Hildegarde had found her rough gray suit impracticable because of the drenching rains of yesterday and was freshly arrayed in a very chic street costume of royal blue broadcloth, trimmed with bands of chinchilla fur, with a muff and hat to match. She was standing near a window, on the sill of which the Major, wrapped in a rug and his overcoat, was ensconced, having been brought forth for a breath of air. He had a whimsical look of discovery on his pallid and wrinkled face. She was recalling to him a world which he had forgotten so long ago that it had all the flavor of a new existence.
“I can’t give you any idea of the sceneryen route, Major,”—she was describing a trip to the far west,—“in fact I slept the whole way. You see, my social duties were very onerous last spring. Our club haddetermined to give twelve dinner dances during the season, and the weather became hot unusually early, and so many people were leaving town that as we were pledged to twelve we were compelled to give four of the dinner dances during the last week and my head was in a whirl. There was the Adelantado ball, too, and several very elaborate luncheons, and two or three teas every afternoon, and what between the indigestion and the two-step lumbago I was in a state of collapse on the journey west.”
“That was a novel campaign,” remarked the old soldier.
“It was a forced march,” declared Hildegarde. “I didn’t revive until I heard dance music again in the Golden City. Let me prop your head up against the window frame on my muff, Major. Oh, yes, it is very pretty,—all soft gray and white.” She made a point of describing everything in detail for his sightless vision. “You might get a nap in this fresh air,—for it is a ‘pillow muff.’ Yes, indeed,” watching his trembling fingers explore its soft densities, “it is very fine, but I won’t mention the awful sum it cost my daddy lest such a conscienceless pillow give you the nightmare.”
The air had all that bland luxurious quality so characteristic of the southern autumn. A sense was rife in the sunlit spaces of a suspension of effort. The growths of the year were complete; the inception of the new was not yet in progress. No root stirred; there was never a drop of sap distilled; not a twig felt the impetus of bourgeonning anew. Naught was apposite to the season save some languorous dream, too delicate, too elusive even for memory. It touched the lissome grace of the willow-wands, bare and silvery and flickering in the imperceptible zephyrs. It lay, swooning with sweetness, in the heart of a late rose which found the changing world yet so kind that not a petal wilted in fear of frost. It silvered the mists and held them shimmering and spellbound here and there above the shining pearl-tinted water. It was not summer, to be sure, but the apotheosis of the departing season. Those far gates of the skies were opening to receive the winged past, and, surely, some bright reflection of a supernal day had fallen most graciously on all the land.
“For my part, since that deal is over and done with by this time, I don’t care how long I have to wait for a boat,—it can neither mar nor make so far as I am concerned,” said the broker, as he puffed his cigar and walked with long, meditative strides up and down the stone pavement.
Floyd-Rosney did not concur in this view. He had expected all the early hours that some of the neighboring negroes would come to the house, attracted by the rumors of the commotions enacted there during the night. Thus he could hire a messenger to take a note or a telephone message to the nearest livery establishment and secure a conveyance for himself and family to the railroad station some ten miles distant. He feared that hours, nay a day or so, might elapse before one of the regular packets plying the river might be expected to pass. Those already in transit had, doubtless, “tied up” during the storm, and now waited till the current should compass the clearance of the débris of the hurricane floating down the river. The steamers advertised to leave on their regular dates had notcast off, in all probability, but lay supine in their allotted berths till the effects of the storm should be past, and thus would not be due here for twelve or twenty-four hours, according to the distance of their point of departure.
As, however, time went on and the old house stood all solitary in the gay morning light as it had in the sad moon-tide, Floyd-Rosney reflected that no one had gone forth from the place except the robbers and the roustabouts who had rowed the party down from theCherokee Rose, returning thither immediately. It was, therefore, improbable that any rumor was rife of the temporary occupation of the Duciehurst mansion. Hence the absence of curiosity seekers. Moreover, even were the circumstances known, every human creature in the vicinity with the capacity to stand on its feet and open and close its fingers was in the cotton fields this day, for the sun’s rays had already sufficiently dried off the plant, and the industry of cotton-picking, even more than time and tide, waits for nobody. For “cotton is money,—maybe more, maybe less, but cotton is moneyevery time,” according to the old saying. These snowy level fields were rich with coin of the republic. The growing staple was visible wealth, scarcely needing the transmuting touch of trade. No! of all the wights whom he might least expect to see it was any cotton-picker, old or young, of the region.
There being, evidently, no chance of a messenger, he had half a mind, as his impatience of the detention increased, to go himself in search of means of telephonic communication. But, apart from his spirit of leisure and his habit of ease, his prejudiceswere dainty, and he looked upon the miry richness of the Mississippi soil as if it were insurmountable. To be sure, now and again he affected a day of sylvan sport, when, with dog and gun, he cared as little as might be for mud, or rain, or sleet, or snow; but then, he was caparisoned as a Nimrod, and burrs and briers, stains and adhesive mire, were all the necessary accessories, and of no consideration. In his metropolitan attire to step out knee deep in a soil made up of river detritus, the depth and blackness of which are the boast and glory of the cotton belt, was scarcely to be contemplated if an alternative was possible.
Suddenly a cry smote the air with electrical effect. “A boat! A boat!”
Theauspicious announcement came first from the balcony. Then the cry “A boat! A boat!” was taken up by the group on the portico, and echoed by those within, pouring out in eager expectation through the vestibule or the windows that opened to the floor. Floyd-Rosney experienced a moment of self-gratulation on his prudential hesitation. He might have otherwise been half a mile off, plunging through slough and switch-cane, or the sharp serrated blades of the growths of saw-grass that edged the lake, before he could gain the smooth ways of the turn-rows of the cotton fields. All knew that considerable time must needs elapse from the moment the boat was sighted, far up the river, before it could pass this point. But shawls were strapped, gloves, wraps, hats, gathered together, toilet articles tumbled hastily into Gladstone bags, trunks and suitcases. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, with incomparable quickness, had shifted into a gown of taupe cloth, with a coat to match, and with a large hat, trimmed with ostrich plumes of the same shade, on her golden hair, in lieu of the rain-drenched traveling attire of yesterday.
After a few moments of this pandemonium of preparation all eyes were turned toward the river. Vacant it was, sunlit, a certain play of the swift current betokening the added impetus of the recentheavy rainfall and the influx of its swollen tributaries from the region to the northward. Not even a coil of smoke showed above the forest where the river curved.
“The packet must be rounding the point,” said Floyd-Rosney hopefully.
“Did you see the smoke above the trees, darling?” Paula called out to the eager little man, now racing joyfully about the balcony, now pausing to point at an object in the offing with his tiny forefinger.
“No, mamma; the boat; the boat!”
Marjorie, leaning on the iron rail, was gazing with eager eyes in vain search.
“It seems to me that we ought to be able to see the boat from the portico as soon as he can from the balcony,” said the broker.
An adequate reason was presently presented for the advantage of the balcony as an outlook, lifted so high above the portico.
The boat lay very flat on the surface,—a shanty-boat!
“Why, Eddie,” cried Marjorie, with an inflection of poignant disappointment,—she, too, had been looking for the towering chimneys, the coil of black smoke, backward blown in the smooth progress of a packet, the white guards, the natty little pilot-house, and only casually she had chanced to descry the tiny flat object drifting with the current that carried it far in toward the point. “That is a shanty-boat,—we don’t travel on that kind of boat.”
The child’s pink and white face was crestfallen in a moment. Language seemed to fail him as he gazed disconsolate. Then he sought reassurance.“Himisa boat,” he declared with his pointing forefinger, so small in contrast with the vast spaces he sought to index. “Himisa boat,ain’t him, mamma?”
“Him is, indeed, a boat,” cried out Paula. “Never mind,” for little Ned’s head was drooping, “we shall get a bigger boat presently. And it was you that saw the first one!”
“Get him down from there, Paula,” said Floyd-Rosney, greatly discomposed. “Set him at some other mischief, for God’s sake,—anything but this.”
“He is coming now,” she answered, glimpsing the rueful little face through the balusters of the stairs within, and, presently, the whole diminutive figure came into view as he descended, always the right foot first, and only one step at a time, so high were the intervals for his fat baby legs.
“The poor child,” Paula suddenly exclaimed, the tears springing. “There just seems to be no place for him.”
Floyd-Rosney obviously felt the rebuke. He winced for a moment. Then he justified himself.
“To have twenty people on thequi vivefor a boat and then disappoint them with that silly prank,—it is out of the question.”
“It was no prank,—he meant no harm,” said Paula in abashed discomfiture. “I had told him to watch for a boat merely to keep him out of the way. I didn’t think to explain that it was to be a steamboat for us to board.”
“Then you ought to have more consideration for other people,” Floyd-Rosney fumed.
His strong point was scarcely altruism, but heprobably felt the misadventure even more sensibly than any of the others, for he was accustomed to lording it in a fine style and in a fine sphere. There was no lack of indicia of displeasure among the thwarted travelers as they strolled in baffled irritation up and down the stone floor of the portico, and gazed along the glittering river at the slow approach of the shanty-boat, now drifting as noiselessly and apparently as aimlessly on the lustrous surface as a sere leaf on a gust of wind, and now, with its great sweeps, working to keep the current from carrying it in and grounding it on the bank. The old lady who had entertained fears of the insane man was both peevishly outspoken and addicted to covert innuendo.
“I declare it has given me a turn,—I am subject to palpitation.” She put her hand with a gingerly gesture to the decorous passamenterie on her chest that outlined her embroidered lawn guimpe. “Shocks are very bad for any cardiacal affection. Oh, of course,” a wan and wintry smile at once of acceptance and protest as Paula expressed her vicarious contrition, “the child didn’t intend any harm, but it only shows the truth of the old saw that children should be seen and not heard.” She could not be placated, and she sighed plaintively as she once more sat down on her suitcase on the steps of the portico.
The men had less to say, but were of an aspect little less morose. Even the broker, whose heart had warmed to the sunshine, felt it a hardship that he should not have the boon at least of knowing how the deal had gone. A grim laugh, here and there, betokened no merriment and was of sarcasticintimations that touched the verge of rudeness. The business interests of more than one were liable to suffer by prolonged absence, and the ruefulness of disappointment showed in several countenances erstwhile resolutely cheerful.
Paula, to escape further disaffected comment, had turned within, perceiving, at a distance, Hildegarde coming down the hall, gazing intently on a little forked stick, carried stiffly before her in both hands, the eyes of a group hard by fixed smilingly upon her mysterious progress. Randal Ducie suddenly entered from one of the rooms on the left, where he and his brother had been examining the rescued papers.
Was it because Paula was so accustomed to the vicarious preëminence which her husband’s wealth and prominence had conferred upon her that she should experience a sentiment of revolt upon discerning the surprise and accession of interest in Randal Ducie’s face as his eyes passed from her and fixed themselves on Hildegarde—or was it because she still arrogated instinctively her quondam hold upon his heart? Had she never consciously loosed it?—or, while he had escaped its coercions, were they still potential with her? Why should she wince and redden as, with his hat in his hand, he advanced instantly to meet Miss Dean, who seemed not to see him and to cavalierly ignore his presence.
“Why, won’t you speak to me?” he demanded, smiling.
Her casual glance seemed to pass him over. She was intent upon the little forked stick. “What do you want me to say to you?” she asked, not liftingher radiant blue eyes, half glimpsed beneath her lowered black lashes.
“Good morning, at least,” replied Randal.
“How many greetings do you require? Upon my word, the man has forgotten that he has seen me earlier to-day. I wished you a ‘good morning’ at that very delectable breakfast table.”
“Oh, that must have been my brother,” said Randal, enlightened. “This is I, myself, Randal Ducie.”
“You had better beware how you try your fakes on me. You don’t know what magic power I have in this little divining-rod. I will tell you presently to go and look into your strong box and find all your jewels and gold turned to pebbles, and your title-deeds cinders and blank paper.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Floyd-Rosney unpleasantly. “The blind goddess will undertake that little transformation.” His imperious temper could scarcely brook the perception that the coterie regarded the Ducies as restored to the ownership of their ancient estates, even while he stood in the hall of the house he held by the decree of the courts.
But Hildegarde did not hear or heed. Bent on her frivolous fun, she brushed past Ducie, holding her divining-rod stiffly in her dainty fingers. Her eyes were alight with laughter as she exclaimed in a voice agitated with affected excitement, “Oh, it’s turning! It’s turning! I shall find silver in one more moment. Oh, Major, Major,” she brought the twig up against the old soldier’s breast. “Here it is—silver—in the Major’s waistcoat pocket!”
She fell back against the great newel of the staircase, laughing ecstatically, while all the idle grouplooked on with amused sympathy, save only the two Floyd-Rosneys. The wife’s face was disconcerted, almost wry, with the affected smile she sought to maintain, as she watched Ducie’s glowing expression of admiration, and the husband’s gravity was of baleful significance as he watched her.
“I have found silver! I have found silver! Now, Major, stand and deliver.” As the trembling fingers of the veteran obediently explored the pocket and produced several bits of money, they were hailed with acclamations by the discoverer, till she suddenly espied a coin with a hole in it. “Oh, Major,” she cried, in genuine enthusiasm. “Give me this dime!”
“Oh, Hildegarde,”—Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s face assumed an expression of reprehension, but Mrs. Dean only laughed at the childish freak.
“I will have it,—it won’t make or break the Major—I want it—to wear as a bangle, to remind me of this lovely trip, and all that the Major and I have plotted, and contrived, and conspired together. Eh, Major? Oh,—thanks,—thanks,—muchly. You may have the rest, Major.” And she tucked the remaining coins back into his pocket, smiling brightly the while up into his sightless eyes.
Randal Ducie, with an air of sudden decision, turned about, seized his brother by the arm and together they stood before the joyous young beauty, who was obviously beginning to canvass mentally the next possibility of amusement under these unpropitious circumstances.
“Now, Miss Dean, be pleased to cast your eyes over us. I am not going to allow this fellow to deprive me of your valuable acquaintance.”
“Oh, pick me out, Miss Dean,” cried Adrianplaintively. “I am all mixed up. I don’t know if I am myself or my brother.”
Miss Dean stared from one to the other, her brilliant eyes wide with wonder.
“How perfectly amazing!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, how did you distinguish and recognize one of them Thursday afternoon?”
Paula’s mind was so engrossed that, quick as she was always to discern the fluctuations of favor in her husband’s disposition toward her, she had not observed his peculiar notice of the fact of her retentive memory and keen perception in distinguishing the veiled identity of the man who had once been dear to her,—once?
“Oh, I saw the difference instantly,” she declared, with what her husband considered an undignified glibness, and an interest especially unbecoming in a matter so personal, which should be barred to her by the circumstances. “This is Randal, and this is Mr. Adrian Ducie.”
Indeed, they all noticed, with varying sentiments, the familiar use of the Christian name, but only Adrian spoke in his debonair fashion.
“Right-o! I begin to breathe once more. I was afraid I was going to have to be Randal.”
Miss Dean was still studying the aspect of the two brothers. “I believe you are correct, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” she said slowly. “For this one, Mr. Adrian Ducie, is just from France, and he has on Paris-made shoes,—I know the last. It is thedernier cri.”
There was a general laugh.
“Blessed Saint Crispin! I’ll make a votive offering!” cried Adrian. “Now, Randal, you stayaway from me,” with a vigorous push of his brother at arm’s length, “so that this mix-up can’t happen again.”
“I’ll borrow his shoes when he is asleep and he will never know himself any more!” said Randal vindictively.
There was a sudden cheerful acclaim from the portico without. A boat had been sighted, slowly rounding the point, a packet of the line this time, and all was bustle preparatory to embarkation. Even now the whistle, husky, loud, widely blaring, filled the air, signaling the approaching landing, the Captain having received information when passing theCherokee Roseof the plight of the refugees. The next moment they were sheepishly laughing, for the steamer, theNixie, was sending forth a second blast, a prolonged whining shriek, the signal known on the river as a “begging whistle” by which boats solicit patronage in passengers or freight, and which is usually sounded only when there is a doubt whether a stoppage is desired.
Humoring the joke at their expense, the refugees made a vigorous reply, waving handkerchiefs, raising hats on umbrellas and canes, hallooing lustily, as they wended their way down the pavement, over the ruined embankment of the old levee, along the grass-grown road and to the brink of the bank, seeming high and precipitous at this stage of the river. They were well in advance of the stoppage of the steamer, although, as she came sweeping down the current, the constantly quickening beat of her paddles on the water could be heard at a considerable distance in that acceleration of speed always preliminary to landing. They watched all hermotions with an eagerness to be off as if some chance could yet snatch the opportunity from their reach,—the approach, the backing, the turning, the renewed approach, all responsive to the pilot-bells jangling keenly on the air. Then ensued the gradual cessation of the pant of the engines, the almost imperceptible gliding to actual stoppage, as theNixielay in the deep trough of the channel of the river, the slow swinging of the staging from the pulleys suspended above the lower deck. The end of the frame had no sooner been laid on the verge of the high bank than the refugees were trooping eagerly down its steep, cleated incline to the lower deck as if the steamer would touch but a moment and then forge away again.
TheNixiewas sheering off, thus little delayed, to resume her downward journey and the passengers had begun to gather on the promenade deck when Miss Dean encountered Adrian Ducie. She stopped short at the sight of him. “Why, where is the other one of you?” she exclaimed.
“He remained at Duciehurst. I have pressing business in Vicksburg,—my stoppage, as you know, was involuntary. I shall return later.”
“Oh, I don’t like to see you apart.”
“If you would take a little something now,” he said alluringly, “you might see double. Then the freak brothers would be all right again.”
“But the parting must be very painful after such a long separation,” she speculated.
“We shed a couple of tears,” and Adrian wagged his head in melancholy wise.
“Oh, you turn everything into ridicule,—even your fraternal affection,” she said reproachfully.
“Would you have me fall to weeping in sad earnest? Besides, the parting is only for a day or so. I shall take the train at Vicksburg and rejoin him.”
“And where is Mrs. Floyd-Rosney?” she asked, looking about.
“She, too, remained at Duciehurst,” said one of the sour old ladies.
Adrian rose precipitately. The boat, headed downstream, was now in the middle of the channel, and he gazed at the rippling, shimmering expanse as if he had it in mind to attempt its transit. Here, at all events, was something which he did not turn into ridicule. The great house beyond its ruinous levee rose majestically into the noontide sunlight, all its disasters and indignities effaced by the distance. The imposing, pillared portico, the massive main building with its heavy cornice, the broad wings, the stone-coped terraces, all were distinct and differentiated, amidst the glossy magnolias that, sempervirent, aided its aspect of reviviscence, with a fain autumnal haze softening its lines, and the brilliant corrugated surface of the river in the foreground.
He stood gazing vainly upon it, as it seemed to recede into the distance, till, presently, the boat rounded a point and it vanished like an unsubstantial mirage, like a tenuous mist of the morning.
Itwas through no will of her own that Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had remained at Duciehurst. She had been eager and instant in the preparations for departure as soon as the approach of the boat was heralded. She had aided the old nurse with convulsive haste by hustling the baby’s effects into his suitcase, jamming his cap down on his head and shaking him into his coat with little ceremony. She had seen from the broken windows of the deserted music-room the Ducie brothers, the last of all the procession of travelers, wending down toward the great white shell in the river slowly approaching, throwing off the foam in wreaths on each side. The two men walked shoulder to shoulder; now and again they paused to confer; then going on; and there was something so affectionate in their look and attitude, almost leaning on one another, so endearing in the way in which one would lay his hand on the other’s arm that tears sprang to her eyes, and, for the moment, she felt that nothing was worth having in the world but the enduring affection of a simple heart, which asks naught but love in return.
The momentary weakness was gone as it had come. She could feel only elation—to be going, to get out of the house of Randal Ducie, which she had entered with reluctance, even when she had doubtedhis claim, and now that it had been proved valid in fact, if not in law, she could scarcely wait to be quit of it.
In the hall, as she flustered forth—as Floyd-Rosney would have described her agitated movements—she was astonished to come upon her husband, placidly pacing up and down, his deliberate cigar between his lips, his hands clasped behind him.
“Why, dear,”—she used the connubial address from force of habit, for her voice was crisp and keenly pitched—“aren’t you ready?”
“Seems not,” he said, looking at her enigmatically.
“But we shall be left!” she exclaimed.
“Exactly.” He took his cigar from his mouth and emitted a puff of fragrant nicotian.
He was wont to consult his own whims, but hitherto her supine acquiescence had been actuated less by a realization of helplessness than endorsement of his right of mastery, his superior and prevailing will. She thought of her submissiveness at the moment.
How she had loved money! His money, of which she had enjoyed such share as he saw fit to dole forth. All the stiffness, the induration of long custom was at war with her Impulse as she cried:
“But I want to go! What do you mean by staying here?”
“But I want to stay,” he said imperiously, “and that is what I mean, and all I mean.”
This was hardly comprehensive. He could scarcely control the rage that from the first of this ill-omened detention had possessed him upon the discovery of her lingering interest in the face of herold lover—a simple matter and explicable; without latent significance it would have been in the mind of any other man. Had it involved no sequence of subsequent events even he, perhaps, would have brought himself to let it pass unconsidered. He could not expect her to forget the fashion of Randal Ducie’s features, and the presence of the twin brother conjured up his face anew—his face which she had subtly distinguished from its counterpart. That revolted his pride. His wife must have no thought, no care, no memory, even, for aught save him! But her protest as to his ownership of Duciehurst, her revolt against owing any phase of her prosperity to the misfortunes of the Ducies, argued latent sensitiveness, an unprobed wound that he had not suspected, thoughts that he could not divine, memories that he did not share. Never, in all his experience of her, had her individuality, or even a question of his authority, been asserted save since that remembered face reappeared, affecting their matrimonial accord—he, imperious to command, from his plenitude of wealth and power, she eager to fawn and obey.
“You don’t consider me at all. You don’t consult my wishes.”
“I do better, my love. I consult our mutual interests.”
“You treat me like a child, an idiot! You let me know nothing of our plans. Why should we not leave this battered old ruin with the rest of the passengers? How and when are we to leave? If, for nothing but to make a decent response to Aunt Dorothy’s questions, I ought to be told something. I hardly know how to face her.”
“WellIam not posing for that old darkey’s benefit,” he said, satirically smiling.
There was a pause full of expectancy.
“This battered old ruin!” he exclaimed. “It will be the finest mansion in Mississippi by the time I am through with it.”
He cast his imperative eyes in approval over the great spaces of its open apartments. “And you, my dear, will be proud to be its chatelaine, and dispense its hospitalities.”
“Never,” she cried impetuously—“an abasement of pride for me!”
He changed color for a moment, and then held his ground.
“The ante-bellum glories will be revived in a style that has not been attempted in this country.”
“The ante-bellum glories—that were the Ducies’,” she said, with a flushed face and a flashing eye.
He was of so imperious a personality that he seldom encountered rebuke or contradiction. He was of such potential endowments that effort was unknown and failure was annihilated in his undertakings. He scarcely understood how he should deal with this unprecedented insolence, this revolt on the part of the being who had seemed to him most devoted, most adoring. The incense of worship had been dear to him,—and now the worshiper had lapsed to revilings and sacrilege!
“Paula, you are a fool absolute,” he said roughly.
“Ah, no—not I—not I!” she cried significantly. She lifted her head with a quick motion. The boat at the landing was getting up steam. She heard the exhaust of the engines, then the sonorous beatof the paddles on the water, and the swishing tumult of the waves as the wheels revolved.
“They are going,” she cried, “and we are left!”
She turned to him in agitation. He stood, splendid in his arrogant assurance, in his unrelenting dominance, his fine presence befitting the great hall which he would so amply grace in its restored magnificence. It was well for him that he was so handsome. Such a man, less graciously endowed, would have been intolerable in his arrogance, his selfishness, his brutality.
He showed no interest in the departure at the landing; he knew, by the sound, that the steamboat was now well out in midstream, and he secretly congratulated himself upon the termination of this ill-starred revival of old associations with the Ducies. Never again should they cross his wife’s path. Never again should he submit to the humiliation imposed upon him by the revival of old memories which had incited in her this strange restiveness to his supreme control. She had been wont to hug her chains—not that he thus phrased the gentle constraints he had imposed, rather wifely duty, conjugal love, admiration, trust.
The steamboat was gone at length, and his wife, standing in the hall and looking through the wide doorless portal, had seen the last of the passengers. Looking with a strange expression on her strained face which he could not understand,—what series of mysteries had her demeanor set him to interpret during these few hours, she who used to be so pellucidly transparent! Looking with frowning brow and questioning intent eyes, then with a suddenly clearing expression and a vindictive glance like triumph,she turned away with an air of bridling dignity, as if the steamer and its passengers had no concern for her, and, the next moment, Randal Ducie ascended the steps and entered the hall.
Edward Floyd-Rosneyin some sort habitually confused cause and effect. In his normal entourage he mistook the swift potencies of his wealth, waiting on his will, like a conjurer’s magic, for an individual endowment of ability. He had great faith in his management. In every group of business men with whom his affairs brought him in contact his financial weight gave him a predominance and an influence which flattered his vanity, and which he interpreted as personal tribute, and yet he did not disassociate in his mind his identity from his income. His wealth was an integral part of him, one of the many great values attached to his personality—he felt that he was wise and witty, capable and coercive. He addressed himself to the manipulation of a difficult situation with a certainty of success that gave a momentum to the force with which his money carried all before him. So rarely had he been placed on a level with other men, in a position in which wealth and influence were inoperative, that he had had scant opportunities to appraise his own mental processes—his judgment, his initiative, his powers of ratiocination.
He did not feel like a fool when Randal Ducie walked deliberately into the hall of his fathers, staring in responsive surprise to see the Floyd-Rosneys still lingering there. That admission was impossibleto Floyd-Rosney’s temperament. He felt as if contemplating some revulsion of nature. He had seen this man among the crowd, boarding the steamer, and lo, here he was again, on dry land and the boat now miles distant.
He stood stultified, all his plans for the avoidance of Ducie strangely dislocated and set at naught by the unexpected falling out of events.
He was not calculated to bear tamely any crossing of his will, and the blood began to throb heavily in his temples with the realization that his wife had understood his clumsy maneuver, of which she was the subject, and witnessed its ludicrous discomfiture. His pride would not suffer him to glance toward her, where she sat perched up on the grand staircase, in the attitude of a coquettish girl. He curtly addressed Ducie:
“Thought you were gone!”
“No,” said Ducie, almost interrogatively, as to why this conclusion.
Floyd-Rosney responded to the intonation.
“I saw you going down to the landing.”
“To see my brother off.”
“Oh,—ah——”
What more obvious—what more natural? The one resumed his interrupted journey, and the other was to take up his usual course of life. That is, thought Floyd-Rosney, if this one is Randal Ducie. But, for some reason, they might have reversed the program, and this is the other one.
Floyd-Rosney struggled almost visibly for his wonted dominance, but Ducie had naught at stake on his favor, naught to give or to lose, and his manner was singularly composed and inexpressive—too wellbred to even permit the fear of counter questions as to why they lingered here and let the steamer leave without them. Perhaps, he felt such inquiries intrusive, for, after a moment, he turned away, and Floyd-Rosney still confronted him with eyes round and astonished and his face a flushed and uneasy mask of discomfiture.
Momentarily at a loss how to dispose of himself, Ducie looked about the apartment, devoid of chairs or any furniture, and, finally, resorted to the staircase, taking up a position on one of the lower steps. Perhaps, had he known that the Floyd-Rosneys were within he would have lingered outside. But dignity forbade a retreat, although his disinclination for their society was commensurate with Floyd-Rosney’s aversion to him and his brother. For his life Floyd-Rosney, still staring, could not decide which of the twain he had here, and Paula, with a perverse relish of his quandary, perceived and enjoyed his dilemma. Although he was aware she could discern the difference her manner afforded him no clew, as she sat silent and intentionally looking very pretty, to her husband’s indignation, as he noted the grace of her studied attitude, her face held to inexpressive serenity, little in accord with the tumult of vexation the detention had occasioned her.
Floyd-Rosney could not restrain his questions. Perhaps they might pass with Ducie as idle curiosity, although with Paula he had now no disguise.
“You are waiting——?”
“For my horse,” returned Ducie, with the accent of surprise. “There was no room in the phaeton for me, as Colonel Kenwynton and Major Laceyconcluded to accompany the doctor and his patient to the sanatorium.”
So this was Randal Ducie, and the brother had resumed his journey down the river.
“The doctor promised to send the horse back for me——” he paused a moment. “I hope he will send the phaeton, too, for if you have made no other arrangements——” Once more he paused blankly—it seemed so strange that Floyd-Rosney should allow himself to be marooned here in this wise. “If you have made no other arrangements it will give me pleasure to drive you to the station near Glenrose.”
“We are due at the sanatorium for the insane, I think,” cried Paula, with her little fleering laugh, her chin thrust up in her satirical wont.
Floyd-Rosney, sore bestead and amazed by her manner, made a desperate effort to recover his composure.
“Oh, I sent a telegram by one of the passengers to be transmitted when the boat touches at the landing at Volney, and this will bring an automobile here for my family.”
“If the passenger does not forget to send it, or if, when the boat touches he is not asleep, after his vigils here, or if he is not taking a walk, or eating his lunch, or, like Baal of old, otherwise engaged, when we, too, may cry Baal, Baal, unavailingly. For my part, I accept your offer, Mr. Ducie, if your vehicle comes first; if not I hope you will take a seat in the automobile with us.”
“That is a compact,” said Ducie graciously.
Floyd-Rosney felt assured that this was Randal. He was more suave than his brother—or was it thatold associations still had power to gentle his temper? He could not understand his wife’s revolt. Now and again he looked at her with an unconscious inquiry in his eyes. So little was he accustomed to subject his own actions to criticism that it did not occur to him that he had gone too far. The worm had turned, seeming unaware how lowly and helpless was its estate. He had all the sentiment of grinding it under his heel, as he said loftily:
“We shall have no need to impose upon you, Mr. Ducie. Our own conveyance will be here in ample time,”—then, like a jaw-breaker—“Thanks.”
“I march with the first detachment,” declared Paula hardily. “I shall accept your offer of transportation, Mr. Ducie, if the auto does not come first.”
Floyd-Rosney thought this must surely be Adrian Ducie, and not his brother. For some reason of their own theymusthave exchanged their missions, and Randal had gone down the river, leaving his brother here. For she—a stickler on small points of the appropriate—could never say this if it were her old lover. Her sense of decorum, her respect for her husband, her habitual exercise of good taste would alike forbid the suggestion. Doubtless, it was Adrian Ducie.
“I don’t think an automobile will come,” remarked Ducie. “The roads are very rough between here and Volney.”
Paula’s next words seemed to mend the matter a trifle in Floyd-Rosney’s estimation.
“I think we have all had enough of Duciehurst for one time! I would not risk remaining here, as evening closes in, for any consideration. All theriverside harpies will be flocking here when this story of treasure trove is bruited abroad. The old place will be fairly torn stone from stone, and there will be horrible orgies of strife and bloodshed. There ought to be a guard set, though there is nothing now to guard.”
“Do you suppose Captain Treherne’s story of the river pirates was all fact or was partly the effect of his hallucination?” Ducie asked.
“The cords he was bound with were pretty circumstantial evidence,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, not waiting, as usual, for her husband’s word, but taking the lead in the conversation with aplomb and vivacity—he remembered scornfully that before her marriage she had been accounted in social circles intellectual, abel espritamong the frivols.
“The gag failed of its function of silence,” she continued, “it told the whole story. You would have known that it was stern truth if you had seen it.”
Floyd-Rosney vacillated once more.
“Thismustbe Randal Ducie,” he thought, “for Adrian was present at the liberation of Captain Treherne—indeed, he was with the group searching among the series of ruined vacant apartments when the prisoner was discovered.”
“The finding of the box was very singular,” speculated Ducie, “the closest imaginable shave. It was just as possible to one of the parties on the verge of discovery as the other.”
He was in that uneasy, disconcerted state of mind usual with a stranger present at a family discord which he feels, yet must not obviously perceive and cannot altogether ignore.
“It seems the hand of fate,” said Paula.
“I went up to the third story this morning and looked at the place,” remarked Randal. “I really don’t see how, without tools, you contrived to wrench the heavy washboard away, and get at the bricks and the interior of the capital of the pilaster.”
“It seems a feat more in keeping with Miss Dean,” suggested Floyd-Rosney, “she has such a splendid physique.”
“Hilda is as strong as a boy,” declared Paula. “She does ‘the athletic’—affects very boyish manners, don’t you think?” she added, addressing Ducie directly.
There were few propositions which either of the Floyd-Rosneys could put forth with which Randal Ducie would not have agreed, so eager was he to close the incident without awkward friction. To let the malapropos encounter pass without result was the instinct of his good breeding. But, upon this direct challenge, he felt that he could not annul his individuality, his convictions.
“Why, not at all boyish,” he said. “On the contrary, I think her manners are most feminine in their fascination. Did you notice that the old blind Major was having the time of his life?”
Floyd-Rosney, without the possibility of seating himself unless he, too, resorted to the stair, was pacing slowly back and forth, his head bent low, his hands lightly clasped behind him. Now and again he sent forth a keenly observant glance at the two disposed on the stair, like a couple of young people sitting out a dance at a crowded evening function.
“Hildegarde will flirt with anything or anybody when good material cannot be had,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, with a manner of vague discomfiture.
“Well, that is scarcely fair to my brother,” said Randal. He would not let this pass.
“Oh, I should judge his flirting days are over,” cried Paula, wilfully flippant. “He is as crusty as a bear with a sore head.”
“Or a sore heart,” said Randal, thinking of Adrian’s long exile, and his hard fate, ousted from his home and fortune; then he could have bitten his tongue out, realizing the sentimental significance of the words. Still one cannot play with fire without burning one’s fingers, and there are always embers among the ashes of an old flame.
For her life Paula could but look conscious with the eyes of both men on her face.
“He doesn’t seem an exponent of a sore heart.” She stumbled inexcusably in her clumsy embarrassment. There was an awkward silence. The implication that Adrian might be representative passed as untenable, and the subject of hearts was eschewed thereafter.
“Miss Dean has been quite famous as a beauty and belle in her brief career,” Mr. Floyd-Rosney deigned to contribute to the conversation.
“She is wonderfully attractive—so original and interesting,” said Ducie warmly.
“It seems to me Hilda carries her principal assets in her face,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney. “They say she wouldn’t learn a thing at the convent—and what is worse, she feels no lack.”
“What does any woman learn?” demanded Floyd-Rosney iconoclastically, “and what does any woman’s education signify? A mosaic of worthless smattering, expensive to acquire, and impossible toapply. Miss Dean lacks nothing in lacking this equipment.”
Paula sat affronted and indignant. In her husband’s sweeping assertion he had not had the courtesy to except her, and it was hardly admissible for Ducie to repair the omission. He could only carry the proposition further and make it general, and his tact seized the opportunity.
“I think that might be said of the youth of both sexes. The fakir, with his learning made-easy, is the foible of the age and its prototype extends to business methods—the get-rich-quick opportunities match the education-while-you-wait, and the art, reduced to a smudge with a thumb, and the ballads of a country—the voice of the heart of the people, superseded by ragtime.”
But Paula would not be appeased.
“If women are constitutionally idiots and cannot be taught,” she cried, “they ought not to be responsible for folly. That is a charter wide as the winds.”
“Not at all—not at all,” said her husband dogmatically. But how he would have reconciled the variant dicta of incapacity and accountability must remain a matter of conjecture, for there came suddenly on the air the iterative sound of the swift beat of hoofs and, through the open door in another moment, was visible a double phaëton drawn by a glossy, spirited blood bay, brought with difficulty to a pause and lifting alternately his small forefeet with the ardor of motion, even when the pressure on the bit in his mouth constrained his eager activity and brought him to a halt.
“I have won out,” said Ducie genially. Since it had awkwardly fallen to his lot to offer civilities tothese people he did it with a very pretty grace. “I shall be glad to see you and your family to the station, Mr. Floyd-Rosney.”
Floyd-Rosney’s eyes were on the space beyond the portico.
“That’s a good horse you have,” he remarked seriously.
“Yes—before I bought him he was on the turf,—winner in several events.”
“You don’t often see such an animal in private use,” said Floyd-Rosney, unbending a trifle. He, too, loved a good horse for its own sake.
“True, but I am located at a considerable distance from the plantations I lease, and going to and fro he is of special use to me. I can’t stand a slow way of getting through the world, and the roads won’t admit of an auto.”
The two men were quite unconstrained for the moment in the natural interest of a subject foreign to their difficult mutual relations. Randal Ducie’s head was thrown up, his eyes glowed; he was looking at the horse with a sort of glad admiration—an expression which Paula well remembered. Floyd-Rosney’s eyes narrowed as they scanned successively the points of the fine animal, his own face calm, patronizing, approving. Neither of them, for the moment, was thinking of her. She had followed them out upon the wide stone portico and stood in the sun, her head tilted a trifle that her broad hat of taupe velvet might shade her eyes. She brought herself potently into the foreground, seizing the fact that Randal was unincumbered with baggage of any sort.
“Where is the treasure trove?” she cried. “Surelyyou are not going to leave it in the ruins of this old mansion!”
Her husband flashed at her a glance of reproof which would once have silenced her, abashed to the ground. Now she repeated her words, wondering to feel so composed, so possessed of all her faculties. Without a conscious effort of observation the details of the scene were registered in her mind unbefogged by her wonted bewilderment in her husband’s disapproval. She even noticed the groom who had driven the vehicle back from the livery stable—no colored servant, but a carrot-headed youth, with jockey boots, riding breeches, a long freckled face, and small red-lidded eyes, very close together, gazing at Ducie with a keen intentness as she asked the question. The fame of the discovery must have been bruited abroad already, and she vaguely wondered at this, for, as yet, no one on land knew the facts, except the alienist and his party, safely housed at the sanatorium.
“The chest of valuables found here last night?” replied Ducie. “Why, I haven’t it. My brother took it on the boat in his suitcase, and, before nightfall, it will be in one of the banks in Vicksburg.”
Floyd-Rosney, thrown out of all his reckonings by the unaccountable behavior of his wife, spoke at random, more to obviate its effects than with any valid intendment.
“I saw the box opened,” he said; “only family jewels and a lot of gold coin and papers, but I should think, from the pretensions of this place, there must have been elaborate table services of silver, perhaps of gold plate. Were any such appurtenances hidden, do you know, and recovered?”
Ducie shook his head. “I know nothing of such ware. It may be, or it may not be here. The absence of the papers brought out the story of the hiding of the family diamonds, else the box would have remained in the capital of the pilaster, where my uncle left it, till the crack of doom.”
Paula never understood the impulse that possessed her. Boldly, in the presence of her husband, she took from her dainty mesh bag a small key set with rubies and one large diamond.
“Your brother carelessly left one of the Ducie jewels on the table and I picked it up. I am so glad I remembered to restore it to you. It should have been in your possession long ago.”
Floyd-Rosney was watching her like a hawk, and she began to quail before his eyes. Oh, why had she not remembered that he was a connoisseur in bijouterie and bric-à-brac of many sorts and would detect instantly, at a glance, the modern fashion and comparatively slight value of the trinket. More than all, why had she not reckoned on the fact that Randal Ducie was no actor. Who could fail to interpret the surprised recognition in his eyes, his gentle upbraiding look before the associations thus ruthlessly summoned? It was as if some magic had materialized all the tender poignancy of first love, all his winged hopes, all the heartbreak of a cruel disappointment crystallized in this scintillating bauble in his hand. He glanced from it to her, then back at the flashing stones, red as his heart’s blood. He looked so wounded, so passive, as if content to succumb to a blow which he was too generous, too magnanimous to return in kind.
And he said never a word.
She felt that her face was flaring scarlet; the hot tears were smitten into her eyes. She could not speak, and, for a long moment neither of the two men moved, although the horse, restive and eager to be off, plunged now and again, almost lifting from his feet the groom at his head, still swinging at the bit, but staring, as if resolved into eyes, at the group on the piazza.
“It is the key to something of value”—she found her voice suddenly—“or it would never have been so charmingly decorated. I hope it will unlock all the doors shut against you,” she concluded with a little bow.
“Thank you,” he said formally. And he said no more.
“And now shall we go?” asked Floyd-Rosney curtly.
There being only four places, the gentlemen occupying the front seats, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, the nurse and the baby the others, there was no room for the groom, and Ducie, gathering up the reins preparatory to driving, directed him to return to the livery stable on one of the cotton wagons which would be starting in an hour or so. The ill-looking fellow touched his cap, loosed the bit and the horse sprang away with an action so fine, so well sustained, that Floyd-Rosney’s brow cleared. The pleasure of the moment was something.
“What will you take for him?” he asked, quite human for the nonce.
“Not for sale. Couldn’t spare him,” Ducie responded, the reins wound about his forearms, all his strength requisite to hold the abounding vitality and eagerness of the animal to the trot, the hoofs fallingwith the precision of machinery, mile after mile.
Only once did the pace falter. Suddenly the animal plunged. A man dashed out from the Cherokee rose hedge that bordered the high-way and clutched the bit. With the momentum of his pace the horse swung him off his feet, and frightened and swerving from the road, reared high. As the forefeet crashed to the ground once more with a sharp impact the man was thrown sprawling to the roadside, and the horse was a mile away before the occupants of the vehicle knew exactly what had happened.
“Oh,—oh——” cried Paula, “was the man hurt? What did he want?”
“No good,” said her husband grimly.
“Oh, oughtn’t we go back and see what we have done?” She could scarcely speak with the wind of their transit blowing the words down her throat. “Oh, I know Mr. Floyd-Rosney won’t, but, Randal, don’t you think we ought?”
“Hardly,” said Randal.
Floyd-Rosney’s head slowly turned, and his slumberous eyes, with a bated fury smoldering in their depths, looked their sneering triumph at his wife.
“That crack,—was it——?” he asked of Randal.
“A pistol ball, I think. I saw—I thought I saw a puff of smoke from the Cherokee hedge. My head feels hot yet. For simple curiosity look at my hat.”
Floyd-Rosney removed the hat from the head of the man by him. He turned it in his hand and his eyes glittered. Then he held it out for Ducie’s observation.
There was a small orifice on one side, and a correspondingrift, higher, on the other. Evidently, the ball had passed through.
“Thirty caliber, I should judge,” Floyd-Rosney ventured.
“Looks so?” Randal assented.
“But why—why——” exclaimed Paula, “should Randal be shot at—he might have been killed—oh, any of us might have been killed!”
“The story of the treasure trove—out already, I suppose,” suggested Floyd-Rosney.
“And it is believed that I have it now in my possession, carrying it to a place of safety,” said Ducie.
“Just as well for you to get to town as speedily as possible,” remarked Floyd-Rosney.
To have escaped an attempt at highway robbery is not an agreeable sensation, however futile and ill advised the enterprise. This possibility had not occurred to Floyd-Rosney, yet he perceived its logic. It was obvious that the rich find of gold and jewels must be removed from Duciehurst, and by whom more probably than their owner? Doubtless, the miscreants had expected Ducie to be accompanied only by the groom, perhaps a party to the conspiracy, and albeit this supposition had gone awry, there was only one unarmed man beside himself to contend against a possible second attack. Floyd-Rosney would be glad to be rid of Ducie on every account. No such awkward association had ever befallen him, significant at every turn. But, when actual physical danger to himself and his family was involved in sitting beside him, he felt all other objections frivolous indeed, and it was in the nature of a rescue when the fast horse drew up besidethe platform of the little station near Glenrose, where the train was already standing.
Thecongéwas of the briefest, although Randal omitted no observance which a courteous voluntary host might have affected. He left the horse in charge of an idler about the station, assisted Mrs. Floyd-Rosney into the coach, where, to her husband’s satisfaction, the stateroom was vacant and they might thus be spared the presence of the vulgar horde of travelers. He shook hands with both husband and wife, only leaving the train as it glided off. Paula, looking from her window, had her last glimpse of him, standing on the platform, courteously lifting his hat in farewell. She had a wild, unreasoning protest against the parting, her eyes looked a mute appeal, and she felt as if delivered to her fate.
Theex-jockey, left standing alone on the drive in front of the old mansion, had watched, with glowing eyes, the departure of the phaëton from Duciehurst.
“Ai-yi, Ran Ducie,” he jeered, “ridin’ for a fall you are, if you did but know it!”
The vehicle was out of sight in a moment. He thrust his cap on the back of his head, sunk his hands deep in his pockets and strode up the flight of steps to the broad stone-floored portico. He stood for a moment, watching the great shining, rippling expanse of the silent river, vacant save for a small steamer of the government fleet, whisking along in haste on the opposite side, with a heavy coil of smoke and a fluttering flag. Then he strolled into the house, looking about keenly and furtively as he went. The place was obviously familiar to him, doubtless from many secret explorations, and, without hesitation, he took his way up two flights of stairs, threading the vacant apartments, coming, at last, to the third story which gave access to the interior of the capital of the pilaster where the treasure had been found.
He stood, his hands still in his pockets, gazing into the cavity, the washboard left where it had been prized away from the wall. He stooped down presently and sought to explore the interior of the pillar,pulling out first the rotten fragments of the ancient knapsack. He gazed at these remnants with great scorn of their obsolete fashioning, then set to work to ransacking them, deftly manipulating the flaps lest something hidden there should escape his scrutiny. The search resulted in naught, save a handful of crumbs of desiccated leather. He even paused to examine the quality of the fabric and the stitching of the construction.
“Sewed by hand, by jinks!” he muttered. But the article had evidently been used merely as protection, or concealment, perhaps, for the box it had contained. He made a long-armed lunge into the depths of the cavity in hopes of further booty, realizing that he was the first intruder into the place after the departure of the refugees from theCherokee Rose, and might make prize of whatever they had possibly overlooked. His heart quickened its beats as his fingers touched straw, but when he dragged forth a bundle holding persistently together he discovered that it was but one of the well-woven, enormous nests of the tiny sparrow, creeping in through a crevice without, and, like some human builders, having a disproportionate idea of suitable housing for its station. He spat a flood of tobacco juice upon the cunning work of the vanished architects, and, with a curse as grotesque as profane, made a circuit of the interior of the cavity in the pillar with his bare palms. Nothing—quite empty. The treasure had lain here for forty years, the fact bruited throughout the traditions of the country. Hundreds, of whom he was one, had made vain search—“and Randal Ducie had found it first go! Some people haveallthe luck!” He had venturedto the window of the great dining-room last night, after his confederates had fled, and had gazed with gloating eyes on the pile of gold and jewels on the table before Adrian Ducie, whom he mistook for the man familiar to the neighborhood. The sight had maddened him. He had urgently sought to stimulate his confederates to an attack on the place while the money lay undefended, openly on the table. He thought that in the tumult of surprise a rich capture might be effected.
“To snatch jes’ a handful would have done me a heap o’ good,” he meditated.
But no! Binnhart had declared they were too far outnumbered, that the enterprise was impracticable. And Binnhart had seemed slow and dazed, and himself the victim of surprise. Colty’s loose lips curled with bitter scorn as he recalled how owlishly wise Binnhart had looked when he had declared that he would try first the inside and then the outside of this pilaster from the ground floor, instead of at once essaying the capital,—but he did not know what a “capital” was,—nor, indeed, did the jovial “Colty” until he heard the word from Randal Ducie a few minutes ago. In fact, Binnhart did not know the difference between a “pillar” and a “pilaster,” except as the builder in Caxton had expounded the terms. Indeed, Binnhart, assuming to be a leader of men, should be better informed. Leader! He would lead them all to the penitentiary if they followed him much farther. It was an ill-omened association of ideas. Colty Connover began to wonder if any of the refugees from theCherokee Rosehad acquired any knowledge of the search for the treasure prosecuted from without.He remembered how suddenly the sound of a woman’s screams had frightened the marauders from their occupation in what they had deemed the deepest solitude. If some woman had been sitting at this window she could easily have heard their unsuspecting talk. He looked down speculatively. Through the broken roof of the portico he could discern some of their abandoned tools still beside the base of the column. “Pilaster,” he sneered. The word had for him the tang of an opprobrious epithet. She could have heard everything. Had she, indeed, heard aught? Could she remember the names? She could doubtless recall “Colty.” That was within the scope of the meanest intelligence. He began to quail with the realization of disastrous possibilities. What woman was it, he wondered. The one in the phaëton? He hoped Binnhart might shoot her in the hold-up planned on the road. A pistol ball would tie her tongue if—if she had not already told all she knew! Yet what would his name signify? Only that he was one of the seekers who from time immemorial had ransacked the house for its treasure. Robbery, perhaps, in a way, yet what was so definitely abandoned to the will of the marauder could scarcely be esteemed in the pale of ownership. If only the gang had not left their insane victim bound and gagged, as evidence of their brutality. “Colonel Kenwynton will never rest till he ferrets out who done that job.” He winced and lifted one foot high, and let it down with a stamp. “I’d hate for the old Colonel to git on my track, sure,” he muttered.
He reflected that this was what had queered the whole run, through Binnhart’s self-sufficiency,though that fellow, Treherne, did tell, in his sleep, where the money was hid. If they had known—if they had only known—what constituted the capital of a pillar. It had been mismanaged—mismanaged from the beginning, and once more he declared that it was Captain Hugh Treherne who had queered the whole run.
He walked slowly down the stairs into the broad hall, and then, threading the vacant apartments with the definite intention of familiarity, he came into the room where poor Hugh Treherne had lain for hours bound and gagged, not knowing whether his sufferings were actual or the distraught illusions of his mental malady.
Connover stood looking at the many footprints in the dust on the floor, clustered about the clear space where the man had lain. In the corners of the apartment the dust was thick and gray and evidently had not been disturbed in years. Here it was that the refugees of theCherokee Rosehad found Captain Treherne. Buthecould not have informed his rescuers where the swag was hidden. He himself did not know,—he could not say when he was awake. By reason of his distorted mental processes only in dreams did his memory rouse itself; only his somnolent words could reveal the story of the hiding of the treasure in the capital of the pilaster. As, in his ignorant fashion, Connover sought to realize the situation he groped for the clew of its discovery. How had they chanced to find it? Could the woman have overheard the talk of the gang from the window of the attic, and, knowing the signification of the terms “pilaster” and “capital,” could she have fallen like a hawk upon her prey? Oh, Binnhartwas distanced by the whole field,—a fool and a fake. And if he should botch this hold-up that he had planned for Randal Ducie—— Suddenly a nervous thrill agitated Connover. He was conscious that an eye was upon him, a fixed, furtive scrutiny. He gazed wildly about the desolate, empty room. Almost he could see a vague figure at the door withdrawing abruptly as he glanced toward it, but when he ran into the hall there was naught for sixty feet along which any spy upon him must have passed. Still, as he returned, reassured, he felt again that covert gaze. Nothing was visible at the window on one side of the apartment. On the other side the room was lighted by a glass door opening on a veranda, in which the panes had recently been shattered, and broken glass lay about. When he pulled it ajar loose bits fell from the frame and crashed upon the floor, setting astir keen shrill echoes through the empty desolation that put every quivering nerve to the torture. Outside he heard a vague, silly laugh even before he perceived Mrs. Berridge standing close against the wall in her effort to escape observation, her head, with its towsled copper hair, all bare, but an apron pinned shawl-wise around her shoulders in lieu of a wrap.
“I’m cotched,” she exclaimed deprecatingly. “I thought I’d peek in and find out what’s going on, though I reckon I ain’t wanted.”
“Not much you ain’t,” he declared, recovering his composure with difficulty. “How’d you come?”
“In the dug-out,” she explained. “I tied Possum in his bunk, and locked him up, and took out. He’s safe enough.”
“Oh, that’s all right. He’ll spend most of his days locked up, ennyhow,” Colty roughly joked.
“He won’t nuther.” She struck at him with an affectation of retaliation. But her face was not jocose, and a tallowy pallor accented the freckles.
“Colty,” she lowered her voice mysteriously, “I have heard shootin’.”
“Naw!” he cried remonstrantly, as if the reluctance to entertain the fact could annul it.
“Whenst on the ruver I heard shootin’,” she declared again.
“Oh, shucks, gal,” he exclaimed. “You couldn’t hear it so fur off.”
“On the water!” she cried, lifting her eyebrows. “The water fetches the sound.”
“Hesaidhe wouldn’t shoot,” cried Colty Connover, his lip pendulously drooping. “He said on no account.”
“You b’lieve his gab? Well, youarea softy!” she flung at him. Then, with one end of the apron string in her mouth, she ejaculated murmurously: “I heard shootin’,” looking doubtfully and vaguely over her shoulder.
“Then he’ll swing for it ef he’s killed Ran Ducie. There ain’t a more pop’lar man in the county, nor a better judge of horseflesh.”
“I ain’t carin’ fur Binnhart arter the way he made me trick that crazy loon out’n his secrets an’ then declared he’d gimme nuthin’ thout he found the truck.”
“Pulled the horse an’ lost yer pay, too,” grinned Colty.
“But all the rest will be tarred with the same stick——”
“Not me nor you,” interrupted Colty Connover,—“’cause he said he wouldn’t shoot. He swore he wouldn’t.”
Suddenly she pushed back her tousled red hair as she stood near the glass door, and looked up with a startled apprehension on her face.
“Listen, Colty, listen——! What is that sound—what is that sound?”
Then a strange thing happened. The sun, low in its circuit, was already westering on the October day. Even now its radiance fell through the great windows and open doors all aslant, and lay in deep orange tints athwart the bare, dusty floors. Many a skein-like effulgence was suspended from the panes, and on these fine and fiery lines illuminated motes were scattered like the notation of music on an immaterial cleff. There was no wind, no rustle of the magnolia trees glimpsed without. The river was silent as always. The stillness was intense, indescribable, and, suddenly, with a long drawn sigh, a creaking dissonance, the old house gave forth one loud moan, voicing its sorrows, its humiliation, its inanimate woe.