due here to-day. As I explained to you, if the amount is not paid by three o’clock the note will go to protest. I shall be very sorry indeed to have to resort to such measures, but for the reasons already given you, I have no alternative.”
The reply which was brought back was: “Mr. Cargill is out of town for the day; the letter will be handed to him on his return.”
This indicated either a neglect or indifference of the banker’s intentions, which made the latter furious. “I wonder where on earth that note is,” he remarked under his breath feverishly again and again. And as the day passed he grew half crazy with rage. At 2.30 he rang his bell for his signature-book and after opening it at the letter “C,” he carefully studied the specimen signature given there by Mr. Cargill when he opened his account. Then from an inner drawer he took a promissory note blank and slowly filled it in, using for the purpose a bottle of stale black ink. “It is not forgery,” he murmured, as if excusing himself to his conscience, “it is only justice.”
Ten minutes later he rang his bell, and sent the note into the general office with instructions that if it were not taken up by three o’clock, the teller should take it across to Mrs. Cargill and see her about it. Then if still unpaid, he directed that the note should be protested.
The note being unpaid, the teller called on Mrs. Cargill, who politely informed him that she knewnothing about her husband’s affairs. “Did she not seem anxious and perturbed when she saw the note?”
“No, sir, she looked at the handwriting quietly and inquired who signed her husband’s name to it.”
“What!” snarled the banker, “what did you say?”
“She inquired who signed her husband’s name to the note, and I replied of course he signed it himself, and she said, ‘Well, I think I ought to know Mr. Cargill’s signature, and I never saw it as shaky as that before; he must have been put out when he signed that document.’ ”
When the teller retired, the banker sank into his chair in a heap as one who had received a death wound. “Great Heaven,” he ejaculated, “what am I doing, is that woman going to drive me to perdition? But no, her remarks are only the silly talk of an ignorant woman. No one knows about the note being mislaid.” Saying this he drove his hand down savagely on the gong on his table, and when the clerk appeared in response to his summons, he bade him in imperious tones to have “that note protested.”
. . . . . . . . . . .
At four o’clock a sleigh drove up to Mr. Cargill’s house, from which Wilfred alighted after requesting the driver to wait for further instructions. Learning from Mrs. Cargill of the presentation of the note, Wilfred re-entered the sleigh, giving the driver fresh directions in a tone of command very unusual to him. After a drive of a mile the sleigh stopped at the house of a justice of the peace, for the second time that day.
On issuing from the house of the justice, Wilfred gave directions to be driven to the police station. After announcing his wishes there, he returned to his sister’s house and finding her husband had returned he carried him off to the office of the Notary Public. At the latter place they inquired whether a note for $5,000 had been left there for protest that day. On learning that the note was in the notary’s hands and would remain there until the morning, the Justice of the peace was again visited, and an hour later the notary was served with an injunction not to part with the note of hand.
Once more the sleigh’s sweet bells jangled before the police station and when it sped on its way again its ample robe enfolded the sturdy albeitsomewhat bandied legs of the night policeman whose acquaintance we have already made; but who was not now in uniform.
When Mr. Strangely returned to his residence from his own sleigh ride at 5.30P.M., he was surprised to learn that three gentlemen awaited him in the parlor.
“Who are they?” he inquired of the servant, and when he learned that Mr. Cargill was one of the number he rubbed his hands together gleefully and murmured to himself: “At last, at last, I have got you in the toils, my lady with the dainty, devilish face that refused me so scornfully a year ago.”
The look with which he entered the room where his visitors awaited him had a fine and scornful air of contempt about it, suggestive of unsatiated conquest, and slaves, male and female—especially female—dragging at his victorious chariot’s wheel.
“You are come to take up that note, I presume?” he began, addressing Mr. Cargill and ignoring his companion, “but you are entirely too late. Honorable men do not come sneaking into a bank two hours after it has been closed and after their note has gone to protest. To-morrow the whole townwill know that your note has been protested—no not to-morrow, for that is Christmas Day,—but you will be the talk of the town the following day, and no doubtthatreflection will sweeten your Christmas dinner—as” he snarled through his shark-like teeth—“as your wife sweetened mine a year ago, through your accursed interference.”
If he had not been carried away by his feelings he would have noticed the peculiar expression on the faces of his visitors, but he did not, and he raved on until, in a stentorian voice, Wilfred bade him be silent. What was it in the look and voice of that man that made the banker pause and wince as he met his gaze? “Who are you, sir, that dare——” he began, but his voice faltered, and his whole frame seemed to shrink as he met the other’s full lambent eye bent upon him, and felt it thrilling him through and through.
“I know you, surely,” he said slowly and almost feebly. “I have seen you before—somewhere,” and then the other’s gaze seemed to freeze him into silence.
“Listen to me, Banker Strangely, and do not dare to open your mouth till I have done.”
“You have been engaged in a conspiracy to ruinmy friend, Mr. Cargill. You induced him to give you $5,000 to invest in a mine named the Longfellow, near Denver, and give you his note for $5,000, and you told him you were paying $15,000 more, and that, you said, made up the entire purchase money. To insure his joining you, you showed him a letter from the manager of the mine named George Williams, showing that very large profits were being made. You knew Mr. Cargill’s anxiety to make some money, so that his wife, who had had so many rich offers, might not pine for the wealth which might have been hers. O, revenge was sweet to you, and you played your cards well. Too well, my friend, for your own comfort now. You thought to wreck their happiness this fair Christmas eve, did you; well, there is going to be some wrecking done, my friend, but it is here in this house—yourhome—where it is going to occur and not over the way in the home of the woman you once said you loved.
“Your whole plot is laid bare. I hold in my hand in your own handwriting a full and detailed confession of your villainy which you wrote out last night and sent to my friend, together with the note for $5,000, which you acknowledged you hadgot from him by fraud. There it is, and see, you have endorsed it in your own handwriting, and added your private stamp to it. In the same letter you gave my friend the name of your accomplice, George Williams, and his address, and when I showed him your letter he confessed everything too, and told me a good deal more of your dealings than was needful for my case.”
“It is all a lie, that letter is a forgery, I never wrote it, and that note was stolen from the bank last night,” shrieked the banker, goaded to desperation, “I will send for the police.”
“You need not send far, there is one outside the door,” returned Wilfred. Then, opening the door, he summoned the officer to enter.
“This officer in private clothes is the policeman who was on duty last night, and saw you enter the bank office, unlock the safe, take out a document, and after closing the safe, write a letter which you enclosed in a long envelope and placed with your own hand in Mr. Cargill’s letter-box. Am I not right, officer?”
“Entirely correct, sir.”
The banker sat paralyzed, his brain benumbed with the extraordinary statement made to him.Was it all a dream, or was he going mad? And then like a flash of lightning he recollected inquiring that morning if the servant knew what had made his slippers so wet; it was the snow—the accursed snow, as he crossed the street to Mr. Cargill’s. Ah! now he knew they were speaking the truth; besides, that was undoubtedly his handwriting and his seal; and that was beyond all question the genuine note.
“Then,” resumed the inexorable Wilfred, mindful only of his sister’s pain, “ignorant of what you had done in your sleeping hours and being unable to find the note which you had returned to its rightful owner, you imagined you had mislaid it, and lest your darling revenge for which you had imperilled your soul, should escape you, you forged a fresh note, which being of course unpaid, you have sent to the notary’s for protest.
“Dick Strangely, you have played for a high stake—the wrecking of a happy home—and you have lost. That is all, this bright snowy Christmas eve! In my hand here I hold a warrant for your arrest on a charge of conspiracy with Williams to defraud Cargill, and also on a charge of forgery. I have obtained an injunction preventing the notaryfrom parting with the forged note which he holds, and I have Williams safe in prison ready to bear evidence against you.”
As one by one the banker heard of the steps taken to close every door against his escape, his head drooped lower and lower.
“Save me,” he murmured brokenly at last, “I’m a poor, desperate, broken-hearted man, save me, and I’ll make restitution.”
As he glanced on the two faces beside him (the policeman had retired to the passage) he saw on the one, that of Cargill, a mingling of relief and amazement—for the revelations were not one whit the less surprising to him than to the banker—and on the other only relentless determination.
As he recognized the latter he sank on his knees and begged for mercy, offering to pay back double what he had defrauded his former friend Cargill of.
The two brothers-in-law stepped apart for a moment to confer. “Wilfred,” urged the husband’s voice, “this man was until recently a friend. He became an enemy because Nell refused him for me. Her rejection of his desperate love for her has made a scoundrel of him; I imagine it would have madea villain of me too. I surely can afford to be generous when I win all around. I cannot send a man I once called by the name of friend to jail on Christmas eve. Wait here, and I will go across and talk the matter over with my wife; she ought to be consulted on this business.”
“Bring her here,” was the laconic reply.
And so it happened that the mercy which Dick Strangely subsequently received that night was taken humbly and penitently from the hand of the woman he once professed to love, but whose husband and home he ultimately tried to ruin.
The banker returned the money that night of which he had defrauded his friend, and he also returned the mortgages. He offered indeed to pay back double, but his offer was refused with scorn and loathing.
Dinner at Mr. Cargill’s was an hour late that night, but it was eaten with great joy and happiness of heart. “The happiest Christmas eve of my life,” exclaimed Mrs. Cargill with eyes whose radiance was momentarily dimmed by their moisture; and so said they all.
“Wilfred,” exclaimed the happy wife and sister as she rose from table to leave the two gentlemen totheir after-dinner cigar, “I will never, never understand how you accomplished what you did. I believe you must have hypnotized Mr. Strangely. Did you, sir, tell me?”
“Perhaps,” was the reply with a curious smile curling the outer wave of his moustache. “Ben, the port wine is with you!”
“Tell me, Wilfred, how you managed it,” pressed his brother-in-law.
“Well,” replied the other after a pause, “it is not fair to make me disclose the secrets of my success, but I had a good deal of influence over that fellow Strangely, at school. On one occasion I caught him at a very disgraceful trick and gave him a very memorable thrashing. After that he seemed to drift into my power somehow, partly by reason of his disgrace, which I kept to myself, and partly because a good thrashing is an excellent beginning in hypnotism among boys. As the result, I could make him do anything I liked. With such a ground-work I had no difficulty in bringing him under my influence last night, more especially as I have become a pretty successful hypnotist by long practice and study.”
“Could you, do you think, have made him dowhat he did if you had not known him previously?”
“No, I think I would probably have had to go to work some other way with him, but I imagine he would have had to disgorge all the same. Hypnotism as an art is full of resources.”
THE END.
THEplace was Euston Square Station, the Metropolitan terminal depot of the London and Northwestern Railway; the hour 8:15P.M.when from time wellnigh immemorial the London limited express has started for Scotland; the individual a tall, broad-shouldered man of, perhaps, twenty-five years, and known to the world, if not as yet to fame, as Richard Dalrymple.
As the traveller hurriedly took his seat in the first-class carriage which he had given the guard a couple of half-crowns to reserve for his exclusive use, he looked out with some impatience on a whole landscape of good-byes.
There were convivial good-byes perceptible in the refreshment department, there were lovers’ good-byes “the world forgetting by the world forgot,”then there were the multitudinous good-byes of good-fellowship. The universal parting injunction to “mind and write soon” was drowned in the hearty laughter and loud badinage which somehow or other appear to be inseparable from this station, possibly as a sort of counterpoise to the somewhat different style of off-going from the northern and sadder end of the line where the ties of friendship or kinship are apt to be closer and farewells longer and more affecting.
As Richard Dalrymple looked out upon the scene he thanked his lucky stars that there was no one there to bidhimgood-bye, and lest even a passing acquaintance should recognize him he hurriedly drew the window curtains and retired into the seclusion of his carriage.
“Thank God,” he murmured to himself as the train moved out of the station, “I’m glad I’m off. It was safer to run away, she carries altogether too many guns for me.”
As if to divert his mind from painful thoughts, he glanced out into the night and watched for a while, after an absent-minded fashion, the wayside stations as they fled past in endless procession.
Then an inbound express dashed by apparentlysmashing all the crockery of the world as it went, and the shock so far dislocated his ideas as to induce him to leave the window.
“I suppose I may as well make myself comfortable,” he presently murmured to himself. “Barkirk is four hundred miles away and there is no change of carriages.”
Saying this, he exchanged his tall hat for the regulation travelling-cap used in those ante-Pullman days.
As he uncovered his head, his clear-cut profile crowned with a profusion of light brown curls, such as ladies love to toy with, shone white and clear against the dark blue of the carriage upholstery.
“A strikingly handsome man both as to feature and complexion,” all women vowed Richard Dalrymple at first sight—“and a manly-looking man, too,” they were prone to add when they saw his width of shoulder and length of limb, and noted the frank fearless look of the well-opened dark blue eyes.
And yet as he opened his cigar-case to while away with “a weed,” the tedium of the long hours, there was an air of anxiety perceptible on his browand a worn look expressive of much turmoil and uncertainty of mind visible around his eyes, which, to all appearance, the joy he had expressed at his escape had not to any appreciable extent relieved.
As the dainty cigar-case of sweet-smelling Russia leather lay in his grasp a tender look came into his eyes, and opening the clasp, two lovely bunches of blue Scotch “forget-me-nots” lay before him worked in silk in marked relief on the soft lining of the case.
As he sat gazing at the small blue flowers a soft mist crept into his eyes and rose and rose until it blotted out both flowers and cigar-case and blurred the light blazing overhead.
Then from the innermost receptacle of his pocket-book he took a piece of soft tissue paper and extracted from it, with much tenderness, the half of a three-penny piece, which, after putting tenderly to his lips, he laid alongside the blue “forget-me-nots.”
“It is just three years ago,” he murmured to himself, “since Jeannie gave me these when I first left for London to try my hand at medicine there. I remember the very words of the oldsong which she repeated as she gave me the half of the broken coin:
‘Now take this lucky thrupenny bit,’Twill help you bear in mind,A faithful, loving, trusting heart,You left in tears behind.’
‘Now take this lucky thrupenny bit,’Twill help you bear in mind,A faithful, loving, trusting heart,You left in tears behind.’
‘Now take this lucky thrupenny bit,’Twill help you bear in mind,A faithful, loving, trusting heart,You left in tears behind.’
And although I have never seen my darling since, I have been true to her in word and thought and deed.
“Yes, indeed, I have,” he repeated almost fiercely, as though someone had challenged his statement; and then, as if a twinge of remorse tortured him, he cried out, “Oh, forgive me, pet, if I have ever wavered, even for a moment; you know I have never loved anyone but you.”
The heavy tears dropped from his eyes, and fell on the blue “forget-me-nots;” and then, as if ashamed to show his womanishness even to the walls opposite, he looked out into the night, through which the express now plunged on its furious way, rocking under its sixty-miles-an-hour gait.
Richard Dalrymple was what is termed a good, square man, and under the strongest conceivable temptation to prove himself a renegade he wasdoing his utmost, and not by any means with eye-service only, to prove himself true to his little Scottish sweetheart.
The cause—not of his apostasy, for he was still true in word and deed, and yes, in thought too, to hisfiancée—but of his anxiety, was, all unknown to him, seated in the adjoining carriage with a smile of mingled triumph and apprehension lighting up her splendid dark eyes.
When Richard Dalrymple had regained his composure and had lit his cigar, the lady in the next compartment, detecting the odor, smiled again.
“Make yourself at home,mon prince,” she murmured with a softer light in her brilliant eyes—“and good-night—a sweet good-night,” she added tenderly, throwing a mute kiss with both hands in the direction of the invisible smoker. “The woman who loves you will keep watch over you, aroon.”
MISSGwendoline Beattison, the lady who with her companion, an elderly Frenchwoman, occupied the adjoining compartment, was the daughter of General Beattison and of his wife, a Spanish lady of renowned beauty.
After acquiring great wealth in India, General Beattison—a Scotchman by birth—had returned to his native town, and there during the intervals of her visiting and education abroad his daughter had resided, and had made the acquaintance of Richard Dalrymple, the only son of Doctor Dalrymple, senior physician of the town.
When the younger Dalrymple had established a medical practice in the West-end of London it seemed only natural that the Beattisons, who generally spent from five to six months in the Metropolis each year, should patronize him, more especially as they knew him to be well trained in his profession, and well thought of among his brother practitioners.
Dalrymple was an attractive man, a good talker and possessed of a magnetism which drew other men to him. He was popular and was accordingly in demand and at no house was he more welcome than at the home of General Beattison.
But complications soon arose.
Mrs. Beattison had died while her daughter Gwendoline, an only child, was still in the nursery, and the latter’s education had largely devolved upon governesses at home and abroad, whom her naturally dominant will soon reduced to subjection.
The result was that by the time she was sixteen years of age, Miss Beattison was a law unto herself, and it might be added with some show of truth, to her father also.
She was now twenty-one years of age and all the talk of “London-town,” in her matchless beauty—the despair alike of painters and poets. From her mother she had inherited her black Castilian hair and glorious dark eyes, together with that magnetism of glance and capacity for arousing or manifesting passion which seems the heritage of Spain’s seductive daughters.
From her father’s side had sprung the height andstateliness which marked her carriage; and the unresting audacity of the warrior’s blood was readily visible when Miss Gwendoline entered the lists.
Courted by all, and the belle of the London season, Gwendoline was true to an early—but undisclosed—infatuation for Richard Dalrymple, and with scant courtesy she refused the best offers of the season “by the score,” bent upon securing the only being she had made up her mind she could love.
Richard, although by no means insensible to Miss Beattison’s charms, was true to his Scotchfiancée, and feeling the fair Gwendoline’s passion for him becoming more and more marked, and unable to see that he was holding his own satisfactorily, he deemed discretion the better part of valor and, as we have seen, fled.
Miss Beattison, who had fathomed his plans, determined to follow him, believing that only some mistaken notion of chivalry on his side kept them apart, and convinced in her own mind that they were made for each other, and wholly unwilling that both their lives should be ruined by a false delicacy on her part.
It will be seen that her views were very far indeed from being orthodox on the question of woman’s rights, so far as they relate to courtship, but as against this it may be said that no breath of suspicion had ever been raised against her fair fame, and that her determination in following Mr. Dalrymple was consistent with a hereditary obstinacy in legitimate pursuits, once she was satisfied as to what was the right thing for her to do.
As Richard Dalrymple finished his third cigar the train was nearing Rugby station, its first stopping place.
“The preacher was entirely right,” he muttered, as he threw away the end of his cigar; “ ‘fill a bushel full of wheat and there will be no room for chaff.’ I have not been thinking enough of Jeannie, or this thing would never have worried me.
“The dear little darling,” he suddenly burst out with a new accession of fervor, as he took a photograph from his pocket and kissed it again and again. “I will have a thousand copies of that photograph made, and I will put them everywhere in my house and study and in my pockets, so that people will say ‘what a model lover he is!’ and that will stimulate me to be still better than I am.”
He kept on talking for some time until he became conscious of an undue earnestness in his avowals. “Great Heavens!” he suddenly exclaimed, “I hope I am not protesting too much—Oh no, no—how can I talk like that when I am within eight hours of the sweetest lips in Christendom, all mine too—exclusively—unkissed, unreaped for three years and just, just (here hyperbole failed him)—just too sweet for anything.”
“Those lovely blue eyes, that rounded neck and that yellow hair, and those dear arms! O dear, I feel them now even after three long years.
“I hate dark eyes and black hair and all your over-ripe Southern beauty; I wonder I ever gave it a thought; it is so commonplace beside the charm of the ravishing blond.”
In his excitement he had risen to his feet and was pacing backwards and forwards in his carriage, thrusting his arms out forcibly in front of him, as if in an effort to throw off excitement.
In turning, his hand struck the frame of the window forcibly, and the photograph fell from his grasp underneath the seat.
As he stooped to recover it he saw a handkerchief alongside it. This he at first mistook for his ownuntil the softness of its texture undeceived him.
Rising to his feet he held the handkerchief somewhat carelessly to the light with the air of one who had nothing better to do, to see if he could discover any initials upon it. As he did so he became conscious of a subtle perfume, and it moved him horribly, as some men die without being moved.
His knees gave way through the weakness and he sat down. There was, he felt, but one person in all England who used that dainty Oriental perfume. She had told him so, and that one was herself.
Lest there should be any doubt as to the identity of the handkerchief, there, too, was the monogram in gold and black on the corner, the initials G. B. subtly intertwined.
In silence Richard Dalrymple sat with whitening face looking at the delicate piece of cambric in his hands.
“My God!” he suddenly burst out, “What is the matter with me; it is all I can do to keep myself from kissing it!”
His hand shook as it held the piece of vagrant cambric, and when the train entered Rugby station a man in the depths of self-abasement knelt on the floor of Dalrymple’s compartment with his head buried in the cushions of the seat.
WHILEthe train was standing in the station at Rugby, and the majority of the male passengers were taking their last “night-caps” at the bar of the refreshment room, before composing themselves finally to sleep, a voice of somewhat uncertain fibre called to the guard as he passed the window of the carriage occupied by Richard Dalrymple.
“Guard, come here a minute. Can you tell me how that handkerchief got into this carriage?” and the speaker handed the dainty piece of cambric which he had found to the astonished guard.
Before the latter had time to frame a reply a shrill female voice from the next compartment called out, “Come here at once please, guard, quick!!”
The call was so urgent and the necessity of the caller apparently so desperate that, with a hasty “Excuse me, one moment, sir,” to RichardDalrymple, the guard stepped to the door of the adjoining compartment.
“Come inside please, guard, I’ve crushed my finger in the window and can’t get it out.”
As soon as the guard had entered the carriage the lady who had called him—Miss Beattison’s companion—promptly placed herself in front of the door to prevent anyone from seeing inside, and then waved the guard toward her mistress.
“O, conductor, please tell me,” said the other with great eagerness, “what the gentleman in the next compartment found. I overheard part of your conversation but not all.”
“Well, miss, he found this handkerchief, and it seems to have startled him very considerably indeed.”
“O dear, dear, it is one of mine which I must have dropped in that place to-night. You will remember that you showed us into that compartment first of all, but I exchanged it for this one because it gave me a better view of the entrance gate, and enabled me to see who was going off by train.
“Now, guard, that gentleman next door is a friend of mine, but I would not for all the world he knew I was near him; he would certainlywant to travel in the same carriage, and that would be quite a nuisance.
“Tell him the handkerchief must have been left there by one of a party of Northern visitors to London and must have escaped the cleaner’s notice.
“Be steady now and on no account let him suspect that I am in this carriage,” and a small golden coin changed hands.
When the guard returned to Dalrymple the latter questioned him as to what was wrong next door. “Lady jammed her hand in the window, sir.”
“Dear me, and did you raise the window and relieve her hand, poor thing.”
“Well, no, sir—come to reflect, hang me if I think I did “—this with evident shamefacedness.
“You are a funny fellow, guard. After being called to open a window and relieve a suffering damsel, you come away not only without taking off the pressure, but you forget all about it; get out of my way and I’ll attend to the suffering lady.”
“Hold on, sir—stop, I say, stop!” called out the guard resisting the other’s exit, “the lady’s hand is all right now, and besides I haven’t told you the worst, the lady is in a high fever and—and itlooks like small-pox. I didn’t want to tell you at first,” he went on mendaciously, “but you have forced it out of me; please don’t say anything about it or I’ll get into trouble.”
“Great Heavens!” ejaculated the traveller; “what an awful calamity! I wish you would stand a little further off. Suppose,” he added under his breath, “I should carry the infection to Jeannie.”
Then he added aloud as the other was leaving, “You have not explained how that handkerchief came to be in this carriage.”
“Oh, that is a very simple matter, sir,” replied the other promptly with an “in for a penny in for a pound” air, “a party of ladies came up to London in this carriage on my last trip, and I suppose one of them dropped her handkerchief under the seat, by accident. The name on their trunks was Bertrand, and I heard one of the young ladies called Georgiana, and the initials being the same,” continued the guard giving full swing to his imagination, “I suppose the handkerchief belongs to her.”
“That sounds all right,” returned Dalrymple, giving a side glance at the piece of cambric as if he would have liked to have asked for it had he only known what excuse to make for his request.
Now as the lady in the adjoining carriage, anxious that our traveller should have a reminder of her, had with much and unwonted palpitation of heart, suggested to the conductor the propriety of returning the handkerchief to the finder, he had no particular difficulty in meeting the other’s unspoken request.
“I suppose you may as well place that handkerchief where you found it,” the guard remarked handing it to Dalrymple as he closed the door, “it is the usual way.”
“Well, I suppose so,” replied the other with affected indifference, receiving the precious article from his hands.
As the train sped on its way Dalrymple sat for a while with corrugated brow, then he suddenly muttered as he lit a last cigar before turning in for the night:
“That explanation might account for the initials, but how about the perfume? The coincidence is too striking. I don’t understand it, and I believe that small-pox scare next door is all a trumped-up affair. I wonder who the people are who curtain themselves so closely in there, and what they mean by fooling the guard so.”
He awoke once during the night to find himself with a photograph of his lady-love in one hand and the handkerchief in the other. This arrangement stung him to the heart, and he made as though he wanted to throw the handkerchief out of the window.
“But no!” he said to himself in time, “I might need it as a reminder that I must brace myself and drive all thoughts of Miss Beattison out of my mind.”
That this reasoning was faulty was more than proved by the rapid softening of the severe glance which he directed towards the fluffy piece of cambric, which, as if half afraid of some necromantic influence, he held gingerly between his finger and thumb.
“Guard,” he said, “I don’t believe that cock-and-bull story about small-pox in the next compartment, or that high old tale you told me about the lady crushing her hand—now whoarethese people next door and what little game are they dragging you into?”
“I don’t know anything more about them than I have told you,” returned the conductor somewhat curtly, “and I’ve got too many daft people bothering me all the time without hunting up fresh ones.”
Saying this he raised his silver whistle to his lips and blew a loud blast, at the same time waving his right arm up and down toward the engineer like a crazy semaphore; all of which was the signal to go ahead.
Dalrymple retired to his seat with a rather chagrined smile.
“Slightly personal, that remark,” he said as he recomposed himself for sleep, “but I suppose heisworried quite a good deal by queer people. This line seems to be haunted to-night.”
WHENDalrymple awoke again, dawn was breaking coldly and slowly among the mountains of the lake district.
When he put his head out of the window of his carriage, the fresh chilly air of the hills carried his memory back with a rush to his old Scotch days, and to the time of his courtship.
“Oh, my little pet,” he murmured, turning to the photograph in his hand, “it seems but yesterday since you and I plighted our troth to each other on just such a hillside as this one here. I remember the smell of the heather that day, and how I could hardly find you a place to sit down on in the soft velvety sward, because you said you never liked to crush the bonny blue-bells—and they were all around us; and the lark, I recollect, rose from our feet and soared aloft, and we said it was singing us a wedding march.
“And that big intrusive bumble-bee too, thatwould fly around our heads—we could not bear to hurt it, we were so happy ourselves, and I have never even killed a wasp since for the memory of the time. Ah! and I remember too, Jeannie, the touch of your dear little hand so plump and firm, and the look in your bonny blue eyes when I told you I loved you and asked you to marry me; you looked so beautiful and shy.
“I was the happiest man on earth till that day, and there never has anything come between us, until now.”
As he ended there was a sharp tone of anger in his last words, and rising quickly and with much energy he opened the window and threw from it with all his force the poor little piece of monogrammed cambric, which had been lying on the seat before him.
As this little incident culminated the train was slowing down to enter the small station where travellers to the Lakes break their journey, and a barefooted youngster who had run out to meet the train caught the feather-like handkerchief as it fluttered and eddied from the advancing train.
A lady sitting at the adjoining window which was open, heard the violent banging of the sashahead and saw the handkerchief thrown forcibly out.
“Call to that boy instantly, madame, to give you that handkerchief.”
The speaker was Miss Beattison, and as she made way for her companion at the window the natural pallor of her face became almost ghastly as she placed her hand to her side.
“Oh!oh!OH!” she moaned, “at last he has broken my heart. Now indeed I know how much he hates and loathes me by his throwing my poor little handkerchief out of the window as if it was infected by the plague. Oh how he must despise me!” Here gentle nature came to the relief of the sad-eyed, heavy-hearted sleepless one, and she burst into a flood of passionate tears.
“Has the boy got the handkerchief?” she inquired through her sobs.
“Yes, mademoiselle, here he comes with it, running alongside the train.”
“Oh, take it from him quickly, dear,” the sobbing maiden faltered, “or I think I shall die of shame and mortification.”
“Boy, bring that handkerchief here, it belongs to me,” shouted a commanding voice from thecarriage ahead—and at the sound of it the tears in Miss Beattison’s eyes stood still—a frozen cataract.
“The lady wants it, sir; she says it is hers,” protested the boy.
“Oh, madame, slay that boy,” said Miss Beattison in a fierce little whisper.
“The lady is mistaken, bring that handkerchief here at once.”
“But it is a lady’s handkerchief, sir,” urged the boy.
“Bring it here at once, you little devil, or I’ll break your neck.”
Coarse words these, and oh how impolite to the other claimants, and yet sweeter far to the straining ears of the offended one than the softest music!
But the boy was “dour” in the face of ugly words or threats, and he held out the handkerchief to the lady at the window.
“No, no, give it to the gentleman,” said madame, and after a moment’s hesitation the boy threw the handkerchief into the carriage where Dalrymple was standing.
Dalrymple endeavored to reward the boy by throwing him a shilling, but the threat was notforgotten and the boy who came of a fighting stock threw the coin back into the carriage.
Dalrymple saw with surprise a coin of large dimensions fall into the boy’s hands from the other window, and he lighted a matutinal cigar to try and cipher out the peculiar kind of lunatics there were imprisoned in that adjoining compartment.
As for the eventful handkerchief, as if he were ashamed of having had it brought back he let it lie where it fell.
Next door an unusual occurrence had already taken place. Rising to her feet and swaying to and fro in the excess of her emotion, and with her beautiful eyes swimming in happy tears, Gwendoline Beattison threw herself on the hard bosom (but not hard heart) of her old companion and friend, and murmured as she flung her arms around her neck, “Oh, it was all a mistake. He did not intend to throw away my handkerchief. Did you notice how furious he was, the darling, when he thought some one was going to take it, eh?” At which, by way of reply, the truthful companion groaned with much and genuine distress.
“I shall find out all about this mystery of thenext compartment once I get to Carlisle station,” muttered Richard Dalrymple to himself. “We stop there fifteen minutes for breakfast, and it will be strange if I can’t find out what particular kind of asylum I have next door then.”
Saying this he relit his cigar and gave his eyes to the dreamy study of the Northern landscape, while his mind projected itself ahead to the meeting so soon to take place between himself and his sweetheart, from whom he had been parted for three long years.
But “the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglee,” especially when it is a woman’s wit which is the disturbing influence.
At the last station before entering Carlisle, Miss Beattison called the guard to her, and begged that he would find an empty carriage in the rear of the train (their carriage was now in front) for herself and companion, into which they could change the moment the gentleman in the adjoining compartment should leave it for his breakfast.
“But suppose he does not leave it?” gloomily queried the guard; “men who smoke so much in the early morning can easily wait for their breakfast until they get home.”
“Well, in that case,” responded the lady, “we will try some other plan, but this will do until we know it can’t be carried out; and at Carlisle we will keep our curtains closed until you give us warning to change, in case he should feel inclined to satisfy his curiosity about us.”
“By the way, guard,” resumed the lady, after a momentary pause, and with a little tremor in the voice, “did you happen to notice what he did with the handkerchief?”
“Yes, madam, it is lying on the seat in front of him and he is studying a photograph.”
“That is all, guard, thank you,” returned the lady in a fainter tone, as she leaned her head back on the cushioned partition.
“You look faint, mademoiselle,” said her companion, hastening to her side with an anxious look in her eyes—“will mademoiselle try a little sal-volatile?”
“Thank you, no,” replied her mistress; “I think it is only that I am a little faint after my long night’s travel.”
She sat in silence for a few minutes while the companion watched the pallid face, and the white lids and long dark lashes which hid the beautiful eyes.
There was a saddened droop in the beautiful mouth with its gracefully curved lips, as if Cupid’s bow had been bent just a little awry. And where, oh where, was that imperious look which was wont to be enthroned on that boldly rounded chin? The change was Love the humiliator’s work.
The silken scarf thrown over the shapely head had fallen aside and now showed the beautiful hair in all the graceful abandon consequent upon a night’s comfortless travel.
The dusky tresses with the wave of a wind-swept banderol in them grew low and luxurious over the broad white forehead, and curled upwards in wealthy profusion over the graceful head.
The beautiful and strongly marked eyebrows, the densely fringed lids and all the component parts of superlative beauty were there.
Men talk of alabaster loveliness, of faces pale and perfect as flawless marble, but these similes fell far short of Miss Beattison’s complexion, which was the despair of the rest of the sex. In her case these would have been dead illustrations of a living glorious beauty to which neither nature nor art could furnish an analogy or an expression.
Her beautiful eyes, now closed in heart-breakingreflections, like her other perfections defied descriptions and beggared eulogy!
Even Byron, grand-master in the art of portraying woman’s ravishing beauty, recorded his failure to describe the beauty of lovely eyes, and his words might well be appropriated for Miss Beattison: