The Earl of Bude had meant to lay his heart, coronet, and other possessions, real and personal, before the tiny feet of the fair American at Goodwood. But when he learned from Merton the involvements of this heiress and paragon, that her hand depended on the choice of the people, that the choice of the people was to settle on the adventurer who brought to New York the rarest of nature’s varieties, the earl honourably held his peace. Yet he and the object of his love were constantly meeting, on the yachts and in the country houses of their friends, the aristocracy, and, finally, at shooting lodges in the Highlands. Their position, as the Latin Delectussays concerning the passion of love in general, was ‘a strange thing, and full of anxious fears.’ Bude could not declare himself, and Miss McCabe, not knowing that he knew her situation, was constantly wondering why he did not speak. Between fear of letting her secret show itself in a glance or a blush and hope of listening to the words which she desired to hear, even though she could not answer them as her heart prompted, she was unhappy. Bude could not resist the temptation to be with her—indeed he argued to himself that, as her suitor and an adventurer about to risk himself in her cause, he had a right to be near her. Meanwhile Merton was the confidant of both of the perplexed lovers; at least Miss McCabe (who, of course, told him nothing about Bude) kept him apprised as to the conduct of her trustees.
They had acted with honourable caution and circumspection. Their advertisements guardedly appealed to men of daring and of scientific distinction under the age of thirty-five. A professorship might have been in view for all that the world could see, if the world read the advertisements. Perhaps it was something connected with the manufacture of original explosives, for daring is not usually required in the learned. The testimonials and printed works of applicants were jealously scrutinised. At personal interviews with competitors similar caution was observed. During three weeks in August the papers announced that Lord Bude was visiting the States; arrangements about a yachting match in the future were his pretence. He returned, he came to Scotland,and it was in a woodland path beside the Lochy that his resolution failed, and that he spoke to Miss McCabe. They were walking home together from the river in the melancholy and beautiful close of a Highland day in September. Behind them the gillies, at a respectful distance, were carrying the rods and the fish. The wet woods were fragrant, the voice of the stream was deepening, strange lights came and went on moor and hills and the distant loch. It was then that Bude opened his heart. He first candidly explained that his heart, he had supposed, was dead—buried on a distant and a deadly shore.
‘I reckon there’s a lost Lenore most times,’ Miss McCabe had replied to this confession.
But, though never to be forgotten, the memory of the lost one, Bude averred, was now merged in the light of a living love; his heart was no longer tenanted only by a shadow.
The heart of Miss McCabe stood still for a moment, her cheek paled, but the gallant girl was true to herself, to her father’s wish, to her native land, to the flag. She understood her adorer.
‘GuessI’m bespoke,’ said Miss McCabe abruptly.
‘You are another’s! Oh, despair!’ exclaimed the impassioned earl.
‘Yes, I reckon I’m the Bride of Seven, like the girl in the poem.’
‘The Bride of Seven?’ said Bude.
‘One out ofthatcrowd will call me his,’ said Miss McCabe, handing to her adorer the list, which she had received by mail a day or two earlier, of the accepted competitors. He glanced over the names.
1. Dr. Hiram P. Dodge, of the Smithsonian Institute.
2. Alfred Jenkins, F.R.S., All Souls College, Oxford.
3. Dr. James Rustler, Columbia University.
4. Howard Fry, M.A., Ph.D., Trinity College, Cambridge.
5. Professor Potter, F.R.S., University of St. Andrews.
6. Professor Wilkinson, University of Harvard.
7. Jones Harvey, F.G.S., London, England.
‘In Heaven’s name,’ asked the earl, ‘what means this mystification? Miss McCabe, Melissa, do not trifle with me. Is this part of the great American Joke? You are playing it pretty low down on me, Melissa!’ he ended, the phrase being one of those with which she had made him familiar.
She laughed hysterically: ‘It’s honest Injun,’ she said, and in the briefest terms she told him (what he knew very well) the conditions on which her future depended.
‘They are a respectable crowd, I don’t deny it,’ she went on, ‘but, oh, how dull! That Mr. Jenkins, I saw him at your Commemoration. He gave us luncheon, and showed us dry old bones of beasts and savage notions at the Museum. Idrutherhave been on the creek,’ by which name she intended the classical river Isis.
‘Dr. Hiram P. Dodge is one of our rising scientists, a boss of the Smithsonian Institute. Well, Washington is a finer location than Oxford! Dr. Rustler is a crank; he thinks he can find a tall talk mummy that speaks an unknown tongue.’
‘A Toltec mummy? Ah,’ said Bude, ‘I know where to find one ofthem.’
‘Find it then, Alured!’ exclaimed Miss McCabe, blushing scarlet and turning aside. ‘But you are not on the list. You are an idler, and not scientific, not worth a red cent. There, I’ve given myself away!’ She wept.
They were alone, beneath the walls of a crumbling fortalice of Lochiel. The new risen moon saw Bude embrace her and dry her tears. A nameless blissful hope awakened in the fair American; help theremustbe, she thought, with these strong arms around her.
She rapidly disposed of the remaining names: of Howard Fry, who had a red beard; of Professor Potter of St. Andrews, whose accent was Caledonian; of Wilkinson, an ardent but unalluring scientist. ‘As for Jones Harvey,’ she said, ‘I’ve canvassed everywhere, and I can’t find anybody that ever saw him. I am more afraid of him than of all the other galoots; I don’t know why.’
‘He is reckoned very learned,’ said Bude, ‘and has not been thought ill-looking.’
‘Do tell!’ said Miss McCabe.
‘Oh, Melissa, can you evendreamof another in an hour like this?’
‘Did you ever see Jones Harvey?’
‘Yes, I have met him.’
‘Do you know him well?’
‘No man knows him better.’
‘Can’t you get him to stand out, and, Alured, can’t you—fetch along that old tall talk mummy? He would hit our people, being American himself.’
‘It is impossible. Jones Harvey will never stand out,’ and Bude smiled.
By the telepathy of the affections Miss McCabe was slowly informed, especially as Bude’s smile widened almost unbecomingly, while he gazed into the deeps of her golden eyes.
‘Alured,’ she exclaimed, ‘that’swhy you went to the States.You—are—Jones Harvey!’
‘Secret for secret,’ whispered the earl. ‘We have both given ourselves away. Unknown to the world IamJones Harvey; to live for you: to love you: to dare; if need be, to die for you.’
‘Well, you surprise me!’ said Miss McCabe.
* * * * *
The narrator is unwilling to dilate on the delights of a privileged affection. In this love affair neither of the lovers could feel absolutely certain that their affectionwasprivileged. The fair American had her own secret scheme if her hopes were blighted. Shecouldnot then obey the paternal will: she would retire into the life religious, and, as Sister Anna, would strive to forget the sorrows of Melissa McCabe. Bude had his own hours of gloom.
‘It is a six-to-one chance,’ he said to Merton when they met.
‘Better than that, I think,’ said Merton. ‘First, you know exactly what you are entered for. Do the others? When you saw the trustees in the States, did they tell you about the prize?’
‘Not they. They spoke of a pecuniary reward which would be eminently satisfactory, and of the opportunity for research and distinction, and all expensesfound. I said that I preferred to pay my own way, which surprised and pleased them a good deal.’
‘Well, then, knowing the facts, and the lady, you have a far stronger motive than the other six.’
‘That’s true,’ said Bude.
‘Again, though the others are good men (not that I like Jenkins of All Souls), none of them has your experience and knowledge. Jones Harvey’s testimonials would carry it if it were a question of election to a professorship.’
‘You flatter me,’ answered Bude.
‘Lastly, did the trustees ask you if you were a married man?’
‘No, by Jove, they didn’t.’
‘Well, nothing about the competitors being unmarried men occurs in the clause of McCabe’s last will and testament. He took it for granted, the prize being what it is, that only bachelors were eligible. But he forgot to say so, in so many words, and the trustees did not go beyond the deed. Now, Dodge is married; Fry of Trinity is a married don; Rustler (I happen to know) is an engaged man, who can’t afford to marry a charming girl in Detroit, Michigan; and Professor Potter has buried one wife, and wedded another. If Rustler is loyal to his plighted word, you have nobody against you but Wilkinson and old Jenkins of All Souls—a tough customer, I admit, though what a Stinks man like him has to do at All Souls I don’t know.’
‘I say, this is hard on the other sportsmen! What ought I to do? Should I tell them?’
‘You can’t: you have no official knowledge of theirexistence. You only know through Miss McCabe. You have just to sit tight.’
‘It seems beastly unsportsmanlike,’ said Bude.
‘Wills are often most carelessly drafted,’ answered Merton, ‘and the usual consequences follow.’
‘It is not cricket,’ said Bude, and really he seemed much more depressed than elated by the reduction of the odds against him from 6 to 1 to 2 to 1.
This is the magnificent type of character produced by our British system of athletic sports, though it is not to be doubted that the spirit of Science, in the American gentlemen, would have been equally productive of the sense of fair play.
* * * * * *
A year, by the terms of McCabe’s will, was allotted to the quest. Candidates were to keep the trustees informed as to their whereabouts. Six weeks before the end of the period the competitors would be instructed as to the port of rendezvous, where an ocean liner, chartered by the trustees, was to await them. Bude, as Jones Harvey, had obtained leave to sail his own steam yacht of 800 tons.
The earl’s preparations were simple. He carried his usual stock of scientific implements, his usual armament, including two Maxim guns, and a package of considerable size and weight, which was stored in the hold. As to the preparations of the others he knew nothing, but Miss McCabe became aware that Rustler had not left the American continent. Concerning Jenkins, and the probable aim of his enterprise, the object of his quest, she gleaned information from a junior Fellow of All Souls, who was her slave,was indiscreet, and did not know how deeply concerned she was in the expeditions. But she never whispered a word of what she knew to her lover, not even in the hour of parting.
It was in an unnamed creek of the New Zealand coast, six weeks before the end of the appointed year, that Bude received a telegram in cipher from the trustees. Bearded, and in blue spectacles, clad rudely as a mariner, Bude was to all, except Logan, who had accompanied him, plain Jones Harvey. None could have recognised in his rugged aspect the elegant aristocrat of Mayfair.
Bude took the message from the hands of the Maori bearer. As he deciphered it his fingers trembled with eagerness. ‘Oh, Heaven! Here is the Hand of Destiny!’ he exclaimed, when he had read the message; and with pallid face he dropped into a deck-chair.
‘No bad news?’ asked Logan with anxiety.
‘The port of rendezvous,’ said Bude, much agitated. ‘Come down to my cabin.’
Entering the sumptuous cabin, Bude opened the locked door of a state-room, and uttered some words in an unknown tongue. A tall and very ancient Maori, tatooed with the native ‘Moka’ on every inch of his body, emerged. The snows of some eighty winters covered his broad breast and majestic head. His eyes were full of the secrets of primitive races. For clothing he wore two navy revolvers stuck in a waist-cloth.
‘Te-iki-pa,’ said Bude, in the Maori language, ‘watch by the door, we must have no listeners, andyour ears are keen as those of the youngest Rangatira’ (warrior).
The august savage nodded, and, lying down on the floor, applied his ear to the chink at its foot.
‘The port of tryst,’ whispered Bude to Logan, as they seated themselves at the remotest extremity of the cabin, ‘is in Cagayan Sulu.’
‘And where may that be?’ asked Logan, lighting a cigarette.
‘It is a small volcanic island, the most southerly of the Philippines.’
‘American territory now,’ said Logan. ‘But what about it? If it was anybody but you, Bude, I should say he was in a funk.’
‘Iamin a funk,’ answered Bude simply.
‘Why?’
‘I have been there before and left—a blood-feud.’
‘What of it? We have one here, with the Maori King, about you know what. Have we not the Maxims, and any quantity of Lee-Metfords? Besides, you need not go ashore at Cagayan Sulu.’
‘But they can come aboard. Bullets won’t stopthem.’
‘Stop whom? The natives?’
‘The Berbalangs: you might as well try to stop mosquitoes with Maxims.’
‘Who are the Berbalangs then?’
Bude paced the cabin in haggard anxiety. ‘Least said, soonest mended,’ he muttered.
‘Well, I don’t want your confidence,’ said Logan, hurt.
‘My dear fellow,’ said Bude affectionately, ‘youare likely to know soon enough. In the meantime, please accept this.’
He opened a strong box, which appeared to contain jewellery, and offered Logan a ring. Between two diamonds of the finest water it contained a bizarre muddy coloured pearl. ‘Never let that leave your finger,’ said Bude. ‘Your life may hang on it.’
‘It is a pretty talisman,’ said Logan, placing the jewel on the little finger of his right hand. ‘A token of some friendly chief, I suppose, at Cagayan—what do you call it?’
‘Let us put it at that,’ answered Bude; ‘I must take other precautions.’
It seemed to Logan that these consisted in making similar presents to the officers and crew, all of whom were Englishmen. Te-iki-pa displaced his nose-ring and inserted his pearl in the orifice previously occupied by that ornament. A little chain of the pearls was hung on the padlock of the huge packing-case, which was the special care of Te-iki-pa.
‘Luckily I had the yacht’s painting altered before leaving England,’ said Bude. ‘I’ll sail her under Spanish colours, and perhaps they won’t spot her. Any way, with the pearls—lucky I bought a lot—we ought to be safe enough. But if any one of the competitors has gone for specimens of the Berbalangs, I fear, I sadly fear, the consequences.’ His face clouded; he fell into a reverie.
Logan made no reply, but puffed rings of cigarette smoke into the still blue air. There was method in Bude’s apparent madness, but Logan suspected that there was madness in his method.
A certain coolness had not ceased to exist between the friends when, after their long voyage, they sighted the volcanic craters of the lonely isle of Cagayan Sulu and beheld the Stars and Stripes waving from the masthead of theGeorge Washington(Captain Noah P. Funkal).
Logan landed, and noted the harmless but well-armed half-Mahometan natives of the village. He saw the other competitors, whose ‘exhibits,’ as Miss McCabe called them, were securely stored in theGeorge Washington—strange spoils of far-off mysterious forests, and unplumbed waters of the remotest isles. Occasionally a barbaric yap, or a weird yell or hoot, was wafted on the air at feeding time. Jenkins of All Souls (whom he knew a little) Logan did not meet on the beach; he, like Bude, tarried aboard ship. The other adventurers were civil but remote, and there was a jealous air of suspicion on every face save that of Professor Potter. He, during the day of waiting on the island, played golf with Logan over links which he had hastily improvised. Beyond admitting, as they played, thathistreasure was in a tank, ‘and as well as could be expected, poor brute, but awful noisy,’ Professor Potter offered no information.
‘Our find is quiet enough,’ said Logan.
‘Does he give you trouble about food?’ asked Mr. Potter.
‘Takes nothing,’ said Logan, adding, as he holed out, ‘that makes me dormy two.’
From the rest of the competitors not even this amount of information could be extracted, and asfor Captain Noah Funkal, he was taciturn, authoritative, and, Logan thought, not in a very good temper.
TheGeorge Washingtonand thePendragon(so Jones Harvey had christened the yacht which under Bude’s colours sailed asThe Sabrina) weighed anchor simultaneously. If possible they were not to lose sight of each other, and they corresponded by signals and through the megalophone.
The hours of daylight on the first day of the return voyage passed peacefully at deck-cricket, as far as Logan, Bude, and such of the officers and men as could be spared were concerned. At last night came ‘at one stride,’ and the vast ocean plain was only illuminated by the pale claritude that falls from the stars. Logan and Bude (they had not dressed for dinner, but wore yachting suits) were smoking on deck, when, quite suddenly, a loud, almost musical, roar or hum was heard from the direction of the distant island.
‘What’s that?’ asked Logan, leaping up and looking towards Cagayan Sulu.
‘The Berbalangs,’ said Bude coolly. ‘You are wearing the ring I gave you?’
‘Yes, always do,’ said Logan, looking at his hand.
‘All the men have their pearls; I saw to that,’ said Bude.
‘Why, the noise is dwindling,’ said Logan. ‘That is odd; it seemed to be coming this way.’
‘So it is,’ said Bude; ‘the nearer they approach the less you hear them. When they have come on board you won’t hear them at all.’
Logan stared, but asked no more questions.
The musical boom as it approached had died to a whisper, and then had fallen into perfect silence. At the very moment when the mysterious sound ceased, a swarm of things like red fire-flies, a host of floating specks of ruby light, invaded the deck in a cluster. The red points then scattered, approached each man on board, and paused when within a yard of his head or breast. Then they vanished. A queer kind of chill ran down Logan’s spine; then the faint whispered musical moan tingled in each man’s ears, and the sounds as they departed eastwards gathered volume and force till, in a moment, there fell perfect stillness.
Stillness, broken only by a sudden and mysterious chorus of animal cries from theGeorge Washington. A kind of wail, high, shrieking, strenuous, ending in a noise as of air escaping from a pipe; a torrent of barks such as no known beast could utter, subsiding into moans that chilled the blood; a guttural scream, broken by heavy sounds as if of water lapping on a rock at uncertain intervals; a human cry, human words, with unfamiliar vowel sounds, soon slipping into quiet—these were among the horrors that assailed the ears of the voyagers in thePendragon. Such a discord of laments has not tingled to the indifferent stars since the ice-wave swept into their last retreats, and crushed among the rocks that bear their fossil forms, the fauna of the preglacial period, the Ichthyosaurus, the Brontosaurus, the Guyas Cutis (or Ring-tailed Roarer), the Mastodon, and the Mammoth.
‘What a row in the menagerie!’ said Logan.
He was not answered.
Bude had fallen into a deck-chair, his face buried in his hands, his arms rocking convulsively.
‘I say, old cock, pull yourself together,’ said Logan, and rushing down the companion stairs, he reappeared with a bottle of champagne. To extract the cork (how familiar, how reassuring, sounded thecloop!), and to pour the foaming beverage into two long tumblers, was, to the active Logan, the work of a moment. Shaking Bude, he offered him the beaker; the earl drained it at a draught. He shuddered, but rose to his feet.
‘Not a man alive on that doomed vessel,’ he was saying, when anew the still air was rent by the raucous notes of a megalophone:
‘Isyourexhibit all right?’
‘Fit as a fiddle,’ answered Logan through a similar instrument.
‘Our exhibits are gone bust,’ answered Captain Noah Funkal. ‘Our professors are in fits. Our darkeys are all dead. Can your skipper come aboard?’
‘Just launching a boat,’ cried Logan.
Bude gave the necessary orders. His captain stepped up to him and saluted.
‘Do you know what these red fire-flies were that come aboard, sir?’ he asked.
‘Fire-flies? Oh,musæ volitantes sonoræ, a common phenomenon in these latitudes,’ answered Bude.
Logan rejoiced to see that the earl was himself again.
‘The other gentlemen’s scientific beasts don’t seem to like them, sir?’
‘So Captain Funkal seems to imply,’ said Bude, and, taking the ropes, with Logan beside him, while thePendragonlay to, he steered the boat towards theGeorge Washington.
The captain welcomed them on deck in a scene of unusual character. He himself had a revolver in one hand, and a belaying pin in the other; he had been quelling, by the tranquillising methods of Captain Kettle, a mutiny caused by the terror of the crew. The sailors had attempted to leap overboard in the alarm caused by the invasion of the Berbalangs.
‘You will excuse my friend and myself for not being in evening dress, during a visit at this hour,’ said Bude in the silkiest of tones.
‘Glad to see you shipshape, gentlemen,’ answered the American mariner. ‘My dudes of professors were prancing round in Tuxedos and Prince Alberts when the darned fire-flies came aboard.’
Bude bowed. Study of Miss McCabe had taught him that Tuxedos and Prince Alberts mean evening dress and frock-coats.
‘Didyourmen have fits?’ asked the captain.
‘My captain, Captain Hardy, made a scientific inquiry about the—insects,’ said Bude. ‘The crew showed no emotion.’
‘I guess our fire-bugs were more on business than yours,’ said Captain Funkal; ‘they’ve wrecked the exhibits, and killed the darkeys with fright: except two, andtheywere exhibits themselves. Will you honour me by stepping into my cabin, gentlemen. I am glad to see sane white men to-night.’
Bude and Logan followed him through a scene ofmelancholy interest. Beside the mast, within a shattered palisade, lay huddled the vast corpse of the Mylodon of Patagonia, couchant amidst his fodder of chopped hay. The expression of the huge animal was placid and urbane in death. He was the victim of the ceaseless curiosity of science. Two of the five-horned antelope giraffes of Central Africa lay in a confused heap of horns and hoofs. Beside an immense tank couched a figure in evening dress, swearing in a subdued tone. Logan recognised Professor Potter. He gently laid his hand on the Professor’s shoulder. The Scottish savant looked up:
‘It is a dommed mismanaged affair,’ he said. ‘I could have brought the poor beast safe enough from the Clyde to New York, but the Americans made me harl him round by yon island of camstairy deevils,’ and he shook his fist in the direction of Cagayan Sulu.
‘What had you got?’ asked Logan.
‘TheBeathach na Loch na bheiste,’ said Potter. ‘I drained the Loch to get him. Fortunately,’ he added, ‘it was at the expense of the Trust.’
After a few words of commonplace but heartfelt condolence, Logan descended the companion, and followed Bude and Captain Funkal into the cabin of that officer. The captain placed refreshments on the table.
‘Now, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you have seen the least riled of my professors, and you can guess what the rest are like. Professor Rustler is weeping in his cabin over a shrivelled old mummy. “Never will he speak again,” says he, and I am bound to say that Ihevheard the critter discourse once. The mummylet some awful yells out of him when the fire-bugs came aboard.’
‘Yes, we heard a human cry,’ said Bude.
‘I had thought the talk was managed with a concealed gramophone,’ said the captain, ‘but it wasn’t. The Bunyip from Central Australia has gone to his long home. That was Professor Wilkinson’s pet. There is nothing left alive out of the lot but the natives that Professor Jenkins of England brought in irons from Cagayan Sulu. I reckon them two niggers are somehow at the bottom of the whole ruction.’
‘Indeed, and why?’ asked Bude.
‘Why, sir—I am addressing Professor Jones Harvey?’
Bude bowed. ‘Harvey, captain, but not professor—simple amateur seaman and explorer.’
‘Sir, your hand,’ said the captain. ‘Your friend is not a professor?’
‘Not I,’ said Logan, smiling.
The captain solemnly shook hands. ‘Gentlemen, you have sand,’ he said, a supreme tribute of respect. ‘Well, about these two natives. I never liked taking them aboard. They are, in consequence of the triumph of our arms, American subjects, natives of the conquered Philippines. I am no lawyer, and they may be citizens, they may have votes. They are entitled, anyway, to the protection of the Flag, and I would have entered them as steerage passengers. But that Professor Jenkins (and the other professors agreed) would have it that they came under the head of scientific exhibits. And they didallow that the critters were highly dangerous. I guess they were right.’
‘Why, what could they do?’
‘Well, gentlemen, I heard stories on shore that I took no stock in. I am not a superstitious man, but they allowed that these darkeys are not of a common tribe, but what the papers call “highly developed mediums.” And I guess they are at the bottom of the stramash.’
‘Captain Funkal, may I be frank with you?’ asked Bude.
‘I am hearing you,’ said the captain.
‘Then, to put it shortly, I have been at Cagayan Sulu before, on an exploring cruise. That was in 1897. I never wanted to go back to it. Logan, did I not regret the choice of that port when the news reached us in New Zealand?’
Logan nodded. ‘You funked it,’ he said.
‘When I was at Cagayan Sulu in 1897 I heard from the natives of a singular tribe in the centre of the island. This tribe is the Berbalangs.’
‘That’s what Professor Jenkins called them,’ said the captain.
‘The Berbalangs are subject to neither of the chiefs in the island. No native will approach their village. They are cannibals. The story is that they can throw themselves into a kind of trance. They then project a something or other—spirit, astral body, influence of some kind—which flies forth, making a loud noise when distant.’
‘That’s what we heard,’ said the captain.
‘But is silent when they are close at hand.’
‘Silent they were,’ said the captain.
‘They then appear as points of red flame.’
‘That’s so,’ interrupted the captain.
‘And cause death to man and beast, apparently by terror. I have seen,’ said Bude, shuddering, ‘the face of a dead native of high respectability, into whose house, before my own eyes, these points of flame had entered. I had to force the door, it was strongly barred within. I never mentioned the fact before, knowing that I could not expect belief.’
‘Well, sir, I believe you. You are a white man.’
Bude bowed, and went on. ‘The circumstances, though not generally known, have been published, captain, by a gentleman of reputation, Mr. Edward Forbes Skertchley, of Hong Kong. His paper indeed, in theJournalof a learned association, the Asiatic Society of Bengal,{232}induced me, most unfortunately, to visit Cagayan Sulu, when it was still nominally in the possession of the Spaniards. My experience was similar to that of Mr. Skertchley, but, for personal reasons, was much more awful and distressing. One of the most beautiful of the island girls, a person of most amiable and winning character, not, alas! of my own faith’—Bude’s voice broke—‘was one of the victims of the Berbalangs. . . . I loved her.’
He paused, and covered his face with his hands. The others respected and shared his emotion. The captain, like all sailors, sympathetic, dashed away a tear.
‘One thing I ought to add,’ said Bude, recovering himself, ‘I am no more superstitious than you are, Captain Funkal, and doubtless science will find a simple, satisfactory, and normal explanation of the facts, the existence of which we are both compelled to admit. I have heard of no well authenticated instance in which the force, whatever it is, has been fatal to Europeans. The superstitious natives, much as they dread the Berbalangs, believe that they will not attack a person who wears a cocoa-nut pearl. Why this should be so, if so it is, I cannot guess. But, as it is always well to be on the safe side, I provided myself five years ago with a collection of these objects, and when I heard that we were ordered to Cagayan Sulu I distributed them among my crew. My friend, you may observe, wears one of the pearls. I have several about my person.’ He disengaged a pin from his necktie, a muddy pearl set with burning rubies. ‘Perhaps, Captain Funkal, you will honour me by accepting this specimen, and wearing it while we are in these latitudes? If it does no good, it can do no harm. We, at least, have not been molested, though we witnessed the phenomena.’
‘Sir,’ said the captain, ‘I appreciate your kindness, and I value your gift as a memorial of one of the most singular experiences in a seafaring life. I drink your health and your friend’s. Mr. Logan, toyou.’ The captain pledged his guests.
‘And now, gentlemen, what am I to do?’
‘That, captain, is for your own consideration.’
‘I’ll carpet that lubber, Jenkins,’ said the captain, and leaving the cabin, he returned with the Fellow ofAll Souls. His shirt front was ruffled, his white neckcloth awry, his pallid countenance betrayed a sensitive second-rate mind, not at unity with itself. He nodded sullenly to Logan: Bude he did not know.
‘Professor Jenkins, Mr. Jones Harvey,’ said the captain. ‘Sit down, sir. Take a drink; you seem to need one.’ Jenkins drained the tumbler, and sat with downcast eyes, his finger drumming nervously on the table.
‘Professor Jenkins, sir, I reckon you are the cause of the unparalleled disaster to this exploring expedition. Why did you bring these two natives of our territory on board, you well and duly knowing that the end would not justify the proceedings?’ A furtive glance from Jenkins lighted on the diamonds that sparkled in Logan’s ring. He caught Logan’s hand.
‘Traitor!’ he cried. ‘What will not scientific jealousy dare, that meanest of the passions!’
‘What the devil do you mean?’ said Logan angrily, wrenching his hand away.
‘You leave Mr. Logan alone, sir,’ said the captain. ‘I have two minds to put you in irons, Mr. Professor Jenkins. If you please, explain yourself.’
‘I denounce this man and his companion,’ said Jenkins, noticing a pearl ring on Bude’s finger; ‘I denounce them of conspiracy, mean conspiracy, against this expedition, and against the American flag.’
‘As how?’ inquired the captain, lighting a cigar with irritating calmness.
‘They wear these pearls, in which I had trusted for absolute security against the Berbalangs.’
‘Well, I wear one too,’ said the captain, pointing to the pin in his necktie. ‘Are you going to tell me thatIam a traitor to the flag, sir? I warn you Professor, to be careful.’
‘What am I to think?’ asked Jenkins.
‘It is rather more important what yousay,’ replied the captain. ‘What is this fine conspiracy?’
‘I had read in England about the Berbalangs.’
‘Probably in Mr. Skertchley’s curious paper in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal?’ asked Bude with suavity.
Jenkins merely stared at him.
‘I deemed that specimens of these American subjects, dowered with their strange and baneful gift, were well worthy of the study of American savants; and I knew that the pearls were a certain prophylactic.’
‘What’s that?’ asked the captain.
‘A kind of Universal Pain-Killer,’ said Jenkins.
‘Well, you surprise me,’ said the captain, ‘a man of your education. Pain-Killer!’ and he expectorated dexterously.
‘I mean that the pearls keep off the Berbalangs,’ said Jenkins.
‘Then why didn’t you lay in a stock of the pearls?’ asked the captain.
‘Because these conspirators had been before me. These men, or their agents, had bought up, just before our arrival, every pearl in the island. They had wormed out my secret, knew the object of my adventure, knew how to ruin us all, and I denounce them.’
‘A corner in pearls. Well, it was darned ’cute,’said the captain impartially. ‘Now, Mr. Jones Harvey, and Mr. Logan, sir, what haveyouto say?’
‘Did Mr. Jenkins—I think you said that this gentleman’s name is Jenkins?—see the agent engaged in making this corner in pearls, or learn his name?’ asked Bude.
‘He was an Irish American, one McCarthy,’ answered Jenkins sullenly.
‘I am unacquainted with the gentleman,’ said Bude, ‘and I never employed any one for any such purpose. My visit to Cagayan Sulu was some years ago, just after that of Mr. Skertchley. Captain Funkal, I have already acquainted you with the facts, and you were kind enough to say that you accepted my statement.’
‘I did, sir, and I do,’ answered the captain. ‘As foryou,’ he went on, ‘Mr. Professor Jenkins, when you found that your game was dangerous, indeed likely to be ruinous, to this scientific expedition, and to the crew of theGeorge Washington—damn you, sir—you should have dropped it. I don’t know that I ever swore at a passenger before, and I beg your pardon, you two English gentlemen, for so far forgetting myself. I don’t know, and these gentlemen don’t know, who made the corner, but I don’t think our citizens want either you or your exhibits. The whole population of the States, sir, not to mention the live stock, cannot afford to go about wearing cocoa-nut pearls, a precaution which would be necessary if I landed these venomous Berbalangs of yours on our shores: man and wife too, likely to have a family of young Berbalangs. Snakes are not a patch on these darkeys, and our coloured population, at least, would be busted up.’
The captain paused, perhaps attracted by the chance of thus solving the negro problem.
‘So, I’ll tell you what it is, gentlemen; and, Professor Jenkins, I’ll turn back and land these two native exhibits, and I’ll putyouon shore, Professor Jenkins, at Cagayan Sulu. Perhaps before a steamer touches there—which is not once in a blue moon—you’ll have had time to write an exhaustive monograph on the Berbalangs, their manners and customs.’
Jenkins (who knew what awaited him) threw himself on the floor at the feet of Captain Funkal. Horrified by the abject distress of one who, after all, was their countryman, Bude and Logan induced the captain to seclude Jenkins in his cabin. They then, by their combined entreaties, prevailed on the officer to land the Berbalangs on their own island, indeed, but to drop Jenkins later on civilised shores. Dawn saw theGeorge Washingtonand thePendragonin the port of Cagayan Sulu, where the fetters of the two natives, ill looking people enough, were knocked off, and they themselves deposited on the quay, where, not being popular, they were received by a hostile demonstration. The two vessels then resumed their eastward course. The taxidermic appliances without which Jones Harvey never sailed, and the services of his staff of taxidermists, were placed at the disposal of his brother savants. By this means a stuffed Mylodon, a stuffed Beathach, stuffed five-horned antelopes and a stuffed Bunyip, with a common gorilla and the Toltec mummy, now forever silent, were passed through the New York Custom House, and consigned to the McCabe Museum of Natural Varieties.
The immense case that contained the discovery of Jones Harvey was also carefully conveyed to an apartment prepared for it in the same repository. The competitors sought their hotels, Te-iki-pa marching beside Logan and Jones Harvey. But, by special arrangement, either Jones Harvey or his Maori ally always slept beside their mysterious case, which they watched with passionate attention. Two or three days were spent in setting up the stuffed exhibits. Then the trustees, throughThe Yellow Flag(the paper founded by the late Mr. McCabe), announced to the startled citizens the nature of the competition. On successive days the vast theatre of the McCabe Museum would be open, and each competitor, in turn, would display to the public his contribution, and lecture on his adventures and on the variety of nature which he had secured.
While the death of the animals was deplored, nothing was said, for obvious reasons, about the causes of the catastrophe.
The general excitement was intense. Interviewers scoured the city, and flocked, to little purpose, around the officials of the McCabe Museum. Special trains were run from all quarters. The hotels were thronged. ‘America,’ it was announced, ‘had taken hold of science, and was just going to make science hum.’
On the first day of the exhibition, Dr. Hiram Dodge displayed the stuffed Mylodon. The agitation was unprecedented. America had bred, in ancient days, and an American citizen had discovered, the monstrous yet amiable animal whence prehistoric Patagonia drewher milk supplies and cheese stuffs. Mr. Dodge’s adventures, he modestly said, could only be adequately narrated by Mr. Rider Haggard. Unluckily the Mylodon had not survived the conditions of the voyage, the change of climates. The applause was thunderous. Mr. Dodge gracefully expressed his obligations to his fair and friendly rival, Mr. Jones Harvey, who had loaned his taxidermic appliances. It did not appear to the public that the Mylodon could be excelled in interest. The Toltec mummy, as he could no longer talk, was flat on a falling market, nor was Mr. Rustler’s narrative of its conversational powers accepted by the scepticism of the populace, though it was corroborated by Captain Funkal, Professor Dodge, and Professor Wilkinson, who swore affidavits before a notary, within the hearing of the multitude. The Beathach, exhibited by Professor Potter, was reckoned of high anatomical interest by scientific characters, but it was not of American habitat, and left the people relatively cold. On the other hand, all the Macleans and Macdonnells of Canada and Nova Scotia wept tears of joy at the corroboration of their tribal legends, and the popularity of Professor Potter rivalled even that of Mr. Ian Maclaren. He was at once engaged by Major Pond for a series of lectures. The adventures of Howard Fry, in the taking of his gorilla, were reckoned interesting, as were those of the captor of the Bunyip, but both animals were now undeniably dead. The people could not feed them with waffles and hominy cakes in the gardens of the institute. The savants wrangled on the anatomical differences andresemblances of the Bunyip and the Beathach; still the critters were, to the general mind, only stuffed specimens, though unique. The African five-horned brutes (though in quieter times they would have scored a triumph) did not now appeal to the heart of the people.
At last came the day when, in the huge crowded amphitheatre, with Te-iki-pa by his side, Jones Harvey addressed the congregation. First he exhibited a skeleton of a dinornis, a bird of about twenty-five feet in height.
‘Now,’ he went on, ‘thanks to the assistance of a Maori gentleman, my friend the Tohunga Te-iki-pa’—(cheers, Te-iki bows his acknowledgments)—‘I propose to exhibit to youthis.’
With a touch on the mechanism he unrolled the valves of a gigantic incubator. Within, recumbent on cotton wool, the almost frenzied spectators perceived two monstrous eggs, like those of the Roc of Arabian fable. Te-iki-pa now chanted a brief psalm in his own language. One of the eggs rolled gently in its place; then the other. A faint crackling noise was heard, first from one, then from the other egg. From each emerged the featherless head of a fowl—the species hitherto unknown to the American continent. The necks pushed forth, then the shoulders, then both shells rolled away in fragments, and the spectators gazed on two fledgling Moas. Te-iki-pa, on inspection, pronounced them to be cock and hen, and in healthy condition. The breed, he said, could doubtless be acclimatised.
The professors of the museum, by Jones Harvey’srequest, then closely examined the chickens. There could be no doubt of it, they unanimously asserted: these specimens were living deinornithe (which for scientific men, is not a bad shot at the dual of deinornis). The American continent was now endowed, through the enterprise of Mr. Jones Harvey, not only with living specimens, but with a probable breed of a species hitherto thought extinct.
The cheering was led by Captain Funkal, who waved the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack. Words cannot do justice to the scene. Women fainted, strong men wept, enemies embraced each other. For details we must refer to the files ofThe Yellow Flag. Aplébisciteto select the winner of the McCabe Prize was organised by that Journal. The Moas (bred and exhibited by Mr, Jones Harvey) simply romped in, by 1,732,901 votes, the Mylodon being a bad second, thanks to the Irish vote.
Bude telegraphed ‘Victory,’ and Miss McCabe by cable answered ‘Bully for us.’
The secret of these lovers was well kept. None who watches the fascinating Countess of Bude as she moves through the gilded saloons of Mayfair guesses that her hand was once the prize of success in a scientific exploration. The identity of Jones Harvey remains a puzzle to the learned. For the rest, a letter in which Jenkins told the story of the Berbalangs was rejected by the Editor ofNature, and has not yet passed even the Literary Committee of the Society for Psychical Research. The classical authority on the Berbalangs is still the paperby Mr. Skertchley in theJournalof the Asiatic Society of Bengal.{242}The scientific gentlemen who witnessed the onslaught of the Berbalangs have convinced themselves (except Jenkins) that nothing of the sort occurred in their experience. The evidence of Captain Funkal is rejected as ‘marine.’
Te-iki-pa decided to remain in New York as custodian of the Moas. He occasionally obliges by exhibiting a few feats of native conjuring, when his performances are attended by theéliteof the city. He knows that his countrymen hold him in feud, but he is aware that they fear even more than they hate the ex-medicine man of his Maori Majesty.
The generosity of Bude and his Countess heaped rewards on Merton, who vainly protested that his services had not been professional.
The frequent appearance of new American novelists, whose works sell 250,000 copies in their first month, demonstrate that Mr. McCabe’s scheme for raising the level of genius has been as satisfactory as it was original. Genius is riz.
But who ‘cornered’ the muddy pearls in Cagayan Sulu?
That secret is only known to Lady Bude, her confessor, and the Irish-American agent whom she employed. For she, as we saw, had got at the nature of poor Jenkins’s project and had acquainted herself with the wonderful properties of the pearls, which she cornered.
As a patriot, she consoles herself for the loss of the other exhibits to her country, by the reflection that Berbalangs would have been the most mischievous of pauper immigrants. But of all this Bude knows nothing.
Few men were, and perhaps no marquis was so unpopular as the Marquis of Restalrig, Logan’s maternal Scotch cousin, widely removed. He was the last of his family, in the direct line, and on his death almost all his vast wealth would go to nobody knew where. To be sure Logan himself would succeed to the title of Fastcastle, which descends to heirs general, but nothing worth having went with the title. Logan had only the most distant memory of seeing the marquis when he himself was a little boy, and the marquis gave him two sixpences. His relationship to his opulent though remote kinsman had been of no service to him in the struggle for social existence. It carried no ‘expectations,’ and did not afford the most shadowy basis for a post obit. There was no entail, the marquis could do as he liked with his own.
‘The Jewsmayhave been credulous in the time of Horace,’ Logan said, ‘but now they insist on the most drastic evidence of prospective wealth. No, they won’t lend me a shekel.’
Events were to prove that other financial operators were better informed than the chosen people, thoughto be sure their belief was displayed in a manner at once grotesque and painfully embarrassing.
Why the marquis was generally disliked we might explain, historically, if we were acquainted with the tale of his infancy, early youth, and adolescence. Perhaps he had been betrayed in his affections, and was ‘taking it out’ of mankind in general. But this notion implies that the marquis once had some affections, a point not hitherto substantiated by any evidence. Perhaps heredity was to blame, some unhappy blend of parentage. An ancestor at an unknown period may have bequeathed to the marquis the elements of his unalluring character. But the only ancestor of marked temperament was the festive Logan of Restalrig, who conspired over his cups to kidnap a king, laid out his plot on the lines of an Italian novel, and died without being detected. This heroic ancestor admitted that he hated ‘arguments derived from religion,’ and, so far, the Marquis of Restalrig was quite with him, if the arguments bore on giving to the poor, or, indeed, to any one.
In fact the marquis was that unpopular character, a miser. Your miser may be looked up to, in a way, as an ideal votary of Mammon, but he is never loved. On his vast possessions, mainly in coal-fields, he was even more detested than the ordinary run of capitalists. The cottages and farmhouses on his estates were dilapidated and insanitary beyond what is endurable. Of his many mansions, some were kept in decent repair, because he drew many shillings from tourists admitted to view them. But his favourite abode was almost as ruinous as his cottages, and an artist insearch of a model for the domestic interior of the Master of Ravenswood might have found what he wanted at Kirkburn, the usual lair of this avaricious nobleman. It was a keep of the sixteenth century, and looked as if it had never been papered or painted since Queen Mary’s time. But it was near the collieries; and within its blackened walls, and among its bleak fields and grimy trees, Lord Restalrig chose to live alone, with an old man and an old woman for his attendants. The woman had been his nurse; it was whispered in the district that she was also his illegal-aunt, or perhaps even, so to speak, his illegal stepmother. At all events, she endured more than anybody but a Scotch woman who had been his nurse in childhood would have tolerated. To keep her in his service saved him the cost of a pension, which even the marquis, people thought, could hardly refuse to allow her. The other old servitor was her husband, and entirely under her domination. Both might be reckoned staunch, in the old fashion, ‘to the name,’ which Logan only bore by accident, his grandmother having wedded a kinless Logan who had no demonstrable connection with the house of Restalrig. Any mortal but the marquis would probably have brought Logan up as his heir, for the churlish peer had no nearer connection. But the marquis did more than sympathise with the Roman emperor who quoted ‘after me the Last Day.’ The emperor only meant that, after his time, he did not care how soon earth and fire were mingled. The marquis, on the other hand, gave the impression that, he once out of the way, he ardently desired the destruction of thewhole human race. He was not known ever to have consciously benefited man or woman. He screwed out what he might from everybody in his power, and made no returns which the law did not exact; even these, as far as the income tax went, he kept at the lowest figure possible.
Such was the distinguished personage whose card was handed to Merton one morning at the office. There had been no previous exchange of letters, according to the rules of the Society, and yet Merton could not suppose that the marquis wished to see him on any but business matters. ‘He wants to put a spoke in somebody’s wheel,’ thought Merton, ‘but whose?’
He hastily scrawled a note for Logan, who, as usual, was late, put it in an envelope, and sealed it. He wrote: ‘On no account come in.Explanation later! Then he gave the note to the office boy, impressed on him the necessity of placing it in Logan’s hands when he arrived, and told the boy to admit the visitor.
The marquis entered, clad in rusty black not unlike a Scotch peasant’s best raiment as worn at funerals. He held a dripping umbrella; his boots were muddy, his trousers had their frayed ends turned up. He wore a hard, cruel red face, with keen grey eyes beneath penthouses where age had touched the original tawny red with snow. Merton, bowing, took the umbrella and placed it in a stand.
‘You’ll not have any snuff?’ asked the marquis.
Trevor had placed a few enamelled snuff-boxes of the eighteenth century among the other costlybibelotsin the rooms, and, by an unusual chance, one of them actually did contain what the marquis wanted. Merton opened it and handed it to the peer, who, after trying a pinch on his nostrils, poured a quantity into his hand and thence into a little black mull made of horn, which he took from his breast pocket. ‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘Better than I get at Kirkburn. You’ll know who I am?’ His accent was nearly as broad as that of one of his own hinds, and he sometimes used Scottish words, to Merton’s perplexity.
‘Every one has heard of the Marquis of Restalrig,’ said Merton.
‘Ay, and little to his good, I’ll be bound?’
‘I do not listen to gossip,’ said Merton. ‘I presume, though you have not addressed me by letter, that your visit is not unconnected with business?’
‘No, no, no letters! I never was wasteful in postage stamps. But as I was in London, to see the doctor, for the Edinburgh ones can make nothing of the case—a kind of dwawming—I looked in at auld Nicky Maxwell’s. She gave me a good character of you, and she is one to lippen to. And you make no charge for a first interview.’
Merton vaguely conjectured that to ‘lippen’ implied some sort of caress; however, he only said that he was obliged to Miss Maxwell for her kind estimate of his firm.
‘Gray and Graham, good Scots names. You’ll not be one of the Grahams of Netherby, though?’
‘The name of the firm is merely conventional, a trading title,’ said Merton; ‘if you want to know myname, there it is,’ and he handed his card to the marquis, who stared at it, and (apparently from motiveless acquisitiveness) put it into his pocket.
‘I don’t like an alias,’ he said. ‘But it seems you are to lippen to.’
From the context Merton now understood that the marquis probably wished to signify that he was to be trusted. So he bowed, and expressed a hope that he was ‘all that could be desired in the lippening way.’
‘You’re laughing at my Doric?’ asked the nobleman. ‘Well, in the only important way, it’s not at myexpense. Ha! Ha!’ He shook a lumbering laugh out of himself.
Merton smiled—and was bored.
‘I’m come about stopping a marriage,’ said the marquis, at last arriving at business.
‘My experience is at your service,’ said Merton.
‘Well,’ went on the marquis, ‘ours is an old name.’
Merton remarked that, in the course of historical study, he had made himself acquainted with the achievements of the house.
‘Auld warld tales! But I wish I could tell where the treasure is that wily auld Logan quarrelled over with the wizard Laird of Merchistoun. Logan would not implement the contract—half profits. But my wits are wool gathering.’
He began to wander round the room, looking at the mezzotints. He stopped in front of one portrait, and said ‘My Aunt!’ Merton took this for an exclamation of astonishment, but later found that the lady (after Lawrence) really had been the great aunt of the marquis.
Merton conceived that the wits of his visitor were worse than ‘wool gathering,’ that he had ‘softening of the brain.’ But circumstances presently indicated that Lord Restalrig was actually suffering from a much less common disorder—softening of the heart.
He returned to his seat, and helped himself to snuff out of the enamelled gold box, on which Merton deemed it politic to keep a watchful eye.
‘Man, I’m sweir’ (reluctant) ‘to come to the point,’ said Lord Restalrig.
Merton erroneously understood him to mean that he was under oath or vow to come to the point, and showed a face of attention.
‘I’m not the man I was. The doctors don’t understand my case—they take awful fees—but I see they think ill of it. And that sets a body thinking. Have you a taste of brandy in the house?’
As the visitor’s weather-beaten ruddiness had changed to a ghastly ashen hue, rather bordering on the azure, Merton set forth the liqueur case, and drew a bottle of soda water.
‘No water,’ said the peer; ‘it’s just ma twal’ ours, an auld Scotch fashion,’ and he took without winking an orthodox dram of brandy. Then he looked at the silver tops of the flasks.
‘A good coat!’ he said. ‘Yours?’
Merton nodded.
‘Ye quarter the Douglas Heart. A good coat. Dod, I’ll speak plain. The name, Mr. Merton, when ye come to the end o’ the furrow, the name is all ye have left. We brought nothing into the world but the name, we take out nothing else. A sore dispensation.I’m not the man I was, not this two years. I must dispone, I know it well. Now the name, that I thought that I cared not an empty whistle for, is worn to a rag, but I cannot leave it in the mire. There’s just one that bears it, one Logan by name, and true Logan by the mother’s blood. The mother’s mother, my cousin, was a bonny lass.’
He paused; his enfeebled memory was wandering, no doubt, in scenes more vivid to him than those of yesterday.
Merton was now attentive indeed. The miserly marquis had become, to him, something other than a curious survival of times past. There was a chance for Logan, his friend, the last of the name, but Logan was firmly affianced to Miss Markham, of the cloak department at Madame Claudine’s. And the marquis, as he said, ‘had come about stopping a marriage,’ and Merton was to help him in stopping it, in disentangling Logan!
The old man aroused himself. ‘I have never seen the lad but once, when he was a bairn. But I’ve kept eyes on him. Hehasnothing, and since I came to London I hear that he has gone gyte, I mean—ye’ll not understand me—he is plighted to a long-legged shop-lass, the daughter of a ne’er-do-well Australian land-louper, a doctor. This must not be. Now I’ll speak plain to you, plainer than to Tod and Brock, my doers—ye call them lawyers.Theydid not make my will.’
Merton prevented himself, by an effort, from gasping. He kept a countenance of cold attention. But the marquis was coming to the point.
‘I have left all to the name, lands and rents, and mines, and money. But, unless the lad marries in his own rank, I’ll change my will. It’s in the hidie hole at Kirkburn, that Logan built to keep King Jamie in, when he caught him. But the fool Ruthvens marred that job, and got their kail through the reek. I’m wandering.’ He helped himself to another dram, and went on, ‘Ye see what I want, ye must stop that marriage.’
‘But,’ said Merton, ‘as you are so kindly disposed towards your kinsman, this Mr. Logan, may I ask whether it would not be wise to address him yourself, as the head of his house? He may, surely he will, listen to your objections.’
‘Ye do not know the Logans.’
Merton concealed his smile.
‘Camstairy deevils! It’s in the blood. Never once has he asked me for a pound, never noticed me by word or letter. Faith, I wish all the world had been as considerate to auld Restalrig! For me to say a word, let be to make an offer, would just tie him faster to the lass. “Tyne troth, tyne a’,” that is the old bye-word.’
Merton recognised his friend in this description, but he merely shook a sympathetic head. ‘Very unusual,’ he remarked. ‘You really have no hope by this method?’
‘None at all, or I would not be here on this daft ploy. There’s no fool like an auld fool, and, faith, I hardly know the man I was. But they cannot dispute the will. I drew doctors to witness that I was of sound and disponing mind, and I’ve since beenthrice to kirk and market. Lord, how they stared to see auld Restalrig in his pew, that had not smelt appleringie these forty years.’
Merton noted these words, which he thought curious and obscure. ‘Your case interests me deeply,’ he said, ‘and shall receive my very best attention. You perceive, of course, that it is a difficult case, Mr. Logan’s character and tenacity being what you describe. I must make careful inquiries, and shall inform you of progress. You wish to see this engagement ended?’
‘And the lad on with a lass of his rank,’ said the marquis.
‘Probably that will follow quickly on the close of his present affection. It usually does in our experience,’ said Merton, adding, ‘Am I to write to you at your London address?’
‘No, sir; these London hotels would ruin the cunzie’ (the Mint).
Merton wondered whether the Cunzie was the title of some wealthy Scotch peer.
‘And I’m off for Kirkburn by the night express. Here’s wishing luck,’ and the old sinner finished the brandy.
‘May I call a cab for you—it still rains?’
‘No, no, I’ll travel,’ by which the economical peer meant that he would walk.
He then shook Merton by the hand, and hobbled downstairs attended by his adviser.
‘Did Mr. Logan call?’ Merton asked the office boy when the marquis had trotted off.
‘Yes, sir; he said you would find him at the club.’
‘Call a hansom,’ said Merton, ‘and put up the notice, “out.”’ He drove to the club, where he found Logan ordering luncheon.
‘Hullo, shall we lunch together?’ Logan asked.
‘Not yet: I want to speak to you.’
‘Nothing gone wrong? Why did you shut me out of the office?’
‘Where can we talk without being disturbed?’
‘Try the smoking-room on the top storey,’ said Logan, ‘Nobody will have climbed so high so early.’
They made the ascent, and found the room vacant: the windows looked out over swirling smoke and trees tossing in a wind of early spring.
‘Quiet enough,’ said Logan, taking an arm-chair. ‘Now out with it! You make me quite nervous.’
‘A client has come with what looks a promising piece of business. We are to disentangle—’
‘A royal duke?’
‘No.You!’
‘A practical joke,’ said Logan. ‘Somebody pulling your leg, as people say, a most idiotic way of speaking. What sort of client was he, or she? We’ll be even with them.’
‘The client’s card is here,’ said Merton, and he handed to Logan that of the Marquis of Restalrig.
‘You never saw him before; are you sure it was the man?’ asked Logan, staggered in his scepticism.
‘A very good imitation. Dressed like a farmer at a funeral. Talked like all the kailyards. Snuffed, and asked for brandy, and went and came, walking, in this weather.’
‘By Jove, it is my venerated cousin. And he had heard about me and Miss ---’
‘He was quite well informed.’
Logan looked very grave. He rose and stared out of the window into the mist. Then he came back, and stood beside Merton’s chair. He spoke in a low voice:
‘This can only mean one thing.’
‘Only that one thing,’ said Merton, dropping his own voice.
‘What did you say to him?’
‘I told him that his best plan, as the head of the house, was to approach you himself.’
‘And he said?’
‘That it was of no use, and that I do not know the Logans.’
‘But you do?’
‘I think so.’
‘You think right. No, not for all his lands and mines I won’t.’
‘Not for the name?’
‘Not for the kingdoms of the earth,’ said Logan.
‘It is a great refusal.’
‘I have really no temptation to accept,’ said Logan. ‘I am not built that way. So what next? If the old boy could only see her—’
‘I doubt if that would do any good, though, of course, if I were you I should think so. He goes north to-night. You can’t take the lady to Kirkburn. And you can’t write to him.’
‘Of course not,’ said Logan; ‘of course it would be all up if he knew that I know.’
‘There is this to be said—it is not a very pleasant view to take—he can’t live long. He came to see some London specialist—it is his heart, I think—’
‘Hisheart!
How Fortune aristophanisesAnd how severe the fun of Fate!’
How Fortune aristophanisesAnd how severe the fun of Fate!’
quoted Logan.
‘The odd thing is,’ said Merton, ‘that I do believe he has a heart. I rather like him. At all events, I think, from what I saw, that a sudden start might set him off at any moment, or an unusual exertion. And he may go off before I tell him that I can do nothing with you—’
‘Oh, hang that,’ said Logan, ‘you make me feel like a beastly assassin!’
‘I only want you to understand how the land lies.’ Merton dropped his voice again, ‘He has made a will leaving you everything.’
‘Poor old cock! Look here, I believe I had better write, and say that I’m awfully touched and obliged, but that I can’t come into his views, or break my word, and then, you know, he can just make another will. It would be a swindle to let him die, and come into his property, and then go dead against his wishes.’