"Will you sit for me?" he asked. "I will—"
But I shook my head to keep him from mentioning money.
"Very cheerfully," I said. "It is easy for the old to sit—especially when, by the mere act of sitting, it is possible for them to become immortal. I have a room two flights up—where you will not be disturbed."
"Splendid!" he said. "You are splendid! Everything's splendid!"
When he had placed me as he wished, I asked him why my head suited him more than another's.
"How do I know?" he said. "Instinct—you seem a cheerful man and yet I have never seen a head and face that stood so clearly for—for—please take me as I am, I don't ever mean to offend—steadiness in sorrow…. I am planning a picture in which there is to be an ol—a man of your age who looks as—as late October would look if it had a face…."
Then he began to sketch me, and, as he worked, he chattered about this and that.
"Funny thing," he said, "I had a knife when I started and it's disappeared."
"Things have that habit," I said.
"Yes," said he, "things and people, and often people disappear as suddenly and completely as things—chin quarter of an inch lower—just so—thank you forever—"
"And what experience have you had with people disappearing?" I asked."And you so young and masterful."
"I?" he said. "Why, a very near and dear experience. When I was quite a little boy my own father went to his place of business and was never heard of again from that day to this. But he must have done it on purpose, because it was found that he had put all his affairs into the most regular and explicit order—"
I felt a little shiver, as if I had taken cold.
"And, do you know," here the young man dawdled with his pencil and presently ceased working for the moment, "I've always felt as if I had had a hand in it—though I was only seven. I'd done something so naughty and wrong that I looked forward all day to my father's home-coming as a sinner looks forward to going to hell. My father had never punished me. But he would this time, I knew—and I was terribly afraid and—sometimes I have thought that, perhaps, I prayed to God that my father might never come home. I'm not sure I prayed that—but I have a sneaking suspicion that I did. Anyway, he never came, and, Great Grief! what a time there was. My mother nearly went insane—"
"What had you done?" I asked, forcing a smile, "to merit such terrible punishment?"
The young man blushed.
"Why," he said, "my mother had been quite sick for a long time, and, to tempt her appetite, my father had journeyed 'way uptown and at vast expense bought her a bunch of wonderful white hot-house grapes. I remember she wouldn't eat them at first—just wanted to look at them—and my father hung them for her over the foot of the bed. Well, soon after he'd gone to business she fell asleep, leaving the grapes untouched. They tempted me, and I fell. I wanted to show off, I suppose, before my young friends in the street—there was a girl, Minnie Hopflekoppf, I think her name was, who'd passed me up for an Italian butcher's son. I wanted to showher. I'm sure I didn't mean to eat the things. I'm sure I meant to return with them and hang them back at the foot of the bed."
"Please go on," I managed to say. "This is such a very human page—I'm really excited to know what happened."
"Well, one of those flashy Bowery dudes came loafing along and said: 'Hi, Johnny, let's have a look at the grapes,' I let him take them, in my pride and innocence, and he wouldn't give them back. He only laughed and began to eat them before my eyes. I begged for them, and wept, and told him how my mother was sick and my father had gone 'way uptown to get the grapes for her because there were none such to be had in our neighborhood. And, please, he must give them back because they were White Muscats of Alexandria, very precious, and my father would kill me. But the young man only laughed until I began to make a real uproar. Then he said sharply to shut up, called me a young thief, and said if I said another word he'd turn me over to the police. Then he flung me a fifty-cent piece and went away, munching the grapes. And," the young man finished, "the fifty-cent piece was lead."
Then he looked up from his sketch and, seeing the expression of my face, gave a little cry of delight.
"Great Grief, man!" he cried, "stay as you are—only hold that expression for two minutes!"
But I have held it from that day to this.
However bright the court's light may have appeared to the court, the place in which it was shining smelt damnably of oil. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, but already the Alaskan night had descended. The court sat in a barn, warmed from without by the heavily drifted snow and from within by the tiny flames of lanterns and the breathing of men, horses, and cows. Here and there in the outskirts of the circle of light could be seen the long face of a horse or the horned head of a cow. There was a steady sound of munching. The scene was not unlike many paintings of the stable in Bethlehem on the night of the Nativity. And here, too, justice was being born in a dark age. There had been too many sudden deaths, too many jumped claims, too much drinking, too much shooting, too many strong men, too few weak men, until finally—for time, during the long winter, hung upon the neck like a millstone—the gorges of the more decent had risen. Hence the judge, hence the jury, hence the prisoner, dragged from his outlying cabin on a charge of murder. As there were no lawyers in the community, the prisoner held his own brief. Though not a Frenchman, he had been sarcastically nicknamed, because of his small size and shrinking expression, Lou Garou.
The judge rapped for order upon the head of a flour-barrel behind which he sat. "Lou Garou," he said, "you are accused of having shot down Ruddy Boyd in cold blood, after having called him to the door of his cabin for that purpose on the twenty-ninth of last month. Guilty or not guilty?"
"Sure," said Lou Garou timidly, and nodding his head. "I shot him."
"Why?" asked the judge.
For answer Lou Garou shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the chief witness, a woman who had wound her head in a dark veil so that her face could not be seen. "Make her take that veil off," said he in a shrill voice, "and you'll see why I shot him."
The woman rose without embarrassment and removed her veil. But, unless in the prisoner's eyes, she was not beautiful.
"Thank you, madam," said the judge, after an embarrassed pause. "Ahem!" And he addressed the prisoner. "Your answer has its romantic value, Lou Garou, but the court is unable to attach to it any ethical significance whatsoever. Did you shoot Ruddy Boyd because of this lady's appearance in general, or because of her left eye in particular, which I note has been blackened as if by a blow?"
"Oh, I did that," said Lou Garou naïvely.
"Sit down!" thundered the judge. The foreman of the jury, a South Carolinian by birth, had risen, revolver in hand, with the evident intention of executing the prisoner on the spot. "You have sworn to abide by the finding of the court," continued the judge angrily. "If you don't put up that gun I'll blow your damned head off."
The juror, who was not without a sense of the ridiculous, smiled and sat down.
"You have pleaded guilty," resumed the judge sternly, "to the charge of murder. You have given a reason. You have either said too much or too little. If you are unable further to justify your cold-blooded and intemperate act, you shall hang."
"What do you want me to say?" whined Lou Garou.
"I want you to tell the court," said the judge, "why you shot Ruddy Boyd. If it is possible for you to justify that act I want you to do it. The court, representing, as it does, the justice of the land, has a leaning, a bias, toward mercy. Stand up and tell us your story from the beginning."
The prisoner once more indicated the woman. "About then," he said, "I had nothin' but Jenny—and twenty dollars gold that I had loaned to Ruddy Boyd. Hans"—he pointed to a stout German sitting on the Carolinian's left—"wouldn't give me any more credit at the store." He whined and sniffled. "I'm not blaming you one mite, Hans," he said, "but I had to have flour and bacon, and all I had was twenty dollars gold that Ruddy owed me. So I says, 'Jenny, I'll step over to Ruddy's shack and ask him for that money.' She says, 'Think you'd better?' and I says, 'Sure.' So she puts me up a snack of lunch, and I takes my rifle and starts. Ruddy was in his ditch (having shovelled out the snow), and I says, 'Ruddy, how about that twenty?' You all know what a nice hearty way Ruddy had with him—outside. He slaps his thigh, and laughs, and looks astonished, and then he says: 'My Gawd, Lou, if I hadn't clean forgot! Now ain't that funny?' So I laughs, too, and says, 'It do seem kind of funny, and how about it?' 'Now, Lou,' says he, 'you've come on me sudden, and caught me awkward. I ain't got a dime's worth of change. But tell you what: I'll give you a check.'
"I says, 'On what bank?'
"He says, 'Oh, Hans over at the store—heknows me—'"
All eyes were turned on the German. Lou Garou continued:
"Ruddy says: 'Hans dassen't not cash it. He's scared of me, the pot-bellied old fool."
The stout German blinked behind his horn spectacles. He feared neitherGod nor man, but he was very patient. He made no remark.
"'If Hans won't,' says Ruddy, 'Stewart sure will!'"
The foreman of the jury rose like a spring slowly uncoiling. He looked like a snake ready to strike. "May I inquire," he drawled, "what reason the late lamented gave for supposing that I would honor his wuffless paper?"
Lou Garou sniffled with embarrassment and looked appealingly at the judge.
"Tell him," ordered the latter.
"Mind, then," said Lou Garou, "it was him said it, not me."
"What was said?" glinted the foreman.
"Something," said Lou Garou in a small still voice like that which is said to appertain to conscience, "something about him having give you a terrible lickin' once, that you'd never got over. He says, 'If Stewart won't cash it, tell him I'll step over and kick the stuffin' out of him.'"
The juror on the left end of the front row stood up.
"Did he say anything about me?" he asked.
"Nothin' particular, Jimmy," said Lou Garou. "He only said somethin' general, like 'them bally-washed hawgs over to the Central Store,' I think it was."
"The court," said the judge stiffly, "knows the deceased to have been a worthless braggart. Proceed with your story."
"Long and short of it was," said Lou Garou, "we arranged that Ruddyhimself was to get the check cashed and bring me the money the nextThursday. He swears on his honor he won't keep me waitin' no longer. SoI steps off and eats my lunch, and goes home and tells Jenny how it was.
"'Hope you get it,' says she. 'I knowhim.'
"It so happened," continued Lou Garou, "Thursday come, and no Ruddy. No Ruddy, Friday. Saturday I see the weather was bankin' up black for snow, so I says: 'Jenny, it's credit or bust. I'll step up to the store and talk to Hans.' So Jenny puts me up a snack of lunch, and I goes to see Hans. Hans," said Lou Garou, addressing that juror directly, "did I or didn't I come to see you that Saturday?"
Hans nodded.
"Did you or didn't you let me have some flour and bacon on tick?"
"I did nod," said Hans.
Lou Garou turned once more to the judge. "So I goes home," he said, "and finds my chairs broke, and my table upside down, and the dishes broke, and Jenny gone."
There was a mild sensation in the court.
"I casts about for signs, and pretty soon I finds a wisp of red hair, roots an' all, I says, 'Ruddy's hair,' I says. 'He's bin and gone.'
"So I takes my gun and starts for Ruddy's, over the mountain. It's hours shorter than by the valley, for them that has good legs.
"I was goin' down the other side of the mountain when it seems to me I hears voices. I bears to the left, and looks down the mountain, and yonder I sees a man and a woman on the valley path to Ruddy's. The man he wants the woman to go on. The woman she wants to go back. I can hear their voices loud and mad, but not their words. Pretty soon Ruddy he takes Jenny by the arm and twists it—very slow—tighter and tighter. She sinks to the ground. He goes on twistin'. Pretty soon she indicates that she has enough. He helps her up with a kick, and they goes on."
The foreman of the jury rose. "Your honor," he said, "it is an obvious case ofraptae puellae. In my opinion the prisoner was more than justified in shooting the man Ruddy Boyd like a dog."
"Sit down," said the judge.
Lou Garou, somewhat excited by painful recollections, went on in a stronger voice. "I puts up my hind sight to three hundred yards and draws a bead on Ruddy, between the shoulders. Then I lowers my piece and uncocks her. 'Stop a bit,' I says. 'How about that twenty?'
It's gettin' dark, and I follows them to Ruddy's. I hides my gun in a bush and knocks on the door. Ruddy comes out showin' his big teeth and laughin.' He closes the door behind him.
'Come for that twenty, Lou?' says he.
'Sure,' says I.
He thinks a minute, then he laughs and turns and flings open the door.'Come in,' he says.
I goes in.
'Hallo!' says he, like he was awful surprised. 'Here's a friend of yours, Lou. Well, I never!'
I sees Jenny sittin' in a corner, tied hand and foot. I says, 'Hallo, Jenny'; she says, 'Hallo, Lou.' Then I turns to Ruddy. 'How about that twenty?' I says.
'Well, I'm damned!' he says. 'All he thinks about is his twenty. Well, here you are.'
He goes down into his pocket and fetches up a slug, and I pockets it.
'There,' says he; 'you've got yours, and I've got mine.'
I don't find nothin' much to say, so I says, 'Well, good-night all, I'll be goin'.'
Then Jenny speaks up. 'Ain't you goin' to do nothin'?' she says.
"'Why, Jenny,' says I 'what canIdo?'
"'All right for you,' she says. 'Turn me loose, Ruddy; no need to keep me tied after that.'
"So I says 'Good-night' again and goes. Ruddy comes to the door and watches me. I looks back once and waves my hand, but he don't make no sign. I says to myself, 'I can see him because of the light at his back, but he can't see me.' So I makes for my gun, finds her, turns, and there's Ruddy still standin' at the door lookin' after me into the dark. It was a pot shot. Then I goes back, and steps over Ruddy into the shack and unties Jenny.
"'Lou,' she says, 'I thought I knowed you inside out. But you fooledme!'
"By reason of the late hour we stops that night in Ruddy's shack, and that's all."
The prisoner, after shuffling his feet uncertainly, sat down.
"Madam," said the judge, "may I ask you to rise?"
The woman stood up; not unhandsome in a hard, bold way, except for her black eye.
"Madam," said the judge, "is what the prisoner has told us, in so far as it concerns you, true?"
"Every word of it."
"The man Ruddy Boyd used violence to make you go with him?"
"He twisted my arm and cramped my little finger till I couldn't bear the pain."
"You are, I take it, the prisoner's wife?"
The color mounted slowly into the woman's cheeks. She hesitated, choked upon her words. The prisoner sprang to his feet.
"Your honor," he cried, "in a question of life or death like this Jenny and me we speaks the truth, and nothin' but the truth. She'snotmy wife. But I'm goin' to marry her, and make an honest woman of her—at the foot of the gallows, if you decide that way. No, sir; she was Ruddy Boyd's wife."
There was a dead silence, broken by the sounds of the horses and cows munching their fodder. The foreman of the jury uncoiled slowly.
"Your honor," he drawled, "I can find it in my heart to pass over the exact married status of the lady, but I cannot find it in my heart to pass over without explanation the black eye which the prisoner confesses to have given her."
Lou Garou turned upon the foreman like a rat at bay. "That night in the shack," he cried, "I dreams that Ruddy comes to life. Jenny she hears me moanin' in my sleep, and she sits up and bends over to see what's the matter. I think it's Ruddy bendin' over to choke me, and I hits out!"
"That's true, every word of it!" cried the woman. "He hit me in his sleep. And when he found out what he'd done he cried over me, and he kissed the place and made it well!" Her voice broke and ran off into a sob.
The jury acquitted the prisoner without leaving their seats. One by one they shook hands with him, and with the woman.
"I propose," said the foreman, "that by a unanimous vote we change this court-house into a house of worship. It will not be a legal marriage precisely, but it will answer until we can get hold of a minister after the spring break up."
The motion was carried.
The last man to congratulate the happy pair was the German Hans. "Wheneffer," he said, "you need a parrel of flour or something, you comes to me py my store."
Two long-faced young men and one old man with a long face sat upon the veranda of the Country Club of Westchester, and looked, now into the depths of pewter mugs containing mint and ice among other things, and now across Pelham Bay to the narrow pass of water between Fort Schuyler and Willets Point. Through this pass the evening fleet of Sound steamers had already torn with freight and passengers for New Haven, Newport, Fall River, and Portland; and had already disappeared behind City Island Point, and in such close order that it had looked as if thePeck, which led, had been towing the others. The first waves from the paddle-wheels of the great ships had crossed the three miles of intervening bay, and were slapping at the base of the seawall that supported the country club pigeon grounds and lawn-tennis terraces, when another vessel came slowly and haughtily into view from between the forts. She was as black as the king of England's brougham, and as smart; her two masts and her great single funnel were stepped with the most insolent rake imaginable. Here and there where the light of the setting sun smote upon polished brass she shone as with pools of fire.
"There she is," said Powers. He had been sitting in his shirt sleeves, but now he rose and put on his coat as if the sight of the huge and proud yacht had chilled him. Brett, with a petulant slap, killed a swollen mosquito against his black silk ankle bone. The old man, Callender, put his hand to his forehead as if trying to remember something; and the yacht, steaming slower and slower, and yet, as it seemed, with more and more grandeur and pride of place—as if she knew that she gave to the whole bayscape, and the pale Long Island shore against which she moved in strong relief, an irrefutable note of dignity—presently stopped and anchored, midway between the forts and City Island Point; then she began to swing with the tide, until she faced New York City, from which she had just come.
Callender took his hand from his forehead. He had remembered.
"Young gentlemen," he said, "that yacht of Merriman's has been reminding me every afternoon for a month of something, and I've just thought what. You remember one day theMerrimaccame down the James, very slowly, and sunk theCumberland, and damaged and frightened the Union fleet into fits, just the way Merriman has been going down to Wall Street every morning and frightening us into fits? Well, instead of finishing the work then and there, she suddenly quit and steamed off up the river in the same insolent, don't-give-a-hoot way that Merriman comes up from Wall Street every afternoon. Of course, when theMerrimaccame down to finish destroying the fleet the next day, theMonitorhad arrived during the night and gave her fits, and they called the whole thing off. Anyhow, it's that going-home-to-sleep-on-it expression of theMerrimac'sthat I've been seeing in theSappho."
"You were on theMonitor, weren't you?" asked Powers cheerfully.
The old man did not answer, but he was quite willing that Powers and Brett, and the whole world for that matter, should think that he had been. Powers and Brett, though in no cheerful mood, exchanged winks.
"I don't see why history shouldn't repeat itself," said Powers.
"You don't!" said Brett. "Why, because there isn't anyMonitorwaiting for Merriman off Wall Street."
"And just like the Civil War," said Callender, "this trouble in the street is a rich man's quarrel and a poor man's war. Just because old Merriman is gunning for Waters, you, and I, and the rest of us are about to go up the spout."
Callender was a jaunty old man, tall, of commanding presence and smart clothes. His white mustache was the epitome of close-cropped neatness. When he lost money at poker his brown eyes held exactly the same twinkle as when he won, and it was current among the young men that he had played greatly in his day—great games for great stakes. Sometimes he had made heavy winnings, sometimes he had faced ruin; sometimes his family went to Newport for the summer and entertained; sometimes they went to a hotel somewhere in some mountains or other, where they didn't even have a parlor to themselves. But this summer they were living on in the town house, keeping just enough rooms open, and a few servants who had weathered former panics, and who were willing to eat dry bread in bad times for the sake of the plentiful golden butter that they knew was to be expected when the country believed in its own prosperity and future. Just now the country believed that it was going to the dogs. And Mr. Merriman, the banker, had chosen the opportunity to go gunning for Mr. Waters, the railroad man. The quarrel between the great men was personal; and so because of a couple of nasty tempers people were being ruined daily, honest stocks were selling far below their intrinsic value, United States Steel had been obliged to cut wages, there was a strike on in the Pennsylvania coal fields, and the Callenders, as I have said, were not even going to the cheapest mountain top for the summer. Brett alone was glad of this, because it meant that little Miss Callender would occasionally come out to the country club for a game of tennis and a swim, and, although she had refused to marry him on twenty distinct occasions, he was not a young man to be easily put from his purpose. Nor did little Miss Callender propose to be relinquished by him just yet; and she threw into each refusal just the proper amount of gentleness and startled-fawn expression to insure another proposal within a month.
Brett, looking upon Callender as his probable father-in-law, turned to the old gentleman and said, with guileful innocence:
"Isn't there anything you can do, sir, to hold Merriman off? Powers and I are in the market a little, but our customers are in heavy, and the way things are going we've got to break whether we like it or not."
Ordinarily Callender would have pretended that he could have checkmated Merriman if he had wanted to—for in some things he was a child, and it humored him to pretend, and to intimate, and to look wise; but on the present occasion, and much to Powers's and Brett's consternation, he began to speak to them gravely, and confidentially, and a little pitifully. They had never before seen him other than jaunty and debonair, whether his family were at Newport or in the mountains.
"It's all very well for you boys," he said; "you have youth and resiliency on your side. No matter what happens to you now, in money or in love, you can come again. But we old fellows, buying and selling with one foot in the grave, with families accustomed to luxury dependent on us"—he paused and tugged at his neatly ordered necktie as if to free his throat for the passage of more air—"some of us old fellows," he said, "if we go now can never come again—never."
He rose abruptly and walked into the house without a word more; but Brett, after hesitating a moment, followed him. Mr. Callender had stopped in front of the "Delinquent List." Seeing Brett at his elbow, he pointed with a well-groomed finger to his own name at the beginning of the C's.
"If I died to-night," he said, neither gravely nor jocosely, but as if rather interested to know whether he would or would not, "the club would have a hard time to collect that sixteen dollars."
"Are you serious, sir?" Brett asked.
"If to-morrow is a repetition of to-day," said Mr. Callender, "you will see the name of Callender & Co. in the evening papers." His lips trembled slightly under his close-cropped mustache.
"Then," said Brett, "this is a good opportunity to ask you, sir, if you have any objection to me as a candidate for your youngest daughter."
Mr. Callender raised his eyebrows. So small a thing as contemplated matrimony did not disturb him under the circumstances.
"My boy," he said, "I take it you are in earnest. I don't object to you.I am sure nobody does."
"Oh, yes," said Brett; "shedoes."
He had succeeded in making Mr. Callender laugh.
"But," Brett went on, "I'd like your permission to go on trying."
"You have it," said her father. "Will you and Powers dine with me?"
"No," said Brett. "Speaking as candidate to be your son-in-law, you cannot afford to give us dinner; and in the same way I cannot afford to buy dinner for you and Powers. So Powers will have to be host and pay for everything. I shall explain it to him…. But look here, sir, are you really up against it?"
To Brett's consternation, Callender suddenly buried his face in his hands and groaned aloud.
"Don't," said Brett; "some one's coming."
Callender recovered his usual poise with a great effort. But no one came.
"As far as my wishes go, sir," said Brett, "I'm your son. You never had a son, did you? If you had a son, and if he were young and resilient, you'd talk to him and explain to him, and in that way, perhaps, you'd get to see things so clearly in your own mind that you'd be able to think a way out. Why don't you talk to me as if I were your son? You see I want to be so very much, and that's half the battle."
Callender often joked about his affairs, but he never talked about them. Now, however, he looked for a moment keenly into the young man's frank and intelligent face, hesitated, and then, with a grave and courtly bow, he waved his hand toward two deep chairs that stood in the corner of the room half facing each other, as if they themselves were engaged in conversation.
Twenty minutes later Callender went upstairs to dress for dinner, but Brett rejoined Powers on the piazza. He sat down without looking at Powers or speaking to him, and his eyes, crossing the darkening bay, rested once more on the lordly silhouette of theSappho. In the failing light she had lost something of her emphatic outline, and was beginning to melt, as it were, into the shore.
Brett and Powers were partners. Powers was the floor member of the firm and Brett ran the office. But they were partners in more ways than the one, and had been ever since they could remember. As little boys they had owned things in common without dispute. At St. Marks Powers had pitched for the nine, and Brett had caught. In their senior year at New Haven they had played these positions to advantage, both against Harvard and Princeton. After graduation they had given a year to going around the world. In Bengal they had shot a tiger, each giving it a mortal wound. In Siam they had won the doubles championship at lawn tennis. When one rode on the water wagon the other sat beside him, and vice versa. Powers's family loved Brett almost as much as they loved Powers, and if Brett had had a family it would probably have felt about Powers in the same way.
As far as volume of business and legitimate commissions went, their firm was a success. It could execute orders with precision, despatch, and honesty. It could keep its mouth shut. But it had not yet learned to keep out of the market on its own account. Regularly as a clock ticks its profits were wiped out in speculation. The young men believed in the future of the country, and wanted to get rich quick, not because they were greedy, but because that desire is part of the average American's nature and equipment. Gradually, however, they were "getting wise," as the saying is. And they had taken a solemn oath and shaken hands upon it, that if ever they got out of their present difficulties they would never again tempt the goddess of fortune.
"Old man's in bad, I guess," said Powers.
"I shouldn't wonder," said Brett, and was ashamed to feel that he must not be more frank with his partner. "We're all in bad."
"TheCumberlandhas been sunk," said Powers, "and the rest of us are aground and helpless, waiting for theMerrimacto come down the river in the morning." He shook his fist at the distantSappho. "Why," he said, "even if we knew what he knows it's too late to do anything, unlesshedoes it. And he won't. He won't quit firing until Waters blows up."
"I've a good notion," said Brett, "to get out my pigeon gun, take the club launch, board theSapphoabout midnight, hold the gun to old Merriman's head, and make him promise to save the country; or else make him put to sea, and keep him there. If he were kidnapped and couldn't unload any more securities, the market would pull up by itself." The young men chuckled, for the idea amused them in spite of their troubles.
By a common impulse they turned and looked at the club's thirty-foot naphtha launch at anchor off the club's dock; and by a common impulse they both pointed at her, and both exclaimed:
"TheMonitor!"
Then, of course, they were very careful not to say anything more until they had crooked together the little fingers of their right hands, and in silence registered a wish each. Then each spoke the name of a famous poet, and the spell was ended.
"What did you wish?" said Brett idly.
Powers could be very courtly and old fashioned.
"My dear boy," he said, "I fancy that I wished for you just what you wished for yourself."
Before this they had never spoken about her to each other.
"I didn't know that you knew," said Brett. "Thanks."
They shook hands. Then Brett broke into his gay, happy laugh.
"That," said he, "is why you have to pay for dinner for Mr. Callender and me."
"Are we to dine?" asked Powers, "before attacking theMerrimac?"
"Always," assented Brett, "and we are to dress first."
The two young men rose and went into the house, Powers resting his hand affectionately on Brett's further shoulder. It was so that they had come off the field after striking out Harvard's last chance to score.
At dinner Mr. Callender, as became his age and experience, told the young men many clean and amusing stories. Though the clouds were thick about his head he had recovered his poise and his twinkling eye of the good loser. Let his night be sleepless, let the morrow crush him, but let his young friends remember that he had gone to his execution calm, courteous, and amusing, his mustache trimmed, his face close-shaved, his nails clean and polished. They had often, he knew, laughed at him for his pretensions, and his affectation of mysterious knowledge, and all his little vanities and superiorities, but they would remember him for the very real nerve and courage that he was showing, and knew that he was showing. The old gentleman took pleasure in thinking that although he was about to fail in affairs, he was not going to fail in character. He even began to make vague plans for trying again, and when, after a long dinner, they pushed back their chairs and rose from the table, there was a youthful resiliency in the voice with which he challenged Powers to a game of piquet.
"That seems to leave me out," said Brett.
"Well," said Mr. Callender, with snapping eyes, "can you play well enough to be an interesting opponent, or can't you?"
"No, I can't," said Brett. "And anyway, I'm going out in the launch to talk things over with Merriman." He shrugged his shoulders in a superior way, and they laughed; but when they had left him for the card-room he walked out on the veranda and stood looking through the darkness at theSappho'sdistant lights, and he might have been heard muttering, as if from the depths of very deep thought:
"Why not?"
At first Brett did not head the launch straight for theSappho. He was not sure in his own mind whether he intended to visit her, or just to have a near-by look at her and then return to the club. He had ordered the launch on an impulse which he could not explain to himself. If she had been got ready for him promptly he might not have cared at the last minute to go out in her at all. But there had been a long delay in finding the engineer, and this had provoked him and made him very sure that he wanted to use the launch very much. And it hadn't smoothed his temper to learn that the engineer had been found in the kitchen eating a Virginia ham in company with the kitchen maid.
But the warmth and salt freshness that came into his face, and the softness and great number of the stars soon pacified him. If she were only with him, he thought, if her father were only not on the brink of ruin, how pleasant the world would be. He pretended that she was with him, just at his shoulder, where he could not see her, but there just the same, and that he was steering the launch straight for the ends of the world. He pretended that for such a voyage the launch would not need an engineer. He wondered if under the circumstances it would be safe to steer with only one hand.
But the launch ran suddenly into an oyster stake that went rasping aft along her side, and at the same moment the searchlight from Fort Schuyler beamed with dazzling playfulness in his face, and then having half blinded him wheeled heavenward, a narrow cornucopia of light that petered out just short of the stars. He watched the searchlight. He wondered how many pairs of lovers it had discovered along the shores of Pelham Bay, how many mint-juleps it had seen drunk on the veranda of the country club, how many kisses it had interrupted; and whether it would rather pry into people's private affairs or look for torpedo-boats and night attacks in time of war. But most of all he wondered why it spent so much of its light on space, sweeping the heavens like a fiery broom with indefatigable zeal. There were no lovers or torpedo-boats up there. Even the birds were in bed, and the Wright brothers were known to be at Pau.
Once more the searchlight smote him full in the face and then, as if making a pointed gesture, swept from him, and for a long second illuminated the black hull and the yellow spars of theSappho. Then, as if its earthly business were over, the shaft of light, lengthening and lengthening as it rose above intervening obstacles, the bay, the Stepping Stone light, the Long Island shore, turned slowly upward until it pointed at the zenith. Then it went out.
"That," thought Brett, "was almost a hint. First it stirred me up; then it pointed at theSappho; then it indicated that there is One above, and then it went out."
He headed the launch straight for theSappho, and began to wonder what one had to do to get aboard of a magnate's yacht at night. He turned to the engineer.
"Gryce," he said, "what do you know about yachts?"
"What about 'em?" Gryce answered sulkily. He was still thinking of the kitchen-maid and the unfinished ham, or else of the ham and the unfinished kitchen maid, I am not sure which.
"What about 'em?" Brett echoed. "Do they take up their gangways at night?"
"Unless some one's expected," said Gryce.
"Do they have a watchman?"
"One forward and one aft on big yachts."
"Making two," said Brett. "But aren't there usually two gangways—one for the crew and one for the owner's guests?"
"Crew's gangway is to starboard," Gryce vouchsafed.
Brett wondered if there was anything else that he ought to know. Then, in picturing himself as running the launch alongside theSappho, and hoping that he would not bump her, a question presented itself.
"If I were going to visit theSappho," he asked, "would I approach the gangway from the stern or from the bow?"
"I don't know," said Gryce.
"Do you mean," said Brett, "that you don't know which is the correct thing to do, or that you think I can't steer?"
"I mean," said Gryce, "that I know it's one or the other, but I don't know which."
"In that case," said Brett, "we will approach from the rear. That is always the better part of valor. But if the gangway has been taken up for the night I don't know what I shall do."
"The gangway was down when the light was on her," said Gryce. "I seen it."
And that it was still down Brett could presently see for himself. He doubted his ability to make a neat landing, but they seemed to be expecting him, for a sailor ran down to the gangway landing armed with a long boat-hook, and made the matter easy for him. When he had reached theSappho'sdeck an officer came forward in the darkness, and said:
"This way, sir, if you please."
"There's magic about," thought Brett, and he accompanied the officer aft.
"Mr. Merriman," said the latter, "told us to expect you half an hour ago in a motor-boat. Did you have a breakdown?"
"No," said Brett, and he added mentally, "but I'm liable to."
They descended a companionway; the officer opened a sliding door of some rich wood, and Brett stepped into the highly lighted main saloon of theSappho.
In one corner of the room, with his back turned, the famous Mr. Merriman sat at an upright piano, lugubriously drumming. Brett had often heard of the great man's secret vice, and now the sight of him hard at it made him, in spite of the very real trepidation under which he was laboring, feel good-natured all over—the Colossus of finance was so earnest at his music, so painstaking and interested in placing his thick, clumsy fingers, and so frankly delighted with the effect of his performance upon his own ear. It seemed to Brett homely and pleasant, the thought that one of the most important people of eighty millions should find his pleasure in an art for which he had neither gift nor training.
Mr. Merriman finished his piece with a badly fumbled chord, and turned from the piano with something like the show of reluctance with which a man turns from a girl who has refused him. That Mr. Merriman did not start or change expression on seeing a stranger in the very heart of his privacy was also in keeping with his reputed character. It was also like him to look steadily at the young man for quite a long while before speaking. But finally to be addressed in courteous and pleasant tones was not what Brett expected. For this he had his own good looks to thank, as Mr. Merriman hated, with the exception of his own music, everything that was ugly.
"Good-evening, sir," said Mr. Merriman. "But I can't for the life of me think what you are doing on my yacht. I was expecting a man, but not you."
"You couldn't guess," said Brett, "why I have been so impertinent as to call upon you without an invitation."
"Then," said Mr. Merriman, "perhaps you had better tell me. I think I have seen you before."
"My name is Brett," said Brett. "You may have seen me trying to play tennis at Newport. I have often seen you there, looking on."
"You didn't come to accuse me of being a looker-on?" Mr. Merriman asked.
"No, sir," said Brett, "but I do wish that could have been the reason. I've come, sir, as a matter of fact, because you are, on the contrary, so very, very active in the game."
"I don't understand," said Merriman rather coldly,
"Oh," said Brett, "everybody I care for in the world is being ruined, including myself, and I said, 'Mr. Merriman could save us all if he only would.' So I came to ask you if you couldn't see your way to letting up on us all."
"'Mr. Brett," said Mr. Merriman, "you may have heard, since gossip occasionally concerns herself with me, that in my youth I was a priest."
Brett nodded.
"Well," continued Mr. Merriman, "I have never before listened to so naïve a confession as yours."
Brett blushed to his eyes.
"I knew when I came," he said, "that I shouldn't know how to go about what I've come for."
"But I think I have a better opinion of you," smiled Mr. Merriman, and his smile was very engaging. "You have been frank without being fresh, you have been bashful without showing fear. You meet the eye in a manly way, and you seem a clean and worthy young man. As opposed to these things, what you might have thought out to say to me would hardly matter."
"Oh," cried Brett impulsively, "if you would only let up!"
"I suppose, Mr. Brett," the banker smiled, even more engagingly, "that you mean you would like me to come to the personal rescue of all those persons who have recently shown bad judgment in the conduct of their affairs. But let me tell you that I have precisely your own objections to seeing people go to smash. But theywilldo it. They don't even come to me for advice."
"You wouldn't give it to them if they did," said Brett.
"No," said Mr. Merriman, "I couldn't. But I should like to, and a piece of my mind to boot. Now, sir, you have suggested something for me to do. Will you go further and tell me how I am to do it?"
"Why," said Brett, diffidently but unabashed, "you could start in early to-morrow morning, couldn't you, and bull the market?"
"Mr. Brett," said Mr. Merriman forcefully, "I have for the last month been straining my resources to hold the market. But it is too heavy, sir, for one pair of shoulders."
A look of doubt must have crossed Brett's face, for the banker smote his right fist into the palm of his left hand with considerable violence, and rose to his feet, almost menacingly.
"Have the courtesy not to doubt my statements, young sir," he said sharply. "I have made light of your intrusion; see that you do not make light of the courtesy and consideration thus shown you."
"Of course, I believe you," said Brett, and he did.
"You are one of those," said Mr. Merriman, "who listen to what the run of people say, and make capital of it."
"Of course, I can't help hearing what people say," said Brett.
"Or believing it!" Mr. Merriman laughed savagely, "What are they saying of me these days?" he asked.
Brett hesitated.
"Come, come," said the great man, in a mocking voice. "You are here without an invitation. Entertain me! Entertain me! Make good!"
Brett was nettled.
"Well," said he, "they say that Mr. Waters was tremendously extended for a rise in stocks, and that you found it out, and that you hate him, and that you went for him to give him a lesson, and that you pulled all the props out of the market, and smashed it all to pieces, just for a private spite. That's what they say!"
The banker was silent for quite a long time.
"If there wasn't something awful about that," he said at last, "it would be very funny."
The officer who had ushered Brett into the saloon appeared at the door.
"Well?" said Merriman curtly.
"There's a gentleman," said the officer, "who wants to come aboard. He says you are expecting him. But as you only mentioned one gentleman—"
"Yes, yes," said Merriman, "I'm expecting this other gentleman, too."
He turned to Brett.
"I am going to ask you to remain," he said, "to assist at a conference on the present state of the market between yourself, and myself, and myarch-enemy—Mr. Waters."
Even if Brett should live to be a distinguished financier himself—which is not likely—he will never forget that midnight conference on board theSappho. He had supposed that famous men—unless they were dead statesmen—thought only of themselves, and how they might best and most easily increase their own power and wealth. He had believed with the rest of the smaller Wall Street interests that the present difficulties were the result of a private feud. Instead of this he now saw that the supposed quarrellers had forgotten their differences, and were in the closest kind of an alliance to save the situation. He discovered that until prices had fallen fifty points neither of them had been in the market to any significant extent; and that, to avert the appalling calamities which seemed imminent, both were ready if necessary to impoverish themselves or to take unusual risks of so doing. He learned the real causes of the panic, so far as these were not hidden from Merriman and Waters themselves, and when at last the two men decided what should be attempted, to what strategic points they should send re-enforcements, and just what assistance they should ask the Secretary of the Treasury to furnish, Brett felt that he had seen history in the making.
Waters left theSapphoat one in the morning, and Brett was for going, too, but Merriman laid a hand on the young man's shoulder and asked him to remain for a few moments.
"Now, my son," he said, "you see how the panic has affected some of the so-called big interests. It may be that Waters and I can't do very much. But it will be good for you to remember that we tried; it will make you perhaps see others in a more tolerant light. But for purposes of conversation you will, of course, forget that you have been here. Now, as to your own affairs—"
Mr. Merriman looked old and tired, but very indulgent and kind.
"Knowing what I know now," said Brett, "I would rather take my chances with the other little fools who have made so much trouble for you and Mr. Waters. If your schemes work out I'll be saved in spite of myself; and if they don't—well, I hope I've learned not to be so great a fool again."
"In every honest young man," said Merriman, "there is something of the early Christian—he is very noble and very silly. Write your name and telephone number on that sheet of paper. At least, you won't refuse orders from me in the morning. Waters and I will have to use many brokers to-morrow, of whom I hope you will consent to be one."
Brett hung his head in pleasure and shame. Then he looked Mr. Merriman in the face with a bright smile.
"If you've got to help some private individual, Mr. Merriman, I'd rather you didn't make it me; I'd rather you made it old man Callender. If he goes under now he'll never get to the top again."
"Not Samuel B. Callender?" said Merriman, with a note of surprise and very real interest in his voice. "Is he in trouble? I didn't know. Why, that will never do—a fine old fighting character like that—and besides … why, wouldn't you have thought that he would have come to me himself or that at least he would have confided in my son Jim?"
Brett winced.
Merriman wrote something upon a card and handed it to Brett.
"Can you see that he gets that?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," said Brett.
"Tell him, then, to present it at my office the first thing in the morning. It will get him straight to me. I can't stand idle and see the father of the girl my boy is going to marry ruined."
"I didn't know—" said Brett. He was very white, and his lips trembled in spite of his best efforts to control them. "I congratulate you, sir. She is very lovely," he added.
Mr. Merriman regarded the miserable young man quizzically.
"But," he said, "Mr. Callender has three daughters."
"Oh, no," said Brett dismally, "there is only the one."
"My boy," said Mr. Merriman, "I am afraid that you are an incorrigible plunger—at stocks, at romance, and at conclusions. I don't know if I am going to comfort you or give you pain, but the girl my son is going to marry isMaryCallender."
The color returned to Brett's cheek and the sparkle to his eyes. He grasped Mr. Merriman by both hands, and in a confidential voice he said:
"Mr. Merriman, there is no such person."
THE McTAVISH
By the look of her she might have been a queen, or a princess, or at the very least a duchess. But she was no one of these. She was only a commoner—a plain miss, though very far from plain. Which is extraordinary when you consider that the blood of the Bruce flowed with exceeding liveliness in her veins, together with the blood of many another valiant Scot—Randolph, Douglas, Campbell—who bled with Bruce or for him.
With the fact that she was not at the very least a duchess,mostof her temporal troubles came to an abrupt end. When she tired of her castle at Beem-Tay she could hop into her motor-car and fly down the Great North Road to her castle at Brig O'Dread. This was a fifty-mile run, and from any part of the road she could see land that belonged to her—forest, farm, and moor. If the air at Beem-Tay was too formal, or the keep at Brig O'Dread too gloomy, she could put up at any of her half-dozen shooting lodges, built in wild, inaccessible, wild-fowly places, and shake the dust of the world from her feet, and tread, just under heaven, upon the heather.
But mixed up with all this fine estate was one other temporal trouble. For, over and above the expenses of keeping the castles on a good footing, and the shooting lodges clean and attractive, and the motor-car full of petrol, and the horses full of oats, and the lawns empty of weeds, and the glass houses full of fruit, she had no money whatsoever. She could not sell any of her land because it was entailed—that is, it really belonged to somebody who didn't exist; she couldn't sell her diamonds, for the same reason; and she could not rent any of her shootings, because her ancestors had not done so. I honestly believe that a sixpence of real money looked big to her.
Her first name was the same as that of the Lady of the Lake—Ellen. Her last name was McTavish—if she had been a man she would have been The McTavish (and many people did call her that)—and her middle names were like the sands of the sea in number, and sounded like bugles blowing a charge—Campbell and Cameron, Dundee and Douglas. She had a family tartan—heather brown, with Lincoln green tit-tat-toe crisscrosses—and she had learned how to walk from a thousand years of strong-walking ancestors. She had her eyes from the deepest part of a deep moorland loch, her cheeks from the briar rose, some of the notes of her voice from the upland plover, and some from the lark. And her laugh was like an echo of the sounds that the River Tay makes when it goes among the shallows.
One day she was sitting all by herself in the Seventh Drawing Room (forty feet by twenty-four) of Brig O'Dread Castle, looking from a fourteen-foot-deep window embrasure, upon the brig itself, the river rushing under it, and the clean, flowery town upon both banks. From most of her houses she could see nothing but her own possessions, but from Brig O'Dread Castle, standing, as it did, in one corner of her estates, she could see past her entrance gate, with its flowery, embattled lodge, a little into the outside world. There were tourists whirling by in automobiles along the Great North Road, or parties of Scotch gypsies, with their dark faces and ear-rings, with their wagons and folded tents, passing from one good poaching neighborhood to the next. Sometimes it amused her to see tourists turned from her gates by the proud porter who lived in the lodge; and on the present occasion, when an automobile stopped in front of the gate and the chauffeur hopped out and rang the bell, she was prepared to be mildly amused once more in the same way.
The proud porter emerged like a conquering hero from the lodge, the pleated kilt of the McTavish tartan swinging against his great thighs, his knees bare and glowing in the sun, and the jaunty Highland bonnet low upon the side of his head. He approached the gate and began to parley, but not with the chauffeur; a more important person (if possible) had descended from the car—a person of unguessable age, owing to automobile goggles, dressed in a London-made shooting suit of tweed, and a cap to match. The parley ended, the stranger appeared to place something in the proud porter's hand; and the latter swung upon his heel and strode up the driveway to the castle. Meanwhile the stranger remained without the gate.
Presently word came to The McTavish, in the Seventh Drawing Room, that an American gentleman named McTavish, who had come all the way from America for the purpose, desired to read the inscriptions upon the McTavish tombstones in the chapel of Brig O'Dread Castle. The porter, who brought this word himself, being a privileged character, looked very wistful when he had delivered it—as much as to say that the frightful itching of his palm had not been as yet wholly assuaged. The McTavish smiled.
"Bring the gentleman to the Great Tower door, McDougall," she said, "and—I will show him about, myself."
The proud porter's face fell. His snow-whitemustachiostook on a fuller droop.
"McDougall," said The McTavish—and this time she laughed aloud—"if the gentleman from America crosses my hand with silver, it shall be yours."
"More like"—and McDougall became gloomier still—"more like he will cross it with gold." (Only he said this in a kind of dialect that was delightful to hear, difficult to understand, and would be insulting to the reader to reproduce in print.)
"If it's gold," said The McTavish sharply, "I'll not part wi' it,McDougall, and you may lay to that."
You might have thought that McDougall had been brought up in the Black Hole of Calcutta—so sad he looked, and so hurt, so softly he left the room, so loudly he closed the door.
The McTavish burst into laughter, and promised herself, not without some compunction, to hand over the gold to McDougall, if any should materialize. Next she flew to her dressing-room and made herself look as much like a gentlewoman's housekeeper as she could in the few minutes at her disposal. Then she danced through a long, dark passageway, and whisked down a narrow winding stair, and stood at last in the door of the Great Tower in the sunlight. And when she heard the stranger's feet upon the gravel she composed her face; and when he appeared round the corner of a clipped yew she rattled the keys at her belt and bustled on her feet, as becomes a housekeeper, and bobbed a courtesy.
The stranger McTavish was no more than thirty. He had brown eyes, and wore upon his face a steady, enigmatic smile.
"Good-morning," said the American McTavish. "It is very kind of MissMcTavish to let me go into her chapel. Are you the housekeeper?"
"I am," said The McTavish. "Mrs. Nevis is my name."
"What a pity!" murmured the gentleman.
"This way, sir," said The McTavish.
She stepped into the open, and, jangling her keys occasionally, led him along an almost interminable path of green turf bordered by larkspur and flowering sage, which ended at last at a somewhat battered lead statue of Atlas, crowning a pudding-shaped mound of turf.
"When the Red Currie sacked Brig O'Dread Castle," said The McTavish, "he dug a pit here and flung the dead into it. There will be McTavishes among them."
"There are no inscriptions," said the gentleman.
"Those are in the chapel," said The McTavish. "This way." And she swung into another turf walk, long, wide, springy, and bordered by birches.
"Tell me," said the American, "is it true that Miss McTavish is down on strangers?"
She looked at him over her shoulder. He still wore his enigmatic smile.
"I don't know what got into her," she said, "to let you in." She halted in her tracks and, looking cautiously this way and that, like a conspirator in a play: "She's a hard woman to deal with," she said, "between you and me."
"I've heard something of the kind," said the American. "Indeed, I asked the porter. I said, 'What manner of woman is Miss McTavish?' and he said, in a kind of whisper, 'The McTavish, sir, is a roaring, ranting, stingy, bony female.'"
"He said that, did he?" asked the pseudo Mrs. Nevis, tightening her lips and jangling her keys.
"But I didn't believe him," said the American; "I wouldn't believe what he said of any cousin of mine."
"Is The McTavish your cousin?"
"Why, yes," said he; "but just which one I don't know. That's what I have come to find out. I have an idea—I and my lawyers have—that if The McTavish died without a direct heir, I should be The McTavish; that is, that this nice castle, and Red Curries Mound, and all and all, would be mine. I could come every August for the shooting. It would be very nice."
"It wouldn't be very nice for The McTavish to die before you," saidMrs. Nevis. "She's only twenty-two."
"Great heavens!" said the American. "Between you, you made me think she was a horrid old woman!"
"Horrid," said Mrs. Nevis, "very. But not old."
She led the way abruptly to a turf circle which ended the birch walk and from which sprang, in turn, a walk of larch, a walk of Lebanon cedars, and one of mountain ash. At the end of the cedar walk, far off, could be seen the squat gray tower of the chapel, heavy with ivy. McTavish caught up with Mrs. Nevis and walked at her side. Their feet made no sound upon the pleasant, springy turf. Only the bunch of keys sounded occasionally.
"How," said McTavish, not without insinuation, "could one get to know one's cousin?"
"Oh," said Mrs. Nevis, "if you are troubled with spare cash and stay in the neighborhood long enough, she'll manage that. She has little enough to spend, poor woman. Why, sir, when she told me to show you the chapel, she said, 'Catherine,' she said, 'there's one Carnegie come out of the States—see if yon McTavish is not another.'"
"She said that?"
"She did so."
"And how did you propose to go to work to find out, Mrs. Nevis?"
"Oh," said she, "I've hinted broadly at the news that's required at headquarters. I can do no more."
McTavish reflected, "Tell her," he said presently, "when you see her, that I'm not Carnegie, nor near it. But tell her that, as we Americans say, 'I've enough for two.'"
"Oh," said Mrs. Nevis, "that would mean too much or too little to aScot."
"Call it, then," said McTavish, "several million pounds."
"Several," Mrs. Nevis reflected.
"Say—three," said McTavish.
Mrs. Nevis sighed. "And where did you gather it all?" she asked.
"Oh, from my father," said McTavish. "And it was given to him by the government."
"Why?" she asked.
"Not why," said he, "so much as how. You see, our government is passionately fond of certain people and makes them very rich. But it's perfectly fair, because at the same time it makes other people, of whom it is not fond, desperately poor. We call it protection," he said. "For instance, my government lets a man buy a Shetland wool sweater in Scotland for two dollars, and lets him sell it on Broadway for twenty dollars. The process makes that man rich in time, but it's perfectly fair, because it makes the man who has to buy the sweater poor."
"But the fool doesn't have to buy it," said Mrs. Nevis.
"Oh yes, he does," said McTavish; "in America—if he likes the look of it and the feel of it—he has to buy. It's the climate, I suppose."
"Did your father make his money in Shetland sweaters?" she asked.
"Nothing so nice," said McTavish; "rails."
A covey of birds rose in the woods at their right with a loud whir of wings.
"Whew!" exclaimed McTavish.
"Baby pheasants," explained Mrs. Nevis. "They shoot three thousand atBrig O'Dread in the season."
After certain difficulties, during which their hands touched, the greatest key in Mrs. Nevis's bunch was made to open the chapel door, and they went in.
The place had no roof; the flagged floor had disappeared, and it had been replaced by velvety turf, level between the graves and headstones. Supporting columns reared themselves here and there, supporting nothing. A sturdy thorn tree grew against the left-hand wall; but the sun shone brightly into the ruin, and sparrows twittered pleasantly among the in-growths of ivy.
"Will you wish to read all the inscriptions?" asked Mrs. Nevis, doubtfully, for there were hundreds of tombstones crowding the turf or pegged to the walls.
"No, no," said McTavish "I see what I came to see—already."
For the first time the enigmatic smile left his face, and she watched him with a kind of excited interest as he crossed the narrow houses of the dead and halted before a small tablet of white marble. She followed him, more slowly, and stood presently at his side as he read aloud:
"SACRED TO THE MEMORY OFCOLLAND McTAVISH,WHO DISAPPEARED, AGED FIVE YEARS,JUNE 15TH, 1801."
Immediately below the inscription a bar of music was engraved in the marble. "I can't read that," said McTavish.
Mrs. Nevis hummed a pathetic air very sweetly, almost under her breath. He listened until she had finished and then: "What tune is that?" he asked, excitedly.
"'Wandering Willie,'" she answered.
"Of course," said he, "it would be that."
"Was this the stone you came to see?" she asked presently.
"Yes," he said. "Colland McTavish, who disappeared, was my great-grandfather. The old gentleman—I never saw him myself—used to say that he remembered a long, long driveway, and a great iron gate, and riding for ever and ever in a wagon with a tent over it, and sleeping at night on the bare hills or in forests beside streams. And that was all he remembered, except being on a ship on the sea for years and years. But he had this—"
McTavish extracted from a pocket into which it had been buttoned for safety what appeared, at first sight, to be a linen handkerchief yellow with age. But, on unfolding, it proved to be a child's shirt, cracked and broken in places, and lacking all but one of its bone buttons. Embroidered on the tiny shirt tail, in faint and faded blue, was the name Colland McTavish.
"He always thought," said McTavish, "that the gypsies stole him. It looks as if they had, doesn't it? And, just think, he used to live in this beautiful place, and play in it, and belong to it! Wasn't it curious, my seeing that tablet the first thing when we came in? It looked as big as a house and seemed to beckon me."
"It looks more like the ghost of a little child," said Mrs. Nevis quietly. "Perhaps that is why it drew you so."
"Why," said he, "has this chapel been allowed to fall to pieces?"
"Because," said Mrs. Nevis, "there's never been the money to mend it."
"I wonder," he mused, "if The McTavish would let me do it? After all,I'm not an utter stranger; I'm a distant cousin—after all."
"Not so distant, sir," said Mrs. Nevis, "as may appear, if what you say is true. Colland McTavish, your great-grandfather, and The McTavish's great-grandfather, were brothers—and the poor bereft mother that put up this tablet was your great-great-grandmother, and hers."