The two looked at each other with aghast, white faces. Then, with a common impulse, they fled from—they knew not what. The woman sprang out of the shattered glass door and sped through the shrubbery, across the ruined levee to her dug-out, swinging at the old landing. The groom dashed down the hall, the echoes of his steps hard on his heels like swift pursuers, out into the road, and thence, scarcely relaxing his pace, ran along the rugged ground till he was in the turn-row, where his speed was aided by the smooth hard-beaten earth. Thecotton was breast high, and glittering in the afternoon sun—a famous crop. He could scarcely see the pickers, although he noted here and there their big cylindrical baskets, filled as the bags, suspended from their necks, overflowed from time to time. A great wagon was drawing up at one side where the road struck the turn-row, and this notified him that the weigher, with his steelyards, had arrived to pay off the laborers according to the weight of the contents of their baskets, and to convey the product to Ran Ducie’s gin. He welcomed the sight of another white man, for he desired more credible testimony, in case it should be needed, than the haphazard observation of the darkey cotton pickers that he was miles distant from the scene of Binnhart’s hold-up at the time of the shooting. Hence he attached himself to the society of the weigher, and made himself unpleasantly conspicuous, and was officious and obstructive during the weighing process, as much from latent intention as maladroit folly. When, at last, the wagons were heaped and he and the weigher took their seats behind two of the big mules, the pickers, trailing on foot contentedly in the rear, his companion observed: “I’m goin’ to tell Mr. Ducie that the nex’ time he treats you to a ride he may pervide a coach and four, for durned if I’ll have you monkeying in the cotton fields along of me another time.” Colty Connover had made the desired impression and on this score he was content. Nevertheless, again and again during the afternoon, throughout the process of the weighing, and on the road to the town, and in the midst of his duties at the livery stable there recurred to him a stupefied, stunned realization of some uncomprehendedcrisis, and again and again he asked himself helplessly: “What was that strange sound in the old house? What was it?”
And on the river bank, in the little amphibious cabin upon its grotesque high-water stilts, through all the afternoon and deep into the night, the woman with a vague thrill of terror futilely wondered, “What was that strange, strange sound in the old house? What was it?”
Certainlyno institution of its type ever had such cheerful inmates as the Glenrose Sanatorium could boast so long as Colonel Kenwynton and the blind Major sojourned within its gates, the guests of the alienist and Captain Hugh Treherne. The patient experienced no recurrence of his malady during the visit. Indeed, the beneficial influence, with the incident change of thought, conversation, and occupation, was so obvious that the physician acceded to Colonel Kenwynton’s earnest urgency to allow the Captain to go home with him and spend a few weeks at his plantation, in a neighboring county. They made a solemn compact for the conservation of his safety and the promotion of his mental health.
“Captain,” said the Colonel the first evening that they spent together over the wood fire in the old plantation house, “I don’t know what is the particular devil that you say possesses you at times, and I don’t want to know. He is an indignity to you and an affront to me. Never mention the nature of the obsession to me for I won’t hear it. Never let me have so much as a glimpse of his horn or his hoof. But if you, unhappily, ever feel again the clutch of his claw fastening on you, just report to me, and we’ll both strike out in a dog-trot for that insane asylum, and let the doctor exorcise him a bit. And I swear to you before God on our sacred bonds as comrades in the Lost Cause I will stay there with you till youare ready to come home with me. Shake hands on it, dear old fellow—shake hands on it.”
Perhaps because the topic was interdicted in conversation it was the less intrusive in thought. Hugh Treherne maintained an observance of the Colonel’s mandate as strict and as soldierly as if it had been read in general orders at the head of the regiment. He found an interest in the Colonel’s affairs in the ramshackle old place, which was but a meager remnant of his former princely domain. Colonel Kenwynton had brought down from the larger methods of the old times a constitutional disregard of minutæ. Hence men, “indifferent honest,” otherwise would overreach him in negotiation. Servants filched ruthlessly his minor possessions. His pastures, fields, barns, orchards, were plundered with scarcely a realization of the significance of robbery, the facile phrase, “The old Cunnel won’t care,” or “The old Cunnel won’t ever know the difference,” sufficient to numb any faint prick of conscience.
And thus it was that his home had fallen to decay; his barns and fences rotted; his gin was broken and patched and deteriorated in common with all his farm machinery; his hedges of Cherokee rose, widened, unpruned and untended, becoming veritable land grabbers, rather than boundaries, and yearly more and more of his acres must needs be rented for lack of funds to pay a force of laborers. Colonel Kenwynton lived on in his mortgaged home and “scuffled up the money,” as he phrased the process, to meet the interest year by year, and kept but sorry cheer by a bleak and lonely fireside. Nevertheless, he twirled up the ends of his white mustachios jauntily and faced the world with a bold front.
From his own account it seemed wonderful that he had any income at all, and as if much business tact must be requisite to hold his mortgages together in such shape that they should assume all the enlightened functions of a fortune. The age of some of these obligations was a source of special pride with him, although sometimes with an air of important dismay he would compute the amount of interest he had paid in the course of years on their several renewals aggregating more than the property would sell for in the present collapsed condition of such real estate values. When he came to speak of the interest he had promised to pay, he would pause with an imperative shake of the head, as if to abash the futurity which was fast bringing about the maturity of these notes.
“Why, Colonel, this is not good business,—you have practically bought your own property twice over,” Treherne attempted to argue with him one day when his mood waxed confidential. “You should have given up the fight long ago and let them foreclose.”
“Foreclose on my home place, sir,—the remnant of my father’s plantation?” he replied in amaze. “Why, what would the snail do without the shell he was born with? I shall need a narrower one before that day comes, I humbly trust in Providence.”
Colonel Kenwynton could scarcely imagine existence without a mortgage. A deed of trust seemed as natural and essential an incident of a holding in fee simple as the title papers.
Treherne discovered as time went on opportunities for betterment in the Colonel’s affairs, small it is true, pitiful in comparison with the ideals ofthe old gentleman, who lifted his brows in compassionate surprise when the subject was broached, and, but that he could not contravene the common sense of the proposition, he might have thought it an insane impulse, manifesting itself in schemes of domestic economy on a minute scale.
“Colonel, this place ought to make its own meat. There is plenty of corn in that rearward barn. I put a padlock on its door to-day. Those young shoats will be as fine a lot of meat as ever stepped by hog-killing time. I had them turned into the oak woods to-day,—to give them a chance at the mast,—makes the meat streaked lean and fat, you know.”
“You surprise me,” said the Colonel, looking blankly over his spectacles. “I didn’t know there was any corn left. And a few hogs didn’t seem worth wasting time about. I don’t go into such matters, dear boy,—cotton is my strong suit. Cotton is the only play.”
“You spent your time in the war mostly on the firing line, Colonel. Somebody ought to be mighty thankful you were not in the quartermaster’s office. That ham we cut to-day came from the store, and the cook tells me so does every pound of lard that goes into your frying pan, and all the bacon you furnish to your force of hands. And yet you have here an ample lot of bacon on the hoof and abundance of good feed to fatten it.”
The Colonel appraised the logic and sat humiliated and silent.
“I had the shoats all marked and sent the mark to the county court to be registered. And now you’lleat your own meat after January or go without,” said Treherne sternly, in command of the situation.
By some accident, searching in the Colonel’s desk for an envelope or some such matter, Treherne chanced to discover a receipt for a bill which the old gentleman had carelessly paid twice.
“I took his word, of course,” said the Colonel in vicarious abasement, “as the word of a gentleman and an old soldier.”
“An old soldier on the back track generally. I remember him well,” said Treherne uncompromisingly. “He shall refund as sure as my name is Treherne.”
And he did refund, protesting that the matter was an accident, an oversight, which excuses the Colonel accepted in good faith and brought back to the skeptical Hugh Treherne.
“So queer those mistakes never happen to your advantage, Colonel,” he snarled, and although his contention was obviously logical, the Colonel listened dubiously.
In truth, Colonel Kenwynton was of a different animus, of a dead day, of a species as extinct as the Plesiosaurus. He could not even adapt himself to the conditions of his survival. He could neither hear nor speak through the telephone, although all his faculties were unimpaired. He held himself immune from diseases of modern diagnosis; for him there was no microbe, no appendicitis, no neurasthenia. His credulity revolted against the practicability of wireless telegraphy and aviation. He clove to his old books, and, except for the newspapers, he read nothing that had been printed within the last fifty years. His ideas of amusement were thoseof previous generations. He was a skilled sportsman, a dead shot, indeed; his play at billiards held the record at his club; he was versed in many games of chance and had the nerve to back his hand or his opinion to the limit of his power.
He was a shrewd judge of horseflesh, and, as he often remarked since he could no longer own and race a string, he took pleasure in seeing the fine animals of other men achieve credit on the turf. Despite his early gambling and racing proclivities he had always been esteemed a man of immaculate honor and held a high social position. This ascendancy was supplemented by certain associations of special piety incongruously enough. As long as his wife had lived he accompanied her to church every Sunday morning; he drew the line, it is true, at the evening service. He carried a large prayerbook, and his notable personality rendered his presence marked. He read the responses with a devotional air and a solemn voice and listened to the sermon with an appearance of unflagging interest and absorption; as he seemed to take it for granted that he could go to heaven on the footing of an honorary member, his persuasion was in a manner accepted, and it might have been a source of surprise to his friends to realize that, after all, he was not a professedly religious man.
For some weeks the two incongruous companions lived on in great peace and amity in the seclusion of the old plantation house, a rambling frame structure far too large for the shrunken number of its inmates. The broad verandas surrounding it on three sides scarcely knew a footfall; the upper story was unoccupied save for the Colonel’s bedroom, forTreherne had selected a chamber among the vacant apartments on the ground floor that, through a glass door opening on the veranda, permitted his egress betimes to take up his self-arrogated supervisory duties on the place hours before his host, always a late riser, was astir.
One night,—a memorable night,—a dreadful thing happened. The Colonel lay asleep in his big mahogany four-poster; the placidity of venerable age on his face was scarcely less appealing than the innocence of childhood; his snowy hair on the pillow gave back a silvery gleam to the red suffusions from the hearth. If he dreamed, it was of some gentle phase of yore, for his breathing was soft and regular, his consciousness far away adown the misty realms of the past, irrevocable save in these soft and sleeping illusions. The old house was still and silent. At long intervals an errant gust stole around a corner and tried a window. Then it skulked away and, for a time, a mute peace reigned.
Suddenly a sound,—not of the elements, not from without. A sound that in the deep peace of dreams smote no fiber of consciousness. It came again and again. It was the sound of a step ascending the stair. A slender shaft of light preceded it—the dim radiance showed first in a line under the door. Then the door slowly swung ajar, and Hugh Treherne entered, his candle in his hand—not the officer that the old Colonel had known and trusted in the years that tried men’s souls, who never broke faith or failed in a duty; not the piteous wreck whom he had met on the tow-head where theCherokee Roselay aground, who wept on his neck and besought his aid; not the earnest altruist, who plannedand contrived his escape from durance, through suffering and dread, to retrieve the injustice done to an old comrade’s heirs, and with his first recall of memory to reveal hidden treasure to enrich other men. This was Hugh Treherne, of the obsession, a man who believed himself possessed of the devil.
Colonel Kenwynton, gazing wincingly up with eyes heavy with sleep, and dazed by the glare of the candle held close to his face, hardly recognized the lineaments bent above him—wild, distorted, with a sinister smile, a queer furtive doubt, as if some wicked maniacal impulse debated with the vanishing instinct of reason in his brain.
The Colonel feared no man. The instinct of fear, if ever it had existed in him, was annulled, atrophied. But in this lonely house, in the presence of this strange and inexplicable possession, in all that this change, so curiously wrought, so radical, so sinister, intimated, his blood ran cold.
“He has come, Colonel,” hissed the strange man, for the Colonel could hardly make shift to recognize him, “the Devil has come!”
There was an aghast pause. Then Colonel Kenwynton understood the significance of the catastrophe. He plunged up in the bed, throwing off the cover, and gazed wildly around the room.
“The Devil has come?—Then skirmish to the front, Hugh! Hold him in check, while I get on my clothes, and I’ll flank him. By George, I’ve led a forlorn hope in my time, and I’m not to be intimidated by any little medical fiend like this!”
It was not long, however, that they sojourned at the sanatorium, but the doctor, who had heard of the suddenness of the seizure, warned Colonel Kenwyntonthat he had always best have help at hand in case of a relapse as sudden.
“You might be in danger of violence from him,” the doctor explained, seeing that Colonel Kenwynton stared in blank amaze.
“In danger of violence, sir,from my own officer,” he exclaimed, flouting the obvious absurdity, as if the Confederate army were in complete organization, the loyal submission to a superior in rank at once the dearest behest and the instinct of second nature with the soldier.
And, indeed, Hugh Treherne justified the trust. He wrought Colonel Kenwynton nothing but good. His mental health was so far restored to its normal strength that when they had returned together to the old home he took the lead in all those practical little affairs of life which bored the Colonel, and which he at once misunderstood and despised. He shrank from society, in which, indeed, he was more feared than welcomed, and the Colonel, in compassion for his infirmity and loneliness, had given up most of his cronies. The Colonel suffered from this deprivation more than Treherne, who took an intense and almost pathetic interest in trifling improvements; the fences were mended; the farm buildings were repaired; various small peculations ceased, for the servants and the hands whose interests brought them about the place were afraid of the “crazy man,” and were alert and capable in obeying his orders,—the anger that flashed in his wild dark eyes was not reassuring. He pottered in placid content about these industrial pursuits till chance led to a greater utility.
He displayed unexpected judgment in advicewhich saved the Colonel from taking a financial step that would, indeed, have bereft the simple snail of his rickety old shell in his defenseless years, and certain financiers of a dubious sort, baffled in the expectation of gain at the old man’s loss, looked askance at Hugh Treherne and his influence with his former commander which promised in time to remove him altogether from their clutches. They made great talk of having considered his interest rather than their own, and in set phrase withdrew the sun of their favor to shine on his shattered affairs no more. But his affairs were on the mend. Through Treherne’s urgency he devoted the returns from the bulk of his cotton crop, unusually large this year, to the lifting of a mortgage on a pretty tract of land nearer the county town than his plantation, almost in the suburbs, in truth, and which was thus left unencumbered. In this matter he was difficult of persuasion, and yielded only at last to be rid of importunacy.
“Lord, Hugh, how lonesome I do feel without that money,” he said drearily, lighting his candle one night.
“But you have got the land free of all encumbrance, Colonel,—dead to rights,—within two miles of the town, right out there in the night.”
“It is a cold night and dark,” said the Colonel, toying with the snuffers. “It seems cruel to leave it there, bare and bleak, with no sort of a little old mortgage to cover it.”
But then he laughed and took himself upstairs to his rest.
A similar application of funds betided his later shipments of bales, the receipts from which wereformerly wont to vanish in driblets he hardly knew how.
“Hugh, this way of paying debts that I thought would last through my time and be discharged by my executors almost takes my breath away,” he said half jocosely, half upbraiding. “You scarcely leave me a dollar for myself,—to buy me a little ‘baccy.’”And then they both laughed.
In the forty years of Hugh Treherne’s incarceration such independent means as he had possessed had barely sufficed for his maintenance at the sanatorium, constantly dwindling until now becoming inadequate for that purpose. His relatives greatly disapproved of the course that events had taken and were also solicitous for his safety while at large and the possibility of injury to others at his hands. One of them, a man of ample fortune, by way of coercing acquiescence in their views, notified Colonel Kenwynton that they would not be responsible for any expenses which Captain Treherne might incur during his absence from the asylum, where he had been placed with the sanction of his kindred, and where the writer of this communication was prepared to defray all the costs of his sojourn and treatment. Colonel Kenwynton, in a letter as formal and courteous as a cartel and as smoothly fierce, expressed his ignorance that any moneys had been asked of Captain Treherne’s relatives, and begged to know when and by whom such requests had been made. Then a significant silence settled on the subject.
The old Colonel felt that he had routed the enemy, but Hugh Treherne, to whom he detailed the circumstances, for he treated his friend in every respectas a sane man and kept nothing from him, did not share his host’s elation. A deep gloom descended upon his spirits and a furtive apprehension looked out of his eyes. He cautiously scanned the personnel of every approach to the house before he ventured to appear and greet the newcomers, and in his small interests about the place he kept within close reach of refuge. The negroes began to notice that he discontinued his supervisory errands to the fields where the picking of cotton was still in progress and where he had shown himself exceedingly suspicious of the accounts of the weigher and the bulk of the cotton delivered as compared with the distribution of the money furnished by Colonel Kenwynton for paying the cotton pickers. “The ole Cunnel’s crap will sho’ly turn out fur all hit is worf’ dis time,” the grinning darkeys were in the habit of commenting.
The old gentleman was constitutionally and by training incapable of detecting this deviation from the established routine, but affection whetted his wits and he observed the change in Hugh Treherne’s appearance when it began to be so marked as scarcely to be imputed to fluctuations in his malady.
“Why are you looking so down-in-the-mouth, Hugh?” he demanded one morning after breakfast as he sprawled comfortably with his pipe before the crackling fire, agreeable in the chill of the early December day despite the bland golden sunshine of the southern winter. Treherne cast at him a glance helplessly terrified, like a child in the face of danger, and said not a word. “You are losing your relish for country life, I am afraid,” the Colonel went on. “Why, you haven’t put your foot in stirrup for aweek. Why don’t you take your horse out for a canter?”
The hearty genial tones opened the floodgates of confidence. It was impossible for Treherne to resist the look of affectionate solicitude, of kindly sympathy in those transparently candid eyes.
“Colonel,—I’m—I’m—afraid.”
“Zounds, sir. Afraid of what?”
“Capture,” the hunted creature replied succinctly.
“Why, look here, man,” the Colonel rallied him, “I really think you have been captured before this time. How long were you in prison at Camp Chase?”
“But, Colonel, this is different. I think my friends—my unfriends,—are bent on restoring me to seclusion.”
“Doctor Vailer won’t receive you,—professional pride much lacerated by the criticism of his course expressed by your precious relative, Tom Treherne,—excuse me if I pause here to particularly curse him—and you know when you touch a really learned technician of any sort on his professional pride, you have got hold of his keenest susceptibility, where he feels most acutely and most high-mindedly, the very nerves of his soul, so to speak, his spiritual essence. Doctor Vailer won’t have you.”
“But there are other alienists, other asylums in Mississippi.”
“And under your favor there ismein Mississippi,—and there is the law of the land. I tell you, Hugh, that Tom Treherne might as well try to bottle up the Mississippi River as to incarcerate you again without Doctor Vailer’s sanction, of course, so long as I am out of the ground.”
Hugh Treherne stirred uneasily and crossed and uncrossed his legs as he sat opposite the Colonel in a big mahogany chair before the frowsy hearth where the ashes of nearly all the fires since fall set in were banked behind the big tarnished brass dogs—the Colonel was no dainty housekeeper, and deserved the frequent declaration that “de Cunnel don’t know de diffunce.”
“People generally, Colonel, will approve the course of my relations,” Treherne argued. “It will seem the proper thing as long as I am—am—occasionally—absent.”
“Well, you are all here, now, in one piece,” declared the old man, wagging his head with vehement emphasis.
“It will seem very generous of Tom Treherne to offer, to desire to maintain me at his own expense at a high-priced private sanatorium, since I have no means of my own.”
He paused, a bitter look of repulsion on his face. All these years—these long years, the men of his own age, the compeers of his youth, had been at work restoring their shattered fortunes, after the terrible cataclysm of war that had wrecked the financial interests as well as the face of the southern country, achieving eminence and distinction in their varied lines of effort, life signifying somewhat of attainment even to those of meanest ability, while he was gone to waste, destroyed by his own gallant exploit; the blow of the sabre, the jeering accolade of Fate, when he had triumphantly led his troop to the capture of a strong battery, had consigned him to forty years of idleness, helplessness, imprisonment,in effect. “Be brave, loyal, and fortunate,” quotha.
He was silently revolving these reflections so long that Colonel Kenwynton, puffing his pipe with gusto, declared:
“I’ll make Tom Treherne’s liberality look like thirty cents before I am done with him. He can’t choke you off and hide you out because he is afraid you might be troublesome tohimin the future,—dispose of you for good and all,—not while I am alive. Why, damme, man, you commanded a troop in my regiment.”
“If he should once more lay hands on me I could never get away from him and his precautions and anxieties, and considerations for the safety of the public and open-handed generosity. And, Colonel, you might not know where he had stowed me away next time.”
“Hoh,” snorted the Colonel, “I never lose sight of you longer than between breakfast and dinner. I’d be on his track with every detective in the State before dark. Why, Hugh, I’m a moneyed man. I’d take advantage of your absence to mortgage that little tract of land out yonder bare of all encumbrance, and I’d spend the last nickel of it making publicity for Tom Treherne.Heisn’t going to spend any money except for his own objects. Now, boots and saddles! Time for you to be on the march!”
In two hours Treherne was back again, with a flush on his face and a light in his eyes, bearing the mail, for which he had ridden to the nearest town, and this contained matters of interest both for him and the Colonel. It was, indeed, a rare occurrence when he received a letter—in forty years he couldcount the missives on the fingers of one hand. To-day the post brought him one addressed directly to him by Adrian Ducie, although the counsel for the two brothers wrote instead to Colonel Kenwynton. In common with all people of advancing years, Treherne was continually impressed with the superiority of the methods of the past in comparison with those of to-day. He noted the courtesy, the consideration of the tone of the letter, and at once likened it to the manner of the writer’s boy uncle, who had been his chum and comrade in the ancient days. His heart warmed to the perception of tact which had induced this one of the brothers to write who had been present at the finding of the box and the valuable papers, that it was hoped would return to the Ducie heirs the estate which had been so long wrested from them. Adrian and Randal had both taken care on that occasion to express their deep appreciation of the efforts of Archie Ducie’s friend to restore to them their rights, although they had been the victims of his disqualified memory. But now Adrian repeated their realization of the extreme and friendly interest which had caused this object to so persistently cling to the mind and intention of Captain Treherne, and asked if he would object to giving testimony in a sort which the counsel recommended, immediately after the filing of the bill for the recovery of the property, a proceedingde bene esse, to be used in case of death or a recurrence of a malady which would prevent the taking of his deposition in the regular proceedings in the cause.
It was a difficult letter to write, a delicate proposition to make, and it was done with a simple directness, a lack of circumlocution which might implythat Adrian Ducie thought it a usual matter that gentlemen could be seized with a recurrence of acute mania, obstructing the course of business, and tending to impede justice. Treherne declared that it was exactly the sort of letter that Archibald Ducie would have written, and he was eager to comply with the request.
“Only,” he began, and paused abruptly.
“Only what?” asked the Colonel, looking up with grizzled eyebrows drawn.
“You don’t know how—how baffling it is to talk, to speak, when you are aware that everybody is all the time disparaging every word as insanity. Even you could scarcely hold your own under such circumstances.”
“I could,” declared the Colonel hardily. “I’d know that nine out of every ten men are crazy anyhow, with no lucid intervals,—natural fools, born fools—fools for the lack of sense,—only,” with a crafty leer, “the rest of the fellows are so looney themselves that nobody has found it out.”
Treherne laughed, and the Colonel went on with his prelection.
“Never stop to consider what people will think, Hugh. They will think what they damn please. It is the root of most of the troubles that beset this world,—trying to square our preferences and duty to what people will think.”
Thus the testimonyde bene essewas taken, Captain Treherne’s story from the beginning;—his part in the concealment of the treasure at Duciehurst, assisting his friend and comrade Archibald Ducie; his knowledge of the nature of the papers among the jewels; the early death of his friend; his own woundand his consequent mental disability; his incarceration for forty years in an insane asylum; his recent recovery of memory, and his resolve to right this wrong which impelled him to make his escape from Glenrose; his meeting with Colonel Kenwynton; the strange attack he sustained from unknown miscreants after quitting the sand-bar; the transit, bound and gagged, to Duciehurst, supplemented by the circumstances of his liberation by Colonel Kenwynton and Adrian Ducie. The affidavit of the alienist as to his lucid condition at the time and his present mental reliability completed the proceedings.
This was merely a precautionary measure, designed to guard against a relapse of Captain Treherne into his malady. The Ducie heirs had already made formal demand for the restoration of their ancestral estate, alleging the full satisfaction of the indebtedness, recording the release of the mortgage and the quit-claim deed, and bringing suit against all in interest.
Floyd-Rosneycould scarcely restrain his fury when the papers were served upon him. The whole subject had grown doubly distasteful because of its singular connection with his domestic concerns. He could not fall to so poor spirited a plane as to imagine that his wife preferred another man—he was too ascendant in his own estimation to harbor the thought. Logic, simple, plain common sense, forbade the conclusion. She had thrown this man over for him years ago at the first summons. He did not esteem his wealth as the lure; it was only an incident of his other superlative advantages. She had not seen the discarded lover since, yet from the moment of the appearance of the facsimile brother was inaugurated a change in her manner, her conversation, the very look in her eyes, which he could not explain, except as the result of old associations which he did not share, antagonistic to his interest and his domestic peace.
She had very blandly explained on the first opportunity, volunteering the communication, indeed, the mystery of the return of the key—an oldgage d’amour, a trifle—the slightness of which he mentally conceded, for he had large ideas inbijouterie. She did not wish to keep it, nor to send it back without explanation; in fact, she was not willing to return it at all except in her husband’s presence.
“Dear me, you need not have been so particular,”he declared cavalierly. “A matter of no importance.”
She had magnified it in her fear of him till it loomed great and menacing. She felt cheapened and crestfallen by his manner of receiving the disclosure. Yet he had marked the occurrence, she was sure; he had resented it—though he now flouted it as a trifle. This added to her respect for him, and it riveted the fetters in which he held her.
The inauguration of the suit to rip up and annul the ancient foreclosure, the many irritating questions as to whether the lapse of time could be pleaded in bar of the remedy, whether disabilities could be brought forward to affect the operation of the statute of limitations, what line of attack would be pursued by the Ducie brothers, all wrought him almost to a frenzy. He could scarcely endure even canvassing with his lawyers the points of his adversary’s position. Any intimation of the development of possible strength on their part affected him like the discovery of disloyalty in his counsel. More than once the senior of these gentlemen saw fit to explain that this effort to probe the possibilities, to foresee and provide against the maneuvers of the enemy, to weigh the values in their favor, was not the result of conviction, but merely to ascertain the facts in the case.
The counsel, in closer conference still, closeted together, canvassed in surprise and disaffection the difficulty of handling their client, and the best method of avoiding rousing from his lair the slumbering lion of his temper. It was a case involving so much opportunity of distinction, of professional display, as well as heavy fees, that they were loathto risk public discomfiture because Mr. Floyd-Rosney was prone to gnash his teeth at a mere inquiry which bore upon one of the many sensitive points with which the case seemed to bristle. He was as prickly as a porcupine, and to stroke him gently required the deftness of a conjurer. At the most unexpected junctures this proclivity of sudden rage, of unaccountable discomfiture broke forth, amazing and harassing the counsel, who, with all their perspicacity, could not perceive, lurking in the background of Floyd-Rosney’s consciousness, the mirage of his wife’s ancient romance, more especially as he himself could not justify its formulation on the horizon.
As Floyd-Rosney was accustomed to handle large business interests and was ordinarily open to any proposition of a practical nature, conservative in his views, and close and accurate in his calculation of chances, his attitude in this matter mystified his co-adjutors, who had had experience hitherto in his affairs and were versed in his peculiar characteristics. The legal firm had come to avoid speaking of any point that might redound to the advantage of the opponent, unless, indeed, there was some bit of information necessary to secure from Floyd-Rosney. Thus matters had been going more smoothly, save that he was wont to come to the conferences with his counsel bearing always a lowering brow and a smoldering fire in his surly, brown eyes. It flared into open flame when one day Mr. Stacey, the senior counsel, observed:
“They will, doubtless, call Mrs. Floyd-Rosney.”
The client went pale for a moment, then his face turned a deep purplish red. Twice he sought to speak before he could enunciate a word.
“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” he sputtered at length. “As their witness? It is monstrous! I will not suffer it! It is monstrous!”
“Oh, no; not at all.”
Mr. Stacey had a colorless, clear-cut face of the thin, hatchet-like type. His straight hair, originally of some blonde hue, had worn sparse, and neither showed the tint of youth nor demanded the respect due to the bleach of age. It seemed wasted out. He was immaculately groomed and was very spare; he looked, somehow, as if in due process of law he had been ground very sharp, and had lost all extraneous particles. There seemed nothing of Mr. Stacey but a legal machine, very cleverly invented, and, as he sat in his swivel chair, his thin legs crossed, he turned a bit from his desk, intently regarding Mr. Floyd-Rosney, who was thrown back in a cushioned armchair beside him, flanked by the great waste-paper basket, containing the off-scourings of the lawyer’s desk. Mr. Stacey’s light gray eyes narrowed as he gazed,—he was beginning to see into the dark purlieus of his client’s reasonless conduct.
“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney is perfectly competent to testify in the case.” Mr. Stacey wore a specially glittering set of false teeth which made no pretense to nature, but gave effect to his clear-clipped enunciation. “Her deposition will certainly be taken by them.”
“As against her husband?” foamed Floyd-Rosney in vehement argument. “She can be introducedbyher husband to testify in his behalf, but notagainsthim, except in her own interest, as you know right well.”
“That incompetency is limited to the Mississippilaw as regards third persons, in the case of husband and wife. But in the proceedings in reference to the Tennessee property the local statutes will obtain,—she can testify against her husband’s interest and, in my opinion, will be constrained to do this.” After this succinct, dispassionate statement Mr. Stacey paused for a moment; then, in response to Floyd-Rosney’s stultified bovine stare, as in speechless amazement, he went on with a tang of impatience in his tone. “Why, you know, of course, there is a bit of Tennessee property involved,—that small business house in South Memphis,—I forget, for the moment, the name of the street. You are aware that in the foreclosure proceedings nearly forty years ago the plantation and mansion house of Duciehurst were bid in for the estate of the mortgagee, but as the amount of the highest bid at the sale did not equal the indebtedness in the shrunken condition of real estate values at that time, the executors pursued and subjected other property of the mortgagor for the balance due, this Tennessee holding being a part of it, and the Ducies now contend that the debt having been previously fully satisfied and paid in full, this whole proceeding was null and void from the beginning. They bring suit for all in sight. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney can testify in their interest under the Tennessee statutes.”
Floyd-Rosney sprang up and strode across the room, coming flush against the waste-paper basket as he threw himself once more into his chair, overturning the papers and scattering them about the floor. He took no notice of them, but the tidy Stacey glanced down at the litter, though with an inscrutable eye.
“Oh, I’ll get her out of the country. They shall not have her testimony. They shall not call her as their witness. She has been wanting a trip to the Orient—she shall go—at once—at once!”
Mr. Stacey very closely and critically examined a paper knife that had been lying on the table. Then, putting it down, he rejoined, without looking at Floyd-Rosney, who was scarcely in case to be seen, the veins of his forehead swollen and stiff, his face apoplectically red, his eyes hot and angry: “They can have her deposition taken in a foreign country.”
“If they can find her,” said Floyd-Rosney in prophetic triumph. “But they would not take the time for that.”
“Why, you don’t reflect,” said the lawyer very coolly, “the cause may not come to trial for two or three years. In view of the usual delays, continuances and the like, you could not expatriate her for that length of time.”
Floyd-Rosney’s face was a mask of stubborn conviction as he replied:
“The Ducies will want to race the matter through. They claim that they and their predecessors have been wrongfully kept out of their own for forty years. They will think that is long enough.Iwon’t make delays. The question is a legal one, and can be decided on the jump—yes or no. The case can come to trial at the April term of the court, and by that time Mrs. Floyd-Rosney will be in Jerusalem or Jericho.”
“This will damage your position in the case, Mr. Floyd-Rosney,” urged the lawyer. “I think, myself, that it is a particularly valuable point for you that it should be your wife, who, at considerable risk andin a very dramatic manner, discovered and secured these family jewels and papers, knowing what they were and that they threatened the title of her husband, and restored them to the complainants. It proves your good faith in your title—the foreclosure of the mortgage in ignorance of the outstanding release. Your wife as their witness is a valuable witness for us, and the motives of your contention being thus justified there remains nothing but the question of title to come before the court.”
“All that rigamarole can be proved by other witnesses,” said Floyd-Rosney doggedly. “There were twenty people who saw her come bouncing down the stairs with the box and give it to Adrian Ducie.”
There is a species of anger expressed in unbecoming phraseology. Mr. Stacey made no sign, but the words “rigamarole,” applied to his own lucid prelection, and “bouncing” to the gait of the very elegant Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, did not pass unnoted.
“I am sure the case on neither side can be ready for the April term,—the docket is crowded and there is always the possibility of continuances.”
“There are to be no continuances on our side,” declared Floyd-Rosney, both glum and stubborn; “I don’t choose that my wife shall testify in their interest. She goes to the Orient, and stays there till the testimony is all in and the case closed.”
Theseason had opened in a whirl of social absorption for Paula, once more established in their city house for the winter. She had never known her husband so interested in these functions nor so solicitous that her entertainments should be characterized by a species of magnificence that would once have dazzled and delighted her, but that now seemed only to illustrate his wealth and predominance. He was critical and fretful because of small, very small, deficiencies, as—some flower being unattainable that one less costly should be used in decoration, or a shade of an electrolier being broken that another, dissimilar to the rest in design, should be temporarily substituted. Her own toilets were submitted to his scrutiny and preference, and when she revolted, saying that she knew far more of such matters than he did, he lapsed into surly dissatisfaction. Once he spoke of a costume of delicate, chaste elegance as “common”—“nothing on it.” Then he added significantly, “You ought to have married a poor man, Paula, if that is your taste.”
She held the gown up when she was disrobing afterward and examined its points. She saw that the effect could have been duplicated in simple materials costing a trifle; thus beautifully and gracefully could she have gowned herself if shehadmarried a poor man as once she had thought to do.
Of her own initiative she could not have given theseries of dinners of which the lavish richness astonished, as was intended, the guests, and of which, strangely enough, she was tired before they began. More than once, as she took up her position beside her husband in the glittering drawing-room, hearing the approach of the first of the guests, he said to her in a low voice, the tone like a pinch: “Don’t seem so dull, Paula—you have gone off awfully in your looks lately, and that gown is no good. For Heaven’s sake be more animated, and not so much like a rag doll.” It was poor preparation to meet the coterie of men and women keyed to a high pitch of effort toward charm and brilliancy, as doing honor to the occasion, their hosts, and themselves. A large ball was also among the functions he planned, to be given in compliment to Hildegarde Dean, whose beauty he affected to admire extravagantly. He had remembered his wife’s obvious jealousy of her attractions when Randal Ducie had seemed interested and delighted, and it did not soothe his unquiet spirit to note that now she had no grudging, but joined ardently in making the festivity a great success and an elaborate tribute to the reigning belle and beauty. She was required to invite the wives of certain men whom he desired to compliment,—yet who were not of his list of dinner guests,—to luncheons, and teas, and afternoon receptions, till she was tired out with the meaningless routine and sick at heart. Yet this was what she had craved—all her dream come true, pressed down and running over. Why had it no longer an interest for her? Was it sheer satiety, or was it that naught is of value when love has flown. And it had gone—even such poor semblance as had worn its name had vanished. She could not deludeherself, though she might make shift to masquerade in such wise that he should not know. She hoped for this, for she had begun to fear him. He was so arrogant, so self-sufficient, so dominant, so coercive. She feared his frown, his surly slumbrous eyes, his hasty outbursts of gusty temper.
One evening in this arid existence, this feast of dead-sea fruit, there was on hand no social duty—the pretty phrase for the empty frivolity—and she was glad of it. It was a gala night at the opera, for a star of distinction was to sing in a Wagnerian rôle, and the Floyd-Rosneys would occupy their box, according to their habit when aught worth while was billed. She was dressed for the occasion and awaiting him in the library, but he had not yet come in. She was more placid than her wont of late, for she realized that it would rest her nerves to be still and listen, a respite, however brief, from the tiresome round; and she had just come from the nursery where the baby was being put to bed—very playful, and freakish, and comical. She had been laughing with him, and at him, and the glow of this simple happiness was still warm in her heart when the door opened and her husband entered. He was not yet dressed for the evening, and, as she looked her surprise, he responded directly:
“No,—we are not going.”
He often changed his plans thus, regardless of her preferences, and she had grown so plastic to his will that she was able to readjust her evening or her day without regard to her previous expectations.
The spacious room might have seemed the ideal expression of a home of culture and affluence. The walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling, unbrokensave where a painting of value and distinction was inserted, special favorites of their owner, and placed here where his eyes might constantly rest upon them, rather than consigned to the gallery of his art treasures. The furniture was all of a fashion illustrating the extremity of luxury,—such soft cushions, such elastic springs, such deep pile into which the feet sunk treading the Oriental rugs. Not a sound from the street nor from any portion of the house could penetrate this choice seclusion, and over the fireplace, where the hickory logs flared genially, the legend “Fair Quiet, have I found thee here?” was especially accented by a finely sculptured statue of Silence, her finger on her lip, which stood on its pedestal at a little distance from the deep bay of a window.
The beautiful woman, in the blended radiance of the electric light and the home-like blaze, seemed as one of the favored of the earth. She had dressed with great care, and her gown of lavender gauze over satin of the same shade, with a string of fine pearls about her throat and another in her fair hair, could scarcely have incurred his unfavorable criticism. Her gloves of the same tint lay ready on the table and an evening cloak of white brocaded satin hung over a chair. Great pains and some time such a toilette cost; but she had learned never to count trouble if peace might ensue.
She was prepared to be left in ignorance of his reason for a change of plans, but he seemed, this evening, disposed to explain. He came and stood opposite to her, one hand lifted on the shelf of the massive mantel-piece, while he held his hat with the other. He was still in his overcoat, its collar andlining of fur bringing out in strong relief the admirable points of his handsome face, its red and white tints, the brilliancy of his full lordly eyes, the fine shade of his chestnut hair. He was notably splendid this evening, vitally alert, powerful of aspect, yet graceful, all the traits of his manly beauty finished with such minutely delicate detail. She noticed the embellishment of his aspect, as if the evident quickening of his interest in some matter had enhanced it, and she remembered a day—long ago, it seemed, foolish and transient when she had had a proud possessory sentiment toward this fair outer semblance of the identity within, so little known to her then, so overwhelming all other attributes of his personality.
She did not ask a question—she was too well trained by experience. He would tell her if he would; if not, it was futile to speculate as to his intentions.
“Well, the Oriental tour isun fait accompli,” he said, smiling. “You sail within the week.”
She started in surprise. She had definitely been denied this desire, which she had once harbored, on the score of all others most seemingly untenable—expense. But it was her husband’s habit to make everything inordinately costly. He would not appear in public excepten prince, nor travel abroad save with a most elaborate and extensive itinerary and a suite of attendants.
“This week—why—I don’t know——” she hesitated. “I suppose—I can get ready.”
“Oh, you will scarcely need any preparation,” he said cavalierly. “Any old things will answer.”
This was so out of character with his wonted solicitudein small matters that she was surprised and vaguely agitated. She saw a quiver in the tip of her dainty lavender slipper, extended on a hassock before her in the relaxed attitude she had occupied, and she withdrew it that the disquietude of her nerves might not be noticed. She raised herself to an upright posture in her chair before she replied in a matter-of-fact tone.
“I wasn’t alluding to dress. What I am wearing here will answer, of course—but I was thinking of the arrangements for the nurse. Will we take his old colored nurse, or do you suppose she would not be equal to the requirements of the trip? Had Elise better go in her place?”
“Oh, that cuts no ice. For the baby won’t go at all,” he replied, as simply as if this were an obvious conclusion.
She sat petrified for one moment. Then she found her voice—loud and strong and definite.
“The baby won’t go!” she exclaimed. “Then I won’t go—not one foot! What do you take me for?”
“For a sensible woman,” he retorted.
He looked angry, as always, when opposed, but not surprised. He had evidently anticipated her objection, and he controlled himself with care unusual to his ungoverned temper. “Who wants to go dragging a child three years old all around Europe and the Holy Land! You won’t be gone more than a year!”
“A year! Why, Edward—are you crazy? To think I would leave the baby for a year! No—nor a month! No—nor a day! He has scarcely beenout of my sight for two hours together since he was born.”
“How many women leave their children to take a trip abroad,” he argued, and she began to feel vaguely that he would much prefer that she should agree peaceably—he was even willing to exert such self-control as was necessary to persuade her.
“Never—never would I,” she declared, “and he would be miserable without me.”
“Not with me here,” her husband urged. “He is pleased to regard me with considerable favor.” And he bent upon her his rare, intimate, confidential smile.
For, unknown to him, she had been at great pains to build up a sort of idolatry of his father in the breast of the little boy, such as children usually feel without prompting. He was taught to disregard Floyd-Rosney’s averse, selfish inattention, to rejoice and bask in the sun of his favor, to run to greet him with pretty little graces, to admire him extravagantly as the finest man in all the world, to regulate his infantile conduct by the paternal prepossessions, being stealthily rewarded by his mother whenever his wiles attained the meed of praise.
Paula looked dazed, bewildered.
“You know, dearest, I am held here by the pressure of that villainous lawsuit, and as it will absorb all my leisure I thought that now is your chance for your Oriental tour—for I really don’t care to go again, and you may never have another opportunity.”
He paused, somewhat at a loss. She was leaning forward, gazing at him searchingly.
“Whatcanpossess you to imagine for one momentthat I would go without the boy! What is the Orient to me—or my silly fad for Eastern travel! I wish my tongue had been withered before I ever spoke the word!”
“Why, you talk as if I were proposing something amazing—abnormally brutal. Don’t other women leave their children?”
“But with their mothers, or some one who stands in that tender, solicitous relation,—and I have no mother!” Her words ended in a wail.
“But he will be with me—and surely I care for him as much as you do,” he argued, vehemently.
“But why can’t I take him with me,” she sought to adjust the difficulty, “even though the pleasure of the trip is lost if you don’t go?”
“Because—because,” he hesitated. “Because I cannot bear the separation from him,” he declared bluntly. “I am afraid something—I don’t know what—might happen to him. I know I am a fool. I couldn’t bear it.”
His folly went to her heart in his behalf as nothing else could have done. This evidence of his love for the child, his son and hers, atoned for a thousand slights and tyrannies which she forgave on the spot. Her brow cleared, her face relaxed, her cheek flushed.
“Aha!” she cried jubilantly, “you know how it feels, too!” She gleefully shook her fan at him. “We will let the trip to the Orient drop, now and forever. I can’t go without little Edward, and you”—she gave him a radiant, rallying smile—“can’t spare him, so we will just stay at home and see as much of each other as the old lawsuit will let you. And what I want to know,” she added, with a touchof indignation, “is, why do those lawyers of yours allow the matter to harass you? It is their business to take the care of it off your shoulders.”
He stood silent throughout this speech, changing expressions flitting across his face, but it hardened upon the allusion to the lawsuit and his vacillation solidified into resolve.
“Come, Paula, this talk is idle; the matter is arranged. The Hardingtons start for New York to-morrow, and sail as soon as they strike the town. Mrs. Hardington says she will be enchanted to have you of her party, and I have telegraphed and received an answer engaging your stateroom on the ship. Your section in the Pullman is also reserved,—couldn’t get the stateroom on the train—already taken, hang it.”
She had risen to her feet and was gazing at him with a sort of averse amazement, once more pale and agitated, and with a strange difficulty of articulation. “Why, Edward, what do you mean? Why should you want to get me out of the country? There’s something behind all this, evidently.” She noted that he winced by so slight a token as the flicker of an eyelash. “You know that I would not consent to go without my child for any earthly consideration.”
“I know no such thing, as I have told you,” he retorted hotly. “The arrangements are all made. Your passage is taken. I have ready your letter of credit. I do think you are the most ungrateful wretch alive,” he exclaimed, his eyes aglow with anger. “A beautiful and costly trip, that you have longed for, planned out for you in every detail, and you——” he broke off with a gesture of repudiation.
“I wouldn’t be separated from my child for one night for all the jauntings about the globe that could be devised,” she declared.
Floyd-Rosney suddenly lost all self-control. “Well, you certainly will be separated from him for one night—for many nights,—for he is gone!”
“Gone?” She sprang forward with a shriek and started toward the door. Then with a desperate effort to compose herself she paused even in the attitude of flight. “For God’s sake, Edward, where has he gone? What do you mean?”
“He has been sent to the place where I propose to have him cared for in your absence. Knowing that your time is short I tried to smooth the way.”
“But where?—where?”
“Where you shall not know,—you shall not follow. You may as well make up your mind to take the trip.”
She seemed taller, to tower, as she drew herself up in her wrath, standing on the threshold in the ghastly incongruity of her festival evening gown and her tragic face. “Oh, you brute!” she shrilled at him. “You fiend!”
Then she turned and fled through the great square hall and up the massive staircase to the nursery that she had quitted so lately, that had been so full of cheer and cosy comfort and infantile laughter and caresses.
The room was empty now. The fire was low in the grate, seen through the bars of the high fender that kept the little fellow from danger of contact with the flames. The dull, spiritless, red glow of the embers enabled her to discern the switch to turn on the electric light, and instantly the apartmentsprang into keen visibility. The bed was vacant, the coverlets disarranged where the child had been taken thence, doubtless after he had fallen asleep. The drawers of the bureau, the doors of the wardrobe stood ajar, the receptacles ransacked of all his little garments, his hats and shoes. Evidently a trunk had been packed in view of a prolonged absence while she had sat downstairs in the library, all unconscious of the machinations in progress against her in her own home. She was numb with the realization of the tremendous import of the situation. She could not understand the motive—she only perceived the fact. It was her husband’s scheme to get her out of the country, and he had fancied that he could force her to go without her child. She took no account of her grief, her fears, the surging anguish of separation. She was saying to herself as she turned into her own room adjoining that she must be strong in this crisis for the child’s sake, as well as her own. She must discern clearly, and reason accurately, and act promptly and without vacillation. If she should remain here she might be seized and on some pretext coerced into leaving the country on that lovely trip which he had planned for her. She burst into a sudden bitter laugh, and the sound startled her into silence again. When had her husband ever planned aught for her save to serve some purpose of his own? She would not go—she would not, she said over and over to herself. Her determination, her instinct were to ascertain where the child had been hidden, and if possible to capture him; if not to be near, on the chance of seeing him sometimes, to watch over him, to guard him from danger. In her self-pity at this poor hope the tears welled upand she shook with sobs. But on this momentary collapse ensued renewed strength. It might be, she thought, she could appeal to the law. She knew that her husband’s was the superior claim to the child, but in view of his tender years, his delicate health in certain respects, might not a court grant his custody to his mother? At all events his restoration to her care was henceforward her one object, and if she allowed herself to be forced out of the country, to serve this unknown, unimagined whim of her cruel husband’s, she might never see the child again.
A knock at the door startled her nerves like a clap of thunder. A maid had come to say that dinner had been served—indeed the butler had announced it an hour ago—and should it still wait?
“Have it taken down,” Paula said with stiff lips. “Mr. Floyd-Rosney will not dine at home.”
For Paula had heard the street door bang as she fled up the stairs, and she knew that he was not in the house. The girl gazed at her with a sharp point of curiosity in her little black eyes as she obsequiously withdrew. Despite the humility of the manner of her domestics Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had not the ascendency in her household due a chatelaine so magnificently placed. It was his wealth—she was an appendage. It was his will that ruled, not hers. As the servants loved to remark to each other, “She has got no more say-so here than me,” and the insecurity of her authority and the veneer of her position affected unfavorably the estimation in which she was held. The girl perceived readily enough that a clash had supervened between the couple and sagely opined that the master would have the best of it. Below stairs they ascribed to it the strange removalof the child at this hour of the night and the change in their employer’s plans for the evening. Their unrestrained voices came up through doors carelessly left ajar, along with the clatter of the dishes of the superfluous dinner, and Paula, with some unoccupied faculty, albeit all seemed burdened to the point of breaking with her heavy thoughts, realized that this breach of domestic etiquette could never have chanced had the master of the house been within its walls.
As she hastily divested herself of her dainty evening attire, with trembling fingers her spirits fell, her courage waned. No one would heed her, she said to herself. What value would a court attach to her representations as against the word and the will of a man of her husband’s wealth and prominence? And how could she expect aught of aid from any quarter? She had literally no individual position in the world. She had no influence on her husband, no real hold on his heart. She could command not one moment’s attention, save as his wife. Bereft of his favor and countenance she would be more of a nullity than a woman, poor but independent, working for a weekly wage. Truly Floyd-Rosney could ship her out of the country as if she were a mare or a cow. Decorum would forbid open resistance, for indeed if she clamored and protested she could be sent with a trained nurse as the victim of hysteria or monomania. She must get away. Her liberty was threatened. Her will had long been annulled, but now she was to be bodily bound and in effect carried whither she would not. Her liberty, her free agency were at stake—not her life. Never, shethought, would he do a deed that would react upon himself. She must be gone—and swiftly.
Perhaps Paula never realized the extent of her subjection until when dressed in her dark coat suit with hat and gloves, her suitcase packed with a few indispensable articles, she stood at her dressing table and opened her gold mesh-bag with a sudden clutch at her heart to ascertain what money she might have. Her white face, so scornful of herself, looked back from the mirror, duplicating her bitter smile. She had not five dollars in the world. Floyd-Rosney never gave money to his wife in the raw, so to speak. All her extravagant appointments came as it were from his hand. She could buy as she would on his accounts; she could subscribe liberally to charities and public enterprises which he countenanced, and he made her signature as good as his, but she could never have undertaken the slightest plan of her own initiative. She had no command of money. She could not go—she could not get away from under his hand. She was as definitely a prisoner as if she were behind the bars. Still looking scornfully, pityingly, distressfully at her pallid image in the mirror, a strange thought occurred to her. She wondered if she were Ran Ducie’s wife could she have been as poor as this. But she must go—and quickly. For one wild moment she contemplated borrowing from the servants the sum she needed. As she revolted at the degradation she realized its futility. Their place in his favor was more secure than hers—her necessity attested the tenuity of her position. They would not lend money to her in order to thwart him. She looked at the strings of pearls, the gold mesh-bag, and remembered thepawnbroker. Once more she shivered back from her own thought. They were not hers, for her own. They were for her to wear, to illustrate his taste, his liberality to his wife, his wealth. She knew little of law, of life. This might be an actual theft. But she must go—and go at once.
With her suitcase in her hand she stole down the stairs and softly let herself out of the massive front door, closing it noiselessly behind her, never for a moment looking up at the broad, tall façade of the building that had been her home. She crossed the street almost immediately, lest she encounter her husband returning with his plans more definitely concluded and with a more complete readiness to execute them.
The night was not cold, but bland and fresh, and she felt the vague stir of the breeze like a caress on her cheek. The stars—they were strangers to her now, so long it had been since she had paused to look upon them—showed in a dark, moonless heaven high above the deep canyon of the street. She walked rapidly, despite the weight of the suitcase, but so long had it been since she had traversed the thoroughfares on foot that she had forgotten the turnings—now the affair of the chauffeur—and once she was obliged to retrace her way for a block. She deprecated the loss of time and the drain upon her strength, but she was still alert and active when she paused in the ladies’ entrance of a hotel and stood waiting and looking about with her card in her hand. Oh, how strange for her, accustomed to be so considered, so attended, so heralded! She did not for the moment regret the coercion her splendors werewont to exert. She only wondered how best to secure her object, if she could not win the attention of the supercilious and reluctant functionaries dully regarding her in the distance.
The lobby of the ladies’ entrance opened upon the larger space of the office of the hotel, and here in a delicate haze of cigar smoke a number of men were standing in groups about the tessellated marble floor, or seated in the big armchairs placed at the base of the tall pillars. As fixing her eyes on the clerk behind the desk she placed her suitcase on the floor and started forward, he jangled a sharp summons on a hand bell, and a bell-boy detached himself from the coterie that had been nonchalantly regarding her, and loungingly advanced.
“Will you take that card to Mr. Randal Ducie?” she said, controlling her voice with difficulty.
“Ain’t hyar,” airily returned the darkey. He was about to turn away from this plainly dressed woman, who had no claim on any eagerness of service when his eyes chanced to fall on a token of quality above her seeming station. He suddenly noted the jeweled card case as she returned the card to it, and the gold mesh bag, and he vouchsafed pleasantly:
“I noticed myse’f the announcement in the evenin’ paper, but it is his brudder stoppin’ hyar.”
That moment her eyes fell upon Adrian Ducie standing in one of the groups of men smoking in the office. Her impulse was like that of a drowning creature clutching at a straw. Without an instant of hesitation, without even a vague intention of appropriately employing the intermediary services of the limp bell-boy, with a wild, hysteric fear that amoment’s waiting would lose her the opportunity, she dashed into the midst of the office, and, speechless, and pallid, and trembling, she seized Adrian by the arm.